Chapter Text
The first thing Peter understood was that the river was close.
He could hear it somewhere beyond the trees, low and constant, rushing over rocks in the dark. Not loud enough to cover everything. Not loud enough to hide the sound of boots in wet leaves, or the scrape of someone dragging equipment over gravel, or his own breathing coming apart in his throat.
He had tried to run.
That was the part he kept circling back to, even as his vision blurred and his thoughts began slipping out of order. He had tried. He had gotten one hand under him, then the other, even though both wrists screamed when he put weight on them. He had pushed up onto one knee with his ankle already wrong beneath him. He had made it three feet, maybe four, crawling more than standing, fingers digging into mud and cold grass.
Then someone had caught him by the back of his suit and hauled him down.
His face hit the ground first.
A flash of white went through his skull.
Not pain exactly. Pain came after. This was impact. A hard, blank detonation behind his eyes that wiped out the trees, the river, the night sky, everything except the taste of dirt and blood.
He made a sound without meaning to.
A hand tangled in his hair and lifted his head only to drive it down again.
This time his temple struck a flat stone hidden under the mud.
Peter’s body jerked once and went loose.
For a second, he could not hear the river anymore.
There was only ringing.
High and thin and endless.
He blinked against the mud stuck to his lashes. His cheek was pressed into the ground. His mouth hung open because his jaw would not close right. Something in it had shifted when he hit. His teeth did not meet. Blood ran over his tongue and spilled into the dirt beneath his lips.
He tried to pull air in.
It came wet.
Somewhere above him, a man said, “He’s still conscious.”
Another voice answered, calm and irritated. “It’s fine. He won’t be going anywhere.”
Peter did not know either voice.
That made it worse.
If it had been someone he knew, if it had been a face attached to a reason, maybe his brain could have found something to hold onto. A villain with a name. A threat with a shape. But this was just dark figures around him, boots near his hands, gloved fingers dragging him like an object, the river waiting beyond the slope.
He tried to lift his head.
The hand in his hair slammed him down again.
Not as hard as before.
Hard enough.
The world tilted sideways and stayed there.
Peter’s stomach rolled. He gagged, but with his jaw displaced and his face in the dirt, the movement turned into a choking cough. Blood sprayed weakly from his mouth. He tried to bring one hand up, instinctive, to wipe it away or push himself free, but his wrist folded wrong beneath him.
The pain burst so bright he nearly blacked out.
He sucked in a broken breath.
The man above him noticed.
“Wrists are done.”
“Good.”
Good.
Peter’s brain snagged on the word with slow, horrified confusion.
Good.
Someone crouched near his face. Peter could see only part of him: dark pants, wet knees, a gloved hand holding an arrow by the shaft.
An arrow.
His eyes struggled to focus on it.
The fletching looked familiar.
For one dizzy second, relief almost came. Clint? Some stupid training arrow? Some awful misunderstanding?
Then the man turned it slightly in the moonlight, and Peter saw what was wrong.
It looked like Clint’s.
But it wasn’t.
Not exactly.
The details were wrong.
His mind tried to say it. Tried to hold it.
Not Clint.
They were trying to frame Clint for whatever they were about to do.
The thought was clear for half a second, sharp enough to hurt.
Not Clint.
Then the first arrow went in.
Peter screamed.
He could not help it. There was no dignity in it, no control. The sound ripped out of him and broke halfway because his jaw was out of place and his throat was full of blood. His back arched off the ground, hands clawing uselessly at the mud, broken wrists failing under the movement. Someone planted a knee near his hip and shoved him down.
“Hold him.”
“I’ve got him.”
The second arrow struck higher, near his shoulder blade.
This time the scream barely came out. It turned into a wet gasp, then a cough, then gagging as blood came up from somewhere deeper. Peter’s fingers dug trenches in the mud. His vision sparked black at the edges.
He thought of Tony first.
He thought of Tony’s workshop, warm light, the smell of coffee and hot metal, the stupid safety goggles Tony kept throwing at him whenever Peter leaned too close to something sparking.
Then May.
Her hand on the back of his head when he was sick. Her voice telling him to breathe through it. Her kitchen. The way she always knew when he was lying about being fine.
Then Roy.
Roy’s shoulder pressed against his while they watched some movie neither of them cared about. Roy’s hand finding his under a blanket. Roy pretending not to notice when Peter fell asleep first.
Peter tried to say his name.
Nothing came out right.
The third arrow drove into his lower back.
His body convulsed.
Something deep in his pelvis shifted with a nauseating slide. The pain became so large it stopped having edges. It was not in his back anymore. It was everywhere. His spine, hips, ribs, throat, skull, wrists, ankle. His whole body was just damage trying to stay conscious.
He heard himself crying, but distantly, like it was happening to someone else.
“No,” he tried.
It came out as a wet breath.
Someone grabbed his jaw.
Peter’s vision flashed white again. The dislocated joint screamed under the pressure, and his entire body tried to recoil.
“Look at me,” the man said.
Peter could not. One eye would not focus. The other kept rolling toward the river, toward the strip of moonlit water beyond the brush.
The man forced his face sideways anyway.
“You’re going to be found,” he said. “That’s the point. You understand?”
Peter did not.
He understood only pieces.
Found.
Arrows.
Clint.
Not Clint.
He tried to form it again, because suddenly it mattered more than breathing.
Not Clint. This wasn’t Clint’s work.
His tongue felt too big. His mouth would not work. Blood slid down his chin into the mud.
The fourth arrow went in low, near the center of his back.
Peter did not scream that time.
His mouth opened, but his body had run out of sound.
For several seconds, he did not exist in any normal way. His eyes were open, but the world had gone gray and far away. The river sounded close again, louder now, like it had moved up the bank to breathe beside him. His chest fluttered against the ground. He could not pull in enough air. Every inhale dragged through blood.
Hands moved him.
Not carefully.
They hauled him by his suit, by his arm, by whatever part of him they could grip. Pain flared and vanished and flared again. His broken ankle struck a rock and his stomach heaved. He vomited blood into the leaves.
Someone cursed.
“Keep his face clear. He needs to last.”
Needs to last.
Peter understood that too.
They were not trying to kill him quickly.
They needed him alive enough to be useful.
That thought terrified him more than the arrows.
He tried to crawl again when they let go of him near the slope. It was not a decision. His body just did it, some stubborn animal part still firing beneath everything else. His hands pressed into the mud. Both wrists buckled. He collapsed forward, cheek hitting wet gravel, breath leaving him in a thin grunt.
A boot caught him in the side and rolled him down the riverbank.
Cold swallowed him.
The river hit like a shock straight into his bones.
Peter went under halfway, water closing over his legs and hips, soaking into the torn suit, dragging mud and blood out in dark ribbons. His upper body caught against the shallows, arrows scraping against reeds and stones. He gagged, twisted weakly, and got one cheek above water.
The cold was immediate and total.
It stole what little breath he had left.
Above him, the voices moved away.
Not running.
Just leaving.
Peter listened to them go.
Boots through leaves. A car door somewhere up the road. An engine starting. Gravel crunching.
Then nothing but river.
He was alone.
The realization settled slowly because his brain was not working right anymore. He was too cold. Too hurt. Too low on blood. His thoughts came in pieces, breaking apart before they finished.
Alone.
No signal.
No Tony.
No May.
No Roy.
No Clint.
Clint.
The arrows.
His heart lurched weakly.
They’ll think—
He tried to lift his head.
Mud sucked at his cheek. Water tugged at his legs. His pelvis shifted and the pain came back so violently his vision went black for a few seconds.
When it returned, he was still there.
Still in the river.
Still breathing, barely.
The water pulled at him in small, steady tugs. The arrows in his back pinned every breath to pain. His wrists throbbed uselessly near his chest. His ankle floated at an angle that made no sense. His pelvis shifted if he so much as coughed, and he kept coughing because blood would not stop filling his mouth.
He faded.
Came back.
Faded again.
At some point, his right hand found mud.
He pulled.
His wrist folded, and he nearly passed out. He sobbed once, a broken sound that disappeared into the water noise. He tried the left. Same thing. No strength. No leverage. His ankle was useless. His hips were wrong. His back was on fire around the arrows, each tiny movement making the shafts grind inside him.
But the water was rising around his side with every small movement of the current.
The river rose and fell around him.
It wasn’t dramatic, or even that much, but it was just enough that when the current shifted, water lapped closer to his ribs. It slid beneath his shoulder. It touched the torn edge of his suit and pulled.
Peter understood that.
If he stayed there, he would drown.
Not all at once. Not like in movies. There would be no clean, brave ending. No final line. No dramatic moment where he closed his eyes and accepted anything.
He would get weaker.
The water would keep nudging him.
His face would sink an inch.
He would try to lift it and fail.
He would breathe river water because his body would fight even when he was too tired to want it to.
And then he would die with mud in his mouth and arrows in his back and everyone he loved miles away, not knowing he had been calling for them in his head.
A helpless, terrified sound slipped out of him.
He did not want to die there.
He had been scared before. Of course he had. He had been crushed, thrown, stabbed, trapped, buried under concrete, held under pressure that would have killed anyone else. He had known fear in bright flashes and long nights and hospital rooms where adults spoke quietly at the foot of his bed.
But this was different.
This had no one in it.
No Tony snapping orders with that tight fear under his voice. No May gripping his hand too hard and pretending she wasn’t crying. No Roy sitting beside him with red eyes and a stubborn set to his jaw like love could physically keep Peter’s heart beating. No Clint hovering awkwardly by the doorway with something terrible and soft in his face, acting like he didn’t know how to be gentle while being gentle anyway.
There was nobody.
Just Peter.
Just the river.
Just the road above him where no one would come unless by accident.
So Peter crawled.
Not properly. Not even close. He clawed with broken wrists, pulled with his elbows, shoved his face through mud and reeds and dead grass. Every inch cost him something. Blood came up again and again, spilling from his mouth onto the bank. He coughed until he could not cough anymore. The river made him heavy. The arrows caught on brush and tore sounds out of him he did not recognize as his own.
He thought he heard Tony once.
Not real.
Just his brain trying to be kind.
Kid.
Peter’s mouth moved.
“Mr…” he tried.
Nothing.
He thought of May.
Her voice would be angry if she saw him like this. Not at him. Never at him. Angry at the world, at the people who had done it, at the fact that he had been left in the cold like something disposable.
He thought of Roy and felt panic cut through the fog.
Roy would wait.
Roy would call.
Roy would think Peter wasn’t answering because he was busy, or sleeping, or being stupid with his phone battery again.
Roy would not know Peter was dying by a river with someone else’s arrows in his back.
Peter tried harder then.
He pulled himself another foot up the shore.
The movement tore something open inside him. Pain burst low in his back and pelvis, hot enough to cut through the cold. He gagged, vomited blood into the reeds, and lay still until the black spots thinned.
Then he pulled again.
An inch.
Maybe less.
His fingers clawed into silt, slipped, caught a root.
He did not think in sentences anymore.
Not Clint.
Pull.
Not Clint.
Breathe.
Not Clint.
Don’t drown.
His broken wrist dragged under him, sending sparks of pain up his arm. His lower body remained partly in the water, heavy and numb. The arrows shuddered every time his shoulders moved. One shaft caught against a root and nearly tore a scream from him, but he had no air left for it.
He pulled again.
Mud smeared across his cheek. Blood ran from his nose into his mouth. His jaw hung open, useless. He tried to spit and only coughed.
The road above was empty.
No headlights.
No voices.
No one to save him.
Peter’s hand slipped.
His face hit the mud.
For one terrifying second, his mouth and nose were covered. He tried to lift himself and couldn’t. Panic flared bright through the fading edges of his mind. His right hand clawed, found purchase, dragged his head sideways enough for air.
He vomited again.
Mostly blood.
He lay there after that, half out of the river, body shaking so hard the arrow shafts trembled.
The cold became less sharp.
That was bad.
Some small, distant part of him knew that was bad.
His thoughts scattered.
Peter dragged his right hand forward.
He moved and inch.
Maybe less.
But it didn’t matter because he wasn’t dead yet.
He held onto that with the last stubborn pieces of himself.
Not dead.
Keep going.
The bank sloped upward, but not enough. The river still had him by the legs. His suit was soaked and heavy. His body weighed too much. He had never felt so trapped inside himself, never felt so betrayed by limbs that had swung him between buildings, caught cars, held up collapsing walls.
Now his hands could not even save his face from the mud.
He tried to laugh once, or maybe he tried to cry. It came out as a wet, breathless hitch.
Of course.
Of course this was how it happened.
Not in the sky. Not between buildings. Not with people watching. Not in some final desperate save where at least everyone knew he had tried.
Here.
In a ditch by an abandoned road.
Thrown away.
Discarded.
A man he looked up to left to be framed for his murder.
His hand slipped.
His body gave out at the edge of the mud.
The road was somewhere above him. He could not see it, but he could sense the open space beyond the brush, the faint difference in darkness where headlights might pass if anyone came down this abandoned stretch for no reason.
No one would.
That was the point.
Peter lay half out of the water, cheek in the mud, lower body still submerged. His fingers curled weakly in the dirt. His breath rattled. The cold had moved past shivering into something quieter and worse. His thoughts slowed until each one felt separated from the next by miles.
He was going to die here.
The thought arrived clear and calm.
That calmness frightened him more than the pain had.
Not because he accepted it.
Because he didn’t.
He was seventeen.
He had homework somewhere. Clothes in a dryer. Half a sandwich in the Tower fridge with his name written on it because Roy had learned the hard way that Avengers ate anything not physically guarded. He had a text from May he hadn’t answered yet. He had promised Tony he would update the left web-shooter calibration and then not touch it until Tony checked it. He had told Roy they could watch a movie later and then probably fall asleep ten minutes in.
He had a later.
He was supposed to have a later.
His face crumpled against the mud.
“Please,” he breathed.
It was not clear who he was asking.
God.
The river.
The road.
Anyone.
Everyone.
“Please.”
The word broke apart into a small, wet sob.
There was no one to pretend for. No one to reassure. No one to joke at. No one to tell him he was being brave. He did not feel brave. He felt seventeen and broken and cold and very, very far from home.
His mouth worked around blood.
“May,” he breathed.
It barely made sound.
Then, after a long time, “Roy.”
His eyes slipped half closed.
A car engine existed somewhere in memory, not outside. Headlights existed in memory. Sam’s voice existed somewhere far away, maybe from another night, another roof, another life.
Peter tried one last time to hold onto the important thing.
Not Clint.
He had to tell them.
If someone found him, he had to tell them.
Not Clint.
His lips moved.
“C…”
Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth.
His body forgot the rest.
The river kept pulling at his legs. The cold pressed deeper. The pain thinned into distance. The trees above him blurred into black shapes against a darker sky.
Peter’s last clear thought before he passed out was not heroic.
It was small.
Please don’t let me die alone.
Then his eyes rolled shut, his fingers loosened in the mud, and he lay half-submerged on the shore with four arrows in his back, breathing so shallowly that the river almost sounded louder than he did.