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“Fifteen.”
The word sat between them, small and impossibly heavy.
She'd understood it immediately, of course. There was no ambiguity in the number, no chance that she'd misheard him through the broken voice changer.
Fifteen.
The problem was that her mind refused to connect the word to the person standing in front of her.
She had spent months building a profile on Spider-Man from scraps of brief rooftop meetings and videos online: enhanced strength and reflexes, an abnormal healing factor, exceptional intelligence, homemade technology that shouldn't have worked as well as it did, a habit of prioritizing civilians over apprehension, and an infuriating tendency to disappear the second anyone got close.
She had estimated young. Mid twenties, maybe younger. But she had never seriously considered that Spider-Man was a child.
Now that she knew, everything she'd noticed but never quite understood rearranged itself in her head.
The way he landed on rooftops wasn't careful. Natasha had watched him do it dozens of times, always rolling slightly through the impact, always favoring one side when he was injured.
She'd noticed that he never stayed still for long, even when nobody was around. She'd assumed it was paranoia. Maybe it was. But she'd also noticed that every time the Avengers arrived, his first instinct was to look for an exit rather than a target.
He never struck first. Never aimed for anything that would seriously injure them. Even tonight, when he'd been surrounded, frightened enough that she could hear it in his breathing, he'd spent more time trying to get away from them than fighting them.
She'd called it evasive, Tony had called it suspicious, and Fury had called it dangerous.
Natasha suddenly thought it looked a lot more like fear.
Her eyes moved over him again, and now she couldn't stop seeing the things she'd made herself not notice. He was disproportionately short, like maybe he hadn't even finished growing yet. His shoulders were hunched; he was trying to make himself smaller. There was blood drying along his side from an injury she knew he didn't get from tonight. His hands were shaking, even though he was doing everything he could to hide it.
Even without hearing his unfiltered voice, everything was wrong. No, not wrong. Young.
Fifteen.
Natasha had been fifteen once.
The Red Room had already spent years teaching her how to be useful by then. There had been no room for uncertainty, no room for childish mistakes, and certainly no room for someone to look at her and think young.
‘Emotions are not necessary.’
She'd learned early on that adults were the ones you survived or became useful to, and she'd forgotten, somewhere along the way, that fifteen was supposed to mean homework and dumb decisions and someone telling you to come inside before dark.
Every part of her training said to disengage the potential threat and not freeze at the mere thought of a child being on the other end, but Spider-Man was standing in front of her with blood on his costume and no idea what came next.
“Wait,” Natasha said, and she heard something unfamiliar in her own voice. She had no idea how much of her thoughts were present on her face, how much weakness she was showing. Her hand twitched towards her comm, recalculating the situation for the second time in as many seconds. “Fifteen?”
She didn't even see him move.
One second she was standing in front of him, and the next something slammed into her shoulder hard enough to throw her sideways.
Her training took over before thought could catch up; she rolled with the impact, one hand catching the concrete, and came up on her feet almost instantly.
Then she saw the arrow.
It was lying several feet away, but Spider-Man was still standing.
For one impossible second Natasha thought he'd somehow dodged it.
But then she saw the hole in his chest.
—
"Come on, baby. Stay with me.”
That was her voice, and it was cracking and full of emotion, and everything she'd ever been taught snapped into her skull and rang through her entire body.
He had passed out. There was blood everywhere. It had soaked through the red and blue of his suit, pooled beneath his back, run over Natasha's gloves and down the sleeve of her jacket, and splattered across the concrete in small, bright drops that looked almost black beneath the rooftop lights.
She registered all of it without really looking at it.
Amount of blood. Rate of bleeding. Color. Breathing. Pulse. Airway.
Those were the things that mattered; fear could come later. Emotions are not necessary.
She checked his airway, then his pulse. Fast but weak. His breathing was shallow, and there was an unevenness to the movement of his chest that made her stomach tighten. Emotions are not necessary.
Chest wound. Significant blood loss. Possible pneumothorax. Possible internal bleeding. She didn't know the exact trajectory of the arrow, but she knew that if it had passed through the upper chest, there were too many internal organs it could have damaged.
"Avengers, emergency extraction," she said into her comm, her voice perfectly level. "Spider-Man is down. Penetrating chest wound, severe blood loss, unconscious. I need the Quinjet and medical support immediately."
Steve answered almost at once. "We caught him?"
"We made a mistake."
There was a pause.
"Nat?"
"Get here, now."
She didn't explain. There wasn't time, and explanations were for people who had the luxury of stopping.
The others reached the roof less than a minute later. Steve came over the ledge first, followed by Tony, Thor, and Clint, all of them still carrying the posture of people expecting the end of a successful apprehension.
But then they saw Natasha on the ground with Spider-Man in her arms and the blood spreading across the concrete.
Clint stopped.
His eyes went to the arrow several feet away, then to Natasha's hands, then to the body. "Nat?"
Her eyes didn't leave Spider-Man. "Help me."
Steve was beside her immediately.
"How bad?"
"He's unconscious. Rapid, weak pulse. Breathing is shallow and asymmetric."
Tony crouched on the opposite side of the body. "Can we move him?"
"Only onto a stretcher. We can't leave him here."
As Thor left to retrieve one, Clint stepped closer, and Natasha saw the exact moment he realized where the arrow had gone. Where it was going to go if he didn't push her out of the way.
"I didn't—"
"Not now."
She didn't look at him when she said it. If she did, she'd have to process his face, and processing his face was not going to keep Spider-Man alive. Emotions are not necessary.
Steve reached for the edge of the mask. "His face is obstructed."
Natasha pushed his hand away, ignoring the confused look he shot her.
For some reason, something inside of her didn't want to watch anybody touch the boy.
Natasha peeled the mask away carefully, avoiding the broken voice changer attached beneath it. The fabric came free, and suddenly the barrier between her years of training and the heavy feeling in her chest broke.
Brown hair matted with sweat and blood. Freckles overtaken by bruises.
No beard. No facial lines. No adult sharpness anywhere.
His features were softer than Natasha had expected, his jaw narrower, his face thinner.
Fifteen.
She had already known, but she hadn't taken the time to imagine his face.
So young.
Emotions are not necessary.
Steve's eyes widened, taking a small step away from the boy. Tony's face was hidden behind the Iron Man mask, but his silence said more than it ever could.
Clint looked like he'd been the one who got shot.
"He is fifteen," Natasha said. "He told me."
The words settled over the roof.
Clint stared at the boy in front of them. "Fifteen?"
"Yes."
His face went white. "I shot him." The word sounded like it was forced out of him.
Nobody answered.
Natasha had no patience for guilt yet. Guilt was useful when the patient was stable. Right now the patient was not stable.
Thor landed softly on the roof. "I have retrieved the stretcher."
Clint backed up so far Natasha briefly considered the possibility of him falling off the side.
Steve helped her stabilize the boy's shoulders while Tony called ahead for the Quinjet. Thor stood over the scene for a second longer than necessary, staring at Spider-Man as though trying to reconcile the person they'd spent months chasing with the child lying in front of them.
Natasha couldn't give him time. "Move."
They lifted him together. Spider-Man's body was lighter than it should have been.
Natasha had noticed that when she caught him earlier, but now there were more points of reference. His shoulders were narrow beneath the torn suit, his wrists were thin. When the stretcher shifted, the fabric pulled tight over his ribs, and Natasha caught a glimpse of the outline beneath the suit.
Too thin.
Not lean.
Thin.
She had seen malnutrition before; she knew what it did to people. She knew the difference between an athletic build and a body that was running out of reserves.
God, this kid looked like his body ran out months ago. Emotions are not necessary.
They lowered him onto the stretcher, and when Tony ripped away more of the damaged costume to expose the wound and Natasha saw things she'd never noticed through the mask and layers of fabric: old bruises in different stages of healing, a pale scar along his side, another near his shoulder, rough homemade stitches crossing a cut that had clearly been closed without a medical professional, and a scattering of smaller marks that suggested this was far from the first time he'd been hurt badly enough to need treatment.
Tony's eyes bounced around his body. "What the hell..."
Natasha's gaze stayed on the injuries, assessing. "He did them himself."
Clint looked over. "What?"
"The stitches."
Nobody said anything.
The voice changer was still attached beneath the homemade mask, the cheap wiring and scavenged components, fried from the blast, but still held together with enough ingenuity to make Tony's eyes narrow even while he was staring at a dying child.
Tony slowly picked up the mask. "He built this," He said quietly.
Natasha glanced at the device. Of course he had.
She remembered every time Spider-Man had refused to let them get close enough to examine his equipment.
"Hey Spidey, how about you come with us back to the tower and tell us how those web shooters work?"
Every time he'd escaped before they could identify what he was using.
Every time she'd assumed access to advanced technology.
But it wasn’t. It was whatever he could build, whatever he could find, because there was nothing he could afford.
Emotions are not necessary.
"Banner is on the way," Tony said.
"How long?"
"Less than two minutes."
Natasha checked the pulse again. Still there.
Barely.
"That is not good enough."
"He's coming as fast as he can."
Spider-Man's breathing hitched, paused, and then slowly resumed.
Natasha immediately adjusted her hand against his chest. "He's deteriorating."
Steve looked at her. "What do you need?"
"Space."
They gave it to her.
She pressed carefully around the wound, watching the rise and fall of his chest, listening to every breath.
Her mind broke the sounds apart automatically: inhale, pause, shallow exhale, wetness, increased effort. She had learned to listen to wounded people the way other people listened to voices. The body always said what the mouth couldn't.
"Come on, паук," she murmured.
She wasn't even sure whether she was speaking to him or to herself. Emotions are not necessary.
A pair of footsteps hit the roof.
Bruce.
"Where is he?"
"Here."
Bruce dropped beside the stretcher and immediately took over the assessment. He checked the boy's pupils, pulse, and oxygen saturation, then pressed his stethoscope against his chest.
"Right side is significantly diminished."
Natasha watched his face. Worry, uncertainty. "Collapsed lung?"
"Likely. Could be tension building. He's losing oxygen."
"What can we do?"
"Keep him stable until we get inside."
Tony was already turning toward the Quinjet.
"It's ready."
Bruce nodded. "Move him carefully. No unnecessary movement."
As they rolled the stretcher up the ramp, Natasha stayed beside Spider-Man's head. She caught his wrist as they moved, feeling for the pulse there because she wanted something tangible to measure against the monitor.
Slow.
Weak.
But still there.
"Stay alive," she said quietly.
It felt like more of a prayer than a request.
Behind her, Clint said nothing. She glanced back once and saw him standing several feet away, staring at the blood on his hands.
She hadn't even realized it was there.
Natasha looked at the blood on her own gloves.
She wished it was hers instead of his.
She turned away before the thought could become anything else. Emotions are not necessary.
The Quinjet's ramp was already up. Tony had the engines running, Steve was securing the equipment, and Bruce was directing the medical supplies into place. They set up Spider-Man’s stretcher into the corner, and Natasha climbed in beside him without waiting to be asked.
The Quinjet lifted and steadily headed towards the tower as Bruce immediately went back to work.
"He's hypotensive."
"How bad?" Steve asked.
A deep breath, "I don't like it."
Bruce cut more of the suit away, exposing the boy's chest properly. Natasha watched him work and caught the smallest pause in his hands when he saw the extent of the old injuries beneath the costume.
"He's severely underweight," Bruce said.
Tony went still. "How underweight?"
"I'll know more when we have proper labs. Right now, I'm more concerned about keeping his oxygen up."
Bruce fitted an oxygen mask over the boy's face and started preparing the equipment for a chest decompression. Natasha moved without being told, handing him whatever he needed before he asked.
"That's it," Bruce said. "Keep his airway clear."
Natasha nodded.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
She watched the rhythm of the heart monitor.
A slow, but still regular enough for viability.
"He's fifteen," Steve said quietly, almost as if he was saying it to himself.
Tony was staring at the boy.
"I thought he was older."
"We all did," Steve said.
"I shot at him."
Natasha looked over.
Tony's expression was different from anything she'd seen on him during the months they'd been hunting Spider-Man. No amusement or even frustration.
Just horror.
Steve looked down. "He looked so scared when we were chasing him; he tried to run away from me... I tried to stop him."
Thor stood near the wall, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "We all did."
Natasha looked back at the boy.
"Yes."
Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. The way Clint looked over at her, he knew it too. She was too calm. She knew what that calm meant.
She was compartmentalizing everything.
The fear.
The guilt.
The memory of him saying fifteen, his hands shaking, him pushing her out of the way.
All of it went into the same place she'd put everything since she was a child. Emotions are not necessary.
Later. She could fall apart later.
Right now there was a job.
Bruce looked up from the monitor. "Natasha."
She turned.
"I need you to talk to him."
"He's unconscious."
"I know."
Her brows slightly furrowed, "Then why?"
"Because sometimes people can still hear you."
Natasha looked down at the boy.
The word child kept trying to surface. She pushed it down. Emotions are not necessary.
She took a deep breath, looking for something to tell him that wouldn't cause her to fall apart.
"You're okay," she lied quietly.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Natasha kept her hand around his wrist all the way to the Tower, counting every heartbeat she could feel as if somehow keeping track of them meant she could keep them from stopping.
When the Quinjet touched down on the Tower's landing platform, even before the wheels had fully settled, the access doors were opening.
Helen Cho was already waiting with a surgical team, the mobile medical bay prepared and lit, already expecting them, and Bruce was moving the stretcher almost immediately.
Natasha stayed with Spider-Man as they moved him through the giant elevator doors, one hand still around his wrist, counting the weak pulse beneath her fingers because the mobile monitor was only one source of information and she trusted her hands more.
"Penetrating chest wound, right side," Bruce said quickly as Helen walked alongside them. "Significant blood loss, suspected hemothorax, likely pneumothorax. Oxygen saturation is dropping, and he's hypotensive."
Helen took one look at the boy and nodded. "How long since the injury?"
"Under fifteen minutes."
"Good. We still have a chance."
Natasha hated the wording, but she said nothing.
Helen's team immediately took over, transferring Spider-Man onto the surgical table while nurses cut away the rest of the damaged suit and connected a new set of monitors. Natasha finally had to let go of his hand when one of the nurses deliberately stepped between them, and she stood there for a second with her fingers still curled around nothing.
"Natasha."
She looked up.
Bruce was watching her. "Go."
She immediately shook her head. "I'm staying with him."
"You can stay after he gets out of surgery."
Natasha looked around the medical bay. Helen was already calling for blood products, one surgeon preparing to drain the blood collecting around the lung while another worked to stabilize the chest wound. Everyone moved quickly and deliberately, but nobody was panicking.
Good.
That meant she didn't have to either. Emotions are not necessary.
She stepped back into the elevator and only looked down at herself when the doors closed.
Blood covered her.
It was across the palms of her gloves, dried in streaks along her fingers, soaking through the front of her uniform and darkening the sleeve of her jacket. There were droplets on her boots and small spots across the elevator floor from when they carried him in.
She could still feel the warmth of it beneath her gloves, even though the rest of him had been frighteningly cold.
"Nat."
She looked up and only then realized that Clint had been with her the whole time.
There was still blood on his hands, and he was staring at them as if they belonged to somebody else.
"What?"
"I didn't know."
Natasha sighed, "I know."
He looked toward the elevator doors. "I saw your face on the rooftop; you looked scared, Nat. Spider-Man was standing so close and–" His voice cracked, "And I thought you were scared because he was about to hurt you."
"I know." Natasha's jaw tightened.
"I didn't know what you two were talking about."
"I know."
Clint swallowed. "I still fired."
Natasha looked at him fully now. His shoulders were tense, his face pale, and his eyes were fixed somewhere just past her.
He was doing what he always did when something hurt too much: trying to make it smaller by turning it into a sequence of facts. Arrow. Shot. Target. Mistake. Consequence.
She knew that trick. She used it herself more times than she could count.
"You followed the plan," she said. Iron Man exhausts him, Black Widow distracts him, Hawkeye immobilizes him.
She could still see the exact calculation he'd made. Distance. Angle. Her position. Spider-Man's position. A shot that should have immobilized a grown man without doing permanent damage.
He'd done everything right.
Except for the part where the target was a fifteen-year-old boy.
Clint laughed once, but there wasn't anything amused in it. "Yeah."
Natasha glanced toward the elevator doors as they opened, but couldn't make her feet move just yet.
"He pushed me out of the way."
The sentence was so quiet that Clint almost missed it.
"He could have gotten out of the way but chose to save me instead."
Clint glanced at his hands again, then back up at her. "I'm sorry."
Natasha's throat tightened. Emotions are not necessary.
"I know."
She turned away before he could see anything else on her face.
"Go clean up."
"Nat—"
"Go."
He stared at her for another second, then nodded and walked away.
Natasha watched him go.
She knew he was hurting. She knew exactly how bad it was going to get later, when the adrenaline wore off, and the image of the arrow going through the kid's chest had enough room to settle properly in his head.
She knew because she'd seen Clint through grief before.
She also knew she couldn't do anything about it right now.
Emotions are not necessary.
The Avengers eventually gathered in the common area one floor above the medical bay, but nobody seemed to know why they'd gone there. They had all simply migrated upward, falling into their usual habits after a mission: Steve near the windows, Tony pacing between the kitchen and the living room, Thor standing in front of the fireplace with his arms crossed, Clint nowhere to be seen.
Natasha remained closest to the elevator, sitting at the end of the couch where she could see if the doors opened from the corner of her eye.
Nobody spoke for several minutes.
The silence was worse than the fighting had been.
Finally Tony stopped pacing. "FRIDAY."
The AI answered immediately.
"Yes, sir."
"Find out who Spider-Man is."
Steve looked over. "Tony..."
"If he's fifteen, there has to be something. School. Medical records. Somebody."
Natasha looked at the floor. "Do it."
Tony nodded.
A projection appeared above the coffee table.
PARKER, PETER BENJAMIN.
Natasha stared at the name.
She didn't know why it felt strange.
Maybe because the name belonged so completely to the boy she had never met that it was difficult to connect it to the person she'd spent months calling Spider-Man.
FRIDAY continued with the available records. Fifteen years old. Queens resident. Midtown school records. Emergency contact listed as May Parker.
Tony's expression changed, almost hopeful. "Open the family records."
A second set of files appeared.
Richard Parker. Mary Parker. Deceased 13 years prior.
Natasha read the dates and immediately understood what they meant. He had lost his parents young; so young that he probably didn't remember them.
Then Ben Parker. Deceased.
This one was far too recent; Ben was shot in front of the boy only two years ago after a burglar escaped.
The next file opened automatically.
May Parker. Legal guardian. Deceased five months prior.
Steve's eyes moved over the screen as if it would make them make sense. "Five months."
Five months.
Five months.
FRIDAY opened the hospital records next. May Parker had been hospitalized. Peter Parker had been listed as her dependent. A placement with Child Protective Services had been initiated following her death.
Then another line appeared.
MINOR LEFT HOSPITAL PRIOR TO TRANSFER.
Nobody spoke.
Natasha felt something cold crawl beneath her skin.
"He ran," Steve said.
FRIDAY continued.
MISSING PERSON REPORT FILED BY NED LEEDS.
Natasha didn't know the name.
She watched the others' faces; they didn't either.
FRIDAY opened Peter's school attendance history.
Perfect attendance up until five months ago. The day after May died.
Then there was nothing.
No more school. No guardian. No home. No documented employment. No medical visits. No financial history that could explain how a fifteen-year-old had been living independently.
Natasha stared at the empty records.
"How long was he Spider-Man?"
Tony asked the question quietly, almost reluctantly.
FRIDAY pulled up the oldest verified sightings. Two years and three months ago.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Steve was the one who finally did. "He was thirteen."
Natasha looked down.
Thirteen.
She remembered herself at thirteen, although the memories didn't come in anything as gentle as bedrooms or school.
She remembered training rooms. White walls that got painted red. Hard floors turned slippery. She remembered learning to kill without making a sound.
And then she thought about a thirteen-year-old boy putting on a mask in New York and deciding to help strangers who needed saving.
The difference made her feel sick. Emotions are not necessary.
Tony sank into one of the chairs. "We've been hunting him for months."
"Yes," Natasha said.
"We knew he was young."
"Yes."
Steve looked at the floor. "We never asked why he kept running."
She already knew why. They had simply mistaken fear for defiance.
Tony rubbed a hand over his face. "God."
The elevator doors suddenly opened, and every head in the room turned.
Helen walked in; she looked exhausted.
Natasha stood before she realized she'd moved. "He's alive." He has to be alive.
Helen nodded. "The surgery went well."
Natasha's lungs finally loosened.
Helen continued, "The arrow caused a hemothorax and damaged the upper portion of the right lung. We drained the blood from the chest and repaired the damage. There was also significant blood loss, but we were able to stabilize him."
"Is he awake?" Steve asked.
"No."
"Will he?"
Helen looked toward Natasha.
"We're keeping him sedated. His healing factor is already repairing some of the tissue damage, but his body has been through a lot. The sedation gives his body time to stabilize while his healing factor does its work. We don't want him burning through more energy than he already has."
Tony swallowed. "How bad is the rest of him?"
Helen hesitated. "Bad."
The room went silent again.
"He's severely dehydrated and malnourished. His body has been compensating for that for some time. Multiple old injuries were never properly treated, including several wounds that appear to have been stitched by hand."
Natasha closed her eyes.
"He did them himself?" Steve asked.
Helen nodded. "Likely." Helen glanced toward the elevator. "There are also signs of repeated physical trauma. Nothing recent enough for me to determine exactly when it happened, but he's been injured and healed over many times."
Natasha thought of all the videos she saw of Spider-Man disappearing from a fight before anyone had been able to get a good glance of him afterwards.
She'd thought he was hiding his capabilities.
He'd been hiding his injuries.
"And the healing factor?" Bruce asked, finally speaking from where he'd been standing quietly near the elevator. "It's repairing the damage?"
"Yes. Faster than a normal human would, but not infinitely fast. It still requires significant energy and nutrients."
Natasha's mind immediately returned to the image of his body beneath the torn suit.
Not lean.
Thin.
She didn't know what happened over the past five months; all she knew was that somewhere in Queens, a fifteen-year-old boy had been surviving without enough food for long enough that his body was showing the consequences.
Helen looked at them all. "He is stable."
That word should have felt like relief. Instead, Natasha found herself thinking about how easily stable could become something else.
Helen continued, "He'll be sedated for a while."
"How long?"
"I don't know."
The answer was honest; Natasha hated it.
"I'll stay."
Helen gave her a sympathetic look.
"He's stable, Natasha."
"I know."
"You should eat something."
"I will."
Helen clearly didn't believe her, but she luckily didn't argue.
One by one, the others began finding reasons to leave.
Steve disappeared toward the training room. Tony went upstairs toward his lab without explaining what he was doing.
Thor lingered long enough to ask where the spare rooms were before declaring that the little spider would require a proper bedroom and walking away as though this were an entirely reasonable thing to begin doing immediately.
Clint never came back.
Natasha understood.
She understood all of them.
They were doing what they always did when something hurt too much. Steve would exhaust himself. Tony would build. Thor would organize.
Clint would disappear.
Natasha would stay exactly where she was and refuse to acknowledge that she was doing the same thing in her mind.
She returned to the medical bay.
The room was dim now, the lights lowered for the night. Machines surrounded the bed, each one displaying numbers Natasha didn't fully understand but had already memorized anyway. Heart rate. Oxygen saturation. Blood pressure.
She looked towards the heart monitor.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Natasha sat down in the chair beside the bed as she reached for his hand again.
Warm.
Not warm enough. But warm.
She stared at his chest beneath the blankets.
Up, down, repeat. Again.
Still here.
Natasha leaned back in the chair and watched his breathing.
She had spent years learning how to survive pain by refusing to look directly at it. She knew how to compartmentalize. She knew how to turn fear into information, grief into a mission, guilt into something useful.
So she did what she always did.
She counted.
Heartbeats. Breaths. Seconds between monitor changes.
Anything that could be measured.
Anything that could be controlled.
Anything that meant she didn't have to think about a fifteen-year-old boy bleeding out in her arms because he had pushed her out of the way.
Anything that meant she didn't have to think about the fact that when he woke up, he was going to look at her and she was going to explain why the people he had spent months running from were the reason he was lying in this bed.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Natasha kept counting. Emotions are not necessary.
By the time the first night ended, Natasha had stopped being able to tell how long she'd been sitting beside the bed.
The city kept moving beyond the windows, headlights threading through the streets far below, Stark Industries employees filtering through the lower floors as they began their shifts, elevators humming somewhere beyond the medical bay doors. The Tower had not stopped simply because a fifteen-year-old boy was unconscious upstairs.
Natasha understood that. Missions didn't stop because someone was hurt. The world didn't stop because someone had died. She had learned that lesson too young to remember learning it.
Still, every time the elevator doors opened somewhere down the hall, some part of her attention snapped toward them before she could stop it.
Peter's monitor kept a more reliable schedule than the rest of the building.
Natasha had learned its rhythm sometime during the first night, long before she'd realized she'd been listening to it.
She knew the normal beeping of his heart rate, the quieter rhythm of his oxygen monitor, the subtle changes that came when someone entered the room to check his IV or adjust his medication.
She knew that when the pain medication they had carefully altered for his metabolism began to wear thin, his fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket before anything else changed, and she knew exactly how long to wait before calling Bruce or Helen rather than uping his dose unnecessarily.
She knew his temperature dropped more quickly than it should when the room was cold, although she didn't yet understand why, and she knew that his breathing became slightly shallower whenever his body was under more stress.
She had no reason to know any of those things.
Natasha had spent her life learning people because information was useful, because tiny details could keep you alive. This was different though, and she couldn't quite figure out why she was doing it.
The first day bled into the second without Natasha leaving the room for more than a few minutes at a time.
She drank coffee when somebody put it in her hand and forgot about it while it cooled.
She ate nothing until Steve finally appeared in the doorway carrying a plate with a sandwich, sliced fruit, and a bottle of water, set them on the table beside her, and looked at her until she understood he wasn't leaving without watching her eat.
"You're going to sit there until you pass out," he said quietly.
Natasha kept her eyes on the monitor.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
"I'm fine."
Steve glanced at the untouched tray from earlier. When did that get there?
"You haven't eaten since yesterday."
"I ate."
"Coffee isn't food."
She looked over at him, and he raised an eyebrow.
Natasha sighed and picked up the sandwich. She took a bite because arguing with Steve would take more energy than eating, then another.
He didn't say anything else. He just pulled the chair from the corner and sat beside her for a while, watching the sleeping boy and the monitor with the same rigid attention she had.
Steve didn't ask questions, and Natasha greatly appreciated that. After a few minutes, she realized he was counting the breaths too.
On the third day, Helen came in to check the surgical site and adjust the medication.
Natasha stood out of the way while she worked, watching the surgeon's hands more closely than she watched Helen's face. The incision was healing. The chest tube had come out cleanly. The repaired lung was responding well. The healing factor was doing exactly what Bruce had predicted, repairing damaged tissue faster than it should have been possible, but it still needed fuel to do its work. Helen talked through the numbers as she checked them, and Natasha filed every one away.
"He really shouldn't be recovering this quickly," Helen murmured.
"He's strong," Natasha said.
Helen looked at her and smiled faintly, then glanced toward the boy. "He's going to need a lot of food when he's awake."
Natasha looked at Peter's face.
She didn't know why that sentence hurt. "How much?"
Helen considered. "A lot."
That was all she said, and Natasha knew enough to understand what she wasn't saying.
He had been running on almost nothing for too long. Whatever his body could do with an injury, it couldn't manufacture calories. It couldn't invent nutrients. It couldn't make up for months of being hungry simply because he had powers.
On the fourth day, Natasha finally showered because Bruce cornered her in the hallway and told her she was no use to anyone if she got sick herself.
She stood beneath the hot water longer than she intended, watching the diluted pink swirl toward the drain. The blood had dried beneath her fingernails and along the seams of her clothes despite everything she'd done to clean herself up, and now it was gone within minutes, carried down the drain as if it had never been there.
Natasha stared at it.
She should have felt relieved.
Instead, she found herself thinking that it was almost insulting how easily blood came off skin. She could scrub her hands until they were raw, wash Peter's blood out of her clothes, change everything she had been wearing that night, and there would still be nothing she could do about the memory of him collapsing into her arms. There was no soap for that. No amount of hot water that could make the image disappear.
She turned off the shower and stood in the steam until the mirror was completely fogged, refusing to look at herself.
Someone had left clean clothes outside her room.
Gray sweatpants. A black hoodie far too large for her.
Clint's.
Natasha recognized it immediately, mostly because she knew his clothes almost as well as she knew her own.
She held it for a moment before putting it on. The sleeves covered her hands, and the hoodie fell a quarter down her legs. It smelled faintly like detergent and Clint's cologne.
He still hadn't come into Peter's room.
She understood.
By the fifth day, the others had started coming to her instead of trying to make her leave.
Tony appeared in the medical bay doorway with a handful of pieces of webbing and a look she recognized as the beginning of an obsession.
"I've been rebuilding the suit."
Natasha looked up from the monitor. "Why?"
Tony gave her a look.
She waited. “Really."
He shifted the pieces in his hands. "Because the one he made is held together with garbage, the thermal protection is nonexistent, the impact absorption is terrible, and the voice changer is held together with what I am pretty sure is part of a toaster."
Natasha's mouth twitched.
Tony swallows. "I don't know how to fix this."
"Neither do I."
And that's probably the closest Natasha gets to admitting that she is scared. Emotions are not necessary.
"You don't know if he'll want it."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Tony glanced at Peter again. "I'll ask."
He left before Natasha could say anything else. She watched him go, then looked down at the webbing he'd left behind. He hadn't said it, but she understood.
Tony wasn't building the suit because Peter needed better equipment. He was building it because the last thing he'd fired at Spider-Man had nearly killed him. He was trying to make sure it couldn't happen again.
Steve came later, after spending most of the day in the training room. Natasha knew because she could smell the sweat and see the rawness of his hands as he leaned against the doorframe.
"You know you're allowed to leave, right?" he asked.
"Right back at you."
He smiled. "Fair."
Steve looked at Peter.
"How's he doing?"
"Better."
"You?"
Natasha looked at him.
"I’m fine."
He gave her a long, patient look.
"I've been worse."
He didn't push. Instead, he walked in, pulled another chair over, and sat beside her.
They stayed like that for several minutes without saying anything. Steve didn't try to make her feel better. He didn't tell her that it wasn't her fault. He knew better. He just sat there, shoulder close enough to hers that she could feel the warmth through the oversized hoodie.
Eventually he said, "You know Clint's asking about him."
Natasha looked toward the door. "He won't come in."
"I know."
"He thinks I’m mad at him."
"Are you?"
She was quiet. "I'm angry."
Steve nodded. "At him?"
"At everyone."
"That includes yourself."
Natasha looked away.
Steve didn't say anything else.
On the sixth day, the Tower felt strangely normal despite the boy in the medical bay. Thor had taken it upon himself to inspect the available bedrooms and had apparently decided that Peter required the room nearest the upper terraces because it had the best access to the sky. Natasha found him studying a floor plan on the kitchen counter.
"What are you doing?"
"Preparing the little spider's chamber."
Natasha sighed. "Tony already assigned him a room."
"A room with a bed is not a chamber."
"It is in this case."
Thor looked at the plans again. "He should have a balcony."
Natasha’s brows slightly furrowed. "Why?"
"So he can leave."
Natasha stared at him.
Thor shrugged, as though the answer were obvious. "If we place him in a room without an easy exit, he may feel trapped."
Natasha looked down at the floor plan.
A room with a balcony.
A room where Spider-Man could come and go without asking permission.
A room that Peter could leave whenever he wanted.
"Fine."
Thor smiled.
"I shall make it excellent."
Natasha watched him go and wondered, not for the first time, how a man who had spent most of his life fighting wars had managed to understand that much so quickly.
The seventh day was when all of them finally ended up in the medical bay at once.
It happened because Tony arrived with coffee, Steve arrived with food, Bruce arrived with another update, and Thor arrived carrying a box of things nobody had asked him to buy. They looked around the room at one another and seemed to realize that Natasha had been sitting there for nearly a week while they had each been finding increasingly complicated excuses not to stay long.
Bruce checked the monitor first. "He's stable."
Steve nodded.
Tony looked at Natasha. "Eat."
"I did."
Tony looked at Steve.
Steve looked at the empty plate beside her.
"She did."
Tony frowned. "How much?"
"Enough."
"That's not a measurement."
"It's the one you're getting."
Tony sent Steve a glare, and Thor set the box down beside the chair.
Inside were blankets, pillows, and, inexplicably, a stuffed spider the size of a basketball.
Everyone stared at it.
"What is that?"
"A guardian."
"He's fifteen."
"Then he is precisely the correct age for a guardian spider."
Tony rubbed his forehead. "I regret asking."
For the first time in days, Natasha almost laughed.
It didn't solve anything.
Peter was still unconscious. Clint still couldn't bring himself to come into the room. Tony still had blood on his conscience. Steve still disappeared into the gym whenever things became too quiet. Natasha still woke at every change in the monitor.
But for a few minutes, they were all there together.
Just six people sitting around a hospital bed, frightened for someone they had only just started to know.
Eventually Bruce looked at Natasha. "You need sleep, Nat."
"I'm sleeping."
Tony pointed at her chair. "That's not sleep."
"Yes."
"No."
Natasha gave him a look.
Tony looked at Steve, Steve looked at Bruce, Bruce looked at Thor, and Thor nodded determinedly.
"This shall require teamwork."
Natasha immediately knew she'd lost.
She was eventually bullied out of the medical bay by three Avengers and one doctor who had apparently decided that she was now their collective responsibility.
She ate half a meal at the kitchen counter while Steve watched to make sure she finished it, drank a full glass of water because Bruce wouldn't stop reminding her that coffee did not count, and showered again because apparently she was now being supervised like a child.
When she returned, there was a book sitting on her chair.
So You've Got a Kid: A Practical Guide to Not Completely Screwing Up Parenthood
She slowly turned toward the hallway.
"Tony."
His voice floated back from somewhere down the hall.
"What?"
She picked up the book. "You're an asshole."
"You're welcome."
She threw the book back onto the chair.
Then, after several minutes and making sure that nobody was around, she picked it up again.
She read the first page. Then another.
She told herself it was research.
By the eighth day, Peter had become a familiar presence in the Tower despite never having spoken to anyone inside it.
There were clothes waiting for him upstairs. A room being prepared by the Stark Construction Team to add a balcony to the tower. A suit Tony was rebuilding from scratch. Bruce had filled a notebook with notes about his healing factor. Helen had ordered nutritional supplements specifically formulated around what they knew of his metabolism. Steve had somehow found his school information and gotten the books he’d need to return. Thor had apparently purchased enough blankets to furnish a small hotel.
Nobody had asked Peter whether he wanted any of it yet.
They didn’t even know if he was going to want to stay, but they weren't going to decide his life for him.
They were simply making sure that when he woke up, he would have choices.
Natasha stayed beside him through the morning, the oversized hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands as she rested one against the blanket. Peter's breathing was stronger now. His oxygen support had been reduced. His heart rate was stable. Helen had told her the sedation was beginning to lighten and that his body was ready to start waking whenever it decided to.
Natasha had been waiting for that moment for eight days.
It happened without warning.
One second, Peter was still. The next, his fingers twitched.
Natasha's attention snapped immediately to his hand.
The movement was tiny, barely more than a flex of the fingers against the blanket, but she'd spent eight days learning every variation in that room.
This wasn't pain or medication. This was different.
His brow pulled together and his head shifted slightly against the pillow. The monitor changed rhythm.
Natasha was reaching for his hand.
Peter's shoulders moved as though he were trying to take a deeper breath. His face tightened, confused and uncomfortable, and one hand twitched again before slowly beginning to move toward his chest.
"Don’t try to move, baby."
He didn't seem to hear her.
His eyes remained closed, but his breathing was changing now, faster and more uneven as consciousness fought its way through eight days of medication.
His fingers curled weakly around hers. She felt his pulse jump beneath her thumb; the room seemed to narrow to that single point of contact.
His eyelids fluttered.
Once.
Twice.
Then, suddenly, Peter opened his eyes.
Natasha didn't move.
For eight days, she had watched him sleep.
Now he was looking back at her.