shard
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 8:21 AM
Tony wakes up to Pepper shaking him.
He hasn’t been sleeping well, waking every hour or so with a jerk. Those sleep-supplement pills are still kicking in. He's frazzled as he wakes, searching for his tools immediately, awaiting the familiar surroundings of his lab—formulas written on the walls, post-it notes covering his lab table.
Instead, he finds a massive all-white space filled with navy-blue chairs: a waiting room.
Pepper has to remind him several times where he is, and when he finally recognizes where he is, he slumps back into his chair.
Pepper's looking at him. Pregnant. Right. She’s pregnant. She's safe and pregnant and here with him. “You were talking in your sleep,” she says, a hand on his back. “Something about Peter.”
Tony’s hand is trembling, and he stops it by clamping over it with his other hand. He knows he talks in his sleep—Dum-E recorded it and offered to replay in case he’d spoken any miraculous chemical equations in his sleep. He rarely sleeps long enough to dream; but when he does, it’s always about Peter.
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” she says, that crease in her brow taut.
The doctors say they want to check over Tony as well; apparently, one of the nurses noticed all of his twitching and grew worried. His check-up is quick. They quickly discover an unusually high blood pressure, as well as a high heart rate. “Have you experienced any stressors that might have…” starts the doctor, in that automatic medical tone, before she suddenly trails off, realizing her mistake. The woman clears her throat. “About the tremors—are you on any medications?”
Tony finds himself rubbing his trembling palms together. “Uh.” To the best of his ability, he explains the sleep-supplement pill he was taking, but he can’t even remember what’s in it.
“Well,” says the doctor, “ stimulants and chronic insomnia are never a good mix. Your tremors could dissipate on their own—but let’s just wait until the drug flushes out of your system before running any tests.” She snaps her gloves into the garbage can. “In the meantime, Mr. Stark, try to get some sleep.”
Sleep.
The thought is almost laughable.
Peter’s condition mellowed overnight.
They opted to keep him in the ICU, heavily sedated, to allow his body to recover more before they performed any more medical procedures.
Around nine o’clock, Pepper and Tony meet again with Peter’s doctor. “For the time being,” Dr. Jackson says, when Pepper tries to protest, “Peter needs to stay in the ICU. He’s pretty weak right now—the refeeding syndrome is taking a toll, and his body is in no condition to endure anything difficult. He’s eight-six pounds right now—his body mass index of thirteen-point-one. Do you understand how low that is?”
Pepper twists her mouth; Tony gnaws on the inside of his cheek. Eighty-six pounds. He thinks of all the cans of food he consumed in his lab. Begging Riri to give some to Peter. Her irritated expression, her dark eyes sliding over to his. Parker gets what he gets, she said, shoving the door closed between them.
“That’s the kind of index you see in... prisoners of war. Or Not teenage boys. Most doctors consider a BMI of twelve to be… well, the limit for human survival. His BMI is barely higher than that. He lost almost forty percent of his body weight, Mr. Stark. So unless we want to destabilize him, we have to keep him there for the time being.”
Tony keeps seeing flashes of Peter on the back of his eyelids: a blade pressed against his cheek, water poured over his cloth-covered face, cracked bone jutting out of his shin, a blue-white blowtorch glowing over his brachium, his panic-wide eyes smooth and wet like the yolk of an egg and gleaming in the light of the torch.
His fingers itch for his tools; he should be working. He needs to be working. God, Peter—
A warm hand on his knee. Pepper. Pepper’s here. She’s here. She’s here and she’s safe and she’s pregnant. Tony puts his sweaty hand over hers. She’s here.
“But before you see him,” Dr. Jackson continues, “there’s something we need to discuss. Something about Peter’s…condition.” There’s a nurse beside her, looking uncomfortable with her hands folded in her lap. “I do have to warn you—parents don’t tend to react well to this information. So if you need to take a break—get a drink of water, anything—then feel free. But this is a pretty sensitive issue.”
Tony grips Pepper’s hand tightly; Pepper holds his just as tightly, the both of them finding a lifeline in each other.
He doesn’t know what they could possibly tell him that he doesn’t already know. He witnessed everything : every cut, every burn, every lash, every bruise. He saw it all, lit up for him on a flat-screen television in his lab. Every drugged glance, every raspy sob, every broken scream. Like his own personal Saw film.
The doctor clears her throat; Tony snaps back into the present, finding the comfort of Pepper’s hand in his. “When we took Peter through the ICU,” she explains, “our medical staff did a more, well, thorough examination of him than when he first arrived. And when my staff performed that examination, they found evidence of violent sexual trauma. Some of it went unnoticed during our original exam, due to the nature of his…time missing. But some of his bruising is consistent with it, too. Underlying bruising around the hips, thigh, neck, genital region—all consistent.”
The woman is wincing. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Tony’s mind has gone cold and numb. He must be hallucinating. He must be hallucinating. He saw everything that happened to Peter—that’s how he knew his kid was still alive.
“They…” says Pepper, as Tony’s sight blurs. She’s using her business voice. Her I’m-CEO-of-Stark-Industries voice. “They abused him…sexually?”
“Yes, Ms. Potts.” Tony can feel the doctor’s gaze on him suddenly. “Mr. Stark? You alright, sir?”
There was never any sign, was there? In any of the livestreams… Charlie and the others never touched him like that. Never. There was sometimes a guy in the corner who looked a little suspicious but Tony never saw… They’d never spoken about Peter in that way, had never looked at him that way.
But the doctors said that it was true. That they’d hurt Peter in the worst way imaginable.
He thinks of Peter with deliberate force.
The couch is large, but somehow Peter has ended up on Tony’s side of it, his socked feet only inches from the man. The kid has his knees tucked up to his chest, arm resting, his head resting on a couch cushion, and Tony draws the blanket back over his feet. They’d been watching Superman at Tony’s suggestion (of course, the original from the seventies) and now blue-and-red flashes across Peter’s sleeping face as the superhero dove into the villain’s underground lair.
Even in his sleep, the kid is shivering a little, his hands tucked between his knees to keep them warm. He’s never been good at heat retention, not as long as Tony’s known him. He says it’s a ‘Spider thing,’ but Tony’s pretty sure it’s a ‘Peter thing.’
Tony pulls the blanket from his own legs and tucks it around Peter, pushing the edges of the quilt under his knees and shoulders so that it’ll stay.
In his sleep, the tucked-in kid lets out a content sigh.
Tony’s hands are trembling again. The doctor's words whine in his ears: “Are you… Are you sure?” he asks. “I didn’t see—I didn’t notice—”
Dr. Jackson interlaces her fingers and sets them on top of Peter’s manila folder. “Yes, Mr. Stark. We may not have seen much of Mr. Parker’s…type of situation in our hospital, but sexual assault is one thing we do see with some frequency here. We’re sure.”
Tony’s voice catches in his throat; he scratches there, just below his chin. There’s a burn scar there, mostly faded, from the tip of the smoking gun he’d pressed there when Pepper and Rhodey tried to break into his lab months ago. He remembers the sizzle of heat as he pressed it to that soft spot, the odor of burning beard-hair.
Dr. Jackson fiddles with the folder in front of her. “And although some of the…evidence of any sexual crimes may have been lost in his treatment, we can still do a rape kit to collect any evidence that was left. And this is the difficult part.” She sighs. “As of right now, Peter is de facto incompetent , meaning he can’t make any medical decisions for himself. And as his next-of-kin, it’s hospital policy, in the case of an incompetent victim, to ask the next-of-kin whether or not they’d like a rape kit done for the patient.”
Pepper glances at him; Tony feels her gaze like a double-laser searing into his cheek. “You want us to…” his fiancée tries, unable to finish.
Are they engaged anymore? Are they even dating? He finds this thought pervading his mind, overpassing any thoughts of Peter. Pepper’s engagement ring is gone, leaving a faint circle of white around her ring finger; vaguely, Tony remembers her throwing it at him the last time he saw her.
“Yes,” answers Dr. Jackson. “As his temporary guardians, it’s your decision. If any sex crimes against Peter were committed in the past 72 hours, we can probably get find remnants of DNA. And if you’re pursuing a legal case against the perpetrators of, um” —she tugs a bit at her ironed collar, uncomfortable— “what happened, then some tangible evidence will make it a lot easier. Legally, though, the hospital can’t do anything without the patient’s permission. Or the next-of-kin.” She points generally to Tony and Pepper.
Pepper’s still using her CEO voice. “Is it common?” she asks. “For parents to approve…”
“Statistically speaking,” says the doctor, “yes. Parents and guardians generally consent to a rape kit done for their child if the child is unable to give consent.”
“And the victims? Do they usually want one?”
The woman looks pained, the line of questioning drawing a line of sweat across her brown hairline. She fiddles with her ponytail, tightening it by pulling on either side. “Not exactly,” she says eventually. “When patients come in with sexual trauma, about half consent to rape kits, and of those… Only a third usually turn them over to the police.”
Tony could do the math, but his head’s hurting so much that he’s beginning to sway in his chair. He looses his hand from Pepper’s and grips the plastic arms of his chair. Oh, God. Oh, God.
“We’ll still take note of any injuries he sustained, but when it comes to identifying the perpetrator…”
Tony realizes suddenly that he probably knows whoever did it. He’s seen them all, flitting in and out of that depraved tiny room, high and sweating and twitching. He knows them. And one of them… One of them…
One of them raped Peter.
Tony struggles to his feet suddenly, the chair squeaking as he stands on shaking legs, grabbing the table for support. “Sorry,” he says abruptly. “I’m just gonna…” He waves awkwardly, trips over the leg of Pepper’s chair, and exits in a hurry, clutching at his chest.
He barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s coughing into the toilet—all that comes up is hospital coffee and bile. He didn’t think that they could strike at Peter’s dignity any more than they already had, and they’d… They’d… A kid.
When he’s retched all he can from his system, Tony staggers out into the hallway, pressing a hand to his forehead to relieve a sudden pain there; he finds himself sliding down the wall, back pressed against white-painted surface. He’s there alone for a while, and eventually he looks up to find another man in the hallway, leaned up against the wall. “Tony,” Steve Rogers says, with a polite, blond nod.
“Rogers,” he says, and the supersoldier approaches, bracing himself against the wall with one hand the whole way. “Thought you—” Tony pauses. He’s still having trouble putting sentences together. After speaking to robots and himself for four months, social interactions aren’t coming quite so easy. “Thought you left already.”
Steve Rogers has a black hoodie half-zipped over his bandaged chest—Tony recognizes it as one of the Quinjet’s stash of extra clothes. Tony’s wearing the same one now. The man shrugs, winces, and then drops his shoulders. “Not gonna leave the little guy to fend for himself,” he says, now only a couple feet from Tony. “Buck and I got a motel nearby.”
Motel. He hasn’t even thought about where he’s going to sleep. He’s just been passing out beside Peter’s hospital bed and in waiting room chairs. Tony makes a half-baked sound of acknowledgement and tucks his knees up, bending his legs into triangles so that Steve can pass him.
But Steve Rogers doesn’t walk past; instead, he bends down and, in the most awkward fashion Tony’s ever seen from the man, clambers into a similar position beside Tony: back to the wall, legs bent, forearms resting atop his knees.
Tony curls his hand into a fist and presses his clenched finger-and-thumb to his forehead, letting out a shaky sigh. This might be the first time he’s seen Steve since he tried to throw him in prison for trying to protect Bucky Barnes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “about how things went down. The whole…Barnes…thing. I didn’t—I didn’t get it. But now I—”
Steve Rogers is shaking his head. “That Accords mess…” the supersoldier says. “The whole thing… It’s forgotten. That was a long time ago, Tony. We’ve suffered for it now, all of us. ”
The man sounds surprisingly earnest.
Tony realizes now that Steve has changed his clothes entirely. He’s holding himself together in a way that children do, hugging themselves in lieu of another person. He remembers briefly the way Steve was acting on the plane, and he squints. On the plane ride to the hospital, Steve was…visibly disturbed. More so than Tony had ever witnessed from the man. Bare-chested and barefoot, with a small stain on his pants.
A stain.
His chest strangles itself, his lungs twisting like a dishrag. “What did they do to you in there?” he whispers, and Steve’s whole body tightens. “They said… They said that Peter’d been… That he…” Tony can’t say it out loud. He can’t. Saying it would draw it into existence, like coaxing a monster from underneath his bed.
The man sits quietly beside him, hands on his knees. One of his hands is in a cast, all the way up to the thumb—hardened strips of blue over white bandages.“So they told you?”
“You knew?” he whispers.
A close-mouthed sigh through the supersoldier’s nose, almost like relief.
“And you didn’t tell us?”
The other man grimaces. “Didn’t think it was anyone else’s business but his.”
A silence spreads between them like a growing pool of spilt milk. “They want us to choose,” Tony says. “To…examine Peter or not.” He tries to swallow and finds he can’t, his throat tightening with a twitch. “If you had the… the choice…”
Thankfully, the other man seems to understand the rest of the question without Tony saying it. “I think,” he starts, “in Peter’s situation… He hasn’t had a lot of autonomy lately. I…” He speaks slowly, like he’s chewing on each word before speaking. “I wouldn’t want to make this kind of decision for him. Those exams, they… They…” Steve stops, seeming to think better of his sentence. “He should get to choose.”
Tony staggers back into the conference room with newfound resolve, and the words take root in his brain, curling around the soil and worms and rainwater of his mind. Violent sexual trauma. Violent sexual trauma. Violent… “Can I see him first?” he says, gripping the doorframe with such force that his fingertips pale, his nail-plates going half-pink, half-white. “Please.”
Startled by his ragged entrance, the doctor nods. “That’s fine,” she says. “But only for a few minutes.”
They take them to Peter's room in the ICU. Pepper stays behind—they only allow one visitor at a time.
There’s a scrub-clothed physician there, tapping into a tablet and glancing up at the screened monitor. He moves to the corner as they appear, engrossed in the glowing screen of his tablet. As Tony passes him, he spots the name at the top of the screen: Parker, Peter Benjamin.
Tony feels like he’s swallowed a sliver of glass—like he’s swallowed a shard a long time ago and is only now feeling it scrape at his insides. “Oh, Peter…” he says, and he takes the kid’s limp hand, sitting at the kid’s bedside for the umpteenth time.
This isn’t a hallucination.
Peter’s hand is cold and clammy and real; Tony warms it by cupping it between his, trapping those spindly fingers in his own. “I know what they did to you,” he whispers. “They… They told me what happened.”
God, that shard of glass is digging in.
This is all his fault.
“I'm so sorry, Pete.” He kisses those pallid knuckles. Grasping the kid’s thin wrist, he sob trembles in his throat. He swallows it, and it slides down his esophagus like a spoonful of peanut butter. “I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
Suddenly, violently, Tony thinks about the pain this one arm had to experience. He sees the lines, the scars, the million bruises this one square of flesh had endured. Scars layered over scars: some faint, like scratches with a knife; some thick and ropey, like the meat of his arm was carved to the bone; and some pink and mottled, like someone had taken a hot iron and pressed it to him till his skin festered.
This is all his fault.
“Peter,” he whispers. “Peter, kiddo. I—I don’t know what to do this time, okay? I don’t—don’t know… I’m not a genius, buddy. I’m not—not a superhero. I—I’m not made of iron. I’m not anything. I’m just a man. You hear me? You hear—” The tears bubble forth, salty in his throat and liquid in his eyes. “I’m just.. I’m just some guy who got you caught up in things you never should’ve been near… You should’ve never been…” He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his forehead into Peter’s arm. He hopes the kid can hear him, but part of him fears it. “I'm just… I'm just one man. You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t trust me with things like this—do you trust me with something as big as this?”
The kid is silent, eyes closed, mouth half-open around a breathing tube. The rhythmic beeping of his monitors are Tony’s only solace. The kid’s heartbeat moves steadily across the screen, a jumping green line. His chest expands and rises with each mechanical breath, unresponsive.
“I don’t… I don’t know what to do , kid, I…” His face is wet, and he wipes at it. “You’re strong, Spider-Kid. You’re so strong. Stronger than any kid should have to be.” That sob he swallowed comes gurgling back up, and when he tries to breathe he finds the sob there, strangling him. “You know—Doc says I need to sleep,” he tries, and humor’s not working. Nothing’s working. His chest is wound in barbed wire. “And—and, like, never get up again.”
Peter doesn’t answer.
“And that’s what we’re gonna do, Pete. We’re gonna… We’re gonna sleep. For the rest of our lives. We’re gonna be lazy and—and waste all my money and—eat breakfast in bed and fall asleep on the couch and sleep in and… You’re never gonna have to do anything you don’t want to ever again, Pete. Ever again.” He has the sudden urge to squeeze Peter’s arm, hard, like biting into an apple or stepping off the deck of a bridge. “Ever. You’re never gonna… Have to…” Tony scrubs one hand over his face, and he can’t find any of the words he wants to say. They’re all stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Oh, God…”
The tears are coming faster than he can stop them, and he bows his head low, pressing the base of his forehead against the plastic railing; with a sudden visceral need, he wants to split his head in half with it—cleanly, like the salute of a vibranium hand.
This is all his fault.
“We’re gonna do whatever the hell you want, Peter. When we—we get you out of here, you’re gonna be in charge. You’re—we can—we—” Tony sobs helplessly, pressing his other hand into his twisted-tight chest. “I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you need. Anything. You’re in charge now.”
That sliver of glass slices him open. This is all his fault. This is all his fault.
“Just…” he sobs, his throat aching in utter misery, “just this one—this one—this one thing, Pete. Just this one—oh, God…”
It hurts.
It hurts like an elephant’s foot on his chest, like acid in the pit of his stomach, like a pipe-wrench tightening around his skull.
God, it hurts.
“Pete—Peter—” He’s stripped raw—something in him gives , something impotent and miserable—and Tony sags forward into his kid’s scarred-over forearm, sobbing. “ Tell me what to do, buddy. ”