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The chair digging into his spine uncomfortably. The reinforced shackles biting onto his skin. A water pipe leaking somewhere, the drops falling, one drop per three of his heartbeats.
Tap.
Thud-thud-thud.
Tap.
Thud-thud-thud.
Tap.
A knife at his throat. Warm blood trickling down ice-cold skin, the contrast in temperatures raising the hairs at the nape of his neck.
Thudthudthudthudthud.
A pinprick on his arm.
Tap.
A raspy voice.
“Goodbye now, Petey-pie.”
ThudthudTHUDTHUDTHUD—
Darkness.
It had been an okay day so far.
They’d gone to get lunch and ice cream before Mr. Stark and Mrs. Potts had to leave for their conference and it had been nice to get some family time at last. Lately, Peter had been too busy with school and increased Spider-Man duties to make the trip to the lake house, and Mr. Stark and Mrs. Potts had both been busy taking care of Morgan and running SI. 'Scheduling conflicts' had become somewhat of a curse word between them.
Even today, they’d only gotten an hour before Mr. Stark and Mrs. Potts had had to leave.
They had clearly been reluctant to leave, the goodbye-hugs lingering too long, both of them hovering beside the doorway until the very last minute.
To be honest, Peter had been kind of reluctant too, missing the days after the war when they were all recovering and could spend entire days just goofing off and doing nothing. He had never felt more loved or more like he belonged, than during those weeks.
Then again, this wasn’t so bad either.
“Piggyback-ride!”
An eager force of chaos thumped against his legs, grabbing his shirt and tugging insistently at it to get him to kneel down.
Peter chuckled.
“Okay, okay!” He quickly swept her up, causing her to squeal in delighted glee.
“Go Pete, go! We need to hurry and see what’s in the living room!” She leaned in to whisper loudly into his ear, “I heard that Pride Rock needs a rescue. Onwards! To defeat the evil Scar!”
The last bit is screeched right next to his ear, and he has to suppress a flinch. It’s not so fun to have super senses in the presence of excitable 5-year-olds.
But it’s Morgan, so he grinned and said, “As you wish,” as he sprinted to the living room.
They spent the rest of the evening watching old Disney classics (since Morgan is a Stark and therefore has impeccable taste), eating tons of junk food and simply having fun.
“Are you sure you can sleep after eating all this sugar? You won’t get nightmares or something?”
“Well we won’t sleep then! Let’s have all-night pajama party!”
“No.”
“No faiiiir, Petey’s a party pooper!”
“I’ll show you a party pooper!”
Two pairs of footsteps started running down the hall followed by bubbling laughter.
“Peter are you crying?”
A sniff.
“….No.”
Morgan turned over in Peter’s lap and hugged him softly.
“You know, daddy and mommy say it’s okay for both boys and girls to cry when they’re sad. And Simba’s dad dying is very sad.”
Peter held her even tighter.
“…and then she grabbed her wrist and I just had to stop her, it isn’t nice if the other one hurts and then she—”
“Wow! A superhero point to Morgan Morning Star! At this rate you’ll be more awesome than me in no time.”
“Silly Petey! You already have 3000, I can’t pass that.”
“Aww, thanks Mo.”
When the dancing scene between EVE and WALL-E appeared on the screen, Peter grabbed Morgan under the arms and swung her around to the music, his sister screeching with laughter and exclaiming “faster!”.
He spun faster and faster until they were both dizzy and a bit nauseous, stomachs hurting from laughing to hard.
They were coloring an Iron Man coloring book, when FRIDAY interrupts them.
“Peter, code PITT,” her usually calm voice is laced with urgency.
It takes a moment for the phrase to sink in, but when it does, Peter springs into action.
PITT.
Princess In The Tower.
In other words, someone's attacking and the lake house is about to enter Lockdown Mode in 3 minutes.
There's only one thing in his mind.
Protect Morgan.
Body kicking into overdrive, he snatches his sister up, arms covering her back and head protectively, tucking her as close to his body as he can. He moves faster than he’s ever had to in Morgan’s presence, barking at FRIDAY as he runs.
“FRIDAY, what’s the threat?”
There is apologetic reluctance in FRIDAY’s voice, when she answers.
“It’s an unknown group of mercenaries. I can’t identify any notable associations. And I’m sorry, Peter, some of them are…enhanced.”
“Fu—," a tiny hand clenches into a fist on his chest, “—uuudge!”
He arrives in the basement, setting Morgan down and trying to look reassuringly into her big, frightened eyes.
“It’ll be okay, Mo-Mo, I’ll go take care of it okay? Just stay here, don’t come out until I or your mommy or daddy – or Happy or Rhodey come get you, okay?” His smile is probably too wide and too cheery, but it seems to fool Morgan at least temporarily. His gaze sweeps the basement – an entertainment center, couch, some desks and a fully-stocked kitchen. He gets an idea.
“Actually, this is kind of like hide and seek. You need to hide here for some time and when mom and dad come looking, you come out. Okay?”
Morgan’s eyes widen even more.
“Bu-but that’s not hide-and-seek! That’s—”
“Morgan just—!” Peter takes a deep, calming breath. “Just do as I say. It’s important, okay? I need you to hide now, and not come out until mom and dad or your uncles come calling for you. Do you understand me?”
At his serious tone, Morgan quiets down and nods, apprehension clouding her expression. Peter really, really hates this. Hates that she has to be afraid just because some people decide to be assholes and raid the home of the savior of the whole world. The home of his hero. The home of their dad.
Peter grits his teeth together painfully and tries to keep the rage from his voice as he whispers her to go.
Morgan flees.
Peter turns around, pressing the buttons on his webshooters as he leaves the room, doors behind him clanging down in Lockdown Mode.
The nano-armor forms around him, the weight settling on him like an old friend.
Peter narrows his eyes.
“Let’s do this.”
The assailants know about Spider-Man.
They’ve clearly prepared for this – for him – and he knows right from the start that this is a fight he can’t win. The only thing he can do is lead the bad guys further away from the house and away from Morgan. He’s already called Mr. Stark, of course, but it's evident that even the Iron Man suit can’t get here fast enough, and Peter had to end the call when the fighting got so intense that even the slightest slip of concentration would’ve cost him the fight.
Not that he isn’t losing it anyway.
He finds it almost weird. Usually when there’re enhanced people, he can still take this amount of combatants and come out as the winner. Now, though, it seems like his senses are dulling for some reason, leaving him open to attacks and slowing down his counters.
Then he tries to move his leg to aim a high kick at a baddie’s solar plexus and the leg won’t move. In fact, all the movement in his body seizes and he drops limply to the ground.
What?
“Don’t like that, do ya, Spidey? Or should I say, Petey?”
Shivers of dread spread down his back. They know my name!
Before he can work himself up to full-blown panic, one of the men lifts him up from his hair.
owowowowowoow
“Well, Spidey. Tell me, were you alone today? Or were you with your lovely little sister, hmm? Don’t worry, you can still speak, so you can answer.”
Molten white-hot rage blanks his mind, wipes out any thought that isn’t PROTECT.
“Don't you dare touch her!!! She’s not even here and I wouldn't tell you where she is even if she were!! Not even if you t-tortured me!”
His cheek stings.
He wouldn’t even have noticed it if the blow didn’t whip his head to the side.
From the corner of his eyes, he can see a cold gaze staring at him through the black lenses.
He turns his head to stare defiantly, mutinously back at the man.
The stand-off takes a while, until the man scoffs and turns away.
Ha! My win!
Then the man turns one more time and states,
“It doesn’t matter if the girl is here or not. All we needed was you.”
As they begin to drag him away, a grim thought makes him unable to stop a horrified shiver.
Torture it is, then.
They’re already in the air when the call comes.
Tony sees Peter’s call ID on his screen and exchanges a wry look with Pepper.
He swipes to answer the call.
“Already in trouble with pipsqueak, short stuff? I didn’t think—”
“Mr. Stark! Someone’s here!”
Something heavy and big and tangled drops down to his stomach.
“Wait, what—”
“I completed PITT, but I don’t think I can—HEY! That wasn’t nice, Mr. Baddie! Or are you a Miss? I honestly can’t tell, so pardon my un-egalitarian language for now, I’ll try—”
The call cuts out abruptly.
Tony’s following reaction is automatic, coming from years and years of battle-honed instincts.
“I need to go Pep, something’s wrong with Peter,” he says through numb lips and presses the button on his seat, coating himself with his armor and falling out through an emergency exit.
Even with the thrusters at full-emission, he knows he’ll be late. He knows it, yet he still hopes.
It’s not even 20 minutes, when Tony is at the lodge (along with Rhodey and Pepper who had called her RESCUE armor to the plane) and the lump in the bottom of his stomach turns into a block of ice.
They’re too late.
Peter is gone.
“Let’s see how you handle this one…”
Peter strains against the shackles, gaze on the needle, senses sharpening painfully until his whole world is hanging on the tip of it.
The man plunges the needle into his arm and pushes the stopper down.
First, there’s nothing.
Then he can feel it. In his hyperaware state he can feel the air bubbles traveling through his veins, getting closer and closer to his heart. His heart speeds up in response as if trying to escape them. Escape the seizure that’s about to start.
But he can’t reverse his own blood flow.
The world is pain.
I love playing with your boy.
Tony stares at the message with bloodshot, empty eyes.
It came with a picture.
Tony couldn’t open it.
He had tried, but the first glimpse of Peter in restraints, face creased in agony and body trashing around, quaking violently, had sent him straight into a panic attack. He had had to let Rhodey and the rest of the Avengers take the lead after that. Just for a while.
After he had gotten his composure back, he had gone to check Morgan.
(They had panicked when they hadn’t immediately found Morgan from the bomb cover.
It wasn’t until they’d started shouting her name that Morgan emerged from one of the roomier kitchen cabinets.
“Petey said we were playing hide-n-seek from the evil guys. So I hid. Can I see Petey now?”
He had been forced to watch the glimmering hope slowly dim in his daughter’s eyes as he floundered for words too long.
“I’m sorry Morguna, they took him. I’m sorry.”
She stared at her feet for a moment before rising her eyes back to him.
“But you’ll get him back, dad.”
The unconditional faith breaks his heart into thousand pieces and rebuilds it again.
“Yes, I will, sweetheart, I will.”)
He had looked at her small figure, at her chest rising and falling reassuringly, wishing that his other child was here for him to check upon too.
Now, watching the picture, bitter tears stream down his face.
It has been three days since the abduction.
And Tony has never felt as useless as he does in that moment.
On day 5, finally, the note comes.
It’s accompanied by a short video and this time Tony steels his heart and watches all the way through. He owes at least that and much, much more to his son. Besides, he deserves the pain.
The room is – unsurprisingly – a desolated warehouse of some kind.
And Peter’s there, in the middle of the room, shackled into a steel chair.
One of the kidnapper’s is holding a knife to Peter’s throat.
Peter’s eyes look hazy, like he can’t quite get a proper grasp on where he is. His gaze wanders aimlessly around the room, occasionally stopping on the figure threatening him, but there’s no proper recognition even then.
The frozen lump that never really left his chest rises up to his throat and freezes his vocal chords.
The camera pans to the left, showing another kidnapper facing the camera, his balaclava lowered to show his thin mouth.
“Hello, Stark. You must be wondering who I am, who we are, but that’s not important. We are nobodies. To you at least. We were planning on having a little more fun with you and your boy, but since you set the suit to electrocute anyone putting it on without the boy’s biometrics, we need to do this differently. See, we didn’t really want to hurt him. But now we have to.”
The man nods to another kidnapper off the frame, who uncovers a syringe and without preamble pushes it into Peter’s leg.
Before the effects of whatever it is on the syringe come to pass, the man holding a knife to Peter’s throat says, “Goodbye now, Petey-pie,” and punches the boy unconscious.
There are alarmed exclamations and urgent-toned discussions around him, but he never takes his eyes off the screen, glaring intently, murderously at the kidnapper at the front.
“That was a concoction I’ve developing recently. It’s a type of a slow, paralyzing poison. In large doses it paralyzes and corrodes the nerves first from the tips of the fingers and toes, slowly working its way towards the internal organs. Curiously enough, I developed it from the poison of a rare spider. Fitting, don’t you think?”
The man pauses to flash an unnerving smile for the camera.
“Now, if you don’t send me ten suits of armor that work for anyone putting them on, your boy will be slowly losing a limb per hour. So be fast.”
The man rattles off coordinates for the drop-off, before the camera cuts off.
For a second, the room is as silent as a tomb.
Then,
“FRIDAY, Natasha, did you get a trace?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Yes, Tony.”
When they get to the warehouse, it’s completely abandoned.
It seems that the kidnappers got wind of their arrival and decided to book it.
Tony would comment on their smart thinking if he didn’t want so badly to annihilate them for hurting his son.
The son they find in the second level of the warehouse in a near-catatonic state, body a gruesome mix of black and violet and blue and red, unresponsive and lifeless.
(For a dreadful second Tony thought his child wasn't breathing and his heart just stops for a long, horribly suspended moment until he can see his chest moving — the movement is minute, but it's there.)
They bring him back to the compound where Bruce and Helen immediately start working on an antidote for the poison. At one point, Peter almost loses the nerves on his legs, but after correct adjustments to the antidote and because of his incredible healing factor, he’s finally on his way to a proper recovery.
He hasn’t woken up even once in the three days after his rescue.
Tony, Morgan and Pepper hadn’t left his bedside for more than a meal for all those days. They even have their own sleeping cots next to him, as per Morgan’s request.
(“But what if he wakes up and no one’s there? I don’t want him to be sad.”
Just one look at those pleading eyes, and Tony’s gone.
He swears his kid have been trading tips on how to make him fold. Those puppy-dog-eyes are all Peter.)
Tony sighs as he walks tiredly back to the hospital room, a scalding cup of coffee in his hand.
“…sorry you got hurt.”
“Don’ worry ‘bout it, Morn’ Star, you 'r safe so 'twas worth it. Wouldn’ wan’ anythin' to happen t'you. You’re my s'ster.”
“I love you too, Petey.”
As quiet as possible, Tony sneaks to the door of Peter’s room, and peeks inside.
The sight of Peter, (awake, alive) a small, weary, but honest smile on his face, holding a careful hand to Morgan’s back as she hugs him tightly, finally melts the frozen lump in his chest.
His family is home, safe and recovering. His heart is warm, whole and beating again.
They will be okay.