3
New Message From Bruce Banner: Headtothelab. Gotsomethingforyoutosee.
Tony tried his best to shield his watch from view, his palm over the screen in an effort to hide whatever text Banner had just sent.
Peter and May were just a few feet away, the two of them positioned at the other end of the living room couch. Both were tucked beneath an obscenely large blanket, a fuzzy blue one Pepper had gotten Tony when they’d moved into the tower.
“This place feels like a museum,” she’d said. “We’ve gotta spruce the place up. Make it feel more homey.”
Tony had scoffed. “White marble countertops and floor-to-ceiling windows aren’t homey enough for you?”
Despite his original protests, Tony had used the blanket so much that the seams had begun to fray. Not that Peter seemed to mind. He held the cover against his left cheek, the other side of his face squished against May’s shoulder. Both were focused on whatever was playing on the TV, some sort of home remodel show, but Tony’s thoughts were elsewhere.
He couldn’t get a certain image of Peter out of his mind; the mental snapshot he’d taken of the boy when Tony had found him lying on the balcony earlier that morning.
He had been in his workshop when he’d gotten the alarm. FRIDAY had come over the loudspeaker, her pleasant voice simply stating “Mr. Parker is waiting for you on the balcony, boss,” as if her words held no weight. As if it were any other day of the week, and a spider-kid that had been missing for the last twelve months showing up at the tower was no big deal.
He’d simply slapped his smartwatch onto his wrist and sprinted to the penthouse, not taking the time to fully suit-up. He couldn’t even imagine what freak of nature could have tricked FRIDAY’s advanced identification systems into thinking a dead man had somehow scaled Tony’s tower, and was just chilling on his terrace.
Turns out, the “freak of nature” was Tony’s long-lost intern.
He hadn’t believed his own eyes, at first, had thought his grief-addled brain was playing tricks on him. How could Peter be here? Be alive? All evidence he’d collected within the last year, or the serious lack thereof, had pointed to the contrary.
Stark liked to think he’d handled the loss well. He had been doing everything in his power to help May: recruiting the Avengers, assisting the police investigation, explaining Spider-Man’s absence to the press. Not to mention the fact that for once in his life, he’d been taking care of himself in the midst of everything. Pepper had been the one that recommended therapy, but Tony had seen its benefits in just a few sessions. He’d always just mentioned his issues to Pepper or Rhodey in passing and called it a day. Healthy? Maybe not. But it had worked just fine the last decade. (No, it hadn’t.)
Tony had never realized how beneficial it was to talk to someone, how being able to openly share whatever twisted shit was rumbling around inside his skull could be so relieving. Having an unbiased sounding board for his ideas and concerns was truly a breath of fresh air.
His therapist had taught him how to stay calm. How to reign himself in when the weight of whatever mental baggage he was carrying around became too heavy. He had gotten pretty good at it, actually. After a few months his nightmares had lessened in frequency. The random moments of panic or dissociation had seemed to fade as well.
None of that meant Peter’s disappearance hurt any less.
Losing Peter had been like...well...he didn’t know. He’d never had to go through anything like losing Peter before. Sure, he’d lost his parents when he was fairly young, but that was a different situation entirely. An entirely different kind of grief. Back in those days, he'd mainly relied upon two people, his best friend and his mentor. Without those two, he'd have been flying blind. He counted himself lucky that only one of them had ended up trying to kill him and steal his company.
He'd never had buddies to spare; not now, not then.
Peter’s disappearance had been less like flying blind and more like being the captain of an empty ship. Why was Tony sailing, if he had no one to sail with? Where were his passengers? His crew? It was as if he was stuck on the bridge, sailing straight into a storm with no navigation equipment for absolutely no reason.
Parker going missing hadn’t just been confusing. It had been empty, and dark, and messy, and more or less the reason Tony’s therapist had taught him breathing techniques to get through each day. Peter Parker’s absence had compressed his lungs, forced the air out of them in violent and quick succession.
Any lingering knowledge of said breathing techniques had flown out the window when Tony had seen Peter on the balcony. The little voice in his head had been leading him, full-heartedly insisting This isn’t our Peter. Our Peter is dead.
But is he? Tony questioned. Are we sure this couldn’t be him?
It was that uncertainty that had landed Peter with a repulsor aimed at the center of his face, and a very ruffled Tony Stark at his feet.
Now, sitting so close to him on the sofa, Tony wasn’t sure how he could have thought it was anyone else. This felt like his Peter, even if the boy’s looks fell short in some places.
For example, the perfect butterfly of bruises wrapping around Peter’s neck. Those were definitely new. They were a bright indigo and stood out drastically against his pale skin. He also had these crazy dark circles under his eyes. Pete looked as if he hadn’t gotten a solid night’s sleep in ages.
Tony knew the implications of Peter coming to consciousness at the bottom of the Hudson. If he hadn’t been put there on purpose, cement handcuffed and out cold, how else could he have gotten there? Someone was responsible for all of this.
For potentially killing Spider-Man.
But had he been killed? He looked so alive, leaning against May’s shoulder. He had the same ruffled hair, the same light behind his eyes Stark rarely saw in most people. There must be a reason why he only breathes a few times a minute, a reason why his heart only beats when his emotions run rampant. A scientific explanation for all of it.
Right?
That’s why Tony placed his hands on his knees and stood slowly from the couch. Maybe this text from Bruce meant that he’d found something within Peter’s blood samples. Tony would take anything, at this point, if it meant soothing his frazzled nerves.
“Where are you going?” Peter asked, momentarily peeling his eyes away from the television screen.
“Everyone pees, Peter.”
Peter chuckled and turned away. The natural light in the room made his skin appear almost translucent.
Tony hurried down the hall and to the elevator. When he walked into the lab, Bruce’s eye was firmly positioned over the ocular lens of a microscope.
“Tony, get a look at this.”
Bruce shoved his rolling chair away from the table to make room, Stark positioning himself over the microscope. “What am I looking at?”
Scattered splotches of purple fluoresced beneath the lens. Most of them were solid, abstract shapes, each with its own dark nucleus. Some of the cell membranes appeared stretched, nuclear blebbing evident in some, and full-scale membrane bursts evident in others. A select few seemed much less colored than the rest, their nuclei appearing faint in comparison to the others. These cells looked smaller, less mature. If Tony didn’t know any better, he’d have thought they were regressing.
“Peter’s cheek swab,” Bruce said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Most of the cells are perfectly healthy, but these…” Bruce grabbed a remote off of his desk, then tapped a button on the microscope. Peter’s sample appeared on a monitor a few feet away.
Banner pointed at some of the warped cells that Tony had noticed previously. “Cells like these are typically seen in cancer cases.”
Tony was quickly becoming confused. “So, you’re saying he has cancer?”
“No, no. Hold on.” Bruce pressed another button on the remote, and a different microscope slide appeared on the screen. This sample was dyed pink opposed to purple, its cells different than the last group. Most of these were relatively circular, while some resembled crescent moons.
“And here. His blood samples. These cells here, these half-circle ones. They’re a sign of sickle-cell anemia. I know you’re smart,”
“No shit.”
“But I’m going to explain this simply. Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body using hemoglobin. Altered hemoglobin is responsible for sickling the cell. Less cell surface area means less oxygen gets carried around the body. People with sickle-cell typically feel a variety of symptoms; fatigue, swelling of the extremities, among other things.”
“I thought this explanation was going to be short.”
“Right. Yeah.” Bruce sat back in his chair, evidently trying to calm himself down. He was getting worked up over Peter’s lab results. It wasn’t anger; the Big Green Guy wasn’t going to make an appearance. It seemed more like exasperation. Like whatever sickle-shaped puzzle pieces he was trying to smash together just weren’t fitting. “I compared his new samples to his old ones. You know, the ones you collected a couple years back. There’s no sickling in the old samples.”
Stark had been able to follow the conversation up until now. He hoped this wouldn’t take much longer. He was old, but not old enough for Peter to believe he needed twenty minutes for a bathroom break. Hopefully May and Love It or List It on HGTV would occupy him for the time being. “I don’t know what you’re implying.”
“His old red blood cells and cheek swabs were completely normal. I mean, beside the arachnid DNA scattered throughout his genome, but that’s a confusing topic for another time. Something about what happened to him, something that happened after Peter died, altered his cell anatomy drastically. The sickling of his cells should have caused complications. Instead, I think it’s actually helping him.”
Tony’s watch buzzed. He didn’t check it, just let it vibrate against his wrist.
“How’s that possible? How could having sickle-cell possibly be helpful to anyone?”
Bruce was standing now, shuffling through a stack of papers on the workbench. He yanked one from a teetering pile and handed it to Tony. Plastered across it were several different tables and lists of numbers, colored bar graphs and pie charts displaying information such as Peter’s blood-oxygen levels, blood pressure, and more.
“Sickled cells also die extremely fast, much faster than regular red blood cells, causing anemia. Here’s the kicker. From the looks of it, Peter’s aren’t following those same rules. The cells sickle and carry less oxygen, but they’re not causing the typical side effects that come with anemia. They’re just not requiring him to use and absorb as much oxygen as the average person.”
That was quite a pill to swallow. Tony understood human biology, sure. He had enough of an anatomical understanding to get by. But this? A genetic condition that Peter somehow obtained through dying was keeping him alive?
Was whatever this was, actually considered living, though?
“What-what about the cheek swab? Those didn’t look quite right, either. You mentioned they look like cancer cells.”
Bruce switched the monitor back to the first slide. Blobs of light and dark purple filled the screen once again. “Yeah. That. Generally, that would imply that the cells are replicating uncontrollably, right? But right now, instead of creating a tumor or metastasizing to other parts of the body, they’re just...dying. The cells grow too large or have any sort of mild deformity and its spontaneous apoptosis. It’s normal for the body to self-destruct cells that could be harmful, but Peter’s seems to be doing it at an exponential rate. That’s what happened to these cells here.” He motioned to the small, faded cells Tony had noticed before. “His body’s killing them off before they get a chance to become dangerous. But how are we supposed to know if those would have actually been harmful? By the looks of them, they hadn’t even matured enough to perform mitosis.”
Tony’s watch buzzed again. He tilted the digital face toward him.
NewMessageFrom PeterParker: Did you slip and fall in there, Mr. Stark? You’re missing Property Brothers!
“Sum it up, Doc. That was a lot to digest. What are you saying?”
Bruce switched the monitor off and dropped the remote into the pocket of his lab coat opposed to the workbench. Tony knew he’d forget where it was, later. “Peter’s physiology is so whacked out right now. Who knows what’s going to happen when he no longer needs to breathe at all? Or if his body moves on from killing these rapidly appearing mutated cells and starts aiming for ones we know are healthy? I know he seems more or less alive, Tony. But from how things are looking, I’m not sure he’ll be that way much longer.”
Stark could feel his heartbeat in his toes.
“Whatever brought him back is going to end up killing him. Again.”
“Should I not use that bathroom for the rest of the day?”
Peter’s eyes were on Tony when he walked into the room. He’d been well-distracted by May and the TV for awhile, but Tony’s absence hasn’t gone unnoticed. Nobody took a half hour to pee. Not to mention the fact that Stark would never have proclaimed something so personal to the room at-large. Going to the bathroom was for mere mortals, right at the top of the “No Way” list with things like eating raw vegetables and sweeping your own floor. Whatever he’d been doing hadn’t involved the bathroom.
“Are you kidding? I shit rainbows.”
Stark walked directly past the back of the couch and toward the bar cart across the room.
The bronze cart had been fully stocked for as long as Peter could remember. It wasn’t as if it was kept continuously replenished, though. From what he could tell, the amber liquids within the numerous fancy bottles and flasks never seemed to change levels. Some containers still wore their rubbery seals, the bottles never having been opened in the first place. The same could be said for the whiskey and martini glasses, their surfaces perfectly polished but their positions on the cart never changing. Peter wondered how many hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars worth of wasted alcohol was sitting on that cart.
Maybe the cart’s presence was purely sentimental. Peter knew that Mr. Stark had struggled with alcoholism periodically throughout his life. He may have kept the cart around as a reminder of what he’d overcome, how he didn’t need whatever was within those bottles. Worst case scenario, he’d never gotten rid of it so he’d have a bountiful supply of his preferred mind-numbing agent in the event of an emergency.
Either way, deep down, Peter had always wanted him to get rid of it. He felt that having it around in the first place was just too risky, too tempting. Wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of the issue entirely? Dump it all down the drain and forget that it had been around in the first place?
Maybe that’s why Stark seemed so strong, so collected. He faced the problem head-on. Developed a thick skin in defense of the metaphorical needle trying to snake its way into his veins.
May dozed, leaning on the armrest of the couch. Peter had a feeling that this was probably the most soundly she’d slept since he went missing. She’d always been restless when her mind was racing, taking long walks when she was stressed or cleaning the entire apartment in anticipation of major events. May Parker wasn’t a woman to sit and watch the world go by. If she wanted something, she worked for it. So how hard had she worked to get her nephew back?
Peter watched silently as Mr. Stark carefully selected a bottle, one with a blank label and a red wax seal. He either didn’t realize Peter was watching, or didn’t care, because he took his time peeling the wax away carefully with his forefinger and thumb. He poured two fingers of what Peter presumed was scotch (because he didn’t really know how to identify liquor, truthfully) into a glass so crystalline that it sparkled in the sunlight leaking through the windows.
Peter felt his lethargic heart beat twice, each pump of blood seeming to bounce around inside his skull. The sudden action of his circulatory system forced his lungs into action, his nostrils flaring with the effort of trying to hide the intensity of his exhales. With how little he’d been breathing in the last few hours, Peter had a feeling Stark would notice if he started huffing and puffing for no reason.
Mr. Stark obviously hadn’t gone to the bathroom. So, where had he gone? What about it had sent him spiraling quickly enough to warrant a drink?
Tony lifted the drink toward his face, but to Peter’s surprise, the rim of the glass passed his lips and rested just beneath his nose. His breath made ripples on the scotch’s surface.
“Always liked the smell of this stuff,” he said. “Used to be one of my favorites, back in the day.”
He continued holding the glass, but returned to his place on the couch. He let his head fall back, eyes trained on the ceiling. Tony obviously had no intention of drinking whatever he’d poured, seemingly finding comfort in its very presence. Peter almost scoffed; it was a stressed adult’s version of a teddy bear. A mental image of Tony with his arms wrapped around an Iron Man Build-A-Bear came into focus. It was hard imagining the man so vulnerable.
Tony’s watch buzzed, just as it had earlier. Peter wasn’t sure what Stark had done with his phone, but he evidently didn’t need it.
He tipped his wrist toward his face, pursing his lips at whatever was on the screen. In one swift motion, he unclamped the wristband and tossed the watch onto the coffee table.
“Had enough of that.” The hand around his scotch glass went white around the knuckles.
New Message From Bruce Banner (1/3):
Did gel electrophoresis on some of the kid’s DNA. Sample prep was almost impossible, PCR barely gave me enough viable material to test. The sample I collected hours ago is already more degraded than the one you kept from a year ago. It’s fascinating.
New Message From Bruce Banner (⅔):
Not in a good way, of course.
New message From Bruce Banner (3/3):
But seriously. This decay rate is insane.