You Were There, Too (You Drove That Train Right Through My Heart)
All Peter knew was warm water.
He floated through a dark ocean that he didn’t understand and didn’t much care to, with no body and hardly a mind. Time passed quicker than he could comprehend, yet was at a standstill, too. Sometimes the water was calm, and he was at peace. It was at these times he let his consciousness drift away into nothingness, dissolving into nothing more than sand settling on the ocean floor.
Sometimes, though, the water would spin and crash violently around him in waves and his limbs would squirm without him asking them to as he tried to grab onto something, anything real.
He remembered feeling like this when he got his appendix out as a child. But back then it felt like only a few hours passed before the dizzying waters receded and he was left on the cold shore of consciousness, Ben’s hand in his and a needle stuck in his skin. Now, he couldn’t have fought the water away if he tried.
There were times when the waves started to fade, and he heard something other than rushing water—beeping, the clacking of a keyboard, someone barking frantic orders—and could feel something beneath him, real and there. After the first couple of times he began to wake, he learned to dread it, because after the sounds and the sheets came the pain.
Pain wasn’t quite the right word for everything that Peter was feeling. There were different types of pain all through his body, too many to be adequately described by such a broad term. Both of his arms ached, a deep, throbbing pain that weighed him down. His head throbbed loudly, like hammers pounding inside of his skull. The palm of his left hand burned, so fiercely he could have sworn it was truly on fire. And his eye—it was always the last feeling he clung to as something sharp pricked his neck and he fell back into oblivion. No matter how he rode the waves of pain, the searing agony surrounding his right eye never fully subsided. It was always there, a constant screaming that grew louder in time with the dizzying waves.
But finally, finally, finally, after what felt like centuries of bobbing in the dark sea, Peter felt the warm waters around him begin to recede, exposing his skin to the cold air above.
——
Tony was almost convinced that May Parker had vanished. Four straight days of hunching over his laptop in the corner of Peter’s hospital room, typing rapidly as he illegally bypassed blocks and firewalls, accessing medical records and psychiatric history, and he had found nothing useful. All of May’s social media was gone, her phone number went straight to voicemail. Her license plate number hadn’t been seen since she left the apartment, her cards had all been cancelled after all the money was withdrawn at an ATM two blocks from her home. And no matter how many people he sent out across the city, arming them with drones and hand made spyware, not a single clue had come up.
(But he couldn’t stop, because stopping meant thinking about what he would do once Peter woke up for real, because stopping meant realizing that he had no idea what was happening, because stopping meant addressing the hundreds of reporters waiting outside of the hospital like hawks until he could manage to transfer Peter to the Medbay.)
A few times, Peter had stirred and cracked open his eyes, but immediately he would begin to breathe too quickly, too heavily, his gaze flitting across the room with no real focus. Then, seconds after his heart rate would shoot up far past the maximum limit for safety, and a nurse would rush in, push a few buttons on one of the many machines he was hooked up to, and Peter would sink back off into his constant sleep.
Tony almost envied his stillness.
As he logged the name of May Parker’s third grade science teacher, MJ walked through the door and placed a black coffee in his hands. He thanked her and she nodded as she sat in the chair to his right and sipped her own. He almost objected, saving that seat for Pepper, but she had left for the day. He kept typing.
MJ sighed and leaned her head towards the ceiling in his peripheral. After a long moment of blinking into the empty air, she leaned over, training her gaze on Tony’s laptop, which now displayed a picture of May’s long-dead bulldog. “Watcha doin’?” She asked.
Tony didn’t take his eyes off of the screen. “Finding as much information on May as I can. Might be useful.”
MJ nodded, took another sip of her coffee. She slumped deeper into her chair and stared at the steady rise and fall of Peter’s chest. A minute of silence went by. Then, she said, “You know you’re not going to find her, right?”
Tony’s fingers froze over the keys. “What?”
“Not without him,” she said, gesturing to Peter. “She’s gone somewhere secret, and we’re not going to find her until he tells us where that is.”
”What makes you think that he knows?”
MJ shrugged lightly. “He’s the only one who saw her as she was. He knows something about her that we won’t be able to really find.”
Tony fell silent, staring at Peter’s slack face. She was right, wasn’t she? He had never truly seen the extent of May’s abuse. He had seen her cracks—her frighteningly wide smiles, her tight lips, her shaking hands—but nothing more. He’d never seen her break, not like Peter. The thought of it made his stomach turn.
”Fuck,” he whispered.
MJ nodded. “Fuck,” she replied.
And there they sat, staring at the white sheet covering Peter’s limp body.
Until is wasn’t so limp.
The heart monitor picked up slowly, not a sudden onslaught of rapid beeping like before. Tony scooter to the edge of his seat, tapping MJ to attention, his eyes glued on Peter, whose face had begun to screw up. After a second, he started to squirm lightly, parting his lips. Then, he stilled, and his eye cracked open. For a second, it was scrunched, confused, blinking at the ceiling as if trying to clear away a film. Then, he focused, and his gaze swept the room, taking in every bit of the world around him.
Tony stood, placing his computer on the floor, and gently approached Peter. Peter’s eye widened upon seeing him, and he saw his breathing pick up. Tony held up his hands. “Hey, kid. It’s me, alright? It’s Tony.”
Peter slowly cracked open his chapped lips, took a shuddering breath, and croaked so quietly it was almost a whisper, “Mr. Stark?”
Tony forced himself not to cringe at just how broken the kid’s voice was. He swallowed, then said, “Yup. Yeah, it’s me. You’re in the hospital, alright? You’re safe.”
Peter blinked. “I’m...I’m in the hospital?” A tremor crept into his voice.
“Yeah, but I’m working on getting you transferred to the Medbay. Don’t worry, you won’t be here long.”
Peter swallowed. His eyes squinted and he scanned the room, his eyes stuttering over MJ, but then passing her. Finally, he said two words that turned Tony’s blood to ice:
”Where’s May?”
Tony thought this was a question of relief. He thought Peter would be glad that May was gone, and that this question was just to secure his safety. Which was why he made the mistake of smiling and saying proudly, “She’s on the run, but I’ve got every force tracking her down. Don’t worry, kid. You’ll never have to see her again.”
But Peter didn’t smile. No, his face crumbled as he said, “W-what?”
And Tony, in all of his stupidity, kept smiling as he said, “Yup. We’ve got plenty of evidence to convict her, all we need is to find her and get your testimony down. We can get that once she’s in handcuffs, though—“
”No,” Peter interjected, and Tony froze.
”Hm?” He said, his half-smile still painted on his face.
Peter started to sit up, forcing his cast-ridden arms to move. “You—you can’t arrest her. She’s fine, I’m fine, we’ll be fine. And y-you can’t transfer me to the Medbay, I need to be home when she comes back. It’ll be fine if I just show her I’m okay.”
MJ stepped up to Tony’s side, leaning over Peter ever so slightly. “Peter, we’re not letting you go back to May. She almost killed you.”
Peter closed his eyes and took a breath. “No, I know that. But she didn’t. She stopped before she did, she knew what she was doing. And—and it was my fault, I took Ben’s shirt, she was just mad, it’ll all be okay when I’m back and we talk it out. We always resolve it, alright?”
Tony and MJ exchanged a worried glance. Tony started, “Pete...” but he couldn’t finish. How could he? How could he tell this kid, this child, broken and bloodied before him that the only person he could trust had hurt and abandoned him? How could he make him believe it?
He took a breath and continued, “May’s not coming back. She knows she’ll get arrested if she does. What she did wasn’t punishment, it was abuse, and she knows it. You don’t have to go back there.”
And those eyes, those stupid puppy eyes looked up at him and whispered simply, “That’s not true.”
MJ said gently, “Yes, it is. And we need you to help us prove it, alright?”
”But I don’t want to prove it! There’s nothing to prove!”
“Peter,” MJ said, reaching out to touch his arm. Peter shoved her away. She retracted her hand as if she had been burned, and said again, much quieter than before, “Peter, we found you lying in a pool of your own blood right as May was pulling away in her car. She almost killed you. It doesn’t matter what you think, what she did was illegal. You’re safe now, though, okay?”
”But this isn’t what I want!” Peter protested, his voice starting to rise. “I just want to go home!”
Tony sighed. “Look, I—you don’t have to admit it right now, alright? But all I’ve been doing for the past four days is trying to find May, and same goes for the NYPD. Do you have any idea where she might be?”
”Why do you even need to find her? If you think she’s such a danger to me, aren’t you glad she’s gone?!”
Tony ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “No, kid. We still need to press charges. We have to find her so we can bring her to justice. We need you to find her and confirm what she did.”
And suddenly, those soft eyes were hard. There was no trace of tears, and Tony could almost see the one beneath the bandage turn to stone as well as the other. Peter’s frown became carved, and his face flushed. Tony heard all of the anger in the world, more than in the loudest hurricane, when Peter quietly said, “No.”
Tony blinked. “What?” He asked incredulously.
”No,” Peter repeated. “I’m not telling you where she went.”
”Wait, so—so you know?” MJ asked.
”I’m not telling you anything. I’m not selling out my Aunt. Drop the charges, and maybe I’ll tell you.”
”Kid,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair, “You know we can’t do that. She broke the law, and there’s clear evidence. The second I call a doctor in here to check you, we’re bringing in police to question you and confirm what you went through, alright? This isn’t a question.”
Peter looked down into his lap, his expression unreadable and half-hidden by curls and bandages. “Leave me alone,” he whispered.
MJ reached out her hand again, “Peter—“
”Leave me alone!” He shouted, and Tony and MJ both jumped back. By the time Tony’s heart calmed, Peter was back to staring at his lap with a furrowed brow. He started to say something, but then felt MJ’s cold hand on his arm, saw her silently shake her head. Breathing heavily, anger hot in his stomach at this stupid teenager refusing his help, he let himself be guided back into his seat, silently stepping over his laptop.
After he sat, MJ leaned out of the door and called for the doctor to check Peter, but Tony ignored. All he could focus on was the smoldering irritation in his gut as he stared at Peter, holding onto it. Because he knew as soon as the hot rage faded, it would give way to freezing fear. Sadness, anxiety, uncertainty would fill him to the brim and he would be useless, and then May would never be found.
He couldn’t feel for the kid. Not now, when he refused to cooperate. He blinked away the tears pricking his eyes and clung to his anger, forcing away thoughts of just what May had done to him to convince him that his near-death was his own fault.
He held onto that anger as the doctor rushed in and begun asking a million questions, as Peter kept his mouth sealed shut, as MJ kept one hand on the mattress and called Ned and Flash, who had been forced to come home by his father. He held onto it, picked up his computer, and got back to work.
(And maybe, just maybe, a tear would roll down his cheek for just a second before he could wipe it away.)