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Stephen mopped up the blood that continued to spill from Peter’s arm. He pressed the sterile gauze against the wound with greater force, hoping to stem the flow of red liquid. “Once the bleeding stops, I’ll be able to heal your skin back together.” He sighed. “Peter, what were you thinking?”
“They were holding up Mr. Delmar’s store, I couldn’t just stand there and watch! They had guns pointed at him, multiple guns!” the teen argued indignantly.
“I could have portaled to you. I would have greatly preferred to join you before you intervened, rather than panic when you called for help after the fact. You know that. And yet you ran blindly into a situation with four armed men who are already wanted for murder - “
“ - okay in my defense I didn’t know they’d killed someone - “
“ - you had nothing, no backup, no suit, not even your own tech or webs. You were incredibly foolish, and you’re lucky that this is the only - “
“ - I know, I know . I just - ugh! You’re both so amazing.” Peter’s words came out in a frustrated rush. “You can walk into any situation and get it under control in, like, two seconds Doctor Strange. And even without your suit, Mr. Stark, you would have been able to talk them down. You’re good with words, and I’m not, I tried, I recognized them from around the neighborhood, but they still didn’t listen to me.”
“I’m not sure I could have talked them down either,” said Tony.
The man had been besides himself when Stephen first portaled in with Peter, who was dripping blood onto the Sanctum’s hardwood floors. He’d shouted and raved about how stupid the boy had been, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him and threatening to lock him in Stark Tower until he turned thirty. Peter hadn’t even attempted to argue. He knew Mr. Stark well enough by now to understand that his mentor had been acting out of fear and panic, not anger. Finally, though, the engineer had settled, content to let Stephen tend to the teenager’s arm while keeping a watchful eye and offering what little help he could give.
“Sometimes diplomacy works,” continued Tony, “but sometimes public relations take little more … elbow grease.”
From there, the apartment fell into an awkward silence. For the first time in his life Peter was speechless; he truly couldn’t find the words to say what he was feeling. Finally, Stephen took over the conversation in full doctor mode. “Here, let’s take a look at it.”
He peeled back the edge of the bandage. Satisfied once he saw that the bleeding had stopped, he pulled off the rest of the white gauze to examine the wound more closely. The boy was lucky. The bullet had only grazed the back of his forearm, leaving gash running from wrist to elbow.
“Turn your wrist upward for me,” Stephen instructed. Peter complied with no difficulty. “Good, now touch each finger to your thumb one at a time.” They continued like that for several minutes, the doctor giving basic instructions which the teen followed with ease. Finally, Stephen ran a trembling finger around the edges of the cut, watching carefully for Peter’s reaction. The teenager winced each time a new patch of skin was prodded.
“Good. No appreciable musculoskeletal or neurovascular damage,” he concluded. “Let’s clean it out to prevent infection, then I’ll patch you up.”
“You’re lucky you’ve befriended a sorcerer, kid,” said Tony, clapping Peter on the shoulder.
Stephen flicked his hand, fingers curling, and a small stack of sterile antiseptic wipes appeared in his palm. He took one from the top of the pile and handed the rest to Tony to hold. Keeping his hands as steady as he could, he began to gently dab at the wound.
“Or, more accurately, you’re lucky I’m engaged to one. Probably would have needed stitches otherwise. Right sweetheart?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, definitely,” said Stephen absently, concentrating on the task at hand while trying his best to keep his hands from shaking.
Peter winced at the sting of antiseptic on broken skin but made no attempt to pull his arm from the doctor’s grasp. “It’s deeper than I thought,” he said as the excess blood was slowly removed, allowing him to see the extent of the damage in greater detail. Without looking up, he asked, “Is it… is it gonna scar?”
“Most likely,” the sorcerer replied offhand. As the true meaning behind the question sank into his mind, however, Stephen halted his ministrations. “This is your first, isn’t it?”
Peter looked up and saw a sympathetic smile on the man’s face. He nodded.
“They’re nothing to be ashamed of, you know,” said Tony, lowering his voice. He gestured at his own chest. “Took me longer than it should have to figure that out.” The dark long-sleeved shirt he wore hid the scars from the arc reactor well, but they didn't need to be visible for Peter to remember. Mr. Stark wasn’t overly concerned with hiding them, these days, and the teen had seen them on several occasions. Each time he’d feigned nonchalance, but… he didn’t think he’d ever forget the marks that marred his mentor’s chest. Looking at them was like looking at a ghost… Of the man Mr. Stark used to be, long before Peter had known him? Of the monster who had sold him to terrorists and left him with a permanent reminder of the betrayal? Peter wasn’t sure, but it unsettled him all the same.
“I’m not ashamed , I just… it just sucks. To know that one stupid mistake is going to stay on my body for the rest of my life. I don’t want to get a tattoo because I’m scared I’ll regret it in ten years, but whenever I look down at my arm I’m always going to have this big ugly thing staring at me to remind me of that one time I didn’t bring my suit when I went down the block to get a sandwich. You didn’t have a choice about getting that arc reactor, Mr. Stark, but after everything that happened with Thanos I should have known better than to leave home without the suit.”
“And I should have known not to look at my phone,” countered Stephen quietly.
Peter missed the concerned look that Tony shot at his fiancé. Instead, he stared at the sorcerer in confusion.
Stephen held up a shaking hand in response, a small, sad smile on his face. “I’ve always let you think that I got these scars in a fight. It’s what I lead most people to believe - that I did something heroic and sacrificed my hands to save Earth from one interdimensional monster or another.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. It was a car crash. I was still a neurosurgeon, back then. It was dark, and raining, and I was speeding. I looked down at my phone to study a patient’s file and lost control. I…” The sorcerer squeezed his eyes shut in obvious discomfort and took a deep breath before pressing onward. “I hit another car and spun out, and fell off the side of a cliff. By the time they found me, it was too late to save my hands. The next thing I remember is waking up in Metro-General.”
Doctor Strange opened his eyes again, and Peter saw pain flicker in their blue-green depths. He noted the way Mr. Stark subtly wrapped a comforting arm around his fiance’s waist, and how the latter leaned into the touch. It was clearly hurting him, digging up these old memories. And yet… he was doing it anyway. For Peter’s sake. The teen felt a rush of affection for the man who had become just as much of a mentor to him in the past two years as Mr. Stark was.
“I was reckless,” the sorcerer continued. “You were also reckless today, and you could have been hurt a lot worse than you were. But you were brave, too. Deep down you’re a hero, Peter, and that’s something you must have had in you long before you gained your powers. Back then, I was just a narcissist who thought he was invincible.”
“So did I, today. Felt like I was invincible, I mean. And it’s like they won, because they reminded me that I’m not, and I thought I could do this, but I couldn’t, and I feel helpless.” Peter felt tears prick his eyes, and wiped them away angrily before they could fall.
Stephen gave him a calculating look. “Are you considering quitting, then?”
“I… I don’t know. But what good is a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man when I can’t even protect the neighborhood from itself? Or protect myself from the neighborhood?”
Tony paused a moment before answering, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. “Kid, I’m not going to lie to you. If you stay in the hero biz… this isn’t going to be your last scar. It comes with the territory.”
“Take it from people with experience,” Stephen said wryly, pulling down the collar of his t-shirt to expose a myriad of other marks he’d collected over the years. Tony rolled up his sleeves to do the same.
“How are you both so calm about it, though? Like, how are you completely fine looking at them when you know that someone put those on you, and they’ll never go away?”
Peter wasn’t sure who he was directing his question to, but it was Stephen who answered. “Because Tony doesn’t care what my hands look like,” he said simply. “And like it or not, if I hadn’t been a complete idiot and crashed my car, we wouldn’t have met. These scars are a small price to pay for meeting the love of my life.”
“The same goes for my chest,” Tony said simply. “And all the rest of them. They don’t change who I am. They just remind me of how far I've come.”
”And for what it’s worth, Harley isn’t going to care either, Peter,” added Stephen. “He’s going to be pissed that you put yourself in danger, and will probably want to murder the men who did it, but you could be covered in thousands of scars and that boy would still look at you like you hung the moon.”
Tony sighed. “Listen, kid. I would be thrilled if you hung up the Spidey suit for good. Ecstatic. Effervescent. I’d throw a goddamn party. But don’t do it because of them. Don’t give those guys from today the satisfaction of taking that away from you, of changing who you are. Just... be more careful next time, okay? Keep your webs and the suit with you at all times or I will personally handcuff them to your wrist. Capeesh?”
Peter nodded. He looked up at the man who had shown up at his apartment one day and changed his life forever - the person who had taught him what it was to be a hero and had somehow become the closest thing he had to a father in the process.
Then he turned his gaze to Doctor Strange - the man whose aloof exterior hid one of the softest hearts he had ever seen. Who had kept him sane while they waited to be rescued from the Soul Stone, and who always made time for him despite the thousand other, better things the sorcerer could be doing.
“Are you ready?” Stephen asked.
Peter was confused for a moment, before realizing that the sorcerer had managed to finish cleaning out his wound while they were talking. Once he understood the man’s question, he nodded.
“Okay. This will tickle a little.” Stephen waved his hand back and forth over Peter’s arm as if he were conducting a symphony, fingers bent in an awkward position that the teen knew must cause him pain.
The teenager watched in fascination as his skin began to heal in front of his eyes, the edges of the gash knitting themselves back together until only a raised pink scar remained.
“Massage it regularly and hopefully some of that scar tissue will break down. But wounds like this never fade completely.”
Peter examined his arm closely, twisting it back and forth in the light of the flickering fire to see how it looked from each angle. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, but… it was still there. A physical reminder of how becoming Spider-Man had changed his life, changed him.
Before today, Peter thought he could have stopped being a hero. He’d convinced himself that if he just burned the suit and didn’t climb walls, his life would have gone completely back to the way it had been.
Spider-Man was an Avenger, one of the Earth’s mightiest heroes. Peter Parker was just a high school student with friends, homework, and an amazing boyfriend. Before today, he’d always tried to keep the two separate. But now… now there was no turning back. He was Spider-Man and always would be, even if he decided to quit right then and never look back. There was no getting around it - the proof was etched into his skin.
Did he want to quit?
Peter didn’t think he did.
He already hated this scar, hated how it proved he wasn’t invincible or infallible, how this piece of Spider-Man had bled into Peter Parker. But Mr. Stark and Doctor Strange were comfortable showing others their own physical proof that they were vulnerable. They had collected dozens of scars between them, and they wore them all with open ease.
Could he learn to live with it, then? Like they had?
He thought that with time, he could. If they were right, and scars were an unavoidable part of being a hero… he’d have to.
Because Peter knew that he couldn’t bring himself burn the suit. He couldn’t throw away the tech, or stop climbing walls. At the end of the day, he couldn’t keep himself from saving people. Doctor Strange was right - he’d wanted to be a hero long before he was bitten by that spider.
And a line on his arm was a small price to pay for saving a man’s life.