Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The subway car was quiet.

Almost too quiet.

Peter’s senses buzzed in the silence. A familiar shiver ran down his spine, and his muscles clenched reflexively. There was danger, his spidey-sense told him that much.

But where?

Someone sneezed into a tissue before clearing their throat gruffly, and the noise grated in Peter’s over-sensitive ears.

A woman in a business suit chattered away on her phone, her voice brusque and commanding. She reminded him of Pepper when she was in a meeting - poised, well-aware of the power she held.

Somebody was tapping their nails against the hard plastic of the empty seat beside them in a steady rhythm, almost like a countdown.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap .

A pair of white Converse swung their way into Peter’s peripheral vision, and he whipped around, earning himself a few odd looks, but he didn’t care. His senses had him on edge, and the fabric of the shoes seemed to reflect the harsh lighting in the carriage.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap .

The owner of the shoes kicked her feet again, and the sound of them hitting the linoleum floor made Peter’s hair stand on end. She was a small child, maybe seven or eight, and her blonde hair was combed into two neat, little pigtails. Her eyes, shockingly blue, darted up to meet his own for just a second, and he offered her a smile, just a twitch of his lips, really. He was too focused on the spark at the nape of his neck, telling him that something was wrong. Danger was near.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap .

She glanced away, and continued kicking her feet. The Converse were glowing under the light of the cabin, and they made Peter’s eyes water just looking at them. They must be new - he knew his own tattered pair sitting in his closet at the apartment were not nearly as clean.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap .

The kicking stopped, and for just a moment it seemed like the entire world had frozen in time, like a candid snapshot of a routine day in the life of the people who called New York City home. For just a moment, everything was still.

But then there was a shockingly loud boom, echoing through the tunnel, and the train rocked to a halt. The passengers looked around the carriage in confusion, as if one of their fellow travellers would hold the reason behind their sudden stop, and the boom that had accompanied it. The few who had fallen out of their seats at the jerking motion of the train clambered to their feet grumpily. 

Peter focused his hearing, and it may have been his overly paranoid brain, but he could have sworn he heard faint screaming, terrified and desperate.

He didn’t have time to question the noise further though, because the muffled confusion in the train car was replaced by a second boom, several yards away from him, accompanied by a bright flash of light that encompassed Peter’s vision as he was launched into the air by the force of the explosion. 

There was a brief moment of silence - the kind of torn, broken quiet that followed an event so terrible that no one had the words to describe it - before he smashed into the wall of the train car. The metal dented and warped around his body, and the pain was instantaneous as he slid down to the floor, boneless. It bloomed through him, like a plant curling up to meet the sun.

He ached . 

Screams filled the air, not faint like the ones after the first boom, but loud and pervasive in his ears. The last thought that his throbbing brain brought to his attention was that the tap-tap-tapping had stopped.

~~~

Peter was running late. Again. 

He’d stayed out a little too late as Spider-Man last night, but he’d had a good reason. Once the clock struck midnight, patrol had really heated up. Literally. There’d been a fire in an old apartment building, and after rescuing three people and a very distraught cat, he’d resolved to have a talk with the city council about their fire safety regulations. That was the second one in a month that he’d had to deal with. 

He’d made it home eventually though, smelling of sweat and smoke, but buzzing with the victory of the night. It wasn’t often that he made it through patrol without a hitch. May and Mr Stark would be proud of him for making it a full day without running into trouble. They often joked that he was a trouble magnet, and after looking back at some of the events in his life, Peter couldn’t help but agree with them. 

After a cool shower to soothe his overheated skin, he was about ready to collapse onto his bed and never wake up again. Naturally, just as he was about to fall asleep, he remembered the history homework that was due tomorrow. The history homework that they’d had a week to do. The history homework that he hadn’t even started.

By some miracle, he’d managed to pump out a satisfactory essay on how technology had evolved from World War I to World War II, despite the way sleep tugged desperately at his eyelids throughout the process. He was sure that it was interlaced with an absurd number of typos and grammar missteps, but he could edit it tomorrow morning. Sleep was a bigger priority right now.

Finally, he’d let himself drift off. It felt like only moments later when he woke up to May hammering on his door, telling him to get his ass out of bed before he was late. Peter glanced at the alarm clock sitting placidly on his bedside table, looking way too innocent for something that had forgotten to do its job and wake him up. He also did some very quick maths, and figured out that he’d gotten four whole hours of sleep. That was fine. He’d functioned on less, and he didn’t have anything important going on that day. 

Peter actually managed to get out of the door on time, though he’d had to forego a proper breakfast and settle instead for a cold Pop-Tart out of the box. Everything was going well. He should have known it wouldn’t last

Halfway to the subway station, he realised that he’d forgotten his history homework on his desk. Shit , he could not afford to miss yet another assignment. If his GPA dropped any more he’d risk being kicked off Decathlon, and Peter would rather die than let Flash take his spot on the team.

Sighing, he started on the route back to the apartment, and that was the beginning of a very unfortunate series of events. 

If he ran, he’d still miss his usual train, but he’d be able to catch the one after it, which would get him into school a few minutes shy of the first bell that signaled the beginning of first period. Normally, he wouldn’t chance getting the second train, because the New York subway system was about as reliable as the Nigerian Prince scam emails that popped up in his inbox every now and again. To make matters worse, the likelihood of there being a delay rose exponentially as the city edged into rush hour, but he was running perilously low on options.

In a brilliant stroke of luck, he managed to grab his history homework and make it back to the subway platform just seconds before the train pulled in, though he had gotten several dirty looks from irritated New Yorkers as he pushed through the crowd in his desperation to make it to the platform on time.

As he filed onto the subway and took a seat, he slipped his phone out of his pocket. There was a message from Mr Stark on the lockscreen, and a smile tugged at his lips as he read it.

Mr Stark: Hey, kid. Happy’s gonna pick you up from school today and drive you up to the compound. I’ve got a couple of ideas for your suit that I wanna test out. Don’t worry, I checked with Aunt Hottie, and she has given her blessing. 

Peter: Sounds awesome! Thanks, Mr Stark.

Peter: You gotta stop calling my Aunt that though. It makes me uncomfortable.

The ellipses popped up on Tony’s side of the screen, indicating the man was typing, and Peter waited patiently for the no doubt snarky response from his mentor… father figure… whatever Mr Stark was to him. Their relationship was one of constant stumbles and awkwardly sappy moments, but Peter still had no clue what he was to the genius, and he had no idea how the man felt about him in return.

Ever since the disastrous Homecoming night, the billionaire had transformed from a distant benefactor, to a mentor, and then to an almost-father. It had been a slow shift, one that Peter himself hadn’t noticed until recently. Mr Stark started inviting him over to the compound on the odd occasion, and then those visits had increased in both frequency and length. 

Now, Peter couldn’t count the number of times he’d slept over at the compound, but it was often enough that the thought of staying overnight at the Avengers-fucking-Compound didn’t send him into a mess of excited fanboying.

Eventually, their activities had moved from superhero stuff in the labs to strangely domestic things, like curling up on the couch with a carton of ice cream and a movie. Somehow, Mr Stark had dug his way into Peter’s life, occupying, but not replacing, the place that Ben had left when he died, and Peter was pretty sure that he held his own spot in Mr Stark’s supposedly iron heart.

They continued their playful banter until the older man had to go, claiming that Pepper was dragging him along to a board meeting.

Mr Stark: Now is a fantastic time to have an emergency, kid. I think this meeting is going to be the end of me.

Peter had chuckled and left the dramatic genius on read. It was only when he slipped his phone into his backpack that he became aware of the dreadfully familiar tingling sensation at the back of his neck.

~~~

Peter’s eyes fluttered open, and the first thing he noticed was the throbbing pain shooting through his entire body. It was no longer a plant curling up to meet the sun, but a tiger, vicious and insatiable in its hunger. He groaned, and then cried out when the action shifted something in his torso. His ribs, maybe?

He tried to move, but his limbs felt swollen and useless. The air was ashy, and he choked as he sucked in a tortured breath. That brought a round of coughing, and his ribs screamed , and then Peter screamed, the delirium in his mind rendering him incapable of suppressing anything.

No one came to his aid, and he flopped his head to the side. There was something dripping into his left eye, red and warm. He realised with a sort of detached alarm that it was blood. His blood.

The one eye that wasn’t obscured by blood was blurry, like his eyesight used to be before he became Spider-Man. He didn't feel like Spider-Man now. He felt like Peter Parker, weak and helpless as he squirmed on the ground, unable to move, unable to breathe around the pain zinging through his very bones.

He blinked a couple of times, and his right eye cleared, though he immediately wished it hadn’t. Lying not two feet away from his face were a pair of bloodied Converse, attached to pale, limp legs.

The urge to scramble away from the corpse of the little girl (too little, so much life left to live) was enough to jolt him into a sitting position. He ignored the scrape of his ribs and the throb of his skull at the movement, eyes fixed on the face of the girl.

Her blonde pigtails were stained with red, and her eyes had dulled until they were morose, lifeless. Peter’s mouth opened in a silent sob, and he felt his heart cave in as he looked around the smoking ruins of the train car.

There was death and pain painted on every face he could see amongst the twisted metal and shattered glass. They needed someone to help them, they needed Spider-Man, someone strong and unaffected by the horrors strewn across the tunnel, ready to lead their quivering, terrified bodies into the arms of safety. 

But they didn’t have Spider-Man. There was only Peter Parker, and Peter Parker wanted to get far, far away from the wreckage of the train car.

He scrambled backwards like a crab, only making it a few paces before his trembling arms gave out underneath his weight and he fell onto his back with a barely-repressed groan of pain. His left arm had felt numb from the elbow down before now, but when he’d put pressure on it a sharp jolt of pain had shot through his nerves. When he brought it to his face, he had no trouble seeing why.

Peter’s elbow was broken, or maybe snapped in two was a better description. His forearm was at an odd angle to his upper arm, and it would have been nauseating if he didn’t feel like he was watching it all happen to someone else. It was like Peter himself was a character in a movie that he was only partially invested in. The whole area was turning an alarming shade of purple, and he wondered if it was just bruised, or something more serious.

After that, Peter decided it was probably a good idea to take stock of his injuries, before he accidentally hurt himself even more.

His right side was littered with burns, though from what he could tell, none were above second degree. He figured that the heat of the explosion had been the cause, and congratulated himself on his excellent deductive reasoning. Normally, it would have been a simple conclusion to draw, but his brain felt like a half-melted slushie, and he figured he had a concussion of some sort.

His left side seemed to have gotten the worst of it, though. There was a cut on his forehead, if the blood dripping into his eye was anything to go by. Obviously, his arm was fucked beyond belief, and at least six of the ribs on his left side were fractured, if not broken. He’d also discovered a sizable piece of metal sticking out of his calf, and Peter wondered if something was wrong with him when he stared at it with abstract detachment. He distantly attributed all of the injuries on his left side to the fact that it was the side that had made contact with the wall when the bomb went off.

And, shit, it was only just hitting him. Someone had set a bomb off on the train. 

Two bombs , he corrected, thinking of the boom he’d heard right before his world was shattered into fragments of pain by the force of the explosion.

Someone had willingly blown up a train filled with innocent civilians. Children , he thought, and a pair of white Converse flashed before his eyes. Why would someone do that? Peter looked around him, at the desolation and reeling panic on people’s faces. Who in their right mind would do something as utterly evil as this?

A face swam in front of him, a woman with kind eyes and dried blood caking the bridge of her nose. “Hello? Hon, can you hear me?” she asked gently, and Peter flinched at the endearment. They reminded him of May, God, how he wanted his Aunt.

He wanted to relax into her strong embrace, knowing that she’d protect him from anything, even though he was the one with the superpowers. He wanted to feel her acrylic nails scratching gently at his skin as she rubbed her hand up and down his back, the comforting gesture a habit from his childhood. Peter used to get vicious asthma attacks before the spider bite, and it was the only thing that would help while they waited for his inhaler to kick in. 

He wanted Mr Stark too. The man who had somehow moved from distant mentor to father figure in the short span of a few months. He wanted his quick, one-armed hugs and gruff compliments disguised as lighthearted barbs.

He wanted May, and he wanted Mr Stark.

Briefly, his mind flicked to the watch that the man had given him a couple of weeks ago as a means to contact him in case of emergency, but as he looked down at the device, he could see that the screen was shattered beyond repair, and that the delicate wiring inside had been partially melted by the heat of the blast. Not even Stark tech was strong enough to withstand the unspeakable consequences of the bomb.

His backpack, which held his phone, was also nowhere to be seen. It was probably buried under a pile of twisted metal somewhere. May would kill him for losing yet another backpack, and Mr Dell would kill him for not handing in yet another round of history homework.

He was letting so many people down. 

A hand touched his arm, and Peter jumped at the sudden sensation. “Hon, I’m really gonna need you to answer me, alright? Can you stand?”

Peter blinked owlishly at her, and his brain churned its way through her question a few times before he finally understood them. Fuck, it felt like he was supended in jelly. “I-I don’t know,” he whispered, coughing a few times as he let the words hang in the air. There was something warm and metallic at the back of his throat.

“That’s okay, hon, but we’ve gotta start moving. The tunnel might collapse and we don’t want to be here when it does.”

Peter’s mind flashed to homecoming night, when the building fell down on top of him and ironed the breath out of his lungs. He agreed with the nice lady - he didn’t want to be here if the tunnel collapsed. It was almost a miracle that it hadn’t done so already. The explosion was sure to have affected the stability of the structure in some way.

“Y-yeah. Okay,” he wheezed, struggling to his feet, careful not to put pressure on his left leg. The area around the metal pulsed with pain, and the sheer wrongness of having something forcing his skin and his muscle apart made his insides squirm uncomfortably.

The nice lady looked at his leg with a sympathetic wince, but ultimately decided there was nothing she could do about it here. She took his good arm and slung it around her shoulders, wrapping her other arm around his waist. Peter ignored the way her grip shifted his ribs uncomfortably, and instead focused on breathing through the wave of pain that had come with standing up.

They started hobbling towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It wasn’t too far away, but Peter was already wheezing from the effort of staying upright, and the nice lady was limping slightly. He felt bad for making her support most of his weight, when she was so clearly injured herself. He was Spider-Man, Goddamnit, he should be able to get himself out of this fucking tunnel without burdening a poor civilian. 

The remaining passengers of the train were slowly shuffling towards the light of the tunnel opening as well. All around Peter, strangers were helping each other and able-bodied people assisted the injured. The display would have been heartwarming, if one ignored the tears tracking down grimy faces and blood mixing with dust on the ground. 

A pair of hauntingly familiar shoes caught his attention, and he froze in his tracks, bringing the nice woman to a shaky halt as well. The little girl was still there, and he was aware enough this time to notice her mother was lying alongside her, eyes similarly dull and lifeless. 

His breath caught in the back of his throat, and a sob bubbled out of his mouth at the sight of it. Two whole lives, wiped out of existence like they hadn’t mattered at all. Like they didn’t have people waiting for them to come home.

There was a tug on his arm, and he turned to see the nice lady looking at him with pitiful eyes. Peter hated pity. In the months after Ben’s death, he’d become all too familiar with it, and it had almost been enough to drive him insane. He couldn’t stand the sad looks that everyone gave him, when they themselves had no clue what the grief of losing a loved one felt like, the way it weighed heavy in his chest like a boulder pinning him down and trapping the breath in his lungs.

“There’s nothing we can do for them anymore, hon. They’d want you to make it out of here, c’mon.”

He realised with a start that she thought he was related to them. He shook his head frantically. This wasn’t his tragedy. “I’m not - they aren’t… I don’t know them,” he finally stuttered out with a sigh. “They just… shouldn’t have died.” He should have been able to save them. What was the point of him making it out of this alive when an innocent child hadn’t? Surely, the little girl had deserved to survive more than he did.

“I know, hon, I know,” the nice lady murmured as she pulled him forward, and Peter thought he saw the shine of tears in her eyes as well.

They turned away from the bodies of the mother and daughter, and followed the other passengers out of the tunnel. Other people in cars that hadn’t been blown to pieces by the explosions pried their doors open and rushed to help those struggling to make it out.

Hundreds of feet crunched against the gravel covering the ground and Peter slipped in and out of awareness as they made the trek to the light. The nice lady kept muttering encouragement, but her soft words were drowned out by the screams of pain, the sobs of distress, and the cloying air of loss that seemed to press against his body, ever-expanding.

Distantly, Peter thought he could hear sirens, but he wasn’t sure. The explosion had left a shrill ringing in his ears that wasn’t going away, no matter how hard he shook his head to try and dislodge it. He prayed that it hadn’t permanently damaged his hearing, because he relied on that sense so much when he was Spider-Man.

But did he even deserve to go out as the vigilante after this? He had known something was wrong. His spider sense had told him as much, but he had done nothing to stop it. Spider-Man was supposed to save people, and he had failed miserably.

Weak sunlight hit Peter’s face and pulled him out of his spiralling thoughts. He quickly shut his eyes against the rays - they felt like needles piercing his skull and served only to exacerbate his already throbbing headache. 

Red and blue lights flashed against the windows of nearby buildings, and he glanced up to take in the emergency vehicles parked messily around the exit of the subway. Curious onlookers were held back by police tape and a few officers, their faces pale and horrified as they stared at the seemingly never-ending stream of people emerging from the subway, coated in dust and blood.

The air in the subway tunnel had been ashy, marred with the scent of blood and burning flesh, and Peter choked down a sob as he struggled to get a proper lungful of blessedly ash-free air around his throbbing ribs. Why was he crying? He shouldn’t be crying. People had died , and he had the gall to cry about the way his limbs hadn’t stopped shaking since he woke up on the floor of that subway tunnel, about the pain in his body that only intensified the longer he stayed balanced on a singular, weak leg. Because everything hurt, it really did, but he had no right to complain when people had lost their lives and he escaped with just a few broken bones and the image of bloodied, white Converse imprinted behind his eyelids for all of eternity.

“It’s alright, hon. One of the ambulances will take you to the hospital and we’ll get you all fixed up. It’ll all be over soon,” the nice lady assured, and she ran a hand through his dirty, tangled hair.

But that only made Peter cry harder, because that was Mr Stark’s thing. The billionaire wasn’t a very touchy-feely guy, and he didn’t give out very much physical affection, but when he did it was usually in the form of a gentle hand through Peter’s hair.

Maybe it was the concussion, but the nice lady’s words took a while to sink into his brain. When they did though, he could not stop the tide of panic that rose within him. The hospital? He couldn’t go to the hospital! Mr Stark had made that very clear when he explained that Peter’s very DNA was different to a normal human’s, and that meant he required a different level of care. He needed super drugs that were capable of knocking out a grown elephant, and the doctors had to factor in his enhanced healing when planning out his treatment. 

The staff at the hospital weren’t stupid. They were healthcare professionals, and they would surely figure out that something was odd about the teenager who could heal at an alarming rate, so long as he got the right amount of nutrients to keep his metabolism satisfied. It wouldn’t be hard to connect him to the spider-themed vigilante that swung around Queens.

Peter wasn’t sure of very much at the moment, but he knew he couldn’t get in that ambulance. “No!” he cried desperately, pulling away from the nice lady as she guided him towards the vehicle. He wobbled on his only usable leg for a moment, before toppling to the ground. 

There were several cries of alarm, and he found himself surrounded by a team of EMT’s, their hands reaching out to touch him. 

“Stop! Stop it, I don’t want to go!” he sobbed, watching helplessly as the nice lady pushed through the crowd of medics.

“Hey, back off. He’s traumatised enough, let me talk to him,” she snarled at the nearest EMT, who was reaching for a terrifyingly long needle, presumably full of sedatives. She crouched down in front of him, blocking his view of the crowd, and he took a shuddering breath. “Hey, hey, hon, you need to let them take you, okay? What’s your name?”

“Peter,” he gasped out in between rapidly quickening inhales. “I can’t - I can’t go with them.”

“Alright, hi, Peter. My name’s Tia. Can you explain to me why you can’t go with them?”

“I-I have special medical needs,” Peter said, coughing pathetically as he did. The warm liquid that had been resting at the back of his throat until now splattered onto his lips. Tia’s eyes widened, and he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in response, doing his best not to panic at the sight of the bright red smears left on his skin.

“Okay,” Tia said, sounding worried. “Well, where do you need to go to get properly taken care of. You’re not looking too good, hon.”

“I have someone I can call, I just… can I borrow a phone?” Peter said, a little calmer now that someone was finally listening to him. His adrenaline was ebbing away, and as it left, a deep exhaustion took its place.

A phone was shoved into his line of sight, and he muttered a thank you as he took it. His fingers dialed the number on muscle memory alone, and he brought the device up to his ear with a trembling hand as it rang.

Please pick up, please pick up , he thought. I know you’re busy, but please pick up .

The dial tone clicked, and then a familiar, voice answered. “Who is this?”
Peter let out a hysterical breath of relief that turned into a sob by the time it left his mouth.

“Hello? Peter? Is that you?” Mr Stark said, his tone switching from lightly suspicious to terrifyingly urgent. “Kid? Answer me, bud, what’s going on?”

“Mr Stark,” Peter whispered, and he heard Tony’s breath stutter on the other side of the call.

“Yeah, kid, it’s me. What’s wrong?”

“Please, Mr Stark. I need help.”

Chapter Text

“Please, Mr Stark. I need help.”

When Tony heard Peter’s shaky voice utter those words, his stomach dropped. The kid did many things, but he never, ever, willingly asked for help. From what the billionaire had managed to figure out, Peter was afraid of being a burden. The kid had some serious self-esteem issues, though Tony wasn’t one to talk.

He tried his best to let Peter know that he could ask him for help whenever he needed it, but he hadn’t thought the kid had actually taken the message to heart, until now. 

“Yeah, anything, what do you need me to do?” He asked, checking his watch. The kid was supposed to be in school, so why did he sound like he’d just witnessed all of the horrors of the universe?

“Come. Please come.” At the broken tone of Peter’s words, Tony rose from his seat, pointedly ignoring the glares of the other businessmen in the meeting room. Pepper didn’t even try to stop him as he walked out of the door. She knew that the kid on the other end of the call was one of the few people on this Earth that Tony would do anything for, and he was pretty sure she loved Peter almost as much as he did.

The thought jolted him a little bit. He had already acknowledged that the skinny spiderling from Queens had wiggled his way first into Tony’s life, and then into his heart, but he hadn’t realised just how deep Peter had managed to get. It was only as he ditched a meeting filled with a number of important business partners, and his wonderful (but fiercely scary) fiancee, solely because the kid had asked him to, that the reality of it all truly came crashing down.

He loved Peter, almost as a son. He’d never thought he’d be very good at the parenting side of life, and the Homecoming fiasco had only cemented that opinion in his mind, but after a few months of strangely domestic afternoons spent with Peter in the labs, or lounging around in the living room of the penthouse, he had begun to wonder if this was what fatherhood felt like. Of course, he had never actually told Peter any of that. Emotions weren’t his thing - how was he supposed to tell the kid that he loved him as a son?

But shit, he did. He loved Peter.

Hell, he’d even bought the Tower back in order to be closer to the kid. The company he’d sold it to was very disgruntled by his sporadic change of mind, but they’d loosened up a little once Tony offered them a high enough amount. People always did.

“I’m coming, of course I’ll come. Where are you?” he asked as he tapped his watch, ordering FRIDAY to send a suit his way. His question was met with a round of hacking coughs, and some alarmed muttering.

What the fuck is going on?

There were a few moments of shuffling, as if the phone was being handed over, and Tony tensed. He never liked being out of the loop, and this situation was filled with too many unknowns for his liking. Panic was starting to curl in the pit of his stomach, and he could feel the muscles in his chest tightening with each breath.

“Mr… Stark?” someone asked through the speaker, sounding sceptical, and Tony bristled at the unfamiliar voice.

“Who are you? Where’s Peter?”

“Mr Stark, my name’s Tia. I need you to come and help Peter.”

“Well I would if anyone could tell me where he is and what the fuck is going on!” Tony snapped, the anxiety that was running rampant in his mind having shortened his fuse considerably.

“There was a… a bombing.” Tony’s heart clenched painfully at the way the woman seemed to stutter her way through the word, as if just saying it would be enough to shatter her. 

“What? What do you mean a bombing?” 

Someone had set off a bomb? And Peter had been there when it happened? The panic had completely taken over his body, operating his stress-stiffened limbs like an unnatural kind of puppet. His voice sounded strange and mechanical in his ears.

“Someone blew up a train. Peter’s… he’s alive, but it’s pretty bad.”

Tony drew in a shaky breath. Someone blew up a train. And Peter had been on it. His Peter. His sweet, sweet kid that helped little old ladies across the road and rescued cats from trees. “Where are you?” His voice was ragged, and he wheezed out another exhale through his rapidly closing windpipe. He needed to stay calm. Peter needed him to stay calm. 

“Eighty-second street station. You’ll, uh, you’ll know it when you see it.” Tia’s voice was wobbly, and Tony tried not to read between the lines of her words. If he dug any deeper he’d fall in, and never be able to get back out again. 

“I’m on my way. Tell Peter I’m coming,” he said, stepping into the suit that had arrived in the nick of time and hanging up the call. 

Metal folded around him, and he felt just a little bit of the panic running rings inside his mind ebb away. The familiarity of the suit had always helped him feel calmer in situations that were so far beyond his control he felt like he was trying to lasso a rabid bull. 

Not for the first time, Tony counted his lucky stars as he zoomed over New York City. Peter was obviously hurt, a fact that he wasn’t allowing himself to dwell on anymore than he needed to, and probably needed medical attention. If he had been at the Compound instead of the Tower, he might not have been able to get to the kid in time, and then Tony would have to face a reality in which the exuberant boy from Queens was nothing more than a corpse lying six feet under.

Of course, he still might have to face that reality. He knew a pitifully small amount about what had happened, and the state that he would find Peter in. Even as FRIDAY scanned the internet and CCTV, trying to get him more information on just what had happened, his brain was concocting the worst possible circumstance he could find when he arrived. 

Peter, silent and still - two things that Peter Parker should never be. The kid was supposed to be a constant ball of movement and light, but all Tony could picture was a pale, lifeless corpse.

It was ironic, really, how his mind was both his greatest attribute and most fervent enemy.

He caught the sight of red and blue flashing lights in the distance, and put a little more power into his thrusters. He was already going as fast as possible, but the extra juice made a loud, echoing noise. If Peter was lucid, he’d hear the unmistakable sound of Iron Man and know that Tony was going to be there at any second. It was the smallest amount of comfort he could offer the kid at the moment.

Unless, Peter was unconscious… or worse.

He shook that thought out of his mind. Now was not the time to think of what might be. Peter needed him, and that meant he had to push his own worries to the back of his mind until he could get the kid somewhere safe.

Tony touched down on the pavement of eighty-second street and stumbled out of the suit, trying not to fall straight onto his face. Moving from the suit to his own two feet was always a slightly disorientating experience. “Sentry mode, FRI,” he muttered, eyes scanning the filthy station in front of him. Why were the streets of New York always so unsanitary?

The suit closed up, but Tony wasn’t focused on it. His gaze was fixed on the carnage before him. He had seen many things as Iron Man, but there was something about the raw desperation in the eyes of each bloodied, dust-covered person that milled around the exit to the subway, something about their sobs of horror and screams of agony that disturbed him to his very core.

He caught sight of an unmistakable mop of brown curls among the crowd, and took off towards them. He pushed past the flimsy barrier of police tape that the officers had set up, not heeding their surprised gasps when they caught sight of his face. The benefit to being Tony Stark was that he didn’t have to bend and fold to the rules that constricted the rest of society.

His footsteps must have been loud - he wouldn’t know, he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of blood pumping in his ears - because Peter lifted his head from where it had been buried in his arms and made eye contact before Tony was able to call out his name.

The billionaire faltered at the sight of the kid’s face. It was pale, one side drenched in rusty-brown blood, and his red-rimmed eyes held a horrifying mixture of guilt, pain, and fear. Tony ached with the need to fix it. His kid was hurting, and he had to do something, so he got his shit together and hurried over to the boy.

“Hey, Pete. How’re you feeling?” What a stupid fucking question. The kid had just survived a bombing , and Tony was asking how he was feeling . 

Sure enough, Peter didn’t dignify him with a response. Instead, his bottom lip began wobbling, and tears leaked out of his eyes, carving fresh paths through the blood and grime on his face.

It was then that Tony decided he needed to put his aversion to touchy-feely affection into the fuck-it-bucket, and he surged forward, gently wrapping the boy in a hug, all too aware of the many injuries that littered his body and trying desperately not to disturb them. He cradled Peter’s head, running his fingers through the kid’s matted hair, and he felt just a little bit of the tension leak out of the boy’s body as he leaned into Tony’s touch.

A throat cleared behind them, and the billionaire stiffened in annoyance. He was very clearly busy trying to console a traumatised teenager.

“Mr Stark?” a familiar voice said timidly, and Tony recognised it as the woman from the phone who had taken over once Peter started coughing so hard that he could no longer speak. The billionaire put that little tidbit of disturbing information away to examine at a later date. He wasn’t a medical professional, but FRIDAY had already notified Helen Cho of the situation, which meant the Medbay was probably being prepared at this very moment.

“That’s me. I assume you’re Tia?” He responded, trying his best to be pleasant.

“Yeah, but we don’t have time for chit chat. Peter needs to go to the hospital, but he’s refusing to get in the ambulance. Keeps saying something about special medical needs.”

Tony’s heart swelled with pride. Even when the kid was in pain and scared out of his mind, he was smart enough to know that a normal hospital wouldn’t be able to do him any good. “No, he’s right. Normal hospitals don’t have the necessary equipment to treat him, but mine does.” He turned to the group of medics standing in a loose circle nearby, his mind slipping into business mode as he organised everything he had to do into one manageable plan. “I don’t suppose you could give us a ride to my Tower, could you?”

The medics nodded, swarming closer in a rush of single-minded focus. In minutes they had Peter loaded onto a stretcher, and Tony struggled to ignore how small the kid looked under their bustling hands. 

Just before they loaded the boy into the ambulance, he ordered FRIDAY to send the suit back to the Tower. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore, and he didn’t need someone getting their hands on Iron Man technology on top of everything else that had gone wrong today.

The EMT’s hurried onto the vehicle and Tony jumped in after them. Just before the doors closed, the billionaire remembered Tia. He turned to the woman, and offered her a single nod of thanks. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was all he could do at the moment. She deserved so much more for looking out for Peter when Tony couldn’t, for quite possibly keeping him alive when Tony couldn’t.

The ride to the Tower was one that Tony didn’t think he’d ever forget. The medics moved with a frantic grace inside the small space, and he would be marvelling at their practiced efficiency if Peter’s lips weren’t turning blue, if flecks of blood weren’t being propelled onto his face every time he coughed, if the EMT’s weren’t muttering ‘pneumothorax’ among the slew of other medical terminology, if the kid’s arm wasn’t bent at a disturbing angle at the elbow while his leg oozed crimson onto the white sheet below him.

Halfway through the drive, when Peter had been given an oxygen mask to combat his rapidly dropping oxygen saturation levels, Tony felt a light tugging on his sleeve. He looked down to see slender, pale fingers clinging tightly to the fabric, and followed them all the way to the kid’s worn-out face.

Someone had cleaned most of the blood off, though the cut at his hairline was still leaking slowly, the red liquid soaking into his hair now that he was lying down. Gravity had always fascinated the genius, but now it was just a sickening reminder of Peter’s injuries.

Tony shuffled impossibly closer. He was already pressed up against the stretcher, trying with all his might to stay out of the way of the EMT’s while remaining close enough to Peter to provide some semblance of comfort. The kid seemed to be trying to mouth something underneath the mask, but Tony couldn’t hear him over the hissing of the oxygen tank and the shouts of the medics.

He leaned closer and pulled the mask down just a little. He wouldn’t have done it, but Peter looked so desperate, like his entire survival relied on telling the billionaire whatever it was he had to say.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Peter panted. He didn’t have enough oxygen as is, why was Tony letting him waste it on talking, on apologising , of all things. What did the kid possibly need to be sorry for? “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I… I couldn’t s-save them. I’m sorry!”

The kid was almost wailing now, and as tears slipped down the boy’s temple and blended with the blood in his hair, Tony started panicking. He wasn’t cut out for this, not at all. May was the one that should be here right now, comforting her traumatised nephew. Why had Peter called him; emotionally-stunted Tony Stark?

Because he wanted you. 

The thought floated, unbidden, through his whirling mind, like the eye of a wild storm. It cut through the panic and left only a deep instinct to protect the child lying in front of him, who was in pain and apologising for God knows what. The kid had a guilt complex worse than Tony’s, and that wasn’t something he’d thought was possible until he’d seen it with his own two eyes.

“Hey now, take a breath, bud. You don’t have anything to apologise for,” Tony soothed as he slipped the oxygen mask back over Peter’s mouth and nose. The kid’s breathing had taken on a worrying wheezing quality. “Not a thing. You’re completely blameless, I promise you that, and you know me. Tony Stark is a man of his word.”

Peter shook his head sharply, and Tony threaded his fingers through the boy’s hair, ignoring the sticky blood that coated his hands as he did so. “I swear, baby, I swear.” The endearment slipped out of his mouth unintentionally, and he froze, waiting for Peter’s reaction, but the boy only let out a small, shaky breath and relaxed further into Tony’s hand. He took that as a good sign. “Peter, none of this was your fault, alright? I need you to understand that, bud.”

The boy clenched his eyes shut for a moment, before he nodded his head. The movement was almost imperceptible, but Tony caught it. Somehow, in the last few months, he’d become fluent in the language of Peter. He knew what the kid’s reaction would be to almost any given situation, but he had never dared to imagine something like this.

He’d never dared to imagine that something so terrible could happen to his Peter. This was the kind of thing that was supposed to stay on the Spider-Man side of the kid’s life, and he was only ever supposed to be a rescuer, never the victim. But now Peter Parker had been in a bombing while he was on his way to school. How could something so normal, so innocent be turned into the horror show that Tony saw before him? 

The lines were blurred now. Peter Parker was leaking into Spider-Man, and vice versa, and Tony wasn’t sure how the kid would manage. He had always seemed to want to keep the different sections of his life separate, like two sides of the same coin. The billionaire almost thought it was a coping mechanism for the boy - compartmentalising his life so that he only had to deal with a little bit of the shit he’d been through at once.

Both Peter Parker and Spider-Man had been through horrendous things. Peter Parker watched the life drain from his Uncle’s eyes, and Spider-Man nearly met his end underneath the ruins of an abandoned warehouse, completely alone. 

At fifteen, Peter had seen more than most. It was the horrifying truth that Tony saw every time he looked into the kid’s eyes. He hid it well, but the billionaire could spot it instantly, partly because it was the same kind of look that he saw in his own eyes whenever he took the time to confront himself in the mirror.

“I just… I should have saved them.” Peter’s hoarse voice jerked Tony out of his thoughts and he started stroking his fingers through the boy’s hair again, realising he’d stopped sometime during his philosophical crisis. 

“Who, baby?”

“She was so-” The kid had to pause while a coughing fit took over his body, and Tony did his best to ignore the blood that sprayed onto the mask. “So little. Why’d she die? Why didn’t I?”

Peter sounded delirious. The hysteria was like a rising tide, bringing the pitch of his voice up along with it. 

“Listen to me, Peter. There was no way you could have stopped this, okay? Whoever did this was… they’re evil, kid, but you couldn’t have done anything. Sometimes the hardest thing we have to learn to accept in our line of work is that we physically cannot save everyone.”

“She was so young, Mr S’ark,” Peter slurred as another tear slid down his temple, and Tony brushed the boy’s fringe out of his eyes. The poor kid looked dead on his feet, tired beyond belief. He supposed that surviving a bombing took a lot out of a person.

Suddenly, Peter’s eyes, which had been drooping shut, shot open. “I have to go to school, I’m going to be late!” He cried, struggling to sit up. Tony tried not to be alarmed at how easy it was to hold the boy down - normally the kid would be able to throw Tony clear across the ambulance with no problem, not that he ever would. Peter would rather die than harm a hair on the billionaire’s head, and not for the first time, Tony wondered what he had done to deserve someone like Peter in his life. 

“I think your school will consider this a valid reason for not attending, Pete,” the genius sighed, struggling not to laugh. The impossibility of the situation he was in, coupled by the merciless exhaustion that always followed intense panic, had left him in a mentally weak state. Only Peter would think about being late for school after surviving a bombing.

Christ, the kid was so good .

“No you don’t… you don’t understand. Mr Dell’s… he’s gonna be so - so mad at me,” he moaned, pausing every few words to take deep, shuddering breaths that rocked his whole frame.

“I’ll have a talk to him if it’s really worrying you so much. Nothing a good old Tony Stark appearance won't fix. Just… you can rest now, baby. Rest.”

The kid nodded, his eyelids fluttering closed, and the billionaire tensed as the boy went completely limp. None of the medics seemed overly concerned by Peter’s lack of consciousness, and the sloppily attached heart monitor on the kid’s bare chest was still beeping steadily, filling the ambulance with a reminder that the boy on the stretcher was still very much fighting.

Tony’s eyes flicked to the mottled bruising that coated the left side of Peter’s torso, like a morbid Gerard Richter painting, before he averted his eyes. The physical reminder that the kid would be in a lot of pain whenever he next woke up was almost too much. All he wanted was to swoop Peter up and take him far, far away from all of the dangers that the world held. Maybe to a nice cabin in the woods upstate. Wouldn’t that be a peaceful life?

But he couldn’t do that right now, because the kid’s life was in danger. Tony couldn’t let him consider the possibility of Peter dying, no matter how close the boy looked to putting his second foot in the grave as he lay there on the stretcher, limp and oh so small. Everything would be fine. It had to be fine.

They pulled into the Tower several minutes later, and the medics were out of the ambulance and rushing through the back entrance before Tony had a chance to comprehend what was happening. He took the time to ask FRIDAY to light a path to the Medbay for the EMT’s, before he broke into a run in order to catch up to the stretcher.

Cho met them halfway there, and in one smooth handover, her team took over from the ambulance medics, slowing only to get the necessary information on Peter’s condition before they were off again. Tony’s poor brain was struggling to keep up, but soon enough it was made abundantly clear that he didn’t have to. The doors to the operating theatre were shut in his face, and a nurse kindly told him that he wasn’t allowed to go past that point.

Time seemed to slow as he nodded dumbly and then stumbled to the nearest wall. He couldn’t stand up anymore. His body felt drained as he slid down to the floor, staring at his hands curled softly in his lap. They looked like they belonged to a stranger. He recognised the calluses and scars from years upon years of wear and tear in the lab, but the flecks of blood underneath his fingernails weren’t supposed to be there. They didn’t belong , and suddenly he couldn’t hold back the roiling nausea in his gut.

Tony only just made it to a trashcan in time before he threw up everything he had in his stomach. Someone had bombed a train, filled with innocent civilians and most importantly, Peter . Someone had hurt his Peter, and the thought of it brought anger simmering to the forefront of his mind, where it mixed with revulsion. A maniac out there had killed innocents, and they had hurt one of the only people that Tony Stark would do anything for. That was about as good as signing a death wish.

The clicking of heels against the tiled Medbay floor alerted him to someone else’s presence, and then there were hands on his back, remarkably steady when Tony felt like he was shaking himself apart.

Pepper’s perfume wafted over him, like raspberries in the summertime, and it was just enough to slow his racing thoughts and settle his cramping stomach.

“Tony, what’s happened? There’s reports of a bombing in Queens and you left right around the time they came through.”

“Pep,” he gasped, reaching up to her like a needy child. It was pathetic, but he was desperate for some semblance of human contact that didn’t come from a dying kid. “Peter was… he was on the train when it exploded.”

Pepper inhaled sharply, before she eased herself down next to him on the floor, crossing her legs daintily at the ankles and leaning into him. Look at them, a superhero and the CEO of a billion-dollar company reduced to sitting on the ground of the Medbay, waiting for news about a child they could almost call their own. God, he loved this woman. 

“Will he be alright?”

“Well, I don’t know. I really don’t, and it’s killing me. None of his injuries are an immediate death sentence by themselves...“

“But you’re worried about how they’ll affect him altogether?”

“Yeah,” Tony muttered, running a hand through his already disastrously rumpled hair. He was sure he looked like a hobo, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“You got him here quickly, Tony, and Helen’s the best in the business. If anyone can help, it’s her.”

Tony just nodded forlornly and Pepper grabbed his hand, intertwining her fingers with his and squeezing tightly. They stayed in that position for a while, gathering strength from each other as they waited in silence.

“Have you called May?” Pepper asked, pulling Tony out of his daze. He’d been staring at the clock, watching as the hands ticked their way through one minute, then another, and then two more, wondering if the few seconds that had just passed were the ones that would bring an end to Peter's life.

“Shit,” Tony cursed. How could he have been so forgetful? May was the kid’s legal guardian, and also the person he had promised to call if ever Peter was in trouble. It seemed to him that being operated on for wounds obtained in a bombing counted as ‘in trouble’ so he pulled his phone out of his pocket, nearly dropping it when his shaking fingers refused to grip the plastic casing.

The phone rang and rang, and at the very last moment, May picked up. Her voice sounded flustered and rushed as she answered. “Tony? I don’t really have time to talk right now.”

“You’re going to want to make time,” he replied, and it must have been something in his tone that made her pause. He could hear her sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

“What is it? The hospital is packed right now, there was a-”

“Bombing, I know.”

“How do you know?” she asked, and by the way her voice trembled, Tony could tell that she had an inkling.

“Peter was… he was on the train when it blew up. I managed to get him to the Tower, and Helen took him into surgery as soon as we arrived.”

May choked, and her words were barely audible when she spoke. “Will he be okay?”

“I… I don’t know. He’d pretty banged up.” That was putting it lightly, but Tony was loath to scare May anymore than he already had.

“ Shit . Oh my God. Why do these things always happen to our boy?” she asked, trying to chuckle weakly through her tears.

The billionaire ignored the way his stomach fluttered when she called Peter their boy. “He’s a trouble magnet that one, I swear.”

May laughed, though it sounded wet and half-hearted. There was a round of shouting on her end, and she cursed again. “Another round of casualties just pulled in. I-I wish I could get out of here Tony, I really do, but my only shift just started and-”

“It’s alright May. Don’t worry about it. Peter would want you to help them.”

“Yeah, yeah I suppose you’re right. I’ll be there as soon as I can - make sure you tell Peter that… you know, when he gets out of surgery.”

“Of course.” Tony assured her, acknowledging the way she refused to consider the possibility that the kid might not make it through the operation. “He’ll probably sleep for a while afterwards anyway. Chances are you’ll make it here before he even wakes up.”

“Can I ask you a favour, Tony?”

“Anything, May. What is it?”

“Will you stay with him, even if he is asleep? Just… make sure he’s not alone. He doesn’t like being alone when he’s hurt.”

The billionaire’s heart softened at that. “I promise. I won’t leave his side.” And he wouldn’t, probably ever again. The situation had only fed the protective fire inside of him that demanded he monitor Peter at all times, just in case he stumbled into a problem he couldn’t fix by himself.

It might have spawned from the vestiges of guilt that still remained from Homecoming. The kid had been hurt then, because Tony had taken away his only method of calling for help, and now he was hurt again, because Tony hadn’t been keeping an eye on him like he’d promised himself he would after the kid told him about everything that happened that night with the Vulture.

Peter might die because Tony had been slacking off in a meeting instead of watching out for him, and if that happened the billionaire didn’t think he’d ever forgive himself.

Chapter Text

Tony’s legs were a mess of tingling pins and needles and solid numbness. He’d been pacing for hours, listening to nothing but the tap of his overly-expensive shoes against the floor of the Medbay and the maddening tick-tock of the clock on the wall. It was a sick kind of harmony, and each note only added to the burdening press of uselessness on his shoulders.

He was useless, and that fact sat in his throat like a cloying layer of ash, reminiscent of the dark, dusty substance that had coated every inch of Peter’s skin when Tony first found the kid at the station.

The billionaire was not a medical professional - basic first aid was as far as he went in that area - and so he could do nothing at all to help Peter when the boy needed it most. He knew that if he burst into the operating theatre now, he’d be more of a pain in the ass than anything else, and yet the urge to do so was almost overwhelming.

Pepper only watched him wearily from her uncomfortable plastic seat in the waiting room. She’d been typing away at her Starkpad for the past two hours, and each light tap of her acrylic nails against the screen seemed to drill into his skull.

He had a pounding headache, and the harsh, fluorescent lights overhead did nothing to help him. The pain was resting behind his eyes, and every time he moved his head it flared up like a firework on New Years. 

But he shouldn’t be complaining, not about a stupid headache. Not when Peter was hanging on the precipice of life or death. Not when the kid could be taken from him forever. Not when Peter could be facing years of recovery from one ill-fated day.

Because Tony was no fool, despite the preconceptions that some people may have of him. He knew that if the kid made it out of this alive he’d be hurting something terrible for at least a week or two while his enhanced healing worked it’s magic, but that would be nothing compared to the emotional wounds that a devastating event like this would undoubtedly leave behind.

Tony was no stranger to those emotional wounds, and as each year passed he only added more and more fuel to the simmering trauma weighing heavily on his chest. It had started on a snowy, December night, when he’d awoken from a drunken slumber to find two stone-faced cops standing on his doorsteps, hats held respectfully in their hands as the told him that his only family had been wiped from existence in car accident on a deserted, frosty road. The latest addition to the nightmare wheel of fortune would probably be the sight of Peter’s tortured face, ashen and bloody as he sat on the ground of a ruined subway station, trying to come to terms with what he’d just seen.

Tony knew what things like this did to a person’s psyche. He knew better than most the turmoil that sprung from the shadows when it was least expected and then took over a whole day, a week, a month, years of time that were supposed to be reserved for moving on. Eventually, the shadows drew back, and the turmoil receded enough for him to see the pieces of his life that had shattered apart while he was blinded by memories of something too dark to speak of.

He didn’t want that for Peter. He didn’t want the kid to have to push through a lifetime of dark patches and days where he felt like he was drowning in the sorrow of it all.

His kid was too good to have his life destroyed by something that should have never happened in the first place.

At that thought, Tony felt a wave of anger rise up within him, charring the edges of his mind with it’s intensity. Someone had done this. Someone had blown up an entire train filled with innocent people, including Peter, and Tony would rather go through a thousand Afghanistan’s than let them go unpunished.

And so it was with a renewed sense of purpose that he plonked himself in the chair next to Pepper, squirming at the uncomfortable plastic beneath him. The woman paused her typing to look at him in cautious confusion - movement was one of Tony’s healthier coping mechanisms, which was why he’d been wearing a path into the floor for the past couple of hours, and when he stopped it usually meant nothing good.

“Is everything alright, Tony?” Pepper asked, shifting in her seat. 

He took a moment to appreciate her concern and swallow back the instinctive ‘no’ that rose to his lips. “I’ve just realised that I don’t know anything about the bombing, or who was responsible, and I probably should, right? I figured that while I’m here, I might as well do something useful.”

Pepper smiled slightly. “A few steps ahead of you there. I’m monitoring all of the news that comes out about it, but there isn’t much of anything yet. Nothing about you or Peter either.”
Tony wondered at this marvelous woman he had somehow managed to win over, despite his innumerable flaws and nasty habits. Both her and Peter were too good to associate themselves with him, and yet they refused to leave like he had told them they should. Like he said, too good .

“I’m sending you everything I’ve found so far,” Pepper informed him, and Tony could tell by the deliberate glint in her eye that she had known he was getting lost in his own mind, and had meant to pull him out.

He nodded gratefully, and then set about going through the notes and articles that his brilliant fiancee had managed to gather while he was wasting precious time trying to keep himself from falling apart. Words flashed through his mind as he read, and Tony couldn’t repress the shudders that ran through him at each new line.

‘No one has claimed responsibility for the attack as of yet...’

‘...an appalling crime against our country and all we stand for...’

‘Hospitals in the area are struggling with the influx of critically injured - exact number unknown.’

‘...New Yorkers left reeling from a bombing at eighty-second street station this morning.’

‘It is unknown if this was a coordinated terrorist attack, or the actions of a madman.’

‘...and as the bombing occurred just before the beginning of school, many students travelling to school were affected.’

‘...seventeen confirmed dead as of now, but emergency services suspect the number will only rise as searches continue-’

That was where Tony had to stop, and he averted his gaze from the words with a choked off gag. He did not need the reminder that his kid was not out of the woods yet, but he’d be damned if Peter’s name was added to the ever-growing tally of the dead.

Hours passed, and Tony did not let himself falter from his task again - there was not a minute to spare. He asked FRIDAY to alert him if his name or Peter’s appeared, and counted his lucky stars that no one had posted anything about the sudden appearance of Iron Man at the bombing site. Prying questions about his intentions behind the visit, or worse, about the kid he hopped into the back of an ambulance with, were the exact opposite of what he needed right now.

When he was about halfway through a far-fetched conspiracy article about just who was really behind the bombing (he’d exhausted all of the reliable material he could find, and had been forced to resort to pieces of writing that dangerously flirted the line between fiction and non-fiction), he heard footsteps making their way towards him. Tony shot up in his seat, discarding his Starkpad without a second thought - some things were more important than pieces of four-thousand dollar technology. Pepper shifted attentively, her critical gaze focused on the opening of the hallway from which the steps were emanating.

Helen Cho came into view, and Tony’s chest clenched at the drawn expression on her face, pinching her features into a tight frown. His hand found Pepper’s, and she squeezed his trembling fingers tightly, anchoring him to the moment, because she knew that at times like these his head was a helium balloon, threatening to float away with the wind of worry whirling through his mind.

To keep himself tethered, he jumped up, tugging Pepper with him, and met Doctor Cho in the middle of the waiting room. The woman nodded her head in greeting, and smoothed out the wrinkles in her lab coat distractedly. Apart from the exhaustion carved into the lines of her face, she looked as put together as ever, but she continued to fiddle nervously, and it set Tony on edge.

“Well, Doc? Is he alright?” he blurted, unable to control himself anymore. It was a sign of just how much the situation had affected everyone when Pepper did not elbow him sharply in the ribs for his abruptness.

Doctor Cho hesitated for a moment, and Tony felt the icy fingers of panic pry at his mind. He had known Helen for years, and she had always been forthright, even when delivering bad news.

“He’s alive,” she assured finally, and Tony let out a huff of relief, before she continued. “And we’ve very tentatively declared him stable, but I would not say he is alright .” 

Tony just nodded. After seeing Peter’s condition firsthand, he hadn’t expected the kid to be unscathed (he ignored the memories of bright red blood flecked against the plastic of an oxygen mask that flooded his mind), but he was alive . That was enough for now, Tony could work with alive.

“Most of his injuries were not life threatening on their own, but combined they posed quite a problem.” Tony closed his eyes and rubbed his temples for a moment as his fears were confirmed. “Peter has a grade three concussion, though we believe he has avoided brain damage. The only way to know for sure, of course, is to see when he wakes up, but by our estimate he should have nothing more than a terrible headache, maybe some dizziness, and a few gaps in his memory.”

Tony had stiffened at the mention of a grade three concussion - he knew enough about common injuries to realise that it was the most severe classification available, and that they could mean potential brain damage - but he relaxed when Helen said that Peter would remain relatively unaffected in the long run. The panic was still trying to claw its way to the forefront of his mind, but it helped to have something else to concentrate on. He was already making a mental list of everything he would have to do. He’d have to ask FRIDAY to make sure the lights in the kid’s room were at the lowest setting possible - Tony knew that Peter’s senses always went haywire when he obtained a head injury (which was a rather common occurrence, given the fact that he spent the vast majority of his evenings swinging around the streets of Queens and fighting crime as a spider-themed vigilante).

“His left humerus is broken just above the elbow. I could rattle off a thousand different descriptions pertaining to the way it’s broken and the displacement of the bone, but that will just confuse you. We’ve placed it in a cast for now, in order to ensure that it heals correctly, but his enhanced physiology leaves us in virtually unexplored territory. I don’t know if his accelerated healing will help or hinder at this point.”

“Will he need more surgery for it later on?” Pepper asked, and Tony marveled at her ability to keep her head on straight while under pressure. He felt like a house of cards on a rickety table, one move away from tumbling down.

“I don’t believe so, no. We set it correctly, and the cast is just a precaution while it continues to heal, to keep him from accidentally disturbing it. I know Peter, and I know that he’ll find it a little difficult to stay still.”

Tony snorted at that, because it was the understatement of the century. Peter was an unstoppable force of energy, and he’d be devastated to find out that he had to keep the movement to a minimum when ( not if ) he woke up. 

“Is that all, Helen?” he questioned, sending a half-hearted prayer to God that the list of injuries Doctor Cho had recited would stay short. He wasn’t optimistic though, and the remaining hope that he was holding on to drained away like water through cupped hands when Helen shook her head slowly.

“Unfortunately not, Tony. Peter had several lacerations across his body, though only two required stitching; one on his forehead, and a very nasty one on his upper left calf. The moronic paramedics removed the foreign body that was lodged in his leg, and they’re lucky he didn’t bleed out. It’s atrocious - they’re trained medical personnel - this should be basic knowledge. I suppose it speaks volumes about America’s healthcare system-” Helen ended her rant abruptly when she caught sight of Tony’s terrified face. He’d choked on his thready breath when she mentioned that Peter could have bled out. He could have been forced to watch his kid die in an ambulance, seconds away from help. “Ehem, anyway,” Doctor Cho cleared her throat. “We’ll have to monitor the site closely for infection, but I think it has a good chance of healing without an issue. Peter also has several first and second degree burns along his right side, and we’ve wrapped them in gauze to prevent bacteria from entering the wounds. Once he’s substantially more rested, I’m going to consider using the cradle to heal them further, in order to give his healing a chance to focus fully on his arm and his…” 

Helen trailed off and Tony looked up sharply. “What? And his what?”

“I haven’t told you about his last few injuries yet, but before I do I need you to promise me that you’ll remain calm.”
And wasn’t that just the worst thing to hear in a situation like this? His chest squeezed uncomfortably as he spoke, his tone menacingly low. “What’s wrong with my kid, Doctor Cho?”

Helen looked back at him cooly, not at all phased by the dangerous mix of panic and anger in his eyes. “Two of Peter’s ribs are quite badly bruised, one is fractured, and three are broken. As a result, one of them punctured his lung, and it collapsed in surgery. We were able to avoid the need for a tracheal intubation, which is just a flexible tube that is placed in the windpipe to assist with the movement of air through the respiratory system, and we’ve got him on an oxygen mask now. He does have a tube in his chest at the moment, and I understand that it can sound scary, but it’s nothing major - a simple insertion procedure was successfully performed, and the process of taking it out once it has drained the air trapped between his lung and chest wall is going to be just as easy.”

Tony took a stuttering breath, and released it in one huff before he dropped his head into his hands. “Shit.”
Pepper rubbed a comforting hand up and down his back. “I second that.”

“Tony, I’d like to offer my condolences.” Helen said, her voice soft and so very unlike her. “The injuries that come from an event like this always seem worse, purely because of the evil that inflicted them, but Peter is strong, and if anyone can make it through this, it’s him. I want you to know that I will do my very best to help him.” 

Tony looked up to meet her eyes, and in them he saw nothing but sincerity. It hit him then, just how many people that Peter had won over in his short life. He had Iron Man and a handful of the other Avengers (Ex-vengers? Tony didn’t know, his relationship with them at the moment was tentative at best) wrapped around his finger, and Pepper Potts had fallen in love with him just seconds after they were introduced. Now, Helen would join the ranks of those who would do almost anything for a kid that was just too good for the life he’d been given.

“Thank you, Helen,” Tony sighed, and his voice sounded wet. Was he crying? It had been so long since he’d done that, but it seemed fitting that this would be enough to reduce the infallible Tony Stark to tears. “Can I… can I see him now?”

Helen nodded and turned on her heel, turning her head slightly to make sure Tony was following. 

After hours of wanting nothing more than to make sure Peter was okay, he found himself struggling with the idea of seeing the kid. There was no way the boy would be in good shape, not with the extensive list of injuries Doctor Cho had outlined, and Tony was terrified to see Peter in that state.

The kid was supposed to be happy and healthy all the time, it was just who he was . Until recently, the billionaire didn’t think the boy had ever known a bad day in his life, but he’d been taught otherwise by the sight of the kid wrapped in the grips of a vicious panic attack. Peter hid his trauma and pain behind wide, toothy grins and cheesy jokes, but he was still a joyful bundle of innocent teenager most of the time. Seeing him as anything other than the person that Tony knew and loved would probably be enough to shatter the last remaining vestiges of composure that he had.

Nevertheless, he owed it to both the kid and May. He’d promised Peter’s Aunt that he’d be there for the boy, and he was a man of his word. Besides, he hadn’t been able to prevent this from happening to Peter (perhaps his biggest fuck-up yet), so the least he could do was make sure the kid didn’t have to wake up alone.

They reached the room where Peter was recovering from the surgery, and Tony noticed that Pepper lagged outside the doorway, atypically unsure of herself.

“Do you want me to wait out here?” she asked tentatively, obviously unsure if she should come in with him or stay outside in order to give him some privacy with the kid who he almost considered a son (the kid that had been coughing up blood just hours before). 

At that thought, he tugged on her hand, pulling her into the room after him, keeping his eyes on her as he entered lest he fall to pieces at the sight of the boy. Pepper loved Peter almost as much as he did, and she deserved the chance to see him. Besides, she was one of the only people who could keep him calm just by being there.

Helen quietly informed them that Peter might wake up for a few seconds occasionally, but that it wasn’t anything to worry about - it was just a sign that he was working through the anesthesia. When he did wake up properly, he’d be very tired, and probably wouldn’t make it past the three minute mark before falling asleep again. The doctor left quietly, with the reminder that they could call her whenever they needed her.

At his fiancee’s insistent nudge, he turned around, and found himself face-to-face with Peter Parker, the sole reason for every single one of Tony Stark’s grey hairs (it definitely wasn’t age, as the kid so frequently claimed). He could have sworn he felt a few more sprout out of his scalp at the sight of the boy - he looked more like a mummified Egyptian Pharaoh than a kid who was very much alive. But, if Tony looked past the swathes of bandages, the IVs and tubes lacing Peter’s seemingly tiny body, and the pallor of his face, he could almost be sleeping.

Of course, Tony knew better, and so when he sunk into one of the chairs stationed at Peter’s bedside with shaking knees, he couldn’t contain the singular sob that broke through his walls and bubbled up his throat, a deadly cloud of trauma that wasn’t his to cry about. This hadn’t hadn’t happened to him, and he had no right to mourn everything that would be lost, everything that had already been lost, because of it. He didn’t deserve the tears that dribbled down his cheeks like some grim mockery of the pain that the bombing had caused.

And yet, Pepper still wrapped her slender arms around him, rocking him gently like he was a child instead of a grown ass man, until his sobs faded into the throbbing kind of headache that always followed a grade A meltdown. It was only then that he noticed his shirt was stained with Pepper’s own tears, and he realised that the embrace had been just as much for her benefit as it had been for his.

Three hours later, May bustled in, a hurricane of anxious words and motherly affection. She rambled when she was nervous, just like Peter, and Tony’s heart panged as her sentences ran together with the speed with which she was speaking.

“Tony! Tony, I’m here. My boss let me leave a couple of hours early when I told her what happened. She loves Peter, everyone does - how is he? Has he woken up yet? He will wake up, right?”

He caught her up on everything that Doctor Cho had told him, watching as her face crumpled just a little bit more with each new injury that he mentioned. She was a nurse, and probably had a real understanding of what they all meant for Peter and his life moving forward - Tony didn’t know if that knowledge would make everything better, or worse.

But May was a strong woman, one of the strongest he knew, and she shook off the parental worry that hung over her like a shadow (he knew it was there because he felt it too), before taking a seat opposite Tony and Pepper, on the other side of Peter’s bed. 

She reached for the kid’s hand, but faltered when she saw it was wrapped in plaster, and settled instead for stroking her fingers through his sweaty hair. Tony felt a stab of guilt in his chest at the sight of the tenderness in May’s eyes. The boy in front of him was hers, legally, and he felt like he was intruding in a moment meant only for family.

But then May’s eyes flicked up to meet his own, and there wasn’t a hint of begrudgement in them. “Thank you,” she said, and Tony tactfully chose to ignore the choked quality to her voice. “Thank you for staying with him.” 

Another thirty minutes passed before Peter stirred. His hand twitched in Tony’s, just the smallest movement, but it had the billionaire straightening from the defeated slump he’d adopted. 

“Pete? Baby, can you hear me?” Tony asked desperately, and May arched an eyebrow at the endearment that slipped out of his mouth. “Later,” he mouthed, and she nodded, looking amused, if not vaguely confused.

Peter grunted in response, and tossed his head uncomfortably. His eyes didn’t open, but the heart monitor sped up a little as the kid reached towards the tube sticking grotesquely out of the side of his chest with a clumsy, shaking hand. 

“Hey, hey, sweetheart, it’s okay,” May soothed, jumping in to comfort her boy without hesitation. Tony grabbed Peter’s hand gently, and pulled it away from the tube, squeezing it comfortingly. Together, he and May managed to coax the kid back into unconsciousness.

After that, Peter woke up intermittently, each time moaning in discomfort and pain. The noise tugged at Tony’s heart, knowing he couldn’t do anything about the poor kid’s suffering. Helen said they had already reached the painkiller limit, even for Peter’s enhanced metabolism, and so the most Tony and May could do was utter soothing words of assurance as the boy tried to pull at his tube or scratch at his cast in a dazed attempt to remove whatever was bothering him. 

Peter was out again, and had been for about an hour, which meant he’d probably be waking up again soon, but for how long, Tony didn’t know. He tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair impatiently, eager to know for sure that Peter was alright.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.

The clock in the room glowed in the semi-darkness of the room. FRIDAY had done as he asked and lowered the brightness of the lights so that Peter wouldn’t be overwhelmed when he woke up properly.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.

May shifted in her chair, folding one of her legs underneath her as she turned a page in the book she was reading. Her hair had started to fall out of the bun she’d put it in for work, and she was still in her scrubs.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.

Pepper was slaving away on her Starkpad, still working to find out as much as she could about the bombing, despite the fact that she probably had hundreds of other things that required her attention as CEO of Stark Industries.

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.

Peter shifted a little, and Tony braced himself for the inevitable struggle to stop the kid from touching something he wasn’t supposed to, and then the long process of getting him to fall back asleep. That was why he wasn’t prepared for the boy’s eyes to fly open as the beeping of the heart monitor skyrocketed. Peter’s hand shot out and grabbed Tony’s hand, the one that had been tapping on the arm of his chair, and his white-knuckled grip was painfully tight.

The billionaire looked up, alarmed. May had jolted at the sound of the heart monitor, and met his gaze with eyes that were just as puzzled as his own probably were. He shifted to stare at Peter, and the desperation in the kid’s eyes nearly broke the billionaire.

“S’op. Please, please s’op,” the boy slurred, sounding like he was two seconds away from either passing out or bursting into tears, and Tony nodded dumbly. He wasn’t sure how, but his nervous tapping had caused hurt Peter in some way - hadn’t Tony done enough of that already? The kid didn’t need him to add on to that any more.

“Sorry, baby, I’m so sorry. I’ll stop - I’ve stopped, promise,” Tony assured and slowly, slowly, the heart monitor slowed, and the pressure of Peter’s grip lessened with it.

“Mr S’ark,” Peter croaked lazily, and if it weren’t for the way his eyebrows were still pinched with worry, Tony may have bought the small smile on the kid’s lips.  “Hey, Mr S’ark.”

“Hey, Petey. I’m glad you’re okay.”

The kid blinked slowly in acknowledgment and rolled his head slightly on the pillow, letting out a loud sob of relief when he caught sight of May.

“Hey, sweetheart,” the woman said, her voice soft as she stroked Peter’s hair away from his eyes.

“I larb you,” the kid said, and Tony’s heart dropped to his stomach.

“Shit, he’s brain damaged,” he muttered, which okay, probably wasn’t the most tactful thing to say when May and Peter were clearly having an emotional moment, but he’d been terrified that Peter would have to deal with a traumatic brain injury, on top of everything else, and now his fears had been confirmed. The kid couldn’t even talk properly. 

However, his dread quickly morphed into befuddlement when May’s startled laugh broke the thick silence. It started off quiet and unsure, before it morphed into deep, gasps for air. “He’s not - he’s not…” she wheezed, struggling to get the words out around her chuckles. She took a deep breath and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes, successfully composing herself enough to speak. “He’s not brain damaged, Tony. That’s just how we say ‘I love you.’ It’s an inside joke, and you’re tragically uninformed.”

“Oh,” he said, feeling rather stupid. The kid had only been awake for a few minutes and Tony had already ruined it twice. Luckily for him, making excellent recoveries after particularly moronic moments was something he’d had more than enough practice at. “In that case, kiddo, I larb you.”

Chapter Text

Ned’s friendship with Peter began with a single, white crayon. On the very first day of kindergarten, he’d sat down next to a boy with cloud-like hair (or at least, that’s what five-year-old Ned had thought the fluffy brown curls had looked like).

The other boy offered him a small smile, and then handed over the crayon he’d been twirling in his small hands. They’d learn later that white crayons were probably the most useless things ever created, but for the next hour they satisfied themselves with turning a picture of farm animals into their own masterpiece and trying to figure out why the sheep didn’t look any different when they tried to colour them in with the white crayon. 

In the end, the chickens were bright blue, and the sky was an egg yolk yellow, but in the strokes of their stubby, unsharpened crayons, the fledglings of a friendship were formed.

Ned was there to help Peter pull his first wobbly tooth out by tying a string around it, attaching that string to a doorknob, and then slamming the door shut (the ensuing mess of blood and tears had scarred young-Ned for a very long time). Peter was there when someone made fun of Ned for his hefty stature, ready to swing his scrawny, chicken wing-arms at the perpetrator with no regard for his own safety. Looking back, Ned thinks he shouldn’t be surprised by what a self-sacrificial idiot Peter is. 

When they grew older, they studied together over boxes of Thai takeout, while they mouthed the lines to whatever Star Wars movie was playing in the background. They worked on devious schemes and projects for the science fair together, and Ned would never forget the day they took home the first place trophy when their LEGO robot, capable of sniffing out and identifying dangerous chemicals, trumped all of the half-hearted volcanoes and potato clocks that the other kids submitted. 

When Ben died, Ned tried his hardest to help Peter through grief that he didn’t fully understand. He had liked Ben a lot - the man had always been there, ready to swoop in and crack a swift joke whenever either of them were down - but Ben was Peter’s loss, and the closest Ned had come to death was when his own father flushed the family goldfish down the toilet when he was seven.

And then Peter became Spider-Man, and when Ned found out he thought it was the coolest thing in the world. His best friend was a crime-fighting vigilante that patrolled the streets at night, kicking ass and taking names, and Ned got to hear all about it every morning during homeroom. 

Except, then Ned discovered that some aspects of Spider-Man weren’t so cool. Like when Peter shuffled into class, head down and eyes dull, the day after he failed to save someone on patrol. Like when his best friend showed up at his bedroom window one night, moaning about not wanting to bother May or Mr Stark while blood oozed out of a stab wound in his side, and then attempted to stitch himself up on Ned’s bedroom floor. Like when Peter didn’t show up for school at all, presumably because he was so injured he couldn’t even drag himself out of the Medbay for the Spanish quiz they had that day.

But the thing was, whenever Peter didn’t make an appearance, there would always be a message in Ned’s inbox from his best friend, usually something along the lines of, ‘guess who got stabbed again!!! Mr Stark’s super pissed.’ 

That message was the constant that Ned could rely on, because no matter what happened, Peter always left him one, explaining where he was and what had happened. His best friend knew how much he worried, and Peter was a very considerate person - he’d do anything to assuage Ned’s anxiety as much as he could.

So when Peter didn’t show up to school that morning, and Ned’s inbox contained only a message on the decathlon group chat from MJ to remind all of them about the practice scheduled for tomorrow, and one from his cell provider to tell him that his data would renew in three days, he got a little worried.

Ned tried to remind himself that Peter was late to school a lot. He was scatter-brained at the best of times, and it was entirely likely that he’d just slept in and missed his train, or stopped on the way to school so he could help an old lady cross the street. Yeah, that sounded like Peter. 

Everything’s normal , Ned assured himself as the warning bell rang, signaling that they had five minutes until homeroom began and ignoring the voice in the back of his mind that was screaming about how Peter was usually here by now.

It’s fine , he thought as he shoved his way through the streams of students crowding the halls, barely noticing as he shoulder-checked a freshman and sent him stumbling into a locker.

Peter will burst through that door any second now , he told himself as he sank into his seat in homeroom, staring at the empty chair beside him - the chair that Peter should be occupying right now, leaning forward eagerly to catch him up on everything that happened during last night’s patrol.

But Peter didn’t burst through the door, spilling excuses and apologies as he tripped over his feet in his haste to get to his seat. He didn’t do that in homeroom, or Spanish, or Chemistry, or History. Mr Dell collected their homework silently, and tutted when he reached Peter’s empty desk. “Mr Parker better have a good excuse for being absent… again .”

By lunchtime, the seeds of worry in Ned’s stomach had grown into creeping vines that wrapped around his insides and squeezed until breathing was more of a chore than anything else and his stomach felt like a writhing mass of anxiety.

“Hey, loser, where’s the other loser?” MJ asked from where she was sitting at the opposite end of the lunch table, reading To Kill A Mockingbird.

“I-I don’t know,” Ned stuttered, squishing his fork down into the grey mashed potato piled on his plate. He knew from experience that it tasted like shit, and he didn’t think he could stomach anything anyway. What he really needed was a distraction from the, frankly, irrational worry twirling in his gut, so he struck up a conversation with the one person who he felt comfortable talking to, other than Peter. “You know we don’t need to read that until they give us our assignment, right?”

MJ rolled her eyes, as if Ned was missing something painfully obvious, and he had never felt stupider. “I know, but Mrs Cunningham says that she’ll lend me her copy of Jasper Jones for extension reading once I’ve finished this. The American Library put it in their ‘Best Fiction For Young Adults 2012’ list, and I’ve been working my way through it.”

“Okay,” Ned said, not expecting the onslaught of words. He was pretty sure that was the most he’d ever heard MJ say in one go, and he was glad that the girl was obviously warming up to him, but English was not his best subject. Both he and Peter favoured the sciences above all else. 

There must have been something in his expression, because MJ softened slightly and put her book down, using a creased napkin as a bookmark. “Parker’s a no-show a lot of the time, isn’t he? Don’t worry so much, he’s probably just sick... or something.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ned acquiesced, eyeing the girl suspiciously. He and Peter were almost certain that she knew something, if not everything, about Peter’s alter-ego, and almost all of her sentences trailed off suggestively these days.

Lunch ended, and the scraping of chairs as everyone got up to dump their trays almost drowned out the sound of Principal Moritia’s voice over the loudspeaker. Almost. “Could all staff and students please make their way to the gym for an emergency assembly. I repeat, all staff and students to the gym for an emergency assembly.”

The cafeteria erupted into a chaotic mess of muttered questions and confused glances. They had assemblies every second Monday, and emergency assemblies were rare. The last time Ned could recall being in one was when a student had… died.

Shit .

And suddenly the twisting vines of anxiety squeezed his lungs with such ferocity that he actually choked on an inhale. Ned wasn’t one to believe in coincidences, he preferred facts and statistics over what if’s and maybe’s, but all of the evidence was adding up and it made a mountain too tall to ignore.

And so he raced towards the gym, MJ hot on his heels. They weaved through the other students, and Ned’s heart was beating a staccato rhythm against his chest wall. Was he reading too much into this? Maybe Peter really was just sick, like MJ said. Maybe this emergency assembly was for something entirely unrelated. Maybe, maybe, maybe ( please, please, please ).

But the newfound vines of crushing anxiety circled his insides and pinched them tightly as Ned found a seat in the bleachers and stared intently at the single microphone that had been set up on the gym floor. 

MJ sat next to him, peering at him with an odd look in her eyes. “What do you think this is about?”

“I really hope I don’t know,” Ned muttered, and MJ’s eyebrows furrowed at his cryptic answer. Maybe she didn’t know as much as he and Peter thought she did. 

The rest of the student body settled around them, eager to get to their seats and find out what had brought on the assembly. Most of the faces in the crowd were confused, but Ned caught sight of a few that looked just as grim as he was sure his own did.

Principal Moritia walked up to the microphone and cleared his throat. Ned’s stomach dropped at the sight of the man’s sagging shoulders and the somber set of his jaw. 

“Some of you may already know why we have gathered here, and so I won't waste time circumventing the specifics. This morning, there was a suspected terrorist attack at eighty-second street station,” Mr Moritia paused to allow a wave of gasps and mutters to wash through the gym, and Ned saw MJ press a tight fist to her mouth out of the corner of his eye. “From what I have been told, two bombs were remotely detonated on a train as it passed through the tunnel just before the station. I do not need to tell you that this situation must be treated with the utmost sincerity, especially considering that several of our own students were on the train affected.” 

The mutterings in the room grew louder, but Mr Moritia silenced them all with a wave of his hand. Ned had never seen the school so ready to comply with the orders of an authority figure - even Flash grew silent, and Ned felt like he was about to throw up. 

“Today, through the actions of those who have only hate in their hearts, three of our students were severely injured, several more were affected in some way, and we lost a brilliant young man. He was an honour roll student, and an avid member of the decathlon team. He had so much potential, so much life left to live, and his loss will be felt deeply both by his family and by this school.” 

Ned couldn’t breathe. Air was supposed to be flowing into his lungs but it wasn’t doing that and he was panicking because what was he supposed to do when his respiratory system wasn’t doing it’s fucking job ? Mr Moritia had just described Peter, and Ned had entertained the possibility that this might have happened before. His best friend put himself in danger every night, and Ned had spent many hours lying awake, thinking about what he would do if the worst happened, but he never thought he’d have to live through it. Peter was an infallible presence in his life, and Ned didn’t know what he would do if that presence disappeared. 

“Tomas McLaughlan, you were taken from this world far too soon, and Midtown School of Science and Technology utterly, and unconditionally rejects those responsible for this, and any who affiliate with them. This cowardly act that has harmed so many innocent men, women, and children sickens me, but I ask you not to lash out with anger in response to this. Let the legacy of this attack not be pain, but kindness; lay flowers, offer words of comfort, attend rallies in support of the victims, be kind .”

Principal Moritia continued his speech, but the relief that flooded Ned’s system was too much, and he zoned out. It was terrible, he knew that. A kid had died , and Ned had the audacity to feel relieved that it hadn’t been Peter. It was all made worse by the fact that he knew Tomas from decathlon. The older boy was a year above him, but they were friendly enough terms that Ned knew he preferred Tommy over Tomas, and that he’d wanted to be a human rights lawyer when he was older.

Tommy had died , and Ned was relieved because the name that had been spoken wasn’t his best friend’s. It wasn’t Peter’s. He choked on a sob, and normally he’d be embarrassed at the thought of crying while surrounded by his entire school, but as he looked around he saw that he wasn’t the only one with a tear-streaked face. MJ grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly, her grief showing in the hard set of her lips and the curvature of her posture, like she was trying to curl in on herself and hide from the tragedy in the air. 

Peter’s okay, Peter’s okay, Peter’s okay, Ned told himself, and the words ran around his mind like a mantra until they were the only thing he could focus on and he began to calm down, until Mr Maritia’s words floated back to him - “three severely injured” - and the panic came back full force, hitting him like a truck. Peter hadn’t shown up today, hadn’t left a message explaining why, and now this. 

“Three severely injured.”

Ned shot up, ignoring the startled noise that MJ made at his sudden movement, and the stares of his peers. He had to know, he had to know.

He bolted out of the gym and down the hallway, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he did so. Briefly, he marveled at his newfound grace and athleticism, because normally he wouldn’t be able to do anything while running, except maybe trip over his feet and fall flat on his face. 

He reached a bathroom and slammed the door open, throwing himself onto the floor and taking a moment to breathe, just breathe. The tile beneath him was cold against his skin, and he unlocked his phone, scrolling through his contacts with feverish intensity. His hands were shaking, but he paid them no mind. Finally he reached May’s contact and called her, breathing in and out yet again as the dial tone rang. And rang. And rang.

Finally, it clicked, and Ned was talking before she had the chance to say anything. “May? May, it’s Ned. Is Peter -  is he okay? He’s fine right? I’m probably being dumb but we just had this massive emergency assembly, right, and they told us about the… the bombing and they said that some of the kids at our school had been hurt and Peter didn’t show up today so I need to know, I just need to know that he’s okay. Please,” Ned blurted, his last word cracking painfully.

“Ned, honey, take a breath. I can hear you panting and it won’t do either of us any good if you pass out from hyperventilation,” May soothed, and Ned took a deep, exaggerated breath. “Good, honey, that’s good. Where are you right now?”

“A bathroom,” he muttered weakly, and his voice sounded so small, so childish.

“Oh, Ned.” He could picture her rubbing a hand across her forehead like she did when she was stressed. “Peter, well he was caught in the bombing, yes,” May admitted, but she rushed to continue when Ned’s breathing sped up again in his panic. “But Tony got him to the Tower quickly, and then Dr Cho took the lead during his surgery, and she’s the best of the best. It’s - it’s not good, Ned, but he’s stable. He finally worked through the last of the anesthesia a few minutes ago, actually, and we got to talk to him for a bit. He’s very tired, but he’ll heal. You know he will, Ned.”

“Yeah… yeah.”

“Do you want to come and see him?”

“Yes, yes, thank you, May.”

“It’s not a problem, Ned. You know it’s never a problem.” 

She hung up, and Ned closed his eyes for just a moment. Peter was… hurt, but okay. He could deal with hurt but okay.

“So, is he alright?” a voice asked, and Ned almost jumped out of his skin. His eyes flew open to see MJ leaning against the door of a cubicle, arms folded across her chest.

“MJ? What are you doing in here?”

“I think the real question is what are you doing in here ? This is the girls bathroom, creep.”

“Shit,” Ned cursed, and MJ laughed lightly, before sobering.

“So, is he alright?” She asked, repeating her question.

“He, uh, he was in the bombing. May says he’s hurt, but stable.”

MJ nodded, her unflappable mask betrayed only by the white knuckled grip she had on her own arms, almost like she was trying to hold herself together. “Go.”

“What do you mean?” Ned asked, confused.

“Go on. Go see him. I’ll cover for you.”

“Thank you, MJ,” Ned said, his tone sincere as he pushed himself off the floor.

“Don’t thank me, just make sure you tell him that he better be ready to thrash Bronx at the decathlon meet next month.”

Ned chuckled, before jogging out of the bathroom with a grateful nod.

~~~

Half an hour, and several wrong turns later, Ned finally made it to the lobby of Avengers Tower (or was it Stark Tower now? Peter had mentioned something about a fight at a German airport, and a massive falling out between Mr Stark and Mr Rogers, but he wasn’t clear on the details). His feet hurt from walking all the way to the Tower, and he was still jittering with anxiety after having to ask a number of strangers for directions, but he didn’t have enough space in his brain to pay attention to any of that right now.

The security guards were watching him closely, and he hoped someone who knew who he was would show up soon. He was all too aware of how suspicious he, a plump, sweaty teenager, looked in the lobby of a multi-billion dollar company. 

The private elevator doors slid open, and Ned breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of May Parker. She beckoned him closer, looking quietly stern, and he trailed her back into the elevator, probably looking like a lost puppy.

“You know, Ned, when I said you could come and see him, I kind of meant once school was finished. I know how close you and Peter are, believe me I do, but you shouldn’t be skipping school for this.”

“It’s alright, May, they gave us the rest of the day off because of… what happened,” Ned said, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. MJ had texted him a little while ago to tell him as much. He’d just left before the higher powers at the school decided to let everyone else leave too. Technically, he wasn’t really in the wrong, or at least, that’s what he told himself.

May raised a sceptical eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Ned knew that she saw right through him - as she’d always been able to, because neither he nor Peter were very good liars - but he was infinitely grateful when she didn’t question him further.

They reached the floor that the Medbay was on, and when the doors opened Ned was met with the blinding halls that Peter always complained about - apparently the intensity of the white paint gave him a headache. He’d been there a few times before, when Peter was laid up with a particularly nasty injury and required some entertainment that Ned was happy to provide, but he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the overwhelming scent of cleaning supplies that hit his nose as soon as he exited the elevator. 

“Peter’s asleep at the moment, but he’ll probably wake up soon - you know he never rests properly when he’s in the Medbay,” May said, putting a hand on his shoulder and steering him towards an unmarked door. “But I need to warn you that he’s not looking too hot at the moment. It’ll be scary, okay, but you need to remember that he’s going to be fine.”

He nodded dumbly, and they entered the room.

As soon as he entered, he locked eyes with the one and only Tony Stark. If the situation wasn’t so dire, he’d probably be freaking out right now. He’d only met Mr Stark twice before, and both times he’d talked so fast that he’d nearly fainted because he forgot to breathe like a normal person - the hero worship hadn’t quite worn off yet. As it was, he did nothing but stare at the man with wide eyes, and Mr Stark stared right back at him for two seconds before snapping out of it and looking up at May sharply.

“Uh, no,” he said, and May bristled from where she was standing behind Ned.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Peter needs rest right now, not an attack from his over-energetic, and frankly terrifyingly verbose friend.”

“And you’re making that claim with how many years of medical experience behind you, Stark? Remind me, who’s the nurse here, and who’s the glorified mechanic that should stay in his lane ?” Ned recognised the dangerous tone in May’s voice, and he thought that Mr Stark should probably back down sometime soon if he knew what was good for him.

Evidently Mr Stark recognised the tone too, because he bowed his head in acquiescence. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Ted deserves the chance to see Peter too, yep, I agree. Excellent idea, May.”

“That’s what I thought, but you’re not entirely wrong.” May turned to Ned, her tone much gentler than when she’d been talking to Mr Stark. “Pete does need to rest, Ned, so fifteen minutes max, okay?”

Ned nodded, and finally turned his gaze to Peter.

All he can see is cloud-like hair and white, white, white.

Peter is lying on the hospital bed, an oxygen mask strapped across his face, which is so pale it practically blends in with the pillow beneath his head. The sheets are folded back to reveal a mass of white bandaging, and there’s a tube poking out of the wrappings that makes Ned want to vomit up his breakfast. Peter’s body is littered with cuts and burns that stick out, bright red and sore, against the pallor of his skin. There’s a cast on his arm that stretches up past his elbow, and each new injury that Ned clocks makes the vines inside him squeeze just a little tighter.

He’s never seen Peter looking so terrifyingly close to death, and he doesn’t notice the tears that spill down his cheeks at the sight of his best friend. Ned takes a seat next to the bed, oblivious to the two adults in the room that are watching the scene with sad, tired eyes.

“Hey, Pete,” Ned whispered, and he’s dangerously close to sobbing. There’s a beast in his throat, clawing at each word that he tries to say and making speaking really fucking hard. “You look worse than that time we went to a Star Wars trivia night and you got food poisoning from the chicken burrito you ate. The vomiting was insane ,” Ned chuckled, and he could almost ignore the wet quality to his voice. He leaned back for a second to stare up at the ceiling, and missed Peter rousing himself from his sleep, pushing the oxygen mask down so that he could speak.

“It was disgusting,” Peter wheezed, and Ned shot up.

“Peter!” He yelled, wincing in apology when his best friend flinched at the loud noise. “Shit, dude, I was so worried. You didn’t leave me a message, and I had to find out about the bomb-” Ned cut himself off when he noticed the haunted look in Peter’s eyes, and hastily backtracked. “The, yeah, you know what I mean. Anyway, there was a massive assembly and then I called May, and then… yeah. Here I am.”

At that, Peter’s eyes softened. “Sorry, man, I’m so sorry I scared you. But I’m okay, just a little achy.”

Peter’s words earned him a scoff from everyone else in the room. He was notorious for underplaying his injuries, and he’d done it yet again. 

“Screw you, dumbass. Don’t do this again, okay?” Ned says, and Peter smiles gently.

“I second that motion, kid. Try not to get blown up a second time,” Tony chimed in, and May smacked him across the head. She pushed him out of the room, closing the door behind her and effectively shutting them off from Tony’s groans of pain.

“Did you say something about an assembly before, Ned?” Peter asked, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand.

“Oh, yeah. It was right after lunch and then Mr Moritia told us all to come to the gym for an emergency assembly, and then he told us about, you know, and also…”

“Also what?”

Ned hesitated, because he knew that Peter would probably blame himself for Tommy’s death, no matter how many times he was told that it wasn’t his fault, but his best friend would find out the truth at some point - wasn’t it better that someone he loved was the one to share the news? “Uh, one of the kids at Midtown died… in - in the blast.”

“Who?” Peter’s voice was strangled when he spoke, and Ned couldn’t decide if it was because of the recent news or his injuries.

“Tommy. Tommy McLaughlan.”

Peter let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes. After a few minutes of quiet, he spoke, tone devastated. “He didn’t deserve to die. No one deserved to die because of this.”

Ned nodded in agreement, and they sat in silence for a moment. It wasn’t the comfortable, peaceful silence that usually rested between them, but heavy - filled with too many racing thoughts. It made him itch, and so he shifted in his chair and spoke, his words feeble against the coagulated air. “MJ, she told me - well, threatened me really, to tell you that you better be ready for the decathlon meet with Bronx next month.”

Peter grinned at that, clearly just as thankful for the distraction as Ned was. “Don’t worry, you can tell her I’ll be ready and raring to beat their asses.”

“Yeah, you better be,” came a voice from the doorway, and Ned spun around to see MJ leaning against the frame, arms crossed. 

The sight gave him a crazy sense of deja vu, and he sighed as he spoke. “Christ, MJ, you’ve gotta stop doing that. That’s twice today .”

“Whatever, I brought Uno,” she said, smiling slightly as she held up the game.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway outside, and Mr Stark burst into the room, panting heavily and fingering his watch - Ned was pretty sure it was the infamous gauntlet watch that Peter had told him about. 

“I have no idea who you are, or how you got up here, but you have three seconds to explain yourself before I blast your head off, or call security, whichever tickles my fancy.”

“Mr Stark, chill . It’s MJ,” Peter chuckled from his hospital bed, and Mr Stark let out an interested chuckle.

“Oh? MJ, hm? That girl you’re always gushing about?” Tony asked, ignoring Peter’s groans of embarrassment. “It's an absolute pleasure to meet you, MJ.”

“Wish I could say the same. It’s Michelle to you, by the way.”

“Yeah, she’s not your biggest fan,” Peter explained, wincing sympathetically. “There’s a small chance she’ll warm up to you, but I don’t want to get your hopes up.”

“It’s okay, Pete. I like her,” Mr Stark chuckled, winking at his protege and-slash-or son. “I still don’t know how she got past security and FRIDAY, but I’m too tired to figure that out now. Your fifteen minutes are almost up, Ted. Out soon.”

“But Mrs Parker said I could have fifteen minutes with Peter too,” MJ countered, crossing her arms and glaring at the billionaire.

Under the scrutiny of three teenagers, two with more than adequate puppy dog eyes, and one with a gaze so steely it reminded him of Pepper, Tony caved. “Alright fine, fine. Do whatever you want, but as soon as Peter starts getting tired, you’re out. You hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah. Go have your nap, old man,” Peter said, blinking innocently as Mr Stark scowled at him. The grumpy expression dropped quickly though, and morphed into a fond smile.

“I’m really glad you’re okay, kid.”

Peter blushed as Mr Stark left, and Ned turned to his best friend. “Dude, Mr Stark’s totally your faux-dad.”

“What? No he’s not!”

“Uh yeah, he is,” MJ chimed in, looking smug.

“Shut up, MJ, how’d you even know I was here. And how did you get past FRIDAY?”

“I just asked her nicely. As for how I knew where you were… well, it’s not that hard to figure where Iron Man would take Spider-Man to get patched up, now is it?”

Peter spluttered inexplicably for a few seconds while Ned scrambled to put a coherent sentence together. How did MJ know? Since when? And why hadn’t she said anything?

“Okay, I was like, seventy percent sure I was right, but both of your faces have bumped that number right up to one-hundred. You know, for someone so hell-bent on keeping a secret identity, you suck at actually being secretive.”

Peter was still gasping for air, and just as Ned was beginning to get worried, he spoke, though his words were frail. “At least we don’t have to whisper around her anymore, Ned.”

“I would hardly call it whispering. More like gently shouting you secrets for everyone to hear, if only they were a tad bit more observant.”

Peter scoffed. “Whatever, let’s play Uno, we only have like ten minutes left before Mr Stark comes in here and kicks both of you out. With any luck though, he’ll oversleep and we’ll have a little more time.”

Ned nodded in agreement, and MJ started dealing the cards. 

They were both so engaged in their debate on how to correctly shuffle a deck that neither of them noticed as Peter’s smile slipped off his face and he stared out the window, seemingly lost in thought.

A pair of bloodstained, white converse flashed across his vision, and he screwed his eyes shut against the image. That was over now. He was fine . 

Fine.

Chapter Text

Peter hated cheesy quotes more than anything in the world - the ones with supposedly inspiring words written in cursive and superimposed over a heavily filtered image of a sunset. The ones that took up the majority of the posts on Pinterest. Yeah, he hated them.

Hated them more than his Aunt’s mushroom risotto, or that one person in an exam who would always interrupt the strained silence of the room with a loud, throaty sniff that never failed to make Peter’s skin crawl.

They were just frilly expressions that tried pathetically hard to drape the shitshow of the world in phoney hope, like the lace pillow that May had bought to cover up the soup stain on the couch. It was nice enough to look at, but both of them knew what lay beneath, and just because they couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Living in ignorance didn’t make the stain go away.

And so he hated the quotes, because they were fucking moronic. The people who wrote “happiness is always a choice,” had obviously never watched their Uncle bleed out in front of them. They’d obviously never had to wake up to screams of terror and a pair of bloodied, white converse two feet from their face. They’d obviously never stared into the cold, dull eyes of a little girl who had died far too soon in an attack that never should have happened.

Because happiness may be a choice for those who had never experienced real pain, but for Peter, he was struggling to choose to get out of bed, let alone plaster a genuine smile on his face instead of the hollow ones that stretched his cheeks like he was a half-melted wax model and made May look at him like he was a stranger.

Granted, the fact that his leg, among his many other injuries, had yet to heal also made getting up a seemingly Olympian effort, but for the sake of his argument he wouldn’t acknowledge that.

In conclusion, cheesy quotes were for people unsatisfied with their mundane lives and wanted to make themselves feel a little better about everything that was going wrong. Full stop. The end. No further questions, your honour.

But still the cheesy quotes followed him, as they always did in times of crisis. They were emblazoned on the get well soon cards scattered across his room, sent by various, well-meaning classmates who had heard about his entanglement in the explosion and had accosted Ned at school, thrusting meaningless teddy bears and balloons into his arms and demanding that he pass them on to Peter, as if captured helium would miraculously heal his aching ribs (or erase the memories of fire and blood, twisted metal and chunks of concrete). The quotes were interwoven throughout his feed on Instagram, the captions always something along the lines of ‘I stand in solidarity with the victims of the Eighty-second Street bombing.’

Peter wanted nothing more than to comment something needlessly rude, something like, ‘it’s not solidarity if hundreds of thousands of people are doing it with you.’

But he refrained, because he knew that those people were just trying to show their support in one of the only ways they knew how, and the endless amount of hate he’d get for his words wouldn’t be worth it anyway.

He knew he was acting like a cranky old man - a grinch of community support, if you will - but he couldn’t help it. There was a list of numbers scrolling through his head and they only served to amplify his guilt and self-hatred, which manifested in the form of general prickliness towards most of those around him.

One-hundred and thirty-eight people in the carriages affected.

Eight-seven injured, and Peter found it so strange to think that he was included in that statistic. Was he the twelfth? Or maybe lucky last, number eighty-seven?

And thirty-four dead. Dead, dead, dead. Thirty-four people that Peter could have saved, if only he’d been paying attention to his surroundings, if only he’d actually listened to the prickling at the nape of his neck for once. But he’d failed, and now thirty-four families would be burying their loved ones, grief pressing down on them until they buckled under the weight of it all. Peter hated that he understood their pain so well when he could have, should have stopped it altogether.

Some days he wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all, because thirty-four people had lost their lives. Tommy McLaughlan. A mother and that little girl, her small body like a ragdoll, sprawled against unyielding concrete as it stole away the last of her warmth with greedy, grasping fingers.

Other days he just felt like crawling under his covers like he was five again and the thunder overhead was the scariest thing in the world. He wanted to be guarded by the muted darkness and assured protection that his old Iron Man bed sheets had provided. He wanted that feeling of safety again, but his mind seemed to think that safety was a ruse, and that he’d never know what security felt like ever again. 

There was an ever present anxiety in the pit of his stomach that simmered like a toxic potion, making him jumpy and far too aware of his surroundings. His hands shook whenever he was left alone, and he couldn’t stop the flush of relief that ran through his body when May or Mr Stark returned, temporarily soothing the prickles of fear that stabbed at his limbs. His voice had taken up a tremor when he spoke, and he was long-used to the way Mr Stark’s gaze always took up a sad quality when he thought Peter wasn’t looking.

It had been two weeks since the explosion. A week since Peter was well enough to return to his and May’s apartment in Queens. They’d taken the long route on the way back, to avoid driving past Eighty-second Street Station, and that had seemed to set the stage for every single one of their conversations afterwards. No one broached the topic of the bombing, instead tiptoeing around it and glossing over it until it shone like a newly-polished floor, and Peter couldn’t help but notice it’s presence.

And he was sick of the eggshells, really, but he was no keener to face the issue that everyone else had decided to avoid. He wasn’t ready to revisit the images from that day, not with Mr Stark, not with May, and certainly not with some wackass shrink. Both of the adults had tentatively suggested that he go and see a therapist, but that was out of the question, for the moment at least. There was no way he’d talk to a complete stranger when he couldn’t even talk to the people in his life that he trusted most.

Unfortunately, his subconscious didn’t get the whole ‘let’s not go back to one of the worst days of my life’ memo, because it dragged the memories up every time he closed his eyes. His dreams were bright flashes of light and impossible heat, screams of agony, lifeless limbs and bloodied, white converse. 

As a result, Peter had kind of sworn off sleeping. It was slowing his healing factor down, and Doctor Cho reminded him of as much when he went in for his biweekly check ups at the Tower. Apparently, his body needed all of the healthy things to work at full capacity, sleep included. Personally, Peter thought that was lame, but Doctor Cho insisted that was what he needed if he wanted to start healing at above-average rates again.

He had to admit, it would be nice to get rid of the clunky cast around his arm, and the feeling of the tight stitches holding the hole on his leg together made his stomach churn, but sleep still eluded him - the flighty bitch.

He hadn’t gone back to school yet. He didn’t know what he would do when he did. How was he supposed to cope with the pitying glances from his teachers and classmates when he couldn’t even maintain eye contact with May and Mr Stark? And Midtown had been more than understanding, too. Principal Moritia had said that he could take as much time off as he needed, and Peter was grateful for that, he really was, but he was torn.

He wanted to go to school, he wanted to stop sitting in his room while memories circled inside his head, but it would be hard. If he had to deal with one more sympathetic hand-squeeze he’d probably burst - a volcano eruption of pent-up rage and all-consuming fear. 

And so he didn’t go to school. He stayed in his room and hid under his bed sheets like he’d so longed to do, pretending to be asleep when May poked her head in to check on him. She let him do it, even though they both knew he never slept these days, and part of him felt bad for avoiding her. The other part of him reasoned that she wouldn’t want to talk to him anyway, not if she knew how badly he’d failed. 

Mr Stark showed up at their apartment almost every day, and Peter felt terribly guilty every time he did. Surely, the billionaire had something better to do than check up on him, right? There was probably a meeting to attend, or revolutionary technology to build, and yet the man never skipped a day.

Despite the guilt, Peter never complained, because whenever Mr Stark was around he could get lost in their fast-paced banter and high-level shop talk. For an hour, or two, or three, he could forget about the shadows in his brain that whispered terrible things to him at night. 

It was your fault , they’d say, and Peter couldn’t help but believe them. Those thirty-four people are dead because you were too weak to save them. You’re a failure.

It became common knowledge, he thought. Everyone knew that Peter Parker had failed, that he was a failure, and that was why he could never look anyone in the eye anymore -  he was too afraid to see the blame there, too weak to face the music. He was the cowardly lion, and everyone knew that.

So when he made a joke about it to Mr Stark, and the man didn’t laugh, Peter was confused.

He was even more confused when Mr Stark put down the Lego he’d been fiddling with - Peter was still surprised that the older man had agreed to build Legos with him in the first place - and fixed him with a serious stare.

“Peter, you don’t really think that, do you?”

“What?” the boy asked, and now he was just plain befuddled, because Mr Stark never used his full name, not unless something really important was happening.

“C’mon, Pete. You’re… God, you’re probably as far from cowardly as you can get,” Mr Stark said, his tone thick with disbelief at Peter’s apparent ignorance.

Peter scoffed at that, and he could feel it all welling up inside him. All the fear and hurt and anger of the past month, doubling and then tripling inside of him until he felt like an over-inflated balloon, ready to pop at any moment. 

“I’m not kidding, Peter. You’re so, so brave. What you went through was horrible , but you’re still here, you’re still fighting, and I admire that so much-”

“Stop it, Mr Stark,” Peter scowled, and he was burning now, inside and out. There was a rash of anger rising up his neck, tinging his cheeks pink with the heat of it.

“No, I won't stop, kid, because I need you to understand. You’re incredible, Peter, and what you went through was not your fault, you hear me?”

The anger was irrational, Peter knew that, but that didn’t stop him from feeling it. He was tired. He was exhausted . All he wanted was to cry, and then maybe sleep for a thousand years. But he couldn’t sleep because there were memories in his head that would only twist and warp until they were so grotesque that he woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for air and choking on the phantom ash in his throat. “I’m not brave, Mr Stark. I’m not. If I was fucking brave I’d actually leave the apartment, I’d be able to look people in the eye, I’d be able to get on with my miserable life. But I failed, and I can’t move on and I can’t forget because that’s like spitting on a corpse, Mr Stark. Thirty-four people are dead and it’s all my fault .” The rage made his voice sound raw and ragged, like his vocal chords had been dragged across gravel for a mile and then stuffed, haphazard, back into his throat.

Mr Stark leaned back at the outburst, and Peter couldn’t help the spark of satisfaction when he caught sight of the shock on the man’s face. 

“It’s not, Peter, it’s not.”

“Stop, Mr Stark, just stop talking, you weren’t there . You don’t know what happened.”

“Then tell me! Talk to me, I just want to help, baby.”

“Shut up!” The anger was boiling now, and the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “You don’t get to call me that. You’re not my dad!” 

Mr Stark’s mouth dropped open, and he floundered like a goldfish on land for a moment, before he slapped his mouth closed and clenched his jaw.

“Just… leave, please. Go away,” Peter sighed, and the anger was gone, replaced by a bone deep exhaustion. He was tired all the time now, like his very limbs were made of lead and he just didn’t have the strength to lift them anymore. Why did he have to make that stupid joke? Why did he have to explode all over Mr Stark like that? All he’d done now was confirm that he was nothing more than a pathetic, weak-kneed kid.

Mr Stark nodded, his face somber as he rose from his position on the floor. The man took extra care to avoid the Legos scattered across the carpet, and it only made the anger flare up in Peter’s chest again. He wanted Mr Stark to rage, he wanted the man to shout about how sad and pitiful Peter was, he wanted the anger inside him to be justifiable, he wanted somewhere to direct the hurt , but Mr Stark remained stoic as he left Peter’s room with a despondent twitch of his lips and downcast eyes. “I’ll be here whenever you need me, kid.”

And then he was gone, and Peter had never hated himself more. He’d blown up at Mr Stark, who’d been nothing but benevolent and supportive through this entire horror story. The man had stayed with him the entire time, held him while he’d cried, coached him through panic attack after panic attack, and Peter had thrown that all back at him like it hadn’t ever mattered.

He wished he could take it all back. He wished he’d never opened his stupid fucking mouth. But he had, and it was all out in the open now. He heard the apartment door swing shut, and then the bile rose in his throat.

He only just made it to the bathroom in time before he was vomiting his guts up into the toilet. His leg was throbbing in time with the contractions of his abdomen muscles, because his body had suddenly decided that keeping half-digested food inside where it belonged was for losers.

May’s gentle hand was on his back and her calming voice was in his ear as he spewed into the toilet bowl.

“It’s alright, Peter, just relax. It’ll all be over soon.”

And she was right, it was. His heaving slowed as soon as there was nothing left in him to throw up, and he was left shaking on the frigid, tile floor of the bathroom. There was a film of nastiness coating his tongue, but he paid it no mind as May scooped him into her lap, cradling him like she used to when he was younger. He had been so distant from her in the past weeks, and he had missed her hugs more than he thought.

“What happened, sweetheart? Tony just… left,” May asked, her voice so gentle, but the words struck Peter like a harsh slap.

“I - I did something bad, May. I said something terrible. He’ll hate me forever now,” Peter cried, and the words were bubbles of sadness, bursting out of his throat and popping when they touched the air.

“You know that’s not true, Peter. You know that’ll never be true. He larbs you, remember?”

Peter just shook his head, burrowing further into his Aunt’s arms. 

She sighed, clucking her tongue a few times, before seeming to come to a decision. “We’ll leave it a few days, how about that? Let everything simmer down a bit. In the meantime, you need your rest, mister. Get that healing back up to scratch.”

Wordlessly, she helped him up, grabbing a tissue from the box on the counter and deftly wiping away the vomit smeared around his mouth. Peter had rarely been more disgusted with himself than in that moment, except for the time he’d snorted in class and a stream of snot had shot out of his left nostril - that had also been sickening, and Flash still hadn’t let him forget it.

As they left the bathroom, he caught sight of himself in the mirror, and winced. He looked wrecked, like a tired brick wall that had weathered thousands of years until time had finally taken its toll on him, and he was crumbling to pieces. There were dark circles under his eyes, half moons that spoke of every night he’d spent laying awake on his bed and watching mindless Netflix shows instead of sleeping. His cuts and bruises had yet to mend, and there was a certain pallor to his face now, like all of his blood had been drained from his body and he was just a walking corpse. The bright purple bruise that stretched across his forehead stood out, a bright neon sign saying ‘pathetic dumbass right here.’

And then his eyes glanced away from the mirror of their own accord, and the self-loathing bubbled back up again. He couldn’t even look himself in the eyes. There was too much failure sitting there, like a slab of truth that Peter was just too cowardly to look at.

May steered him back to his bed and tucked him in, smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead. “Sleep, sweetheart. It’ll all be better in the morning.”

The childish treatment might have annoyed him once upon a time, but now he just offered his Aunt a small smile before he shut his eyes, praying that her words of comfort might actually be true. She used to whisper them to him when the bullies at school had been especially harsh, or when he’d fallen over and scraped his knee at the playground.

The last time he can remember her saying it was the night Ben died. She’d guided his shock-stiffened limbs out of the bloodied t-shirt and jeans that he would never wear again. They were thrown in the garbage, and he was eased into bed. She swept his hair back, and whispered the words of comfort, all the while battling back her own tears and insurmountable grief. May was so strong, and Peter wanted to know what it would feel like if that kind of unshakeable assurance was running through his own veins.

She’d been wrong, of course. Ben was still dead in the morning, and the harsh reality of it had seemed even worse in the daylight, but it was the sentiment that counted, he supposed.

He drifted away, and the sleep that encased him was not flighty. Rather, it trapped him in it’s darkness, strapped him down and forced him to watch the worst moments of his life over and over again, twisting them and warping them until he no longer knew what was real and what was a figment of his own, fucked up imagination. 

Peter dreamt, but he wished he hadn’t.

~~~

The night Ben died, he and Peter’d had an argument. It was about something stupid, so stupid that Peter couldn’t even rememeber what the point of it had been, despite the fact that every other facet of that night was etched into his bain. Peter had been so mad, he’d left the apartment and went for a walk to the bodega at the corner, despite the fact that it was eight o’clock at night and Ben had been yelling at him from the doorway, ordering him to come back.

Nevertheless, Peter had slipped out into the night.

Ben had followed.

The robber came in just as his Uncle had gripped his arm and started tugging him towards the door. Ben’s hold on him had switched from authoritative to protective in a second.

The robber had pointed his gun at Ben, and asked the man to empty his wallet.

Ben had scrambled to comply. He’d been doing what he was told , but it didn’t matter in the end.

Another shopper’s phone had gone off.

The robber had startled, and then Ben was on the floor, his chest stained red.

Peter had screamed. He’d cried.

And then Ben had died.

And a part of Peter had died too.

It seemed that whenever he argued with a family member, the universe thought it was a good idea to take them away before he was able to get over his pride and just apologise. 

So he was terrified, because it had been a week since he’d screamed at Mr Stark, and he was yet to apologise, and he didn’t think he could get through the loss of another person that he treasured. It was a mixture of emotions that prevented him from apologising, despite his terror. Partly shame, because he had uttered unforgivable things, and partly fear, because he didn’t know if he’d be able to survive the inevitable rejection when he apologised and Mr Stark realised he was better off without a rude and whiny teenager in his life.

The billionaire had stopped coming around to the apartment each day, and May told him it was because the man didn’t want to pressure Peter, but naturally he interpreted it as a sign that Mr Stark didn’t want to see him. And why would he? Peter had hit him right where he knew it would hurt, scissoring the unspoken agreement they had not to acknowledge just how close they’d grown and just how familial their relationship was.

Peter wondered if Uncle Ben was watching down from wherever he was, shaking his head in disappointment as he watched the strings of Peter’s life unravel, like God was an excitable kitten and Peter was a poor, battered toy that had been chewed up one too many times and really needed a wash. 

He realised he was the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law: ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong.’

He’d stepped on a train. It had blown up.

He’d managed to obtain yet another father-figure. Peter had pushed him away.

He was his own worst enemy.

May was gently fed up with both him and Mr Stark. She was understanding as she pushed a new phone into his hands and urged him to call the older man (his old phone hadn’t been recovered from the wreckage of the train). He could hear her compassionate tone through the thin walls as she urged the billionaire to come around to the apartment. She rolled her eyes lightly when he asked if he could go to the Tower for his checkups at a time when he knew Mr Stark wouldn’t be there, but arranged the change anyway. May hid it well, but she definitely thought they were both idiots.

On the plus side, Peter’s head was just as scary a place when he was awake as when he was asleep. He knew it didn’t sound like a positive thing, but it meant he was no longer afraid to sleep, and so his healing had sped up a little, much to Doctor Cho’s delight. The half-moons beneath his eyes had also eased up a bit, and May told him he looked less panda-esque, so he guessed that was good too.

His dreams that night were especially brutal, but they would eventuate in the righting of a wrong, so he didn’t think he could complain. 

He was lying on the lumpy concrete of the train tunnel, and it was hot against his back, making him sweat and shift uncomfortably when his t-shirt adhered itself to his slick skin. There was a cracked ceiling above him, and flakes of dust floated down towards him. 

He turned his head to the left, and was met with Ben’s cold, dead eyes, and inch from his own. The wrongness struck him immediately - they were supposed to be warm, like melted chocolate, but they held no emotion, not a single twinkle of the happiness that usually sat in them. 

Peter jerked his head away, and the first sickening wave of panic washed over him when he realised that he couldn’t move the rest of his body in his attempt to get away from his Uncle’s corpse. 

He rolled his head, desperate to look at anything other than Ben’s uncharacteristically dull eyes, and shrieked in fear. The one image from that day that he didn’t think he’d ever forget was in front of him again - a pair of small, white converse, crimson blood staining the otherwise impeccably clean fabric. He wanted nothing more than to get as far away as possible from the bodies on either side of him, but he was stuck . He was stuck and the panic was rising up in him, stealing the air right out of his lungs faster than he could breathe it in. There was dust in his eyes and blood mingled with the sweat on his skin. 

A figure moved in the corner of his eye, and Peter shifted his head to see Mr Stark standing above him, swaying dangerously as blood dripped from his nose in a steady stream. The man’s eyes were wide and bloodshot. A drop of scarlet fell onto Peter’s forehead, making a heavy plop sound as it did so, and he groaned pitifully.

He wanted to throw up.

“You… you could have saved me,” Mr Stark said, and his voice was barely a whisper. “All you had to do was apologise. Why didn’t you apologise? First Ben, now me.”
And then Mr Stark was falling, falling, falling towards him, and Peter was screaming, screaming, screaming. 

He shot up in his bed, gasping heavily and wiping frantically at his forehead, trying to get rid of the blood that he knew, logically wasn’t there. But his brain wasn’t thinking logically. That was why he reached a shaky hand towards his nightstand and grasped his phone. That was why he scrolled through his contacts and clicked Mr Stark’s, despite the fact that it was two in the morning, and the man was probably asleep.

He just had to make sure Mr Stark was still alive, even though, logically, he knew it had just been a dream. He had to apologise. There couldn’t be a repeat of the night Ben died.

The older man picked up so fast that Peter wondered if he might have been waiting for the call. 

“Peter? Is everything okay?”

“Tony,” the first word was barely audible, more a sigh of disbelief than anything else. Then the panic still resting in his chest pressed higher, and Peter started speaking, sobbing out the apology that had been butting at his lips for a week now. “ Tony , I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, kid, don’t apologise. You don’t need to apologise.” The line crackled like Mr Stark was shifting his grip on the phone.

“I do, I do - in the dream… I have to!” Peter blubbered, aching for the man to understand.

“Hey, hey, slow down. Take a breath. In and out, just like we’ve practised. I know you can do it, kid.” Peter did as he was told, and Mr Stark sighed in relief. “Now, tell me about this dream.”

And Peter did. He related every horrible detail back to Mr Stark, and the man was sympathetic yet sternly rational. “I’m safe, Pete. I promise. Do you need me to come over? Do you need to see it in person”

But the thought of Mr Stark hurtling across the city in a tin can was almost enough to send him spiralling again, because Mr Stark would hurtle. He’d do anything to get to Peter if he was asked, and the boy was starting to wonder if maybe Mr Stark hadn’t been lying about all the stuff he’d said earlier, in Peter’s room over scattered Lego pieces. He vaguely remembered the ambulance ride to the Tower - a firm grip on his hand and calm assurances that, “it wasn't his fault.”

If Mr Stark had been toting that line from the very beginning, maybe it was the truth? Maybe Peter could look people in the eyes and he would find something other than blame and disappointment in them?

Nevertheless, he couldn’t let Mr Stark fly across New York in a science-defying suit, not right now.

“ No ,” a breath, to recollect himself. “No, don’t do that. Stay at the Tower. Stay safe, please.”

“Okay, kiddo, I can do that. Do you want me to do anything else?”

“Can you… talk? Just talk.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure I can. I’m probably the only person on Earth capable of talking as much as I do. Talking is actually my specialty.”

“Really, I hadn’t noticed?” Peter said dryly, and Mr Stark chuckled softly. 

The line was silent for just a moment, and Peter wrapped his blanket tightly around himself, until he was more of a burrito than a distressed teenager, and lay down. 

The phone was next to his head, and Mr Stark cleared his throat obnoxiously before he launched into a detailed retelling of his days at MIT, and all the (heavily censored, though Peter wouldn’t find that out until much later) trouble he got into with Rhodey.

With Mr Stark in his ear and the anxiety in his stomach finally settled, Peter fell asleep again. This time, he didn’t have a single dream.

When he awoke in the morning, he thought again of those Iron Man bed sheets, the ones that never failed to make him feel safe when he was younger, and he realised that Mr Stark had been protecting him for far longer than he thought.