Chapter 3
The teenager was shaking. Then, without warning, Happy felt the boy’s grip around him loosen before sliding southwards.
“Pete? Shit,” said the burly man, trying but failing to catch the boy as he fell to the dirt below. With some effort - he really did need to get fit - he managed to scoop Peter up and get him into the jet, depositing him in the nearest seat and crouching in front of him.
“Pete can you hear me?” he asked, gently tapping the pale face in front of him. Slowly, Peter’s eyes fluttered open, confused.
“What happened?”
“You passed out kid,” Happy said, passing the boy a glass of water. “Don’t worry it wasn’t for long.”
Peter gulped down the cool liquid, relishing the first drink he’d had in more than 36 hours. “Can I have some more please, I’m so thirsty.”
“Sure, you need food? Eat this,” Happy put two protein bars on the arm of the chair. “Thanks,” Peter said, adjusting himself in the seat, wincing, before wearily opening one of the protein bars..
“Pete we can’t stay here long but I need to know what the hell has happened. And you are hurt, we need to get you fixed up don’t we?”
He didn’t want to tell the story. He didn’t want to remember the nightmare, the betrayal, the impact, the pain. He didn’t want to admit he was a failure.
“I need some stitches,” Peter admitted. “The rest is probably just bruising,” he lied.
“Ok, where do you need patching up? I’m no expert but I stitched up my dad a few times after bouts in the boxing ring.”
“Um, on my shoulders, they’re pretty deep,” Peter said, quietly.
“Well here’s the deal, I’ll make a start and you can tell me what happened,” Happy said, gesturing to the stool across the aisle. Peter struggled to stand, stiff and sore, and gingerly moved across to the seat. There, the words flew out.
“I just wanted to have a great trip with my friends, and tell MJ how I feel. I didn’t want to be Spider-Man, just for a little while. Happy, I was tired, so god-damn tired, and who needed Spider-Man in Europe anyway?
“You knew Nick Fury was trying to call me? It was to meet me in Venice. He knew my school trip itinerary to the minute. He’d been watching me - he tranquilized Ned to talk with me and then he sets me up with Beck, formally introduces me after the whole water incident.”
Happy interjects. “So, that Mysterio guy is called Beck? What’s his first name?”
“Quentin.”
Happy KNEW that name. As Peter continued he dwelled on that thought.
“So then I’m asked if I want to go with Beck to Prague to kill off the last of these elemental creatures. I say no, I want to go to Paris and tell MJ how I feel. But oh no… our entire trip is diverted to Prague.
“So like clockwork, this fire creature thing appears and me and Beck are trying to defeat it and then Beck blows it up and it’s all good. We are asked by Fury to go to Berlin, to Europol to debrief. I’m thinking it’s not for me - I just wanna go on my trip, you know? Beck asks me if I wanna get a drink which we do, and here’s where it all goes wrong. It felt like the right thing to do to give Beck the glasses Tony gave me, to hand over EDITH. It just felt like he was more responsible.”
“Ok….” Happy says, still racking his brain about the name.
“And then I go for a walk with MJ, thinking my trip was back on track, when she shows me this metal thing she picked up when we were fighting the fire creature. Turns out the whole thing was an illusion, using projectors and drones. I knew I had to tell Fury in Berlin, get there before Beck did.
“Problem was he’d got there first, and he created this...illusion. Told me if I’d been better, Tony...Mr Stark...would still be alive. I...I…I’d rather not talk about that bit.”
“And you don’t have to,” Happy said, cleaning around the two wounds just below Peter’s neck. “But you might wanna talk about it later if it’s troubling you? Stuff like that isn’t good to try to deal with alone.”
Peter nodded, nervously. “It was so real, Happy. And then he forced me back, and back, and back and without even knowing it I was on a train track...and then I got hit.”
“Wait, you were hit by a train?” Happy exclaimed. “How are you not dead?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, that’s how I ended up in the Netherlands. And here we are.”
Happy sat back and took a deep breath. “Kid, it’s a miracle you’re here. We should get you to a hospital.”
“No time Hap, “ Peter said, wincing. “I gotta stop him. Please, if you can just stitch me up and we can get going.”
Happy threaded the needle and began. Each wound probably only needed three or four stitches each, and he wanted to be as quick as he could. “Hold still,” he warned.
Peter hissed with each stitch. “Ouch,” he moaned.
“Thought you had super strength?” Happy said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Still hurts,” Peter grumbled. Another stitch went in. “Happy!”
“Relax,” Happy said. There wasn’t much else to say. He tried to speed up with the stitches.
“Ahh my god!!” Peter yelped, jumping up and yanking the needle and thread from Happy’s hand.
“Pete relax,”
“Don’t tell me to relax Happy! How can I relax when I messed up so bad?” Peter yelled. “I trusted Beck, right? I thought he was my friend so I gave him the only thing Mr Stark left behind for me and now he’s going to kill my friends and half of Europe so please, do NOT tell me to relax!”
Peter slumped in the chair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have shouted…. I just really miss him.”
“I miss him too,” Happy said, sadly.
“Everywhere I go, I see his face. And, the whole world is asking who is going to be the next Iron Man,” Peter said, the tears now falling freely. “I don’t know if that’s me Happy, I’m not Iron Man.”
Happy’s heart ached seeing Peter, this teenager, this boy, hurting so much.
“You’re not Iron Man, you’re never going to be Iron Man. Nobody could live up to Tony, not even Tony. Tony was my best friend, and he was a mess. He second-guessed everything, he was all over the place. The one thing he did that he didn’t second-guess, was picking you. I don’t think Tony would have done what he did, if he didn’t think you were going to be here after he was gone.
“Now your friends are in trouble, you’re all alone, your tech is missing, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m gonna kick his ass,” Peter said, Happy’s speech giving him a vital shot of determination.
“No like, right now, what are we going to do? We’ve been hovering here for 15 minutes and we don’t know where your friends are, right?”
“Can I use your phone?”
“Sure,” he said, handing over the handset. Peter quickly navigated the phone and logged into his instagram, knowing there was one account which would definitely tell them where they needed to go. Flash Thompson. Sure enough, he’d live-streamed their arrival at Paddington station not 45 minutes previously.
“They’re in London,” he said. Happy jumped up, heading to the cockpit.
“But I need a suit!”
“Suit? No problem!” Happy pressed a button in the overhead panel, revealing a mobile lab, with everything in it Peter would need to create a new suit within the hour.
Peter walked in, adrenaline pumping through his system. Everything looked just the same as it had when he’d worked in the lab with Tony. He put his hand on the control panel, and to his surprise it instantly unlocked.
“Ok um…give me everything you have on Spider-Man,” he said tentatively. Instantly, all the suits Peter had worn plus two prototypes flew up. He could take his pick. But for this battle he knew he’d need more.
He picked a suit and began to make modifications, scooping up the prototype web shooter, light surrounding his hand and arm to test how it felt before manufacture. He felt eyes watching him.
“What?” he said, looking at Happy who had this knowing smile.
“Nothing,” said the older man. “You get the suit, I’ll get the music.” There seemed to be only one choice for this moment. AC/DC began to play loudly.
“Oh I love Led Zeppelin!” the kid exclaimed, as Happy got the jet airborne and bound for London.
Peter worked non stop on the suit, increasing the taser web strength by 25% as he knew he’d probably need a bigger shock to take out the drones en masse, and adding extra strength to his gliding wings and parachute in case of any big falls.
“You ok back there?” Happy asked, checking in.
“Um, yeah I’m OK. Sore, but you know, superstrength and all that,” Peter said, masking how he really felt. Happy gave him a knowing look. “I’ll get patched up when this is done, promise.”
That seemed to be enough. “I’m going to call Fury now, let him know we’re on our way.”
As the jet approached the British coast, Happy knew they didn’t have long left before Peter was going to have to defeat that bastard. He checked in one last time.
“Ok Fury has the coded message. Your friends are at the Tower Bridge, we call it London Bridge but I figured it out. I’m gonna go scoop them up, OK? We’re close.”
“We’re close,” Peter agreed.
“How’s the suit coming?”
“Almost done.”
“Good.”
“Wait wait before you go,” Peter said, fishing in one of his pockets and revealing a pretty black necklace. “If something happens to me can you give this to MJ?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, you’re gonna give it to her yourself. You’ve got this!” Happy said, taking the necklace and putting it in his pocket.
“I got this,” Peter said, as if repeating it would make it happen.
“Right, walk me through it.”
“I know it’s illusion tech. All I have to do is get inside the illusion and then I can take it down and find him, and he’s just a guy so I can take EDITH right back,” he said.
“But last time you got hit by a train…”
“True, but, this time...it’s hard to explain uh, I have like this sixth sense?”
“The Peter Tingle?” Happy said. Peter’s face froze. No way. He decided he didn’t have time to argue the point. All that mattered was getting the suit on and defeating Beck.
Within five minutes the suit was ready.
Happy was walking back the cockpit when he heard a yelp from the lab.
“Pete, you OK?”
“Yeah...just trying to get this suit off is a bit more painful than I anticipated.”
Happy looked back to see the boy trying to pull the skin-tight T-shirt over his head and ultimately failing. Clearly raising his shoulders above his head was too painful - and the attempt to pull it off revealed the reason why. There wasn’t an inch of the kid’s torso that wasn’t black and blue and every colour in between. The worst of it was on his right side, deep red bruising intermingled with a map of cuts and grazes.
“Here,” Happy said. “Put your arms back down and I’ll help. Sit down.”
Happy grabbed Peter’s right hand and helped his arm through the armhole, then raised the tee so it was resting on his shoulder, repeating it on the left side before pulling the whole thing over his head.
“Thanks,” Peter said, standing back up.
“You’re definitely going to a hospital after this. And I’m not helping you with your pants,” Happy replied. “I’ll stay though because I want to see how that leg looks.”
“I don’t,” Peter said, releasing the belt, button and zipper. Just the feeling of the fabric moving against the skin was enough to make the nausea rise in his stomach. He pushed the trousers down past his butt and fell back into the seat.
“You need to take your boots off first, Pete.”
“I know,” said the teen, exhausted. He tried to reach down but his ribs screamed in protest, and so did he. “Shit,” he hissed. “Can’t do that.”
Happy took over and pulled the boots off, taking care not to jostle his right leg too much with the action. He looked up at Peter, the colour having left his face again and panting slightly as he tried to regulate his breathing. Innuendo be damned, he thought, grabbing at the hems of the trousers and pulling down to save Peter the job.
His leg was a mess. It was beyond just bruising, it almost looked like he’d been burned, deep red and scabbed over as if he’d been attacked with sandpaper. Where it wasn’t red, it was black and purple and swollen all the way down the outside of his thigh to his knee, which also looked twisted and in need of fixing.
“Jesus Peter,” Happy said. “How are you even walking?”
“Not sure to be honest,” Peter said through gritted teeth. “I think it’s fractured, there’s a really deep itch, so it’s healing. Whether it’s healing right or not is another matter.”
Happy went to the small medical box on the side and grabbed the roll of bandage and ice pack inside it. “Let’s strap it up for the time being, we’ve still got 15 minutes before we arrive and you don’t need long to suit up, right?”
He strapped the ice pack to Peter’s thigh, and made him elevate it on the seat next to him. “You gotta get this checked out Pete,” Happy said, concerned.
“I know, I know..”
“Listen I gotta go fly this thing, we’re nearing London airspace. Give me a shout when it’s time to suit up and I’ll help if I can.”
Peter nodded, allowing himself ten minutes to rest before the inevitable showdown.
He felt a hand gently shake his shoulder, and then tap his face. His ten minutes was up, sleep had felt good but fleeting. He gingerly moved his leg to the ground and took off the strapping and ice pack. He felt some relief but knew it wouldn’t last for long. He restrapped his thigh tightly with the bandage again, for some kind of support.
The suit was ready. He pulled it from the manufacturing pod and climbed into it, patting the spider symbol in the middle to adhere it to his body. The compression of the suit and the bandage held his leg steady, taking the edge of the pain enough for Peter to be able to move more freely.
“Happy I need to get on the outside of the jet, how do I do that?”
“Escape hatch at the back there, press the yellow button on the bottom left hand side of the lab,” he shouted.
“Thanks! See you on the outside!”