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There’s something about waking up to pain, confusion and biting cold that doesn’t get easier with time, even if being a superhero means that Peter should probably be used to these kind of situations by now.
The confusion comes first. Peter’s initial reflex when he opens his eyes and doesn’t know where he is is to sit up and get ready to fight. It turns out to be a mistake, because the pain hits right after that, a fierce burning in every part of his body that makes his vision white out and then fade to black. Peter cries out involuntarily, screwing his eyes shut and biting his tongue in order to hold on to consciousness.
As soon as the first waves of pain subside, the cold creeps up on him. He opens his eyes again and stares at his hands for a while before realising that they are shaking, that his whole body is trembling so hard that he’s practically vibrating.
“T-That’s…not good,” Peter mutters to himself through shattering teeth, hating how weak and whiny his voice comes out. He glances up and sees that he is surrounded by trees. It’s night, the forest around him barely visible due to the lack of artificial light. Not good at all. He has no idea where he is or how he got there. “K-Karen, what happened?”
Silence.
It takes his woozy brain a while to understand that the reason for the lack of reply from the AI is the absence of his Spider-Man suit. All he is wearing are jeans and a t-shirt. When he looks down on himself, he realises that both are sporting impressive blood stains.
Shit.
“Okay, okay breathe,” Peter tells himself. “Assess the situation. What do I have?”
No suit. No backpack. No jacket. But, he realises with a flicker of hope, his phone was in the pocket of his pants. Peter clumsily digs his fingers into his jeans. His hands are already numb from the cold and it takes him a while to fumble out the device. He doesn’t find what he expected, though. It’s an old phone, the one he used to own before Mr. Stark gave him a one that has Karen installed in it. It occurs to him belatedly that his StarkPhone got broken, that he wanted to get it repaired but didn’t get around to it yet. Because, because…
“MJ,” Peter whispers. Finally, the memories are returning. MJ with tears in her eyes. Their recent fights. Weeks of tiredness and doubts. His visit upstate to where she is staying with her grandparents. Another argument.
After that, things get blurry. He remembers coming back in a bus after things had gone from bad to worse between the two of them, listening to songs and trying not to cry, and then a bunch of neo-Nazis threatening an old Muslim couple. And then, and then…the beating.
Oh yeah, that. Peter groans and for a second he almost wishes for the amnesia to return. What a day.
There had been three of them, so it should have been easy for him to deal with the situation despite everything else, except…
Peter pulls his shirt up, wincing when the cold bites into his bruised and bloodied skin like needles, and then finds the bite-like marks of a taser on his chest. Extra-strong, judging by the pain still coursing through his limbs.
“Stupid alien tech,” Peter curses. He must have fallen unconscious before they beat him up and left him in the forest. He pulls the shirt back down, partly because of the cold, partly because the look of his burnt skin makes him feel increasingly queasy.
Great. Just great.
Tears are burning in Peter’s eyes. He tries not to feel too sorry for himself, but it’s been a while since he’s been this alone. If at least he had Karen. Or MJ. Happy, or even Tony. But a lot has changed since the Reversal, and more and more often Peter’s days just feel like he is walking through chewing gum, like the world is doing everything it can to put obstacles into his way. Obstacles and fights with MJ and hyper-aggressive neo-Nazis.
He should probably call May, but she’s on a romantic weekend getaway with Happy, who’d stayed over and left a rose on the table last Monday, and Peter really, really doesn’t know what to feel about that. May also restricted him from Spider-manning until his exams are over, and although that wasn’t technically what he’d been doing, she probably wouldn’t be happy that he was visiting MJ upstates in the middle of the night.
Peter shakes his head and tries to focus on the situation at hand. The spider-healing will probably take care of his injuries sooner or later, but he’s freezing for good now. The shivers have turned into a constant shaking and the feeling in his hands and toes is almost completely gone.
Peter tries once more to get up, but pain and dizziness attack even before he has made it to his knees. Nausea pools in his stomach and he’s gagging before he knows it. He tries to swallow the sick feeling down, because this is going to hurt, but bile rises in his throat and he can barely roll onto his side to avoid making a mess on his clothes before he is throwing up violently.
He heaves onto the ground, chunks of a long-forgotten dinner and - oh no. That’s definitely blood. It’s red even in the pale light of the moon, and when he retches again, Peter can taste copper on his tongue. Really not good. Peter feels a lot more woozy all at once, but his heart is beating hard and fast inside his chest. For the first time since he’s woken up, he feels actually scared.
Calling an ordinary ambulance is out of the question with his spider-abilities. He already decided against alerting May and Happy. Which leaves only the Avengers. “Karen…call Sam, please,” he half-whimpers, his voice tiny in the empty forest.
He waits for her reply, feeling like there’s something he is forgetting, until he remembers with a feeling equivalent to a punch in the gut that Karen is not there. The suit is lost. His StarkPhone is broken. Huh. Peter hazily recalls having gotten this point before, feeling very dumb and also sort of worried about his own mental state.
“Phone, okay, okay,” he mumbles. He should call…call Sam. Does he even have his number in this phone? Does he have anyone’s number? Peter realises that the device has slipped out of his hand and fumbles for it on the ground, but when he clumsily lifts it up to his face, he is too dizzy to read what’s written on the screen. The brightness makes his head hurt and his stomach lurch. His arm is tired, so he lets it sink back to his lap.
Peter closes his eyes, just for a moment.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he hears a noise. The previously constant shivers have turned into occasional waves that make him shake violently where he’s sitting before leaving him limb. He’s pretty sure that this isn’t an improvement. Peter is about to slip back into darkness when he hears the noise again. It’s his phone. Ringing. He slowly raises his hand again squints and squints until he can read Mr. Stark’s name on the display. Peter stares at it in disbelief through fuzzy vision, brain too slow and fingers too numb to do anything at all.
Luckily, he doesn’t need to, because apparently Tony Stark has methods to force a call to be accepted even when the person on the other side is not able to do so.
“Kid?”
Peter tries to respond, but his vocal chords seem to have frozen over. He manages a croak.
“Peter? Hello? Anyone home?”
“H-Hello,” he croaks.
“So, this might not be any of my business, but why the hell did FRIDAY just alert me that you entered a brothel?”
“What?“ Peter is so taken aback that he almost forgets the pain he’s in.
“The NC-17 protocol is still a thing, kid. If need be, we can certainly arrange something once you are older, but until them I’m afraid you have to- ”
“What? No!” Peter cuts him off. “No, I’m not, I’m…” Truth is, he isn’t actually sure where he is. But it’s definitely not a brothel. It’s cold, way too cold for that. Peter tries to sit up and look around, but pain flares up in his chest and stomach. A groan escapes him.
“Kid? Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I’m not – I mean, I’m not where you are thinking, really. I, my suit got lost on a bus, and I guess someone stole my rucksack, so- “
“I am gonna stop you here, because you are not making any sense, but we can figure this out later. Are you injured?”
“I…” Peter considers lying, guilt already flaring up in him, but he doesn’t really have a choice at this moment. “Maybe.”
He hears Tony’s breathing speed up on the other side of the line, then a rustle of a blanket being thrown down. Imagines his mentor getting up from his bed or the couch, pictures the lines of worry on his face, the quickening of his heartbeat. Peter’s fault, again.
“How bad is ‘maybe’?”
“Uhm…” Peter tries to examine, to categorise, but all he can come up with is ‘wrong’ and ‘pain’ and ‘freezing’. Another wave of shivers overtakes him. 'I don’t know. It’s just, it hurts, and I’m so cold…” He trails off, realising how whiny he is sounding.
“Okay. Hold tight, kid, I’m coming to get you.”
He hears the taps of Tony’s fingers presumably on a display, then a curse through gritted teeth. “What’s up with your StarkPhone?”
“It’s, it got broken. A while ago. I’m, this is my old one.”
“Why didn’t you say a thing, kid? I could’ve given you a replacement…” Tony trails off before curding again. “Whichever company this is, I swear I’m gonna sue them, because I can’t pinpoint your location. It’s only giving me a mile-wide approximation.”
“Oh.” Peter doesn’t know what to say. “It’s okay, you really don’t have to come.”
Tony snorts. “Yeah, sure. Listen, you gotta stay conscious until I’m nearby, okay? Just stay on the call…”
There’s a clonk and buzz and then the noise of the Iron Man suit powering up, and somewhere in his mind Peter wonders whether Tony has ever used it since the battle, since he woke up from the coma, since he stopped being Iron Man, since… since everything changed.
As soon as he is in the air, Tony starts to ramble about Morgan and Gerold the alpaca, and Peter “hmm”s and “yeah”s because he knows that the sole purpose of the conversation is to keep him engaged and stop Tony from freaking out, but he feels his mind growing tired, his limbs heavy. He can hardly even feel the cold anymore.
“…Kid? You still with me?”
Peter blinks. The sky he can see through the trees seem lighter than before. Is it morning already? Or is his vision turning grey?
“Y-yeah.”
“Okay. I’m above the forest. Do you have an idea of where you are? Directions, landmarks, anything?”
Peter thinks hard, tries to recall the earlier events. MJ. No, that was too long ago. Nazis. Nazis on a bus. “Bus stop,” he exhales. “There was a bus stop.”
“Okay, that’s something, that’s good. Do you remember the name of the stop?”
“I…” he never looked, never had time before the fight started. “No.”
“Fine,” Tony sighs.” I’m gonna fly along the road and produce a nice firework show for you, and once you see them, you let me know, alright?”
“Okay.” If he can keep his eyes open.
There’s a tense silence, interrupted by booms of the explosions Tony must be blowing into night, somewhere far away, because the sky stays dark for Peter.
“Kid, you still with me?”
“Yeah,” Peter whispers. He’s so exhausted. His vision is blurring. He wants to be home, but it feels like this is a place that doesn’t really exist anymore. He wants a home where he never met Mysterio, where May is only his aunt and not someone’s girlfriend, where half of his classmates are not five years older than him, where Happy is still grumpy and Tony still has both his arms and no daughter and invites him to his lab on weekends. Where he doesn’t wake up in a forest in the middle of the night, beaten up and bloody, with no one to call.
He wants…he really wants to sleep.
“Kid?”
Peter realised his eyes have slipped close. He feels like he’s floating outside of his body. The pain is almost gone, and he isn’t even trembling anymore.
“Hmm?”
“Keep looking up, okay?”
The sky is black and grey and blue, like an ocean hanging in between the stars. Just a huge, wide nothing. It’s so easy to get lost in it. Peter feels himself falling, falling upwards. And then…a red sparkle, somewhere at the edge of his vision. Like spots of blood in the darkness. Then another one.
“I..I saw you, I think.” His voice sounds weak and far away in his own ears.
“Where?”
“Left…no, right. Right.”
“Good, Peter. Keep watching. Keep telling me what you see.”
Peter does so, and soon his enhanced hearing can make out the hum of Tony’s armour closing in.
“I can see you, kid. I’m coming.”
The armour lands in the mossy ground with a soft noise. Its helmet retracts so that Peter can make out Tony’s face through blurry vision, which is sweaty despite the coldness of the air, lines of worry and pain engraved in it. Tony is breathing hard, and Peter realises with a weird clarity that his mentor probably really shouldn’t be flying the suit yet.
“Are you ‘kay?” he asks, dimly aware that he is slurring his words.
“You actually have the audacity to ask that?” Tony raises an eyebrow, but the concern in his eyes is all-encompassing. “Are you aware that you’re half-frozen, beaten-up and currently lying next to a puddle of your puke and – is that blood?”
“Uhm...I guess so.”
“Shit. I was gonna wrap you in a blanket until the medics arrive, but this looks like internal bleeding, I don’t like this at all.”
Me neither, Peter thinks, but he’s lacking the strength to say it out loud.
Tony taps his chest and the suit opens, leaving him to step out of it in a slightly hunched posture, as if it’s hurting him to stand straight. “FRIDAY, complete check-up.”
Immediately, the suit wraps itself around Peter like a piece of clothing. The nanobots are gentle, but he still can’t help but whimper when their touch jostles his injuries. It’s warm though, so warm, and finally, a bit of feeling returns to his body.
“Report?” Tony listens to something in his earpiece and frowns. “I was right, looks like you are bleeding internally.”
“Oh.” Peter isn’t exactly surprised. From how the week had been going, he honestly hadn’t expected anything better. He knows he should probably be panicking, but somehow he is too tired for even that.
“Medical services are on their way.” Tony takes a step closer and then sits down with a groan very suddenly, and if Peter had energy for anything right now, he would probably be very worried.
“So, now that we are settled, the obvious question.” Tony bends forward and puts his flesh hand on the metal-glove around Peter’s. It’s shaking a little, from the cold or the strain, he doesn’t know. “Why didn’t you just call me?”
It should be easy, but it isn’t. He can’t lie, doesn’t want to lie. But he’s not sure of the truth either.
Why didn’t you call?
Because. Because he wanted to be better. Because Iron Man sacrificed himself for him, for them, for everyone. Because he’s retired, healing, with his wife and daughter, not supposed to be out and take care of a superhero-gone-wrong when Peter fucks up for the nth time this year. All of it is true, and it’s not.
Because.
Because Happy had told him, once on a plane in a tulip field, when Tony was still in a coma and Peter was all alone in the world, that Tony wouldn’t have done what he did if it hadn’t been for Peter, and he is still not sure what to feel about that. Sometimes it’s guilt, sometimes it’s gratitude. Mostly it’s doubt, because how will they ever know if he was worth it?
Because Peter still doesn’t know whether it was really him that Tony cared about or just the symbol he’d become.
But he can’t say any of this out loud, so he swallows his feelings and tries for a shaky grin and whispers “sorry” through a fading vision and wishes it’s enough.
“Geez, stop apologizing,” Tony huffs. His lips are moving as if he’s saying something else, but the words get lost somewhere on the way to Peter, and then the world seems to be tipping backwards in front of his eyes at an ever-increasing speed, and Tony frowns and pushes himself up and bends over Peter and then everything fades to black.
*
He comes back to consciousness when the Avengers’ medical van starts to move. He’s lying on a gurney, a medic he doesn’t know fixing an IV on his arm.
“Hey. Welcome back.”
Tony is sitting close to Peter on a bench, his head tipped back against the wall, pressing a cold compress to his own right shoulder. The prosthesis is taken off and the flesh below is red and visibly swollen. He looks old and exhausted and definitely not like he should have been flying around in his armour rescuing teenage superheroes. Peter’s fault. Again.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, his voice warm and serious for once.
“I don’t...I…” Peter’s finally warm, that’s something at least. His thoughts are still moving sluggishly, not from agony and cold, but probably rather from the drugs they have him on. The pain is much duller now, and he feels surprisingly okay, apart from a sick nagging in his stomach that might stem from either injuries or the knowledge of how much trouble he’s brought on everyone. “I’m okay. Just sorta nauseous, and woozy.”
“That’s to be expected. You’re lucky your spider powers started fixing things before you could bleed out internally.” Tony takes a deep breath and frowns as if trying to decide whether to go on or not, but then the words spill from his mouth anyway. “What was that all about? Your suit is gone, you’re out alone in the middle of the night, injured and not calling for help? Seriously, kid, you’ve become reckless, and that’s not a compliment. You look tired, and that’s me saying that. What’s going on with you?”
There’s it again, the easy-not-at-all-easy question.
There’s a myriad of answers on Peter’s mind. There’s a cracked cell phone in his school bag and a red rose on the table and a broken necklace thrown carelessly onto the floor. There’s a memory of Ben’s splintered glasses on a rainy street and Tony’s arc reactor flickering off and on in the middle of a battlefield. There’s a tiredness that doesn’t seem to ever leave his body and the responsibility for a neighbourhood of eight million on his shoulders and the fear of never being good enough deep down in his heart.
But it seems ridiculous to tell any of that to Tony Stark, to Iron Man, who survived Afghanistan and outer space, a god and a Titan and an army of robots, who was dead for minutes and in a coma for months after saving the whole universe from extinction, who has a wife and a daugther and a whole lot of other people to worry about.
“Come on, kid. Talk to me.”
“It’s just…it’s a lot,” Peter finally whispers. “Everything, it’s kind of...too much at the moment. I’m sorry, I’m just, I’m always trying to be good enough, to do everything right, and it just feels like it’s never working out.”
It doesn’t feel like anything to say, but it also feels like a lot. Because things have grown over his head, and the mere act of admitting that seems to take a bit of the weight off his shoulders. And the weird thing is that once the words are out, once Tony looks at him, just looks at him for a while, it feels like he actually understands what Peter is trying to say.
“I know, kid,” he replies, with the calmness of an old man who has gone through everything hell has on offer and somehow made it out alive, and there’s a certainty and peace in his eyes that Peter doesn’t remember from the man he met five years ago.
“It’s okay, we’ll figure it out.” Tony lets go of the ice pack on his shoulder and wraps his hand around the one of Peter that’s not attached to an IV. He squeezes it hard. It feels warm and reassurring. It feels real. “You don’t have to do that alone.”
And maybe that’s all Peter needs to hear for now.