safer ground
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 9:40 AM
As soon as they pull Tony from the ICU, he calls May. Pepper gives him the number of her room in the Medbay, and reminds him that she’s still in recovery from the car crash and can’t speak without vast effort. He dials messily, his fingers stumbling over the buttons on Pepper’s phone.
He doesn’t even know where his phone is.
His mind is a sunken ship, and he drowns in it. He thinks of Peter—helpless, hollowed, hurting—and he starts to cry again, fingers pressed into his eyes as though that’ll stop the image of Peter’s brutalized body from appearing behind his eyes.
“Hey, May,” he says, and he tries to sound composed, “don’t talk. Just… listen. I know you’re sick. But I need you… I need you to tell me what Peter—what he wants.” His mind feels as though it’s on fire—like that Peter-shaped hole in his chest is now filled with sloshing lava.
Shallow breathing on the other line.
He tries to explain as best he can, referencing the party he’d rescued Peter from, and finds himself struggling to remember the exact details. “You remember? Someone was trying to roofie his friend and he—he drank the whole thing… And because Peter couldn’t remember the whole night, we… We asked him if he wanted to do a… a…”
The woman’s voice is weary and slightly slurred, maybe from the drugs she’s on. “…rape kit,” May finishes.
The words themselves sound like a death sentence; he can’t help picturing it then: Peter naked and facedown on the ground, and he punches his knuckles to his chest. Stop it. Stop it. “Yes,” says Tony, minutely relieved he doesn’t have to say it aloud. “You remember what he said?”
Peter yawns, blinks a couple times, and turns onto his side. “Hate those,” he mumbles, and he goes right back to sleep.
“I…remember…” croaks the kid’s aunt.
Tony swallows. “Do you think… If he asked you now…” He’s already forgotten his train of thought. He thinks of Peter. Sweet, happy, dorky little Peter. Tony thinks of him working in the lab, of him falling asleep on the couch, of him eating breakfast in the kitchen. Tony thinks of him laughing—the kind of full-bodied laugh that crinkles his eyes and draws his hand to his chest. “...that he would say the same thing?”
There’s a long silence—a mile wide and just as thick, so prevalent that Tony thinks she might’ve fallen asleep. Then, finally: “…Ned,” she manages.
“What?” he says, sure he heard her wrong.
A breath, croaky and weak. “Ask… Ned...”
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 9:56 AM
Ned and MJ have been pacing the length of Ned’s bedroom for two days now.
Ned tells his parents they have a big decathlon debate to practice for, and MJ tells her mom the same. His Lola demands they leave the door open, and for once Ned doesn’t find the suggestion aggravating.
He just agrees.
Late Thursday night, they’d gotten a call from Happy Hogan, head of security at Stark Industries. He’d said two sentences to him: “We found him.” and “He’s alive.” before brusquely hanging up. Apparently, MJ got the same exact call just a minute later.
And ever since then: radio silence.
That call was Ned and MJ have been together since, trying to come up with a way to locate their best friend.
As MJ sits on his bed, cross-legged, scanning news outlets on her stickered laptop, Ned keeps dialing Stark Industries. He’s called them so many times that the secretary threatened to call the police.
So when his phone buzzes Saturday morning, over thirty-two hours since that original phone call, Ned picks up almost immediately, hungry for more information about his best friend.
The number is unlisted but Ned answers with bated breath, blurting out, “Peter?”
A sigh. An older, grown-up sigh. Not Peter. “Ned.”
Ned doesn’t say anything at first, still hung up on the fact that it’s not Peter’s voice; MJ shoves him with her sharp elbow and he manages, “Hello?”
“Is there anyone else…around?”
The voice is clearer then, weary through an iron-tight throat.
It’s Tony Stark.
Ned turns away from MJ then, ignoring her hand-waving and saying, “No, but—” He can’t help the flood of words that comes from him then. “Some guy told us you found Peter but he didn’t say anything else, and MJ tried to contact the Tower but they said you weren’t there, and—”
“Ned,” the man says again, softer. He sounds, oddly, like he’s been crying: his voice is a raw, overused sound. “Just—just listen—I need your advice.”
“Okay,” he says, his mind still focused on Peter. He doesn’t know what kind of advice he could possibly give to a genius billionaire like Tony Stark—
“Would Peter ever do a rape kit?”
Ned stops where he stands, his bare feet suddenly cold against his bedroom carpet. “Oh,” he says, an automatic noise. His mind goes thoughtless, blank, filled with a liquidy sadness.
Then the billionaire starts to speak. The words are stilted and jerky, like he’s reading a dictionary simultaneously. He mentions something, a party, a drink, and something Peter said a long time ago: I hate those.
And then he asks again: “Would he want one?”
Is this what happened to Peter while he was missing?
Ned is Peter’s best friend. They’ve been friends forever—since they were twelve, since the seventh grade. He knows about the babysitter, the one who molested Peter, the one Peter avidly refuses to ever mention by name. He knows about the frat party, where Iron Man found Peter with a girl’s hand halfway down his pants. He knows about his struggles with physical touch, about his fear of dating people, about his panic attack the first time he kissed MJ after seeing Hamilton with her. Ned knows everything.
Of course Ned knows.
But he didn’t know that Tony Stark knew, too.
Finally, Ned manages to gather himself; MJ is still in the room, arms folded so tight that she’s like a piece of origami.
“Um,” he says, his chest feeling wide and empty, “you’re not gonna like my answer, Mr. Stark.”
“Just tell me,” the other man croaks.
Ned grimaces. “No matter what,” he says, “Peter would probably refuse. He doesn’t… He doesn’t like them. Not that anyone would, just—it’s not something that he’s ever really agreed to, not ever, so if he had the choice, I mean—”
“Okay,” the man on the other line says. “Okay. Thank you, Ned.”
Ned senses the motion, and, knowing the man’s about to hang up, blurts, “Mr. Stark?” Ned can’t help it; his voice tinges on something freaked and it tastes like hysteria. “Is he okay?”
He grips the phone tightly as the man goes quiet. “No,” Tony Stark says finally. “No, he’s not okay.”
The man hangs up, and Ned’s left staring at his stupid home screen—an old picture of him and Peter, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders—after the call disconnects. “Well?” MJ says, stepping towards him. “What’d he say?”
Ned stares emptily at his phone.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 10:28 AM
When Tony returns to the conference room, there’s more people inside.
Pepper is in the corner, pacing and speaking on the phone with angry gestures; Steve Rogers is in the other corner, talking in low tones to Dr. Jackson.
When Tony arrives, though, Steve strides out of the room and past him stiffly, hands in his pockets. Spotting him, Peter’s doctor jerks her chin up in an unspoken question: What have you decided?
“We’re not doing it,” he says, far too harsh.
Pepper’s face falters; he knows then what she wanted to do. “Tony—”
“We’re not—we’ve failed him enough - we’re not taking anything else from him. I’m not gonna force him through something he wouldn’t consent to if he was awake. I won’t do it.”
They—as in Steve and Tony—argue quietly with Pepper, who gets so angry about the whole situation that she shoves at Tony’s chest and storms from the conference room.
Afterwards, Steve comes to Tony in the waiting room, and they sit together in miserable silence.
“Someone needs to tell the Paxtons,” says Steve after a while.
“Who?” says Tony, groggy with a foggy weariness.
“The girl?” he prompts. “Cassie Paxton-Lang. We’ve been keeping her parents in the dark about the Avengers involvement… They don’t know. About…what happened in there. And if they came after Peter… They could’ve…”
“The girl,” echoes Tony, sounding empty. “I remember… I heard her scream.”
Steve winces at that. “I didn’t see anyone go after the little girl. But… It’s possible. It’s definitely possible.” He stands then, dusting off his pants, his hands awkward in the movements. “Did they tell you when he’s coming out of the ICU?”
Tony shakes his head. “They said he’s… He’s better…” Tony’s still having trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that Peter is here . Alive. Breathing. Warm. Thinking about his well-being is another whole step of his shock back to reality. He itches for something to work on—for a weapon to fiddle with, wires to fix, code to write, chemical compounds to create. “He… His healing is kicking in.”
Steve doesn’t have to explain who he’s talking about. He. Peter. “Well,” he continues, “if he wakes up….” The supersoldier stops talking, pressing his mouth together in a sudden line.
They both heard it.
If he wakes up.
If.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 6:24 PM
Cassie looks up to find Captain America in her hospital room. Suddenly she feels like she’s in their room again, one wrist cuffed to the bed-railing. She looks behind him for Charlie or the red-haired lady or Mr. Beck, but there’s nobody else with him.
He looks better. She remembers when Mr. Beck smashed his face with the hatchet, how his nose and face bled. But now, all of his cuts are stitched and all of his bruises have darkened. “You’re not dead,” she whispers, clapping her hand over her mouth when she realizes that she’s spoken, and she cries in little quiet huffs, quiet enough that Charlie can’t hear.
Mommy turns, jumping at the sight of a man in the hospital room doorway. Some kind of recognition lights up her face; she doesn’t seem as guarded as usual.
Captain America, dressed in a black hoodie and some hospital-order scrubs, smiles a little. “Not dead. I said I'd find you, didn’t I?”
She does. She remembers what Captain America said to her very clearly: I need you to run that way, okay? 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. And when she cried, he said, You can be brave. You can do it . And then he told her to run.
Cassie thinks, suddenly, about running again: about the broad forest, about sticks cutting into the bottoms of her now-bandaged feet, about tripping and falling, about her itchy scalp, about the hard-muscled arms of Captain America.
“Is she okay?”
They’re talking about her. Mommy’s talking softly, in that just-before-bed voice, and Captain America is nodding.
Cassie is okay. She’s not hurt. No one has beaten her or screamed at her. They’ve pricked her with needles, but none that sent flames of pain up and down her body. Her body feels it’s usual pain—the Always-Hurts—aches and pains in her bad arm and in her tummy and in her chest and in her head, but she hasn’t been hurt.
Cassie’s not hurt, but Peter will be. They always hurt him bad when their plans fall.
Where’s Peter? she thinks viscerally, and she starts crying again, hard. Captain America was supposed to find Peter, and if he returned to this room without him…
Is this their new Room? Is this where Charlie’s going to hurt her? Are they punishing Peter right now? Are they gonna punish her? She remembers them punishing Captain America, hitting him with that hatchet, the blood running down his teeth like drool…
Cassie thinks—she thinks hard, and then her mind scatters into something pitch and sticky.
No one here has hurt her yet.
But someone has to be hurt. There’s always someone bleeding, someone bruised, someone screaming for mercy. So who is it going to be? Are they gonna hurt Mommy? Is Captain America gonna hurt Mommy?
Is Mommy gonna hurt her?
The thought needles her, through her shaved-bald head and into the thick of her brain. Mommy’s gonna hurt her. She’s gonna punish her for running away. Maybe they’re talking about that now—about different ways to punish her for being bad. How hard to hit her after Cassie ran away from the cell.
The bad guys always punish her for running away.
Renee used to say something like that, that her parents were lucky she’d taken her, that their life was better because Cassie wasn’t there, that they wanted her gone. What if that was true? Maybe Mommy was the one making sure Charlie hit her when she was bad, the one who made sure the needle hurt, the one who took Peter away, the one who made sure Mr. Beck came in to make Peter so sad…
She listens back to their conversation, and she hears words clashing and melding: …signs of sexual contact on the other captive…
Are you sure? They said there wasn’t any sign of…
…sure… Can you sign these forms?
…didn’t know if we…
…who is it?
Anonymous for now… your family has to understand… much bigger than you understand…
There’s a clock in this room. At home, Cassie forgot what clocks looked like, but she recognizes the object hanging beside the door: the white circle, black numbers, pointy hands. She keeps staring at it as the voices of Captain American and Mommy blur together. She doesn’t know how to read a clock; Peter never taught her how. She can see that one hand is set between the six and the seven, while the longer one points near the eight. She doesn’t know what that means. Peter always tells her things like this—things she needs to know.
But it feels like it’s time.
It’s time, right? It’s time for them to come in and drag Peter away—but if Peter’s not here, then…
Are they gonna drag her away instead? Lock her into that chair and burn her skin until she smells smokey and bloody?
She ate something without Peter’s permission, too. Cassie knows she’s not supposed to do that—that she has to ask for permission first. Because…
Because of Mr. Beck.
Does this mean that Mr. Beck is going to hurt her like he did to Peter?
She remembers one night in their room when Peter talked to her about Mr. Beck. It was one of the only times he actually referenced what happened in those times during Mr. Beck’s visits.
“Cassie.”
Peter’s bony hand on her arm, squeezing lightly. “Cass. Cassie.” He’s always lucid in moments like this, in the very peak of the morning when Charlie and his crew are all asleep.
“Wake up, kiddo. Wake up.” When she opens her eyes, he’s there. bloodshot eyes scanning her face. His eye is still all messed up—last night, Charlie beat him so badly that the white of his eye turned red. Now it’s so swollen that Cassie can only see a sliver of blood there, the eye swallowed by swollen fleshy lids. “I need… I need to tell you something.”
“You smell weird,” she mumbles, sleepiness still pulling at her eyes. Peter smells clean, like flowers and soap, and also of sweat, which means he’d probably had a bad dream.
“I know,” he says, in that strained voice. “I need to tell you a story.”
She closes her eyes again. She’d been dreaming of Mommy and Daddy and Jim—of them all sitting at a dinner table together. She was hungry in her dream, and she’d been heaping her plate full of mashed potatoes, bread rolls, honey-baked ham, cranberry sauce, gravy-smothered turkey…
“Cassie.” She opens her eyes again. “Just listen, okay?”
“I don’t want a story,” she murmurs into his arm, curling her head into the heat of his shoulder. “I’m tired…”
“I know,” he says, and he sounds like he’s been crying. “Just…for a little bit, Stinger. Then you can go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” she says.
He grasps her hand loosely as he speaks, tethering himself to her. She squeezes back, her fingers light. His fingers are so much bigger than hers. “When I was about your age,” he says. “A little older, I think, I—”
“How old?” she asks.
“Eight,” he says, his voice a little high. “I was eight. And I met a guy at the library. He was older than me, like in high school, and I needed a babysitter—”
“What did he look like?” she asks, trying to imagine this mysterious guy.
“It doesn’t matter. He would babysit me, and he would show me things, things in magazines, and convince me to—”
“How old was he?” she asks, curious.
“Seventeen,” he says, curt. “No more questions, Cass, please. Just let me tell… Just let me tell it. He would come into my room and sit on the bed with me, and… and show me things. And he…”
As Peter talks, Cassie tries to picture the babysitter in her head. She imagines an older Peter, with short brown hair, but it’s not working. “What color was his hair—”
“It’s not important! ” he says, squeezing his eyes shut for a second. Cassie notices then the line of wetness trailing from his eye across his temple and into his matted hair. He’s crying. “Just listen, Stinger, please . He tricked me, okay? My babysitter, he… He did things like Beck does. He gives you presents, he says he’s good, he tells you all of these good things…and then he hurts you. Because he’s not your friend. I… thought he was my friend, too.”
Cassie is confused by this story: that people who are her age and Peter's age… She’s terribly confused, and she coughs raggedly before looking at Peter in his one good eye. “Are you going to trick me?’ she asks.
“No,” he says, good eye squinting, “no, Cassie, you’re not listening. He… He did… he did things with me. Things I didn't understand. Things that hurt me.”
“What kind of things?”
“Bad things.”
“What kind of bad things?”
“Like the things that… that Beck does. When he comes here.”
“But he doesn’t hurt you…”
He hesitates then, his jaw going hard beneath the skin of his face. “Cassie… He does. He does. It’s just a different kind.”
“Like the hammer? Like the… Like the needle?”
“No… Not like that. It’s not that kind of hurt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, I know. God…” He ghost his hand over his eye, covering the swollen mass. “Just… he’s not good, okay? He’s not a good person. You understand?”
“Okay,” she says, and she goes quiet.
After a while, in her tired little voice, “Will we get pop-tarts tomorrow?”
“Maybe,” he says.
He wasn’t specific about what happened or what his babysitter did. Whenever Cassie tried to press for more information, he’d just roll over and go quiet.
Is Captain America one of those people? Cassie saw Peter kiss him and rub his knee. Does that mean he’s one of those tricky people? Like Peter's babysitter and Mr. Beck?
…Avengers? her mommy is whispering. So you’re saying…
Yes, Mrs. Paxton. Your husband…
She doesn’t understand most of it, but some words come in crystal-clear.
And then there it is, one word amongst many others: Ant-Man.
That’s one of Peter’s code words. Iron Man means protect yourself. Hawkeye means close your ears and don’t listen. Captain America means Peter needs medical help. Black Widow means be quiet and listen. And Ant-Man…
Ant-Man means run.
With her good hand, Cassie shoves at her mom’s chest, squishing her soft skin with her punch, and she hits again, as hard as she possibly can; immediately, Mommy stops talking and grabs by the forearm, saying, “Cassie, what—”
Hand on her wrist. There’s a hand on her wrist.
She’s gonna be punished.
“Peter!” she cries, and she hopes Peter can hear her, because she can almost see Charlie coming through her tear-filled eyes. “PETER, HELP ME, PETER!”
Captain America’s looking at her now with wide eyes. He’s one of them. This must have been his plan all along, like Mr. Beck—to pretend to be nice until he can get close enough to Peter to make him cry. He’s gonna hurt her, gonna pin her down, gonna touch her like Mr. Beck does to Peter.
She doesn’t want that. Cassie has seen it—those violent thrusts, all the bared skin, the bruises and the crying, and she clutches at her hospital gown, wanting that sweatshirt back. She doesn’t feel good. She doesn’t feel safe.
She wants Peter.
She twists out of her mommy’s arms and hits the ground on her hands and knees, the impact sending such pain through her arm that she lets out a wail of pain, but she scrambles to her feet and ducks under Captain America’s muscled legs, taking off down the hallway on bandaged feet.
Cassie is small, so she dodges them; Peter taught her well. The whole way, she keeps screaming Peter’s name all the way down the hallway. She’s gonna find him; he has to be here somewhere, being punished by Charlie. She wants him to hold her, to hug her and tell her exactly what’s going on, to explain in that quiet, shaky voice who’s the bad guy and who isn’t. She trips down a flight of stairs, her bandaged arm banging against the stair-railing, and the white doors open into another hallway, one with new people and orange-colored scrubs.
They come after her in swarms: doctors and nurses and people in gowns, all rushing to catch her, but she’s learned too well. She runs as fast as she can, faster than the forest, faster than her escape attempts, because if they kill Peter…
Oh no , what if they killed Peter?
She screams his name at the top of her lungs, so loud that her whole throat vibrates with the effort: “Peter! Peter! PETER! PETER! ”
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 6:49 PM
Peter senses her voice like it’s underwater: in ripples of lightened sound over his eyelids.
Peter. Peter. Peter. Peter.
That’s Cassie’s voice. That’s Cassie… He’s… He can’t hear her. He feels freeze-dried, something pasted onto parchment; his body is so stiff that clenching his fingers takes a world of effort. He forces himself up, his aching abdomen seizing, and there’s something in his throat, something cylindrical and stiff. Oh, God—oh, God—he’s on the bed, he’s on the bed—
The mere thought renders him weak; he smacks at his mouth with his palm and grasps it then, digging his fingernails into plastic and tearing it out in one rough jerk. He coughs, and he coughs, and there’s movement in the corner of the room. Words come out of him in a pathetic, wheezy mumble: “Cass,” he chokes out, because that’s a man—Peter can smell him from here, all sandalwood and sweat. He has to warn her… Has to tell her, but he can’t find the words, he can’t attach his frazzled thoughts to words: he just knows her name. “Cassie… Cassie…”
He—where’s Charlie? where’s—where are they?
And Cassie. Cassie. Where’s Cassie? Where’s Cassie?
The man moves, and terror like lightning surges through his chest. Any semblance of coherency is gone; he sees blood as he opens his eyes, and the whole room is a curtain of blinding white.
His body is frail; his legs heavy, his breathing shallow, his muscles stringy like melted gelatin—he tries to breathe, and it hurts. It all hurts . But his blood is pumping; they’ve drugged him again. The drugs push, oily and wet, into his brain and through his eye sockets, thickening in his arteries. What did he do? Peter can’t remember… He can’t remember anything…
A dark-skinned hand on his shoulder, and there’s fear like a blowtorch heating the side of his face. Peter throws himself away from the man, and finds himself on the hard floor, sweaty palms braced against linoleum. There’s Cassie’s voice again, faint but there , screaming for him.
They’re hurting her. He fell asleep and they’re hurting her. He can see nothing but flashes of color and purified panic—he’s crazy— he’s crazy— because everything is wrong .
“Cass…” he mumbles, and he forces himself up, disobeying everything in his body telling him not to. “Cassie…”
Limping heavily on one leg, he walks, and he walks, and his leg is bursting with sparks of damp pain, pressure like a pressurized canister of oil on a hot stove or a grenade without a pin, three seconds from bursting into a spray of metal debris.
Cassie, he thinks, the only word in his mind with any lucidity. Cassie, Cassie…
Peter staggers and he feels like he’s walking on the walls with the amount of weight pressing on one side. His chest aches like he’s been blasted with a gauntlet, like someone carved it out and shoved a poisoned arc reactor inside.
More hands on him and he moves faster, throwing his arms out to knock them away. Arms come for him, blue-clothed. There’s movement in his blurry peripheral and he does what he does best: he fights for his life.
“Sir, I need you to calm down—hey! Need some help in here!”
He kicks and dodges and shoves and follows the sound of Cassie’s voice like a trail of breadcrumbs. Across a room, and to an open doorway—a flutter of hope in his panic-sunken chest. Peter’s body barely obeys him, flooded with a feverish heat and a heavy ache as he staggers through the doorway and into another space. “Cassie,” he rasps, collapsing against the wall, and he can’t get out more than a whimper from his sore throat. “Cass…”
Where is she? What did they do to her?
“Someone grab him!”
Don’t touch her, please don’t, she didn’t do anything wrong —staggering like a dying man, his feet heavy on the floor. Peter’s leg—there’s something wrong with his leg— there’s always something wrong with his leg —and he feels hands on him, someone trying to wrangle him into submission and he’s not going back in there—
“CASSIE!”
Her name bursts from his burning esophagus like a boiling geyser, and he throws himself forward, fighting the near-faint dizziness and bodily hurt that douses him like a bucket of gasoline. Peter’s barreling through the crowd of people to get to her. He’s a bull in a china shop, battering everything in sight to get to Cassie. He can hear her still, wailing his name, they’re hurting her, no, please don’t hurt her, please don’t hurt her— and the sound of her hurting voice makes his knees buckle. “Cassie…” he gargles, and there’s blood in his mouth, filling in the slender gaps between his teeth. Someone grabs his arm, and he shudders away from it— no, Beck, please, PLEASE— and tries to pick up the pace, limping so fast that the weight breaks away from his leg—a cast? He thinks of the doctor then, of his short blondish gray beard and his round belly and his warm eyes and his mind is filled with the sight of spraying blood and facial flesh—
He falls onto his knees, and the pain of impact draws nauseating blackness to swallow him. A hand on his back and a man’s voice in his ear: “Sir, please, let me help—”
Tears flood down his face unbounded, and he cowers under the man’s touch, crawling away despite the sickening pain of his knee; finding the strength to stand, he struggles to his feet, follows her wailing voice, and finds himself in a stairwell.
There’s his kid at the top—shaved head, dark eyes, broken arm, teary face.
His kid.
For a split second, Peter thinks of Mr. Stark, his voice as plain as the sun gleaming in the sky: You’re doing so good, Peter. So good. You’re gonna pull through. You’re strong, okay? You’re the strongest kid I know. Someone shouts her name, and someone shouts his, and they’re not gonna hurt her —
Arms outstretched, Peter lunges at Cassie; Cassie lunges at him. He tackles her mid-air, both of them landing on the metal-ridged stairs with a umph that knocks the wind out of the girl. She clings onto him like always, wrapping her arms and legs around his skinny body in a clamplike vise, and he holds her, backing into the wall and squeezing his eyes shut as he shields her from the rest.
Cassie.
Cassie.
“Peter,” the little girl sobs, and her face is wet when she presses it into his neck. Cassie smells like herself, like unwashed skin and eggy sink-water, and she clings to him so tightly that he drops his knee to the ground with the pain of it. “You came—I thought—I thought—”
Shuddering, grating breaths heave from him, every lungful an effort. He has the desire to tell her— I’m here— but the words can’t translate to legibility on his tongue. He just feels crazy, like he’s strung between nightmares. His spidey sense is a blur: they’re beside him, they’re above him, they’re in front of him, they’re all coming after him—
There’s shadows all around them then, grabbing at him, and Peter clutches his kid tightly to him—like a waterskin in the desert, like an oxygen tank in a space station, like a gold-titanium suit in a wormhole—eyes wild; his body screams for him to stop. He hits and punches, flailing like he’s drunk, but he’s so fucking weak that he can’t do stop the horde of limbs coming for him. “PLEASE!” he begs, as Cassie clings to him, and some sick, minute part of him craves the pain already so that the anticipation fluttering in his clenched-tight chest will be over. “Please, please, please …” His throat is so raw that his words come out in a splutter of cracked sound, as though he’s speaking through a mouthful of sand.
He shouldn’t have fought back, he shouldn’t have fought back …
His spidey sense is electrified, every figure around him a blood-drenched threat, and he’s in so much pain that he’s struggling to stand up again. Someone is shouting, and that can only be bad. He has to keep Cassie safe— she’s not safe, they’re not safe, they’re never safe— and there’s a voice, a man’s voice ringing through his ears.
The figures retreat from vision, and he panics, jerking left and right with his hand out, trying to prevent whatever’s coming, and he squeezes his eyes shut in anticipation, shaking so badly that his casted leg slips. At last, Peter falls into a crumpled sitting position, arms twined around his kid so rigidly that he can feel the rattled breaths in her lungs. “Peter—” whimpers Cassie, her head pressed into his damp neck, “I’m scared…”
He doesn’t know where they are. This isn’t… This isn’t the bunker. This isn’t the bunker.
Where are they going?
This is bad, this has to be bad, they’re gonna flay him alive for this ; he takes huge gulps of breath, the air scraping against his pained throat. They’re gonna hurt him, gonna strap him down and peel his skin off one strip at a time, gonna light a blowtorch and set it to his back, gonna whip him with wire-cords until he can’t remember his own name. Cassie is a weight on him, pulling at him with her little hands, a heaviness clutching his shirt. Shirt? No, there’s no cloth between his chest and Cassie’s hands.
A sob in his throat.
No, he. He’s not wearing clothes.
He’s not wearing clothes—
Oh, God. The fear comes then in a tsunami wave, like a serrated knife twisted in his gut, twisted and twisted and twisted, leeching him of any warmth; he can feel the shiver of paper against his thighs—there’s something around his waist but he’s not wearing any clothes— and he holds Cassie tighter and tighter, turning his body into the wall so that his back is to the open and Cassie is shielded, his skinny arms knotted around her like a hitch. His body is her shield, his body is her shield, HE IS THE ONLY THING BETWEEN HER AND THE INEVITABLE—
A man is kneeled in front of him, and he sobs harder, his spidey sense blaring: danger, danger, danger—
“Peter. Peter. It’s me. I’m here, kiddo. I’m here.”
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 7:03 PM
In front of Tony, Peter is curled up at the landing of the stairwell, his eyes squeezed shut and his body curled around that bald little girl.
He’s still dressed in that ICU gown, a paper-fabric that is tied around his waist, but it bares most of his bandaged chest to the crowd of medical staff in the stairwell. Tony can’t imagine what the kid must be seeing: a roomful of people trying to grab him is only one of the many causes of pain he experienced in that bunker.
Happy starts to usher them out, pushing gawking patients through the double doors before they can catch a glimpse of the kid. Most of the medical staff follow as well, leaving a doctor, a couple nurses, Tony and Pepper, and the girl’s family. Beside him, her parents are pale, both clinging to each other in abject shock.
The world falls away: it’s just Peter and Tony, Tony and Peter. He inches closer, going shakily to his knees, and Peter practically writhes in an attempt to get away from him, twisting his body into the corner as though attempting to burrow through the wall.
That’s his kid. That’s his kid.
“Peter,” he tries, his chest aching, and the kid’s eyes are unseeing, bouncing around the room like a horror-themed pinball machine. “Peter. It’s me.” Is he even awake? The kid looks like a ragged sleepwalker, swaying a little as his eyes graze the room. “I’m here, kiddo. I’m here.”
Peter makes a small sound, a moan of pain or confusion, and squirms further into the wall, guarding the girl with every bony inch of his physical body. At least his voice is working—his healing must have kicked in because his throat looks better, the black bruises lightening into browns and yellows. Every time the kid moves, shifting around like he’s scared, the girl’s terror only heightens, her whole body trembling—like she knows if Peter’s scared, then there’s something legitimate to be frightened of.
Tony has never felt more like a father. “Look at me, Peter,” he says. “You remember me? Mr. Stark?”
Peter stares at him for an unbearable length of time. His face is so scarred, ridged lines of flesh covering his jaw and neck. Tony remembers every cut and every burn, every mark on Peter’s body, how Charlie grinned as he did it. He remembers that scar, of the knife poked through his cheek on the second day. He remembers that burn, the blowtorch that singed his ear until the kid passed out from the pain. He remembers that scar on his forearm, from when he’d tried to pick his cuffs with a loose screw and they’d sliced his wrist in retaliation, telling him, “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO ESCAPE, PARKER. YOU DIE. YOU’RE NEVER GETTING OUT OF HERE.” and let him bleed out in flailing terror until he passed out from the blood loss.
Tony had watched on his television screen, banging helplessly at the heated glass, as red pooled around that fucking chair.
Now, he’s… Peter here, curled up in a hospital stairwell, but he’s not himself—so contorted by torture and fear that he can’t speak more than a word at a time. “It’s me,” Tony says again, wanting to touch him. “You’re safe, buddy. We—we made it out. We got you out.”
Still unresponsive, Peter seems to be clinging to consciousness with every neuron in his exhausted body. His eyes rake over the room, wide and bloodshot, before squeezing shut every couple seconds. His lips part every time he breathes, gasping in ragged breaths. He’s terrified.
His knee, previously casted, has been twisted into a bent, obtuse angle from walking on it. God, he must be in agony. The bruises around his throat are fading, but there’s so much more. Scabbed-over cuts all over his skin, those half-healed whip-wounds in his naked back, and that leg—his knee is so shattered that it doesn’t resemble a joint anymore; every step must be pushing bone fragments into his muscle.
Tony can’t imagine the pain he must be in.
And still the kid is pushing through, willing himself to consciousness in order to protect this little girl.
Something startles the kid. Peter looks down at himself, his brown eyes suddenly growing wide with fresh panic, and more tears come down his face. One of his hands is stroking, gently, trembly, over the girl’s freshly bandaged head. Peter shakes his head, and he shakes it again, and his whole body quivers—as though anticipating something.
There’s a wetness sliding down Tony’s neck—it’s only then Tony realizes he’s been crying, enough tears coming down his face that they’re rolling into his beard. “Peter… Peter… It’s okay, it’s okay… Peter, we won. We did it, buddy…” He tries to catch the kid’s gaze, finding nothing but pain . “Peter, look at me. We’re gonna be okay.” Peter whimpers, a raw sound in the back of his throat, and his matted hair glistens, oily and tangled, in the hospital light as he shifts. His bare feet, lined with old burns and tiny red marks, squeak against the hospital floor as he pushes himself further into the wall. He’s so fucking small. Tony wants nothing more than to gather the kid into his arms, to cup the back of his head and hug him. God, he just wants to hold him. Tears like runny eggs slides down Peter’s face, and the kid shuts his eyes, tilting his face down and away from Tony like he’s expecting the man to fucking hit him. “Kid, look at me—look at me, Pete. Come on, you can do it. I’m here. It’s me. You’re safe, buddy.” Tony’s choking on his tears now, some of them slipping down the back of his throat as he sniffs. “You’re safe .”
Tony realizes then that most of Peter’s scarring is on one side of his face. The left. Like Charlie had gone with his dominant hand. This is the side that Peter subconsciously hides, shying away as Tony comes close, ducking it into his chest with squeezed-shut eyes.
He offers his hand, palm up, to the kid. Trust me, kid. Trust me. You’re safe . Just a day and a half ago, this was him. Empty-eyed, crumpled up, leeched of life.
“Godfather, remember?” Tony whispers, trying to soften the sickening feeling that’s broiling in his stomach. “We’ve gotta watch the Godfather.”
Something in Peter’s abused mind seems to click, because he draws in breath quickly like he’s just been struck. He remembers . His eyes trace Tony’s shoes, his socks, then run over his sweatpants and T-shirt—the same ones Pepper gave him in the Quinjet Thursday night. His face melts from terrified to slightly less terrified, then to wholly confused, glancing behind him, in slight bursts of panic. “Cassie…” the kid whispers, the word tainted by panic as he tightens his grip around her.
“Oh, buddy,” whispers Tony, and the hollow of his throat aches with miserable hurt. “No one’s gonna hurt her. No one’s gonna hurt you, either. It’s just us, buddy.”
Again, Peter’s eyes scan the room, his fear-blown pupils starting to shrink to a regular size. One of the Paxton parents steps forward, trying to get to Cassie, and Tony hears Happy pull them back. Peter is taking in the room at last—the whiteness of the linoleum tile, the papery texture of his hospital gown, the fluorescent lights above him, the white-painted walls. With every new discovery, he clutches Cassie tighter. Tony’s surprised that the muscles in his arms don’t give—he can see them shift under his skin, wiry and firm.
The girl is still in his lap, hugging him like a baby monkey, whispering into his ear in teary stammers; Peter grows more lucid by the second, his eyes dulling that blind-panic sheen.
At last, Peter’s brown eyes settle on Tony’s face, the person barely a foot away from him. His nostrils flare. And Peter Parker, the kid he’s been watching be brutalized for months now, looks at him with such a gaze of withering longing that Tony can feel it in his chest like the ghost of an arc reactor.
Recognition. It’s fleeting but it’s there, glistening in Peter’s big brown eyes, in the twitch of his confused brow. The kid’s whole body trembles as though afraid of the truth of what he’s seeing, his eyes raking over Tony’s crouched form. And then Peter croaks out a sound, voice raw with addled trepidation, still clutching the kid to his bruised chest, his cracked lips barely parting.
The words are barely understandable through his strangled throat, but Tony understands. He does. He understands immediately . A fresh burst of tears well in his eyes—sudden and painful relief.
“Mr. Stark?”
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25 — 7:30 PM
Queens native Flint Marko has killed more people than he cares to count.
Men and women, old and young, black and white, evil and innocent.
He’s known for a lot—witness killings, high-level government assassinations, foreign executions—and is generally hired by governments and the rich to take it those who might be a threat to their empires.
And today, he gets an anonymous message with a cash drop into his bank account. Twenty grand, unmarked, paid in full by an anonymous donor with a message: This is a down payment. Each one on the list is twenty more.
Flint Marko needs the money—much more money than he can get with a normal job—because his daughter is sick. Terminally. He’s been paying for her treatment for years with his dirty money.
If it keeps his Penny alive, he’ll do it.
The list has thirteen people on it.
Four soldiers. Nine unemployeds. All located at some local prison in rural New Hampshire. Charles Keene, Renee Deladier, Jonathan Walker, Riri Williams, Quentin Beck… He hasn’t heard of any of these targets, which is good. Public targets are always the most difficult to complete.
Another ping! from his phone. The message: They are witnesses. Eliminate them ASAP.
The soldiers will be hard, too—they’re currently being held at a military base in Massachusetts as they await their arraignment. Military bases are well-fortified and well-guarded.
His work phone pings : a list of questions. Ask these first.
They’re all legal questions, most of which Flint himself doesn't understand, but he saves them into his phone nonetheless.
If they decline, continues the message, then continue as planned. Execute—and leave no trace.
And at last, there are two final targets, with their full names provided.
Both of the targets are located at a hospital a few miles away from the jail.
Peter Benjamin Parker and Cassandra Marie Paxton-Lang.