my baby, my baby
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 — 7:41 AM
Wednesday and Thursday go by without much incident.
The bunker perpetrators—which the media has lovingly dubbed ‘The Stark Seven’—have all been charged with enough violent crime that they are denied bail. Each has been moved to separate holding facilities in the state of New York in anticipation of their next hearing.
All except for Riri Williams—who has been moved to a secure juvenile detention center near the city.
Cassie Paxton-Lang is still a terrified recluse. The only times they’ve managed to soothe her into some sense of calm is when they allow her to visit Peter—and only while the kid is asleep, for fear of another stairwell incident.
Peter heals up a little more, his body slowly but surely strengthening—he even gains a pound. It’s one pound. One damn pound. He’s gone from eighty-six to eighty-seven pounds—and somehow, that’s the greatest miracle that Tony’s ever witnessed.
Then Friday comes, and it has officially been one week since Peter and Tony got free.
One week.
One week, and it seems like it’s been an eternity.
Friday morning, Dr. Cho weans Peter off of the heavy sedatives and into a lighter, more lucid state.
They’re sitting in Peter’s newly decorated room as she does it, monitoring his vitals as he comes out of it. Pepper’s off somewhere talking on the phone—to their legal team, Tony thinks.
Dr. Cho’s been looking over Peter’s charts for the past few days—making sure that she catches every caveat, every wrinkle. She even printed it all out on paper and displays it in her office like an episode of Criminal Minds—old charts and new alike. “Tony,” she says, “I’ve got some good news for you. Peter—his healing rate has actually increased.”
“What?” he says.
“With all of these risk factors—all of Peter's injuries—layering on the refeeding syndrome should’ve killed him outright. But his body is working at least double what we’re used to.”
Peter said that after his scare with the Vulture, his body re-mutated—gave him those sticky hands, as he called them. Sort of…scared his body into another mutation. And it seems like his body did the same while he was imprisoned. Upped his healing factor, adjusted his ocular system, and that’s only the ones I’ve noticed.
Tony doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand any of it.
He’s doing…better?
“Tony,” Cho says again. “His mutation saved his life.”
Tony doesn’t even want to think of some of Peter’s past trauma: the Vulture trapping Peter under a building already gave Peter enough nightmares. But if Peter had mutated again, that meant—they tried to kill him. He doesn’t realize he says those words aloud until Helen Cho glances up from her papers.
“Not necessarily,” responds the doctor. “I think if Peter’s body perceives enough of a threat to his life, then he mutates.” She sighs. “I know this is hard to hear, but it’s a good thing. It means that whatever happens, Peter’s body will fight to stay alive.”
Tony hears the slippery language: even if Peter himself might not. And it makes sense as well. Peter hasn’t been the most cooperative patient since he arrived. Or the most self-caring. If the kid even finally woke up from this stupor, who knows if the kid would even want to live after this ordeal.
“But he,” she tries, swallowing. “I’m not sure what he’ll be like when he comes out of it.”
“I know,” he replies stiffly. He just wants the kid back—lucid and looking at him like that day in the stairwell. Mr. Stark? he’d said, with a confused clarity, his whole face trembling with disbelief.
Cho grimaces, pulling at the lapels of her wrinkled labcoat.. “...so I’m leaving the cuffs on.”
Tony takes a breath and lets it out. Beside him, Peter stirs lightly, his neck twisting; even in his sleep, his hands are curled into fists, his thumb tucked into his palm like a child’s. And on his right hand, on his mutilated, burned and scarred right hand, his pinky twitches—it’s shorter than the rest. About an inch shorter. Tony remembers that day, sometime deep in May—
“LOOK AT THE CAMERA PARKER, GIVE YOUR PRECIOUS STARK A SMILE—”
Charlie pins the kid’s hand down to the arm of the chair, takes a knife to it, digs it right below the first joint—
“I SAID LOOK AT THE FUCKING CAMERA, FREAK—NOW—NOW OR I’LL CUT IT OFF AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT—
And he does, his brown eyes somehow finding that little green light on Scott Lang’s computer—his chin falling back, his face glistening in the flickering yellow lights. “TELL YOUR LITTLE FAKE DADDY HOW MUCH YOU MISS HIM—”
“Mr. Stark—” the kid sobs, and his chest heaves; and Pete’s teary eyes stare so hard at the camera, like he can see Tony on the other side, and his face splinters with another sob. “I—I wanna go home—”
His eyes. His kid’s marvelous, sparkling eyes—now terrified and staring directly at him through Tony’s television screen.
“Please, Mr. Stark—I can’t—” He’s sobbing so hard he starts to cough, wild frantic coughs. “PLEASE—TONY—PLEASE—”
And then Charlie smiles and presses the knife down.
Peter makes this high, inhuman sound—
The knife doesn’t go all the way through the first time.
Or the second.
His chest feels like it’s on fire—he’s got to—he’s got to help Peter—
Where are his tools— “The gun,” he mutters, suddenly frantic, his head feeling the weight of an anvil— “Oh, god—oh, god—my—I have to—”
“Tony.”
What time is it? “Dum-E,” he says, and he can’t think— “My blueprints—we have to, have to adjust for—if—if we add ammonium ni—nitrate—then—then the target might—”
“Tony,” she says gently, touching his back—who—when did she get beside him? “Breathe, just breathe.”
“If—if we—we have to try—”
“Tony, Tony…” It’s Dr. Cho—and her hand on his back, pressing in slow increments. “Breathe with me, come on…”
He chokes in a breath. “Peter—”
“He’s right here, he’s safe, just breathe with me, one more, come on…”
Tony inhales raggedly, and he pushes his head into his hands. His hair feels like a thousand wires, and he pulls enough to feel a prickle over his skull. “He… He…”
“Peter’s right here. Look at him, Tony. Look at him.”
He forces his eyes up—
—and they fall upon Peter’s sleeping, blanketed body.
“He’s safe. He’s okay. He’s here.”
Tony pulls at his hair again, struggles through another inhale, and breathes out shakily. And again, he looks at that half-sized pinky finger, nailless and blunted—and he closes his eyes to it.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 — 11:45 AM
Steve’s ears ring.
“What?” he says, and his voice comes out a pathetic whisper.
Dr. Cho looks at him, and she reaches for his hand across the table; he jerks his hand back.
“No—” he says, and his head feels like it’s full of cotton. “That’s not—I can’t. I didn’t…”
It’s just the two of them in this conference room—there’s enough room to fit the Avengers and more—but the walls are swaying, closing in around them, and Steve looks down at the paper again. At the top, the date of the medical test: Friday, August 24. Exactly a week ago. The date of the result next, and then his name Rogers, Steven Grant. His age, adjusted for his time in the ice: 34. His birthday: July 4, 1918. Then his address—his and Bucky’s address—in Brooklyn. And he scans down the paper for a second, for a third time, and the whole list of tests: HIV, herpes, chlamydia, syphilis, hepatitis B and C—all negative.
Then there, at the bottom: Gonorrhea. And across from it, in green—Positive.
Dr. Cho nods. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I really am, Steve. But treatment’s going to be quick—a single intramuscular dose of ceftriaxone…”
He can see that brown-haired man’s face every time he closes his eyes. Can hear his voice, taunting: Answer me, Steve Rogers. Can feel his fingernails on the back of his neck. Can feel his hand, pulling his shirt out of his pants in a quick yank, and the flutter of panic in his chest—
Cho’s still talking, something about current sexual partners, and it’s in such an automatic medical tone that his stomach churns.
He tips forward, bowing his head, interlacing his fingers over the back of his neck—and he presses his face into the surface of the table. It’s somehow better than having to look Dr. Cho in the face. “Steve?” she says, and he just pretends he hasn’t heard her, pressing his nose into the table and sucking in a breath. “Steve…”
There’s several slashes from the guy’s hatchet still visible on his face—three of them and traces of others, because the blunt edge of it caught his skin and tore. He remembers how it felt, too—not the pain of it, but the slight victory in his chest, the way he kept thinking: Eyes on me, eyes on me, eyes on me. Like he was winning—like he was going to save the day.
He was so fucking stupid.
Until later that day, when Steve took his eyes fully, entirely off of Peter and onto him. He hears the man’s voice then, low and thick: You wanna know how it feels?
Steve has the sudden urge to drive his shield into his skull.
“Get out,” he says.
Dr. Cho looks up. “Steve—”
“Please, Helen.”
She gets up then, all slow and careful, gathering her papers into her hands, tapping them lightly on the table to straighten them out. She leaves one, though: the results of his STD testing, and slides the paper to him. Then he hears her chair screech across the floor, and the conference door opens and closes behind her with a click.
God, the humiliation. He might be sick. He really, really might be sick.
Please, said Steve, as the muzzle of the gun poked into his spine. And then the brown-haired man said, with that murky, taunting voice: Please what?
How could he do that? How could he say that?
How could Steve Rogers give in so easily?
He’s Captain America, for God’s sake, and all it took was a couple hours in a cell with a normal human guy and a gun, and he had him on his hands and knees, begging to be—to be—
He presses his forehead into the table and his hands into his neck and tries to think of one good reason why he’s still a superhero.
What’d you do to him? said the man who’d entered, and the brown-haired man said, Nothing he didn’t want.
Isn’t that true? He asked for it. He’d begged for it.
In front of a helpless, injured child, he begged.
His laugh. His fucking laugh.
The great Captain America. What are you now?
He has to tell Bucky—should he tell Bucky?
It’s so fucking ironic. Steve gave speeches on STDs and safe sex to kids Peter’s age. He preached on how to tell a partner, how to get tested, how to use protection.
And he couldn’t even…
The conference room door opens and closes again, and a wave of acidic shame broils in Steve’s gut.
It’s Bucky—he can recognize his footsteps anywhere, slightly uneven because of the weight of his vibranium arm. “Hey, blondie,” he says, gentler than usual. “Cho told me you were in here.”
He pulls up a chair beside him, and Steve moves just slightly—away from him. Away from Bucky. And without looking, Steve quickly snatches the paper with one hand and crumples it in his fist. It’s childish—it’s stupid—but he keeps it there, trapped like it’ll keep Bucky from knowing.
“Did something… Did something happen?”
Steve keeps his head on the table. He’s acting like a child—but he feels like one, too. Impotent and inadequate, choking back tears over a sexual experience that he asked for.
“Lemme see, baby,” says Bucky, and Steve feels him move beside him, feels his fingers pry at his closed fist. “Lemme see.”
“Buck,” he says, and panic gnarls in his chest, and he squeezes his fingers tighter around that stupid fucking paper. “Bucky, please—”
“It’s okay,” says Bucky, and when he settles his other hand warmly on Steve’s back, he can’t help it—he jumps. “You’re alright—lemme see, doll, lemme see…” He pulls again his flesh-and-blood fingers pry at Steve’s, pulling at the corners of the crumpled paper there.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he whispers. “I didn’t—I didn’t—Bucky—”
“I know,” he says, and his voice is so soft that Steve can feel tears coming down his face. “You’re okay, I know… You’re okay, baby, just lemme see…”
He sobs into the table, gripping the back of his neck with one hand and the paper with his other. “Buck—”
“Whatever it is,” he says gently, “we’ll get through it, we always do…”
He chokes out another sob, and his hand clenches once more around the paper.
“Just let go, Stevie, lemme see…”
And it’s something in his coaxing, gentle tone—but Steve relents, unclenching his fist, and Bucky pulls it from his hand with the slight sound of wrinkling paper.
He hears the paper unfold, crinkling paper smoothed out, and he can practically hear Bucky’s eyes graze over the page. He hears the realization, too, the slight intake of breath.
And Steve—he cowers like a kid, pressing his forehead hard into the table. Humiliation swims in his face and burns at the back of his neck.
“Stevie,” says Bucky eventually, softly, and he’s re-crumpling the paper in his hands, “I can see where your head’s at, and it’s not—”
“It is,” he says, because he’d rather die than hear Buck finish that sentence. “You know it is.”
Bucky huffs. “No,” he says. “No, Steve. This wasn’t your fault. Beck—he—he forced you—”
“No,” he whispers into his hands. “I fucked up, Bucky, I really—I really—I’m—so sorry—”
And this is something they’ve never spoken about before—but Steve Rogers has never slept with anyone other than Bucky Barnes. Bucky was his sweetheart, his only—and then he’d gone straight into the ice. There was some rumor spread around about him and a few girls on tour, and even more about him and Natasha, but it was all just tabloid bullshit.
Bucky was the only person. His only person. And he’d betrayed him.
“Steve,” Bucky says with a firmness, “I want you to listen to me, okay?”
Steve can’t bring himself to nod.
“Stevie,” he says, demanding.
“Yeah,” he chokes out. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I don't blame you for what happened—any of it. That son of a bitch is the one to blame. Not you. Never you. You saved a kid in a horrible way—that doesn’t make you a whore.”
Go on, then. Let’s see what America’s ass has to offer.
“I’m stronger than this,” he whispers. “I let him—I—”
Bucky shakes his head. “I saw the tox screens. they gave you so much of that HYDRA sedating shit that you should’ve been unconscious—but you stayed awake. You stayed awake, baby, all so you could save Peter Parker.”
He shakes his head into the table.
“Steve,” he says, lightly touching Steve’s back again. “That's the same stuff they used on me.”
He didn’t know that.
“Kept me weak unless they needed me. They… Look, doll—there’s no way you could’ve fought him off. That shit’s really potent. Kept Peter down, too.”
“Sorry,” Steve whispers. He knows Bucky is having a hard time with this case—revisiting all those old bunkers still makes it difficult for him to sleep. And here he is, whining like a baby about an STD he willingly... That he willingly...
“Don’t be sorry, you—” A ragged sigh. “Steve. Steve. You’re a hero, baby. You saved him.”
“Captain Steve Rogers, hero of the Western world, choking down some dick.” He chuckles, and Steve’s mouth goes dry.
“Steve,” Bucky says. “Stevie. Don’t do that—get out of your head, baby.”
He wants to bury himself alive from sheer shame. “I did it, Buck. I did it and then he—”
And Bucky's there, touching his back, rubbing slowly. He doesn't mention the paper—or what's on it—and Steve can feel the weight of it strung between them.
Steve takes a shuddery breath; he's never felt so weak.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 — 3:32 PM
By the afternoon, Peter Parker wakes, and Tony is beside him.
It’s a slow process—but when he finally opens his brown eyes, he seems a little calmer—a little less frantic—spending most of his awake moments scanning the room with some kind of twisted confusion. The nerdy teenage posters, the Star Wars-themed bedspread, the MIT sweatshirt hanging off the door, the photos of his friends… If anything, it gives the kid pause; he seems shaken when he sees them, closing his eyes and opening them again like he’s trying to wake up.
With the sedation mostly gone, Peter moves with a little more insistence, and the first thing he does is move his arm—clink—and then the rest of his body stills, with the same arm, he pulls harder, his pale face contorting with something like panic.
His chest heaves; he pulls his head to his chest like he’s trying to curl in on himself, the scarred side of his face pressed to his bony collarbone.
“Peter,” he says, and it’s like the kid doesn’t even hear him. “Peter. Buddy.” He just pulls at his restraints, face screwing up, and the kid glances around, his neck barely moving—why isn’t he responding— “Peter, hey—”
Then Tony touches Peter’s hand, and Peter’s whole body goes taut.
Peter just freezes—unmoving, and he shrinks, seeming to flatten himself bodily against the bed; he’s still hiding that left side of his face, and his eyes graze warily over the room, scanning again and again and again.
Steve Rogers described the way the kid was when he met him, and this is what he’s like now; “He was quiet,” said the supersoldier, with his gaze directed at the floor, “jumpy, and very, very afraid.”
Then the kid’s eyes fall on Tony, and his whole body seems to tremble. “Peter,” he says, and the kid just looks at him. “Peter, it’s me. It’s Mr. Stark.” You—you remember me, right, kiddo?”
Nothing. The kid’s eyes just jerk to him, and then to the doorway, and then down to the straps around his wrists. He seems cloudy, maybe—and he mouths something to himself: Cassie. And he glances back up, and his eyes don’t leave Tony.
But there’s no recognition there. Just fear.
Tony glances back at Dr. Cho, who’s standing by the doorway with her arms folded. “He’s—he’s off the sedatives, right? He should be—he should be—”
Dr. Cho shakes her head, and Tony turns back to his kid. His movement seems to frighten Peter, because he tightens his entire body, cringing in anticipation of some imagined blow.
He’s just like Steve said:
Quiet.
Jumpy.
And very, very afraid.
“Peter,” he whispers. “Peter, hey.”
He takes his hand away then, and the kid relaxes minutely. But his eyes bounce around the room again—he’s confused, he’s afraid, and he says with a brutal quiet: “Where—where—”
“You’re in the Medbay,” says Tony. “You’re at the Tower.”
Peter shakes his head, and he’s whispering to himself, his voice so quiet that Tony can’t make out a single word.
“We got you out,” he says. “We got you out.”
The kid’s hair hangs dark and stringy over his eyes. “Where—” he tries again, and he swallows his words, shutting his mouth tightly.
“The Tower,” Tony repeats, and he’s waiting for Peter to understand— “Avengers Tower, remember?”
But Peter keeps shaking his head, his chest taking in shallow breaths, and he’s starting to tremble—whispering to himself again, and Tony knows they’re not going to get anywhere with their current track. So he tries, like on that first day, “Godfather, Pete—godfather.”
The kid looks at him. “Mr. Stark,” he whimpers, his voice raspy and pained, and some fleeting recognition passes over his face.
“Yeah, kiddo. It’s me. It’s me.”
“Tony,” he says, weird and insistent.
“Yes—” he says, and his chest clenches. “Yes, Pete, that’s right.”
He’s talking. He’s talking.
There’s that tube trailing into his nose, taped down one side of his face, and the tape crinkles as Pete turns his face back and forth. “I don’t—” he whispers, “I don’t—”
“Just me,” he says, “just me. Mr. Stark.”
At least now he’s acting more normal, more stable, like he can see the person in front of him. “Cassie,” he whispers, “Cassie.” And then he pulls harder at his restraints. “Cassie? Cassie?”
Heart pounding, Tony turns to Helen, who’s standing in the doorway still, and he says, “Can we…”
She just shakes her head.
Tony turns back to his kid, and he says, “Peter—Peter, kid—look at me, okay? You’re here. You’re here with me—”
And he doesn’t know what does it, maybe the movement, or the sound of his voice, or the fact that Cassie’s not with him, but something changes. Peter squeezes his eyes shut, tears slipping down his face. “No,” he whimpers, “no, please—”
Behind him, Dr. Cho moves, and she says, “Okay, I’m gonna sedate him, Kaelyn, get me another dose—
A nurse vanishes down the hallway, and Tony says, “Wait—no—no more of that. He’s scared enough, Cho. Just let him—he’ll calm on his own, he will.”
She sighs.
Tony tries to touch him, and he just screams. “You’re okay,” he manages, feeling that sinking pit in his stomach. “Godfather—godfather, remember?”
She just nods her chin a little in Peter’s direction, who’s started to notice the restraints again, pulling violently at them, and it’s making him make these small noises in the back of his throat—like a dog in a cage. “Mr. Stark,” he sobs out. “Mr. Stark—Mr. Stark—Mr. Stark—Mr. Stark, help me—”
The nurse returns with an array of syringes, handing it to Helen, Tony moves bodily between them, blocking her access to Peter’s bed. “No,” he says. “We’re done with that—he’s—he’s done.”
“Tony,” says Dr. Cho, plucking up one of the syringes in gloved hands—
“I said no,” he says, and there’s a burning feeling inside of his chest. “That’s—that’s my kid you’ve got in this bed! You’re not drugging him again!”
Peters started to cry, sobbing incoherently, and Helen is at him with this utterly pissed gaze. “You wanna let him go on like this, Tony? He’s fucking terrified!”
“He’s always terrified!” Tony shouts, and when Cho moves, he does, too, eyeing the needles that’re supposed to go in Peter. “And he’s gonna keep being terrified if you keep putting that shit in him!”
Steve Rogers is in the door suddenly, like a saving grace, and although Tony flinches minutely at the sight of his sudden form, he’s actually relieved. “He said no,” he says firmly, weaving his way to stand by Tony. “No more sedatives for the kid—Helen, put it down.”
“Steve—”
“He said no,” Steve repeats, and he glances once to Tony, meeting his eyes with something that mirrors his own.
With two Avengers blocking her, Cho backs off, both hands slightly raised, but her face betrays her. “Fine,” she says, and behind them, Peter continues to sob, his restraints clicking against the sides of the bed. “But when he needs them—”
“He won’t,” says Tony, firm. “He won’t.”
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 — 8:09 AM
Cassie’s lost a fair amount of teeth.
For some reason, that fact seems to bother Maggie more than anything else. Because Cassie’s always been a late bloomer—late to walk, late to talk, late to grow—and she’d never lost a tooth before, not before she went missing in April. And now five of them are gone. One front tooth, the canine next to it, an incisor on the bottom a little molar in the back, and a matching molar on the other side.
Dr. Helen Cho says, after a quick examination of her mouth, that she’s been grinding her teeth—that’s probably why she lost so many so quickly. That and the malnutrition.
And as Cassie sleeps this morning, she does it still—grinding her teeth, her little jaw moving back and forth, her brow drawn in a tense little frown. It’s a habit Maggie’s seen the Peter kid do in his sleep, his jaw moving slightly as he sleeps, twitching and frowning and whimpering through his gritted teeth the way Cassie’s doing now.
They picked it up from each other, just like they did everything else.
And as Cassie sleeps, it gets worse—Maggie can hear her teeth squeak against one another as they go back and forth. They’ve refitted her bed with her zoo-covered quilt from home, and she’s swallowed herself in it completely; Maggie swaddles her in it and rocks her slowly, trying to soothe her even as she sleeps. Her little girl’s breathing shallowly, in raspy huffs, and she’s hugging that little stuffed zebra to her chest with her scarred hand.
Even in her sleep, her sweet girl is in pain.
Dr. Cho sends in a dentist on Saturday morning—a woman, someone to make sure Cassie’s mouth and teeth are healthy. Maggie meets her first, as Jim slowly wakes Cassie, and she seems nice enough. Gentle. Slow-moving and careful enough to come close to Cassie without repercussion. “Did they tell you…” asks Maggie.
She doesn’t have to finish her sentence, because the dentist nods, her red hair swaying lightly to one side. “Cho did give me her medical history—so I know some of it, yes.”
They talk a little more—about Cassie’s bleeding gums, about her lost teeth, about her malnutrition and the soft foods she’s been eating. Then Maggie invites her into the room slowly, letting the red-haired dentist follow her into the room.
Cassie in her bed, sitting quietly in Jim’s lap, a fuzzy dolphin blanket from home wrapped around her little shoulders. She’s holding that little stuffed zebra—Ava—and whispering softly to him.
“Cassie,” Maggie says, and her little girl looks up and goes very still. “This is the dentist, okay? She’s gonna take a look at your mouth.”
Behind her, the dentist tucks a tendril of auburn hair behind her ear. She takes a small step forward, waving slightly, and she says, “My name’s Dr.—”
The woman can’t even get her own name out before Jim cuts her off with a yelp, shifting Cassie out of his lap. “Cassie, honey—” He looks up at Maggie, his voice betraying his sudden alarm. “She…”
Maggie’s gaze drifts down, and she can see it: the warm rush of liquid down Cassie’s hospital gown, trickling down her leg, spilling out onto the bedsheets.
“Oh,” says the dentist, and her shock is palpable. “Um.”
Maggie realizes now that Cassie isn’t even looking at Jim or her animal anymore. Her attention is entirely trained on the red-haired dentist; she’s not even blinking.
And she’s shaking, her hands now fisted in Jim’s shirt.
Maggie glances between her daughter and the dentist, and back to her daughter—and she finds that Cassie’s barely even breathing, air coming into her in little short gulps. “Hey,” says the dentist, and Maggie knows that’s the wrong move, “there’s nothing to be scared of, sweetheart—”
And her hand moves, and Cassie screeches like a goddamn demon—
—and she scrambles out of the bed, out of Jim’s arms like a slippery fish, and she hits the ground hard, her palms slapping tile. “Cassie—”
And she scrambles like a frightened cat, on her hands and knees like some kind of animal—quickly beneath the bed, already starting to cry, and once she’s backed all the way to the wall, she’s shouting, crying out more words than Maggie’s heard from her in days: “I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m sorry, Mommy—please—please—PLEASE—I—I—I won’t—I won’t run—I won’t run—”
And when they try to comfort her, try to kneel down to greet her, to tell her that everything’s alright—but her sobbing is so relentless that it’s hard for them to get a word in edgewise.
They leave her like that for a while, just hiding beneath the bed. Cassie’s been doing so well these past few days that they don’t want to sedate her or scare her again. So she and Jim sit cross-legged on the floor, trying to coax her out with promises of stuffed toys and more food.
But Cassie doesn’t move.
She just hugs herself, crying, and whispers for Peter.
They manage to get her out later that day, when she falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, and pull her back into the bed.
That new psychiatrist—Dr. Alexis—puts up a photo of Peter in Cassie’s room, right beside the bed. They thought it might help—that then she might remember that Peter’s not gone.
But the photo was an old one—a picture Pepper Potts provided of the teenager at a convention. Smiling and full-cheeked and dressed up like a stormtrooper, giving a cheery thumbs up to the camera. “Not Peter,” Cassie whispers, and she shies away from the photo, choosing instead to curl her blanket around her shoulders.
“Honey,” says Maggie. “That’s Peter. See? Right here—”
“Not Peter,” she says, and she looks like she’s going to cry, so Maggie gives up, putting the photo away.
Cassie’s spent more time seeing that battered skeleton of a boy than she has seen him as a regular teen that she can’t—she can’t even recognize him.
So they take a more recent photo of him—something of him in the hospital bed, bony and scarred with bloodshot eyes, and Cassie nods. “Peter,” she says, and she looks at the photo with this unmatched sense of longing. “Peter.”