Chapter Text
On his first day back, he didn’t expect the stares. Well, he expected some stares, but he didn’t think the entire hallway would just… stop. But that’s what they did. They froze, jaws hanging open, eyes wide, as he lowered his head and curled in on himself. He pushed through the attention. He set his jaw and marched forward, because he had been through worse in the last year.
-+-
Peter was taken from school in broad daylight. One moment, he was waving at Ned from across the street; the next, he was gone, dragged away by two men in black, a syringe in his neck.
He spent the next couple of days unconscious in a dark room. When he finally woke up, it was to cold water splashing him awake. All he remembers from those first few weeks is the pain. He remembers the electricity coursing through him and the exhaustion as his rapid healing worked on overdrive to keep him alive.
When he finally got rescued, almost a year later, it took Tony a week to get the details out of him. He still doesn’t like to talk about it.
-+-
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ned asks for the fifth time.
Peter chuckles, warmth flooding his chest. He had missed this. “Yes, Ned, I am. I’ve been back for like two months, and Bruce says I’m all healed up. No more psychological issues to worry about.” He grits his teeth and tries to forget how many people he hurt.
His trigger words were shut down in the first week of being back, but it was too late. He had already caused more harm than good. He’ll never forget the nurses face as he snapped his neck.
Peter blinks out of the memory. He focuses on the teacher rambling on about something unimportant. He missed this, too. He missed how Ned could rant about anything and how MJ sighed when Peter got too excited over something nerdy. But he’s back now. He can experience those things again. He needs to keep reminding himself of that.
Ned pokes him in the side, and Peter forces himself to not react the way he had been programmed to react. Instead, he looks over to see Ned point at MJ’s notebook, revealing a newly drawn picture of their teacher in crisis. Peter laughs.
The teacher calls their attention with a stern frown, but Peter sees something soft in her eyes. Everybody knows what he’s been through, and he’s come to recognise the look of pity that people give off. He stares back, eyes hard. If people have to pity him, he’ll show them he’s stronger now.
As the class takes notes around him, he tunes it out. History isn’t important anymore, not after what he’s been through.
-+-
“We need to talk about this eventually, Pete,” Tony whispers as he cradles Peter’s head to his chest. He feels his shirt get wet with Peter’s tears. He cards his fingers through his hair. “Either to me or May, I don’t care, but you need to get it off your chest.”
-+-
Peter, flanked by Ned and MJ, strides down the hallway with his head held high. He scans the gawking students, looking for a threat subconsciously. He finds one.
“Hey, Penis!” Flash calls, slamming his locker and stepping in front of Peter. “I saw you on the news last month, something about a fake kidnapping? That’s what my dad says, anyways; that you faked it for attention.”
The hallway becomes silent. Peter hears their heartbeats speed up, and he grins the way his torturer did before he died, showing all his teeth. He knows he’s acting out of his “normal” behavior, but that’s what a year’s worth of programming does to a person, so he doesn’t care.
“Aw, Flash, I was beginning to think you forgot about me,” he says. He drops his grin, making his face purposely blank. “And you and your father can think what you want. It doesn’t affect me, because you’re wrong. Now, anything else?” The finality to Peter’s tone startles the other students in the hall, and no one moves.
“You may have everybody else fooled, Parker,” Flash sneers, “but not me. I see through your lies, and soon they will too.” He pushes past Peter, forcefully shouldering him as he does. Peter pretends to falter in his footing, losing balance. He hates that he has to do that.
“Don’t listen to him, dude,” Ned says, resting a warm hand on his arm. “He’s just being an idiot, like always.”
-+-
Peter strains against his bonds, wishing for something, anything, to stop the pain. It burns, it burns so bad. He holds back his scream. He won’t give them the satisfaction of having proof of his suffering.
He feels a tear slip down his cheek, and he clamps his eyes shut. A sob escapes him.
The man in front of him grips Peter’s chin and forces it up.
“You will look at me,” he says quietly. Peter chokes, but he opens his eyes. The man grins. “That’s better. Now, tell me where it hurts.” He plunges his thumb on the syringe down, sending the mystery liquid into Peter’s bloodstream.
This time, he can’t help it.
He screams.
-+-
His day is fine until eighth period. He’s been dreading it since May and Tony sat him down to tell him he was going back to school. Eighth period, PE, is Peter’s least favorite class. He hates having to pretend to be weak, and he detests changing in front of Flash and his buddies.
Peter takes a deep breath before he steps into the gym. The students around him give him a wide berth, but he still feels overwhelmed. This place, the gym, holds so many bad memories, and now, after a year of actual torture, those memories seem like child play.
He chuckles lowly, and then he moves. He holds his head high and strides through the gathering crowd of whispering students that seemed to follow him all day. They go silent as they watch him, watch his blank expression fix onto the coach. He stops, shoulders squared, in front of Coach Wilson.
“Coach,” he says, “Principal Morita told me to give you this.” He pulls a folded slip of paper out of his pocket and hands it over. He waits for him to read it, and that brief silence that fills the gym as his eyes scan the page hurts Peter. The eyes on him burn, and his Spidey Sense goes crazy.
“What’s it say?” someone calls from the crowd. The others shush him.
The letter, from the Avengers’ doctor, Dr. Helen Cho, tells Coach Wilson of Peter’s physical limits for the next few weeks. Dr. Cho recommends exercise, but nothing too stressful. She details what he absolutely cannot do, including swimming, any tackling sports, and weightlifting.
Peter tries not to shrink when Coach Wilson looks back up at him. He’s clearly confused, and who wouldn’t be? A teenage boy gets kidnapped for a year, returns, and isn’t able to swim? Nobody except those close to Peter know what he went through in that time.
Peter wants to try to explain, but how does he say it? Sorry, Coach, I can’t swim because I was waterboarded for a week straight. Oh, and I can’t tackle anybody because my Bruce Banner doesn’t trust my strength to not kill the person that tries to hurt me. And, oh yeah, if I lift something heavy, it will look so easy because I spent months not regulating my strength because I was being tortured .
So, Peter keeps his mouth shut.
Coach Wilson nods as the bell rings, signalling the start of class. “Alright, Parker, go get changed. That goes for all of you too!”
The crowd disperses quickly, the students fleeing to their designated locker rooms. Peter trails behind Ned, who gives him a pat on the back and a whispered ‘good luck.’
-+-
“Pete,” Tony whispers, barely hiding the horror in his voice. “They- they did that to you?”
Peter shuts his eyes and holds back a whimper. He doesn’t want to disappoint Tony, but he can’t answer. The scars are long since healed, but he’d rather not acknowledge them. The memories attached hurt too much. He nods.
He squints at the mirror in front of him. His shirt falls from his hand, and he can’t bring himself to care. His chest is a mosaic of scar tissue, but one stands out the most. A skull rests on his sternum. Six tentacles extend from the mouth, curling around his torso and meeting as one at the small of his back.
He hates that one the most. It took days to burn it into him, but Glas had been dedicated.
-+-
Peter ignores the stares as he slips his shirt over his head. He keeps himself turned towards his locker, but he can hear everything . He hears the silence as all the boys around him freeze. He can tell they’re looking at him because of the gasp that Abe lets out.
“Peter?”
He grits his teeth and pulls his gym shirt on with shaking hands. He’s stronger than this. He went through hell; he can make it through a single class period. All he can think as he marches out of the locker room is, “Thank god Flash didn’t see that.”