Chapter Text
“I won’t let you get away with this, Toomes!”
Oh, gross. When had Peter gotten so cliche in his quips? That was just sad.
But he could fix that later.
“You know, Peter,” Toomes’ voice reverberated through the warehouse, “There was a lot of Chitauri tech in that wreckage I was in charge of. We’ve had a lot of time to work with it, but not even we can test everything. But you know what? I think you’re the perfect guinea pig for this special little device.”
Peter didn’t even want to imagine what Toomes was trying to use on him, much less have it actually succeed in hitting him. Not on his watch. He tried to let his spidersense take control, flipping around the shots Toomes tried to fire at him.
It wasn’t just this new mystery weapon he had to worry about, though. The Vulture was still bombarding him with plenty of normal bullets, which was making it rather hard to focus.
His senses working overtime, it was only a matter of time until he wasn’t able to dodge properly, a bullet slicing the outside of his thigh. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make Peter lose his grip on his web, falling to the warehouse floor.
“Ugh,” He groaned, before immediately rolling to escape another blast. “Okay, that’s enough of that. Peter threw out a wrist, catching Toomes’ gun in a web and throwing it to the other side of the warehouse. “I have a hard time believing you have a gun license, anyway.”
“And I’ll take that, too.” Before Toomes could try anything else, Peter had grabbed the weird Chitauri gun from Toomes, tossing it away, too.
He rose unsteadily to his feet while simultaneously spraying web fluid into the gash in his leg, desperate to not lose too much blood.
“It’s just you and me now, birdbrain.”
“Is it, though?”
Peter’s spidersense had just enough to let out a panicked shout of look behind you! before something was embedding itself into Peter’s ribs. He shouted, looking up and behind him, where another identical Chitauri gun to what Toomes had earlier was mounted on the wall, and had just fired something into Peter.
“If you survive, be sure to tell me what it does.” And he flew off.
To Peter’s confusion, he wasn’t in any pain. He was just–-numb. Like every limb in his body had fallen asleep at the same time. And yet he didn’t fall; it was like his feet were rooted to the ground.
What had Toomes just shot him with? What was going to happen to him?
He went to feel at the gash in his leg, to make sure he wasn’t bleeding through the webs, but his hand wouldn’t move. Did the device paralyze him?
But then why did his head feel so fuzzy? He’d never been paralyzed before, but he hadn’t expected it to make his head so foggy. Or his vision so blurry.
So very, very blurry . . .
/*/*/*/*/
Peter was used to having to find ways to deal with his super-hearing. Noise-cancelling headphones, regularly sneaking into the soundproof recording room at school. When you had enhanced hearing in New York, it was just a fact of life that the world was going to be too loud.
Silence, though? Peter hadn’t been used to that for nearly a year now.
Which was why his first thought was that Toomes’ device had made him deaf, and he nearly panicked. But slowly, he heard some soft sounds: the rustling of leaves outside, a few birds singing, far-off people’s voices. He hadn’t lost his hearing, or even his super-hearing.
“Toomes?” He called tentatively. No answer. But then, Peter had seen him fly away after Peter had gotten hit. And it hadn’t really sounded like he’d expected Peter to survive whatever that device was.
Speaking of . . .
The thing still seemed to be embedded in his side, poking into his ribs through his suit. Peter poked at it a bit, wincing. Should he take it out? Or was it safer to be left in?
He opted to leave it in for now. Just in case.
Padding silently across the floor, he went to the end of the warehouse, looking out–
–and immediately did a double take. It was a mess outside. There was trash scattered across the ground, and graffiti on the walls. What had happened? He hadn’t been out of it that long, right?
A quick inventory revealed that whatever the Chitauri thing was had messed with his webshooters, so he wouldn’t be able to swing and find Toomes. Peter cursed under his breath, trying to figure out an alternate plan. It wouldn’t be very good for his image for Spiderman to be seen on a bus, and anyway he didn’t have his metrocard on him.
He needed a phone. He needed to call someone, anyone. Ned, or Happy–though Peter doubted the man would talk to him–or even May.
Well, it was a good thing he was in Queens, where there was no shortage of people with their phones out. One of them would be willing to let Peter use it to call someone.
But just in case, he couldn’t be out in his suit, in case one of Toomes’ men saw him and told Toomes that Peter survived. It was lucky that Peter had kept on his button-up shirt and pants from homecoming; he regretted having to rip his suit leg around the Chitauri device, but didn’t know of a better option.
He stuffed the suit in the corner of the warehouse and walked out, hoping no one he ran into would think to question neither the device stuck in his leg nor the bloody gash barely held together by webbing in the other. It was Queens, people had seen weirder things, right?
As Peter stepped out into the light, though, his plan on finding a phone quickly seemed less and less likely by the second. In an event he’d never seen before in the city, there seemed to be no one out on the streets. No joggers or moms with strollers or suit-and-tie businesspeople or shouting vendors or–anyone.
If he listened hard enough, he could hear voices from inside the buildings–and, far off, what sounded like an elementary schoolyard. But where was everybody? Peter had never experienced such quiet in his home city.
Something was very wrong.
Toomes couldn’t have been responsible for this, though, right? He was just after the Stark weapons. And besides, Peter hadn’t been unconscious long enough for Toomes to actually done anything this consequential.
Peter’s need to call someone started to become less out of a desire to stop Toomes and more out of a need to find out what was going on.
Finally– finally –he caught someone walking out of a cafe. Instantly alert, Peter sprinted across the street towards them.
“Ma’am!” He shouted. “Ma’am, stop, please!”
She turned as he approached, looking incredibly suspicious. Peter didn’t blame her; a scruffy teenager running up to you while yelling and slightly limping probably wasn’t the most reassuring sight.
“Please,” Peter put a hand on his thigh to hide the device. “Can I borrow your phone? Just for a few minutes, I really, really need to call someone, it’s very important. I’m not going to steal it or anything, I just really need to call someone.”
Slowly, thankfully, her suspicion softened into something more like sympathy, and she handed Peter her phone.
“ Thank you, ” He said emphatically, instantly typing in Ned’s number. Peter frowned as it went to voicemail, before ending the call and trying again.
Voicemail again. Why wasn’t Ned picking up the phone?
He tried twice more with the same results before giving up and calling Happy instead. He got the same thing, calling thrice.
Peter’s heart was starting to pound in his ears. This was wrong. Happy he could understand, but Ned? Ned was the type of person to pick up no matter who was calling him.
May finding out about Spiderman and Toomes was the last thing Peter wanted, but that was hardly his priority anymore. He just needed answers.
But May didn’t answer either.
There was only one more number Peter could think to call, but was it even worth trying? He couldn’t imagine Mr. Stark picking up after how badly Peter had messed up at the ferry. He was probably busy right now anyway.
Sighing, Peter gave in to the temptation, typing in the billionaire’s personal number that Happy had once showed him– only in case of extreme emergency, do you understand?-- and holding it to his ear.
No answer. Peter’s heart sank, though it shouldn’t have. That was what he’d been expecting.
Against all logic, Peter pressed the call button again–and again, when it went to voicemail.
Finally, on the third call, he picked up.
“Who are you and how did you get this number?”
“Mr. Stark,” Peter sighed in both relief and apprehension, halfway worried the man would yell at him again. “I’m really sorry; I know you’re mad at me right now, and you probably don’t want to be hearing from me right now, but I’m so confused, and I don’t know what’s happening, and–”
“Peter.”
/*/*/*/*/
Contrary to everyone who said Tony Stark wouldn’t be a good father, Tony valued playtime with his young daughter extremely highly, always wanting to give her his full attention.
Which is why if this caller interrupted their Princess Tea Party one more time, he would personally don the suit again and make them regret it.
Finally, on the third call, he groaned, shooting Morgan an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Princess, Daddy just has to see who this is. I’ll be right back, okay? Keep my tea warm for me.”
“Okay, Daddy!” She nodded, jostling the plastic tiara on her head.
Tony smiled fondly before pressing accept on the call, switching his voice from dad-mode to threatening-mode.
“Who are you and how did you get this number?”
“Mr. Stark,” said a voice that Tony had never expected to hear in person again. This wasn’t possible, right? That voice was dead, and had been for four years, just like so, so many others.
And yet this voice kept talking, and Tony could hardly even focus on the words themselves because that was Peter Parker talking to him on the phone.
“--and I don’t know what’s happening, and–”
“Peter,” Tony cut him off, just needing some sort of confirmation more that this wasn’t some cruel trick of the universe, trying to remind him of what he’d lost.
“Yeah, Mr. Stark?” Peter’s voice was a bit wary, but his nonetheless. Tony could have cried–he was crying, salty tears leaking onto his phone. Peter.
“How–” He swallowed. “How are you back?”
“Back? I didn’t go anywhere. It seems most of Queens is the one that went somewhere.”
Tony’s throat was constricting. How could Peter say that he hadn’t gone anywhere? Did he not remember Titan, that horrible moment as he turned to nothingness in Tony’s arms, muttering those horrible, heartbreaking words.
“M-Mr. Stark?”
“What’s the last thing you remember, kid?” The name was almost foreign on his tongue now; he never called Morgon that, that was Peter’s name. His kid had been gone for four years.
There was a pause. “Um, don’t get mad, but the last thing that happened was fighting Toomes in this warehouse. I mean the-the Vulture guy. He shot something at me, and then–and then I don’t know what. Now everyone’s gone and no one will answer their phones.”
The Vulture? “Pete, we need to talk–”
“Um, I think so too, Mr. Stark, but the lady I borrowed this phone from kinda needs it back now. I can maybe find a payphone and–”
“No way.” This was the first time Tony had heard his kid’s voice in four years, and he didn’t want any more of it to be over a phone. “Where are you, kid, I’m sending a suit to pick you up and bring you to me.”
Another pause. And then, “Uh, okay.” He told Tony where he was, and then hung up.
“Who was it, Daddy?” Morgan asked, coming over by him.
“It was . . .” Tony hardly dared say it, lest that reveal it as a trick. It still barely seemed real.
But what if it was?
Leaning down, Tony scooped his little girl up. “Remember Peter, the big brother I told you about?”