Work Text:
The first thing Peter felt when he woke up was pain. All- encompassing, blinding pain.
He struggled to sit up, groaning when he tried to prop himself up on his right hand only to find that he must’ve broken his wrist somehow. Something was wrong. He didn’t usually wake up with a broken wrist and a splitting headache. Now that he tried to concentrate on the room he realized that something was wrong with his senses as well.
His eyesight was blurry and the dark room started spinning when he tried to focus. He couldn’t hear as good either, or smell. The only thing that seemed to be working was his spider- sense that kept screaming at him to get out of there.
No kidding. He would get right on that.
Suddenly there was a noise from behind him and he froze before scrambling as far away from it as possible, arms raised in defense at whoever – or whatever – might be attacking him. The movement left him feeling even groggier than he had before.
“Peter?”, a familiar voice travelled through the room, far weaker than he was used to.
“Miss Potts?”, he gave back in a whisper, still trying to get the room to stop spinning. But now that immediate danger seemed unlikely he relaxed his stance. “Where are we?”, he asked, slowly crawling closer once more, taking the hand Pepper had stretched out to help her sit. “What happened?”
Pepper calmly took in the room they were in before focusing back on the distraught teenager in front of her as if waking up in a dark room with broken wrists and probably drugged could not phase a power woman such as herself.
“My guess is we’ve been kidnapped from lunch”, she told him, her voice even and her arms ready to catch him should he faint.
Lunch.
Right.
They had met up for lunch because Miss Potts just got back to the city and Tony had wanted to join them but had been running late.
“Mister Stark!”, Peter exclaimed all of the sudden, his heart stuttering in his chest, “Is he here? Did they get him- where –“
“Peter”, Pepper interrupted him, pulling him down and in front of her, gently smoothing his sweaty curls with her hand, waiting until he met her eyes. “You need to stay calm. Can you do that?”
He nodded into her hands, both marring his face, but he couldn’t fight the way his breathing quickened and how every fiber of his being was screaming to get out, get out, get out. His senses were slowly coming back to him and all they were telling him was that everything hurt. It was disorienting and scary but he looked at Pepper and realized that she was calm.
If Pepper was calm and she had no superpowers and no enhanced healing, then he could be, too.
He slowly exhaled through his mouth, then inhaled through his nose and was grateful that Pepper didn’t try to rush him through it. After 5 cycles he had calmed himself down enough to put on a brave façade and nod, trying to channel the calm she projected.
His bravery stayed strong for about 30 minutes, slowly started showing superficial cracks in the following hour and completely slipped out of his grasp after 2 hours without any attempt at communication.
“What do they want?”, he asked Pepper, wandering around aimlessly in their ridiculously over-the-top reinforced cell that he had inspected at least 5 times already. He heard his own voice start to rise in panic, but felt powerless do control it. “Why would they take us? Why- why did they leave us here? Are they going to let us starve? Oh god, I don’t want to starve, Miss Potts. I promised Aunt May I’d get lunch at school and then I kind of forgot because Ned told me about- And then you called and we were going to get lunch. But we haven’t. Oh god, Aunt May is going to be so worried if I don’t call her and Mister Stark! He wanted to join us and what if they get him, too? What if-“
“Peter”, Pepper interrupted him sternly and he shut up immediately, watching her with big eyes, hoping against hope that she would have the solution to all their problems because he was so, so scared.
“They probably want money”, she told him again once he had calmed his breathing, “They always do.”
“Always?” He almost choked on the word. “Where you- Have you been kidnapped before?”
She nodded and he really didn’t know what to do with that information. It meant she had gotten out alive, right? But it also meant that it could happen again. He didn’t want this to happen again. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see Aunt May and Ned and Mister Stark. And he wanted to go to school and do his homework. And see the next Star Wars movie. He wanted-
“Peter.”
Again, Pepper’s voice pulled him from the vortex of thoughts that were threatening to drown him. Gratefully he focused back on her. She still seemed so calm, so collected. But of course, she did, Pepper Potts always knew what to do. He truly envied her for that because it felt like right now professionalism would get them a lot farther than his superpowers.
“How do we get out?”, he asked her, like he had a million times already. “Do we- do we fight them when they come back?”
Still, she patiently told him again. “We’re going to do exactly what they’re going to tell us to do. They’re going to want to make a video and we’re going to go along. Then they’ll arrange for the exchange, Tony will get them the money and we’ll go free. That’s how we’re getting out.”
“I can’t believe we’re not gonna do anything.” He plops down to the floor, next to her and buries his face in his hands. “We have to do something, right? Anything to help them get us out of here?”
“Nope”, Pepper replied, popping the ‘P’ and sounding so much like her fiancé that a traitorous part of him immediately felt safer at the prospect.
“But then Mister Stark has to pay –“
“Yes, and he will.”
“But we could make it out!”, he objected, impatience mixing into his fear. “I have super strength and then he doesn’t have to pay to get us back. It’d be much easier to –”
All of the sudden Pepper sat up straighter, shushing him, and frowning in concentration. He could hear it, too, now that he wasn’t so focused on losing his mind. There were footsteps approaching their cell. Lots of feet by Peter’s own very rough estimate and he froze on the spot, letting Pepper drag him to his feet without fighting back but without helping her either.
“You stay quiet unless they ask you something directly”, she whispered hurriedly, shaking his shoulder when he didn’t immediately reply, “Peter. Do you understand me? Don’t fight them. Just do as you’re told. Can you do that?”
“Ye-yeah”, he replied hoarsely, heart pumping so loudly in his chest that he was sure she must hear it, too, and then – before he could do anything at all to prepare or protect himself – four people came in, faces hidden behind masks.
One was carrying a video camera, two of them were holding automatic weapons and the third was playing with a knife. They looked so cliché badass that Peter wasn’t sure whether to be more afraid because of the weapons and their threatening demeanor or less afraid because of all the ways movies had shown him how they would fail in whatever they were planning.
Pepper had positioned herself halfway in front of him, keeping him mostly out of sight from their capturers and he was holding on to her hand as tightly as he dared without hurting her.
“What do you want?”, she asked them calmly and, once they got out a piece of paper they wanted her to read – money, of course they wanted money, just like Pepper had said – she read it out loud, looking into the camera evenly and as fast as they had come they were gone again.
“Why are you just going along with it?”, he asked her once they had slid back down to the ground. He was hugging his knees to his chest, trying to keep himself from trembling. “I mean, you can be pretty intimidating and I’m kind of strong. It doesn’t really seem like you to just let them get away with it without fighting back.”
He watched her intently and didn’t miss the small cringe she gave at his words but when she met his eyes, she told him, “It’s against every instinct I own”, quietly.
“Then why do you do it?”
With a sigh she turned her body so she was facing him fully before she started speaking again.
“The first time someone kidnapped me to get money from Tony, we had just gotten together and when I woke up, drugged and blindfolded and all alone, I was so scared at first. By the time they came back for him, to record a video very similar to the one today, I had channeled all my fear into anger and I was determined to get out of there”, her voice went quieter as she spoke.
“They hit me”, she continued, and hadn’t he been so completely focused on her, he would’ve missed the quiver in her voice. “After I tried to kick them and struggle free, they broke my jaw and my arm and by the time they had gotten me to record the video, I was bleeding from my eyebrow so bad that I could barely see the card they were holding up.”
“That must’ve been awful”, Peter whispered, reaching out to rest a hand on Pepper’s leg. She covered his hand with her own and squeezed it lightly.
“It was”, she admitted, “But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was seeing the look on Tony’s face when he barged in to get me back. He was –“, she struggled to find the right word for a moment before she settled on, “broken. He was broken.”
She could recall the haunted look in his eyes, the guilt that had eaten him alive and that had only intensified when he had seen her injuries. He had hovered over her as she had gotten checked out and hadn’t left her bedside once in the three days until she had been moved back to the penthouse.
“He was so mad at me for fighting back and, of course, I was mad at him for being mad at me for it”, she chuckled lightly, “I told him that he couldn’t expect me to let these guys just do what they wanted and he told me that that was exactly what I was supposed to do. As long as they just wanted money and didn’t try anything else, I should do as they say.”
“I had to promise him to never fight back unless they touched me first because he’d always give them all the money before he’d let anyone hurt me ever again.”
“He blamed himself”, Peter whispered, understanding dawning on him, “You were kidnapped because they wanted his money and he blamed himself for it. He’s going to blame himself for this, too.”
“Yes, he will”, she nodded, “But as long as we’re both okay at the end of the day, it won’t be too bad. It’ll only cost him a few night’s sleep instead of a complete relapse.”
They stayed quiet after that and at some point, their guards threw some nutrition bars and two bottles of water inside their little cell.
“Can I ask you something?”, Peter asked after a while, lifting his head from where it was resting on Pepper’s shoulder when he felt her nod.
“If he always pays the money… how come you don’t get kidnapped a lot more often?”
For a second, he wasn’t sure if he’d crossed some unmentioned line between them because she didn’t reply but then her laughter filled the silence, albeit not as light as it usually was.
“Believe me, if Tony and I have anything to say about it, there won’t be any news coverage on this whatsoever”, she told him matter-of-factly and he could only stare at her as he processed that new piece of information. “And even if there was, whoever gets the money won’t have much time to enjoy it, either. So far, every single one of them has ended up behind bars within 24 hours of releasing me. The lucky ones were caught by the FBI, the others… let’s just say Iron-Man paid them a visit.”
Despite the situation he grinned at the thought, “So he gets the money back?”
“Yes”, Pepper nodded, then shrugged, “But he’d pay even if he wouldn’t get it back. He was pretty adamant about me believing him that when I first got back. Should anything ever happen to you, you can be sure he’ll get you back. No matter the cost.”
She said it so fiercely, so earnestly that he had to swallow past the lump in his throat.
“I never doubted that.”
“Me neither”, she replied with a sigh, “But that’s not what his father used to tell him. Howard had a strict no-pay-policy.”
“I- What? Tony’s been kidnapped? As a child? And no one paid for him?”
Pepper nodded sadly, “Yeah. He’s still scared of becoming like that man when all he ever does is the opposite. He won’t believe me, though. He’ll only ever see the bad things.”
“I won’t let him”, Peter decided then, his heart still aching for the man he trusted with his life that, at his age, hadn’t had someone having his back like that. “We’ll get him to believe us at some point. I promise you that.”
Pepper just smiled sadly but before she could reply, there were loud voices and steps hurrying towards them and suddenly the door was being pulled open and they were dragged outside to find Tony standing in front of them, a metallic case in his right hand. The removable arc reactor was resting on his chest, telling both Pepper and Peter that he didn’t really come unarmed but their kidnappers seemed completely oblivious to it. A grave oversight when dealing with Iron-Man himself, Peter thought.
They shoved them forward as soon as they got their hands on the money and Tony caught them, arms wrapping around both their sides and Peter could feel his mentor’s hands shaking as they ruffled his hair. He didn’t comment on it, though, just hugged him closer as they climbed into the car standing close by.
The second the car had pulled away and they were out of sight, the older man pressed a button on his watch – hands shaking a little less as Rhodey’s face popped up as a hologram in front of him.
“You ready, Rhodes?”
“Yeah, get them home. We’ll give them hell.”
Behind Tony’s back Peter and Pepper exchanged a quick glance and he whispered, “Guess they’re not lucky”, as they heard the distant sound of repulsors behind them.