four-minute warning
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 — 3:24 PM
Matt Murdock’s office is on the fifty-third floor of Avengers Tower. Murdock and his partner Foggy Nelson have taken up space in what used to be a business litigation space and is now reserved solely for Peter’s legal team. It’s a messy office, full of Braille-stamped papers and piles of files.
When Tony enters the office, dark-haired Murdock is pacing back and forth in a wrinkled suit as Foggy Nelson types away at the computer. “Tony,” says Matt Murdock, mild surprise coming over his face. “Is something wrong?”
How the hell does Murdock even know it’s him?
Tony shakes off his confusion. “I need you to do me a favor,” he says. Murdock stops his pacing then, tilting slightly, and tips his head.
Tony does his best to explain the situation: the hearing, Peter’s possible response, and all Murdock does is sigh and press his hand against the wall. “You didn’t tell him,” he echoes. “Stark, the hearing’s in, what, twenty-two hours now?”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Tony says. “I just—I can’t do it, I really can’t.”
He feels like he’s begging for his life; he feels like he’s got one hand pressed to a television screen; he reaches his hand into his pocket like he used to—for the sleep supplement, for those familiar white round pills—and finds his pocket empty.
Right. No more supplements.
“I’ve never even met the kid,” Murdock says. The man looks weary—bags lining his eyes. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to…”
“It’ll be fine,” Tony says quickly, because he needs it to be.
Strangely enough, for all of the meetings Murdock has had with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts about the Stark Seven case, he has never actually met Peter before. The whole case practically revolves around this kid, and Murdock’s only ever seen him in pictures.
But Murdock is a kind man, so he agrees, shirking on his suit jacket as he does. He follows Tony into the elevator, blond-haired Nelson following behind, and once inside, Tony adds, “There’s some things you might want to…”
Know? Beware? Avoid?
“…keep in mind,” Tony finishes, and the lawyer nods. “He’s not exactly…”
“I know,” the man says gently, hands in his pockets. “I… I know.”
Tony nods. “Still, uh, no sudden movements,” Tony says as they walk to the kids room. “Uh, don’t touch him or get too close—don’t mention Cassie or any of the captors by name. Don’t imply that he’s being forced to do something, don’t, uh…” He blinks. “Maybe don’t move your hands a whole lot.”
Murdock nods; he seems a bit nervous, his brow pinched, his jaw clenched. “Makes sense.”
Tony nods. “And sometimes he'll, he’ll kind of echo things that you say, but it doesn’t always mean anything. Just his way of processing… Uh….” He’s about to warn the lawyer about the sight of him, remembers Murdock is blind, and then shuts up. “Try to talk softer, maybe. Don’t say his last name…” He hadn’t realized there was so much to warn people about. “Just… he scares easy, and he doesn’t always respond when people talk, so don’t expect a lot from him. If it gets bad, we’ll just pull back, okay?”
The elevator pings open then, and FRIDAY announces:
Murdock nods again.
“He doesn’t do well…with new people, especially men, so… If this doesn’t work…” Tony swallows. “Just, slow as you can, you understand me? Follow my lead.”
“I’ve got it, Tony,” Murdock says.
They’ve reached the kids’ Medbay room now, and he knocks three times to alert Peter. Tony enters the room first, and the teenager freezes up like he always does, his whole body taut, fingers clenching in whatever he’s holding—a half-made Lego set, looks like. Spaceship.
And then he spots Murdock.
Peter stops breathing, chest halted, eyes trained on the newcomer. “Peter,” Tony says, “this is Matt Murdock. He’s our lawyer—for the case, remember?”
They’ve spoken about the case a couple times before with Peter, mostly in passing, just trying to get him used to the idea, but the idea never seems to stick with Peter. He has such trouble retaining information these days; another common side effect of trauma, Sarah told them both. The mind retains what it needs to survive—conversations weren’t part of his skill set when he was in there.
Peter presses his mouth closed, scanning the man. He’s still rigid, so tense that Tony can see it in his face. He really doesn’t like new people. The kid seems almost frozen as he stares—wholly hypnotized by the man, like he’s waiting for the man to come up to him and grab him by the wrist and thrash him.
He’s frightened.
The kid’s frightened.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“He’s just here to talk about the case,” Tony says, dropping his voice a little gentler. He sits at his usual spot beside Peter’s bed, and the kid draws away from him as if on instinct, still grasping the Lego set. “Is that okay?”
More quiet. Peter glances over at Cassie; only seconds ago, the little girl was playing on the floor with her mother, and now she’s staring wide-eyed at the man, her small hands grasping tight at her mother’s arm.
Right. Neither of them are big on visitors.
Tony swallows. “You remember what we talked about, don’t you? How they arrested the… the bad guys…” He thinks of their names then, names he’s heard Peter howl for mercy. Mason and Daria, Glenn and Renee, Charlie and Frank and Ava and all the others, names and names and names… Most of them dead now.
(He’s heard little Cassie talk about Ava sometimes. He remembers her from the beginning. A bone-thin woman with crazed hair, always twitchy and glancing around. An addict like the rest of them with a soft spot for Peter—but still, she kept them there. Still, she played along with Charlie’s plan. To Tony—she was as evil as the rest of them.)
Peter stares at Matt Murdock for an extraordinarily long time; there, the reflection of the kid’s scarred face in the lawyer’s dark glasses. Pete’s hands go tight on the Lego set—a piece splits off as his fingers tighten, falling onto the bedspread. “Pete? Is that alright if he talks to you for a while? About…”
Peter’s uneasy gaze lands on Tony. “About before,” he says, eerily quiet, a wisp of phrase.
“Yes,” Tony, glad he’s grasping onto something. “That’s right, kiddo.”
“I’m Matt Murdock,” says the man, and he doesn’t stick his hand out to shake—instead clasping his hands together in his lap as though to disarm himself before Peter. “You can call me Matt, if you’d like.”
Peter jerks his head—a quick, anxious nod—but he doesn’t respond, not a sound.
God, Tony hates that he does this now—agreeing to things without a second to think, like a knee-jerk reaction. He remembers Peter doing the same for Keene after the first few weeks—repeating whatever the man told him to repeat, begging whenever the man told him to beg, screaming if the man told him to scream, shutting up as soon as the man looked at him.
Charlie Keene taught Peter that he was never in control. How the hell is Tony supposed to teach him otherwise?
Tony clears his throat; his chest aches a bit where the arc reactor has been placed, and he rubs at it with his knuckles in an attempt to relieve it. “He’s your lawyer, Pete. That’s all.”
Murdock talks for a while then, taking care to speak slowly and deliberately so that Peter can follow, but the kid doesn’t say a word the whole time. “...but you won’t have to say much,” says Murdock. “Your name, yes or no, that kind of thing. Make sense?”
The kid’s eyes haven’t left the lawyer since he started talking; he nods automatically, blinking slow.
“...Tony and I have talked about dropping the charges, but, well, once you do, you can’t re-press those charges, and we want these guys in prison for a long time, especially…” The lawyer trails off; Tony knows he’s about to say that fateful name— Beck— but thankfully he stops himself. “Nevermind. There’s a couple other things we need to go over—you will need to go to the stand, but they’ve allowed us some protocols for mental illness in the courtroom—extra breaks, uh, comfort items, things of that nature, and if that…”
He goes on, and Peter just blinks dully at the man, still white-knuckling the Lego set. Sometimes, Tony forgets that the only people who spoke to Peter in that bunker—for a period of nearly five months—were a seven-year-old girl and a pack of violence-inclined drug addicts. Maybe he’s forgotten how to do this, how to hold a conversation. Maybe that’s just something else that Charlie Keene took from him.
Murdock continues to talk, and Peter keeps staring, this horribly slack stare.
“I know this is difficult,” the man continues, “but Cassie won’t have to go, alright? Just you.”
Tony sits up. That’s one of the rules he told Murdock before he entered—don’t mention Cassie. Damn it, Murdock.
A vein in Peter’s forehead pulses; he’s thinking, he must be, because his eyes drift to some hollow spot in the wall and stay there as though lost in some memory.
“Now,” says Murdock, “we’re just gonna go over what you’re going to say on the stand, okay?”
He thinks Peter's stopped listening. He seems absent—in one of those weird, fugue spaces; Tony can tell just from the way the kid’s moving , swaying a little back and forth. “Okay,” Peter says, in this weird airy voice, and Tony recognizes it, the echolalia again.
Peter’s not agreeing with Murdock. He’s repeating what he’s said.
Tony realizes too late what’s happening. “Matt…” he warns, with a quick glance towards the lawyer.
Peter leans forward then to where Matt Murdock is sitting and the man looks at Peter very strangely. Peter shifts towards him with an outstretched hand, his fingers trembling, and he moves his hand quicker than either of them expected, stroking it up Murdock’s leg, and the lawyer stands up fast, his chair scraping backwards over the tile, tripping over himself in his attempt to back up. “Sorry,” he says, in this strange voice. “Jesus, Peter, I'm so sorry—I didn't mean to— God .”
The horrible thing about it is that before this, Tony never even saw the kid hold hands with anyone, not even that girl MJ that he liked. He's not sure Peter ever had.
(The thought comes quick, like a punch in the gut—did Peter lose his virginity in there? Is this the only way he’s ever had sex? Was locked away with some monster of a person? Trapped in a tiny concrete room, beaten bloody, in front of a little girl?)
And now he’s groping people in front of Tony like it’s nothing , like it’s normal, like it’s a fucking everyday occurrence.
“I’ll make it good,” Peter murmurs, in this strange fucking voice. His eyes flick dully to Tony, and the recognition there has faded. To Peter, now, there are just two men in the room—dangers. Threats. People he had to submit to. “I’m really good…” He squeezes one hand into a fist; the other, he draws out towards Murdock, who’s still backing away from him.
How could anyone have done this to him? How could anyone have looked at this kid, this beautiful boy—bloodied and broken, haunted and a beaten mess, frightened out of his mind—and thought of him like that? How could someone have seen any person like this—and thought of them as some kind of sexual being?
Tony supposes that’s how it is—Beck didn’t see Peter as a person. Just as something he paid for.
“Peter,” Tony says, with certain horror. “ Peter. ”
The kid’s truly not listening. He’s just looking at Murdock, whose expression is growing more ill by the second, standing far from the door. “Out, Murdock,” Tony says, and the man quickly backs out of the room without a word of protest. This seems to rattle Peter, as he jerks his head around like he’s looking for someone.
“Pete, look at the door.” Tony doesn’t know how he knows this but he does—when the door is open, Peter was more apt to try to please someone. It must’ve been how it was in the bunker—Beck visiting him with the door cracked open. “It’s closed, buddy. The door’s closed.”
The kid’s not saying anything, like he didn’t just try to grope his lawyer, and he glances down at his chest and it’s like he’s not even seeing.
“Peter,” he tries again, and that time Peter looks at him, some kind of muted panic in him, like he’s forcing his body still. Like he has no choice. “Please, please, just look at the door for me. You’re not there anymore, buddy, you’re here.” Tony taps the bed for emphasis, and that only makes Peter stiffen like a board—as though expecting Tony to grasp him by the ankle and squeeze.
Tony pulls back, drawing his hand back into his lap.
This is just how Peter acts now—all too often. It’s how he acts when the nurse bathes him, or when they offer him gifts, or when the food doesn’t come the way it’s supposed to—it’s all the same, the way he’s acting now—Peter Parker gone away, the person who survived Charlie Keene left behind.
God, what a mistake Tony has made.
Bringing someone new into Peter’s space? A man? Having him say things like that? All because Tony was too cowardly to do it himself.
Tony looks at the wall, at a photo Pepper taped up—it’s a good one of, of Peter smiling with his arms strung around his best friends. There's another one beside it, scotch-taped to the wall: of him and Peter holding the kid’s official Stark internship award, Peter grinning and holding up two fingers behind Tony’s head, Tony himself returning the favor. Tony's arm around the kid's shoulders. Peter smiling wide.
He hasn’t seen Peter smile like that in almost six months.
Charlie Keene took that away, along with everything else. Peter's joy, his memory, his sense of humor. A third of his weight, the tip of his little finger. His ability to walk. His phone addiction, his love of eating, his want to see his friends. His trust in people. His nonstop talking. His ability to recognize people. His fucking free will. His self-esteem. Any sliver of safety he’s ever known.
This isn’t the Peter he used to know, and Tony keeps forgetting. This isn’t a kid who will just smile and say, Thanks for telling me, Mr. Stark!
Keene broke him, Tony thinks. Turned Peter Parker into something animal, made him afraid of opening doors and regular meals and nearly anyone who comes too close.
Of course the kid wouldn’t listen to Murdock. He barely listened to anyone these days save Tony himself.
Way to go, Tony, he thinks.
Sarah was right. Tony is the only one who Peter will listen to. He can’t pass this job off to Matt Murdock or Sarah Wilson or anyone else. He has to be the one to tell him.
He has to tell Peter.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 — 3:50 PM
Tony spends a few moments in the bathroom gathering himself, another few moments hoping Peter has calmed, and then he turns to Peter’s room with a few careful knocks.
He puts down a chair beside Peter and he says, “Hey, Pete?”
The kid is laying on his side on the bed beneath the covers, not doing much. He does this far too much—staring off into nothing, like he’s absent from his body. It takes a couple more calls of Peter’s name for him to look at Tony, slow-blinking, still burrowed in the blankets. He’s dressed in a sweatshirt—a bright green one of Ned’s, he thinks—zipped all the way up, as well as a pair of dark flannel pants.
“I’ve got to talk to you about something,” he prods, and the kid peeks up from his nest of blankets.
Tony takes a shaky breath, and he presses his hand to his forehead. And then he explains slowly and carefully what will happen tomorrow: the people who will be there, the ones who will speak and the ones who won’t. The traveling, the leaving Cassie behind. All of it. Seeing Charlie and Quentin Beck and all of the rest.
Peter stares at him when he’s done.
“Does that make sense?” Tony asks, watching the kid’s face.
The kid’s gaze drifts to the closed door, then to the left a bit—to the whiteboard and its times. His nurse has already written down his schedule for tomorrow. Nurse check-in — 7:30. Breakfast — 8:00 — eggs, toast, fruit. 9:00 — nutritionist visit. On and on through to bedtime. Conveniently, though, it’s missing the hearing at two o’clock.
The kid squints a couple times at it, and tucks his head tiredly into the blankets with a sigh. there’s only a bit of him visible then—his scraggly hair amongst the blankets, his scarred hands clasping the blanket around himself. Then he shifts, baring his face, and Tony sees it: the burn from that very first day, the one that seared his ear into a mess of flesh and cartilage, that mars the side of his cheek.
(Tony remembers it. The hand pinning Peter’s head against the chair’s headrest. The blowtorch hissing loud. The sweat pouring down Peter’s face. The terror frozen there.)
The kid’s face draws grim, and he looks at Tony for a long time. Peter presses his cracked lips together; his nasogastric tube pulls over his cheek. “People know?” he says at last, voice hoarse.
Oh.
Tony hadn’t thought about that. The social nature of it—that Peter’s experience had become something of public spectacle. That Peter wouldn’t want anyone to know. Why hadn’t he thought about that? Tony’s whole life has been a spectacle—the day he was born, he was photographed for the press.
“Well,” Tony says, and he can’t find any way to finish. “They don’t know it was you—you’re still a minor, so the courts are supposed to keep it quiet…”
But Peter… He lived his life in relative anonymity. Even as Spider-man, his identity was masked. He’d grown up a normal kid among normal people. He’d never had any part of his life so visible to the press.
Peter’s neck bobs, a swallow. “Do you know?” he asks, voice dry.
Tony opens his mouth and then closes it. “Peter,” he says, and his voice cracks, “we had to—May was still knocked out, you have to understand, so we were your—your guardians, temporary ones, and anything medical, they did have to tell us…” A prickle of numbness traveling down his left arm, and he clasps at his elbows.
Peter nods again, sharply, but his eyes have taken on an odd glaze.
“Peter,” Tony tries. “Listen to me—they don’t know it’s you. The case is federal—so they won’t even say your name.”
Peter tightens the blanket around himself and doesn’t respond.
Tony tries a couple more times to get him to speak, but he keeps quiet, looking off to the wall like he’s remembering something. That hollow look in his eyes, that eerie quiet. Tony hates it.
At least he’s not screaming or crying or tripping down a set of stairs. But still… Something about this is worse. The quiet. Like he was expecting this to happen.
Tony supposes that Peter’s been waiting for weeks now for the other shoe to drop. And now it finally has. “It won’t be long,” Tony assures him. “Just a couple hours—and then we can come right back here, alright?”
The kid stiffens, and he nods, and Tony leaves it as is.
There is a reaction out of him, though—a minute one. Peter spends the rest of the day extraordinarily tense, refusing to touch his Legos, stopping Cassie from talking or interacting with anyone, either. They spend nearly the entire day like that, hiding away from the world, holding each other, not speaking to anyone. Not even Tony.
Peter won’t let them to the other side of the room with the little girl, let alone out into the hallway. Peter used to allow Cassie to leave the room—temporarily, for the bathroom or a trip to the doctor. But now, they wouldn’t dare try to remove the girl at all. Not with Peter like this.
That must’ve been what they were like in there. too.
Tony thinks about it then, and he can’t help it. Someone pulling the little girl away from Peter’s arms. Cassie screaming and kicking, Peter begging them not to. Peter grabbing her and shoving her beneath the bed. Peter curling himself around the little kid—his body the girl’s shield.
Tony and Sarah bring up the hearing a couple more times before the day is over, and mostly Peter just nods and says nothing.
When Sarah talks to him about it, she says, “I think part of him understands,” she says. “But it’s a lot. I’m not sure what he knows.”
When dinner comes, Peter stares hollowly at it, not diving at the food like he usually does. Cassie pushes at his arm a couple times until finally the kid blinks and starts to eat.
God, when this is over, Tony needs to get them out of this room. This can’t be healthy, right? Letting them live in here like some ghost version of the bunker, with their Happy Meals and cans of breakfast and having breakdowns every time the clock hits seven?
Peter can’t go home, not really—but maybe he can come back to the penthouse. Live upstairs with him and Pepper, move May up there, too, once she’s well enough. Go back to his old room.
When he goes to sleep that night, he closes his eyes and tries to imagine it: Peter playing video games again, Peter quoting movies word for word, Peter sitting at a dinner table and binge-eating lasagna one forkful at a time. Peter in the lab. Peter in his Spider-suit. Peter’s beaming smile.
Can they ever go back to the way it was before?
Is it even possible?
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 — 7:25 AM
After a quick breakfast, Pepper walks up to the residential floor. She goes past several apartments: Bucky and Steve, Helen Cho, Sarah Wilson… Then at last, Harley Keener.
She knocks several times on the door, and after a few, a blond-haired boy pulls open the door. He looks a bit of a mess—hair unbrushed, dressed loosely in pajama pants and a T-shirt. He musses his hand through his hair, failing to fix it, gives her a tired smile, and says, “Hey, Ms. Potts. What’s up?”
(She thinks for a moment that this is something Peter would’ve said six months ago. She hates how much this kid reminds her of that.)
“I just wanted to remind you about the hearing,” she says. “Someone talked to you?”
The blonde boy nods vaguely. “Yeah—Mr, uh, Hogan. Said it was later today, gave me a bunch of stuff to fill out.” He gestures vaguely behind himself, and Pepper can see a stack of papers on the table somewhere behind him.
“You don’t have to go,” Pepper adds. “But if you do, we’ll get someone to take you.”
Harley nods. “I wanna go,” he says. “I, uh… I wanna know what happened.”
Pepper closes her mouth. She grimaces at the table, and then she looks back up at him. “You might not want to,” she says. “The boy your father saved..”
“Peter?”
Pepper blinks at him. “You know his name?”
He shrugs. “It’s on his door.”
Pepper forgot about that. The name on the door. Tony wanted Peter to feel like the room belonged to him; doesn’t matter much, as the kid barely ever leaves it.
“You’ve been to his…” She’d never thought about it, but she supposes he does have access to the Medbay floor in case of emergency. It stands to reason that he’d passed Peter’s room.
Harley winces, scratches at the back of his neck. “Yeah. Couple weeks back. He looks pretty bad.”
“Do you know…” Pepper smooths the back of her hair. “…what happened?”
Another shrug from the teenager. “I pieced it together. Legal guys explained some of it. Happy said some other stuff, and the rest I got off the Internet. Someone took him, right? That Charlie guy?”
Pepper nods.
Harley grimaces again. “They were beating him pretty bad, so they needed a doctor to fix him up so they didn’t accidentally kill him. Right?”
“That’s right,” she says, careful. She’s seen the photos, and she knows some of it, too. The boy looks much like his father—blondish hair and a pleasant smile.
“It’s because of my dad he’s still alive,” Harley says, and this time he looks up at her as though searching for confirmation. “Right?”
“Seems like,” says Pepper, gentle.
Harley nods.
They stand in silence for a moment: Harley in the doorway and Pepper before him, and at last she says, “Happy will have a car for you, we’ll find someone to—”
“I can drive,” he says.
Pepper blinks at him. Another thing she forgets—that Harley and Peter are the same age, or close to it—and Peter never got his license. Barely finished driver’s ed.
Would Peter ever drive again, like this? Could he, with that leg? She’s never even thought about it.
She clears her throat. “Of course. Well, if you’d like to take yourself, ask Happy about the car. He’ll clear up everything for you.”
The kid looks terribly awkward for a moment, and then he nods. “Cool. Great. Thanks.” Another hesitant nod, and Harley Keener shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t crash it,” she jokes.
The kid lets out a dry laugh. “Sure thing,” he says.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 — 12:25 PM
Then it’s morning, Sunday morning, and the hearing is here.
The hearing is at two o’clock.
Dr. Cho and Pepper are in the conference room, arguing about something or another, Murdock and Nelson are already on their way to the courthouse, and Sarah and Tony are in the kids' room.
They got Peter up at seven-thirty, and they’ve been trying to get him out of the building since nine. They knew how long it would take to get him to leave—and it's taking even longer.
And although Peter is confused and frightened and as skittish as a stray cat—he knows somehow, that the Tower is a safe place—and that he doesn’t want to leave it. “Peter?” whimpers Cassie, and the girl sounds like she’s being flayed.
And Peter just backs them both up against the wall, Cassie hiding behind his leg—God, Steve remembers that they were just like that in the bunker. It was like nothing had changed—Peter using his frail body to protect her. And at some point the kid just stops arguing with them—he just stands there with Cassie behind him, trembling horrifically with the strength of his fear.
Looking at everyone like they’re a threat. Like they’re holding a gun to his head.
“You said—” Peter manages, and he glances quickly between Tony and Steve and he’s just getting worse by the second, it’s like Tony’s watching the kid’s mind deteriorate in front of his eyes, his motions getting jerkier, something like betrayal obvious in his face, “You said—I didn’t—that they wouldn’t—”
“Buddy, we talked about this,” Tony says, holding his hand up, trying to calm him, and sadness pulls at him. “It’s just for a couple hours, and then you can come right back.”
There’s too many people in this room. Steve Rogers and the nurse, Sarah Wilson and Tony, and it’s so obvious that Peter’s feeling cornered but they have to leave. Peter twists his head violently towards the door. “Oh, god.” he whispers, “oh, god… Please—please, no—”
“Buddy,” he says, taking a careful step towards the kid, and Peter draws in breath fast, jerking hard and into Cassie, shoving her backwards. “You’re not going back.”
Peter is shaking his head. They’re all the way against the wall now, and Cassie is hyperventilating, drawing in childlike gaspy breaths of air. “I ran—when you—when you run—“
Tony can see where this is going, that mantra of his, and he says, carefully, “No one’s gonna punish you, Pete. They’re not gonna touch you. They’re still locked up.”
“He’s—he’s—he’s coming—“
“He’s not coming here,” he says. “He will never, ever step foot in this building, Peter. You hear me? It’s a court hearing. A court hearing. You remember those, right? Judge Judy. They’re not gonna touch you. No one’s gonna touch you.”
“They’re gonna—he always, always, always—“ He cuts himself off, forcing his hand over his mouth, tears coming messy and quiet over his face.
Tony says, “Peter, Pete, buddy look at me.” Peter doesn’t even manage that. “They’re not gonna touch you. We’re gonna be there. We’re all gonna be there to protect you. Steve—-and, and Rhodey and Falcon, too—remember Falcon?”
“I don’t want to—“ he shouts, and he cuts himself off.
“Peter,” says Tony carefully, “it’s just for a couple hours.”
The kid bares his teeth at him, and then at the other people in the room—the only bit of aggression he has, the only way of making himself frightening—is to look unhinged, like a cornered animal—and Peter’s eyes are inhumanely wide, his pupils dark and huge, blinking fast, and he keeps backing up against the wall without anywhere to go. Tony can tell he’s putting a shit-ton of weight on that knee—he can tell in the way Peter’s entire body tightens every time he moves, a well-hidden sign of pain.
His eyes dart fast to the side—the nurse’s cart, where there’s a couple syringes, some tubing, medical tape, a box of rubber gloves.
The nurse’s eyes go wide. “Don’t—”
He dives for it, grabbing on for a syringe just as the nurse grabs for the cart, and the woman jumps back as soon as Peter gets a handle on it.
Peter moves like he’s done it before, reverse-gripping the syringe in his fist, elbow out, the needle pointed toward the rest of the room; Peter keeps regripping it and regripping it, blinking like he’s trying to wake himself up, chest heaving. “I’m not leaving without her,” Peter says, his voice going shrill, “ I’m not leaving without her—“
“She’s not going with,” Tony says, “but she’ll be safe here, buddy, I promise, no one’s getting her—just put it down, put it down, Peter—“
Peter jerks his arm, jabbing the syringe towards Tony, who jumps back. “Whoa, buddy, let’s just—let’s just calm down, alright?”
Peter’s breathing hard through his gritted teeth, the trail of pale tubing stretching from his nose all the way taped across his bony cheek. The tape pulls, remarkably staying in place. He’s whispering something to himself, chest heaving, eyes shining bright in the fluorescence overhead, words quick and incoherent, fast mumbling.
This is not going well. This is really, really not going well.
“Peter,” says Sarah carefully, taking a tentative step forward. “I can see that you’re afraid right now. We’ve upset you. Is that right?”
His eyes flick to her and linger there, blinking again, squeezing shut and opening them as though clearing them of some fog.
“We scared you,” Sarah tries again; she’s doing it properly, better than Tony was, keeping her hands open and spread, raising them to show she’s not a threat.
More blinking, and a slight shuffle to move Cassie behind him. “Yeah,” Peter manages, the word raspy, the sleeve of his old sweatshirt draping over his knuckles; he regrips his sweaty fingers around the needle, and his breath comes out of him high and fast.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“You said—you said—“ Peter swallows, and he’s trembling again. “I won’t leave her.”
“Okay,” she says calmly, “that’s completely understandable. You want to make sure she’s safe?”
Peter glances to Tony, and then back at Sarah, his face betraying his confusion. “Yeah,” he says, after a few seconds more of pause.
“We do, too,” she says. “That syringe in your hand?” She doesn’t point, she simply nods her head vaguely in Peter’s direction, hands still up. “It’s got about three milliliters of enhanced sedative made specifically for you. If you accidentally prick Cassie, or one of us—someone could get hurt, Peter. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“I won’t hurt her,” he hisses, through gritted teeth, but the hand holding the syringe trembles.
“I know you won’t,” Sarah says gently, taking a step towards him. “I know. You want to protect her, don’t you?”
“Have to,” Peter manages, and the kid’s hands are still shaking.
Behind Tony somewhere, Maggie Paxton has her hand over her mouth.
“Give it to me, Peter,” says Tony, stepping towards the kid. “Please, just—just give it to me.”
(He wonders if this is how it went in the bunker. He knows Peter tried four times to escape. Is this how it was? Did they wrench the weapon from his trembling hands? Did Cassie stand crying behind his guarding arm? Did Peter cry out for someone to help him? For Tony to help him?)
Cassie’s dark head pokes out from behind him, her face flush from crying—and Peter shoves her back.
“It’s only a couple hours,” Tony reminds him, taking another tentative step, reaching his arm out. “No one will touch you. I promise—no one will touch you, Peter.”
"Just give it to us," says Sarah, moving forward, too. "Please, Peter. We don't want anyone to get hurt."
Peter looks at him then, eyes ashine with violent upset, and a moment flashes in Tony’s head—
— the kid looks directly into the camera, arms straining against the cuffs, and he shouts, “Don’t worry, Mr. Stark!” Even as his body shivers in anticipation, even as the glow of the blowtorch goes white-hot against his face, he shouts, “I’ll be fine—everything’s gonna be okay—I’ll get out of here, you know I can do it!” His sweatshirt is still whole, mostly-zipped up over his still-white T-shirt, and his unbroken knees strain against his jeans. “I’ll get everyone out of here, I can do it, don’t worry, you don’t have to—” A man grasps Peter by his head, clasping over his smooth-gelled hair and pinning his head against one side of the chair, and the kid cries out—and then keeps talking anyway, because it’s Peter and he doesn’t know when to shut up, because he’s stupid, brave, wonderful Peter— “I’ve got it, don’t worry about me, I’m okay, don’t worry—” The man looks at him into the camera, grins widely, and forces the blowtorch to Peter’s head, and the kid finally stops talking—gritting his teeth, until finally his mouth opens in a horrible scream—
—and when Tony comes back to himself, Peter has lowered his arm and is surrendering his weapon to Sarah, holding Cassie in his trembling arms and whispering to her hastily, something that Tony can barely catch—something about rules, something about being safe, something else, too.
The little girl’s mother moves forward to grab her daughter, and the little girl peels away—immediately breaking away and springing back into Peter’s arms, throwing herself to him and hugging him tight. And they’re whispering again to each other like they did in those first couple days, so quietly that only they themselves can hear, and Peter kisses the little girl’s head and then stands up as she cries—she grasps one last time at his sweatshirt but lets him go.
Like she knows it’s pointless to fight.
Peter takes a gasping breath, holding it in his chest like someone’s about to shoot him in the head, looks back once at Cassie, and limps towards the door.