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Tony moves into the next room in the warehouse, and this shit is bringing up a lot of unpleasant Ultron era memories. A lot of bullshit from back when Wanda got into his head, set him off, made him go a little crazy and spawn an evil murderous super bot. As one does. There’s no bot involved here, no, just a group of dickheads who, for some reason, are able to control minds.
He doesn’t know where the kid is, which makes finding him priority one. Not any of the so-called important information they were supposed to be protecting in the upper levels of the building, not the corporate big-wigs who are gonna have to answer for whatever the fuck kind of experiments they were doing here that caused this. No, finding Peter immediately, like right the hell now, is all Tony cares about. They’ve got Steve and Nat for the rest of it.
All Tony knows is that these guys need skin to skin contact to use their abilities. So the kid should be fine. He should be totally fine. Tony covered him head to toe for a reason. He isn’t wearing the iron spider tonight, though, which is—a little bit concerning. But Tony is always concerned, when it comes to Peter. Always jumping to conclusions. He has every damn right considering what the kid has put him through, what the kid has been through, what Tony put the world through to get the kid back in his life.
So. Tony continues on in this labyrinth, looking for Peter.
“Steven,” Tony says, on coms, watching as Friday lays out a grid of the building on the HUD. “Hey. Rogers. Check in. Chop chop, where are you?”
Tony gets a response, but it’s not at all what he was expecting or what he wanted to hear. It’s Steve’s voice, that’s for sure, but it’s mostly static, cutting in and out. The doorway ahead of him is open, and he walks through, heading into a hallway.
“Friday, why the hell is that happening?” he asks, looking back and forth, scanning his surroundings.
“Unsure, boss.”
“Gimme my little dots, huh?” Tony asks, heading to his left. “Where are my little green and red dots? Good and bad guys? Christmas? Huh? Let’s go, girl, c’mon.” He’s getting testy with his fucking AI, because where in the hell is Peter? He’s not here. Usually he’d be chiming in and chirping his every precious thought, and Tony hasn’t heard a comment from him for about twenty minutes now. Since a little after they all ventured off in different directions, on their own. He tries to remember the last thing he heard Peter say. Does Friday have a recording? Is he losing his damn mind already?
The kid’s fine. He’s gotta be fine. He’s a superhero, he can pick up a whole bus, he’s fine. He’s fine.
But this is mind control. Tony is familiar with someone digging around in his head, and he doesn’t want that happening to Peter.
“Any more luck honing in on Peter’s suit?” Tony asks, continuing down the hallway, trying to stay level-headed and unemotional. He wishes Peter hadn’t tagged along for this one. He kind of wishes Peter would retire when he’s twenty one.
“There’s something jamming my signals, Boss,” Friday says. “I’m working on it. Along with your red and green indicator dots.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Tony says, with a shuddering sigh. At least he’s got the floor plan, and he sees that he’s approaching the loading docks. These dudes might be heading out that way, and Tony hopes he can cut them off, stop all this before it gets too big.
Well, it’s pretty big already. Considering there are three—no, four Avengers here. Jesus, he can’t tell the kid he was about to discount him as an Avenger.
He wishes he could tell anything.
“Alright, alright,” he says to himself, rolling his eyes.
There’s two traffic doors up ahead, and Tony can see a figure standing inside, in the darkness, but he can’t make out a face. Alright, finally, he might be getting somewhere. He can’t exactly be too stealth when he’s wearing the suit, so he decides to rush in guns-a-blazin, or more like repulsors at the ready because he doesn’t wanna kill anybody—
He stops. Brain empty. Hands shaking.
Peter is standing there in front of him, without his mask. He’s holding a gun in his hands, and he raises it, pointing it at Tony. He’s trembling, and he grits his teeth.
“Kid,” Tony says, panicking wildly now.
“I can’t—” Peter says, and it’s like each word physically pains him.
Tony breathes hard, trying to think fast, trying to get his hands on a solution. “Did one of them do this to you?” he asks. “Did—did they get your mask off? Get skin to skin contact?”
Peter closes his eyes for a long second, and the gun rattles in his hands. Tony takes one tentative step closer, and he sees the rip in the suit, on the kid’s forearm. Shit. “Okay, buddy, I see it,” he says. “I see it. But these clowns should know that bullets are just gonna bounce right off me.”
Peter opens his eyes, and he looks afraid now, worse than before. He slowly, surely, raises the gun and points it at his own temple. Presses it there hard.
Tony’s world shifts, all the air draining from around him. He takes another faltering step forward, and the helmet retracts down so Peter can see his face.
“No, no,” Tony stammers. “No, hey—kid, can you fight this? I know how strong you are, buddy. I know how strong you are.”
“It’s—it’s really hard,” Peter says, his face contorting with emotion and pain.
Tony keeps looking at his finger on the trigger. Everything is on the line right now, all of it, all of it, and he can see what it would look like, the horror of it, the gore, and he tries to wipe it from his mind. It cannot happen. It cannot happen.
“Are they around?” Tony asks, retracting his previous thoughts about not wanting to kill somebody tonight. He wants to kill somebody tonight. He wants to rip somebody limb from limb.
“I don’t know,” Peter says, softly. He looks like he’s trying so hard to resist, the veins in his arms standing out, his fingers shaking.
Finger on the trigger. Finger on the trigger.
Tony doesn’t care what happened to these people. Not right now. Because they did this. They’re doing this to his kid. They put that look on Peter’s face.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Tony whispers, taking another step forward, and his whole chest hurts, pinpricks and a pinching tightness. “It’s gonna be fine, okay? Promise. I promise you.”
Peter presses the gun harder to his temple, and Tony can see the indent on his skin. Peter sucks in a big breath through his mouth, and tears shine at the corners of his eyes. “I can almost—if I concentrate—really hard—”
“He’s gonna hurt himself!” a voice yells, from one of the open loading dock doors.
Tony’s head whips up, and he sees two men standing there, on the platform just outside the building. He feels like rushing into attack mode, but he knows he can’t. He has to be smart. “Nah, I’m gonna hurt you,” Tony says, his anger simmering. “This is not a way to make friends and influence people.”
“Stark,” the voice says. “You need to be a little more in charge of your emotions—”
“You need to be a little more the fuck out of here—”
“Precisely,” the man says. “Everyone knows you particularly want to protect the Spider-Man. And now we know why—he’s a child!”
“I—am not—” Peter cuts himself off by pressing the gun harder against his head, and Tony sees stars.
“Just let him go,” Tony says, already feeling desperate as all hell, because this image in front of him is nightmare-inducing, for both of them, and it’s goddamn worse that he can see the kid fighting it tooth and nail.
“Let us go,” the man says. “And as soon as we’re a mile away, he’ll be able to drop the gun. Understand?”
“A fucking mile?” Tony asks, cracking his jaw, shifting on his feet. “I’m ready to just start blasting, hoping I hit something—”
“And I’ll make him shoot himself in the head,” the man says. It’s unnerving, just seeing their shadows out there. They should be fucking running, with the amount of fire running through Tony’s veins right now. “He’ll die in front of you,” the man continues. “Brains everywhere.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Tony says. “Just go. Get out.”
“Tony—” Peter starts, eyes wide.
Tony shakes his head. He can barely deal with looking at him right now, like this. With that gun to his own head. It’s something he never, ever wanted to see.
“Go!” Tony yells, and the two men jump down off the platform, into the settling night. Once they’re gone, Tony lets the suit retract back into his housing unit, and he steps closer to Peter on his own two feet. “Pete,” he breathes.
“Okay,” Peter says, blinking rapidly. “Okay, okay.” His hand is still shaking.
“A mile,” Tony says, standing in front of him, afraid to touch him but longing to fix this, somehow. “They better run fast. They better run fucking fast.”
“You’re cursing so much,” Peter breathes, looking at him with pleading eyes. “Right in front of me.”
“I know,” Tony says, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I’m sorry.”
“‘s okay, you’re just gonna have to put like, a lot of money into the swear jar when we get back to the compound—”
Tony snorts, and nearly breaks into full, out and out sobbing, because he needs this to be over. Right now. Right now. He keeps looking at Peter’s finger, tight on the trigger. One false move, and it’s over. It’s over, and for all intents and purposes, they’re both dead.
“Hey, wait, I—” Peter grits his teeth, groaning a little bit. “Hey, wait—”
“What’s happening?” Tony asks, his eyes darting around. He glances back up where the two assholes were, but they’re not there anymore. “Kid, don’t hurt yourself, don’t do anything crazy, please—”
Peter yanks his hand away from his head, and Tony leaps out of the way as the gun goes off, pointed at the wall. Peter tosses it away from him, stumbles back, his hand reaching up to grip his forehead.
“Hey, hey,” Tony says, catching him around his waist, making sure he doesn’t fall. “Hey—are they a mile away already? Did you break the mind control link or whatever? Holy shit.”
“They’re definitely not a mile away,” Peter breathes, leaning hard against him. “Oh my God, my brain.”
“Are you okay?” Tony asks, lowering them both to the ground. “Information needed, stat, c’mon, bud.”
“Fine,” Peter says, wincing, still holding onto his head. “Peaches and cream.”
“Mmhm,” Tony hums, through gritted teeth, because he’s feeling dizzy now, sick. He taps on his ear piece. “Steve,” he says. “Can you hear me?”
“Tony! Lost you for a bit there! Find anything?”
“Thank God, Cap,” Tony breathes, tightening his grip on the kid. “Dickheads heading due north, escaped about five minutes ago, tops. Go get ‘em.”
“On it, you alright?”
“Will be,” Tony says. He directs his attention back to Peter, helps him sit up a little bit. “Hey, look at me, Pete. Look at me real quick.”
Peter groans, shifting, and looks at him through narrowed eyes, swaying a little bit. “What?”
Tony scoffs. “What, he says. They still in there? In that noggin of yours?”
“No,” Peter says. “No, it just feels like—ants in my head, now, when before it was like someone was holding my brain in their big, nasty hand.”
Tony blows out a breath, brushing Peter’s hair out of his eyes. “Gross. Okay, did they seem to have...any real reason for taking your mask off? Do we have identity problems just in case Stevie doesn’t overtake them?”
Peter shrugs.
“Okay,” Tony says, knowing he needs to think about that shit next. Just great. “Okay, I’m done with all this. We’re going home.” He considers how to tell this whole story to May. Considers not telling her at all.
“Okay,” Peter says, which is a little concerning, considering he normally likes to see these things through. “And when we get there, I’m eating the rest of the salted caramel ice cream. I deserve it.”
Tony nods, wrapping an arm around his waist and hauling him to his feet. Yeah, that’s more Peter. “Yup,” Tony says. “You absolutely do.”
Peter leans into his space, and looks at him with wide eyes. “Really?”
“Definitely,” Tony says. He glares at the gun on the way out of the room, and knows it’ll take a good week to scrub the mental image of Peter holding himself at gunpoint out of his head. “Let’s just find your mask. Next stop, ice cream.”