Chapter Text
After the battle in Germany, Peter continued to be Spider-Man. However, it had only taken a few days before he was captured by Thaddeus Ross. Peter was unaware of his obligation to sign the accords, he had been recruited by Tony without being given a real reason, he had never learned the real reason that the fight in Germany took place anyway. Peter should have called Matthew the minute he heard about a fancy car out front, should have had May call Matthew when the billionaire asked to speak with him privately.
Peter hadn’t though, after all he was legally blind, he could still see things of course, but the spider bite had severely messed up his eyesight.
Spiders could see a full 360 degrees, but they were colorblind and could also only see short distances, relying on vibrations and a form of echolocation to communicate and see it’s way around. Peter thankfully was not colorblind, but sadly still ended up nearly completely blind. He could see, that’s true, but very short distances, and he was not allowed to learn to drive, he was legally blind according to the federal government. It had only served to dial his senses up to an even higher sensitivity.
When originally bitten, Peter’s senses had dialed up to an eleven, but then he got severely ill while May was out traveling for work, and when he woke up from his three-day coma - he thanked the gods that he had just started spring break at the time and that Ben had gone on a fishing trip - and couldn’t see anything. His senses had further dialed up, on a scale Peter would have called it a twenty as the shock to his system died down, and it made him extremely sensitive to noises, lights, touches, and tastes.
It had been very difficult to explain it to doctors when May took him to the emergency room, but it seemed that his genetics had a major shift, and Peter insisted nothing had happened to him for this to become an issue. He told no one about the spider that bit him in the Oscorp lab. The doctors had wanted to take him to a facility, study him and his blood, and that was when he’d met Matthew Murdock.
The lawyer made the hospital get rid of the tests as they were deemed unnecessary, rid the blood sample from its computer systems, and told them that Peter had the right to not give blood or agree to testing. His aunt hadn’t agreed to it as well, and so the hospital had been forced to let him go, any evidence of his emergency room visit wiped from the hospital's systems.
Matthew was blind, and he represented Peter and his family to the fullest extent of the law several times. Matthew had met Peter before, the boy had only been around four when they’d met for the first time - Matthew had only been about 18 - but the man remembered the moments fondly and he kept in touch with Peter to ensure that the boy - who was now his fellow blind companion in crime fighting - was being treated right by his peers. He knew he hadn’t had the best education after his accident that left himself blind, and Matthew wanted more for Peter.
Matthew took time to teach him braille, to even teach him a bit of law, and gave him some braille translated books so that he didn’t have to strain his already fragile eyes. Peter was grateful to the man, and Matthew was always happy to represent Peter as long as he got to hear the kids rambling and laughter. Being blind wasn’t as bad when the teenager was around.
Peter had confessed to Matthew a little while after he got settled with his powers - and subsequently the loss of his Uncle Ben - that he was going to be a vigilante and wanted to know if Matthew would still represent him if he chose to go down the path of helping others even if it was against the law.
The lawyer hadn’t ridiculed him, let alone treated him like a child, and confessed that he was Daredevil, that he was doing the same thing. If he was going to tell Peter no, then it would be hypocrisy. Peter had been very thankful.
Which brought Peter back to the Accords. They hadn’t been written in braille, hell the teenager hadn’t even known they applied to him let alone that he had to sign them or be thrown in prison.
So, on his normal patrol route, Peter heard the sounds of struggle. He’d gone to help, it was his duty to help, and he’d been tricked. It wasn’t easy to get a hit on him, his senses quite literally wouldn’t allow it for most attacks, but he’d been so distracted thinking that a woman was being assaulted that he hadn’t realized the woman was targeting him.
She’d stabbed something into his neck, injected him with a liquid, and Peter had gone dizzy. Whatever they had dosed him with coursed through his metabolism fairly quickly, not as quick as regular drugs, but enough that he woke up as he was forcefully loaded into a helicopter.
Peter hated planes, helicopters, he hated every form of flight. He didn’t trust them, not after the loss of his parents. The teen fought tooth and nail to not be taken, but the restraints on him were heavy duty enough that even if he did get out of them he’d be hundreds if not thousands of feet in the air and he was not ready to make that kind of jump from an aircraft.
So he was forced to sit back, restrained even at the mouth, and let them take him away. He was injected with something yet again, and when he woke, he was being dragged by his arms. Faintly he could hear people yelling, questioning, but the people dragging him were silent, and Peter was tossed into a wall before being left to rot. He could feel when the room he was forced into pressurized, he could feel everything. His senses were a thirty, his spidey-sense off the charts as he slowly curled in on himself.
“They brought in another one?! I thought we were the only ones Ross wanted!” A voice spoke, anger filling his tone, and Peter didn’t really recognize it, his eyes shut tight, hands in his hair as he tried to relax the incessant buzzing of his danger sense.
“Ross hates enhanced people, poor guy probably accidentally caused a scene and Ross brought him in.” A gruff voice this time, a second person. Peter was starting to get a handle, his senses were relaxing, and he focused. Four breathes, all at different times, four people. Two male.
Peters hands were cuffed to his front, and there was something around his neck. He raised his hands, feeling for the wall as he slowly stood, swaying before steadying on his feet. Slowly he opened his eyes, it wouldn’t help him much, but it worked, and all he saw was white.
“Hey, who are you?” The first voice asked again, and Peter slowly tilted his head. The left? Cells, they were in cells, this was a prison. The voice sounded a little similar, but he couldn’t pinpoint where he had heard it from.
“Scott, let him get his bearings, not everyday you're dragged into a prison cell.” He knew that voice - it was different from the other two - and at those words he perked up. That was Clinton Barton, and the first voice must be this Scott guy.
Clint seemed to notice the way he reacted to his voice, and Peter slowly looked in his peripheral to try and see the room without actually turning around.
“Hey, you moved.” There was a slight pause, as if hesitant to continue speaking. “What’s your name?”
Peter turned around fully this time, looking around only to find white before blurs of dark grays filled his vision. He couldn't tell where anyone was, but several peoples hearts sped up. He expected that, he was young, he looked even younger. While his hearing wasn’t as good as Matthews, he could still hear the heartbeats of people close to him in proximity.
Clint was under strict no contact orders with S.H.I.E.L.D. when it came to his son, but May had always sent him photos. Every achievement Peter had made went to him, his first gold at a science fair, his first instrument, his first art gallery portrait. All of it: every report card and A+ test, every birthday candle blow out, even when he got sick. He knew about Peter going blind suddenly, that he had been forced to get a lawyer when the hospital tried pressuring him into letting him be their lab rat. The archer made very nice payments to Matthew Murdock ever anniversary of that day as a thanks.
Clint knew about his son, watched him grow through a phone screen from four years old onward and it made him pause. That was his son in that cell, and Peter didn't even know Clint was right there, that his father was right there.
“Where am I?” Peter asked quietly, hoping Clint's familiar voice would answer him.
“Raft Prison. You're young, how old are you?” The gruff voice responded again, and Peter frowned.
“Who are you? Why is Mr. Barton in a prison cell?” Clint laughed, and Peter smiled at the sound of it. It felt familiar in a way.
Clint smiled, this kid really cared about him, knew his name and everything even if it wasn't in the way he wished Peter knew him. The laugh was at the irony though, the irony that someone as young as his son was worried about Clints captivity over his own.
“You sound familiar,” Sam said, and Peter thought long and hard. Where had he heard that voice from?
“I'll admit, Sam's right, you sound familiar.” Sam. That was the gruff voice's name, he could work with that. Thinking again, he remembered the voice, where it came from.
“Oh, I know who you are.” Peter chuckled, smiling as he looked in what he hoped was Sam's general direction.
“Oh?” Sam was interested now, all of them were, even Wanda who twitched from where she was starting to have her eyes on Peter.
“You're the Falcon, yeah, I remember you. I beat the shit out of you in Germany,” Peter comments with a smile, moving his neck around, he tried to adjust to the collar on his neck. Sam groaned, his head thudding against the glass of his cell gently before looking at Peter again.
“Spider-Man. You're like twelve, dude!” Peter tilted his head in annoyance, but Sam smiled.
“That's Spider-Man?! Wow, seriously dude, you're young! Great takedown on me though, the whole Star Wars reference really impressed me!” Scott complimented, smiling as he looked Peter up and down. He couldn't see too closely due to where their cells were located, but the boy did look young. Scott thought of Cassie, his daughter had brown hair and brown eyes just like Spider-Man did.
“What're you doing here, kid? Don't you have parents out there worried about you?” Scott proceeded to ask, making Clint freeze up for a moment before relaxing.
“No, just me.” He did have someone, his father. Clint was right there, he was terrified. Peter had on a shock collar, Thaddeus could kill him if he wanted, and that terrified Clint to no end.
“Really? No mom, no dad? You don't have aunts or uncles or siblings? Not even grandparents?” Scott further questioned, and Peter stood quietly. Thinking it through, he smiled.
“It’s just me. My records are sealed by the best of the best. Even if I did have family, whatever douchebag that put me in here couldn't access them. He'd need an authentication code to access them.” Peter was pushing it with insulting whoever put him in here, he knew that. The collar on his neck wasn’t restricting his powers at all, he could still feel his spider-sense trembling beneath the skin of the back of his neck. There was also his suit still somewhere in the building, and he could feel the clashing and swaying of the prison. Water.
“Authentication code? From who?” Scott asked, curious as to how a kid gained such a high profile. Peter ignored his question.
“My parents worked for a high profile company, not only that, but I have a great lawyer.” The kid had a lawyer, this kid had a lawyer, and from the smirk on his face, Sam could tell that it was a good one.
“You have a lawyer? How old are you even?” Sam couldn’t resist asking, after all the boy looked young, but he didn’t focus on anyone around him. His head was kept high but his gaze never focused on anyone in particular.
Clint smiled, he tried not to focus on Peter too much, the kid was okay for now at least. His kid was smart, too smart, and no matter what, Peter knew what he was doing. Peter knew that his antagonizing and sarcastic nature would get him hurt, but the look on the boy's face made him wonder if that was the idea right from the beginning.
“Old enough. Now, there’s three men in this room, but I’m picking up four heartbeats. Who is the fourth person?” No one spoke up, so Peter assumed that it was because they were afraid to, or rather that the person couldn’t answer.
“It’s alright if you don’t want to tell me, after all I wasn’t on your side of whatever this fight was for.”
“You don’t know what the fight was about?” Sam asked, worry laced in his tone.
“No, I was recruited by Tony Stark and wasn’t told anything other than that you all needed to be brought in. I was against going to Germany in the first place,” Peter told the room frowning in distaste, “I knew I should have called my lawyer when he was in my apartment.”
Clint knew that May had passed away, but he hadn’t gotten in contact with whoever was taking him in to inform them about the situation. Peter had been alone, and Tony had gotten into his apartment to terrorize him into fighting a fight that he wasn’t even apart of in the first place. It made him sick, knowing that Tony was in complete disregard for not only a child's boundaries, but the federal law.
“Wait wait, so you don’t know about the Accords?” Sam asked, and Scott gave a strange look to Peter.
“Clint filled me in on everything, that’s why I agreed to come with him. I knew what was going on.” Scott tried to talk to Peter, tried to focus on the boy who looked furious even if he was trying not to show it.
“If Stark didn’t tell you what was going on, then he pressured you. Spider-Man, you don’t need to give me a number, but are you under sixteen?” Peter froze, then nodded his head slowly. Sam cursed gently, running his hands over his face as he watched this teenager. He wasn’t even sixteen, it was sickening.
“You said you didn’t want to go with him, right? That he pressured you?” Another slow nod. “Spidey, that’s child abduction. Stark abducted and coerced you into crossing country and state lines. I learned a lot in prison, I’ve been before; that’s a Class B felony. Stark violated some weird convention regulations and laws. Tony Stark abducted you into being a child soldier in a fight that he was going to lose.” Scott spoke softly, he tried not to scare Peter as he told the room this information.
“The Hague Convention is the term you’re looking for,” Peter told Scott, and the man smiled.
“Yeah, that thing. The convention was put into place because of international abduction. It’s a hefty sentence, which is why most people will only cross state lines with kids and not country lines.” The explanation wasn’t thorough, but Peter didn’t need it to be. Matthew had taught him the basics of international conventions that he learned through law school, even if they were out of his area of expertise. It was always a good idea to be the smartest in the room.
“Oh my god,” Sam let out a heavy sigh. “You’re not sixteen. Tony violated the Geneva Conventions.”
“What’s that?” Clint asked, and Peter didn’t blame him, he hadn’t brushed up on conventions since history class.
“It's a humanitarian treatment for war. It was put in place after the second world war. It puts out basic regulations and rights of wartime prisoners and personnel. Spidey was a part of the fight, Americans fought on German soil over an international bill: it was technically a small war. Since he isn’t sixteen and he was coerced into fighting; Tony violated the regulations put in place. Spidey is a protected person considering he just said all his records are sealed by high power companies. You can’t compel a protected person into serving a hostile power.” Peter took in all of the information slowly, of course it made sense that this would become a huge legal issue. Matthew was going to have a field day taking down Stark Industries after this was all over, and Peter knew that he’d do it pro-bono simply because he loathed Tony Stark.
“Considering Spidey’s travel was considered child abduction, Stark also violated the fourth Geneva convention. You can’t take hostages. That’s just how it works, you don’t take them. It was drilled into our heads during basic training and during our tours. Hostages aren’t an option.” Sam sounded worried, and Peter could understand why, but he tried not to think about it.
Looking up, Peter eyed what he hoped was a camera, after all the incessant buzzing that was coming from it was annoying him now. Thinking about it now, he really hated that he hadn’t called Matthew. The man would have kept him safe; he wouldn’t be in this prison cell in - in what he assumed was the middle of the ocean - as a prisoner. He would be finishing moving his things into the lawyers' house and probably going with him to church on Sundays even if Peter was raised Jewish.
“Huh,” he turned back to the center of the room and raised his hands, running them through his hair as he let himself try to relax. He’d end up needing the information for later, no doubt Matthew would be hell bent on suing Tony Stark for all he’s worth after Tony got out of this mess.
“Spidey, I know this is a lot to process, but I need you to know that you don’t deserve to be here.” Clint tried to talk to him now, trying to catch his attention. Peter shouldn’t have been brought in, shouldn’t have been forced to fight in this stupid war. Peter shouldn’t have been made to do anything he didn’t want to, and Clint hated that he was so worried about helping Steve that he didn’t check on his son who he knew had a weird mutation that the medical community - and most likely the federal government - wanted to test and examine.
“I know, Ross is violating my right to a fair trial right now, and since we’re in the middle of the ocean, it’s an international issue. My lawyer is gonna have a field day taking Ross and Stark down.” That was it, that was the last straw. The collar on his neck beeped, and Peter smirked. So that’s what the collar was for, it was heating up, electricity fueling through the metal as Scott started screaming.
“No! No! He is a child! Ross, don’t do this!” Peter could feel eyes on him, and he shut his own tightly.
“Spidey, don’t move. Be still, be so fucking still, and try to breathe. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, please just don’t pass out. I’m gonna talk you through it, okay? Listen to the sound of my voice.” Clint told him quietly, and Peter gave a very hesitant nod. The collar was a shock collar, he knew that now, and he knew exactly how to piss off Thaddeus Ross. Peter needed that information.