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“Boss, Vision is asking for your assistance in the Avenger common room,” FRIDAY voice said, interrupting his work. He sighed.
“What is it now? Did Thor break the toaster again? Because if so, I’m not letting him so much as look at that poor piece of machinery again,” Tony replied, using a nearby cloth to clean the grease off his hands. As much that would come off anyways.
“Peter Parker is at the tower and has become irate about something. Vision hopes you would be able to calm him down.”
“What the hell’s he doing here? I told the kid to stay home,” Tony grumbled, heading towards the elevator a little faster than normal.
It was a tense minute or so to get to the Avenger’s shared floor only to be greeted by shouting as soon as the doors opened.
“You all hate me, don’t you!” Peter’s voice echoed sharply throughout the floor, making Tony move that much faster.
“No one here hates you,” Vision stated calmly as Tony got close enough to see what was going on.
Only Vision, Wanda, Natasha, and Peter were in the room, which Tony was thankful for. The less people involved in this the better. Vision was trying to talk with Peter in the middle of the room as the kid paced back and forth, his hands unable to decide whether they wanted to flail around or pull at his hair. Wanda watched tensely from the couch, looking as if she was trying to become one with the seat cushions just to escape the conversation. Nat, on the other hand, was standing next to the doorway Tony had paused at, ready to act in case things got worse. Tony sent her a questioning look that she only answered with a shrug.
“No, you all hate me! I-I can see it in your eyes,” he accused, pointing a shaky hand at the artificial human. He looked bad with his hair unkempt and his skin a sickly pale color. He was in a pair of ratty jeans and a plain tee-shirt despite the fact it was the middle of winter. Tony cursed under his breath when he noticed the boy wasn’t even wearing shoes. “You hate me. Other students hate me. My aunt hates me. She wants me gone; I know it. She keeps trying to make me take these drugs but they’re poison. I won’t take them.”
“Hey yah Pete, what you doing here?” Tony said as he stepped into the room. Peter’s attention immediately snapped to him. “I thought I told you to stay home when you almost got killed three times from zoning out during patrol.”
Tony could tell he hadn’t listened to a word he said; Peter’s eyes were almost vacant even as a smile spread across his face.
“Mr. Stark! You can fix it. You can fix anything. You can fix it,” Peter said, shuffling over to Tony, grabbing his arm desperately. His grip was cold and far too tight. Tony was certain it was going to bruise over but that was the last thing he had to worry about right now.
“That I can, Underroos. Now what needs fixing, other than everyone’s eardrums that is.”
“I need better missions. Bigger ones. The biggest. They won’t hate me if I can do big missions like they do,” Peter whispered conspiratorially, despite everyone in the room being able to hear him. “I did the math. I figured it all out. If I do the big mission, the Avengers will like me again and my aunt won’t give me poison pills and I’ll be able to go to school again. I miss school. She shouldn’t be keeping me from school.”
“Look, if your aunt’s keeping you out of school, then there’s a very good reason for it.”
“No. No. No. No,” Peter chanted, letting go of Tony’s arm in favor of roughly rubbing his hands over his face. “I need to go to school. I can’t get into college if I don’t go to school. If I don’t get into college then I won’t get a good job and I’ll have to work at McDonald’s my whole life. I don’t want to work at McDonald's, Mr. Stark. I…I can’t! Their food’s made of cardboard and everything smells horrible and the beeping! So much beeping!”
“Alright, Peter, alright,” Tony said, awkwardly patting the kid’s back as the kid started to cry. He wasn’t really sure what to do with a crying teen but it made him even more worried for the kid. Peter wasn’t really one to cry. “Let’s get you all set up in a room so you can take a nap and I’ll call your aunt to get everything taken care of while you do. Sound good?”
“You’re going to talk to her about school?” Peter sniffled, allowing himself to be led down the hallway and away from the common room.
“Yeah, so don’t worry your little head about it,” Tony replied. “I’ll fix it.”
Getting Peter to go to sleep was a lot easier than Tony had expected. By the time he got the kid wrapped in a fuzzy blanket and under a literal mountain of comforters, he was out cold.
Tony let his head drop back against the door once it shut, exhaustion hitting him like a freight train.
“FRIDAY, monitor Peter’s vitals and keep him in the room. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t have him wandering around New York in the middle of winter,” Tony said to the ceiling.
“Yes boss.”
“Also find May Parker’s number and send it to my phone. I’m pretty sure she would like to know where her nephew is.”
-
“Bullshit,” Tony said sending the doctor a glare.
It had been a few weeks since Peter had essentially ran away from home and May had agreed that he should stay at the tower for the time being. In that time, Peter had only been getting worse. His moods were progressively more erratic and making less sense. When he wasn’t having a fit of some sort he was barely there, little more than a shell with glazed over eyes.
Tony worried for the kid, especially after last week when a seizure landed him in the med-bay. He’d been staying there ever since, much to Peter’s dismay. He had already tried to escape the room several times, screaming about being kidnapped whenever he was finally caught. He was now being watched by FRIDAY and at least one super powered person at all times. With Peter’s own super speed, strength, and spider sense, they really couldn’t afford anything less.
But apparently none of this odd behavior was evidence enough to prove there was something wrong, at least not to this idiot doctor sitting in front of Tony.
“I’m telling you, I see it a lot in teen and young adults. Excessive partying plus high amounts of stress and very little sleep strains the brain. It can be exceptionally worse if there is some sort of behavioral disorder at play.”
“Look here you over-payed, failed excuse for a medical intern. That kid doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do drugs. And I highly doubt he’s ever so much as been to a party like that in his life,” Tony said. “Something serious is wrong with him and it’s not Bipolar or whatever other mental thing you want to call it. He’s sick. So find out what’s wrong with him or I will find someone else that will.”
“The only thing I see wrong is that you don’t seem to know that kid very well.”
“Leave,” Tony growled as the doctor got up and left. “And don’t let door hit you on the ass on the way out!”
Once the door shut, Tony buried his face in his hands. Just taking a moment to try and get his head on straight. He’d lost count of how many doctors he’d contacted about Peter. Every one of them said it was nothing or a mental health problem. But they were wrong. He might not be a doctor but he knew there was something very wrong with Peter and he was willing to go to the ends of the Earth figure out what.
“FRIDAY, call the next doctor on the list,” Tony said, rubbing a hand through his hair.
“That was the last name on the list, Boss,” FRIDAY said, making him sigh.
“Then make a new list. And include the non-practicing ones while you’re at it. Anyone that wasn’t fired for malpractice.”
Tony waved a hand as he headed to the kitchen. He was in desperate need for coffee. He was halfway through his cup when FRIDAY spoke again.
“The list is ready, boss,” she said. “Do you want me to send it to your tablet?”
“Yeah, do that,” Tony said tiredly, taking a long sip from his mug before picking up said tablet and look through the names. “Who is this first guy?”
“Doctor Stephen Strange. One of the best neurosurgeons up until a car accident over a year ago took his ability to perform surgery.”
“Show me his profile,” Tony asked, the screen changing to that of a medical profile. “Wait, I know this guy. He’s that magic man with the flying cape. I’m assuming he’s not currently practicing.”
“Correct. But when he was, his success rate was exceedingly high.”
“Call him.”
“There is no current number on file.”
“Then find one. Or an address. Just find some way to contact him.”
-
Three days later the door to an old, stone building opened up to show an annoyed man in blue robes and a red cape.
“Care to explain why you were pounding on my door for the past five minutes?” He asked with a raised eyebrow. Tony rolled his eyes as he let himself into the building.
“I wanted someone to answer the door, duh,” Tony said. “Specifically, you. I’m Tony Stark, though I’m pretty sure you already knew that. You’re Stephen Strange, right?”
“Doctor,” Stephen corrected. Tony was unfazed.
“Good. Dust off your medical degree, you’ve got a patient. He’s at my tower right now, so I’ll drive you there. Technically Happy will drive us there but it is my car.”
“And what makes you think I’m just going to agree to this? I don’t practice medicine anymore.”
“Yeah, I know. You practice magic. Odd change in careers but who am I to judge.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Don’t care. You can bring the magic shit too. Whatever it takes. Just fix him.”
“There’s a reason I quit, Stark,” Stephen said sharply. He held up a hand for Tony to see. It was scared, fingers bent like claws, and constantly shaking. “I can’t save anyone. Not with these.”
Tony took a breath, taking a few mental steps back. As much as he just wanted to shove this magician into his car and take off immediately, said magician actually had to agree first.
“Look, I’m not asking you to perform surgery, or medical procedures, or anything like that. I’ve got my own doctors who are capable enough to do that. All I need from you is a diagnosis,” Tony explained.
“Then have one of those many doctors of yours get you one.”
“They can’t. Trust me, I’ve tried pretty much everyone,” Tony said, pacing across the foyer. “I put together a list of almost two dozen of the best doctors I could get my hands on. They found nothing. As far as they can tell he is a perfectly healthy kid under too much stress, but that’s not it. Stress doesn’t scramble your brain like his is.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” Stephen said after a long pause, making Tony stop in his tracks. The magician was already walking away, heading up the stairs and away from this conversation. “I’m sure you can see your way out.”
“He’s catatonic,” Tony called, making the man stop. “He’s been zoning out more and more over the past month or so, but as of yesterday he’s not responsive at all. I promised his aunt I would take care of this, that I would insure he got the best medical treatment money can buy and he’d be back to normal before she knew it. But right now, it’s looking like this kid, this sixteen-year-old child is going to die before we ever figure out from what.”
Stephen was still standing halfway up the stairs, not even turning to face him. But at least he wasn’t walking away either. As long as he stayed on that step, Tony still had a chance.
“Please,” Tony said, all but begging the man. “I’ll pay you want ever salary you ask. Just come look at him, figure out what’s wrong so we can fix it. He can’t die, not like this.”
“I can’t promise I’ll find what’s wrong,” Stephen said quietly. “I’m very much out of touch with most recent medical breakthroughs.”
“I hired a bunch of those that were in touch with them, you can’t be much worse than those guys,” Tony said, half joking.
“Very well, show me this patient.”
-
The next few days were long, so much longer than the rest. Tony wasn’t sure why, or how that was possible. He’d been through this multiple times with multiple doctors, but this time, it felt like an eternity of examinations and tests and just plain silence as Strange tried to find an answer for them. No one slept more than a cat nap or two, including the doctor as he wracked his brain for answers.
Therefore, it wasn’t very odd for Tony to see Stephen enter the kitchen at one in the morning. What was odd, was how the man almost tripped over his own feet in the rush to get to Tony.
“I need to do a brain biopsy,” Stephen said, slamming a piece of notebook paper onto the counter. He looked like a man possessed, his hair wild and his eyes alight with something Tony was too tired to recognize.
“What?”
“A brain biopsy. A small surgery that takes a sample of his brain-“
“You’re not cutting into Pete’s head.”
“Of course I wouldn’t. One of your doctors will. He needs it. To see what exactly is impairing his right hemisphere.”
“Start from the top, mage. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tony said. “Now what about a right hemisphere?”
“Something is impairing the right hemisphere of his brain. That’s what’s causing all this. That’s why the emotional episodes, and the paranoia, and the zoning out. See? Look here,” Stephen pointed repeatedly at the notebook paper on the counter that showed what seemed to be a very messed up clock. “I had Peter draw this. It’s supposed to be a clock but all numbers are on the one side. That means his vision is not being processed correctly. And that means his right hemisphere is acting up.”
“So…a brain biopsy?” Tony questioned, a spark of hope starting to take root in his mind for the first time since all that started. Stephen grinned back at him.
“Brain biopsy.”
-
By the next day the procedure was done and by that night they had the results.
“Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis,” Stephen said upon entering Peter’s medical room. Tony had been spending the last few hours there, pretending to do work. In reality, he had only been staring at a blank tablet screen waiting for the results.
“And what’s that?”
“Basically, his own antibodies have been attacking his brain,” Stephen explained. Tony paled. It sounded bad, but Stephen didn’t seem to think so, if his cocky grin had anything to say about it. “It’s perfectly treatable and he should come out the other side just fine. If he were a normal individual, I’d estimate he’d gain about ninety percent of his cognitive functions back. But with his enhancements, especially that quick healing he seems to have, I expect about a hundred percent recovery, if not then very, very close.”
“Oh thank God,” Tony sighed, feeling as if a fifty pound weight was just lifted off his chest.
Peter was going to be alright. The kid…no, his kid, was going to be alright.
“Yes, I’m amazing, but there’s really no reason to call me a god,” Stephen joked.
“I’m not even dignifying that with an answer,” Tony replied, getting up from his chair and pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’m going to call his aunt, let her know what’s what. On second thought, you talk to her. I’d just muck up all the medical mumbo jumbo only for her to call me out on it. She’s a nurse so it’s better off coming from you.”
“If you insist,” Stephen agreed, plucking the phone out of Tony’s hand and stepping out into the hall.
“Did you hear that, kid? You’re going to be alright,” Tony said, patting the kid gently on the shoulder. He crouched down a bit so he was in Peter’s line of sight. “See? I told you I’d fix this. I’m just sorry it took so long.”
-
Seven months later, Tony’s private elevator opened up to reveal a grinning Peter Parker and a casually dressed Stephen Strange, both holding half-finished ice cream cones.
“Hi Mr. Stark!” Peter exclaimed happily, all but dragging Stephen into the room. “I brought Doctor Strange for movie night, if that’s alright. He didn’t have anything better to do. Plus he’s never seen Star Wars before so it’s my civic duty as a super hero to make sure that’s fixed.”
“And you stopped for ice cream first? Without bringing me one?” Tony teased from his spot on the couch. Peter only rolled is eyes as he flopped across the only other piece of furniture in the small living room, ultimately forcing Stephen to sit next to Tony. “I see how it is.”
“It would have melted before we got here,” Peter explained. “Plus, we were celebrating. He says I’m finally released to do super hero stuff again!”
“Is that so?” Tony glanced over at Stephen, who nodded.
“He’s right back where he was before this happened,” Stephen agreed. “I would suggest keeping an eye on him to insure he doesn’t relapse but otherwise, he fine to start his Spider-man activities once again. If you approve, that is. You are his hero mentor, after all.”
“So, what do you say, Mr. Stark? Can I have my suit back?” Peter asked, making puppy dog eyes at him. The kid knew damn well how difficult it was for Tony to say no to the puppy dog eyes, especially after everything that happened.
“Twist my arm, you brat,” Tony said, with fake annoyance. Peter whooped, throwing his hands in the air and almost loosing his ice cream out of the cone. “But no patrols yet. I want you training here for two weeks before you start doing anything serious, got that?”
Before Tony processed what was going on, Peter was tackling both men in one fierce hug.
“Thank you!”
“You’re welcome, kid.”