HALF RETURN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 — 9:03 AM
Tony’s avoided pretty much everyone since he got back.
Last night after he got back, Pepper took one look at him and stormed into the elevator. He didn’t dare try to sleep up in the penthouse, and he didn’t go to Peter’s room to sleep on the cot either. The guilt festered in him all night, septic and weeping pus—like Peter will know what he did, where he went, who he talked to. Tony stayed awake half the night thinking about Peter, and ended up sleeping in one of the empty residential rooms a couple doors down from the Paxtons’.
He showers in the morning. Tony’s nose still hurts, but it isn’t too bad. When he inspects his face in the mirror, some bruising has gathered in the corner of his left eye, but all the swelling’s gone down and the bridge of his nose is looking straighter. He gets dressed—dark jeans and an old MIT sweater—and after a quick breakfast, finds himself in Dr. Cho’s office.
It’s a large room at the end of the Medbay hallway, with her name on the door and an array of dark-colored bookshelves inside filled with medical textbooks. New ones, now that he’s taken a glance at them. Clinical Child Psychiatry. Effective Treatments for PTSD. Fundamentals of Addiction. Her desk is an L-shaped panel of glass over a set of intersecting black metal supports. Atop the desk are a few empty coffee cups, some protein bar wrappers, a couple of books, and an open notebook. There’s a teal sweater draped over her chair, and a small purple book laying at the edge of her desk, propped open with a stapler. There’s no one in her office, so Tony lifts it slightly off the desk with one hand to get a peek at the title: Psychosis, Trauma, and Dissociation: Evolving Perspectives.
He can see she’s been taking notes, too—it’s half-filled with post-its and pen-written sentences. It’s open to a chapter on something called dissociation theory, and she’s underlined salient reminders of the traumatizing event and relatively short duration and fixed in traumatic memories and recurrently re-experiences these memories. She’s got a couple of post-it notes on this page, particularly at the bottom, and the closest note reads, Trauma-induced — Peter — avoidance of aversive stimuli, disengaging from non-protective actions. Disorientation from time/place/person. Treatment = in-patient intervention + meds, but anti-psychotic medication — increase feelings of alienation. Goals = re-introduce daily functions, re-activate non-protective action—
“Can I help you?” says a voice behind him.
Tony turns around to find Helen standing in the doorway. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she’s dressed in light jeans and a navy short-sleeve shirt. She looks more exasperated than she does irritated, but she still walks past him, picks up the purple book, and shoves it back onto her bookshelf.
“Sorry,” he says automatically. “I just, uh…”
“It’s fine,” she says tightly. “Nothing you don’t already know.” She adjusts her own chair, slumps into it, and then motions for him to sit, too—there are two cushioned chairs in front of her desk, and he settles into the rightmost one. She pushes aside a mess of paperwork to see him better. “Glad to have you back. I heard you went to visit some of the…”
“Yeah.”
Helen nods, and she pulls her notebook off of her desk into her lap. “They tell you anything useful?”
Her bluntness surprises Tony, but he supposes it makes sense. She’s a doctor—she’ll take any kind of treatment she can get her hands on, regardless of where it comes from. “Nothing good,” he says. “Just said to give him time.”
She nods again, her mouth pressed in a slim line, and sweeps her fingers under her eyes a couple times, fixing the dusting of mascara that’s strayed down too far. “That’s…yeah. All we can do at this point. His eating’s gotten better, which is a good sign, but he still hasn’t engaged with anyone much. Nurse Kaelyn said he was making eye contact with her—”
“He’s eating?” Tony echoes, his heart somersaulting in his chest. .
Her dark eyes shift to his, and she relaxes a little in her chair. “Oh. Yes. As of last night.” And before Tony can ask what changed, she adds, “Turns out if we give his food to Cassie first, if we let her…encourage him, he’ll eat on his own. All he needed was a little encouragement. We’re still supplementing with the tube, but for the most part he’s been keeping everything down.”
It makes sense. Peter hadn’t had a nasogastric tube in the bunker, not that Tony knew of, so of course Cassie would’ve found some other way to make sure he ate. A seven-year-old, making sure her caretaker ate, reassuring him through every bite, encouraging him to keep going. How was that a little girl’s job?
“Still not talking, though,” Helen continues. “His leg’s healing a lot better now that he’s gained some weight. He should be able to walk again by tomorrow, I think.”
She doesn’t mention the surgery again. Tony supposes he’s made himself clear on that front. He asks about May, too, and Helen goes on about traumatic brain injuries and rehabilitation and brain plasticity, all of which basically amounts to the kid’s aunt improving.
“And listen,” she says. “Sarah and I have been talking… We think it’d be a good idea for you to talk to someone.”
Talk to someone? Why do people keep bringing this up? He stiffens, now uncomfortable in this too-cushioned chair. Pepper’s mentioned it to him, and Happy has, too. But he’s not Peter, he’s not Cassie. Everything that happened to him in that lab was self-inflicted—all he had to do was watch. What is there to tell? It’s all there in the police reports, in his statements to the police. In the photos, in the videos, written all over Peter’s body. Nothing happened to Tony Stark. Everything— everything —happened to Peter.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she says, like she can see the tension wafting right off of him. “But we really do think this is necessary. With the way you’ve been acting, we think it’s best—”
“I’m fine,” Tony insists. “Helen, you know I’m fine. I’m weaned off those pills, I’ve got the pacemaker in and everything… I’m back. I’m fine.”
Helen’s brow draws in, and she blinks a couple times. “Tony,” she says. “You went to visit the people who tortured Peter—who tortured you —and had a conversation with them. I mean—I really wouldn’t call that fine.”
“I did that for Peter,” he says. “I didn’t want to go, but I had to do it—for Peter.”
“Right,” says Helen, folding her arms. “Well, before you see Peter again, I think it’d be a good choice. Sarah said she can’t see you, given it’d be a…conflict of interest, but Sam said he’d be willing to talk to you. Thirty minutes, that’s all I’m asking. Okay?”
He knows Helen long enough that he can recognize that tinge to her voice: this is non-negotiable.
“Fine,” he says. “Thirty minutes. That’s it.”
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 — 10:00 AM
He doesn’t go talk to Sam that day, though, or the next. Instead, he avoids Peter’s room altogether and spends his time with May instead, rambling to her about Pete and trying to cheer her up.
Friday is the custody hearing. Tony and Pepper dress up nicely and go together—even holding hands on the way in. Tony knows it’s a display of solidarity for the judge, but he doesn’t mind. He just clasps her hand as they walk in, trying to focus on the feeling of her warm hand in his so he doesn’t forget it. As soon as they’ve sat down, Pepper lets his hand go, and clasps her hands together above her belly.
The judge is an older man with a shock of very white hair and a very soft voice. Murdock’s there, too, with a custody lawyer and a series of papers signed by May, and Cho gives a prepared statement about the woman’s health. “...severe traumatic brain injury. Her recovery has improved since her son came home, but it’s still a slow process. She’s now able to talk and sit up, but she’s still suffering from some mobile impairment and exhaustion, which is pretty normal given the state she was in for the past few months. We’re looking at chronic headaches, motor problems, vertigo…”
The judge asks Dr. Cho an assortment of questions, which she easily answers, and the man eventually asks, “And you believe she’ll be able to return to her status as Peter’s guardian?”
“I do, Your Honor.”
The custody lawyer talks for a while, and then another doctor, a short man with long hair—May’s main doctor on staff—provides a thick file of her medical history, and presents it to the judge in a quiet, composed voice. Eventually, the judge starts talking again. “I don’t want this to be an issue for Peter,” the judge states. “It seems to me, in his current state… I don’t want to anything to affect his recovery, and you’ve done an excellent job of caring for him thus far. Ms. Parker seems to agree. So unless she decides to revoke your rights to Peter’s care, then I’m granting both you and your fiancé permanent partial guardianship over Peter.”
Although it’s a win, it doesn’t feel like much to celebrate—not with Peter the way that he is.
The drive back home is silent, and traffic is bad enough that it takes them almost thirty minutes to get back to the Tower. Tony spends most of pushing his knuckles against the glowing pacemaker in the center of his chest, trying to relieve the aching pain there. He presses harder and harder against the metal circle, but it doesn’t work, and the pain pulses in him—he can’t tell if it’s real or imagined.
But Pepper is sitting beside him, still dressed nicely in her maternity blouse, blazer, and skirt, and she reaches over to his side, pushes his hand away, and places her hand in the center of his chest, rubbing with her knuckles in slow, firm circles. She used to do this for him, months ago (an eternity ago) when the arc reactor was in his chest and the phantom pain from the surgery was ever-present.
(He knows this feeling. He dreamt of it. Begged for it. And here it is, her knuckles on his mutilated chest, and he feels forty again. Thirty-five. Eleven years old again, with Jarvis’ long-fingered hand steady on his back.)
“Better?” Pepper asks.
Tony nods wordlessly, and the relief spreads in him like a puddle of lukewarm water.
Helen comes to see him later, when he’s accidentally fallen asleep in a conference room. She asks him if he’s been taking his medication. Kind of. She asks him if he’s had any new symptoms. No. She asks him if he needs anything. No. Of course not.
She tells him to go talk to Sam.
He doesn’t want to.
But he does.
He spends the afternoon changing his clothes and changing them again, and eventually meets up with Sam in one of the residential rooms—with two couches and a coffee table between them, and a large window with a view of the whole city below them. Sam passes him a cup of decaf coffee and sits down in front of him.
The mug is a pastel green and hot to the touch. It’s got words printed on it, too, for some kind of veterans’ program in DC. He lets Sam talk for a while about confidentiality and then about trauma and and then about how this must be really, really hard. “Really, thanks for coming, Tony,” Sam says, as Tony’s sweaty hands grip his cup of coffee. “I know you’ve been really worried about all of this—about Peter, about how he’s improving, but a lot of people have been worried about you. About your improvement.”
“Yeah,” he says stiffly. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
There are more important people to stress about than a forty-eight year old man with chronic heart problems and a dwindling stimulant dependency. He’s been to therapy before—he used to do it weekly before everything happened. He liked it. He felt like it made him better, kinder, more awake.
“Well,” Sam says. “I understand that you’re…hesitant to talk about it. Helen and I just want to make sure you’re in the right mindset to be sound Peter—”
“I am,” he says, gripping the mug. “Sam, I’m fine. What happened—sure, it was shitty, but it’s over now. I’m fine.”
“Tony,” Sam says carefully, “Just because it’s over doesn’t mean you’re not still feeling the impact of it. I mean, for the first couple weeks after we broke you out, you were still pretty shaken up. I barely recognized you”
Tony thinks back to those first couple weeks and the memories are barely there. He remembers the Quinjet, and he remembers the New Hampshire hospital, but everything in between gets murky, like coils of cassette tape warped by water.
“You were jumpy,” Sam explains, “and confused, and barely talking to anyone… overall, pretty antisocial. We’d find you sitting in Peter’s hospital room, just staring at the kid and not saying anything for hours, man. Hours. You weren’t taking care of yourself, eating or showering… Kept talking to yourself… Like it or not, Tony, what happened to you shook you. Now, you’ve gotten a lot better, but you have to admit that it’s still bothering you, Tony.”
Bothering him. Yeah, it bothers him. Tony can at least admit that. The memories keep coming back like acid gurgling at the back of his throat, and each time he chokes them down they come right back up. The other day, he saw Happy raise his hand to his chin and tiredly scratch his beard and he froze right there in the hallway. All he could see then, was Charlie lifting his hand up, scratching his beard and dropping his hand to the back of Peter’s chair—the image grainy on his television, his fingers squeezing at the metal panel. Leaning down, whispering to Peter, and the kid dazedly blinking up at him.
“I mean,” Sam continues, sitting back, “you started a fistfight with Steve in the parking garage in front of Peter. You… You visited the guys who kidnapped Peter and you’re acting like it’s nothing. Pepper said you’re having sleep disturbances too? Nightmares? Sleepwalking?”
He didn’t know Pepper had told anyone about that.
“Listen, why don’t we talk about your trip upstate? That’s what we’re here for, anyway. You want to start there?”
”Yeah,” he says, “uh, sure. Just, I was worried about Peter. Thought they could…help.”
Sam nods, prompting him to go on, but Tony’s not sure what else he can say. Riri knows about what happened, better than Cho or Sarah, better than Tony, even. Haroun told him about a time when the kid went days without talking, and said that he got better—that’s more than the medical staff here could give him. After Beck got him pretty bad, the guy had said. That was…early August, maybe. Just a couple weeks before they broke him out, Tony thinks, and then he pictures it. Peter laying still on that cement bunker floor while that little girl poked at him to wake him up. Refusing to eat. Refusing to talk. Refusing to get up.
Sam clears his throat. “Is there a reason, maybe, that you picked those two to visit? Instead of Keene?”
His coffee is quickly losing its heat—steam trails up towards his face, and he sips at it, swallowing. “I knew her,” Tony explains. “Riri. She was… She gave me…supplies.” He stares down at his coffee. She’d brought him things like that, too. Coffee at first, then caffeine pills, then ingredients for his sleep supplement pills. His food. Canned beef stew. Canned tuna. Canned peas, canned corn, canned carrots. He never even bothered to heat it up. Just cranked it open and shoveled it in with a spoon. He felt like it was a waste of time—the microwave—precious minutes that he could’ve been using to work on the weapon. The vegetables weren’t bad cold, but the beans—red beans, pinto beans, refried beans—those were sometimes harder to keep down.
Sam’s looking at him.
“She was nice,” he adds, because she was. “She helped me…with the…project.”
She was the one thing he had in there. A glimmer of hope in that pit of a lab.
“Nice?” Sam says, and Tony can hear it in his voice—the concern tightening in the other man’s voice.
But she was nice. She helped him with the weapons, she talked to him, she brought him food… Riri wasn’t like the rest of them. She was young. She didn’t know what she was getting into. She didn’t understand how bad it was. “Yeah. I only saw her hurt Peter once or twice, and she’s, I mean. She’s the one ratting them all out, so I’d say she’s pretty nice.” He can feel the defensiveness creep in, and he tries to swallow it down.
“That’s understandable,” Sam says gently. “And how did it feel, talking to her?”
“I don’t know,” Tony says. “I’m glad she’s…safe. I spent a lot of time with her, I saw what they did to her… I’m just glad she’s okay.” Sam writes something down into a small blue notebook, and Tony can’t help but blurt out, “She’s just a kid. She’s—she’s fifteen, you know, they made her do it.”
“You’re saying she was being forced to participate?”
Tony falters, and he can feel again how hot the cup is in his hands, how warm his face is getting. “Well, no. Not exactly. But she’s just a kid—she didn’t know.”
“She’s a teenager,” Sam corrects. “Teenagers commit crimes, too, as I’m sure Peter could tell you. He’s probably stopped some of them himself.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Tony says, frustrated. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t like that. She was lied to, she… She’s not like them. I know her.”
“From the times she helped with the weapon?”
“Well—yeah.”
“Okay, and Haroun? Did you know him?”
The memory rushes at him: the dark-haired man is shaking the punch from his hand, but Peter’s face is already swelling from the contact. His arms pull against his restraints. “Wait,” he says, his eyes flying open, but Haroun picks up his hand, curls his hand into a fist again, and slams his hand into Peter’s jaw.
Peter coughs, a wrecked sound, and the side of his face reddens fast. His eyes open again wide, scouring the air for the next punch, and dark-haired Haroun winces, lifts his hand again, flexes his fingers, and clenches them into a fist—
“Tony?”
Haroun. Right. “Uh,” he says, blinking at the memory, and he presses his fingers a little too hard into his eyes. “No. Not really. I think Peter did, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Uh,” he tries. “He…” The sound rings in his ears, tinny and high—a scream. Peter’s scream. The sound scrapes and grates at his skull, clawing and clawing, Peter screeching, HAROUN! HELP ME! PLEASE! HELP ME! HELP—
The rest of them are standing idle. A man with his arms folded; a long-haired black woman averts her eyes; a shorter olive-skinned man sways heavy in combat boots, his eyes following Charlie as he paces. Like the rest, he’s high—his whites of his eyes an inflamed pink, his lips parted, his pupils thin pricks of black. Nodding and nodding and nodding as Charlie talks, licking his chapped lips.
Peter screams the man’s name again, just as the shadow of Charlie’s arm crosses over his face.
The man’s eyes flicker closed—a slowish blink—and then his bloodshot eyes shift down to the mutilated boy a few feet from him.
“…understand this must be difficult to talk about,” Sam is saying. He’s wearing jeans and a plain T-shirt. His blue-and-brown bomber jacket is beside him, slung on the other side of the couch. “But if you’re going to be around Peter regularly, you need to talk to someone about what’s going on.”
He shrugs.
“I can understand you’ve felt the weight of Peter's well-being on your shoulders for a long time, so what happened after the hearing… During it… It’d be enough to rattle anyone.”
It was. It did. Jon Walker shouting, “ Dead, you hear me? Fucking dead!” and his voice rebounding off the walls off the courtroom. Haroun trying to apologize. Charlie laughing. Renee shooting them both a pointed glare.
“...but he has doctors, Tony. He has nurses, psychiatrists, medical staff—he has a whole team here at the Tower, just a couple doors down the hall, and instead of talking to them…” Sam’s gesturing at the door. “...you chose to consult the felons who kidnapped him in the first place. So can you understand now why my sister’s worried about you? Why we’re all worried about you?”
“I know,” he manages, and shame slides like sweat down the back of his neck. “I… I get it.”
“So help me out, Tony. Talk to me. Tell me what happened with the other one.”
The other one. He was one of twenty at first, Tony knew, because he kept track of every single person who came onto his screen. Twenty people, and now there were just seven. “We talked.”
“About?”
“Peter. About… what happened. What he did.”
“Okay,” says Sam. “And how did it go?”
He’s losing parts of the conversation even now. He remembers the man saying something about Beck. He remembers screaming something about him. He remembers the guy saying, Wait, wait, wait! and then not much else. Not much before that either.
Tony mutters, “He didn’t say a lot.”
“You want to tell me what he did say?”
He tries—he does—but everything comes out half-formed, words that he said and Haroun said and Riri said all coalescing into a congealed mess in his brain.
I never wanted him dead.
Yeah, well. You did, too, didn’t you?
Sam asks him how it felt, seeing them. He says he doesn’t know. Sam asks him to try. Tony asks for another cup of coffee. And after a beat, the man gets up, walks into the kitchenette, and reaches for the glass coffeepot. It’s still mostly full.
As Sam pours him another cup, Tony blurts out, “I know I shouldn’t have gone—I know. I just—I had to.”
“Had to?” the other man echoes, stepping between the coffee table and the couch to hand Tony the mug.
“Yeah, just….” Tony tries, taking it by the handle. “I don’t know. I just had to.”
“For Peter?”
“Yeah.”
Sam hums softly. “And do you think it was worth it? Going to see them?”
He thinks then of Riri’s face, how relaxed she looked. Like she’d been sleeping. Like she could see past tomorrow. Then of Haroun’s face, of that hostile scowl, of his tense expression. “I don’t know,” he says. “I…”
“Have you thought about what Peter might think?”
He stares down at the fresh cup. The coffeepot’s been sitting out for a while now, so the liquid’s barely warm. It’s not of much use to him either—no caffeine, not even any sugar. “When he left on Wednesday morning, he didn’t think he’d feel so guilty. He did it because he had to—and now all he can remember is Haroun’s guilt-ridden voice, and the man looking at him through the plexiglass like he’d just twisted a knife into his stomach.
“Tony?”
It’s not like Peter could tell him what was wrong. He had to talk to them. He had to. There was no video evidence in the police files. Not even a photo of him to prove that it had actually happened. Nothing to give him a clue of how to get Peter talking again. They were the only way Tony knew to help. The only way he could. Right? But Riri had tried to help. Haroun, too, behind that pane of abraded plexiglass.
Like them, he’d failed Peter. Day after day after day, he’d failed Peter.
Now he can feel it too, that craggy shard of glass speared into his chest, and it hurts—the thought hurts—and he thinks it again, this time deafening in his ears. He didn’t help though, did he? Just like in the lab, he made things worse.
He only made things worse.
“...okay?”
He’s been trying so hard not to betray Peter’s trust. He didn’t let them examine Peter back in New Hampshire. He didn’t let Cho operate on Peter’s leg. He didn’t force Peter leave his room or eat his dinner or answer any probing questions, no matter how much Tony wanted the answers. He’s been trying. He really has—he was just trying to help. But since that hearing, God, he’s fractured that trust over, and over, and over again. He let Cho sedate him in the courthouse. He scared him out of the car. He forced him out into the public in front of dozens of people. Trapped him in that bathroom. Dragged him up to that podium. It’s no wonder he’s refusing to talk. Tony scared him all the way back into that bunker. He did this. He did this.
Tony chokes down on his next breath, and his chest is squeezing and squeezing, tighter and tighter, as the feeling chases him down with the pointed claw of a hammer, because he knows with outright certainty, he did this, he did this, he did this—
“...try to breathe…”
How could he do this to him? How could he do this to Peter, after everything that kid’s been through? His chest aches now, and there’s something hot inside him squeezing, churning, rolling over like a dying snake in his gut as he tries to breathe through it. “I…” he manages, and he can’t fucking breathe. “He’s… He’s…”
He’s a monster. He’s a monster, and something in his chest constricts violently, painfully enough that he lets out an audible gasp, and his heart hammers and hammers and hammers in his chest. If it weren’t for him, Peter never would’ve been in that bunker. If it weren’t for him, Peter would be in school still. He’d be talking to his friends. He’d be at home safe with his aunt. He’d be doing homework. Applying for college. Being a fucking normal teenager. But all because of him—God, Rogers was right—Rogers was right —and it’s all his fault, it’s all his fucking fault—he’s gonna be like this forever, a fraction of the boy he once was, and Tony did it to him, Tony did it to him—he might as well have fucking killed him—
“...okay, Tony, everything’s fine.” The man’s still sitting in the same spot—in front of him on the couch, and he’s saying, “It’s gonna pass, it’s gonna pass, Tony, you’re gonna be fine…”
—but it’s his fault, all of it, and Rogers was so fucking right. Everything that’s happened since Germany, it’s all on him. He did this. He did this. He dragged Peter into the Avengers, he dragged Peter into that car, into that bunker, into that chair—
“...try and touch the mug for me? Right there—right in front of you.”
“I.. I… made him…”
“Come on, Tony, right there. It’s right in front of you. Just grab the mug for me.”
His pulse is pounding so hard in his head that he can barely hear Sam talk. But in his daze, Tony focuses his eyes onto the coffee table, on the mug sitting there. It’s pastel green. Steam rises from it in slow curls, and he grasps it with one shaking hand.
It’s warm.
It helps.
It’s not hot enough to hurt, just enough to spread a pleasant warmth over his palm and through his fingertips. Sam tells him to focus on the heat, to try to breathe, and it’s easier with the cup in his hands. He tells him to focus on other things, too, like his shirt collar against his neck, down and down until he gets to the feeling of his feet in his shoes and his shoes against carpet. It gets easier, and his chest pain fades, and soon enough he’s breathing normally again—damp with sweat and a little faint with exertion—but breathing.
He sits there for a minute or two, Sam talking to him the whole time, until the sweat’s cooling on his forehead and his chest doesn’t hurt anymore and he finds himself half-keeled over with his fist pressed hard into the center of his chest, the other arm wrapped around his stomach.
“Hey,” Sam says, when the worst of it has gone and he’s drunk enough decaf to calm himself. “Maybe we should stop there. We could talk again in a couple days, maybe.”
“But Cho,” Tony blurts out. “She… She said…” The unspoken question is strung between them: am I well enough to visit him?
“I’ll talk to her,” Sam says. “Don’t worry.”
Tony closes his eyes again, sinking his head into his hands, and Peter’s face swims in front of him, rippling in the murk of his eyelids.
Inches away on a television screen.
Three-hundred-some miles away, in a bunker underground.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 — 8:00 PM
Barton comes by on Saturday—he brings some old DVDs and a portable DVD player, toys for Cassie, clothes for Peter, and some school supplies for them both. Notebooks. Pens and pencils. Post-it notes. “We did a haul last week for the kids’ back to school,” the man says, his hands shoved into his pockets. “Had some extra… Look, I know he’s not ‘back’ back, but I figured if he wanted to get back into the swing of things…”
He’s not sure why Barton keeps bringing him stuff. Tony’s more than equipped to provide for Peter—he supposes the man feels guilty; they all do. He puts the box in Sarah’s office; she’ll want to go through it anyway.
Natasha spends much of her time going back and forth between that holding facility upstate and the Tower. Every now and then she gives them an update about the Sandman, but nothing ever changes. He never gives the name of the man who employed him or even mentions who he was paid to kill. Apparently, it’s difficult to torture a man made of sand. They don’t know who paid Charlie’s team, they don’t know who paid the assassin, and they still don’t know if it’s safe out there. Nat says she hasn’t heard anything, which is a good sign, but it’s not enough to be absolutely sure.
A pediatric surgeon drops in on Friday—a consult for Cassie’s hand. She comes with a prosthetist in tow, a man with side-parted blonde hair, rectangular glasses, and a missing right arm. “We really only have two options,” says the surgeon, “when it comes to your daughter’s hand. The damage done was…extensive, to say the least.” There’s an X-ray of Cassie’s hand on the conference table, and she gestures to —to the skeletal image of the girl’s thumb and forefinger. “Here—these two fingers suffered the most injury. Given the force that they endured, the bones there were almost completely crushed.”
“If you want her to regain functionality,” she continues, “then I’d recommend amputating these two fingers and replacing them with advanced prosthetics. She’d be able to regain at least ninety percent function in the hand, and—”
“What’s the other option?” Jim blurts out.
“Your other option,” the surgeon says, carefully, “is to leave the fingers as they are. With the damage done to the bone, and the soft tissue of those fingers… I doubt she’ll ever regain function in those fingers, and any reconstruction of the bones here could wreck what soft tissue she has left.”
“And how much motion?” asks the girl’s mother, her brows drawn in. “With just the surgery?”
The surgeon looks at the prosthetist, and then to Maggie Paxton. “I’d guess, not much more than she has now. Maximum, forty-percent usability in her hand. It’ll be…functional, but these surgeries could cause nerve damage, especially given her age and the trauma to the hand. But… taking into account her mental state…”
For the rest of the day, it’s all anyone hears about—Jim and Maggie, talking about Cassie’s broken hand. From what Tony can tell from their too-loud hallway arguments, Maggie wants Cassie to get the prosthetic; Jim hates the very idea. “She’ll never be normal if you cut off her goddamn fingers, Maggie!”
“She’ll never be normal if she can’t use that hand anymore, Jim! Lots of people have prosthetics, and that doctor said she’s young, she’ll learn fast—”
“I don’t give a fuck about what that doctor said, you’re not gonna mutilate my daughter!”
“Your daughter? Your daughter, Jim?”
“Don’t do that—”
“I’m sorry for wanting her to have a normal life! She deserves a normal—“
“She’s had enough! She deserves to go home without someone cutting her open again!”
“She needs this surgery—I don’t understand why you think she’s just going to magically get better once we get her home! She’s never going to be the same, Jim! Never! You can’t just close your eyes and pretend none of this is happening!”
Sarah bans them both from the Medbay floor for the rest of the day.
Then Sunday comes—a week since the hearing—and Peter is a little more himself. He’s not talking, exactly, but he’s eating on his own again and making a decent amount of eye contact with Tony and the medical staff. Engagement, Sarah keeps calling it. A good sign. Mostly, though, he spends his days with Cassie, and neither of them have taken to playing again, instead choosing to lay in the left corner of the room, in that nook between the bed and the wall. Sometimes Cassie talks to him, and sometimes he nods, but mostly he keeps her beside him. At some point Sunday evening, Peter lies down with his head in Cassie’s lap, and he’s shutting his eyes; his face is shining, tears leaking sideways down his face; all the while, Cassie sits with him, whispering to him and patting his head where it lays in her lap.
Tony didn’t see it happen in person; he still hasn’t gone back inside. He watches it on Helen’s tablet instead through the camera. But just watching that little girl with Peter, discomfort prickles at his eyes—tears he can already feel welling in his bottom lids. He grips the tablet a little harder, watching as Peter’s eyes squeeze shut again. His lips are moving, albeit just barely, but they’re moving—he must be saying something to her.
She’s comforting him.
Tony should’ve be the one doing that; he should’ve been the one holding Peter as he cried, checking on his wounded leg, telling him everything was going to be okay. Instead, he’s holed in this stupid conference room watching the kid through a screen.
The doors might as well be locked; his weapon might as well be laying half-made on the table. Tony’s just as useless now as he was then.
Tony used to daydream about this a lot when he was locked up. About finally finishing his weapon—flying in his Iron Man suit and bursting through the bunker doors. Peter throwing his arms around him and thanking him. Taking Peter to the hospital. Letting him crying out on his shoulder.
Peter eating at the dinner table. Peter going back to school. Peter learning how to drive. Peter applying for college.
How many times did he dream that stupid, stupid dream?
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1 — 7:39 AM
It’s Monday.
Peter knows it’s Monday because it’s written on a whiteboard next to the door. Monday. October 1st. 2018. It’s a large whiteboard, with the hours of the day all separated on it. 8:00. Breakfast. 9:00 Nurse check-in. 10:00 Therapy. 12:00. Lunch. His bed is made, the corners of his blue Star Wars comforter tucked beneath the mattress.
Breakfast comes on a yellow tray. Scrambled eggs. Pancakes. Blueberry yogurt. Apple juice. The door is closed, and the food is warm, and it smells fucking incredible, but YOU GIVE AND YOU GET, DON’T YOU? DON’T YOU? And he hears that metallic sound— shiink— as the food slot closes. Yellow tray. Medbay. The hunger’s a crater in him, a meteoric cavity, and it’s all he can do not to grab and shovel, shovel, shovel as much as he can.
A white coat drifts in front of him. Squats in front of him. Taps the yellow tray, the sound of flesh against plastic. She’s saying his name, this familiar face, and she’s tapping the tray again. Black hair and a round face. Black hair. Round face. Her eyelashes are long and dark, and there’s eyeliner ringing both of her eyes. Four cans of food, all for him, and the white-coated doctor’s still talking to him. Not the doctor—this is Dr. Cho. He remembers her, the memories sticky and coated in molasses—laying in a hospital bed, sitting on an exam table, standing in her office doorway. Standing up. Him. His leg, he can’t remember… Just sitting in that rusted vibranium chair, and looking down at the awful thing that was supposed to be his knee.
DOC? he thinks suddenly, violently, and his spidey-sense pulls at him too, scalding the back of the neck like a hot brand, skewers all the way down his spine, and he throws his head around, trying to find where it’s coming from— it’s not him—it’s not him—DOC—DOC, WHERE—WHERE—
“...found you some silverware,” says Dr. Cho. A yellow tray, and her fingers linger at the edge of it. “If you want…”
He looks up at the woman, and for a second, her face contorts before his eyes—where her face should be, a gory sinkhole, red coming in pulsing waves down her neck and down her white coat—like someone had—like someone had— like someone had—
Something resting on his arm—Cassie’s chin, and he can feel her little fingers on the crook of his elbow. Yellow tray. Food, and it’s starting to smell sour now, the eggs reeking sulfur, the pancakes blemished with textured green, the yogurt curdling and pungent. He could swear, as he peers down into that can of apple juice, that there’s blood swirling inside, pooling at the bottom of the metal can.
Fingers. Cassie’s fingers, squeezing his arm again, a silent question— can I?
Two trays in front of them now. One with four cans, the other with two. Yellow. White-plastic sporks on each one. Peter clicks his tongue softly at her, and Cassie lunges for the first can, digging in with one hand and scraping the food with such force that it dribbles down her chin.
Peter reaches his hand up to his face, and with his fingers, traces up his own face to find a soft-plastic tube in his right nostril. It feels odd—slightly unpleasant—like having a cold on one side of his nose. He knows what it is; he doesn’t remember what it’s called. He pinches at it with his fingers. How hard would he have to pull? Could he do it? How long would he have to do it? Would he bleed?
Would it hurt?
Cassie is poking at him again, this time with the spork she barely touched. She’s holding it in one hand and miming stabbing at Peter’s arm, then at his back. He can feel the soft poke of plastic through his sweatshirt. Not his. Can’t be his. He’s never owned anything this color.
Cassie pokes at him and pokes at him until he reaches for the can on his yellow tray. He eats the first can and then the second. He feels sick afterwards, and he crawls to the toilet after and lays down next to it for so long that he falls asleep. When he wakes, there is a white-coated woman kneeling by tapping at his shoulder. A different one this time, and she’s blonde. Pink streaks in her hair. He knows her. The tattoos, there’s a rose inked into her forearm, leaves curling over her wrist and up towards her bicep. “You feeling okay, Peter?”
The doctor’s coat— feet pounding against the ground. He clings harder, harder, and his spider-sense is tearing at him, screaming, WHEN YOU RUN WHAT HAPPENS—WHEN YOU RUN—WHEN YOU RUN YOU GET PUNISHED WHEN YOU RUN YOU—
Somewhere behind them people shouting, and he can hear it, “FIND THEM! FUCKING FIND THEM!”
He curls his hands over his ears, tighter, tighter, but he can still hear it: FOUND YOU! FOUND YOU! FUCKING FOUND YOU! His breath solidifyies in his lungs like ice. FOUND YOU, Peter hears again, and it pummels him again, a fist slugging him right in his—I FOUND YOU, FOUND YOU, FOUND YOU!
He squeezes his eyes for a second. It’s all a fucking mess, though. Blood running wet down his front. Large hands gripping him by the arm. His knee. His knee. Those eyes, large and bloodshot. He had me, he thinks clearly, he had me. The chair—the sound of it shifting down flat.
Peter doesn’t remember leaving—but he remembers running. Running? How could he have been running? The smell of Charlie’s sweat. His beard had an odor—blood and saliva, and his skin reeked slimy sweet, like drugs were leaking out of his pores onto his very skin.
Everyone leaves him alone for a while. Lunch will last a few minutes, and he knows there’s a camera in here somewhere. He’s not sure how. His eyes pick up on a warmth, a kind of infrared brightness that comes from a vent in the ceiling—a strip of black above him. It doesn’t look like a camera, but he knows what it is. Just like the camera in that room. In the computer, that blinking light. The blinking light and the vibranium chair, Mason’s sweaty hand on a crowbar, the tip of it crusted black—it raises above him, and the hand comes down—GIVE ME WHAT I WANT, STARK! IS THAT SO FUCKING HARD? I GIVE YOU EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! ONE FUCKING THING, AND YOU CAN’T EVEN—
There’s a someone beside him. He’s in the room. His room. White walls, white floors. Medbay. A doctor—a woman’s hands, blue scrubs kneeling next to him, and they overlay—male fingers, a grayish blondish beard. A stethoscope. “Can you take a deep breath for me?”
He does. There’s a cool metal circle on his chest, just above his sternum, and the circle moves slightly left. A woman’s hands, and they overlay, a man’s hands, a grayish blondish beard. “One more time, a little cold?”
Pete knows how to do this. The operating room, the doors sliding closed behind him. Sitting on the papered exam table. A medical blanket pulled over his shoulders, and the doctor’s hand on his chest. He breathes in. Out. The doctor’s hand shifts to Peter’s shoulder, holding him steady. “Try to be still,” he says. “I just wanna make sure…”
His chest hurts, it still hurts, and he tips his head onto the doctor’s white-clothed shoulder, letting out a wet sob. “They were—they were—”
He coughs a little, a sputter of water, and it slides down his chin, and the hand rubs his back in a circle, coaxing out another cough and then another. “I know, I know, just try to take another breath, hon, I gotta make sure you’re okay.” The doctor’s hand moves to his shoulder, then to his back, and the cold circle moves, too. He breathes in. Out. In. Out. His head is still on the man’s shoulder, and that hand is still on his shoulder—for a second, adjusting the blanket around his shoulders, and then moving the cold circle again. Good, that’s good, hon, you sound really good.”
He smells clean. He smells like rubbing alcohol and antiseptic, he smells like the Medbay, he smells like May right after work. He breathes in. Out. In. Out.
“One more for me, hon, and then it’s over, just one more.”
He breathes in. Out. In. Out. His forehead is resting on a shoulder, a white-clothed shoulder, and he clutches with his other hand at the doctor’s sleeve. “Hey, um. Are you okay?”
Blonde one. Pink streaks. One of them had pink hair. Bigger than the others. She died sometime in the beginning. Overdosed. Her hair was a faded pink, and as they dragged her body past the bunker door, she had a synthetic, acrid smell—a smell he knew well. Ava had that smell—like frayed hair and white powder.
“Peter, I’m done with the exam, you don’t need to…” The shoulder moves under his forehead, and he presses his face into it, grabs at the arm—DON’T LEAVE ME—DON’T LEAVE ME—white coat, white coat, and they’re gonna take me, they’re gonna TAKE ME AWAY AGAIN— he wants to sink into it, drown in it, he only has so much time, and they’re coming back, he can hear their voices keening high in his ears— HE KNOWS! HE KNOWS! LOOK AT ME, PARKER! TELL THEM! WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST FUCKING DIE!
“...Peter…”
They were here. They were all here. They’re coming back from him, they always come back from him, how long does he have, he wants to stay, please, he wants to stay—DEAD, YOU HEAR ME? FUCKING DEAD! YOU SHOULD BE—YOU SHOULD BE—
“Peter.” His hand’s gripping white cloth, and it’s all wet and his face is wet, too. He thinks he might be crying. “Are you in pain? Or, uh—an unusual amount of pain? Peter?”
“Peter,” he whispers, and he tries to remember, but this is a woman’s voice, a woman’s voice, but the doctor’s here and it bubbles out of him, DOC—DOC— HELP ME—HELP ME—
“Oh—hey, it’s okay—you’re okay.” Arm around his back, and he presses his face into the white coat, cool fabric, and he knows they’re coming back, they’re coming back for him, and he doesn’t want— voices coming for them, shouting and shouting. Trees and leaves and the open sky—and oh, GOD THEY’RE COMING FOR HIM—DOC—PLEASE—PLEASE DON’T LEAVE—DON’T LEAVE ME—PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME—
“I’m right here,” the voice says, a sound as tender as the hand gentle at the back of his head, and he sobs into that white coat. “I won’t leave you, I promise.”
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1 — 5:14 PM
“...strange, with the nurse.”
“She’s still with him?”
“No, no, we got her out after a while, but still. Worries me. We could barely get him to pull away from her. I don’t know. He’s regressing, Sarah. You know he is. Since the hearing, we can barely get him to talk, let alone communicate. He’s not well—we have to do something.”
“I know how you feel about discharging him, but—”
“Sarah—”
“He needs this, Helen. It’s the only way he can get better. We can’t keep him trapped in that hospital room forever. He needs to get back to normal life. Otherwise…”
“I’m not sure he’s ready for outpatient. Especially now… I’m just trying to be realistic here, Sarah. He could break that leg again, or attack someone, or, I don’t know, if he stops eating again…”
“ If, Helen. You can’t keep him here on if.”
“I know, I know, I’m just… He’s my responsibility, and if anything happened to him—”
“If anything happens, we’ll bring him right back to you. Okay?”
A long pause. "I’m still worried about his nutritional intake—his weight’s not great, and the not-eating didn’t help—if we can keep him at 105 for a week, I’d feel…more comfortable discharging him. If he’s fine on that front, and he’s not showing any signs of…anything else, then yes.”
“Perfect. I’ll talk to the parents, see if we’re on the same page. This’ll be healthy for them, Helen, I know you’re hesitant, but it’ll be good.”
Another pause. “I hope so."