Peter
So the bad news was Peter was kidnapped and chained on a ship that was loaded with explosives and on its way to D.C., where the bad guys (some terrorist extremist group; Peter never got the name) were going to use him as a hostage to get something (money, probably)...and then probably kill him and blow up the ship to destroy all evidence. They also knew who he was, because they'd ripped off his mask and run him through facial recognition. Great.
The good news was it was spring break, so he wasn't missing any classes, and since his aunt was out of town she didn't know he was gone and wouldn't freak out (assuming he didn't die). It was also mid-April, which meant if the ship blew up early and went down the water wouldn't be too cold.
Stay positive.
Peter sighed, leaning his head back against the grimy cage wall with a soft thunk. This was the down side to working alone (other than the occasional bouts of crushing loneliness that happened when Peter had problems with Spider-Man but couldn't share them with anybody because everybody who knew about Peter Parker being Spider-Man was either a villain or dead):
No one was coming to get him. No one had his back.
It wasn't like the Avengers, who, while definitely badass in their own individual ways, were unstoppable when they were together. If one of them went down, they all closed ranks and helped that person back up. Peter had seen it himself, when he'd taken a drugged Natasha to the hospital (Steve--he'd insisted on being called Steve after the burger joint--had almost slammed Peter into the wall demanding answers while Bruce glared at him with green eyes), after the battle with Dr. Mad (Thor had carried Tony's armor, and then Tony back to the Tower), after the thing with General Douche (it'd been all over the news: Stark Industries sued while Captain America got him dishonorably discharged), after Clint had his psychotic break with the sorcerers (Natasha hadn't left his side while Thor brought a friend from Asgard to come and make sure Clint's mind was squeaky clean), and after the Hydra shoot-out with Steve (none of them let him go anywhere on his own after that), as well as half a dozen other times. One time Ex-General Douche had managed to kidnap Bruce and bring him to a top-secret facility. Less than twenty-four hours later, that facility was a pile of rubble and Douche was rotting in a SHIELD prison.
And yeah, Peter had hung out with the Avengers a few times, fought alongside them, joked around with Tony and helped Thor and Steve with modern tech, but that didn't change anything: Spider-Man was a loner. He wasn't a part of the team, so the team had no reason to care whether or not he dropped off the face of the earth. They probably hadn't even realized he was gone.
Whatever. The up side to working with the Avengers every now and then was that sometimes you could pick up a few tricks.
Like how to pick a lock.
(That had been Natasha and Clint, during a post-attempted-alien-invasion pizza dinner. Once Peter had had it down, they'd had a racing contest to see who could break a dozen locks the fastest and...no, Peter, focus!)
There was a guard standing outside the prison hold, but he was bored and playing solitaire. Peter took him out without even trying.
He felt naked without his mask, but ignored the feeling. He scurried up the wall and crept along the ceiling. Getting off the ship would be good, but he had to stop it before it got to D.C. and...well, exploded.
Peter considered his options, crouched in a shadowy corner of the ceiling. He could take out all the crew one by one, web them up. But then he'd have to deal with the ship. Peter may have been a smart nineteen-year-old and was on the fast track of graduating college a year early, but he'd never driven one of these things before, and it wasn't like a bike. And he couldn't just blow it up while the crew was still on it; they might be bad people, but they didn't deserve that. They deserved to be brought in, which wouldn't happen if Peter attached them to lifeboats before blowing up the ship because then they could easily escape, or drown.
Peter needed help.
Okay, new plan: web up the crew, then call someone on land to tell them what was up. Hopefully before they showed up Peter could find his mask--any mask--so he wouldn't blow his identity when they arrived.
Satisfied, Peter got to work.
--
This wasn't working.
If the crew had all been human, it would've been fine. But unfortunately Peter had been knocked out before spotting the guy with metal octopus limbs. Doc Oc. That was a problem.
"Ugh, didn't we do this already?" Peter asked, ducking under another robot arm. "We fought, I won, you went to jail. Sound familiar?"
"I got out," Doc growled, thrusting another metal limb at him. Peter narrowly dodged it. "And if memory serves, you had Tony Stark's help. I don't see him around, do you?"
Peter gritted his teeth. He knew he couldn't win this. Doc Oc was a tough fight even on a good day, and this was so far from a good day that it wasn't even funny. Peter considered just going overboard and swimming to shore, but shore was at least fifty miles away, just a thin line on the horizon. Maybe he could make it, but...
But he hadn't been able to contact anyone on land yet. He HAD to do that, before anything else.
Peter feigned a jump to the left, then dove right, summersaulting under Doc Oc's limbs and racing to the quarterdeck. He needed a radio, a cell phone, something!
Metal clamped around his ankle.
It went south very fast.
Doc Oc smashed him into the deck, then some metal crates, then the deck again. He did this about half a dozen times before Peter lost count and was just trying to keep his head from getting bashed in, which was getting harder and harder.
At one point, Doc Oc paused. Peter pushed himself up on wobbly arms and spat out a mouthful of blood and tried to string a thought together. He heard something like an engine getting closer. A plane, maybe?
"Say hi to your friends for me," Doc said. He smashed Peter into the crates one more time--hard--before swinging him off the ship. He went flying through the air and hit the water. He had already blacked out.
--
"...no pulse..."
"...not breathing..."
"Come on, kid, you've gotta help me out here..."
"Careful of the broken bones, Clint!"
Peter gasped, eyes snapping open. It was way too bright, he couldn't see. Couldn't really breathe, either. Someone rolled him on his side and he threw up half of the Atlantic.
The person who rolled him over was now rubbing his back. It was so incredibly soothing, cutting through everything else that hurt, that Peter was pathetically grateful.
"Thatta boy, just breathe for me, okay? Nat's gonna land us and we'll get you patched up in no time."
Clint. That was Clint's voice. What the hell was Hawkeye doing here?
"Saving your ass," someone else answered (oh, he'd spoken out loud?), "although I had something to do with it, too. Lucky for you, this suit does okay in water, so we didn't both drown when I hauled you out of the ocean. You're heavier than you look, you know."
Peter managed to tilt his head enough to see Tony, the Iron Man faceplate off. He was wearing a worried smile. "Had a little too much fun with Doc Oc, didn't you?"
It all came rushing back to Peter. He gasped, and tried to sit up. But his own muscles were being a bitch, and Clint was pinning him down, too. "Whoa, whoa, hey! Easy! Relax!"
"Doc Oc!" Peter wheezed. "He's gonna...bombs...in D.C."
"We know, we know," Clint eased. He was practically sitting on Peter, one hand on his shoulder while the other hand was on Peter's cheek, keeping his focus on Clint. "He has the ship loaded with C4. He was going to blow it up after using you to collect ransom money. Thor, Hulk, and Steve are all on it. If they need backup, Tony has their back, and Nat and I'll turn this quinjet around and give a hand, too. Doc Oc isn't going to get anywhere or blow up anything. Promise."
His words were getting a bit fuzzy near the end there, but they sank into Peter's skin and calmed him down. He was getting dizzy, everything swimming around him. He needed a nap.
Tony looked panicked. "Wait, Spidey, don't go to sleep! You're concussed and I think you have internal bleeding and...goddamn it!"
--
When Peter came back around for good, he was lying in bed.
For a second, he thought it'd all been a dream. But this wasn't his bed at Aunt May's, or the empty bunk Mary Jane sometimes let him crash on at the university after a study binge. This bed was huge, for one thing. Hulk could've slept in it. And the sheets were unbelievably soft with a ridiculous thread count. Was he at a five-star hotel or something?
Peter managed to get his eyes open and look around. It certainly looked like a hotel room. Well, a suite, more like. But he couldn't see any logos.
His Spider-Man outfit was folded up on a chair. Peter got up on shaking legs and, after surfing over a wave of dizziness, went to it. It was clean, almost brand new clean, with all the holes from the latest fight stitched up. Someone had even ironed it. They'd gotten his mask, too.
The knock on the door made him jump. He took a brief glance down to make sure he wasn't naked (he was wearing sweats and an Iron Man t-shirt that was similar to the one he had back home). "Yeah?"
Steve poked his head in the room. "Hey. How are you feeling?"
"Um...less shitty than the last time I woke up. Did you get Doc Oc?"
"He's in custody, with all of his accomplices." Steve came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. "We need to talk, Peter."
Peter froze.
"Sorry," Steve said. "There were some computer files on the ship that I grabbed on the way out. Doc Oc had your identity on there. But don't worry, we wiped them. Nobody outside the Avengers know."
Peter relaxed. Slightly. He set his uniform on the dresser and sat on the chair. "How long was I out?"
"Three days. We were a bit worried about the broken bones and some slight internal bleeding, but the bleeding stopped and healed itself up within twelve hours. The bones should be at least halfway mended by now."
All of Peter's limbs were functional, though his ribs hurt like a bitch and he was pretty sure his left wrist was sprained. "Three days, huh?"
"We called your aunt, disguised as a friend," Steve continued. "You have the flu, but Tony--your friend from biology class--is taking care of you."
The last of the tension in Peter's body melted. His identity was safe, Aunt May was safe, and Doc Oc was taken care of. "Thanks."
"It's no problem, Peter," Steve said, smiling.
"How'd you find out about the ship?" Peter asked. "I hadn't even called anyone yet."
"Someone saw you getting kidnapped and reported it," Steve answered. "We tracked you down as soon as we could."
Peter was floored. Any words he might've said in response to that went right out the window. He couldn't remember a time of anyone going out of their way to save him.
Steve didn't seem to notice. He continued: "Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about. Don't make any decisions right now; you're still recovering and it's a big choice to make. But the team and I have been discussing it for a few weeks now, and we would like to invite you to join the Avengers."
Of all the things Peter had thought would come out of Steve's mouth, that had not even made the "least likely" list.
"Peter?" Steve asked, concern in his voice.
Peter blinked out of his stupor and managed a smile. "Uh, sorry. I think my head's still screwed on backwards. I'm gonna need you to repeat that in a few days when I'm pretty sure I'm not hallucinating from my concussion."
Steve returned the smile. "That seems fair. For now, though, we do insist that you stay here for another day, just to make sure everything's okay health-wise. Bruce especially wants to take another look at you before you go; Hulk wasn't happy to see you go down."
Peter was still about 80% sure he was hallucinating. But he stood and followed Steve out of the room, through Avengers Tower (holy shit, he was in Avengers Tower, he was going to have a fanboy stroke), and to a general living area. The other Avengers were there, Clint and Natasha fighting over the remote while Thor ate poptarts, Bruce read a book, and Tony fiddled with a tablet.
They all jumped on Peter when he walked in. They called him Peter, not Spider-Man. Bruce pushed the others away so he could check his pupils. Tony offered him something to drink. Thor gave him a poptart. Clint gave him the remote. Natasha told him they were even now and he got to be the damsel next time.
Joining a team...might not be a bad idea.
END