seventeen
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 10:49 PM
Clint recognizes the little kid on the floor. He’s familiar, but he can’t remember how he knows him.
Nat and Bucky, the best trackers of the group, followed a trail of bloody footprints that led to this cabin in the middle of the mountains. They expected to find Steve or Peter or one of the HYDRA assholes, not… Not a child.
“That’s Steve’s sweatshirt,” says Barnes. He moves towards the child, far too aggressive towards someone so skittish, and the little boy shrieks and bursts into terrified tears.
Clint Barton is the only one of the five—himself, Nat, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, and Rhodey—who has kids, so he knows how to react immediately, putting down his weapons and crouching low to the ground. “Hey,” he says tenderly, trying not to scare the kid more.
He’s got his hair buzzed haphazardly by his skull, shallow cuts scattered over his head, and he’s wearing a torn-up jumpsuit, something clearly made for adults that was cut to fit him better. He’s incredibly small, maybe three feet tall, and he’s so thin that his bones poke through his spindly fingers and the pallid skin of his face. This kid’s been starved. No wonder he’s sitting on the floor of a random cabin shoveling pie into his mouth.
He’s got one wrist in a cast and the other is still holding a fistful of pie and he’s crying.
The little kid wipes at his mouth, smearing berry over his cheek, and Clint is reminded viscerally of his daughter. It’s a very feminine motion, something his daughter only started doing after kindergarten because ‘all the other girls’ did, too.
That’s why he can’t recognize her—he’s been trying to think of boys he knows that are about that age. But that’s not a little boy. That’s a little girl.
He’s seen her in photos—shared with him back during the Germany fiasco before the Avengers broke up. That Ant-Guy, Scott Lang, kept showing him pictures on the flight to Germany. Pictures of her at ballet recitals and soccer games and the zoo.
Bucky mentioned on the flight over: Scott Lang—Ant-Man—was taken by the same people who took Peter Parker and Steve Rogers.
They took Scott Lang’s daughter, too?
“You’re Scott’s daughter,” he says, and he wracks his mind for the name. “Kennedy. Uh, Carly. Cassie.”
The girl freezes suddenly, staring at him like he just chanted an exorcism.
“It’s Cassie, right? Cassie Lang?”
She doesn’t even move. Berry and pie drip from her hand. Where the hell did all this blood come from? It’s caked in her hair and all over her face like face paint, and it makes his heart clench just to see a kid like this. He imagines his boy—little Nate, named after Natasha, who’s only a couple years younger than this girl—covered in bruises like this, bloodstains like this, visibly starvedlike this, and his stomach lurches at the thought.
“I remember you, honey,” he says, and Natasha’s putting her gun down, too. “You like, um, the zoo? And animals. Uh, dolphins, right? Your dad never shut up about it.”
“Belugas,” she croaks, her voice barely more than a whisper, and then she claps her hand over her mouth and starts sobbing into her palm, trying to muffle the noise.
“It’s okay,” he says, his heart contorting in his chest. What did they do to this little girl? “You’re okay. We’re superheroes, see? We’re here to help you.”
Barnes moves forward again and she starts crying harder and backing up into the cabinet. “Where’s Steve?” he snaps. “How’d you get his—”
The girl starts shaking her head and crying, tears interrupted by violent hiccuping.
“Barnes,” warns Clint, grabbing him by the arm to stop him from approaching any further. “You’re scaring her.”
Shaking off Clint’s grip on his arm, the man scowls. “We don’t have time for this. Nat, let’s go. Barton, get the kid to a hospital and meet us at the bunker.”
He nods, and the three other Avengers follow.
This isn’t a one-time thing; usually, when Clint finds kids in the field, they see his superhero gear and climb right into his arms, knowing they’ll be safe. But this girl, if she was taken as long as Lang was missing… She’s been kidnapped for months. There’s no easy way to explain to her that Clint’s not going to hurt her.
It takes a while to coax the girl into any sense of safety.
Clint sits on the floor with her and shows her pictures of his kids, and that seems to help a little bit. “My oldest is a boy,” he says. “Cooper. He’s sixteen now. Then there’s Lila—she’s thirteen. And that’s Nate there. He turned three in May.” He offers her the phone so she can swipe through the photos, but she covers her head in a quick jerk of her hands, like he was going to hit her. “It’s okay… It’s okay… Are you hurt?”
A slow, uncertain shake of the head.
“I called an ambulance, honey, but we’re pretty far out. They might not be here for at least an hour. You gotta let me take you to the hospital.”
The girl hesitates, hugging that handful of pie close to her chest.
“You’ll be safe there, I promise. Just come with me.” He scoots forward, slow, his arm outstretched to her, but she doesn’t take it. What can he tell her that would get her to come with him? “I—I’m a friend of your dad’s.” He hates how much he suddenly sounds like the predators he warns his kids about.
The girl pauses again, her hollow gaze settling on him. “You know Daddy?” she whispers.
For once, she isn’t backing away from him. “Yes,” he says, and although it’s not technically a lie, it sure does feel like one with the way her face has lit up. “Yes. We can meet him there, at the hospital.” Now, that’sa lie.
“He’s okay?” Cassie asks, eerily quiet.
The lie is spearing a hole in his chest, but he can’t stop now. He has to get her to the hospital. Even if she’s not dying, this girl needs some medical help. “Yes, honey, he’s okay. You wanna come with me? We can go see him.”
She nods emptily, slowly, and she unclenches her fistful of half-eaten pie. Her sticky hands stretch towards him.
Gentle, cautious, he picks her up like he does all his kids—his hands under her arms, lifting her up so that he can rest her on his hip. Now that he’s got her, Cassie’s little arms hug weakly at him and her head tucks into the crook of his neck; her tiny body trembles in his hold, so he rubs circles into her back to calm her. “I’ve got you,” he says, as he steps through the cabin’s doorway. “I’ve got you, honey.”
THURSDAY, AUGUST 23 — 11:28 PM
Steve wakes dazedly; it takes a moment for his vision to come through, and when it does he sees Peter Parker in the corner far from him, rocking and rocking slowly like a kid in timeout. Hands wrapped around his knees, bare feet braced against concrete, the bruises around his neck an angry red. “Peter,” he says, and he tries to remember what happened but his face is so swollen and his head hurts. “Peter, hey…”
The kid’s unresponsive, rocking and rocking, his gaze pointed somewhere by the door. There’s blood splattered over his face and his entire right side like an abstract painting, and he hasn’t wiped it away. He just keeps rocking.
That’s not Peter’s blood. That kind of splatter—heavy blood and small pieces of flesh—can only come from someone else. That must be…
“The doctor,” he says finally, starting to understand. “What happened?”
There are some needle-marks in the crook of Steve’s arm—no wonder he can barely stand on his own. They must’ve drugged him while he was unconscious.
Peter’s rocking and rocking. He scratches at the back of his hand, where that IV port rests. He looks pale and strange, almost inhuman, breathing in rapid huffs, pupils huge and foggy.
“Peter,” Steve tries again, but his head feels like it’s full of cotton. “Hey. Did they hurt you?”
Stupid question. Those marks on the kid’s neck are darkening by the second.
“Did the…the little girl get out?”
Nothing.
Steve remembers a little; he shouted and yelled for help, drawing the HYDRA guys away from Cassie, and they’d followed him. They eventually caught him down the mountainside and knocked him in the head hard enough that he passed out.
He doesn’t remember Cassie getting caught, too, so maybe she escaped. If they’d caught her, wouldn’t she be in the cell with them? Is she alive? “Peter,” Steve tries. “Peter… Are you okay?” Stupid question. Stupid question, but he can’t think straight. “I think… I think Cassie got out.
Something he says must register, because Peter stops rocking and his face starts to stretch into some twisted thing resembling a smile.
He starts laughing.
Peter is laughing.
It’s a wrecked sound because it’s so quiet because of his damaged voice, so it comes out in a pained wheeze, but it’s so clearly a laugh. He’s laughing so hard that his whole body trembles, so hard that he starts slapping his face, like he’s trying to wake himself up.
His hands turn to fists then, and he slams his fist against his head with alarming force. “Peter!” Steve says, startled, and he crawls close to him; each blow gets harder against his head as he continues to laugh like a manic toddler. The world tilts as he moves, and Steve collapses before he can get to the kid, groaning. Right. Drugged. “Peter, stop, you’re gonna hurt yourself!” He drags himself over to the kid, and his looming presence seems to shake Peter from his crazed trance, because he stops as soon as Steve gets close enough to touch him, coughing and putting his hands out to protect himself.
It doesn’t take long for someone to enter the room; and when that door opens, Steve feels a twist of dread. In this state, he can’t do much to protect Peter.
Steve looks up, tries to stand, and immediately collapses back onto his knees.
The brown-haired man is lingering in the doorway.
Steve still doesn’t know his name. He thinks the little girl might have said it, but that memory is diluted by several rounds of drugs and a concussion now. He can’t remember what his name is.
“Welcome back,” says the brown-haired man. “You really thought you could…” The man winces, gritting his teeth as he gestures to his shoulder. “…get rid of me that easy?”
The man moves forward; drugged beyond belief, Steve moves between him and the kid. “You’re not touching him,” he says, although if he’s forced to stand he might pass out. “This time I won’t hold back.”
He chuckles. “Hold back? When will you fucking learn, Captain, huh? You’re not in charge here. The kid’s mine.” He’s got a gun this time, and when he shoves Steve to the side he jabs it into Steve’s neck.
The drugs slosh through his blood, taking him to the floor in an instant. He feels his cheek against cold concrete, and he hears the man’s voice again. Steve lifts his head to see the man standing over Peter, the kid as unresponsive as ever, and then a slap to get his attention.
Steve should’ve killed the man when he had the chance.
He finds it in him to drag himself into a sitting position. “Wait,” he gasps out. “Hey. Come on. The kid… He’s hurt.”
“One more word from you,” says the man, without looking, “and I’ll shoot you in the fucking head. Bet Captain Steve Rogers can’t survive that, can he?”
The man’s gun has a silencer, he realizes with a sudden jolt of panic, spotting the black cylinder extending from the pistol. His gun has a silencer.
The man kneels beside Peter, gun pointed at his gut, and says lowly, “You still owe me for today, don’t you, Petey?” A hand on Peter’s knee, and Steve’s reminded viscerally of what the kid had done hours earlier to Steve—the hand on his knee, the lips on his neck—and there is a sudden, violent burst of desperation from inside him.
Steve should’ve killed him. Steve should’ve killed him.
Steve can’t stop him; has nothing. No weapons, no strength, no bargaining chips. “Wait!” Nothing except… “Me— take me!” His suggestion gives the brown-haired man pause, and a surge of disturbed victory works its way through Steve’s chest. Steve adds, with an unimaginable amount of desperation, “Please.” The man watches him, eyes dark and unreadable. “I’ll… I’ll… I’ll suck you off.”
The brown-haired man stands then, his gun pointed at Steve now. Eyes on me, he thinks, just like last time. Eyes on me. “Now, that’san idea,” he says, his eyes alighting with malice. “Captain Steve Rogers, hero of the Western world, choking down some dick.” He chuckles. “Beg for it.”
Steve’s mouth goes dry. Steve Rogers never begs; he fights until the end of the line. He fights back. He always fights back.
Steve swallows hard. “Please,” he says, and he thinks of Bucky. There’s so much shit pumping through his system that he can barely focus his eyes, but he watches as a blurry form treads the length of the cell in a couple strides and stands above him. His visage sways. “I want to.”
The brown-haired man squats by him. “You know, Cap,” he says, and suddenly his hand is on Steve, palming him through his pants. “You’re really not my type.”
“I’ll…make it good,” says Steve, and he pushes something sultry into his voice, something reserved for Bucky and Bucky alone. “I’m good at it, I promise. Please. Please. Just not the kid, please.”
The man gives him this look, something like a glare, over his scruffy brown chin. “Hard to pass up the opportunity to make Captain America my bitch,” he says. “Especially after he tried to kill me.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
There’s a cold pressure against his arm—a sharp sound—and a thunk , and a flare of pain in his arm so intense that Steve lets out a groan. The man shothim. Last time he’d been shot, it was from a farther distance, but at point blank range… The wound bleeds almost immediately, and he clamps his hand over the wound to stop it.
“Don’t lie,” says the man, as though he didn’t just put a bullet in Steve. “I don’t like liars, Steve Rogers.”
The man smiles, and Steve wants to spit in his face but he can’t. He just sways, gripping his newfound wound as blood spills through his clamped fingers. “Go on, then.” he says, “Let’s see what America’s ass has to offer.”
At least it’s not Peter.
He hopes the kid’s not looking, but he can’t see him past the brown-haired man’s torso. He hopes he doesn’t remember this.
There’s that cold circle on the side of his neck, and when he swallows, the metal slides over his clammy skin. Steve placed a hand on the man’s belt, feeling suddenly very, very sick. It’s calfskin leather, the nice kind, the kind doctors and bankers wear. He unbuckles and unzips with bloodstained fingers, his slippery fingers needing a couple tries to do it; the pain in his shoulder roars.
“Don’t even think about it,” the man says, before Steve can say another word. Steve hears the unspoken threat: Bite down and you’re dead.
He tries not to think of Bucky.
Steve goes somewhere else in his mind, only coming back when the man grasps his hair in a painfully tight grip, thrusting hard enough that Steve gags and involuntarily shoves back at the man’s thighs.
At least it’s not Peter.
When he’s done, the brown-haired man tucks himself away with a grunt and stands over Steve like he’s a prize pig. “That wasn’t bad. You’ve got experience, huh?”
Steve wants to throw up; nauseous, he keels over one hand pressing into his stomach. He’s near-blinded by pain and disgust, and he wishes Bucky would come bursting in through that door.
There’s a weight on his shoulder, pressing hard, and the pain doubles, triples, layering over itself—that’s a handon his shoulder, forcing his back to the wall. His head lolls back, heavy with whatever drug they gave him, and the hand disappears. The man’s face sways in front of him—scruffy chin, thick brows, dark eyes—and there’s a hand on his stomach, tugging his shirt out of his pants.
Wait. Wait.
Steve’s still kneeling; it’s difficult to keep himself upright. “You learn that one in the army, did you?” The man squats in front of him then, one knee on the ground, and sneaks his hand into Steve’s pants; Steve tenses, squeezing his legs together to stop any intrusion. This only seems to encourage the man, because he chuckles and squeezes hard enough to hurt, and Steve swallows a cry of pain. This man won’t see him weak. “Answer me, Steve Rogers.”
“Yes,” he says. Steve can feel the tears well in his eyes, and he blinks them back, blinks again, and takes a breath to dissipate them.
At least it’s not Peter.
The man is not gentle, but Steve’s body responds, and when he is finished, there are tears on Steve’s face. The brown-haired man pulls his hands out of the pants and brushes his hand on Steve’s thigh, back and forth, until his hand is clean.
Then he’s up and striding across the room, a quick movement towards Peter that leaves Steve scrambling for a solution. He has nothing left. He has nothing left. “Wait—wait—not him, not him!”
The man laughs. “You really are into this hero shit, aren’t you?” He waves the gun. “Come here,” he says, and Steve doesn’t move.
The man raises the gun a second time and fires into the same spot on his shoulder, and Steve screams through gritted teeth. “Don’t make me ask again.” He starts to shuffle forward on his knees, a couple inches at a time and the man stops him. “Hands and knees,” he says, and Steve forces one arm to the ground; blood seeps from his gunshot wound. Two, now. “Other hand, too.”
Where the fuck does this guy get off? He feels a sick twist in his gut at the amount of time Peter spent with him. No wonder the kid can barely speak. This kid… He must’ve been through hell. Steve puts his other hand down and, in so much pain it’s darkening his vision, he crawls to the brown-haired man.
At least it’s not Peter.
Then, through the thin fabric of his shirt, he feels cold metal against his back.
From this range, a bullet could easily tear through his lung. Steve Rogers is strong, but he’s not that strong. He’s spent enough time with Bruce Banner to know what will happen if a bullet goes through his lung without anyone to fix him up. First, air from outside the lung will come into the lung, and the area around his lung will fill with blood; then the lung will collapse. Then, within minutes, he’ll be dead.
“This is where you stabbed me, Rogers,” says the man. “Right. Here. You wanna know how it feels?”
“No,” he chokes out. Blood’s coming down his arm in a warm spiral. “Please—“
“Beg me,” he says, and his voice is so cold.
“Wh-what?” If Steve wasn’t so drugged, if his head wasn’t so injured, if his shoulder wasn’t so wounded, then he’d be able to fight back. But he can’t. All he can do is obey.
“Beg me,” he says, “to fuck you.”
Steve has never felt fear as unbridled as this. If the man shoots, he’s dead. The muzzle of the gun pokes into his spine. “Please,” he says.
“Please what?”
The wave of humiliation that comes over him is almost unbearable. “Please,” he says, “fuck me.”
He can feel the man’s shoe on his back then, hard and unyielding, pressing down, and it takes everything in him not to collapse. His body is screaming— “I can’t hear you,” says the man coldly.
Is this how he’s going to die? Begging a sick pervert to rape him? “Please!” he shouts, louder, and his head swims like it’s drowning in mud. He can’t fucking see. “Please…”
He’s gonna pass out, but he can’t. Without him, the guy’s gonna go after Peter. He clings to consciousness, trying to focus on the sound of his blood hitting concrete. Stay awake. Stay awake.
The man fucking laughs. and with a beat of horror, Steve feels the cold muzzle travel down his back. He can hear the echo of what he said, almost violent, in his ears. This isn’t happening, right? It’s not happening to him. He’s Steve Rogers. He’s Captain America. He’s… He’s…
He doesn’t know how the man gets his shirt off. Did he help? Did he take it off? The drugs are slurring his thoughts, his memories, and he’s trying really, really hard not to think about Bucky. He’s on his stomach now, and the man presses his boot into his wounded shoulder, wrenching a garbled cry from him. “The great Captain America,” says the man. “What are you now?”
Steve Rogers is not often helpless. He is a super-soldier and a veteran and an Avenger. He is anything but helpless. But this, this complete and utter defenselessness is making him remember what it was like before the serum. When he’d lose every fight he got into. When he’d struggle to keep his lungs working every other night. When he’d go to sleep knowing he might not wake up.
The door opens again—for a second Steve thinks of Bucky—and there’s an exasperated groan. “Really, Beck? Keep it in your goddamn pants. Can’t you go one second without fucking these poor guys? What’d you do to him?”
The man takes the foot off his back, and the muzzle of the gun disappears from Steve’s bare back. “Nothing he didn’t want,” he grumbles, stepping over Steve’s body to reach the doorway.
“Whatever. Let’s go—family meeting.”
The man and his buddy disappear through the doorway, and for some reason the sound of the lock clicking fills Steve with untamed relief; he breathes shakily into the concrete. “He’s gone,” says Steve, maybe for Peter and maybe for himself. “He’s gone.” He can't find it in himself to cry; he traps that feeling in his chest and buries it deep. He can't. He can't. There's this numb feeling permeating his body, a strangeness tingling in his legs and hips and shoulders; his body doesn't feel real, not quite. He looks down at his pants, at the twisted waistband of his boxers, and still he doesn't cry. He's a superhero—he's Captain America. This doesn't happen to superheroes. Not to him. He... He's not...
Peter doesn’t say a word.
Their captors return after only a few minutes, and when they open the door Steve shuffles back against the bed, one hand clasped over his shoulder wound, the other keeping Peter behind him. They can’t have him— “YOU CAN’T TAKE HIM!” he shouts, even though he’s struggling to stand. “GET—GET THE FUCK OUT!” They ignore him; the brown-haired man whips the gun at his head and knocks him to the side in one blow.
“Time to pay the piper, Parker,” says one, grabbing the kid by the arm. “Let’s go.”
“NO!” Steve cries, and he’s hit a second time—one that bursts his head into sickly blackness. When he comes to, lying in a distinct pool of his own blood, Peter’s gone, as are the rest of those HYDRA assholes. “No,” he gasps to no one in particular. “No, no, no…”
He crawls to the door, clutching his shoulder. “God, Bucky, please…” Steve begs to the ceiling. “Please…”
He’s not going to cry; he needs a plan. He finds his shirt thrown somewhere by the toilet—the man must have cut it off of him, because it’s torn into two pieces—and tears it into strips, wrapping them around the wound in his shoulder. Then he grabs the can opener from across the floor and waits with it, holding on with such a tight grip that his wrist trembles. The next time those assholes come back, he’ll be ready.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 24 — 12:01 AM
Rhodey and the others get to a door with a star on its front, one that is spotted with blood. Instead, they can hear some shuffling; Natasha tugs at the handle, and Bucky clicks his tongue, an unspoken get back.She moves away from the door, and Bucky fires his gun at the lock twice, the silenced shots bursting the mechanism open. The other two stay back.
Vibranium bullets meet vibranium locks. Bucky Barnes knows how to handle HYDRA bases.
Bucky kicks the star-painted door open with ease—
—and nearly gets nailed in the head by a rusty can opener.
Bucky has super-soldier reflexes, so he ducks the first time; the rest of them back up, ready to shoot. It’s Steve, his face beaten beyond recognition, but it’s definitely Steve. For a moment, Rhodey, Sam, and Nat are just onlookers to their reunion. “Steve,” Bucky says, relief flooding his face. “Steve—“
The first swing took Steve to the ground, and he’s on his hands and knees now, trying to push himself back up and when Bucky leans down, the blond man swings again with a crazed cry— why is he fighting with his left arm?—and Bucky catches it in his metal fist. “Steve! Stevie, hey, it’s me. It’s me.”
It takes Steve a second, and when it finally clicks, the relief on his face is otherworldly. “Bucky,” he sobs, and he drops the can opener, falling to one knee and then the other. “Oh, god. Oh, god.”
Bucky’s on the floor with him; he puts a hand on Steve’s face and the man starts crying, hands gripping Bucky’s shirt like a lifeline. Even though Steve’s on his knees, he’s swaying and his pupils look huge. “What did they give you?”
Steve’s shaking his head. He’s crying.Rhodey’s never seen Steve cry before. Ever. It’s disturbing. “Bucky… He… He…” He can’t even finish a sentence. He’s shirtless and barefoot and covered in smears of dirt and blood; hasn’t he only been here for half a day?
“Where’s Peter?” asks Rhodey, insistent.
“They—he—they were—” Steve's acting so strange, and that crazed, drugged look in his eyes isn’t helping. He’s dressed only in sweatpants and boxers; the remains of his shirt are tied bloodily around his shoulder. He’s barefoot, too, and his feet are caked in dirt and dried blood. “He’s—he’s—they have him. They’re—they… They…”
Bucky gets Steve’s arm around his shoulders, and the other man leans heavily into him. “Okay—let’s go.”
The five of them quickly make their way down the hall, checking each room as they go. “Clear,” mutters Romanoff as they encounter another empty room. Most of them are filled with used syringes, sleeping bags, and food wrappers. And another. “Clear.”
They sneak forward; at the end of the hall, they can hear people talking—shouting, even. Rhodey enters the room first; in a split second, he takes in the horrific scene in front of him. In one corner is the felon Scott Lang; he’s tied to a wheelchair and behind a table with a computer on top, and he’s muttering to himself.
Most of the people in the room are swaying like Steve, eyes bloodshot and necks sweaty. In the other corner, a bearded man screams into a phone.
And in the center is the kid. He’s on some kind of metal table, flat on his stomach, little chest heaving, tears running down his face. Peter’s strapped down to the gray-metal table, and he’s in so much pain that he’s drenched in sweat. He’s clearly struggling to stay conscious, every breath coming out drenched in pain. There’s a blindfold on him, a black contraption locked around his eyes, and his hands are trapped in these metal cuffs, as are his ankles. His back’s pink and bloody.
Slap— a sob. Slap—another sob.
They’re beating him with fucking wire.
And there in the corner, a brown-haired man’s jerking off to it.
He’s the first one to see them. Startled, he goes, “What the fuck—” and jumps for the opposite door, zipping up his pants the whole way.
The others take a bit too long to notice, probably too high to recognize that a group of Avengers have just walked in, and they split up amongst the captors. Natasha goes sprinting after the jerk-off guy, whereas the rest of them split up amongst the addicts: Rhodey goes straight for Peter, knocking away the guy beating him into Falcon, who grabs him around the neck and knocks him out in one hit.
Natasha drags back the brown-haired man, whose hands are now tied behind his back with zip-ties and whose erection is clearly visible through his slacks. She kicks him hard in the back, and he curses at her.“Get rid of that,” she snarls, referring to the tent in his pants, “or you won’t have one.”
The brown-haired man spits on her. He’s still hard.
Natasha flips a karambit knife in one hand and plunges the blade downward in a stroke so quick it’s a blur of color, stabbing him in the crotch. He screams—blood spreads over his front, and he collapses on himself, hands pressed between his legs, moaning in pain on the floor.
Nobody says a thing.
As the others keep fighting, Rhodey goes for the straps holding Peter down and he just lays there. “Peter,” Rhodey tries, and the kid just writhes on the table, the wounds in his back leaking blood in small, curved lines. “ Peter.” He spots the restraints, finding vibranium cuffed tightly around his limbs, but as soon as he touches them, the kid tenses up like Rhodey laid a hot poker on his skin, and he backs off. “Sam?” he calls out, wanting anyone else to take over the job of freeing the poor kid. “A little help?”
Sam Wilson’s attention is on something else: one of the junkies is screaming: “STOP! STOP OR I’LL SHOOT HIM!” It’s the bearded man, the one who was on the phone. He’s got wheelchair-bound Scott Lang in a headlock, pressing a massive metal weapon into his chin. This man’s definitely high, because his eyes are nearly bugged out of his head and his skin’s so flushed that his whole face is bright pink. “I’LL KILL HIM! I’LL KILL HIM!”
Romanoff speaks into her earpiece—she’s been communicating with Happy the entire time— “We’ve got a hostage situation, Hogan,” she announces, glaring at the bearded guy. “Hold up on Stark.”
The man licks his teeth. “How’d you find me? Huh?” He makes this weird, grinning smile, even though he doesn’t seem happy—it only makes him seem crazier. “HOW’D YOU FIND ME? YOU CAN’T DEFEAT ME!”
Natasha’s got her gun trained on the guy. as does Bucky, who’s currently blocking Steve with his body. “Put the gun down,” says Natasha icily, “and we’ll let you live.”
“ You can’t kill me!” the man screams. Yeah, this guy’s higher than a fucking kite. He pokes the barrel of the gun into Scott’s neck, hard enough that the man winces. “NO ONE CAN KILL ME! NOBODY MOVE!” The crazy junkie’s rambling and rambling, shouting about saving the world and fail-safes and power with his sweaty fingers on the trigger. “PUT YOUR WEAPONS DOWN!” the guy screams. “PUT ‘EM ALL DOWN OR I’LL KILL HIM!”
Sam obeys almost immediately, then Natasha, too, as she tries to negotiate with him.
“I SAID PUT THEM DOWN! YOU! OUT OF THE SUIT!”
As Rhodey steps out of the suit, his deadened legs support by his high-tech leg braces, he looks to Scott Lang instead.
He remembers Ant-Man from the battle in Germany. This man looks nothing like him, but that smile… Why is he smiling? “Is she free?” the ex-felon asks, quiet enough that the sound is dwarfed by the crazy guy’s rambling.
He’s asking about his daughter. “She’s free,” says Rhodey, heart sinking.“Hawkeye took her to the hospital. Her family” —Sam looks sharply at him, and Rhodey regrets it as soon as he said it— “is coming to get her. She’s safe. She’s safe.”
Scott Lang smiles then, impossibly sad. His eyes shine. And he says, in this wounded tone, “Good.”
The ex-felon wraps his fingers over Charlie’s.
Rhodey doesn’t register what he’s doing until it happens; Scott squeezes the trigger over Charlie’s hand, the weapon fires, and Scott Lang burns up in a flash of blue light. All that’s left is a bloodied wheelchair and a sprinkle of ash. The blast takes out the junkie who’s holding him, too, vanishing his hand into a pile of bluish gray cinders. The man screams and falls backwards, and Rhodey steps back into his suit, quickly taking him out with a blast to the chest.
He's dead. Is he dead? Did Scott just...
Sam Wilson’s throwing up in the corner, his wings all folded up, gagging into his hands.
The rest of the HYDRA guys are neutralized, either unconscious or wishing they were. All the while, Steve’s leaned against the stained wall, repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” like a waterlogged audiotape, sobbing into Bucky’s shoulder.
Finally, they return to Peter. The kid’s spent the entire hostage situation choking out terrified sounds through his swollen throat and thrashing against his bindings.
Still blinking away the afterimage of Scott Lang (and trying not to think about it for Peter’s sake), Rhodey steps out of the suit once more, using his bare hands to try to pry at the blindfold on Peter’s face. It’s not exactly a blindfold, because it’s hard and locked into place; Rhodey can’t get it off his face—what the hell is this?
“Move,” says Bucky gruffly, stepping away from Steve for a moment. He moves to Peter, mutters something incomprehensible under his breath—maybe I’m sorry?—and then places his hands around Peter’s head, who starts thrashing as soon as he does, kicking his legs and groaning weakly. It clicks and releases, and then it’s off.
They get his restraints next, unbuckling arms and legs from vibranium cuffs; but as soon as he’s free, Peter pushes himself off the table and hits the floor so hard that Rhodey swears he hears his bones hit concrete. He’s so beatenthat he can barely move, yet still he tries to crawl away, his nails scraping against concrete as he drags himself forward a couple inches at a time. “Peter,” Natasha tries, kneeling by him, and she touches his leg. “Hey, you’re safe—”
The kid makes a choked sound, curling into a shuddery ball and making these shattered, whimpery noises in his throat; his vocal cords must’ve been wrecked by whoever strangled him—evident by the developing hand-shaped bruises around his neck—because he can barely get a sound out. Peter doesn’t need to speak to express his terror; the fear is evident in every move he makes. He thinks they’re going to hurthim, and he can’t even muster up the words. His eyes are wide open, bugged wide and clouded with pain, but he might as well be blind because he’s not seeing straight; the only thing Peter Parker can see right now is the possibility of more pain.
Back in the doorway, Steve Rogers is crying.
“It’s us,” tries Rhodey, but his vision is going all watery and blurry with tears. “Peter, look at me… Kid. Kid. It’s us, Peter. We’re here to…” He probably knows the kid the best of all of them, and to see him like this… “To… To rescue you.” He can’t help his voice from cracking. “God, Peter… We found you, kid. We foundyou.”
How is this the happy-go-lucky teenager that Tony took out for pizza? That he and Pepper cheered on at decathlon meets and met for ice cream? That they took to Hamilton?
This kid…
He looks like a phantom.
They should’ve looked for him days ago, weeks ago, months ago. How could they let this happen? How could they let a bunch of addicts mutilate a kid like this? He looks like… He looks like… Paper-thin and covered in scars, bruised beyond recognition, his neck layered in darkening handprints, his wrists and ankles sliced bloody by the restraints.
God, the things they must’ve done to him to get him to look like he’s been chewed up by a paper-shredder and run over by a semi-truck. What they must’ve done to him to make him so traumatized he couldn’t speak.
And that look in his eyes—like his pupils had been hollowed out with a spoon—it was like he was already dead.
Rhodey keels over, sudden nausea filling his belly, and gags a couple times before righting himself.
Still Peter Parker crawls away, tears coming down his face like there’s a dam unhinged in his eye-sockets, broken nails scraping the concrete as he drags his broken body away from the Avengers. “We just need,” manages Sam, “to give him time, right? He’ll calm down, he’ll know it’s us?” He tries directing his words at Peter, who’s half-sobbing on the floor, his muscles wound so tight that he twitches at every sound, scraping his fingernails over the wall because he can’t find the fucking door. His face is turned to the wall like he doesn’t want to look, and tears are running through the splatters of blood on his face. “Peter—man, hey, it’s us. You remember us, right? We’re the Avengers. You remember us, don’t you? Peter. Peter. Come on…”
The room is quiet save for Peter’s strangled sounds and Steve’s exhausted sobbing.
“Nat,” says Bucky finally, interrupting the strained silence. His voice is so tired. There’s a weight in it, like the words are doused in mercury instead of oxygen. “You have to knock him out.”
Rhodey backs up, his leg braces clunking against the concrete ground.
Rhodey knows Nat’s seen a lot, but even this brings her some hesitation. “I’m sorry, маленький паучок,” the red-haired woman says, as softly as she can. She presses some buttons on her forearm, points her bracelet at the kid, and fires; it’s as gentle as an electric shock can be, and Peter convulses, his entire body tensing underneath the shock, before he goes limp against the concrete floor, finally still.
They stare at the kid’s limp body; it’s like watching a rotting cadaver.
“I got him,” says Rhodey, and he’s never heard his own voice sound so stripped, so callow, like someone pulled his fingernails from their beds and forced him to swallow them one by one. “I got him.” He moves forward, half-expecting the kid to flinch and scream again, but finds Peter completely unconscious, his jaw slack and his flailing limbs, finally, at rest.
He understands now why Bucky told Nat to do it. They only would’ve frightened him more by trying to physically force him out of the bunker. It’s easier this way. Safer. Calmer.
Behind him, Nat’s speaking through her earpiece, talking to Hogan or Barton or maybe both. “You hear me, Happy? Go get our boy.”
Tears and blood are still drying on the kid’s young, battered face. His entire body’s mottled with scars, burns, and bruises; Rhodey is tender with him, pulling his jumpsuit up and over the kid’s prone torso, pushing his skinny arms through each sleeve. "You're okay." It’s cold outside, and it’ll be a long flight to the hospital. Natasha brings him a shock blanket, one of those fold-up ones she must've been keeping on her. He wraps the kid in it like a toddler, folding the blanket around him like he's swaddling a baby. He hopes the kid is warm; he wishes he had some socks for him. "I'm so sorry, kid," he whispers, and Rhodey's so close to crying that the tears are burning a hole in his throat. "You're safe now, Peter. You hear me? We got you. We got you." Then, gentle as he would be with a newborn infant, he picks up the kid bridal-style, an arm under his back and another under the crook of his legs. His head lolls back like a puppet with its strings cut.
Flanked by the other Avengers, Rhodey carries Peter Parker out of that hellhole.