Chapter Text
When Peter wakes up, he doesn’t recognize the room around him.
He jerks upright, his heart rate skyrocketing. Something next to him is beeping, loud and overstimulating—an alarm clock. Peter’s in a bed, in what appears to be somebody’s guest room. It’s bright and pleasant and surprisingly normal-looking, and the ceiling is sloped like the room is tucked up beneath the rafters. Sunlight streams through a gap in the curtains of the room’s only window.
When Peter looks down, he’s dressed in pajamas he doesn’t recognize, and his phone is nowhere to be found.
Blinking rapidly, Peter throws aside the comforter and stumbles to his feet. He yanks open the curtains and freezes. He’s definitely not in New York City, or anywhere he recognizes. They’re not even in a city. Beyond the glass, there’s only trees that stretch as far as the eye can see.
And, Peter realizes with dawning horror, the forest outside his window is covered in a thick blanket of snow.
It’s August.
Peter swallows down a wave of nausea. He doesn’t know where he is, or how he got here. The last thing he remembers is splitting an order of Thai food with May. The restaurant was loud and they dropped their voices low when May asked him how his first actual, non-Spider-Man internship session with Tony had gone. May still struggles to keep the disapproval out of her voice whenever she mentions Tony’s name, the burn of learning Peter’s secret still a little too fresh.
And after that… nothing.
Peter doesn’t even remember going home after dinner.
Somewhere in the house, someone stirs. There’s a second alarm beeping faintly, but a second later the noise shuts off and floorboards squeak. A quiet, sleepy groan that sounds like a man filters through the walls. And then a door opens, and footsteps start heading Peter’s way.
Panic rising, Peter glances around the room. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know who that is. And he doesn’t have nearly enough time to even think, because the footsteps are rapidly getting closer, and he can barely process a thought anyways with the alarm still blaring at him. Floundering, Peter grabs the lamp off the little nightstand at the bed’s side, ripping the plug from the wall. He brandishes the light like a baseball bat just as the footsteps arrive outside his door and the handle turns.
The man steps inside, still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Peter straightens, his grip on the lamp faltering.
It’s Tony.
Tony’s eyes go to the bed, but he doesn’t look surprised when he doesn’t find Peter there. When he does spot Peter, cowering by the window and still half-ready to smash his skull in with a lamp, he simply smiles.
“Ah. There you are. Morning,” he says easily. He barely glances at the lamp as he crosses the room to turn off the alarm clock.
It’s easier to think without the incessant beeping stabbing at Peter’s brain, and maybe that’s why he finally finds his voice.
“Mr. Stark?” he says. Tony’s name comes out like a plea, and Peter cringes at the fear and confusion even he can hear in his voice.
Tony smiles again, maintaining a distance safely out of skull-smashing range. “That’s me, Pete. Glad to see you’re still here. Some mornings you’re halfway out the window before I make it in here.”
He’s talking breezily, like he’s trying to inconspicuously calm Peter down, but his words only rile Peter up even more. Some mornings he’s what? He’s never been here before. Even disregarding his complete lack of recognition of this house, he’s never stayed the night with Tony. In Berlin, Peter never saw Tony outside that airport.
“What… what do you mean? What’s going on? Where are we?”
Tony’s still smiling, warm and patient. “You’re okay, Pete. You’re safe. I know you don’t remember, but you were in an accident. You hit your head, and now you’re suffering from something called anterograde amnesia. Your brain is struggling to make new memories and retain them. You’re staying with me until we can find a way to get you fixed. We’re in upstate New York. Today is November sixteenth, 2016.”
He speaks slowly and with an unnatural rhythm, like he’s already told Peter this many, many times before.
And what he’s said is… it’s too much to take in. Peter’s mind gets stuck on November.
“It’s August,” he whispers. The lamp shakes in his grip, and Peter can’t tell if he’s shaking because he’s scared, or because of the chill in the air slowly seeping into his bones even inside the house. It can’t be November.
But the trees outside are heavy with snow, and it’s kinda cold, and why would Tony lie to him?
“I know, Pete,” says Tony, still in that unnatural rhythm. “I know you think it is. And I know the last thing you remember is getting Thai with May, right? To celebrate starting the internship at Stark Industries?” His words are perfectly patient and understanding, and Peter kinda hates it. “That’s when the accident happened, but that was a few months ago. It’s November now.”
The metal of the lamp groans beneath Peter’s fingers. November. He feels disoriented, like the planet just skipped beneath his feet and threw him months into the future. But… Tony wouldn’t lie to him.
“Where… where is May?” Peter asks.
Tony’s face falls slightly. “She couldn’t make it here today,” he says. “She has a double shift at the hospital. But she told me to take good care of you, and she’ll be here tomorrow.”
Peter swallows. Tomorrow seems awfully far away if what Tony is telling him is true. Will he wake up again tomorrow morning scared and confused all over again? Is that… is that how he’s been waking up every morning since August?
“I want to talk to her,” Peter says. “Where—where’s my phone?”
Tony sighs. “We’re… limiting your access to your phone for the time being, kid, after you woke up in the middle of the night and dialed 911 thinking you’d been kidnapped. It wasn’t exactly the most relaxing wake-up call I’ve ever had.”
“Then your phone,” says Peter. He really, really wants to hear May’s voice.
Tony considers. “We can try and catch her during her break, but not now, kiddo. You know how strict the hospital is about staff taking phone calls.”
Peter does know. He also knows May once told him to never mind that rule if he needed her—but he supposes flouting the rules once in a while in a genuine emergency is different from Peter freaking out every day about the exact same thing.
Peter slowly lowers the lamp. “What am I supposed to do, then?”
“Well,” Tony says pragmatically, “how about we start with breakfast?”
***
It’s a strange, suspended routine Tony guides him through. There’s not a lot Peter can do when he’ll forget everything that’s happened today as soon as he falls asleep, and Tony is busy with work, constantly answering texts and excusing himself to take phone calls several times an hour. They cook their meals together, Peter clumsy with the instructions despite the dozens of times they’ve apparently made these recipes. When Tony is busy, Peter browses the meager DVD selection. The slim pickings don’t matter—it’s not like Peter recalls watching any of them before.
The DVDs are his only option. Most of the rooms in the house are locked, and it’s too cold to go outside. There’s no internet out here, either. They’re too remote, Tony says, and it hadn’t mattered when he bought this place since he’d never really intended it to be his primary address. Until Peter’s injury, that is. Now, they’re learning to adapt.
They miss May’s break, forgotten while Tony is on a call and Peter is cleaning up from lunch. At least she’ll be here tomorrow, Peter tries to reassure himself, but the impending deadline of falling asleep and forgetting everything looms over Peter like a death sentence.
After Tony calls it a day on the seemingly endless stream of notifications requiring his attention, that opens up some options. Several rounds of Mario Kart and a couple hands of a card game later, Peter pauses in the middle of his turn shuffling the deck.
“I’m not going to remember any of this tomorrow, am I?” Peter asks, running a thumb across the tops of the cards. He can’t quite keep the waver from his voice.
“No,” says Tony. “But I’ll help you. You don’t need to be afraid.”
He is anyway.
He delays going to bed, staying up until Tony is yawning and clearly growing impatient with him. Once in his room, Peter takes his time exploring it, opening drawers and leafing through the few books he finds on the shelves. He’s not really sure why he’s bothering, since he won’t recall any of his exploring come morning. With a sigh, he re-shelves the books. He dawdles changing into his pajamas, brushes his teeth slowly, and sits on the bed staring into the distance for a while before finally climbing under the covers.
Despite his anxiety, he falls asleep quickly.
***
When Peter wakes up, he doesn’t recognize the room around him.
He’s on his feet before he’s even fully conscious. Swaying slightly and furrowing his brow in annoyance at the blaring of an alarm that’s way, way too loud for his sensitive hearing, as his Spidey sense awakens like a cat, slow and languid. He takes in his surroundings with rising panic.
He’s in an unfamiliar but surprisingly normal bedroom with tastefully chosen furniture and faint sunlight streaming through the curtains. A downward glance reveals he’s dressed in pajamas he doesn’t recognize. Shivers run down his spine as he desperately racks his brain for any clues as to what happened to him or how he got here. The last thing he remembers is having Thai with May. After that, everything’s foggy.
Claustrophobic, Peter tries the door to the room, and he’s surprised when the handle turns. The house beyond is just as unfamiliar as the bedroom, and Peter’s hands ball into fists as his panic rises. Out here, the blaring of the alarm is less unbearable, and it’s also joined by a twin alarm ringing somewhere in the house.
More concerningly, someone’s moving nearby.
A door handle turns across the landing, and Peter doesn’t waste another second before he takes off at a sprint, throwing himself around the banister and down the stairs before the door even opens.
The stranger in the house with him swears, and the ceiling above Peter’s head thumps.
“Peter!” they call—it’s a man. Footsteps thunder toward the top of the stairs as Peter reaches the bottom with enough speed he crashes into the wall opposite, catching himself heavily with the heels of his hands.
He’s in a dark, narrow hallway with several doors leading off it. Which one should he take? If he picks the wrong one this guy will corner him—
“Peter!” the man yells again as he charges down the stairs, and Peter freezes as he finally registers the voice.
He flinches when the man arrives heavily at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes fixed on a smartwatch strapped to his wrist. The man’s panting and looks terrified, but when he sees Peter standing there unmoving he staggers to a halt and narrowly avoids slamming into the wall the way Peter did.
Peter swallows. “Mr. Stark?”
Tony lets his hands drop and exhales, relieved. “Oh. Hey there, Mr. Parker. Planning on making another break for it?”
Peter blinks. He glances at his surroundings like they’ll make sense now that Tony is here, but they don’t. Everything is still incomprehensible.
“I… I…” Peter splutters. “What’s going on? Where are we?”
“It’s okay,” Tony says, slow and patient. “You’re safe. You don’t remember it, but you were in an accident and hit your head. Your brain’s struggling to make new memories. You’re staying with me until Cho can find a way to help you get your memories back. We’re in upstate New York, and today is November seventeenth, 2016.”
He speaks with an unnatural rhythm, like he’s repeated this many times before, and it’s all too much for Peter’s panicking, confused mind to take in.
“November?” he repeats dumbly. He’s not sure why that’s what his mind sticks on. “But… it’s August.”
Tony doesn’t look surprised by that comment, either. Peter feels awfully like he’s performing in a play, following a script against his will. “That’s when the accident happened, but that was a few months ago. You’re missing quite a bit of time.”
Now that Tony’s mentioned it, Peter is cold. The house is heated, but there’s still a chill in the air that Peter can no longer ignore. Or maybe he’s starting to shake because he’s in shock. He chooses to believe it’s because of the temperature.
One of his hands snakes up to tangle in the scruff at the base of his hairline. Something doesn’t feel right. “Where’s—where’s May?”
Tony rubs Peter’s shoulder. “She couldn’t make it here today,” he says. “She’s got a double shift. But she told me to take good care of you, and she’ll be here tomorrow.”
***
When Peter wakes up, he doesn’t recognize the room around him.
The sound of someone moving nearby spurs him into action. He’s up and across the small, surprisingly normal-looking bedroom before he’s even fully awake, tucking himself close to the wall next to the door as his head spins and half-formed, confused thoughts fight for attention in his mind.
He doesn’t know what to do. But the last thing he remembers is getting Thai with May. So if he’s been kidnapped, it’s probable these people have May, too.
When the door opens, Peter doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the arm of the person turning the handle and slams them up against the wall, twisting their arm behind their back.
“Where am I?” he snaps as his captor cries out in pain.
“Peter—” the man says, strangled. “Peter! Stop!”
Peter flinches at the familiar voice and lets go. “Mr. Stark?”
Tony stumbles away from him, shaking out his arm as he tries to catch his breath.
“Jesus—Christ, kid. I think I prefer it when you’re climbing out the window before I can get in. Goddammit. It’s me.”
Peter frowns. He glances around the room again, but it’s still unfamiliar, from the bed he just woke up in all the way to the view he can just glimpse through a gap in the curtains.
“Mr. Stark, I… I don’t…” he splutters.
“I know you don’t,” Tony says with a sigh. “You were in an accident. You hit your head, and your brain is struggling to make new memories. You’re staying with me until we can find a way to fix it.”
Confused, Peter rubs the back of his neck to calm himself down. He’s shaking, and his heart is beating hard against his sternum. He just… he just feels like something’s not right.
“Where’s May?” he asks, still fresh off the fear that someone kidnapped her too.
“She couldn’t make it here today,” says Tony. “She’s working a double. But she told me to take good care of you, and she’ll be here tomorrow.”
***
Peter’s attic bedroom has an ensuite, which Peter is more than happy to take advantage of. He misses May and the city and his own bed, but he can take or leave the cold showers in their shared bathroom that usually end with May banging on the door and yelling about the water bill.
This bathroom isn’t as ostentatious as the bathroom Tony nonchalantly waved Peter to during his singular internship session, but nothing here is. Peter’s pretty sure that’s the whole appeal of this cabin to Tony.
Peter stays in the shower for way longer than is probably polite, enjoying the seemingly never-ending supply of hot water. Standing beneath the drum of the shower, he can finally let his head clear, can finally take a moment to breathe deeply, to let his lungs expand all the way. It doesn’t help bring back any of the memories—Tony’s told him multiple times even just today that you can’t simply wish away a brain injury, no matter what movies would have you think—but it leaves Peter feeling slightly less overwhelmed.
He gets dressed quickly afterward and follows the faint sound of Tony’s voice down to the kitchen.
“He was seen in Wisconsin, William,” Tony is saying as Peter makes his way down the stairs. He’s on the phone as he sits at the table, gripping the phone so tight his knuckles have turned white.
Someone speaks on the other side of the call, and Tony’s face goes purple.
“Why else would he be there?” Tony snaps. “Get him off our asses—now!”
A floorboard creaks beneath Peter’s feet, and Tony’s gaze snaps around. Briefly—so briefly Peter wonders if he’s imagining it—Tony’s eyes flash in annoyance, but then his face is normal and smiling and friendly again, and Peter rubs the back of his neck and tries to return Tony’s smile.
“Kid,” says Tony. Into the phone, he snaps, “I need to go. Don’t call me back until you fix this.”
“Sorry,” says Peter as Tony throws his phone onto the table. “You don’t—you can finish your call if it’s important.”
He wonders if it would be rude to ask Tony what that was about. Surely Tony would have told him if something was going on, right? If someone was looking for them?
“It’s fine. I was just finishing up anyways,” says Tony. One hand goes to fiddle with his watch like a nervous tic before he catches himself. Instead, he claps his hands together and pushes himself to his feet. “Right. Breakfast sandwiches. You start chopping the tomatoes, and I’m going to wash my hands. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” says Peter. Tony’s always disappearing upstairs for one reason or another, usually for much longer than Peter would expect the task he excuses himself to complete would take. Peter starts hunting around in the cabinets, watching Tony go over the cabinet door and hoping he didn’t notice just how hard Peter’s hands are suddenly shaking.
As soon as Tony’s footsteps disappear upstairs, Peter throws himself at the kitchen table and snatches up Tony’s phone. It’s locked, but only with a pattern, and when Peter tilts the screen towards the light he can see the streak on the screen left by the oils on Tony’s skin. Peter copies the pattern and grins to himself when the phone successfully unlocks.
He tells himself he’s not breaking Tony’s trust. He just—he needs this. He doesn’t have any reason not to trust Tony, but something about all this—about his amnesia—just doesn’t feel right.
The little snippet of conversation Peter overheard just now only reinforces his suspicion that there’s… there’s something Tony isn’t telling him. He just doesn’t know what.
Peter swallows, staring at the default background Tony’s still using. Okay. He’s breaking Tony’s trust. He knows he is. But he just—he needs to talk to May. The amnesia and the paranoia are threatening to suffocate him, and he just needs May to comfort him and talk some sense into him.
Ignoring everything else in Tony’s phone, Peter opens up Tony’s contacts. He scrolls down to the Ms—and scrolls and scrolls until he hits the Ns.
Peter frowns. He scrolls down to the Ps, just in case, then up to favorites. Then, in a moment of desperation, he goes to A—but Tony doesn’t have May saved as Aunt Hottie, either.
Why… why doesn’t Tony have May’s number?
With dawning worry, Peter rereads all the contacts under P. He checks S for Spidey, U for Underoos, and even K for Kid—but Tony doesn’t have his number saved either.
And as Peter scrolls and finds no evidence of anyone named Pepper or Steve or Rhodes, he’s suddenly fairly sure he’s about to be sick.
He doesn’t recognize any of the names in Tony’s phone.
Maybe there’s an explanation, Peter reasons with himself. Since Peter doesn’t recognize any of the names, maybe everyone is under an alias as a security measure in case Tony’s phone ever gets stolen. But Peter can recognize he’s grasping at straws. Although Tony’s a billionaire and likely has problems and habits no normal person could ever relate to, this is a bit extreme even for Tony’s eccentricities.
When Peter scrolls down to the Ws, he can find the William Tony was speaking to earlier, ruling out that weak theory.
A floorboard creaks above him and Peter jumps. He shoves Tony’s phone deep into his pocket and is busy digging through the fridge for the tomatoes by the time Tony reappears.
“Not started yet?” Tony asks teasingly as he strolls into the kitchen.
Peter plucks the bag of tomatoes from the fridge and shoots Tony a sheepish grin he hopes is covering up his nervousness. “Couldn’t find the chopping boards.”
Tony shakes his head and collects a board and a knife. As Peter accepts them, he swallows and sets them down on the counter. Instead of chopping the tomatoes, however, Peter takes a deep breath and forces out—
“I want to call May.”
Tony barely glances up at him from where he’s opening a packet of bacon. “I told you kid, you can’t. She’s working.”
“I know,” says Peter. His voice doesn’t waver, but his heart is fluttering like a caged bird. “It doesn’t matter. She always answers if it’s me. I wanna talk to her.”
“Normally, yes,” says Tony. “But she can’t be talking to you every shift, kid. She doesn’t need the stress of getting in trouble at work on top of worrying about you, so we agreed to limit the calls to when she’s not working.”
Peter chews on his lip. It sounds believable enough—except if May wasn’t working, she’d be here. Peter might be missing a few months, but he knows May. If Peter’s had a traumatic brain injury, she’d be here. Every second she could spare, she’d be here. She wouldn’t be monitoring him over the phone.
But even so, that’s all a moot point now.
Peter draws in a deep breath. “You’re lying.”
Tony goes very still. His eyes are sharp, almost overwhelmingly so, as he scans Peter’s face. “What?”
Peter swallows, forcing himself to power on, even though Tony’s expression makes him want to splutter and apologize and just chop the tomatoes to keep the peace. “You lied to me. Just then.”
Something indecipherable crosses Tony’s face—something that makes the back of Peter’s neck prickle—and Peter’s stomach churns. He doesn’t want to confront Tony like this. He’s still a little starstruck by Tony. He knows he’s known Tony for months, but he doesn’t remember any of it, and watching the displeasure slowly cross Tony’s face leaves Peter really wishing the ground would open up and swallow him whole.
“You’re not stopping me from calling May because she’s working,” Peter continues despite the sickening feeling in his gut. Slowly, he places Tony’s phone on the counter in front of him. Tony’s eyes dart down to it, then back up to Peter’s face. “I can’t call her because you don’t have her number.”
Tony hesitates for the blink of an eye before he says, “That’s because you’ve got my work phone, Peter. Of course I don’t—”
Peter’s throat is tight. “You don’t have Pepper Potts in there, either. Or Captain America. Or Black Widow. Or anyone. Are you—are you gonna try and tell me the Avengers aren’t in your work phone? Or any SHIELD agents? Or the CEO of your company?”
Slowly, Tony straightens. He slips his hands deep into his pockets as he examines Peter for a long, slow breath.
“What are you saying, Peter?” he asks levelly.
God, Peter wants to back down and just make these damn sandwiches—this is Iron Man, why is he aggravating Iron Man?—but he swallows away the tightness in his throat and forces his mouth open.
“I don’t think you’re telling me the whole truth.” Tony’s face remains impassive, and Peter barrels on. “I don’t… I don’t know what the truth is, but I think you’re not being honest with me. And I wanna know the truth now. What’s going on?”
Tony blinks, his eyes darting between Peter’s. He takes one hand from his pocket and scrubs it across his face, then takes a step closer.
“Peter,” he says with a sigh.
He pauses for long enough that Peter opens his mouth again, desperate to fill the heavy, tense silence that has fallen over the small kitchen. Across the room, Tony’s knuckles form peaks and valleys in the fabric of his pants as his hand twitches a little where it’s still buried in his pocket.
But before Peter can say anything, his Spidey sense explodes like a firework.
***
When Peter wakes up, his head is throbbing.
He doesn’t recognize the room around him, but his head is spinning too much to take much information in. Something’s beeping, driving an ice pick of pain straight into his frontal lobe, and Peter is just starting to wonder if the noise is going to drive him crazy when the door opens and Tony walks in.
“Mr. Stark,” Peter groans. He tries to sit up, but nausea and vertigo overwhelm him and he collapses back down onto his pillows.
Tony pauses in the doorway for a moment, then slowly makes his way to the nightstand and switches off the beeping. Peter squints up at Tony’s silhouette where he’s standing over him, staring down at him with a crease between his eyebrows. After a moment, Tony’s face softens.
“Oh, Peter,” he says gently, pushing Peter’s sweaty hair off his forehead.
“Mr. Stark,” Peter repeats. He screws his eyes shut and shifts closer to Tony. “My head hurts.”
“It’s okay,” says Tony. “You were in an accident. This is totally normal. You stay here, and I’ll get you some painkillers.”
***
“Do I not have any schoolwork?” Peter asks over lunch.
He’s got a mild headache today, which Tony assures him is completely normal after his accident a few months ago. The painkillers he gives him aren’t very strong. He says they’re the strongest Cho will allow him to avoid developing an addiction.
“Not much point if you won’t remember any of it from day to day,” Tony says with a shrug. “May talked to your principal. You’re on extended medical leave.”
Peter pokes at his homemade tacos miserably. It wasn’t the learning he was worried about so much as having something substantial to do with his time. Tony does his best to keep Peter entertained, but he does own a Fortune 500 company and can only spare so much time. Now that Tony’s mentioned it, though, Peter chews on his lip and wonders what Ned and the rest of his classmates must think. If it’s already November, they’re all already half a school year ahead of him.
Will Peter even be able to rejoin his class once Cho cures his amnesia?
Across the table, Tony is busy on his phone. Peter can’t see what he’s looking at from this angle, but there’s a deep crease between his eyebrows and his knuckles are slowly turning white.
“Why can’t I call May, again?” he asks quietly.
Tony does an okay job of stifling the annoyed sigh that escapes. “She’s working a double today, and she can’t be answering long phone calls every single shift. You’ll see her tomorrow, kid.”
Tomorrow seems pretty far away in Peter’s current state.
As Peter goes to force himself to take another bite, Tony throws down his food. His face has gone white, and his eyes dart back and forth as he reads something on his phone.
Somewhere above their heads, a door slams open.
Peter startles and drops his taco, spilling tomato and beans all over his plate. His head snaps to Tony—but Tony’s still staring at his phone. Footsteps thunder across the landing and Peter’s halfway out of his seat before he even registers the Spidey sense ringing in alarm in the back of his head.
No one else is supposed to be here.
“Who’s that?” Peter demands, gripping the back of his chair so hard the wood cracks.
Tony doesn’t respond.
“Mr. Stark?”
An unfamiliar, gray-haired man bursts into the kitchen, his face clammy and pale. He barely even glances at Peter and instead addresses Tony in a thin, panicked voice.
“It’s the Avengers,” he says. “They’ve found us.”
Tony slams his phone down. “You’re sure?”
The man nods. “If they’re not here yet, they will be soon. We need to go. Now.”
“Fuck.” Tony throws himself to his feet. “Gather anything incriminating. Or anything we’re going to need. We need to—”
“What is going on?” Peter demands, cutting Tony off.
His head hurts. He… he can’t work out what he’s seeing. It’s like he’s skipped an hour of a movie and is trying to make sense of the twist.
Tony turns to Peter. His eyes are cold, colder than Peter’s ever seen. The other man swallows, his eyes darting between Peter and Tony as Tony slowly slides his hands into his pockets. Something about the gesture sends a tickle of apprehension down the back of Peter’s neck.
“Pete,” Tony says with a sigh, closing the distance between them. He puts one hand on Peter’s shoulder, partially blocking Peter’s view of the strange man.
“What’s going on?” Peter whispers. The back of his neck tingles with nerves, but he fights to ignore it. Surely he’s just misunderstanding. Tony must have some way to explain what’s happening, some simple explanation that can make this whole confusing scene click and make sense.
But then Peter’s Spidey sense screams, and Tony lunges.
Peter’s back slams up against the counter as Tony pins him there by his forearm across Peter’s shoulders. Tony’s other hand—the one that was buried in his pocket just moments ago—snaps up, and Peter catches a flash of glass and metal. A syringe. His Spidey sense spikes again.
Terrified, Peter rears back and balls his hands into fists, but he hesitates before he attacks. He doesn’t know what to do—whoever this person is, it’s not Tony, but this could still be Tony. What if he’s been brainwashed or mind-controlled? Peter doesn’t want to actually hurt his mentor.
His hesitation costs him.
Tony stabs down with the syringe. Peter dodges away, breaking free of Tony’s grip with a sharp push that sends Tony to the floor. Tony roars in fury. Before he has a chance to get back up, Peter throws himself past his grasping hands and dodges the unfamiliar man, who ducks out of his path and jabs at the buttons on his watch. Peter sprints for the door to the front porch.
Something collides with Peter’s forehead.
The blow knocks Peter to the ground and his skull bounces off the tiles. Peter groans, his hands flying up to grab his head. Something warm and wet drips from his hairline and across his face.
Stunned, Peter peers between his fingers. He… he can’t tell what he ran into. What… what…?
Rough hands grab him and manhandle him around. It’s Tony—or the person wearing Tony’s face—and he straddles Peter’s waist and pins Peter’s hands down with one of his own as the unfamiliar man grabs Peter by the ankles.
Peter bucks, but the blow to his head has left him dizzy. Uncoordinated. He can’t break their grip on him in his dazed state.
“Mr.—Mr. Stark,” he tries. He tastes blood, and his vision is blurry. “I know… I know you’re in there—”
Tony barks a surprised laugh. “Cute, kid. Real cute.”
He rips the cap off the syringe with his teeth.
“Clearly, I haven’t given you enough of this,” Tony spits.
Peter’s Spidey sense screams and he thrashes, but he can’t free himself before the needle stabs into the side of his neck, and something cold seeps through his veins.
“No,” Peter whines. The drug takes hold of him quickly, dragging his limbs down like they’re suddenly made of lead and making his thoughts as wispy as fog, too thin and fleeting to grasp a hold of.
The only thing he knows is that this isn’t Tony.
Someone else has him.
***
When Peter wakes up, he’s tied up in the back of a car.
He jerks and thrashes, but his hands and feet are bound. His head is pounding, and every movement only makes the pain worse. His mouth is taped shut, and he breathes in sharply through his nose, claustrophobic and panicking. He can’t breathe.
He’s not blindfolded, at least, and it’s light out. The car is spacious but absolutely crammed full of boxes and bags. Wires spill from the tops of several of the bags, but that’s all he sees before someone in the front of the car speaks.
“He’s fucking awake again.”
It’s a man—gray-haired and glaring at Peter over his shoulder. Next to him, the driver meets Peter’s eye in the mirror. He’s younger—dark-haired and with striking facial hair. Peter doesn’t recognize either of them.
“Then put him out again,” the driver snaps.
The gray-haired man sighs and unbuckles his seat belt. Peter yelps—a cut-off, choked sound into his gag—and thrashes again, twisting his wrists and kicking his legs, but the restraints are solid enough he can’t free himself. Terror stabs behind his sternum. Who are these people? And how the hell did they find out about his enhancements?
It’s hopeless. The gray-haired man towers over Peter as he struggles and pulls a syringe from his pocket, followed by a nondescript bottle full of a clear liquid that makes Peter’s Spidey sense blare in time to his throbbing headache.
The man fills the syringe quickly, tapping out the bubbles with a practiced air. Desperate, Peter leverages his weight and shoves his knees up into the man’s crotch, but his blow barely affects his captor. The man swears and uses his own knee to pin Peter’s down.
Peter screams into his gag, but he’s helpless to stop the man from jabbing the syringe into the side of his neck. The drug spreads through his veins like ice, and almost immediately, Peter’s limbs go limp and his head swirls.
No. No—he can’t let this happen. He can’t. He doesn’t—he doesn’t even remember getting grabbed. All he remembers is having dinner with May, and then nothing. What’s happened?
And then everything goes dark.