Chapter Text
(Peter’s POV)
Screaming.
That was the first thing I could hear. It sent chills to my very core as I was overcome with immense grief and guilt. But… what had happened? My brain feels foggy, like I am wading through sludge to form even the simplest thought. Yet, the unknown dread and guilt is killing me. So, I force my befuddled mind to work harder to discover the cause. My effort is instantly met with piercing, excruciating, yet slightly muted pain. Everywhere. My whole body aches and burns as if its on fire.
The screaming continues as the pain in my body reawakens. It’s from a girl. I can tell that now, and it’s hauntingly familiar, but the one thing I’m sure of is that I am the one who caused her to scream. It’s my fault. I’m just not sure why or how yet.
The screaming continues to intensify as I become more and more aware of the pain all over my body. I realize suddenly that I can’t see. It’s dark too dark! My chest feels like lead and I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe just like before. I can feel it in my throat, the water, choking me, suffocating me. The rag over my face as water pours down my throat causing me to drown. I can’t breathe. I continue struggling for breath as I begin to thrash and fight to gain a breath.
Everything becomes too close, too loud, too painful. Why won’t she stop screaming! Then suddenly as the guilt from her screams and the pain from my body overwhelms my thoughts beyond help it all comes back, why she is screaming, why everything hurts, why I am drowning. I am dying.
I am dying and innocent people are dying and it’s all my fault. I see the woman fall to the ground with a cut-off scream while she still continues to scream in the background. I remember. I remember Charon, being captured and tortured, and I remember falling. Falling under the weight of a heavy beam as I realized that I had failed. They were all dead and dying and it was all my fault. If I had held out just a little longer, help could have arrived, but who would have arrived to help me. Who would have wanted to help me. Maybe the Avengers would have at one point but not now. I was weak. I failed. All those innocent people died because of me. I am a killer, and who would come to save a murderer?
I continue to thrash and fight as I am overwhelmed by the realization that this is all my fault. I deserve to die, but I don’t want to die. I’m scared. All I hear is her methodical screaming, and I still can’t breathe.
I feel arms grabbing mine in a mock of comfort as they hold me down. The arms are strong, but not typically even close to strong enough to hold me down as they do now. I continue to fight, but I am pinned by the hands to the bed as I struggle to breathe. I hear words spoken in mockingly placating tones reminding me of my failures and that it’s all my fault.
I gasp as suddenly the weight on my chest doubles, but the water pouring down my throat stops and my struggles are finally rewarded with a gasping and painful breathe of air, but it’s not enough. I feel the stab of a needle in my arm as I gasp for another, but before I can desperately take in a third gasp of air my body involuntarily stills and, as the girl continues screaming, my mind fades to nothing with the lingering truth that it’s all my fault.
(Tony’s POV)
It’s been three days. Three days since Peter returned to the compound, since he was last awake. He made it through the night without any major complications, which Doctor Cho said was a great sign that he would recover fully. However, it had been three days that I have been with Peter, and he has just been so… quiet. Peter was never quiet. Always yammering on about one science or Star Wars related thing or another. I think about how it had sometimes annoyed me in the past, but now I would give anything to hear Peter ramble, to wake up, to say something, anything.
I haven’t slept in that time. Not really anyway. I have found myself dozing next to Peter’s bed a few times, but, despite both the doctors and other Avengers’ efforts, I refused to leave Peter’s side, and I won’t until he is better.
I look over at Peter as I card softly through his curls with one hand. I hate seeing him on a ventilator, but Dr. Cho assured me that it was the best way to give his lungs the break they needed to recover. His body was already healing the bruises and other superficial wounds as they turned to brown and yellow and slowly disappeared. Thanks super-healing, but his three bullet-wounds, the mess of remaining skin and newly grafted skin that is Peter’s feet, and the twenty-two broken bones within Peter’s body were still long from healed. Not to mention any psychological damage or trauma which Peter had suffered and would take God knows how long to heal. Knowing how long it took me to sort through the wreckage of my psyche after the cave, I know it can take a long time to return to any semblance of normalcy, even after the body is fully healed, but however long it takes I will be right with him through it all.
Lost in my thoughts, I suddenly notice that although his eyes were still closed, Peter was moving. He is squirming on the table in a weak version of what, with his usual strength would be fighting desperately with all his might. Although I initially was thrilled that my Peter is back, I quickly notice as his face scrunches up that he is in distress.
I didn’t know how his first time awake would go, but I expected it would be something like this. I take his hand and hold it firmly but comfortingly in reassurance, stroking his hand with my thumb, as I press the call button for the doctor with my other hand.
His struggling only increases as he tries to shake his head and reach up with broken arm to the ventilator. I quickly and gently hold his arm down so he won’t rip any stitched or rip out the ventilator which he so desperately needs. He begins to thrash with what I believe is currently all his strength. He is still strong even when this weak, but I am able to hold him down from harming himself as a pray for the nurses and doctors to arrive faster. Why aren’t they here yet.
I look down at his bruised and bandaged form, and my heart swells with grief. Why him? Why do these things always happen to my kid?
“It’s okay, Kid. You’re safe. I’m here.” I murmur in what I hope is a soothing tone over and over again still lightly holding him down with one arm and holding his hand with my other until finally the nurses and Doctor Cho arrive.
His heart monitor has been beeping steadily this whole time, but in the last few minutes it has started to rapidly increase. It increases even more as all of me but my hand holding his is shoved away from Peter as the doctor and nurses rush to his side. I hold desperately onto his hand as if it is my only lifeline to knowing he is still alive and breathing because to me it feels like it is.
“He’s trying to breathe around the ventilator and choking himself.” I hear Dr. Cho say amidst the hustle of bodies around Peter’s bed blocking me from seeing him. I want to rush forward to be even closer to him, but can’t as my mind stills on Dr. Cho’s words. “Choking himself.” Oh, God. My mind flashed back to the videos Charon sent to the compound of Peter being tortured and watching him be waterboarded for hours. He must think that he is drowning. I shudder at the thought a pray and hope above all hope that either they will take the damn tube out or knock Peter out. I can’t stand to see my kid suffer anymore.
My prayers are answered as I hear Cho order her team to remove the ventilation tube because Peter isn’t calming down. I watch as they remove the tube and Peter gasps, painfully sounding for air. My heart clenches at the desperation with which my kid is struggling for a luxury or need as simple as breathing. I can’t watch this, but I have to, for Peter. I can’t leave my kid alone. Not again.
I listen as he takes yet another haltingly painful sounding breath, but he’s not calming down. His heart monitor beeps methodically at an even faster rate signaling his increased panic. He’s having a panic attack. I don’t know what to do but I have to help my kid. I know all the breathing exercises, but those don’t work on a kid who is only half conscious. My brain scolds itself for not planning for this more thoroughly. I should have expected this, but I was so caught up in waiting for Peter to wake up that I hadn’t even considered how scary it would be for him when he did wake up. I had only thought of how great and relieved I would feel when I could finally see him awake and moving again and talk to him. I should have known that he would panic, it’s what I would do, but I didn’t and now Peter is paying the price for my mistakes yet again. I would do anything to lessen his panic and pain as I helplessly watch him struggling for a third breath on the bed in front of me, but I can’t. Why? Because I was selfish and unprepared as always, my brain supplies helpfully.
Mercifully, the doctors are more prepared than I am, and I watch in both horror and gratitude as they inject his arm with a sedative and Peter goes blissfully still with his heart monitor slowing its methodical beeps to match the artificial calm washing over my kid’s body. I feel sick.
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(Peter’s POV)
Why is she still screaming? I know, it’s my fault. I think to myself as I once again slowly become aware of my body and the this time, even more dulled pain which encompasses it.
This time I have resigned myself to the continued torture and guilt, but as I slowly become more and more aware of my body and the faint light tainting the darkness of what I now recognize, instead of a hood or dark room, to simply be my closed eyelids, I realize that I am no longer drowning.
I take a deep calming breathe, reveling in the pain of my lungs expanding and taking in the air I had longed for for so long without the feeling of drowning. Maybe this is what death feels like. Despite the residual, numbed pain I am feeling in my body this isn’t so bad. It overall feels restful, but why is the woman still screaming?
I focus on the sound, and after a few moments of intense study of the sound realize that it’s not a woman screaming at all. It is instead the steady and rhythmical beeping of what, if I’m not mistaken, sounds to be a heart monitor machine, except really loud. Thanks super hearing.
Slightly comforted by the fact that I am not hearing a woman I killed repeatedly screaming, I begin to focus on the rest of my body. Everything hurts, but my torso and feet hurt more that anything else. My feet feel really strange like they’re not my own. I don’t like it. As I continue to survey my body, I realize that there is a hand resting on my left arm just above my wrist, which feels to be bandaged extensively.
I at first begin to panic at the touch which causes the beeping of my heart monitor to rise quickly. They are going to hurt me. Yet, instead of pain, all I feel is what, if I’m not mistaken (and this is really weird), feels to be a thumb comfortingly stroking my arm. Why would my captors being comforting me? If I am dead who is comforting me? Could… could I have been rescued?
No. My brain quickly dismisses the thought and the hope that timidly swelled in my chest at the mere mention of rescue. It couldn’t be, and if it is not, I don’t think I can recover from the disappointment of letting myself think it was. My still slightly sluggish brain supplies a picture of Mr. Stark, Tony, and I suddenly want to cry. I miss him so much and long to be in the comfort of the compound with all the science gadgets, labs, people, and the comfort of home, but that’s not where I am, I quickly remind myself that they probably wouldn’t want me back even if I did escape since so many innocent people had died because I was too weak. I don’t deserve to be home with my family.
However, that leaves the question of where I actually am. I take in a deep breath and notice for the first time since waking that the air smells distinctly sterile. I internally laugh, figuring that my captors must have decided they had to fix me up a bit so that I wouldn’t die before they could torture me more. What irony, but my curious mind still, even in this foggy state, needs to know for sure where I am so I can either plan my escape or resign myself to my fate.
I take in a deep steadying breath as I steel myself to open my eyes and face my fate. I open them only a crack first, but am instantly blinded by extremely bright lights. I let out an involuntary groan at the assault as I quickly close them again. Strangely, I could swear I hear a gasp in the room as the hand leaves my arm and I hear footsteps walking away from me then back towards me again.
I brace myself for the pain that is sure to come as the footsteps stop right next to me and a hand lowers itself back onto my arm. I stay frozen, waiting for a moment before I realize that my arm is being soothingly stroked again and the only other change is that the light coming through my eyelids is considerably dimmer.
I steel myself yet again and open my eyes just a crack. The previously offensive bright lights have been darkened considerably to a level just light enough that a normal person could still see.
My hands and the rest of my body begin to involuntarily shake as I force myself, past the fear screaming in the back of my mind. To open my eyes the rest of the way. Upon doing so, I am met with a very strange sight. I see the rest of my body lying on a hospital bed bruised and broken but bandaged which in hindsight makes perfect sense if I am correct about the beeping sound coming from a heart monitor.
I take in a shaky breath as I allow my eyes to roam slowly to the hand on my left arm. It seems so familiar as I slowly follow the trail up the arm to the person it belongs to. My heart feels as though it stops for a moment and my breath gets caught in my throat from shock because I recognize the person the arm belongs to. It is exactly the person I have desperately wanted to see since I was first taken. It’s Mr. Stark.
Our eyes meet as I begin to shake and cry in relief and fear that this may not all be real. His eyes glisten and he looks so sad. I wonder why he looks so sad, but then his disheveled, tired face breaks into a relieved and hopeful smile, and somehow I just know that that smile is for me. It has its desired effect as the fear in the back of my mind fades away slightly, and although I am still terrified, I somehow know that even though its not okay right now that it will be okay because I’m home.
“Hey, Kid.”