twenty-three.
When Peter woke, he was in a room that looked all too familiar. Crisp white and glass surrounded him and he instantly knew where he was. He sat up quickly but felt dizzy. He felt a sharp pain in his arm from where he'd yanked on his IV and his blood drip, but he yanked both needles out, shocked and afraid. What had happened to him? And where was Wade?
He ran to the wall of glass and beat on it as hard as he could with what little strength he had. "Hey! Mr. Stark! Steve! Anybody, please! Let me out of here!"
The doors at the end of the hall slid open to reveal Bucky and Nat, fully suited up and packing heat. They each had guns resting in their holsters, but he wondered what the big threat could be. He took in their defensive stances and his heart dropped into his stomach. Was he the threat?
"Nat... Why... Why am I here?" He pressed his palms flat against the glass and she looked to the floor at the sign of vulnerability.
"Tony's orders, Peter... You ran away, you've been gone for days..." She shook her head, hair falling into her eyes. "That Mercenary brought you back to us half dead, with one of the deadliest creatures inside of this facility... I don't know what you were thinking Peter, but now we need to know where he is. We need to know where Wade Wilson is and what he's done with VX9103."
Peter's brows furrow as he looks between both parental figures in confusion. "VX...9103? What, what does that mean?"
"You mean to tell me you've never seen or heard of it?" She asks as Bucky stands next to her in stoic silence.
Peter tries to recall something, anything, about what they're asking him. All he can come up with is having seen the code etched into a metal door in the basement. He makes it clear that he's never seen it anywhere else but there and they sigh but press harder for Wade's location. He can't give it to them. Even if he did know, he wouldn't tell them. If Wade was gone it was for a good reason, and if Wade left him behind, that was probably for a good reason too.
Peter swayed and leaned on the glass, feeling suddenly weaker than before. Bucky was quick to open the door and scoop Peter up into his arms. He turned to look at Natasha, who seemed to know what he was about to say before he even said it. "That's not our choice to make, James."
He shook his head. "I refuse to leave him here. Stark's got him trapped down here like some kinda animal. S'not human and it sure as hell ain't fair."
"I don't know if you noticed, Tin Man, but life's not fair." All three of them shifted their attention to the door, where Tony stood with Bruce next to him. They'd been attached at the hip since Peter got back. Tony knew all about machines, sure, but Bruce knew about people. Tony knew about people too, but he knew what made them tick, what set them off. Tony Stark knew what people wanted and knew just how to take it away from them. Bruce Banner knew people in a whole different light.
"He's a child Tony, it's not right for you to keep him isolated down here, you know what that could do to him. You know what it did to you." Natasha snapped. It wasn't often she bothered to badmouth Tony Stark to his face, but this was her little boy they were talking about. The only son she'd ever known, and the only child she'd ever let herself care for.
Tony was struck by her words and visibly hurt, but if there was something else he knew about people, it was how to piss them off. "Yeah, but he's not MY kid, and last I checked he couldn't possibly be yours either, so why don't you put him back in bed and get out?"
Peter felt his heart drop impossibly lower. Tony laid no claim to him as a child, this he already suspected. But to hear it out loud was another matter all on its own. In his already weakened state, his spirit was being crushed and torn apart by one of the few people he trusted to keep him safe... Maybe there was no such thing as safe anymore...
"Why? So you can keep usin' him as an experiment? He's a human bein' for cryin' out loud!" Bucky held him a little closer to his chest, a little tighter. He stood a little higher, a little stronger. Way back when, in the far away 40's, there was a version of James Buchannan Barnes that wanted to have children in his life. He wanted to have little versions of himself and the man that he loved running around, despite the impossibility of it all. They'd once considered a surrogate, but with homosexuality still being illegal, it was nothing more than a dream... But now there was a child, and even though he carried none of his blood through his veins, he had plenty of resemblance to him and Steve both.
Peter carried the dark hair and dark eyes and sarcasm that Bucky had, all while sporting the strong-headedness and sharp wit that Steve brought to the table. Somehow this child born over 50 years after they last saw the sun as regular human beings was almost the perfect blend of the two of them. And Bucky wasn't about to let that go because Tony Stark had an insatiable need to control everything and everyone around him. "The way I see it Stark, you got two options right now. You can turn 'round and let us do what needs done, or you can, as they say, suck a fat one."
The terminology made Tony stutter and blush in both embarrassment and anger at the same time. This marks the first time Bucky has ever used sucking dick as a threat that Tony didn't like. He looked shocked and glanced to Bruce who said nothing.
"I think they're right, Tony, I uh, I don't think we should keep him down here any longer... The isolation can't be good for him. Besides, he truly didn't do anything wrong that we know of. It'd be detrimental to his health and developmental stages. He is still a child."
It wasn't hard to see the conflict in Tony's eyes. He knew that he was outnumbered here but he still had two choices. Put his foot down and become the bad guy, or roll over and show his stomach like the weak little puppy that he is. This was totally the wrong time, but Tony was lying if he didn't think that Bucky staring him down was the hottest thing since sliced bread... Did people still say that now? Oh well.
Natasha glanced towards Bruce, who was looking at the floor as he played with his sleeves. He didn't dare look at her, especially not since she knew the secret he'd been trying so hard to keep. If she wasn't so damn sneaky then she wouldn't know, but it's hard to hide a secret when someone walks right into it. He remembers the look on her face when she saw... She looked shocked more than anything, but even that only lasted a couple of moments. She just stared for the longest time. And then, with a disappointed sigh, she turned and left, closing the door behind her.
He could feel her looking at him now, and looking at where he stood. He was like an abused lapdog, loyal to a fault, staying around for the scraps. That was all he ever got. He hadn't had anything but the scraps from the feet of those that stood above him in so long now he forgot what a meal was like... But he couldn't leave, because he was needed. Wasn't he? That's what they said, after all.
With a shaking breath, Tony turned and stepped to the side out of the doorway. He could see Peter shaking from where he was stood, and he truly didn't want to see the kid suffer. Once Natasha and Bucky passed them and left, he turned to look down at Bruce. "Did you recheck his bloodwork?"
Bruce nods and fiddles with his sleeves as he glances at the door the boy had just been taken through. "Yeah, I did... The anomaly wasn't a malfunction..."
"It has to be a malfunction."
"I ran it eight times, Tony." He sighs. "It's not a malfunction. There's something happening to him, and I don't know if we can fix it."
"It shouldn't be happening, Banner!" Tony ran his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. "It's physically impossible. That's not possible, Bruce, it has to be a mistake!"
Bruce shook his head again. "That's what I thought too, Tony. I'll have to take new scans and run more tests, but I'm sure that it's true."
Tony took a deep breath and was silent for a very long moment. "I hope we find that Red sonuvabitch soon... Cause when we do, I'm gonna kill him."