rise and shine
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 — 4:56 PM
With Cassie beside him, Peter is nearly stable—he’s been awake and lucid nearly as long as she’s been there, not one single going-blank moment, and he’s much less jumpy, only shifting whenever someone gets too close to the little girl. Less of that body-possessed panic, more of a stable wariness.
“It’s okay,” says Maggie Paxton, trying to get around to her daughter. “It’s Cassie’s mom—I’m Cassie’s mom. I won’t hurt her.”
Maybe it’s because Cassie keeps reminding him who she is, or maybe because Cassie’s so comfortable with her, but he lets Maggie touch her, even when every muscle in his body is wound up like a wire. “You’re doing great, buddy,” says Tony. “Really, really great.”
Peter nods. He keeps glancing to the new pacemaker in Tony’s chest—to its new blue glow. Helen got it into him yesterday evening, clicked it into his chest, tested it a couple times, and eventually let him walk around with it. At least he’s not fainting anymore.
“Not fainting,” Helen said, when he said that to her. “A-fib, Tony, and you just let it happen .”
He shrugged then.
Truly, everything’s he’s been through is not even a fraction of what Peter’s endured. He has nothing to complain about.
They give the kids some time alone together—they watch over the security cameras to make sure they’re both safe. Peter spends most of the time with Cassie, but he’s a lot calmer.
There’s something strange in his gaze now—a heaviness. He just keeps staring off into space. It’s the realization, Tony guesses, that keeps weighing on him.
He keeps Cassie away from everything, regarding even the food now with new suspicion. To stop her, all it takes is a small hiss between his teeth, and she’ll pull back to his side, arms around him, and stop everything that she’s doing. “There’s nothing wrong with the food, bud,” he says. “I promise.”
And Peter just peers at him through his haze of stringy dark hair, his brown eyes just darting back and forth around the room, and eventually, eventually takes the can, eating most of it and giving the rest to Cassie. They weren’t expecting them to split the can as though it was all they were getting, so he and the nurse share a worried glance, and she hands them a second one—again, Peter eats three-quarters of the can, and Cassie eats the rest.
Jim Paxton doesn’t like it. Of course he doesn’t. “The power he has over her,” he says, as the kids are taking a nap and they’re out in the hallway, “God, she just listens without even thinking. Whatever he wants, whenever he says it—she looks to him before anyone else, and we’re her parents. ”
Tony will admit—it’s a little disconcerting, watching how Peter interacts with this little girl. Like everything’s a threat. Like every person is a danger, like every gift is a payment for something worse. “They had to,” says Sarah Wilson, placing a hand on Jim’s arm. “They’re just…used to it, Jim. Being afraid. Just give them time.”
Paxton looks suddenly very tired, his mouth twisted like a tangled cord. “I know,” he grumbles.
But overall, their reunion is going well—Peter is much more aware, and Cassie is much more calm, and when the parents disappear from the room and watch through the security cameras, they watch as the kids talk to each other, lying on the bed before each other, whispering beneath the blankets. At some point, they even move to the floor, but mostly they just lay there in silence, side by side, like twin coffins buried under a single gravestone.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 — 6:55 PM
And then seven o’clock comes.
Seven o’clock is difficult for Tony—Pepper has watched time and time again as seven o’clock nears, because Tony will start pacing in the hallway like some kind of lunatic, back and forth and back and forth, pulling at his hair and mumbling to himself—
And at the same time, the kids do, too.
They go from tentative calm to full-on freaking out—and they’re not even looking at the clocks. Both kids know somehow, deeply, that seven o’clock has come. Over the cameras, both the Paxtons watch as the kids start to move—Peter shoves Cassie beneath the bed and drags a blanket beneath it, and they both sit there for a while, rocking and hugging each other. Nothing like the lucid kids they had just an hour prior. And Peter is rattled— now Cassie’s the one comforting him, grabbing his arm, and he keeps flinching, like she’s a threat to him, and he eventually just turns over onto his side, gasping and gasping and curling up into a ball, and Cassie just sits there beside him like she’s sitting shiva, hugging herself and rocking, rocking, rocking.
“Let’s leave them,” says Sarah, when Maggie Paxton tries to rush inside, “let’s just try to let them calm down on their own.” Recently, when anyone has tried to come in around seven o’clock, it’s driven the kids to such wild responses that they’ve had to sedate them. “Maybe they can…”
But the waiting seems to only make it worse.
It’s only a few minutes past seven now, and Peter’s pulling at his hair, and tears are coming down his face so fast that his face has this perpetual shine, and soon the kid’s climbing out from under the bed—as Cassie throws the blanket over her head and shrouds herself in it, pressing her hands over her covered ears.
And Peter’s crying so hard that he’s struggling to walk, his hospital gown shifting as he moves, using the bed-railing to help him up, and he’s just moving without thought—all the way to the wall, and he places his hands against it, trembling with such vigor that they think he’s going to fall.
Why is he standing against the wall? Why is he…
Pepper feels now slightly sick.
“Just wait,” says Sarah Wilson.
There are only a couple of them peering at the tablet now—Tony is somewhere in the hallway, refusing to watch, and Maggie Paxton is sitting outside the kids’ door, so it’s just Sarah, Pepper, and Jim Paxton who are watching. Tony won’t say why, but Pepper thinks watching Peter on the tablet must have that same voyeuristic quality as watching him on that television screen.
Peter’s pacing the room again, moving faster than Sarah has seen him thus far, forcing himself forward along the wall, tripping and falling and forcing himself back up. It’s like the kid doesn’t even have pain signals—or maybe he’s used to the feeling, or maybe he just ignores them altogether.
He’s up against that wall again, face-forward, his head tipped against it, and his shoulders are shaking from the force of his crying. He’s starting to tap his head against the painted wall, upset, tapping and tapping, and then Peter’s palms are hitting the wall, and Pepper’s thinking, We should probably call someone, and then there on the screen—
—the door is opening, and Peter jumps, but it’s Tony, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, inching forward slowly, his hands out to Peter like he’s trying to calm a rapid dog. “Damn it, Tony,” says Sarah, her eyes trained to the screen. “I said wait.”
Pepper didn’t even know Tony was close to the kid’s room—last time she checked, he was pacing by the elevator, but there’s Tony, her Tony, moving forward to the sobbing Peter, speaking to him—with the cameras on mute, they can’t hear what he’s saying, but eventually Peter’s nodding, and the kid’s sliding to the floor and curling up into a ball with his back to it, crushing his head between his arms, curling himself up so tightly that he looks small, childlike, a kid in timeout .
And he calms, and he calms, and eventually Tony coaxes him back into the bed without even touching him.
They leave them alone again after that. Sarah scolds him for not letting them calm themselves, worried that something could have gone wrong, to which Tony just says, “I’m not gonna fucking ferberize him, doc.”
“Tony—”
“Five months I watched him suffer,” he says. “Every day for five fucking months, Sarah.” Those bags beneath his eyes look near-permanent, dark and sickly. “I’m not gonna abandon him again.”
And Sarah goes quiet, and she sits back a little, and she comments on how well he seemed to calm the kid. “Just…be careful with him,” she says.
“I always am,” he says.
By nightfall, they’re falling asleep side by side, Peter curled on his side, Cassie tucked in the space between his arms, curled up against his chest, Peter’s Star Wars blanket draped over them both. They look as peaceful as Tony’s ever seen them.
And in the morning, several times in the night Cassie wakes up in a nightmarish panic, finds Peter beside her, and promptly goes back to sleep.
And when Peter wakes up that morning, thrashing so badly that his arm smacks into Cassie, she grabs his hand and holds on, squeezing, until Peter drags himself awake, in a sobbing, screaming frenzy, gasping and gasping and Cassie just talks to him, talks to him, and helps him calm down in just a couple minutes.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 — 8:08 AM
The next day, they give the kids the entire day to be together. The whole day.
Physically, both kids are doing much, much better—Cassie’s gained almost six pounds, which shifts her BMI from the horrifically low fourteen-point-three to sixteen-point-seven. “Still underweight,” says Dr. Cho, examining Cho’s chart, “but better. So much better.”
Peter’s gained a respectable amount—around five pounds a week since he arrived—placing him at a solid hundred-and-one pounds, but he’s plateaued recently there, sometimes dropping below one hundred and then coming back up.
They’re barely on any meds anyway, focusing more on fluids than anything else. “Once he’s well enough,” says Cho, “then we can focus on that leg.”
Peter still needs at least another week in the Medbay—with the kind of starvation both he and Cassie endured, they still require twenty-four hour supervision to ensure they’re stable.
Bruce Banner shows up during the day with Thor at his side—they both look a little worse for wear, but they’ve apparently captured the guy—Flint Marko. They’re holding him up at the compound upstate. “He was a slippery one,” says Banner, looking a little green. “Thor finally got him with his hammer. Know what happens when sand’s hit by lightning?”
Pepper frowns at him. What does that matter—
Banner pulls out a large piece of glass from his satchel. “Glass,” he says. “It turns to glass.”
“How is Peter Parker?” says Thor.
“A lot better,” says Pepper. “He’s talking, even.”
The large man nods. “Good,” he says, in that booming voice.
The two of them show her video footage of the Sandman where they’re keeping him upstate—in some kind of electric jail cell up at the compound. Inside, there’s a man morphing and remorphing into sand, dressed in a striped-green tee and khaki pants, his brown hair buzzed short, his hair into a short peak at the top of his forehead. He’s holding one arm down at his side—maybe that’s the arm that was injured by Thor’s lightning strike—and with the other, he’s punching at the non-electric walls with sandlike fists, dipping into sand and then back to human, sand and back to human.
“Guy’s not going anywhere,” says Banner. “And according to him, there’s no one else going after any of the witnesses—just him.”
Pepper nods.
Banner’s gone in a matter of seconds—off to discuss science things with Helen Cho, Pepper thinks—but Thor remains. He walks with her in the hallway, Pepper taking a couple steps for every massive one of his. The god is no longer in his battle gear—no cape, no armor, no chainmail—just a hoodie and jeans, his face mostly bearded in brown scruff. “If there’s anything else you need, Pepper Potts,” he says, patting her firmly on the shoulder. “Or anything Peter Parker needs, you may call anytime. Stark knows how to contact me, yes?”
“Yeah,” she says, although she’s really not sure. “Thank you, Thor.”
He nods, and his face pulls into a grimace. She’s not used to seeing the god of thunder like this—worried. He scans her face, and he grimaces again. “I never met Peter Parker,” he says. “I was not in Germany for the battle, so I never encountered him, but from what Banner has told me… He was young. Good. A hero.”
“Still is,” she says softly.
“Of course,” he says quickly. “I did not mean—” The blond god drops his hand from her shoulder, shifting his hammer to the other hand to avoid some sense of awkwardness. “I am truly sorry for what happened to him. Such atrocities rarely occur on Asgard, and…”
She’s never seen him at such a loss for words.
“Nevertheless, I live on Midgard now. In…” The man waves his hand. “The Midgardians call it Norway. And if you, or Tony Stark, or Peter Parker… If you need help of any kind, you may reach me there. Yes?”
He’s grimacing again—he’s grown a beard, and one of his eyes has changed color, and she doesn’t think she even noticed. “Yes, thank you, yes…” she says, but she’s still thinking about the way Peter looked on that screen—how terrified he was.
Thor’s eyes drop to her swollen belly and back up to her face. They’ve reached the elevator now, and both of them turn around to carry on their steady pacing, walking back towards where they came. “And we have…excellent midwives in New Asgard, if you need…”
“I’m alright here,” Pepper says, and it hurts to see him look this guilty, “but thank you, Thor, really.”
The massive man nods, a confirmation, and his differently-colored eye glistens. “I am sorry,” he says, “truly. I do not have any children—but I have a younger brother, as you remember.”
Barely. The war of New York seems like an old fable at this point.
“He is the closest I would have to…” Thor gestures again, this time down the hall to Peter’s room. “...Peter Parker. And if anything happened to him, anything, I…” He shakes his head, and his dark brow turns to a frown, and then he stops walking.
Pepper stops in front of him.
“Pepper Potts,” he says, very firmly, facing her with his entire weight.
“Yes?” she says.
The god looks her very expressly in the eye, and his voice drops—low enough that they cannot be heard, and he places his broad, calloused hand on one shoulder. His hand is warm, and large enough that it dwarfs her entire shoulder. “I want you to understand,” Thor says, every word steadfast, solid as it leaves him, “I have killed for much, much less than these crimes. If you want me to eliminate Peter Parker’s attackers from Midgard, I will do so immediately. On Asgard, one would be put to death for such crimes; I will not hesitate to execute these people for what they have done.” He squeezes her shoulder then, a promise. “Do you wish me to?”
In fact, this is not the first time Pepper Potts has been asked this question. Bucky Barnes came to her, horrifically calm, his blue eyes barely even looking at her, and asked permission to kill the Stark Seven. Natasha Romanoff had done the same. So she tells Thor what she told the others. “Anything that happens to the Stark Seven,” she says, “from an Avenger will only blow back on Tony and Peter—I wish I could say yes, but… If anyone ever finds out, Tony could go to prison. You know how enhanced law is these days…”
Thor nods grimly. “I am aware of the legal battles you have faced here—the Sokovia Accords, the law of collateral damage… Several of the enhanced citizens of New Asgard have faced similar troubles in Norway.”
She nods. “Then you understand?”
“I do,” he says, and he’s nodding with that frown. “I am sorry I could not do more, Pepper Potts.”
“You’ve done more than enough,” she says, and the god of thunder smiles, weary, and drops his hand from her shoulder.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 — 10:49 AM
The next day, Sarah comes in to give Peter another mental test—those same four questions, and this time Peter’s voice is very quiet, tired, like he’s been asleep for a long time.
He sounds different. Sad. Exhausted. “Can you tell me what your name is?” asks Sarah, coming in a little closer.
Peter nods; he’s still holding Cassie to his chest. He’s doing so good—so responsive. Afraid, but responsive. “Peter,” he says.
With the way he’s been responding to his last name, with that head-twisting horror, Sarah only has him repeat his middle name.
“Benjamin,” he says, and his eyes drift down.
“Do you know where you are right now?”
“Medbay,” he says, eerily quiet.
There’s very little relief in him; Tony expected relief—gratitude—happiness, even. But he’s just…sitting there. Occasionally tears will come down his face without even a wrinkle, and the kid doesn’t even bother to wipe them away.
“Good,” says Sarah, “that’s exactly right—you’re doing great, just a couple more… Can you tell me what today’s date is?”
This one bothers him, and he takes this shuddery breath in. “Yeah,” he says, but he doesn’t answer the question.
“Peter?” Sarah prompts.
The kid looks up at her quick, like he’s afraid not to, and his eyes like hollow. “Four,” Peter says slowly, like he’s chewing on the word. “Five? Months?”
That’s not exactly the answer they were looking for, but it’s close. “Yeah,” says Sarah, gently, “almost five, Peter.”
Peters face twists then—his eyes are heavy with something—something dark. He goes out for a second, his eyes drifting to some spot beyond Tony’s shoulder, and Cassie pulls at his arm several times to bring him back. “Peter,” Sarah says again, “can you try telling me the today’s date?” Up on the wall behind them all is a calendar—there it is, flipped open to September. Nine days are crossed out—today, the tenth, and she moves her hand to point at it—
—Peter’s whole body moves suddenly, violently, twisting around Cassie, and both their wires get tangled in each other as he moves bodily around the girl.
With the split-open back of Peter’s hospital gown, everyone can see with some horror Charlie (and whoever else) left there—knife-lines and burns, rough patches from scrapes, curves from a whiplike wire, bony indents in his ribs, thicker curves from a belt.
His back was Cassie’s shield . Peter Parker, Cassie’s flesh-and-blood shield. Tony remembered how he slept before he was taken—on his side, sometimes, but usually on his back. Cassie Lang mentioned it a couple times—Peter always slept on his side in the bunker.
No wonder. Sleeping on his back, with wound after healing wound, scar after more wounds, scar tissue building up and retorn—sleeping on his back must’ve been excruciating.
His spine rolls down his back like something insectish, mottled exoskeleton. He’s so thin; Tony thinks of all the cans Riri gave him—he should’ve refused them. He should’ve refused them and given them to Peter.
Tony thinks he tried a couple times to give up his food for Peter, but they’d just refused or threatened to starve him out completely. So he’d eaten, reluctant, spooning mouthfuls of tasteless mush into his mouth until he was well enough to keep working.
It usually takes at least five minutes to drag Peter out of one of these—a panic made by movement, but with Cassie Lang, it lasts only seconds, her whispering and whispering to him and until at last he turns back to face them, still holding iron-tight to the little girl like someone’s about to rip her from his arms. He presses his lips to her head, kisses once, and she rubs his arm like trying to reassure him that she’s still there. He mutters something to her, and she to him, and then he’s awake again, looking between them, eyes focused as ever.
Sarah and Tony share a short glance; that was quick.
“One more time, Peter,” says Sarah, and his eyes drift towards hers, silent. “Can you tell me what day it is? The month, maybe?” This time only with her eyes, she glances up towards the calendar, as though to say, There. It’s right there.
The kid’s eyes go to it. “September,” he says finally, after an aching silence.
Sarah nods, smiling, and Peter quickly looks away from her, shifting his grip on Cassie so that she can turn around and see. “Good, that’s good.” She lets them be for a bit, another few minutes, until Cassie’s sitting beside him with her zebra, Peter’s casted arm around her shoulders to keep her close. “Just one last question, Peter, and then we’re done, is that okay?”
Peter’s staring at his other arm. The bare one—thin and uncasted, pale and ruined with scars, the worst of them the circle around his wrist. There, the flesh has healed into a layered circle of a scar—one that goes all the way around his wrist like a cuff, pinkish brown flesh worn over and over by restraints, now healed completely over.
“Peter?”
“You fixed it,” he says quietly, and the kid’s turning his wrist over and over, obsessed, his wrist slack from the relaxants. “It—it’s not…”
He doesn’t finish his comment, and Tony’s too busy marveling at the fact that Peter’s speaking in full sentences to realize what he’s actually saying.
He’s surprised that it’s healed.
Peter’s surprised that his wounds are fully healed.
“I’m sorry,” says Tony, because he is, and Peter looks up at him. “Oh, Peter,” he says, and the kid hides his face, letting his hair drift sideways across him and then circling his arms around his knees, bending his broken knee up with that hitch of pain like he usually does—
—but this time Cassie’s there beside him and she says, “Bad leg, Peter, bad leg, be nice to the bad leg,” and Peter just lets it go down.
He listens to her. She cares for him just like he cares for her, and he listens to her.
“Last question, Peter,” Sarah says, and the kid doesn’t even look up at her. “Can you tell me why you’re here?”
This time it takes only a minute or two for him to answer—Peter strokes his hand over Cassie’s bald head, incredibly gentle. “I was gone,” the kid says, very quietly. “For a long time.” And then his face twists hard, into something horrible, something knowing. “Five months.”
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 — 4:00 PM
Yet again, Ross has to meet with Quentin Beck.
Everyone else has pleaded guilty—taken a proposed deal, limiting their sentences to life without the possibility of the death penalty. They know that if they go to trial, the possibility of being put down like dogs by the federal government is high, especially with the amount of dead bodies they’ve left behind: nearly a dozen of their crew members, a doctor, a well-loved vigilante, a police officer in the line of duty, several civilians including children… Six of the Stark Seven were smart enough to know when to surrender, including that idiot Charlie Keene, once he’d sobered up a little.
(Ross had met up with Keene after he’d gone through withdrawal, and the guy was a shell of his former self, refusing to look anyone in the eye. Sober, Charlie Keene was a cowardly little shit, wrapping his arms around himself and crying about the sister he killed during one of his manic highs. Julie, he’d sobbed, and then he’d started banging his head against the plexiglass between them. JULIE, JULIE, JULIE!
The prison guards had to strap him down and sedate him just to keep him from injuring himself—he was still missing one hand from injuries he got killing Scott Lang.
Ross doesn’t care about Keene or Keene’s cop sister or Keene’s missing hand—all he cares about is that Keene is pleading guilty. And he is.)
Everyone is pleading guilty. Everyone. Everyone but Quentin Beck.
Quentin fucking Beck. Ross loves the guy, truly, but he’s such a goddamn pain in the ass. He’s still refusing to plead.
So Secretary Ross has one of his soldiers visit him in the prison and set up a video conference with the guy. He’s still set up in a prison hospital after some guy beat him half to death in custody—apparently, they found him in a pool of his own blood, so many ribs broken that his ribcage came apart, all of his teeth torn violently from his gums. Two fingers missing. One hand crushed. One shoulder dislocated, the other shattered, his mouth filled with bloody foam. His face so messed up that his eyes were swollen shut from the bruising.
The video is fuzzy, but there he is—in all his glory, one arm casted up and missing two fingers, his chest taut with bandages. His mouth is a fucking mess, his lips and the surrounding area covered in small scars—as though scraped by something metal.
Ross can take a fucking hint who did it—God, he should’ve put down that Winter Soldier when he had the chance. Should make one of his own, to be honest. Now, that’s a weapon.
“Quentin,” he says, as soon as the man comes in the screen, taking these wheezing breaths. Those ribs must still be cracked. He had to pay for a metal ribcage for this idiot. “How’s it going?”
“How’s it going?” gargles Quentin, his brown eyes flashing. “How’s it going?” The man has dentures now—they had to wait for the swelling to calm down, but now he’s got these fake-white teeth, perfectly lined up, that shine every time he speaks. his gums are still scabbed over from what happened. “How’s it going is you need to get me the fuck out of here—“
“I’m working on it,” spits Ross.
“Work harder!” the man says, gesturing with his messed-up hand. “I wanna get the fuck out of here—“
“You didn’t get bail,” Ross reminds him, “so I don’t know how you’re expecting me to crack you out of prison before the arraignment—“
“Figure it out!”
“I could if you hadn’t raped that kid in front of a little human girl—“
“I didn’t rape him!” Quentin glances very quickly out of frame, and then he returns to camera, bares his fake-white teeth, and hisses, “I didn’t. Rape him. He fucking wanted it—you didn’t see him, he was fucking pining for it, we made deals, I gave him shit—“
“I hate to break it to you, Q, but fucking a kid locked in a cell is rape, man—“
“Oh, fuck you, Ross, like you haven’t done worse—“
“Sure,” he snaps, “but I didn’t get fucking caught!”
“Pay someone off,” he says, “pay the judge, the jury, whoever—“
“Quentin, this isn’t some fucking state case that you can bury under the rug! This is a federal case held in federal court! The news is all over this, I can't be sneaking money around or I’m gonna go down, too!”
Quentin huffs and lays back in his hospital bed. “Ross,” he snarls, “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. I knew it was a bad idea, and now I’m taking the fall for your crimes? And what the hell did I get?”
“Oh you got enough out of it,” Ross snaps. “You got paid, you got laid, you got your rocks off in front of a whole roomful of people—you had a good time and you know it. You’re here because you wanted to be. No one told you to rape Peter Parker—“
“I didn’t—“ he sighs. “Look, I thought the plan was we were gonna kill the kids, kill Stark, too, and get all the charges dropped—”
“Yeah, well, the plan’s changed.”
“I thought the Sandman was the best there is!”
“He is,” says Ross, sour, “but he’s going up against a goddamn Hulk and a Norse god—cut him some slack if he didn’t manage to best them.”
“Then hire someone else!”
Ross rolls his eyes. This guy. “At this point,” he says, “the case is already gonna go through. No matter who I send after Stark and the Parker kid, and Lang’s little girl—they’ve gotten all the evidence in, it’s all fucking computerized, and they’re gonna go through with it no matter how many witnesses we have left.” He stares down at his phone—a series of messages, and he hopes at least one of them is from Quentin’s new lawyer. “If we kill them off now—it’ll look bad enough that they might follow the fucking paper trail you left and find me. So no, we’re not sending anyone else after them.”
Quentin scowls at him. “So what’s the plan?”
“I’ve got a lawyer for you,” he says, rubbing his hand over his mustache. “You’re gonna do as he says, exactly as he says, and you’ll get off without the death penalty. That’s the fucking plan.”
“I’m not pleading guilty,” says the man for the umpteenth time, cutting his messed-up hand through the air, “I’m not doing it—”
“You don’t have a choice,” he spits. “You have to.”
“Thad, don’t fucking test me—”
“Look,” he says, “it’s not such a bad life, life imprisonment, they’re all getting it. Except for Riri WIlliams, that fucking cunt, she’s locked up in some maximum-security juvie, so I haven’t gotten to her—but the rest? I got them all moved to cushy places, minimum security—hotel living for the rest of their lives, and I've got guys on the inside that can get you anything you’d like—drugs, food, women, whatever.”
“I don't want women,” the man spits.
“Fine, boys, then,” he says, and Quentin just glowers at him. “Whatever you want. We’re friends , Quentin, I'm not gonna just throw you to the dogs.”
“Throwing me in prison is throwing me to the fucking dogs, Thad!” he shouts, and his voice caves into this thready wheeze—must be his broken ribs. “I already lost two fingers and all my fucking teeth—my ribs have gone to shit, too—and you want me to give up my fucking freedom, too? Fuck you, man!”
Ross remembers, strangely, that Charlie Keene lost a hand when the Avengers arrived—one of Project Manticore’s weapons went off—and now, honestly, they match.
“I’m not pleading guilty, man, for the last goddamn time…”
“Fine,” Ross spits. “I got you a lawyer, so just calm down, alright? He should be coming around in the next couple days—he’ll brief you on the hearing, got it? Tell him what you want, and he’ll figure it out.”
Through the screen, Quentin bares those white teeth at him. “Who is it?”
Ross taps through a couple messages on his phone. “You know Oscorp? ”
“The law firm, of course” says Beck. “Oscorp LLP. What, you got me one of those?”
Ross nods. “The head lawyer there, the best there is—Norman Osborn.”
“The Green Goblin,” Beck says, a tone of slight awe in his voice, his words still overshadowed by blanket rage, “you got me the Green fucking Goblin?”
Everyone called Norman Osborn the Green Goblin—it wasn’t the most pleasant of court nicknames, but Osborn wasn’t a pleasant man. Green for his telltale green suits, Goblin for his attitude, which usually consisted of tearing the other side apart.
“He’s the best there is,” Ross assures him. “He’ll get you off— as long as you listen, Beck, so don’t fuck this up. I’m serious.”
Beck scowls at him. “Fine, whatever, but I want a prosthetic for my fingers,” he spits. “Something that moves, not that rubber shit. Something—something like the Winter Soldier has.”
Ross scoffs. “I’m not Stark, I can’t just whip up prosthetics out of my ass—”
“ I don’t want Stark’s fucking tech!” he snarls, and his white teeth almost fly out of his mouth. ‘I want—a good—prosthetic, Thad. You fucking owe me.”
“Fine,” he says. “Just listen to Osborn—he’ll help you, make sure you don’t get nailed down for this—and I’m paying him a fuckton of money for this, so don’t fuck this up, Q.”
“Fine,” the other man spits. “He better be fucking good.”
“The best,” says Ross.