MIDNIGHT SNACK
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10 — 1:36 AM
After almost a month at the compound, the Sandman still hasn’t cracked. Nat and Bucky have been working on him since they captured him in August, and he’s given them nothing—absolutely nothing. They got into the man’s phone, but there wasn’t much there. It was a burner, and it only had one contact with messages that led back to mid-August and then stopped. No identifying information—no gender, no age, no race, nothing that would tell them anything about the person who paid the Sandman to kill six of Charlie’s guys and attempt to kill Peter Parker and Cassie Paxton-Lang.
Behind a pane of bulletproof glass, Marko paces back and forth from one side of his cell to the other. He looks worse than he did before—his muscled arms smaller, his tan face paler. “Tell us who paid you,” Bucky says. His hand hovers over a metal button beside the man’s cell—one that sends a bolt of electricity into the small room. “And this all goes away.”
Still-faced and out of breath, the Sandman huffs through gritted teeth, “I told you—even if I wanted to, my daughter—”
“Yes, your daughter,” Bucky says, his hand still over the button. “Penny, right?” The man wrenches his head up. “Maybe she’ll have a better idea of who you work for.” Before the man can respond, Bucky slams his hand on the button, and a bolt of electricity shoots into the cell; the man lets out a terrified shout, jerking his whole body to one side, and screams, twitching as the electricity runs through him. He can’t turn into sand, not with the threat of electricity, so he’s trapped like this. He gives the man a half-second—a gasp of air—and then punches the button a second time, holding the button so long that the man drops to the ground, limbs twitching and spasming, the only sound leaving him in a series of agitated gags as his head twists from side to side.
A hand on his arm—Natasha, as she slides between him and the button. She says, in hushed Russian, that he’s had enough. Bucky shifts away from her. “He’s our only lead,” he reminds her, as the Sandman forces himself onto his side, coughing and spitting onto the floor. The man’s face is red from exertion, and his skin shines with sweat; inflamed lines trail down his neck and arms in branches, several of which are blistering in pus-leaking lines. Still shaking, he turns his head to Bucky and stares him down through the glass. Nat pushes at his arm again; he can feel her fingers curl around his metal-ridged bicep. “Barnes. Go. Take a break.”
.
Natasha does the rest of the questioning that night; Bucky sits outside. It’s cold, and his breath comes out in wisps of fog. The stars are out this far upstate, dozens of them, just like they were in New Hampshire. They’ve been following up on as much as they can—Bruce and Clint have been tracking down old HYDRA leads to see if they might’ve resurfaced, but so far they’ve come up with nothing. The bunker where Scott Lang and the kids were held was supposed to be completely clean and under government supervision. Marko’s not breaking. And unless Bucky wants to take a page out of Charlie Keene’s book and go after the Sandman’s kid, they’re at a roadblock.
Soon Natasha is done, and standing next to him, and she sits next to him on the bench and hands him a protein bar. He exhales and unwraps the thing, taking a huge bite. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until now. “He’s not Beck,” she says quietly.
“I know,” he says.
“Do you?”
Bucky thinks briefly of Steve. Steve, sitting at the end of their bed. Steve, locking himself in their bathroom. Steve, going for run after run after run until it’s dark out, just so he can come to bed after Bucky’s already asleep.
Bucky takes another bite, barely chews, and swallows.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11 — 10:54 AM
The faucet is clean.
Spotless, even. Peter thinks someone cleans it while he’s not around. It smells faintly of lemon, like the bottle of all-purpose cleaner under the sink. Sitting at the edge of the tub, he turns it. Water bursts out in a cold spray, pounding the tub. He twists the leftmost handle, and the water streams from the showerhead above: thin, even streams. Cool to the touch. Odorless, tasteless. Perfectly clear. It warms up, warms up, warms up, and Peter pushes his hand under the spray. It tickles.
This is the best part of this new place.
The bathroom door has a lock on it. With one hand on the stainless steel railing, he moves to it slowly, quietly, in case someone is listening, sliding his socked feet across the tiled floor. He locks it and, even hearing the click of the locking mechanism, unlocks, locks it again, and wiggles the handle just to make sure.
Stripping down is hard, but the door is locked. He takes his time. Hoodie, then shirt. Both socks. Pants, then underwear. Thundering sound: water hammering against the tub floor. There’s a rubber mat on the tub floor, a green one to match the painted walls, with dozens of small bumps and holes. Helps him stand. He grabs the rail. Holds tight. Steps under the spray. It’s warm. Not too hot. Doesn’t sting. There’s soap. Shampoo, the same kind he had before. Supposed to smell like the ocean.
His hair is too long. Wet and soapy. Strands of it on the tub floor. Tired, he sits. Turns the shower handle again. Warmer. Warmer. Hot. White lather runs down his chest, swirls into the drain. Steam presses at his face. So warm here. Water runs over him. Streams down his face, his back, his legs. Over and over. Fingers wrinkle up, soften and prune.
Clean. He feels clean.
Twists the handle. The water stops, tap drips a couple times and then nothing. A towel rack next to the shower. He sticks his hand out and grabs the closest one. Blue towel. Door is still locked, and he wraps himself in it. Doesn’t think about it—the mess of skin yet to dry. For now, he sits in the tub. He can hear a little girl’s heartbeat a few feet away, slow and calm. Safe. He leans his head back against the wall. Quiet here. Hair drips wet, clinging damp to his neck and shoulders. The towel’s nice. Soft. He breathes in a lungful of steam. Closes his eyes for a second, and he’s almost home.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12 — 10:07 AM
“...a lot easier once you start talking to me,” the woman is saying. “These sessions are just to help me get a read on what’s bothering you, anything you’re trying to work on. You’ve made a lot of progress… Just want to make sure…”
Peter knows her. Sarah. She’s a doctor. Or something like that. She’s explained and explained and Peter always forgets somehow. Dark skin. Darker eyes. Short dark brows. Was in braids before—now it’s loose, in tight curls tickling her chin. A couple trailing diagonal over her forehead. Lipstick, she’s wearing lipstick: muted rouge. Dangling gold earrings, unmarked face. Everything about her nice and even, like a slice of pie.
She’s still talking. Talking to him. Something about danger. Something about him. Now she’s asking if he’s thinking about anything in particular.
He focuses on her face—then her hands, and then tries to focus on her question. Thinking. What he’s thinking about. A minute ago he was thinking about Cassie’s stepfather. He’s thinking about the look he gave Peter a few days ago. He’s thinking about the door—if it locks. If there’s a deadbolt. He’s thinking about the window. What it’s made of. How much force it would take to go through it. He’s thinking he could do it. He’s thinking about how long it would take Sarah to get up from her chair. If he’s strong enough now to fight her off. He’s not sure he could, not like this. His leg—his fucked up leg and his fucked up head, and he’s not sure at all.
“...stressful, being away from her, but I think it’s healthy for both you and Cassie to have some time apart…”
Cassie. Something about Cassie. Peter turns his neck, cracking it one way and then the other, and he curls his fingers into fists at his sides. What did she say to him? She always asks him the same thing. What’s his name. Where he is. Why he’s here. Yesterday she asked him about hallucinations. If he’d had any, and he didn’t say anything back. He wasn’t sure. He’s seen flashes of faces, of things around the corner, of blurry faces and shadows and heard footsteps one minute that weren’t there the next. Nothing like on TV. No sheet-covered ghosts, no horned demons, no clowns or anything weird. Just Charlie’s eyes plastered on new faces. Ava’s long hair trailing down someone else’s back. Mateo’s hand on someone else’s arm. It feels like leftovers, he always thinks. It feels familiar, almost. He doesn’t hate it.
“Peter?”
“Sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” Sarah says, crossing her legs. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry for, Peter. Let’s try some more grounding exercises, could we do that?” He remembers some of them. Breathing. Counting backwards. Spelling his name. Listing things.
She starts talking about grounding again—the list one. Tells him to list things in the room. Movies he likes. Songs he knows. Anything to get him out of his head. Tells him it’s okay if he doesn’t say it out loud.
He finds something to list. People. He can hear one person in the hallway, and another in the room three doors down. He recognizes the one in the hallway—Tony’s stilted heartbeat—but the other takes a second, until she opens her mouth. The doctor in pink. Cassie’s doctor—she’s talking to herself. He strains, and he can hear it too—the sound of pen on paper. Further down the hallway, the television is on—a cartoon. High-pitched voices and magic sounds. Cassie’s heartbeat, he picks it out from all the noise. She’s alive. She’s fine, her fast heartbeat intertwined with another’s close by: her mom. Peter knows it. Tony. Cassie’s therapist. Cassie. Mrs. Paxton. And May—where’s May?
“Okay, let’s try something else, maybe?” Sarah spills out a couple things onto the table in front of her. Some colored pencils. Markers. Crayons. He’s seen them before. “I understand you might not feel like talking, but it can help to write these things down.”
He takes the paper. A couple of markers. She’s watching him. He can feel her eyes pricking on his skin, up and down, up and down. She’s talking. Peter draws. Half shapes and faces. Was good at that before, he thinks, designs and stuff like that. Not much to do in the bunker so he did that. Wet his fingers in the sink and drew on the cement walls. Faces. Places. Fractions of his memories. Watched it fade away. Pictionary. Addition and subtraction. Multiplication, even some fraction and long division. Whatever it was, Cassie loved it. Anything to keep her mind busy. Then his brain went to shit and now he’s not sure if can even do long division anymore.
He tries. For a second, he tries.
Stupid Parker, he thinks. The voice in his head morphs; spittle comes down its chin. It’s pressing his head to the back of the chair. It’s telling him what’s next, and he tries to listen to Sarah instead. She’s talking. Still talking.
“I understand it’s difficult to talk about this, but that weapon is not something we can forget about. Can we try again? Maybe writing it down?”
She’s said this before, Peter thinks, as his heart skips a beat. Stupid fucking Parker. Brain gone to fucking mush. His eyes dart left to his closest option: a ceramic vase on the windowsill. Yellow. Wide beaker vase. Flared at the top. Too big to hold in one hand, but if he sticks to it and throws it hard, he could do it. He could.
When he looks back at the woman, she’s looking at it, too.
Peter forces his stare down into his lap. He feel hot all of a sudden, like the collar of his hoodie is wrapping its thick fingers around his throat. He could try for the door—he doesn’t think it’s locked. The woman always makes a point of showing him it’s not. But he’s not sure he can make it. His leg—she might get there first. He thinks of Ava. Riri too. Standing in the doorway. Peering down at him. Renee, he thinks of Renee. Red hair knotted and long. Lip curling in disgust. Fucking freak, she says in Sarah’s soft voice. Maybe she wants him. She does, doesn’t she? He can feel her thinking about it—peeking outside, leaving the door cracked, beckoning to him with one hand—and he can see her mouth forming the words; Peter inhales again, the thought dizzying him.
The woman is talking still. She’s talking about before. She keeps saying she doesn’t want it to happen again, and it won’t. He’ll never do it again. He’ll never run again. He doesn’t know why he did it—he doesn’t remember doing it at all, just Cassie pushing it into his hands and whispering into his ear. “I won’t—” His voice is as dry as a bone, fossilized and covered in a thick layer of grit. “I wasn’t—” Peter starts, and he can’t finish. What is this? he hears, and he can almost see the shank: shaved-down blue plastic, and he blinks several times before Sarah’s blouse comes into focus again. His heart pumps loudly in his chest. What the fuck is this, Parker?
“It’s okay,” Sarah says. “I understand, it’s just…”
Sweat prickles at his face; all at once, he can see the pockmarks in Sarah’s face, can see the bruised crooks of her arms, can see the heady grin widen on her face. Peter glances at the vase again.
He doesn’t stand a fucking chance.
He remembers. He remembers Charlie— poking the blade into the spot above his eye, and pain splits hot in his brow. Peter doesn’t dare move a muscle. He moves and he dies—HE MOVES AND HE DIES, he gurgles out, “The toys—the Happy Meals—they, they come with toys!”
“Peter, you’re not in any danger—look at me. You’re in my office. Today is October twelfth. You’re at the Avengers Tower.”
The woman is watching him. She hates him. She knows what he is. She knows what hes done. He can’t make it to the door. He can’t make it to the vase. He’s never gonna leave here. Charlie’s hand trapping his jaw. The plastic blade sliding wet up his forehead. Charlie pressing harder. Shank against bone. Shank against bone. Screaming. The boy in his head is screaming.
He doesn’t want to be here.
“Try to take a couple breaths for me, okay?” Can we try that? One, two…”
He can hear himself breathing just like she asked, raw gasps, and his hands clench into the couch fabric. Paper crumples. One, two. One, two. He doesn’t want to be here. He’s not. He’s not here. One. Two. He’s at home—he’s with May. He’s sitting at the kitchen table. She’s kissing the crown of his head. She’s telling him his hair’s getting long.
“Peter, Peter, try to stay with me. Peter?”
Their apartment smells like pancakes, and May’s sitting down next to him. A woman’s voice fading and fading, and time goes soft, wet like watery clay. He’s in his old bedroom, the bunker, the Medbay, the chair, and he’s staring into the murky sink water, at the wavering reflection—a pale face with a tangle of dark hair—and he’s gone again.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15 — 12:05 PM
Maggie’s phone is buzzing again.
She ignores it, and instead continues her breakfast with her family. Across the kitchen table, her daughter’s tearing through her lunch of chili and cornbread. Jim’s trying to coax her into using a spoon, to which she keeps shrieking and smacking it away. Peter’s on the couch with his wheelchair-bound aunt. Every now and then, Maggie looks over to the teenager and finds his eyes on her. She’s never quite sure what she sees in him. Which Peter is she seeing this time? The frightened kid? The solemn protector? The violent teenager? The comatose patient? The boy switches from one minute to the next.
She likes to think they have an understanding about Cassie. Trust, albeit trust dangling by a slim thread. Any wrong move, she’s sure, and it will snap.
Her phone buzzes again, and this time to pulls it out under the table. It reads: [Hi honey! Just checking in again. How’s our girl?] Then a series of photos. A friendship bracelet kit. A pink plastic camera. A stuffed unicorn. Another text. [Stopped at Target today and got some things for her.]
Maggie’s parents have been begging to come see Cassie for weeks. Asking and asking and asking yet Maggie hasn’t even given them a photo. How can she? Jim’s father passed a couple years ago and his mother is in a nursing home upstate, but Maggie’s parents have been begging to see their rescued granddaughter since she was found. She keeps telling them it’s not safe. But as Happy and the other Avengers have informed them, there’s no sign of any assassins on the horizon. No harm would come to them.
How can she explain all of this to her mother? Your granddaughter’s not normal. She used to hate mustard and now she eats mustard-slathered sandwiches in huge bites. She could put a whole plate of broccoli in front of Cassie and she’d devour it, lick the plate, and beg for more. How can she explain it? Her daughter sleeps on the floor. Her daughter won’t wash her hands. Her daughter whispers while she plays and wets the bed at night. Her hair is gone. Her hand is permanently damaged. She’s unstable. She’s clingy. She’s angry.
She bites.
“We want to get her back to normal, right?” Jim says, . “Come on, Maggie. This’ll be a good step for her. They adore her.”
He’s right. Cassie’s grandparents attended every soccer game, every piano recital, every school event. With her heart in her throat, Maggie texts them back: [Maybe this weekend.] In seconds a flurry of texts comes back, and she shoves her phone back down.
Cassie hasn’t had any visitors since she got back. Even Hope Pym, Scott’s ex-girlfriend, had only dropped by the Tower a few times since the rescue, and it certainly wasn’t to see Cassie. She’d handed Maggie a key to a storage facility a couple hours away, asked about Cassie, and told them she’d had the rest of him scattered at his old home in San Francisco. “I’m going back to California. My father’s still there, so. Just came back to wrap things up. She dropped by a few more times after that, just to check on Cassie, but the woman could barely look at her. Too many memories, she said.
Maggie looks over to the couch, where Peter’s ghost of an aunt sits, grazing her hand over Peter’s wrist. Her neck bends uncomfortably to one side, and her arms sag in their attempt to touch the boy. Her legs, too, turn in pigeon-toed, her feet half-resting on the wheelchair’s footrests.
Briefly, she thinks of Scott, and then she looks away.
Later that afternoon, Maggie stops by Pepper Potts’ office. She buttons up her cardigan, feeling all too casual for such a spotless office. She doesn’t know Pepper as well as she does Tony—the woman’s always locked up in her office or in her suite, and she doubts she’ll see much more of her once the baby’s born. She usually attends family dinner, and will at least drop by for a few hours during the day, but she’s not nearly as attentive as her part-time fiancé.
When she enters, Pepper is sitting at her desk and a blond man is sitting in one of the guest chairs. He turns his head when Maggie knocks again, and she recognizes him this time. Mr. Nelson—one of Peter’s lawyers. He smiles awkwardly at Maggie and stands, turning back to Pepper to tell her something.
Looking unsettled, Pepper nods, her brow furrowed. “Thank you, Foggy. Let’s meet again tomorrow?”
He says something about Thursday being better. She shakes his hand, and the man shuts the laptop on his lap. He gives a wave to Maggie as he goes, and she sits in the chair next to his. “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” Maggie says, and Pepper waves her off.
They talk about the kids for a while. Maggie asks about the baby; Pepper says everything’s fine. “Doctor kept saying I’d have her early,” she says. “Older pregnancy, stressful environment…” She waves her hand as though she’s going to list more. “But here I am. Almost to the finish line.”
“Cassie was an early baby, you know,” Maggie says, and she can feel her eyes water just thinking about it again. “My miracle baby. Spent a whole month in the NICU, covered in tubes and things… Three and a half pounds.”
Pepper’s brow raises.
“And when we saw her in that hospital room with that tube in her arm, looking so…” Bone-thin. Ill. Distant. Like a newborn in an incubator—like there was a clear plastic wall between them. “It was like… Like she was three pounds again. And Scott would hold her and he could—” Her voice cracks so loudly that she has to swallow before continuing. “Could hold her in one hand. It was like that—like I was about to lose her again. And I thought we had, I. I thought we lost her, that she died in some… some…” Her hands are tight in her sweater, and she’s blinking again, rapidly, tears coming down, and she’s wiping at her face. “Jim’s a cop,” she says, although Pepper must already know, “so this… He knew all the odds, the statistics, every horrible story you could think of. He searched so hard, barely slept, barely ate, because he knew every day was another day Cassie was… that she was being…” Another sob comes out of her, and she breathes in shakily, wiping at her nose.
When she looks up again, Pepper’s handing her a tissue. A box is now sitting beside her laptop—she must’ve pulled it from her desk. “Sorry,” she says, dabbing at her eyes. “I really didn’t come here to go on like this.”
Pepper says it’s fine. Tells her not to worry. And then tilts her head, eyes locked on her sleeve, and asks, “What happened there?”
Having forgotten, Maggie quickly drags her sleeve up her arm. “Oh. She… She bit me again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. The other night, thought I was trying to… I don’t know. Hurt her, maybe.”
“Is it bad?”
“No infection,” she says tiredly. She can still see a peek of white through her cardigan sleeve, and she adjusts it again. “Alexis says it’s going to be a while before she stops doing things like this.” She’s not sure if Pepper remembers the name of Cassie’s psychiatrist, but she’s too wrought up to explain. “Not just weeks. Months. I don’t know if we can even put her back in school for the year, but Jim’s been trying to find some that’ll accept someone late with… with special, um, needs… I don’t know. I think we’ll have to wait a little longer before we can even think about school. Jim just wants to get her back home, you know, get her back to normal, but.” She glances up at Pepper. “And with Peter, I can’t even imagine.”
She can’t picture that boy in a school or anywhere near one. She tries to imagine him carrying a backpack or opening a locker or writing a paper or speaking anything but those blunt half-sentences, but she can’t. Cassie had grown up in there, and so had Peter. She’s seen pictures—that smiley, awkward teenager, hair short and neat, always holding his phone or a notebook.
Grimly, Pepper nods.
“You knew him, right? He was your…” Maggie starts.
“I don’t know if we called him anything,” Pepper says. “Intern, maybe. Avengers-in-training. But he never came to any of the big meetings. ‘Too much pressure,’ he said. He didn’t want to screw up in front of all those people.”
That’s all Pepper’s willing to say about the boy, and Maggie doesn't want to push. At some point, a blond-haired boy walks in, handing her a couple sheets of paper; she glances briefly at them, signs, and hands them back to him while Maggie drops her question.
“Happy’ll want to check them out,” the other woman responds, as the boy leaves. “Do they have any criminal history?”
“No, nothing.”
“Then I’m sure it won’t be a problem.” As soon as Pepper finishes her sentence, she sighs and rubs her eyes. “Six months,” she says. “They haven’t seen their granddaughter in six months?”
Maggie nods, drawings her sleeve over her re-bandaged wrist; Pepper pinches the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. Maggie imagines her Tony Stark in his lab, working endlessly on a weapon that would never work, and then Pepper, belly growing by the day, scouring hours of security camera footage for a boy that had disappeared overnight.
Six months. Felt more like six years.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19 — 12:33 PM
The past week has been good.
Really good.
After all of that worry about the transition, Peter’s actually done really well. He’s still not talking much, which unnerves Tony, but Sarah says it’s normal. His leg has healed up from its injury during the hearing; he’s getting faster with that brace Tony and Cho fashioned for him. He’s stopped wincing so much when he walks, has started letting his hand drift occasionally from the stainless-steel railings. He spends the days eating and sleeping and lingering around Cassie like a guard dog. He’s even seen the kid crack open a couple of the comic books in his room.
Tony’s been improving too, taking walks around the penthouse suite and making minor appearances on company floors, mostly just a wave or a hello. Some nights he sleeps next to Pepper if she lets him, although last night he woke to Pepper shaking his shoulder. “You were talking again,” she whispers, and when he asks what he said she just shrugged. Sometimes he sleepwalks and tries to work, and sometimes he can't sleep for an entire night. He’s seeing a sleep specialist now, one appointment a week, and he’s taking sleeping pills at night to try to even himself out. He’s not even using a cane anymore now that his tremors have subsided.
He eats on the same schedule as Peter. They cook and eat together with plates and silverware, although occasionally, Peter sits and stares at the food so long that Tony’s afraid they’re going to revert back to the cans. Peter’s taking showers now, too. Lots of them. A couple a day, if he can drag himself away from the little girl, for maybe twenty or thirty minutes each.
Did they have showers in there?
Tony keeps wondering. Peter’s barely told him anything about that bunker, and he doesn’t have access to the police reports yet. It’s an ongoing trial, so most of it is still locked up pretty tight. Jim Paxton’s hinted at his knowledge of the reports, but he’s not exactly jumping at the opportunity to share. So Tony can only guess at most of what happened when Peter wasn’t in front of a camera. They had to have given him something, right? How else would they have kept him clean? Tony thinks he remembers it, maybe. Peter getting clean. Often, that layer of crusted blood and dark grime had disappeared after a couple of days.
But he doesn’t know. Had they given those kids soap? Towels? Toothpaste? Peter’d gotten a dental checkup sometime while he was unconscious—his teeth were fine. So they had to have given him a toothbrush, at least. Toothpaste, maybe. What about hand soap? Toilet paper? The addicts themselves were in rough shape, too. Tony’s seen their mug shots. Half their teeth rotted away. Infected sores peppering their skin. Clothing falling off their emaciated bodies. If those people could barely remember to maintain themselves, why would they bother giving Peter and Cassie the same conditions?
He asks Sam about it during their biweekly session. “Or—or toilet paper,” he says. “Do you think he…” All of those luxuries that Tony had in his lab upstate, and he’d taken it all for granted. He’d showered a few times in there, quick douses of water to force himself awake. “Or soap? You think they let him…”
The very thought makes his hand shake.
“Tony,” Sam says, as Tony stares miserably into his mug of decaf coffee, “you can’t keep torturing yourself with these thoughts. What happened to Peter in that bunker—only he knows. And if he wants to tell you, he will.”
“Yeah,” he says, although that’s not nearly enough of an answer. “I know.”
The following morning, Peter gets his nasogastric tube removed.
May’s there with him, in a wheelchair beside the paper-covered exam-table; he’s holding her hand. The nurse flushes the tube with water, and then peels the medical tape away, leaving behind a rectangular imprint on his cheek. “Might feel a little uncomfortable,” the pink-haired nurse says, just as Peter’s hand clamps down on Mays. “Deep breath and then hold. You ready?”
She counts down, and the kid does as he’s told, gripping a tissue in his other hand. She pulls it from his nose in one smooth yank, and the kid gags immediately, covers his mouth, and gags again, keeling forward. “That’s normal, that’s normal,” the nurse assures him, and Tony spots the teal plastic basin beside Peter just as the nurse pushes it into Peter’s lap. “Don’t worry, it’ll be over in a second.”
He doesn’t throw up, but instead presses the crumpled tissue to his nose until the nurse holds the trash can out for him to toss it. She asks him if anything hurts. Peter shakes his head. She asks him to swallow, and open his mouth, and swallow again. He does.
The nurse documents some of the basics, too, while he’s there. Blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, heart rate. Gets him up on a scale, too. He comes out at one hundred and eleven pounds. “Good,” the nurse says, “that’s really good, Peter.” After some struggle with getting him to stand, she has him lie down flat on the exam table while she gets his height.
They hadn’t gotten his height down yet; Helen had assumed it was the same as before, but it’s not. It was difficult to tell with the leg, but when Peter’s lying down straight, he’s three inches taller. Three inches. He’s not sure if it’s due to his mutation, or just a late-stage growth spurt, but Peter’s as tall as Tony now: five ten.
Peter’d never stood up straight enough for them to notice.
The kid’s only allowed soft things for the rest of the day. Cho’s orders. Soup and crustless bread for lunch. Shepherd’s pie for dinner. He eats well, he does, even downs a bowl of mint chip ice cream. It’s the first thing Tony’s seen him eat slowly. He sorts out the mint chips first, digging at the green lumps of ice cream as they melt to find them, and eats them last, a pile of little chocolate morsels that he savors one at a time.
That night, when Tony tells him goodnight, he finds the kid’s hand at his face again, probing at his cheek where the tape was removed.
“Everything okay?” he asks. Maybe something did hurt, Tony thinks. Maybe something went wrong during the removal, and Pete didn’t want to mention anything to the nurse. “Something hurt?”
Peter shakes his head. Tony scans the room; he’s not sure what he’s looking for, maybe another shank hidden in his headboard or a pile of moldy food stashed away in his dresser. He just finds some dirty clothes instead, which he picks up and tosses into Peter’s laundry basket as the boy watches. “You know, if you need anything, you can just tell me, okay? Or if something’s bugging you… I’m here. I’m right down the hall if you need something.”
This time, Peter looks at him; for a split second his eyes lock on Tony’s and his mouth tightens. Beneath the bed, a scuffle: little Cassie, probably, waiting to go to sleep.
Tony grimaces a smile at him, says good night again, and shuts the kid’s bedroom door.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17 — 3:37 PM
Maggie remembers teaching Cassie how to use a toilet.
She’d only ever housetrained a puppy, but she figured her daughter couldn’t be that different. It took them six whole months to potty train her, Maggie and Scott together, but they did it. And now… Now her daughter’s wetting herself at night. Now she doesn’t want to go in the bathroom alone—screams and cries unless Maggie goes with her. And the first time, as Maggie shut the door behind her, she felt someone squeeze her hand once. Privacy, Mommy, she whispered.
Maggie didn’t know her daughter knew that word.
Did Peter teach it to her?
Her daughter placed her hand over both eyes, covering them; Maggie copied her, waited for the toilet flush, and then felt two squeezes on her hand. Maggie knows what that means—it means she’s done.
Maggie taught her how to wash her hands, too. They had a step stool in the bathroom so Cassie could reach the sink. A wooden one with Cassie’s name on it in a rainbow of colors—Scott brought it home one day with a huge smile on his face. Maggie taught her how to stick one hand beneath the soap bottle’s spout and press hard on the top with her other hand. How to lather. How to rinse. How to dry.
She doesn’t like to use soap anymore, even if Maggie does it for her. Maggie doesn’t know why; she’s not sure she wants to know why. The one and only time Maggie brought it up, Cassie said, Not supposed to, and Maggie left it at that. She tries to make sure Cassie gets some hand sanitizer now, just to keep her hands clean, because each time she tried to make her use the soap Cassie smacked it right out of her hands and howled for Peter.
Always for Peter. Never for her.
Why does she always, always call out for Peter?
For some reason, eight years of learning, eight years of living, eight years of calling out for her parents whenever she was in trouble—unraveled in five months. She learned not to, Maggie keeps thinking, and tears prick at her eyes as Cassie dries her wet hands on her pajama pants. She learned I wasn’t coming.
It’s Wednesday, and Peter is downstairs visiting his aunt, so they figure it’s the best time for her grandparents to visit. Cassie’s been really good most of the day, playing Candyland with Jim until she started losing and jabbed her plastic gingerbread figure into the board until the cardboard dented.
What will her mom think? She can already hear her mom’s voice: How could you do this, Margaret? How could you let this happen to this beautiful little girl? What kind of mother are you?
It’s nothing short of what Maggie’s thought herself.
They arrive at the Tower around four: Maggie meets them downstairs while Jim stays upstairs with Cassie. Her mom is unbuttoning her wool coat, and her dad is carrying a couple of wrapped boxes dressed in ribbons and a pink gift bag filled with tissue paper.
She hugs them both and says, “I appreciate the thought, but the gifts, Mom, I told you—”
“Oh, don’t worry,” her mom says, kissing her cheek. “She’ll love them. Where is she, sweetheart, I wanna see my grandbaby!”
On their way upstairs, Maggie tries to go through the rules again. Don’t shout. Don’t touch her unless she reaches out to you. Don’t hand her anything, don’t ask her about what happened, don’t try to take anything from her.
She might scream. She might cry. She might bite.
She’s not the granddaughter you knew six months ago.
Happy Hogan has them sign a thick packet of NDAs; both scribble a signature without bothering to read them. Maggie leads them into Cassie’s room—the one she never sleeps in. All of Cassie’s stuffed animals sit in a row on her bed, and a line of children’s books sit on a shelf on the other side of the room. Cassie’s sitting on the floor playing with Jim, and Maggie’s mother squeals when she sees her. “Oh, my sweet girl!” she gasps. “Her face, her beautiful face—and her hair! What did they do to her hair!” She reaches out too fast, too close, too loud, and Maggie’s little girl is already baring her teeth.
“Mom,” Maggie, says, pulling at her mother’s bloused arm, but she’s covering her mouth with her hands and stifling her cries into her fingers.
“You remember them, don’t you, honey?” Jim says, pointing at both. “Grandma and Grandpa?”
Her daughter is frozen beside him; her hand clasps her stuffed zebra tightly. Her brown eyes dart between the newcomers, and she whispers something to her zebra, something Maggie doesn’t quite catch. Her dad clears his throat and kneels by her with minor struggle. “Hi, sweetheart. Remember me?”
Cassie huffs out a breath, and then sucks in another gulp of air. She’s touching the strands of her shorn hair, fluffy now with growth. Maybe she’s thinking about what her grandma said. Maybe she’s calming down.
“We missed you, Cassie girl, we really, really did.” His voice breaks; she can hear the wear in his voice, a wave of upcoming tears. His hands are touching the ground in lieu of his granddaughter, his fingertips grazing the rug. “And we—we brought you some things. Presents, just for you.” He reaches behind himself, and pushes one of the gift boxes towards his granddaughter. A pink one with white ribbons.
Her daughter stares at it, unblinking.
“It’s only me, sweetheart,” he says. He comes even closer, inches away, and Cassie doesn’t move. Maybe she does remember him, Maggie thinks. Her parents spent most of their time with their other grandchildren, but they’d visited constantly, especially when Scott was in prison. Her dad beckons Cassie again, his hand nearing her arm. “Come here, give Grandpa a—”
Cassie screeches and launches herself at the man, hands first; her grandpa sputters and sits back on his heels; “Cassie, no!” Maggie shouts, but his little girl is screaming and clawing at his face—he howls and clutches at his face, falling onto his side. Maggie tries to pull her away and Cassie howls like her fingers are branding irons, releasing her grandfather and diving back into Jim’s arms.
“Out!” she says, “Mom—Dad—get out!”
Her mom helps her dad to his feet. He presses his fingertips to his bleeding face, a look of horror dawning over his pale face. “She—she—” he starts, sounding confused. Blood beads in the new twin scratches on his face and then leak down his jaw.
Maggie pushes him to the door.
Her daughter has buried herself so deeply in Jim’s sweater that Maggie can’t see her face; with both hands fisted into the fabric, she’s sobbing violently into his chest. “Look, look,” Jim’s saying, his hands ghosting over her in a half-hug, “Mommy’s getting rid of it, you don’t have to take it, she’s getting rid of it…”
Right. The gift. Maggie shoves the ribbon-covered boxes and the gift bag to the other side of the bed where her daughter can’t see them. Cassie gasps and presses her face harder into Jim’s chest. “He—he wa—he—he was gonna—”
“I know, I know Grandpa scared you, but he loves you, honey, he would never do anything to hurt you.”
“Not—my friend—not my—not my—”
Not my friend. Is that something she learned from Peter as well? That if someone gave her a gift, they shouldn’t be trusted?
“Okay, I know,” Jim says softly, rubbing her back. His eyes lift up to Maggie’s—a simultaneous this was a bad idea— as he continues to comfort her. “We’re sorry, baby, we’re so sorry… They’re gone now, they’re all gone…”
As Cassie’s cries delve into sobs, Maggie goes out into the hallway.
“I told you not to do that,” Maggie snaps, and her mother shoots her an exasperated look. “I told you no gifts, I told you not to approach her—”
“She almost took your father’s eye out!” she says. Beside her, Maggie’s dad doesn’t say anything, gingerly touching his face with one hand.
“How could you do this to Cassie?” her mom says tearily. “You got her involved with drug dealers and and criminals and vigilantes—I always told you to stay away from that Scott—”
“This isn’t his fault,” Maggie says, and as soon as she says it she feels a painful stone notch in her throat.
“Isn’t it? He got my granddaughter exposed to violence, got her kidnapped, got her—”
“It’s not his fault, Mom!” she snaps. “And if you’d just listened to what I said, this wouldn’t have happened! You don’t know what she’s been through!” Angry tears press at her face and she tries not to let them come through. “When we got her back she… She…” She wasn’t talking to anyone. She wouldn’t play. She ate out of a can. They’ve made so much progress and now her mother’s glancing at the door like Maggie pushed Cassie into that van herself. “Scott did his best to protect her!”
Her mother curls her lip, clutching her father’s arm. “His best,” she huffs, incredulous. “Look at what he did to your little girl. It’s no wonder you’ve been hiding her from us.” She shakes her head.
Don’t cry, she wills, as the tears press on and the stone in her throat swells. Don’t cry, don’t cry. Maggie grimaces, hugging her sweater around herself. “Get out or security will escort you out, Mom,” she says. “Don’t come back here until you’re ready to respect my daughter’s boundaries.”
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18 — 12:52 PM
A man is sitting on the bed next to him. His hand is on Peter’s leg. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. “Cold, huh?” he says.
Peter swallows. “Yeah.”
“I’ll warm you up,” he says. “Come here.”
His stomach twists. Ask him, he thinks. Ask him, you have to ask him. Peter slides over on their bed. The man wraps his arm around Peter’s torso, pulls him in closer. His heart is pounding so fucking loud, and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to force it to slow. Ask him. Ask him. “When you’re not here,” he whispers, “it’s still pretty cold.”
He hears the man make a noise of affirmation: a hmph.
His hands are damp with sweat. Peter’s heart: pound, pound, pound, pound— “Maybe… Maybe you could ask for a blanket?”
And it’s there after Peter’s done. In the morning, snuck through the food slot around breakfast. Gray fleece. Stained in spots. Flat, like it’s been washed a few too many times. But it’s warm. God, it’s warm.
They have the blanket for four days; he and Cassie spend all of their time bundled up in it. Four days of plush warmth, and then Charlie takes it back. “Sorry, sweetheart,” the man says, patting the back of his neck, squeezing. “He said you were dangerous. Strangled someone with your last one.”
He had. He doesn’t know why he thought Charlie would let him keep it. They spend a couple days in mourning of it and then wake up one night to find the room significantly warmer. Warm enough that the goosebumps on Peter’s skin have subsided, enough that Cassie doesn’t bury into Peter’s chest for warmth as she sleeps.
When the man comes that night, Peter is already on the bed, and Cassie is already hidden below.
“Well, I’m not a monster, Petey,” the man says, sitting down beside him. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.” He takes off his quarter-zip, and he’s wearing a white shirt underneath.
“Thank you,” Peter blurts out, and he kisses him on the mouth then, hard, and he means it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. He wants a hug and he gets one, the man’s arms tight around him and Peter clings to him so hard that the man lets out a laugh into Peter’s neck. Peter kisses him again, and again, and the man chuckles again, stroking at his chest up and down, up and down, all the way down.
“You’re welcome,” the man says, and that feeling is washing over him—relief, utter relief, because his skin is a little warmer than it was yesterday and the brown-haired man has his arms around him and is pulling him closer, and the fear is dissipating, albeit for just a second. The man kisses his cheek, his neck, and then climbs back up to his mouth. Whispers something, how good he is, and his breath gets faster. Still bruised all over, and it hurts to move. Thank you, thank you, he thinks, because the man could’ve taken it all away and he didn’t. The man mouths on his tear-wet neck and Peter lays down; his heart is pounding again. The man unbuckles his belt with one hand. Peter shifts, helps him with his pants. Moves with him. Feels good. Peter makes a sound for him, touches him, whispers something in his ear. “Turn around,” he huffs, breath hot and smoky on Peter’s face. His white teeth—a smile, and the man’s skin is warm, warmer by the second.
The brown-haired man squeezes his arm, a consolation, and Peter rolls onto his side.
Peter wakes up with his face wet. Exhausted. With shame like barbed wire all twisted up around his heart, and it pulls. The warmth beside him has faded; in his head, the tingly sensation of a laugh in his neck, a nose pressing at his throat, and he’s suddenly so ashamed that he pinches himself to stop himself from thinking of it again. What the fuck is wrong with you, Parker? he thinks, and his thoughts hiccup into varying shades of pitch. He pinches again at his wrist, harder and harder, until there are pink indents in his wrist and skin beneath his nails. Stop it. Stop it, he thinks, and he suddenly wants to scream. He wants to scream until someone throws open the door, until a boot meets his side or a fist meets his eye. He wants to scream until his throat bleeds, until he coughs up strips of skin and flecks of cord.
List. List, he has to make a list. He takes a breath and wipes at his face a couple times. Pancakes. Waffles. Eggs. He pinches again. Bacon. Sausage. Toast. He pinches again, pinches again, and the sharp, diminutive pain wipes his mind clean. Yogurt. Cereal. Bagel.
Peter forces himself onto his back. His hand grazes beside him, finding only a blanket. The thought pins him down like fucking vibranium cuffs, and his heart soars up into his throat.
She’s gone.
His eyes fly open. He drags himself out from under the bed so fast that his fucked-up knee hits rug-covered floor—and a combination of agony and nausea wallops him hard. Scans the room fast—no one, and somewhere far away he can hear her heartbeat. Fuck. Weapon. He needs a weapon, and he snatches the lamp off of the dresses and grasps it tight in his sweaty hands. He took her, he has her—HE TOOK HER— you let your guard down, Parker, you— he fumbles with the first door, staggers into a hallway. Hallway, more hallway, and he can’t hear her—where is she—YOU DID THIS—YOU GOT HER KILLED—SHE’S—
SHE’S SCREAMING—
SHE’S DYING—
He can taste blood in his throat, creeping up the back of his tongue. Blood. Slams his shoulder into the door—OPEN THE DOOR—the door’s open. DYING—DEAD—DEAD—
Door’s open. Woman. Sitting at the kitchen. Cassie. Heartbeat thumping steady. Sleeping. She’s sleeping. Hands, face. No marks. No blood.
“Shit, you scared me,” the woman says, holding the little girl to her chest.
Peter’s vision comes into sharp focus: he can see the pink in the woman’s cheeks, can hear the soft exhale of Cassie’s breath, can sense the warmth wafting off the mug on the kitchen table. Pale green cabinets. One open, rows of cups in an array of colors.
SCARED ME, he hears again, his heart thumping away, running and running like a train on subway rails. YOU SCARED ME.
“She couldn’t sleep,” the woman says. Mrs. Paxton. Her blonde hair is half up. “Came to my room and got me. Thought she was hungry, but… Nutritionist doesn’t want us feeding her after eight.” Pale blue sweater over white tank. Gray sweatpants. Pats on Cassie’s back. Slow. Even. His kid is still asleep. She said Cassie couldn’t sleep. “Made her some hot chocolate. Not sure if that counts, but. I guess it’s a little late for that.”
He follows her gaze to the lamp base, which he’s still holding, and he drops it with a clatter onto the rug. They’ve been sleeping like normal—under the bed, Peter on the outside, Cassie on the inside, so she must’ve climbed over him. She must’ve. Which means Peter didn’t notice when Cassie woke up.
Did she have a bad dream? Did she try to wake him up? Did he sleep straight through it? SORRY, he thinks, and he thinks of her, crying herself to sleep, crying herself awake, trying to wake him up and wandering outside by herself.
“What for?” the woman says.
“I didn’t hear her.”
“That’s okay, Peter.” The woman’s voice is quiet—and she’s still holding Cassie, one arm supporting her and the other bracing her back. Cassie’s cheek rests into her shoulder, one hand around her neck and the other drooping down her mother’s back. “It’s not something you have to be sorry for.”
He shakes his head. “I should’ve… I should’ve…”
Mrs. Paxton tilts her head, trying to meet his eyes. Quietly, she says, “Honey, you’re a little young to be getting up in the middle of the night every time a child wakes up crying.”
Her words swell in his mind, fester like a spread of black mold. He shrugs roughly and looks at Cassie again. Face. Hands. Neck. No marks. Nothing he can see but they could’ve done something, right? Not Mrs. Paxton, but one of the others. Jim or Tony or someone else, all because Peter wasn’t watching—
“You want some?”
Mrs. Paxton is gesturing at the table. An empty mug and a half-empty one. Bag of soft mini marshmallows next to it, and inhales that familiar powdery scent. Sweet, so fucking sweet, like a breath of fresh air laced with vanilla. And the chocolate, fuck, he can almost taste it. He’s nodding before he can help himself. The woman stands, still holding Cassie under one arm, and rifles through the cabinets with her free hand, pulling out a mug.
(It’s one of May’s mugs. A Christmas mug, bright red with dozens of white snowflakes painted all over it. When he blinks, he can see her drinking out of it; spice-thick eggnog and rooibos tea, burgundy wine and black coffee.)
Peter watches her take out a large blue tin, crack it open, scoop out a heaping spoonful of fine chocolate powder and tap it into the red mug. She adds a dusting of cinnamon and pours in a cupful of steaming water from the teapot on the stove. Stirring a couple times first, Mrs. Paxton pushes the cup to him. The smell is intoxicating: chocolate and cinnamon spice, and he wants to thank her; he wants to grab her wrist and beg her for a hundred more just like it. The bag of marshmallows is screaming at him; he wants to stuff his mouth full of them, chew and swallow until his belly bursts. When Mrs. Paxton pushes the bag to him, he takes a handful—six or seven—which feels the most he can take without repercussion.
He drinks it slowly, savoring every delicious sip. The marshmallows drift away from his mouth as he tips the mug; Mrs. Paxton is humming a song as she paces, patting Cassie’s back and humming. Patting and humming, patting and humming, every now and then singing a couple of the words. For one bizarre second, he hears a man’s voice blending with hers.
“The zoo,” Peter remembers suddenly.
Mrs. Paxton stops pacing, still swaying from one foot to the other with Cassie in her arms. “What?” she says.
“You were gonna take her to the zoo.”
She looks tearily at him. “Yeah. I was.”
He looks down at his mug; at the bottom, a marshmallow that won’t budge, and he’s too ashamed to ask for a spoon.
“Did she say anything else about me?”
“All the time.”
“She did?” she says.
Peter nods.
“And what did you…” The woman swallows; she’s blinking again, tearing up like usual. “What did you say to her?”
Peter can hear Cassie’s heartbeat separate of Mrs. Paxton’s, slightly faster even though she’s sleeping. “That you were looking,” he says quietly. “But it was really hard.”
The woman is blinking and blinking up at the ceiling. The tears come down anyway, and she doesn’t wipe them away; she can’t, not with her arms still cradling Cassie. “I know Jim won’t say it,” she says. “And I know we haven’t—” Her nose is running. “Haven’t expressed this to you, but I want to thank you.”
Peter blinks up at the woman—the one who rarely speaks to him, the one with Cassie’s nose and Cassie’s freckles and Cassie’s smile.
“You brought her back to us,” she says. “You kept her safe. That’s something we can never, ever repay you for.”
Peter doesn’t move; his hands still cupped around the mug, drawing leftover warmth from the ceramic. His knee hurts, just a little, and he swallows the pain, looking instead at his sleeping kid. Her hair’s still so short—he remembers doing that. Cassie had been scratching at her head for a while; he tried to get them out with his fingers first. He didn’t know what to do—he just feared she’d get sick if he didn’t do something. She sat in front of him, and he forced himself up, and he scraped away at the hair on her head one swipe at a time with the sharp edge of a can. Afterwards, Cassie rinsed her head the best she could and started crying. He doesn’t remember what he said to her after, just that she cried the whole night and barely slept.
“She had someone who cared for her there—in that—in that place. When I thought—I thought she didn’t have anyone.” Her nose runs, and she sniffs quietly, still patting her daughter’s back and rocking from one food to the other, one foot to the other. “You didn’t have to protect her, but you did.”
Peter looks at Cassie again, and his hearing goes quiet: a staticky, peaceful silence. Cassie jumping on the bed, Cassie chomping happily at a burger, Cassie crying into his chest. Cassie washing his clothes in the sink, Cassie squeezing his hand, Cassie brushing her teeth and smiling with a mouthful of foam.
“Can I have her?” she asks. “Just for tonight?”
Silence between them, and Peter can still smell the sugar in the air. Sweet powdery marshmallows. Cinnamon chocolate warmth. After a second, he nods.
She thanks him a couple times, and reaches across the table to him; Peter pulls his hands back into his lap before she can make contact. Then, still cradling Cassie to her chest, she walks through the kitchen door and shuts it behind her. He listens to them walk down the hallway, all the way to the Paxtons’ bedroom and shut the door. He doesn’t hear a man’s heartbeat, just Tony’s down the hall, and he relaxes into his chair, staring down into his mug.
He sits in the kitchen now, his cup of hot chocolate empty save the marshmallow stuck at the bottom.
Peter is alone.
And he’s not sure what to do without her.