twenty-one.
Peter remembered when Mr. Stark took his suit away from him after the ferry incident happened. He remembered begging to keep the suit, telling Tony that he was nothing without it. He remembered the cold stare that Mr. Stark gave him. He remembered how cold Mr. Stark had been as he found clothes for Peter to change into. He remembers the harsh silence. There were no jokes, no laughter or smiles or inappropriate jokes about Aunt May to ease the tension between them.
'If you died, I feel like that's on me.' He had said. Peter knew that Mr. Stark felt responsible for him as soon as they met. Tony liked Peter for his smarts, but could really care less for his inquisitiveness.
Peter thought it was so strange that it seemed like he had four parents when one of them only cared about him for his brain, one of them dropped a ramp on him, and the other two didn't do a whole lot of speaking to him, even now.
'I just wanted to be like you.' He had told Mr. Stark... Mr. Stark just stared at him, like he was an idiot. He looked at Peter like all he really wanted to do was kick him off of the rooftop they were standing on. He looked so angry that he had to come and save the day, and Peter knew why. Tony didn't like having to clean up after Peter. That's why when Vulture had crashed the plane, he was quick to clear out of the area. He knew Mr. Stark was going to look for him, but Peter managed to avoid him well enough Tony had started to wonder if he'd bled out somewhere.
He remembers the relieved look on Tony's face when he walked into the tower a couple of days later. The moving day had been moved back a couple of weeks due to the incident, so he was able to stay in bed for a couple of days until it didn't hurt so bad to breathe anymore.
Peter walked through the glass doors to the tower, still nursing a limp on his twisted ankle and bruises all over. His shirt was sticking to him where he'd slathered his burns in an antibiotic ointment. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd had the bandages he'd needed to doctor them correctly, but for now every move he made caused his shirt to stick to him and pull on the already sensitive skin.
It didn't take Mr. Stark long to see him, and when he did it looked like a weight had been lifted off of him. He'd called Aunt May's apartment and she'd told Tony that Peter was alright. He didn't seem to believe it until Peter showed up though.
Tony walked right up to him and was about to hug him for the first time ever when he saw the irritated burn peeking above his collar. The skin hadn't even begun to heal properly yet, which meant Tony absolutely had to intervene. Luckily, Tony Stark knew how to keep hospitals quiet, especially after all the visits he'd had. Sure, hospitals already had confidentiality rules, but Tony needed to make sure that not a single word about him was going to be breathed to the public.
That's why he trusted his own doctors to do what they could for Peter and keep their mouths shut about this random child that Tony Stark was wandering around with all of a sudden. He trusted them not to breathe a word of Peter or his injuries to anyone.
Tony didn't really know the true extent of Peter's injuries until he saw the x-rays. And even then he wasn't prepared for the surface damage the fight had inflicted on Peter.
One of the nurses had to help Peter out of his sweater because he physically couldn't move his arm to get it off. How did he get anything done when he was by himself? Did he force himself through the pain to get dressed and undressed every day? And how difficult did this injury make the simplest tasks for Peter?
He knew about Peter's advanced heal rate, but this wasn't looking very good. He kept his arm against his body, almost like he was afraid to move it even the slightest. Tony didn't blame him. He wasn't even upset that Peter didn't tell anyone. Tony probably wouldn't say anything about an injury like this either. In fact, he can think of several times he's hidden injuries from the people around him.
Peter's body could heal broken bones in 24 hours. 3rd degree burns vanished in just 48 hours. So what was up with him now? He had a shoulder that hadn't healed at all in 34 hours and his burns hadn't even begun to heal... Tony didn't have any research he could do on this, there were no documents, no files. The doctors managed to set his shoulder, and after that, it healed fine, but his burns healed so slowly...
After a month and the relocation upstate, his wounds seemed to be as healed as they were going to get, left as white patches of skin across his chest and arms. He saw Peter touching them sometimes when he was studying or thinking or just zoned out. He'd been doing a lot of that lately. He'd noticed that when Peter was alone, he'd curl up on whatever chair or couch he'd been left on and his hand would go straight to the damaged skin, and he wouldn't react much, just trail his fingertips back and forth across it.
Then, just a couple of seconds before someone entered the room, he'd snap out of it and become that same bubbly, optimistic teenager everyone knew him to be. It was almost like the old Peter was just a part that he played to please everyone around him. Tony read the articles, he knew the statistics. He knew all the rates of teenage anxiety and depression. He knew all the calculations and he knew all the signs of each little illness inside of Peter. He saw every little tell and tick that the poor kid tried to pack away into the instability trunk he'd hidden away.
Tony could easily see that Peter was self-conscious about it, those little patches of skin. Tony could easily spot the signs of the PTSD Peter'd been left with thanks to that fight... And he did everything to try and make it better for him. For the first few days of him living on the base, Tony did his best to be observant to try and find the best way to protect Peter, to find his triggers so they could be eliminated.
He noticed Peter got really jumpy when someone managed to sneak up behind him. He'd had his headphones up at full blast and didn't hear the door open behind him once and he'd been scared so bad that not only did he jump, but he cried and shook for over an hour. Wanda felt so bad... So Tony made it a point to have a dim light bar installed around Peter's room. It wasn't anything special, just a simple light that wrapped around the trim near the ceiling.
When it blinked white, it meant that someone was trying to contact him on the intercom. When it was blue, it meant someone was at the door either waiting to come in, or already on their way through it. When it blinked red, it meant that his heart rate was elevated and that Peter needed to calm down. The lights worked so well, Peter was visibly relaxed. These lights were only installed in his room though, so that's where he began spending the most time.
Until Tony decided the kid needed to leave his room more and found a way to integrate his idea into something portable for Peter. His idea was reintroduced to Peter in the form of a smart watch that was continuously scanning his surroundings. FRIDAY was linked through it, so even off base Peter could stay in touch through her if need be. The watch's warnings were simple, several long vibrates meant a connection through Friday's intercom system, or a call. Several short vibrates meant someone was on their way to him. One continuous vibration meant that his heart rate was elevated, and the vibration wouldn't stop until his heart rate was mostly normal again.
Peter might not ever say anything to Mr. Stark about it, but he was truly so very thankful for everything... He knew that without Mr. Stark, he probably wouldn't be alive right now... Little did Peter know that without him, Tony might not be alive right now either.