Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Normally, May and Peter had date nights on Thursdays. He’d always make sure to take some time off patrol, and she’d get Thai takeout, and they’d sit in front of the TV watching soaps and gossiping and just living.

This Thursday, they’re in the hospital.

The doctor’s scrubs are a faint teal and her name badge reads ‘DR. OWENS’ in big, blocky, sanitary letters. She sits on the examination stool with crossed legs and kind eyes when she tells them the news.

“It’s a tumor. Benign, but- It’s not good. Scans showed that it’s wedged underneath your renal artery, and is impeding blood flow into your kidneys. Your body isn’t filtering blood correctly- If we don’t remove it, you’ll have to stay on dialysis your entire life.”

Peter can feel her shaking through the parchment on the bench. May reaches for his hand and he grabs it, squeezing tight as she asks, “How much would it cost to remove?”

The doctor gives her a sympathetic look before checking the number. “For a surgery invasive as this, and stretched thin as we are… At least eighty thousand. Another twenty for the recovery period.”

Immediately he knows they can’t afford it. They barely manage to survive on what they have anyway- Scraping together one hundred thousand dollars is such a remote impossibility that the first thing he starts doing is trying to think of other ways- He and Mr. Stark haven’t talked in nearly six months, not since Toomes’s trial. May lost her job in the paternity ward after passing out in the middle of a delivery, which meant no insurance. They could try and pay it off in the long term, but that would mean they would both be working near constantly, something she couldn’t handle after recovering from a major surgery and he couldn’t fit into his already overloaded schedule.

“I know this is… Hard. Very hard,” says Owens, “But we can start you on dialysis right away, May, and keep it in control until we have something figured out-“

Peter speaks up, giving the doctor a wide-eyed mix of desperation and fear. “How long do we have? Until it gets more dangerous, I mean.”

Until she could die lays unspoken in the air, like a stick of dynamite hanging from cobwebs.

Dr. Owens points the same sympathetic look at him, now, expression twisted in trying to dig up the right answer from the depths of her medical knowledge. “It depends on whether it continues to grow or not, and how soon we start dialysis, but about two or three months. Blood toxicity is a dangerous game to play, especially when we don’t know how heavily the artery is being restricted. We should take action as soon as possible.”

They sat in the car for twenty minutes after leaving, drowning in the type of silence that only happens when something really horrible is going on. She grips his hand again, and he squeezes it, ideas and scenarios and horrible, awful things shaking through his head like ball bearings down a lead pipe.

“Honey, are you okay?”

May’s tone cuts through the rattle, quiet but full of that concern and love she pulls off perfectly every time.

Peter gives her a forced smile, running his thumb over hers. “Yeah. Fine. Just thinking.”

She narrows her eyes. “I know that look in your eyes, Peter. That’s your ‘I’m gonna be a hero’ look. Please don’t tell me you’re planning to rob the Fed or something, because-“

“May, I think I could get us the money, okay? It wouldn’t really be legal or moral, but I could get it, and we could pay for the surgery and the recovery, I think. Maybe.”

A different look hits him this time, the ‘you’re being a self-sacrificing moron’ one. “You’re not breaking the law for me, Peter. I won’t let you.”

He stares down at his beaten-up Converse and keeps rubbing her hand. “I could do it, and I could get away with it. I just-“

“No. That’s final.”

May leans over the center console and pulls Peter into an awkward hug, tucking his head into the hollow of her collarbone. He closes his eyes and breathes in her minty perfume, trying not to cry.

“You promise me you’re not going to go and do something stupid like start a pirating website, okay? We’ll get through this, kiddo. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

Peter snorts at the joke and keeps breathing, trying to calm down. He knows this isn’t like the time he had to work ten hours a day to replace the bumper he wrecked on one of their parking lot practice sessions, or when she worked double shifts at the hospital to send him to Space Camp in seventh grade. Those things were all manageable and a little smaller and no one was going to die if things didn’t work out, but this is different. Now, if they don’t figure out how to make it work, then Peter will be alone. The last familial connection he had to the planet would be severed, and the Parker name would be left to him. And he totally couldn’t handle the stress of that.

“Hey. You wanna get Thai?”

Peter nodded into her neck, pulling away and buckling himself in. He didn’t notice that there were tears in his eyes until he felt the wet splashes on his balled fists, and he wiped them away quickly, staring straight ahead. May kissed his forehead before putting their junky old station wagon into gear and pulling into traffic, trying hard to ignore the way her hands were still trembling on the steering wheel.

Ⴟ

They get curry and sticky rice pudding and eat it on the fire escape, Peter a little shocked (and irrationally offended, if he’s being honest,) that New York keeps on bustling on in the late Spring sun, May occasionally glancing at him with concern. He’s kind of just shoveling the food into his mouth at this point, not really eating, so the sound of plastic scraping against styrofoam startles him. He puts the empty container down and looks out at the fixedly declining glow on the horizon, knees tucked to his chest.

“You wanna talk, kiddo?”

She nudges his knee with her spoon, giving him Look #3, the ‘talk to me because I love you’ one.

Peter shrugs, playing with the frayed edge of his jeans. “You’re dying, May. I don’t know what we can really talk about, y’know?”

May responds with a snort. “Pfft. You think anything can take me out, Peter? After all the shit we’ve had to go through?”

She pulls him into a side hug, rubbing his shoulders, and he takes the moment to breath in her perfume again, because a titanic weight settles on his chest when he thinks of forgetting that smell for good.

“This’ll suck, Pete. But we’ll find a way. We always do. It’s the Parker Way.”

They stay like that for the rest of the waning afternoon and into the night, only slipping back into the warmth of their apartment when the streetlights blink on and Queens begins to slip into it’s evening shudders, the gestalt of bustling city life burning down to embers.

Ⴟ

Part of living the Parker Way is living with the Parker Luck. That’s why the first dialysis appointment is on a Thursday.

It’s probably the strangest environment Peter’s ever been in. They’re surrounded by a ramshackle assembly of sixty-somethings that drift precariously between zonking out and scribbling down the answer to their crossword, cancer patients (because the hospital is so poorly funded that chemo and dialysis happens in the same room), and the other type of cancer patients that are super lively and badass. It still feels like he’s living in a dream, and even though it’s a perfect afternoon and Peter could be patrolling, which May has been prodding him to do for the past hour (of a four-hour treatment), he refuses to leave. After all, he’s currently kicking total ass at Monopoly, and leaving a stack of cash big enough to fund his imaginary pet cemetery remake (he’s a fan, alright? Don’t judge,) would be criminal.

He also doesn’t want to leave May alone.

“Lord, who the hell taught you to play this good?” She whines, forking over another 500 after landing on Park Place, which is coated in houses and hotels because they don’t play by the normal rules, and settles back into her cushy seat.

Peter just grins manically and puts the phony bill atop the rest of his chaotic pile, moving his piece forward (a Darth Vader Lego minifigure, because they lost all the actual pieces a long, long time ago) and handing her the dice. “You know how anal Ben was about Monopoly. I learned from the unofficial Coney Island champion, May.”

She laughs in that angel’s hair way she usually does, sliding her own Lego figurine (a Frankensteinian amalgamation of Luke Skywalker’s torso, Harry Potter’s head, and Chewey’s legs) along the tiles. “I’ll concede that point. Still, you could take it easy on me. I’m just a sick, frail old woman, after all.”

“You’re not old, you’re seasoned. There’s a difference. Plus, I gotta keep you on your toes. Constant stress is good for you.”

May snorts, swiping a strand of hair from her eye. “Don’t I know it. Surprised I’ve got a tumor instead of a stomach ulcer.”

They banter back and forth like that for a while, trying to stave off the scent of chemical sanitization and overall unpleasant aura bombarding them constantly. After what seems like an eternity (and way too many wins for his ego), a nurse comes in and slowly pries the dialysis machine’s tendrils from May’s veins, and the scene is way too reminiscent of an Alien movie for Peter not to wince.

It’s still sunny when they leave, harsh glints bouncing off car windshields and sticky heat soaking into them like syrup into Saturday morning pancakes. When they finally make it to the car, she turns to him and squints, giving him Look #4, ‘I don’t want any special treatment from you’, which is usually only reserved for the weird guy at Prachya Thai that always gives them free food. “I know you think you’ve got to stick to me like a puppy, hun, but it’s a beautiful day out. You should be patrolling. Or at least posing for pictures, or something. Don’t want the Bugle thinking you’re dead.”

She must sense his hesitancy, because she narrows her eyes even further, pupils barely peeking out from cinched lids and gaze pointed enough to pierce concrete. “You’re only going to go if I make you, aren’t you?”

Peter sighs, shrugging. “I just don’t want to leave you alone, May. I already spend so much time at school and stuff, and with all this tumor business, I’m not sure if you should be-“

“Peter. Honey. I love you, but you’re a little neurotic sometimes. I will be fine,” She puts the car into gear and pulls onto the street, both hands on the steering wheel. “Plus, you’ll get springy and weird if you don’t go out. That’ll kill me even quicker.”

“Don’t joke about that, May, please.”

He drums a finger against his knee before relenting. “Fine. I’ll go. But I won’t stay out for long, okay? I wanna be home before dark. We can watch a movie or something.”

May agrees with a hum, eyes fixed on the road. Quietly, she’s smiling.

Ⴟ

Peter crawls through his window under the cover of pitch darkness, feeling a little guilty for not making his way home sooner. The rapidly approaching summer heat left him coated in sticky sweat, and he just drags himself through the shower like a half-dead sewer rat before shuffling into their living room.

He can see May’s haphazard bun while rounding the corner, and Ferris Bueller on the TV, paused mid-Rooney mauling, a cup of likely cold tea sitting on the coffee table. Peter shakes her shoulder gently, trying not to startle her too much.

She slumps over like a bag of water, thumping dully on the couch cushions.

Peter has his phone in his hand and is dialing 911 before he actually realizes he’s doing it, the operator’s voice tearing him out of the soundless, lifeless void his head is currently jammed in.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Uh- My, uh, my aunt- She’s passed out, um-“ Peter stammers, scrambling to her side to feel for a pulse. It’s there, soft, and too thread to comfort him, but it’s there. “She has a pulse. I need an ambulance.”

He gives her their address and sits cross-legged next to May, idly stroking her hair while his ears start to ring in an uncontrollable cacophony of silence. He’s confused- They did what Dr. Owens said, right? She got her blood squeezed through that god-awful crème-colored machine, sat there pretending everything was going to be okay for three hours while they were literally surrounded by death, trying to drown out the grinding motors and sloshing of blood with jokes and banter. If they did what they were supposed to, why was May-

Peter nearly stuck to the ceiling when the EMT slammed her fist on the door, announcing the ambulance’s arrival. “Emergency services! Are both residents conscious and able to open this door?”

He padded over and undid the locks languidly, like he was swimming through syrup and mud, blinking at the woman and her partner as they barged straight into the kitchen before spotting May splayed on the couch, eyes closed and skin swapped to pallor from its normal soft olive, hair messy and sticking up all over the place from Peter’s ministrations. The pair’s paramedic, tall and lanky with soft hazel eyes and violently orange hair spiked in the way only the early 2000’s could teach, started the examination, his partner turning to Peter with a clipboard in hand.

“Hun, I’m gonna need to ask you some questions,” She said, standing to face him. He’d moved across the room without even realizing it, like he was magnetized to the scene in front of him and couldn’t escape the pull. He nodded and gave her his attention.

“Any past history of smoking, drug abuse, alcoholism?”

Peter shook his head, arms snaking around his torso and squeezing his ribs. “She- Has this tumor under her kidney. It’s messing with her blood flow. We went to dialysis earlier today.”

The EMT nodded and passes the information along to her colleague, who finishes clipping an oxygen monitor to May’s finger and stands. “It looks like she had a minor heart attack. Might’ve been stress on her heart from the treatment,” He grabs a gurney from where he laid it, settling it next to the couch. “We’re gonna take her to Presbyterian. Do you have anyone to call?”

Peter shakes his head, and the medics share a look of mild pity, the kind he’s used to getting from his whole ‘total orphan minus the aunt’ deal. They offer him a ride in the ambulance, and he takes it, because God knows that they’re going to be paying $12,000 for the ten-minute ride, and his ears ring the entire time. His head is swimming, like he’s concussed but aware of everything that’s happening around him, painfully aware, and before he knows it Dr. Owens is crouched in front of him and grabbing his hand because he’s digging blunt fingernails into the trashy plastic seat in the hospital’s waiting room.

Idly, he wonders why the chairs in places where people are waiting to hear if their loved ones are dying are always so goddam uncomfortable.

“Peter, honey? Did you hear me?”

He snaps out of that train of thought, reality seeping back into his body. It’s nauseating. “N-No. Sorry. What?”

Owens gives him a sympathetic look, clasping his hand between both of hers. “Your aunt is okay. She had a cardiac arrythmia from the stress put on her heart by dialysis. We’ll all talk about what that means later, but for right now, she’s awake, and wants to see you.”

It takes Peter a few seconds to fully recalibrate, pulling his hand from hers and standing. She seems to understand his silence, and gently squeezes his shoulder before guiding them to the stairs and up a few floors, winding through hallways and doors and skimming past nurses pushing carts until they reach May’s room, and he still doesn’t even realize they moved at all until he’s there.

He should really stop doing that. He’s gonna walk straight into traffic on accident if it keeps happening.

Owens guides him to May’s bedside and leaves, promising to come back and talk later. Peter slips his knobby, rough hand underneath his aunt’s, feeling an odd sense of relief when he feels her soft skin and smells her minty perfume and just feels her, all May-like and comforting. She strokes the back of his hand with her thumb, and Peter climbs into the bed next to her, burrowing into the crook of her neck like it’s the last available hibernation spot and he’ll die without her warmth and protection.

“Key, kiddo,” She says, pulling her hand free from where it’s pinned beneath Peter’s hip and winding it around his shoulders. Sorry for that scare.”

He shakes his head, curly hair tickling her nose. “S’ not your fault, May. You can’t control your heart.”

It’s like she can read his thoughts, because she ruffles his hair and frowns softly. “You can’t control it either, honey.”

At the tilt of his head, she snorts, gently pulling knots loose in his mop of a hairdo. “Don’t act like I can’t read your thoughts, Pete. I can feel guilt radiating off of you.”

Peter shakes out a tiny, miniscule, breathy laugh, pressing his face deeper into May’s neck. “Sorry. I just- Y’know. If I had been there, I could’ve done more.”

“Psh. From what, a heart attack? Contrary to what your big brain might think up, hon, you can’t make my heart suddenly work better,” says May, pressing a finger to his lips when he opens to them to protest, shaking her head with a laugh. “I love you, kid, but sometimes I think you’ve gone even more coo-coo for Cocopuffs than I have.”

They both chuckle a little, and Peter almost starts to feel better when Owens returns with a somber face and crossed arms.

“Here’s the deal,” She begins, pulling over a rolling stool. “I scheduled you for four hours of treatment to clear out a buildup of junk in your blood from the few weeks before your diagnoses. I didn’t stop to consider that your heart might be struggling to maintain bloodflow-“ Peter narrows his eyes at that, a little peeved that the doctor in charge of May’s wellbeing made an oopsie that could’ve killed her- “And the dialysis machine pumping newly refined blood back into your system was just too much for it to handle.”

May nods, face in a neutral, calculating sort of expression, the kind she put on while doing taxes or balancing checks. “Okay. What’s that mean?”

Owens fiddles with the collar of her scrubs. “We’ll have to reduce your treatments to about two hours and put you on blood thinners. Probably space the appointments out longer than I would like, but I want to play this pretty safe until a cardiologist can give your heart a better look.”

Peter’s looking at her from under May’s hair, now, and clears his throat, trying to get the lump out of it. “What’s- What does the timeline look like? Does spacing the treatments out more mean the surgery is going to have to happen sooner, or?”

“We’ll have to monitor her progress over the course of a few weeks to figure that out,” She replies, still fiddling with her scrubs. “Like I said, this is- Pretty dangerous territory. Until the surgery happens, May’s body is going to have to constantly battle to keep itself running, which won’t be easy. I’ll make sure to keep you guys updated, so it’s a little easier to manage. For now, I want you to stay overnight, so I can make sure there’s no other complications or weird rhythms with your heart. After that, you’re free to head home, and I’ll call you to schedule the next treatment then. Sound good?”

Peter almost snorts, because no, it doesn’t sound good, because May is dying, but his aunt nods and Owens leaves, giving them a moment to try and figure out what the hell to do.

He speaks first, pulling back from her neck. “May, we- Can’t afford that surgery. I know we can’t, and you know, too. Not without any income. We’ll be stuck in debt for the rest of our lives if we try.”

“I know, I know,” Her eyebrows knit together in that way Ben’s used to, and he wonders if he got it from her or vice versa, because he’s thrown through a loop at how contemplative and serious she looks. May is normally- Breezy. Light, and happy, and quirky. She’s not boring or predictable, and that’s what Peter loves more than anything, She’s like a comfort blanket that turns into a scattered collection of confetti swirling in one of those air chamber things you see at Chuck E. Cheese. Perfectly caring when she knows you need it but absolutely riotous every other moment of the day. “Whatever happens, Peter, you cannot do something stupid for me, okay? Don’t go quitting school and getting four jobs or something.”

Peter does snort this time, because he knows she knows that he would do that in a second if it would make even remotely enough money to save her life. “Don’t worry. No noble acts from me. Nosirry.”

They both laugh at that.

May pulls him close with one arm, her other limited by an IV drip and wires, and presses his head to hers. “I love you, kid, you know that? More than anything.”

He nods, feeling tiny and weightless, wrapping arms around her shoulders and squeezing. “I love you too, May. So much.”

He whispers it again and again when she falls asleep, curling deeper into her side, and cries, because he’s afraid of never being able to say it to her again.

Ⴟ

Something Peter has always loved about Queens is its makeshift feel. Like it’s stitched together from all the people dwelling in it, making up some messy but beautiful patchwork quilt of crumbling, graffiti-covered brick, family-owned food carts, and homey bodegas, personifying the American melting pot. However, an unfortunate byproduct of such cultural alloying is the inevitability of underfunding, gentrification, and poverty.

That’s the only reason he can think of for Queen’s Detention Facility keeping around the 1990s-style prisoner booths- One of which he’s sat at, parallel to Adrian Toomes, leant close to the thin barrier of acrylic that stands between him and the man who nearly shattered his spinal column into several hundred tiny, irreparable pieces.

The Vulture has fixed him with a gaze accurate to his namesake, like he’s just waiting until the inevitable collapse to strike. Peter returns his own, and tries to keep from breaking it, because if there’s one thing he doesn’t want to embody right now, it’s fear. He can’t afford it.

“So. My aunt is dying.”

Toomes starts, his scrutinizing expression slipping to confusion. “Ah. And you’re here… Why? For a chat? Biscuits and tea, Pedro?”

Peter lets his lips slip into a grimace, digging blunt fingernails into the cement beneath his hands. “I need money, to- Pay for her surgery. To save her live,” He tries to keep the mild tremor out of his voice, but is failing, and it makes him sound far more childlike than he’s aiming for. “She had a heart attack a few days ago. That alone is going to make us live on Kraft easy-mac and ramen for the next few months, we just,” Peter sighs, and tries to dig his look into Toomes, vying for some kind of fairness, some modicum of decency hidden beneath layers of cruel indifference. “We can’t afford it. I’ll do whatever it takes. But I need a lot of money, and I need it fast.”

The man shifts in his seat before leaning forward, resting his chin on a balled fist. “You know, Petey, I didn’t peg you as the type to betray a rigid moral backbone. What’s the jam, huh? You trying to dig up the rest of my contacts, sort out the last of my messes?”

“No. I don’t- Mr. Stark and Damage Control deals with that, I think. Hunting down the weapons,” Says Peter, fighting every nerve in his body so he doesn’t lean back, away from the plexiglass, trying to look strong and ready. He knows he’s failing, but it’s an effort, nonetheless. “I know there’s more stuff out there, more guys with the gear you’re selling. I had to knock a guy with anti-grav gloves off the side of the Chase Bank on 31^st the other day. I doubt you want them out there, right?”

Toomes looks like he’s considering, now, thinking about the potential. “I only got transferred here because of your testimony, Parker. If I do what you’re asking, I could get punted out for good, which means I’d be even further from my home, and my family. I don’t like the risk.”

Peter shifts closer, now, nose nearly pressed on the barrier. “I understand, I do, but we need this- My aunt needs this money, man. She’s gonna die without it, and soon. I’ll round up the weapons, I’ll store them wherever, I,” He rubs his eyes, suddenly feeling so damn tired, so weighed down and languid, everything beginning to seep into his bones like resin. “Just. Please. Anything. I’ll do anything.”

“How much?”

They lock eyes for a moment, and it almost feels like Toomes understands some of it, the desperation and anger. “How much what?” Peter says dumbly, dropping his gaze to the cubicle’s cement sill.

“Time. How much time does your aunt have?”

He shrugs, unsure. “The doctors don’t know. Depending on how well the dialysis works, a month, maybe a little more. Her heart is under a lot of stress, though. It’s volatile.”

Toomes nods, sniffing as he thinks. “I’ll pay you give grand for every guy you round up with my stuff. You store it in my warehouse, I’ll get someone to check it’s there and authentic. Only cash, wherever you want me to get it dropped.”

Peter stiffens a bit, because he honestly wasn’t expecting him to actually say yes. “Wow, uh- How many do you think there are?”

A snort. “Plenty. Stark hasn’t been very… Involved, with Damage Control. They’re doing a shitty job at getting the last of my product collected, and there’s still people circulating it. Probably a quarter of a million’s worth in New York state, maybe a third of that just here in the burrows.”

A quarter of a million. That’s financial solvency. More money that Peter’s seen in his whole life, or been offered the chance of getting, at least. He can feel the money signs taking place of his pupils and the visceral greed speeding into his bloodstream, and he stamps it out, because this is for May. Anything more than what they need would go somewhere that needed it.

If he’s going to break the law, he might as well try to be altruistic about it.

“I’ll take the deal. Just send me the warehouse info and I’ll have the first guy there by tomorrow, at the latest,” Peter pushes a piece of paper into the little sharing drawer thing, and Toomes takes it, tucking the slip into his uniform. “That’s the number for my phone. Just leave the money wherever the warehouse is, and I’ll collect it after the dropoff.”

They share one last look before he stands, phone still in hand. “And thank you. I- I didn’t know where else to go.”

The Vulture gives him a nod, somewhere between acknowledgement and understanding. Peter leaves the prison feeling like he’s going to vomit, but also like he finally, finally has a say in something. He doesn’t know how long it’s going to take before he’ll be able to accept what he’s doing; It’s wrong, and he knows it, but its May. His May, loving and kind and the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. This plan has to work.

He has to save her.

Chapter Text

Peter slides open his bedroom window and crawls through in a flurry of limbs, tossing his backpack into a corner with far more force than necessary and pulling his mask off in one smooth motion. He’d used a combo of trainhopping and webslinging for his journey to the prison, and was soaked in sweat from both physical exertion and stress. Karen had begun sorting through police files for potential targets (He lied and said he was working a new case, and still feels the pinpricks of lingering guilt), and had yet to come up with anything of much use.

In the living room, May is crunching on muesli and berries- Something Peter never seen her come close to even looking at, but it’s healthier than Lucky Charms, so he pours himself a bowl in solidarity and plops down next to her on the couch, knees tucked to his chest and spoon halfway into his mouth when she asks him how patrol went.

“Good,” He says, swallowing the first bite and going for another. “S’ not super busy. Saved a few cats.”

He hates lying to May. Especially about the cats. Even with a wicked allergy, they’re in her Top 5 Best Animals Alive list, an achievement comparable to receiving a Nobel prize, though more prestigious. She has a folder in the phone with videos of all the ones he’s rescued from trees and garbage cans.

“That’s good. You smell like sewer piss, by the way. A shower might save my heart some stress.”

Peter wrinkles his nose, looking over at her as he finishes chewing a strawberry. “What’s the difference between regular piss and sewer-“ He sighs, setting his bowl down. “Actually, don’t want to know. Wanna watch Cake Boss after I’m done?”

As if reading his mind, May turns on the TV, show already queued up. “You got it, hun. Now go, shoo, before you make this couch smell even worse than it already does.”

She’s right. Their couch has this weird combination scent of mothballs, spilled beer, cigarette smoke and something unnervingly sweet that have united forces to kick the ass of anyone unprepared for it’s sinus-curdling stench.

Peter likes his showers ice cold (It’s a habit he picked up after having a warehouse dropped on his head, and his new fear of lukewarm water dripping anywhere on him should probably be addressed sooner or later, but he’d rather file it away for the time being,) and just long enough to scrub the sweat and dirt from his hair, but not long enough to wrinkle his skin. He leaves the bathroom smelling like apples and cinnamon- May loves artisan soap for some reason, but it usually makes him smell pretty nice, so he doesn’t complain- and tosses on the first sweatshirt he sees in his bedroom, combining it with a pair of unflattering basketball shorts that come well above his kneecaps. From the other room, Buddy Valastro waxes poetic about some towering beauty of a wedding cake they’d barely managed to scrape together before the client’s deadline, and May cleans out their bowls in the kitchen sink, rattling pipes that haven’t been replaced since the fifties spraying way too much water from the tap.

Rounding the corner, Peter makes a beeline for the pantry, intending to make amends with his stomach for not eating breakfast that morning.

Instead of Dortios and Welches, he finds stacks of whole-wheat crackers, cans of beans, brown rice, and a whole host of things that make his blood sugar crestfallen but his curiosity piqued. “Uh, May- Why did the fun police raid our pantry?”

She peaks around the corner, eyebrows raised as she eats a pear. “Huh? Oh, right,” May ducks away, producing a sheet of stationary with Queen’s Presbyterian Hospital printed at the top, a mile-long list of foods below it. “Dr. Owens gave me this list at the checkup, said I should start eating healthier. Should make it easier for my kidneys to- Y’know, work.”

Peter makes a noise somewhere between aaah and a scream, because damn, the Doritos were almost gone, and the crumbs are the best part. “Cool, cool. So is all the normal human food locked away in a vault somewhere, or?”

“Aw, sweetheart, sorry. I shoulda gotten you some stuff,” May offers him a gigantic carrot that must’ve been raised on steroids because it’s at least two feet long and wide as his fist at the top. “Lots of veggies, though. It’ll probably be good for you, too, considering you basically entirely subsist off of 7-11 and whatever the average soccer mom keeps loaded into her minivan.”

Carrots are his least favorite vegetable, but his stomach is really starting to get pissed, so Peter takes it, snapping off a chunk the sized of his forearm and nibbling on it with narrowed eyes. “Mfo, Ms. Dmr Omwnes snaid errythin’ s’ gom?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And yeah, sorta,” They meander to the couch and plop down, analyzing the elaborate rose made from frosting that tops a cake the size of their kitchen table. “She said we just gotta take it slow, not put too much pressure on my heart. Eat better, obviously. All that snazzy stuff.”

If he’s being honest, Peter can’t recall the last time they had such a quantity of healthy food in the house at the same time. Usually, they order out, but May hardly eats anyways, aside from dinner. He knows the only reason she’s made this dramatic switch is because she’s trying her hardest to assure him that everything will be fine, regardless of whether or not he believes it’s true. It makes his heart wilt.

“Hey, May.”

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“Love you.”

She snakes an arm around his shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “I love you too, Peter.”

Ⴟ

Peter sits across from Ned at Sully Jr.’s, poking at a slice of too-greasy pizza with pinched brows.

“So what’s up, dude? You just kinda, y’know, called me out of nowhere and said we should meet up, which I’m totally cool with, but honestly it’s a bit freaky-“

“May’s dying.”

Ned blinks, his own dripping slice falling from his hand to the paper plate below. “Oh- Oh, my God, Peter. I’m so sorry. What is it?”

“Tumor under her kidney, impeding the renal artery. Her heart is struggling, her kidneys are straining, it’s,” Peter rips a pepperoni off and tosses it at the wall; He can’t tell if it’s in frustration or anger. “She’s trying to manage, you know? But it’s hard. She’s changing her diet up and stuff, but it won’t be enough, Ned.”

His best friend looks crestfallen, trying to find the right words but failing. “Is there anything you can do? Like, surgery has to be an option, right? If it’s not malignant?”

Peter nods, but its sullen with a steady sort of dread, like Atlas took a day off and he’s the one holding up the world today. “Yeah. But it’s gonna be over a hundred grand. We just can’t afford it, not when she doesn’t have a job.”

Neither of them are strangers to poverty. Ned was always better off, but even then, his parents still struggled to pay for all his camps and programs. Peter wasn’t well off with May even when Ben was around; Neither of their jobs paid well, and it’s not like his parents had much of a will drafted up for what little they had left over, either.

“Couldn’t you ask Mr. Stark? I mean, you had the-“ Ned switches into a whisper, leaning across the table. “Spider-man thing. Wouldn’t he help you in like, a heartbeat? He was gonna make you an Avenger, after all.”

“I haven’t talked to him in ages, not since the trial with Toomes,” replies Peter, staring at the pool of grease gathered in the center of his pizza. “Plus, we were never really close, y’know? Like, we interacted a few times, and that was really cool, but he never invited me over for charades or whatever. Half of the times we talked he was scolding me for something. And I get it, it’s not his fault, with the whole Rogues situation, but. Still.”

“You feel like it’s your responsibility to help May.”

Peter nods, finally looking Ned in the eye. Greif and determination are having a fistfight in his pupils, trying to figure out who’s going to win. He loves May almost as much as Peter does- She’s like, a second mom to him. “You’re doing something to help, aren’t you? Something, like, not super legal?”

Another nod. “Trying to. Dunno if it’ll be enough.”

“Let me help.”

There’s a fire in his friend’s eyes, now, unrestrained and resolute in its purpose. “I can be your guy in the chair, help you with whatever job you’re doing-“

“No, Ned. God, no,” Peter says, shaking his head so hard it might snap at the neck and go rolling off. “I’m not dragging you into this. It’s my responsibility, and if something happens, you can’t be connected to it. I don’t know what I’d do if I got you arrested or- or worse, working with me. I have Karen, she can help with the smaller stuff. I’ll handle the rest.”

Ned visibly sags, head dropping a few inches lower. “I want to do something, man. She means a lot to me, too.”

“I know. Just, like, maybe something else? Drop by when you can, and we can all hang out?” Peter’s picking at a loose thread on his already shredded jeans absentmindedly, trying to rectify the look of crushed hope in best friend’s eyes. “We’re both gonna need support. I think having someone around would help her, even if it’s just stupid stuff, like playing board games or whatever.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, that sounds good.”

They both stand, food abandoned on a table, and spend a half second in awkward silence before Ned pulls him into a hug, arms wrapped tight around his torso. “I’m so sorry.”

Peter’s voice is quiet and miniscule when he replies, almost drowned out by the white noise around them. “Yeah. Me too.”

He promises to call later and make plans to hang out, then leaves, headed toward the bus stop. Peter starts picking through the crowds, walking in a haze, before his phone buzzes.

Before he even pulls it out he knows it’s the API he jacked Karen into, a bright red alert screaming on the display: TARGET LOCATED.

Peter ducks into an alley, trying and failing to squash the guilt worming it’s way into his head as he changes into the suit and follows his AI’s directions towards the first mark.

Ⴟ

“You’re sure this is him, Karen?”

Perched on a ledge, Peter peers down at a man as he loads a variety of duffels and suitcases into the trunk of a black sedan, looking seedy both in stature and demeanor. The car is sleek and brand new, an Audi- According to his AI, straight from the dealership.

“Yes, Peter. Mr. Dulan’s financial records indicate a massive surge in income since the arrest of Toomes, and numerous individuals in his contact list would appear to have transferred sums of ten thousand dollars or more to his account via remote wire transfer.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “He just had the people he’s selling to on his primary cell? No burner?”

Karen makes a sound of affirmation, and says, “Indeed. The only other names present in his call list were ‘Ma’ and ‘Jacob’. Neither have made a call in several weeks.”

He stays silent for a moment as Dulan goes to grab the last set of bags, contemplating. Something in the back of his head tells him the lack of personal contacts is less of a safety measure and more of a window into his personal life; Assuming ‘Ma’ actually meant his mother, then maybe this guy is doing the same brand of work Peter is, trying to help her out. Further than that, who’s Jacob? A friend? Just some random number?

Turns out there’s not much time for speculation, because soon he’s running from the house with a colossal weapon in his hands, glowing blue and pulsating like a pissed-off slug. Before Peter can even think, a ball of lightning jumps from the barrel and onto the tree he’d been hiding in, turning it into a pile of smoking ash.

Okay, so not cool.

The sedan has already peeled off down the street by the time Peter can peel himself off the sidewalk, wincing at the burn on his side. He’d managed to avoid the worst of it, but the smell of charred skin in his nose is still pungent. He balters several steps forward and slings himself to the roof of a building, sloppily jumping across crushed gravel and cool concrete in chase of his target.

He can make out the screech of tires coming to a rapid stop to his left, so he turns there, using his body as a pendulum when he spots Dulan, trying to unwedge his weapon from the back seat where it’d been tossed. Just as he drops out of his fall and aims his feet at the man’s chest, Dulan fires, and Peter barely manages to catch a lamppost as the ball of white-hot plasma arcs into a building, charring the brownstone’s exterior and lighting the interior ablaze, roaring flames slipping from it’s windows like lions heads.

The streets erupt into panic, and Peter thinks quickly, sticking his opponent to the concrete with a stream of webbing and tossing an EMP to the car’s hood to prevent his escape. He sprints full tilt at the house, legs carrying his momentum into a jump straight through the second-floor window, landing with a thunk as smoke begins filling his nostrils.

“Hello? Is anyone-“ He devolves into a coughing fit before Karen activates the air filters in his mask, sucking in a lungful of fresh oxygen before clearing the room he’s in and moving on. “Anyone here? If you can hear me, yell! It’s Spider-Man!”

The projectile was horrifyingly effective. Before he’s even in the hallways he can feel the heat seeping into the building, coating every room in a carpet of fire and smoke. He thinks the second floor is clear, but is relying entirely on his super-hearing to check for any survivors, with thermals made ineffectual by the current summer camp-bonfire-gone-wrong state of the place.

Peter has to stick to the stairway walls as he slinks down, afraid of the stairs caving in while he’s walking down them. The first floor is basically the same deal as the second; Fire and smoke and ash everywhere, consuming every inch of his vision, starting to wear on the suit’s fire-resistant threading. Faintly, he can hear the sound of struggling and groan of pain, and rushes through a hallway, stopping at a room whose door fell straight off the hinges.

He can hear the ceiling joists turning to the equivalent of a ten-year termite infestation above his head, threatening to cave in any instant. Hastily, he drops to the floor, trying to peer under the smoke in search of a trapped leg or pinned torso. Instead, he spots an ear-length blonde bob and long, slender frame yank a piece of miscellaneous metal fragmentation out of its leg and literally vault from a window, leaving a trail of blood the whole way.

Karen’s warnings are beginning to blare in his ear, now, and Peter barely avoids getting smashed by a chunk of flaming wood as the whole ceiling in front of him caves in completely, leaving the roof open to daylight.

“Peter, the building is in imminent danger of total collapse. You must exit immediately. The suit has taken extensive heat damage and will likely be irreparable without lab-grade equipment if you continue to expose yourself to the flames.”

It’s subconscious. Before he knows it, the sky is fully clear above him, no still-burning embers or smoke dancing in his vision. Peter scrambles to the edge of the building he’d landed on, peering over the edge to the street below. To his udder surprise, Dulan is still there, webbed to the pavement. Fire engines and police sirens wail in the distance, approaching rapidly.

He jumps off the roof and lands in a roll, jogging over to his target and delivering him a swift kick to the head, rendering him unconscious. Peter feels a little guilty, but is still working through the massive reserve of adrenaline in his bloodstream, so can’t find much space to care.

Dulan slumps easily in the car’s passenger side, and he jumps in the driver’s side, deactivating his EMP charge and turning on the car’s motors, peeling from the street in a showy display of skidding rubber and falling ash.

Ⴟ

Peter can’t go into the warehouse.

He’s sitting, parked in front of it, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in a nervous staccato, like he’s a strung-out junkie who needs another hit. He figures that it would probably look strange to anyone walking past; A bleeding Spider-Man, with an unconscious guy covered in webs as his passenger, eyeing the entrance to some run-down trashbin spot full of rusty filing cabinets and rotting pallets like it’s about to swallow him whole.

For all intents and purposes, it might as well be.

Four deep breaths, a slap of the center console’s shiny, black, pho-leather covering, and he opens the door.

It’s a perfectly normal afternoon in late May. That’s the thing that really bugs him. Peter’s always had anxiety- It’s kind of home territory, what with his one-point-five-time orphan status. He’s gotten better with it, but it’s always tiny, insignificant, moronic things that get him. Like the sound of dripping water, or creaking walls, or small spaces. Sometimes, its nothing at all.

His heart is beating faster, he can feel it. His lungs are taking in more air, and it’s odd because it feels like he’s suffocating instead of breathing, and his head is starting to hurt from trying to untwist the vines wrapping around his skull. His back is aching like there’s rebar stuck in it, like a building is pressing on him all over and it’s just constant, unrelenting pressure, as though he’d been squashed into a waffle press at some cheap motel and the world is so small in his eyes, narrowed to a single beam of light-

Dulan groans from the passenger seat, head lolling to one side, and Peter jumps at least five feet straight up. Right. Dangerous criminal to hand over.

Or paycheck to collect, whispers his conscience. He doesn’t know what to make of that, yet.

Peter takes a deep breath, pivots on one foot, and opens the passenger side door. His charge slumps out and groans some more, probably nursing one hell of a concussion from the kick he’d taken earlier.

How innocent are you, really?

“Hey, man. I’m sorry about this. You did try to blow me up, though, and you, like, turned a brownstone into a blackstone, so. You ready to face the music?”

Another groan.

Peter puts his hands on his hips like a soccer mom and tries to determine what to do. There’s still the biting, wicked sensation in the back of his head that this is so, so wrong, that this guy isn’t totally innocent but handing him off to a group of people that will either mortally wound or kill him isn’t a very heroic, justice-centric move.

For a moment he wishes that someone would just walk out of the warehouse already, some giant, scary-looking bald guy with an assault rifle, and demand he hand over the weapons. Then he wouldn’t have to decide.

Then this wouldn’t be his fault.

Predictably, no one comes.

Swallowing back the bile in his throat, Peter drops into a crouch and scoops Dulan into an armpit body drag before swapping to the more elegant over-the-shoulder, then moves to open the trunk. It’s full of duffels and suitcases and even a Pokémon backpack, stuffed in haphazardly. He checks them all, and sure enough, there’s a stash of Chitauri tech and weapons large enough to supply a small army.

Peter picks most of them up in one hand, slinging the rest over his shoulder. The warehouse doors seem like they’re a thousand feet tall, like they tower above him, and it takes Peter a moment before his courage is suitably gathered and he can turn the doorknob, shouldering into the place as his senses are screaming to do the opposite.

Sat at one end of a rusting table is a mousy looking guy with a corduroy jacket slung atop a pair of machinist overalls, head covered by a beanie. He stands as Peter enters, hands tucked into pockets, and introduces himself as Mason.

“Toomes- Well, our company went under when- Y’know, everything happened. All our guys who did the dirty work are either in prison or somewhere in Mexico or Europe or whatever, so I’m here to take their place,” He explains, gesturing to an open shipping container. “You can drop the stuff in there.”

Peter huffs with the exertion of setting it all down, spinning on a heel and jerking a thumb at the man entwined in webs and groaning on the floor. “Is uh- What’re you gonna do to him? Cuz, I know he’s selling your stuff or whatever, and I know I’m not really an innocent party here, but killing him seems drastic-“

Mason’s eyes grow wide, and he holds up his palms, head shaking. “No, no no. I don’t know what we’re gonna do with him, but- We won’t just kill him. Them. If there’s more you find, I mean.”

“He told you about why I’m doing this, didn’t he?”

A nod. “Then you should know, this won’t be the last guy I’m grabbing. I need that money. Bad.”

Peter tries to be vague with the details, because God knows what Toomes could do. He’s really just relying on blind trust from a murderous madman not to kill him and the last family he’s got left, which when he thinks about it is probably a really, really dumb idea, but his options are limited.

“The boss said to give you this,” Mason says, pulling a manila envelope from his jacket pocket. It’s fat at the bottom, the outlines of honest-to-god stacks of hundreds obvious against the cardstock. Peter takes it, letting his payment hang loosely from one hand like a lunchbox. “My number’s in there. Whenever you’re about to make a drop, call me. I’ll be here with your money.”

The bills are weirdly heavy. He didn’t expect that. “Alright. Uh. Thanks for this.”

Mason’s eyes are sympathetic, and he nods, turning toward the shipping container and moving to check the bags.

Peter takes that as the cue to leave, so he sets off, rolling the envelope up and keeping it tucked firmly into his armpit on the long journey home.

Ⴟ

He buys a safe on the way home.

It’s tiny, like pathetically small, but Walmart was the only place open so late, and his options were limited. The cashier had given him the ‘you better not be a school shooter’ look as she scanned the box, and he tried for the most innocent smile he could muster, but his brain wasn’t feeling super up to the task of pulling his facial muscles into order, so it probably looked like he was having a minor stroke.

The envelope had three things- A card with Mason’s phone number, a note from Toomes, and ten thousand dollars in fucking cash, which he still hasn’t gotten over. ‘Call it advanced payment’, the scrawl had read, all in sharp, jagged angles, like it was written either by a serial killer or a tetanus patient. Peter punched the number into his newly purchased burner phone and tossed the card, trying to ignore the aftershocks that still rattled through his body like a plucked nerve.

May’s banging around in the kitchen when he clambers through the window, hair matted by sweat and bones aching. Despite the fact that his burns had already healed, and he’d gone through much worse on patrols, every inch of him felt like it’d be tossed into a Jaws-style pit of dirty heroin needles- Filthy, sore, and generally not too jazzed about being around.

Peter stashes the safe underneath his bed, box already discarded. The thing could probably be cracked if you hit it too hard or something, but he figured it’s probably the idea of the thing that matters most. For now, he tucks the envelope right alongside it, intending to set the lock code later.

His backpack hits the floor with a thud and he claws viscously at his battered Converse like they’re bear traps, tossing the poor shoes into his closet with absurd force. Next goes his hoodie, then his shirt, then his pants, and before long he’s gulping down a glass of water in a pair of sweats and some trashy sweater next to his aunt as she chops up veggies and puts them in a salad bowl.

“Lord, kid, I swear you come back smelling worse and worse after every patrol,” She complains, nearly stabbing his bicep with the knife before going for a jab with her elbow instead. “I need to, like, have a hose ready to spray you down when you stumble in here. Jesus.”

He finishes the glass with a sigh, gingerly placing it next to hers on the countertop. “Sorry, May. Long day.”

Her expression softens instantly in that way it does, going from snarky, sharp glances to tender, soft looks like a switch is flipped. He doesn’t know how she does it. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry. You wanna talk about it?”

Peter considers. An edited version of the story, at least, without the ‘I’m going very illegal things to help pay for your surgery instead of starting a GoFundMe or something like most people’ part. He decides against that option, and just shakes his head. “Nah, not really. I’m gonna shower. That pile of nature’s vomit gonna be done when I’m back?”

He points to the bowl, piled with cucumbers and bell peppers and probably a thousand other veggies that he hasn’t consumed in at least a decade. May snorts and waves him off, going back to chopping.

They eat at the table, which is a rare occurrence for dinners. He picks away at the salad, feeling more bone tired than he has is ages, like every inch of his skin is hooked with fishing weights and it’s dragging him down so unbearably slow that he might die of old age before the feeling of gravity chipping away at him pisses off.

“You’re sure you don’t wanna talk about it, honey? It looks like you’re writing a Shakespearean tragedy up there.”

May’s giving him that look again, so full of love and compassion and this unwavering promise that everything will be okay.

“I just,” Peter starts, fork resting on the side of his plate. “This sucks, y’know? I met up with Ned for lunch and told him, and I just- I don’t really know what to say, or how to react, or anything. It’s like the world is covered in syrup and I’m moving in slow motion.”

She slides her hand over his, rubbing slow circles with her thumb. “That’s a fair reaction to have, Peter. I mean, Jesus, look at me,” May gestures at herself and the kitchen, full of fruits and veggies and all these things they’re not used to but are suddenly barging in like they belong. “I haven’t eaten this healthy since I was in my twenties. Everything right now is- Changing, and I know it’s hard on you, God I do, but I’m doing everything I can to make it easier.”

“But you shouldn’t,” He says, trying to convey the desperation that’s slinking through his head like a monster, dragging steel knuckles around like the maze inside his head can be cracked open by brute force. “You’re the one dying, May, not me. I love you so, so much, but I want to help you feel better. I’d feel- God, I want to feel like I’m doing something. It feels like all the hope is dripping out of me like I’m a leaky faucet.”

May leans over and pulls him into a tight, close hug, the kind where all of her fingers dig into the corded muscle of his back like she’s an anchor and he’s the sea floor and they’ll never be separated. “Honey, helping you helps me, you know that. You make everything in my life easier, even if you’re a royal pain in my ass sometimes. You’re my kid, and you give me hope that this’ll work out just by being around. You’re like crack without the rapid weight loss or rotting teeth.”

Peter sniffs, tears starting to stream down his face and onto her cardigan. “Why did this happen, May? What’d we do to deserve it?”

She’s silent for a few seconds, and when she does speak, the tears sound close for her, too. “I dunno, kiddo. But y’know what?”

“Hmm?”

“’Long as we stick together, everything is gonna be fine. Y’know why?”

“Cuz’ you love me?”

May nods against his neck, and her hair smells like some flower he can’t pin down, but it’s just so her and for a minute, just the two of them, it feels like she might be right.

“I love you too, Aunt May.”

Ю

Tony’s woken from his power nap on the lab couch by a silent alarm, FRIDAY speaking softly as he readjusts. “Unidentified craft just landed on the northwest quinjet dock, Boss.”

He blinks up at the security feed, grainy nightvision making details blend together into one image. “Fri, switch on the floodlights and scan for an ID.”

The picture is flooded with light just as the rear bay opens, and Tony is flooded with dread the minute they hit the ground, because only one quinjet has those burn marks and bullet holes.

“Boss-“

“FRIDAY, suit. Now.”

“Boss, wait.”

“NOW, FRI!”

His heart is beating out of his chest and he can’t close his eyes, because Steve fucking Rogers is walking out of that quinjet, and-

Natasha Romanov hangs limply from his arms in a bridal carry, her entire torso wrapped in a compression bandage, left leg hanging as a mess of charred and shredded flesh.

“FRIDAY, prep the Medbay, and get Cho down here,” He chokes out, hands braced against a lab table. “Now.”

“On it, Boss.”

Chapter Text

“What the hell happened?”

Tony is sat across from Steve fucking Rogers, and it’s only through years of business meetings and negotiations that he’s able to stop himself from jumping across the table and throttling the man’s neck.

Cap looks down at his mug, hands wrapped tightly around it, and sighs. “There was an explosion. We’ve been living at a safehouse in Brooklyn for the past few months-“ At Tony’s scowl, Steve frowns. “We couldn’t run internationally forever. The best spot was here, home. It meant we could avoid detection and be available if another Loki-level event happened.”

He stamps down the cocktail of rage and fear brewing in his stomach, opting for another sip of coffee to cover it further. “Okay, whatever. Why was Natasha the only one injured? She’s a super-spy, Rogers. A little explosion shouldn’t be able to stop her.”

“It wasn’t just any explosion, Tony,” Steve shifts in his seat, crossing his arms and leaning back. “It was like- A ball of electricity, concentrated stuff.”

“Like lightning? Ionized plasma?”

A nod. “It was the size of a soccer ball. Only caught a glimpse before I had to get all the others out.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, stewing with the thought. Some of his later Marks were capable of free-flying plasma projectiles, but it was close range and only controllable via an electromagnetic field- Not to mention its barely the size of a baseball.  “Did you catch what fired it? Vehicle mounted? It could’ve been a hit.”

“Not possible. We bought the property anonymously and barely ever leave. And I don’t know how it was fired- All I saw was the projectile heading right for our building. I heard a vehicle leaving a minute or two after Nat got out, but it was chaos, Tony. Hard to parse environment from hostile force.”

Another lull. Idly, Tony checks his watch for any updates from Cho, and finds nothing. Natasha had extensive second and third degree burns across her torso, plus massive lacerations on her right calf. Last time he checked, it was likely she’d lose the leg.

“I didn’t want to bother you here, Tony. I- We had no other choice.”

Steve is staring down at his mug, lids barely open.

“I’m grateful for your perpetual guilt complex, Rogers, but I really don’t give a shit.”

Tony is trying to crack through the ice covering his skull. It feels like he’s drowning in the Arctic sea, even though the compound’s kitchen is perpetually at seventy degrees. “This isn’t- Something we move on from, you understand? Mr. Barnes, I could make an exception for. He was brainwashed. It made sense, no matter how much I don’t want to acknowledge it.

“But you? You had no influence from a covert Nazi terrorist group. You didn’t have codewords or implanted memories or a liquified brain. You knew the truth and instead of telling me and talking it out, you turned the Avengers into a fucking boyband.”

Fissures above his head now, in the shape of broken glass over a glowing heart. “You betrayed me and everything I thought you stood for, Rogers. Your being here doesn’t just piss me off, it infuriates me, like nothing ever has before. That’s what you absolutely fail to understand. There is no forgiveness here, Cap. At best you’ll get tolerance.”

He’s standing, now, hands stuck into pockets and eyes hidden behind a refurbished pair of blue-lenses Raybands. His voice is cold and his body is, too, like a metal cage is slowly turning his blood to sludge and his heart to ice. “Ms. Romanoff will stay for her full recovery. You and the other Rogues can have your rooms back until I decide I’m sick of having to look over my shoulder for you.”

Tony leaves the kitchen and trudges through snow and sludge to his lab, where the familiar scent of metal and grease fills his senses, calms him down, makes his world bearable again.

“Boss?”

FRIDAY’s voice is concerned, the way it usually is when she’s witnessed something and isn’t capable of addressing him about it. He doesn’t bother with a reply; Just slides into a chair and puts his head down on the lab table, trying to ignore the thrumming migraine in the back of his skull as he drifts into a restless sleep.

Ю

“B6.”

May sighs and puts her aircraft carrier to the side, taking another sip of water. “I know I joke about it all the time, but seriously Peter, this is just ridiculous.”

They’re at the hospital for her second week of dialysis, grinding through the hour and a half of treatment by playing Battleship and reading Vogue magazines swiped from the waiting room. Peter is two rounds in with zero sunk ships, and it’s really starting to get on her nerves.

“It’s just probability. Ten-by-ten grid, all the ships take up different amounts of space-“

She swats at him, a scowl painted on her lips to hide a smile. “Yeah, yeah, nerd stuff. God, you’re a total dweeb, kiddo.”

Peter smiles and puts a white peg in the middle of the sea when she calls for G2, steepling his fingers like a chess prodigy with an astronomically large ego.  “Nerds rule the world, May. You can’t escape us.”

The hospital is painfully balmy. As the east coast slips into summertime, heat is seeping into every inch of New York, sticky and inescapable. Especially at their apartment; It’s like living in an easy bake oven someone left in the Everglades. May is wearing jorts and a spaghetti top, which is a massive deviance from her normal attire, and Peter has to exercise notable self-restraint so he doesn’t rip off his t-shirt in a fit of heatstroke-driven rage.

The game ends with a final sunken patrol boat, and May pouts, swiping her pieces back into the game’s box. “Alright, I surrender. You’re no fun to play against.”

Peter frowns, plucking his unharmed ships from the grid and putting them aside. “Maybe it’s just cuz you suck,” He mutters, folding up the board.

She hears his swipe and flicks his nose in retaliation, leaning back in her chair and snatching up a magazine from the floor. “Better watch your mouth, or the next battleship you’ll be sinking is in a homeless shelter.”

His face contorts with confusion as he closes the box and puts it aside. “I know that was supposed to be a threat, but it really didn’t make much sense.”

“Shush.”

Suddenly, Peter’s phone starts buzzing like mad in his pocket. Another target.

He pulls it out just to check, and finds his suspicions confirmed, standing abruptly. “May, this is something important. Are you gonna be okay checking out alone?”

She frowns, but nods, head tilted to the side with worry. “Yeah. Be careful, okay?’

Guilt gnaws at his chest with iron teeth, but he nods, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over a shoulder. “I’ll meet you at home, okay? Be safe! And say hi to Ms. Dr. Owens for me, please!”

---

The man- Dominic Foaly- is short, stout, and balding, dressed in khakis and a white buttonup, some backwards facsimile of formalwear. He paces behind an unmarked van, periodically checking his smartphone; It’s unsettlingly similar to that first weapons deal Peter had busted nearly a year ago, minus the embarrassing ringtone fiasco and subsequent terminal velocity skydive.

He's running one final check on his webshooters as a red truck pulls up and parks next to the van, carrying one passenger- The buyer. If Peter’s lucky, then he could snatch both men in one go, turn them in for a double bounty.

People are money now? Asks his conscience, like some deep, smoldering part of him still trying to keep the illusion that he’s a good person intact.

“You got what I asked for?”

Peter is shaken from his wallowing by a deep, unwavering voice stood a few feet in front of Foaly. He refocuses and spots his target nodding, opening the van’s doors to reveal crates upon crates of weapons.

“What’re you gonna do with all this shit, anyway? There’s enough firepower here to wipe out a city.”

The buyer narrows his eyes, stood defensively with crossed arms and a scowl. “You’re getting paid a quarter million not to ask questions like that. Give me the keys.”

“Wire transfer, right? In twelve hours?”

Foaly eyes the him with distrust, keys clenched in one hand.

“Yes. Now, keys.”

Three things happen at once:

One, Foaly tosses his buyer the keys,

Two, the man pulls a gun from his waistband,

Three, Peter’s abdomen is sprouting blood like a fountain, staining the loam beneath his feet crimson.

Foaly lies behind him, cowering on the ground, and the guy who shot him is priming for another round, expression stuck somewhere between pissed off, confused, and constipated.

His pistol is on the ground a tenth second later, he’s pulling away, and Peter is staunching the relentless flow of blood spewing from both sides of his torso with webbing, head spinning. He’s lucky it’s a through-and-through; It should heal by tomorrow morning, once he gets May to put stiches in.

He tries to ignore the feeling of dread that bubbles like acid in his stomach at stressing her out, but it settles there regardless.

“Holy-fucking-hell. You’re Spider-Man.”

Peter sighs, doing a dramatically slow turn. “Yeah. Hey, do me a favor?”

His target nods slowly, squinting, before webs bind his limbs together and seal his mouth. He writhes uselessly for a few moments before giving up, groaning audibly like being detailed for selling weapons of mass destruction is just such a bothersome affair.

Peter loads him into the van, sliding into the drivers seat with a wince. It’s not the first time he’s been shot, and its also not the worst injury- At the same time, holes in his body aren’t usually appreciated, even if enhanced healing makes them more of a chore than mortally threatening. He texts Mason and lets him know there’s a new delivery on the way, pulling out into midday traffic and settling in. The fact that he’s driving strikes him as a little funny, considering that lifting busses is like, a minorly daunting workout to him, but circumstance is debilitating.

“Where are you taking me?”

The voice nearly makes him swerve, but he corrects, checking the rearview mirror. His target had managed to cut the webbing on his lips with the sharp end of a nail, and is looking very displeased.

“Dropping you off, man. You can’t be selling weapons like this.”

His eyes narrow. “Dropping me off where? Damage Control is in Washington, so unless we’re going on a cross-state roadtrip-“

Peter thwips a new web over his mouth, making sure its double-layered. He sighs a moment later, eyes fixed on an intersection as he turns. “I’m brining this stuff back to the first people who made it. ‘Oh, Mr. Spider-Man, why are you doing that?’” He chatters, speaking from the corner of his lips. “That’s none of your business. But if you must know, there is some- Stuff going on, and I need extra cash. They won’t kill you, probably just whack you with a wooden spoon and let you off with a warning.”

In some part of his head, Peter’s conscience is still thrumming, pulsing like an open circuit. It tells him that there is no true way to justify what he’s doing; They might be criminals, but so are Toomes and Mason. Helping them is the same as giving a mugger someone’s wallet, or stealing precious jewels alongside thieves, or hiding a body. There’s nothing righteous about this.

At the same time, his heart feels like it’s on the verge of collapse when he thinks of life without May. Even if he’s not a good person, she makes up for all of it. There’s nothing that woman wouldn’t do to help people. Peter’s pretty sure the only reason he hasn’t broken down yet is because she’s still here, still living and breathing back at their apartment, doing chores and cutting up vegetables because a salad is the only thing she can’t burn; Being amazing, and bright, and dorky, and caring. Helping criminals is bad, but- Even if it’s selfish, he can’t live without her. He won’t survive.

Makes takes Foaly and his shipment in exchange for an envelope of cash. It’s lighter than before, but it’s money, nonetheless. The swing back to the apartment leaves Peter drained, probably thanks to the gaping bullet wound that’s no doubt been worsened by his continued activity.

He slides through the window with more difficulty than usual, feeling painfully lightheaded. He pulls off the mask and yells for May, who comes running into his room with a suture kit in hand. “God, kiddo, you look messed up,” She says, pushing sweaty curls from his forehead and frowning. “Suit off, c’mon. You know the drill.”

Peter nods and slaps his chest, eyes widening at the crimson staining his side. The webs must’ve busted.

May winces in sympathetic pain, guiding him to the bed and examining the wound as he lays down. The wound hasn’t closed up yet, by some miracle, so the stiches come easy. She’s well-practiced with the needle, now, after more than two dozen holes patched.

They sit in silence for a few minutes after she wraps his torso in a compression bandage and gives him a bowl of some kind of broth, the seven split, swirling images of his room coalescing into a focused picture of one concerned May, leaning back in his desk chair.

“What took you so long to get here, Peter? You could’ve died from blood loss. Literally no more than ten minutes from death.”

Her voice is strained, and she’s clearly trying to hold back tears, blinking with squinted lids. “I get that you have enhanced healing, and I’m grateful for that, but don’t risk it, okay? Please. Just-“

A tear streaks down May’s face, and he’s sitting up in an instant, arms wrapped around her as she cries. “Don’t leave me, kiddo.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry,” He says, and it’s true, because his heart is getting stabbed by a thousand tiny shards of glass and his conscience is back, thrumming stronger now, beating to the rhythm of do better do better.

There’s a part of Peter that yearns to tell her why his sheets are covered in a crusted layer of blood, but he can’t do it. There’s only seventy-five thousand left to go, and the pain he feels is nothing compared to the hollow absence he’d have to suffer without her. So Peter just keeps his arms locked around May’s waist, letting her silent sobs wet his neck, and pretends he’ll be able to forget the way every inch of him feels like it’s been dipped in molten lead.

Ю

Natasha hates being drugged.

It’s not like she isn’t resistant to it, but it’s still unpleasant. It makes her blood flow thickly and her senses sluggish, impedes her normal hyperaware perception. However, the morphine drip gets a silent thanks when she manages to pry an eye open and sees her thickly bandaged leg and, worse, feels what must be six broken ribs and a punctured lung.

“Yo.”

Tony gives her a mock salute and she groans, head thumping against the pillows. “Yo,” She echoes, turning to face him.

He’s… A wreck. There’s trenches beneath his eyes in place of bags, his cheeks are hollow, and his normally picturesque goatee is marred by a frame of greying stubble. A ratty MIT hoodie hangs off him like rags, and if she didn’t know better, she’d think he’s either been lost in the Savannah or homeless for several months.

“Cho said your leg will be fine, long as you stay off it. You’re out of the pneumonia danger zone for that punctured lung, and your collection of bruised and broken ribs should be healed in a week or two.”

His lips move but it doesn’t really seem like he’s talking, more just letting words tumble from his lips like rocks down a cliff.

She nods. “You’ve been out for a few days. Rogers brought you in on Monday, today’s Thursday.”

“Looks like those few days feel like a few weeks to you, Tony.”

Natasha gives him a well-practiced look; Open mixed with quiet concern.

“Forgive me for not sleeping too well when a group of people who betrayed me for a list of ideals are living and breathing a few floors below where I make my coffee and cook my eggs, Romanoff,” He retorts, eyes guarded.

That one stings a little, she won’t lie. “Sorry. I guess it’s a little soon to forgive Steve.”

Tony scoffs. “Forgive? Nat, that man is lucky I haven’t fucking killed him yet. He lied to me for God knows how long then left me to die in the middle of Siberia like I meant nothing to him.”

He flops into a chair at the side of her bed, dragging a hand down his face. “I don’t know why I came here. I guess I just thought I’d try and strike up a chat with you, considering you haven’t called home since you and the Independence Brigade made your big jailbreak.”

Guilt and rage clash inside Natasha’s head. Steve had told her a while ago about Siberia after necking a bottle of vodka, and no amount of emotional sterilization would stop her from feeling unrestrained anger that he’d kept it a secret for no good reason, turning their team to rubble. Still, it’s not like Tony was reaching out much, either.

“Usually, when two people burn a bridge, it’s easier to rebuild it by meeting in the middle,” She says, levering onto bruised elbows with a wince. “It’s not my fault that you think you’re perfectly blameless here, Tony. We all made mistakes, and it’s also not my responsibility to piece everything back together alone. And I missed you, I really did, but there’s no point in giving someone a rope if they’ll just cut it off and pretend it’s your fault for dropping it in the first place.”

There’s this singeing cold is his eyes, like there was fire once but it was suffocated, leaving nothing but blackened soot. He just looks tired. “You guys just left me. I don’t-“ Tony blinks, breathing deeply. “You know what? Nevermind. Just let FRIDAY know if you need anything.”

He stands and tucks callused hands into the pockets of his hoodie, but turns when Natasha calls out.

“You have people, Tony. He didn’t, not really. Barnes was all he had.”

“And that’s your explanation for leaving me in the fucking dust, Natasha?!” He explodes, arms tossed in the air. His eyes are on fire and every inch of him is shaking, like a vase in a paint shaker, just a few tiny moments from shattering. “For letting them fucking leave, huh? That’s it? I trusted you like a sister. I loved you. I thought that, no matter how many friends I lost in this goddam mess, I’d have you. But you chose him. You chose him, and you left me alone to deal with this shit, because no one else understands what it feels like.

“Rhodey and Pepper never had to burry their abusive father and loving mother then team up with the best friend of the man who killed them, Romanoff. They didn’t have to deal with the fallout of an international manhunt and the hours upon hours of talks it took to keep the UN from going full Minority Report on the world population. I did that. While I was dealing with the fact that someone I considered a fucking brother lied to me for what could’ve been years about the death of my parents, I was trying to keep the world from falling over. So, thanks for having a heart of gold and choosing Uncle Sam because he’s lonely, Natasha. I appreciate it.”

Tony is panting, and his face is plastered with too many emotions to count, full of hurt and rage and pure, total, crushing sadness. “Have a good nap, or whatever. Eat when the nurses bring you food and take the meds they give you because, I swear to God, if I have to spend an hour longer than absolutely necessary in this tower with you and Rogers, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She watches him go, and curses under her breath when the doors seal behind his back.

---

“Boss.”

He’s been staring at a blank wall for an hour, rubbing the skin on his palm raw with his thumb.

“Boss?”

FRIDAY sounds concerned, but he barely hears her beneath the static screaming in his head and veins, thoughts scrambled into an unrecognizable soup.

She sighs. “The target I’ve been watching hasn’t been accounted for in over two days, Boss. Should I take any action?”

Tony digs overgrown nails into his skin, trying to take a deep breath. His lungs feel shaky and ineffective, like a pair of balloons stuck with nails. “Just keep looking, Fri. If you figure out who’s making them do a disappearing act, then let me know.  I’m going to bed.”

He knows it must be early morning at this point, no later than seven or eight. He doesn’t care. Every part of his body feels unbearably tired. The couch is stiff and uncomfortable, like it always has been, and Tony takes refuge in the familiar ache blooming in his back, drifting into a constricting, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Thirty thousand dollars in cash takes up more space than you’d think.

Peter has been hiding it in all the places he can think of; Underneath his mattress, beneath the floorboards of his closet, in hoodies and jackets he doesn’t wear. His safe is long discarded- The thing was junk anyway, (He’d been able to crack it by hitting its keypad with mild force,) and way too obvious. Some far-off part of his brain laughs at how absurd this is, tucking away inch-thick stacks of hundreds all around his apartment, but the present him doesn’t bother with rumination.

An unfortunate byproduct of Peter’s room-to-vault conversion is having to do his own laundry. Which, to most, is an underwhelming task, but most people also aren’t metabolically enhanced teenagers who soak every inch of fabric they touch in sweat. Seriously, he has to carry around three changes of clothes in his backpack. It’s horrid.

It’s as he’s dropping a quarter into the machine that a finger taps his shoulder and he spins, expecting some imminent threat, but is faced instead with MJ, head tilt and half-smirk included.

Yeah, actually. Imminent threat.

“Hey, loser,” She says, basket of clothes braced against her pelvis. Punk rock t-shirts and thick flannels are all folded neatly, organized by band and color, so painfully Michelle that his eyes burn for a second before he offers a weak smile in reply.

“Hey, MJ.”

The smirk twists into a frown, and grief leaks into her pupils like rain down a car window, slow and devastatingly full of understanding. “Ned told me about your aunt.”

Peter nods, flicking a few knobs so his laundry begins to dry and turns, looking to the ground. “Yeah. Kinda sucks.”

He never knows what to say around her. Snarky quips fall into mumbled ruins and jokes get lodged in his throat like mortar. Sometimes it feels like a crush, but it’s hard to tell through the genuine fear that clouds his mind when he’s around her.

“How’re, uh, y’know- You guys managing?”

Peter shrugs, tucking his hands into too-tight pockets and leaning against the dryer. “We spend most of the day together, go to dialysis appointments every week or two. Ned comes over sometimes, plays games with us and stuff.”

I feel like I’m drowning, he thinks, but decides not to tack it on.

MJ sets down her basket and takes a seat on a bench, a subtle frown still pulling at the corners of her lips. “It’s pretty hard, right? Dealing with someone who’s sick?”

“Yeah. Just a little.”

She smiles and it’s sad, laced with understanding. “My grandpa died a while ago, after my mom left. Sudden, just a heart attack, stuck around for a few days then-“ Her hand chops through the air, and the smile vanishes. “Gone in his sleep.”

Peter feels the twang of sympathy and pity in his gut, but opts not to show it, knowing she’d probably smack him if he did. “Is that why you were gone for like, two weeks last semester?”

“Yeah. I just had to think about it a bit, you know? Absorb it. He helped my dad raise me. Don’t think I’d be who I am without him.”

He lets the ambience seep in for a moment, tumbling clothes and quietly-conversing patrons filling in the silence like dry erase marker. “I don’t know what I’d do without her, MJ. I don’t have anyone else.”

“You have me,” She blurts, and immediately blushes, ducking her head. “Me. And Ned. We’re here if you need help.”

“I know, and I love you guys for it, but- She’s the last family I’ve got. Even though the connection isn’t blood, it’s still,” Peter drags a hand down his face, trying to find the words to explain. “Look, alright. I’m an orphan. And Ben was the last blood I had. Now it’s just me and May, and unless there’s some aunt in like, rural Kentucky or something, there’s only two Parkers left. And it sounds dumb, but like-“

“You feel like you have to keep your family alive?” MJ provides.

 “Exactly. Knowing there’s someone still here, breathing the same oxygen as me and not rotting in a casket somewhere, makes it easier.”

She nods with understanding, and it makes him feel lighter for some reason, like a bit of the haze coating his vision is attacked with Windex and some elbow grease. “Don’t kill yourself over this, Parker. I can’t promise you it’ll get better, but collapsing won’t help anyone. She needs you more than ever, y’know.”

Peter lets that sink in, the well of guilt growing just a little larger in his heart. “Yeah. She does.”

MJ looks at her watch and starts, reaching for the basket set near her feet. “Shit. I gotta go, dad’s gonna think I got stabbed or something. Text me later, okay? Don’t explode.”

He laughs, something small and fragile, and nods. “I will. And MJ?”

“What’s up?”

“Thanks.”

When she leaves with a ‘Whatever, loser’ tossed over her shoulder, part of him feels a little bit lighter.

Ю

“You need to talk to him, Pep.”

Pepper sighs when her mug clinks against the kitchen countertop, phone pressed between shoulder and ear. “He doesn’t want to see me, Rhodey, not right now. Especially not in the Tower, with- Everyone who’s there. And in case you don’t remember, our last conversation didn’t end on the best terms.”

“FRIDAY’s been keeping me updated. He hasn’t left the lab in days. Apparently, he talked to Nat, and that ended in a shouting match. We have to do something, even if he doesn’t want us to.”

Halfway across the world in his Swedish hotel room, Rhodey drags a calloused hand down his face. “You know he started drinking again a few months ago, right? Not light, social stuff, but like- Full on Lebowski. I dropped in to say hi a few weeks ago and there was an industrial trashcan dedicated to Jameson bottles and beer cans. It’s bad, Pepper. I haven’t seem him get this deep since his parents died.”

“I mean, it makes sense. He’s basically reliving the whole experience and then some,” She says, trying to formulate some pattern of coherent thought through the migraine blooming at the edges of her temples. “Rogers coming back into his life after all this? Not even giving Tony a choice? I mean, Jesus. You know he has control issues, but- Even I’d go insane at that.”

“It’s bad,” Says Rhodey, just so the point solidifies fully.

“It is bad.”

Sometimes Pepper just has to laugh at her life. She was supposed to look at art in Paris, travel the world, then finish her law degree. Instead she ended up dating a self-made-superhero-slash-mutlibillionare, running the world’s largest tech conglomerate, and eating from cold vegan to-go cartons at five A.M. so the throws of early-morning video conferences don’t put her into a coma. She does, now, just a little chuckle, before her voice grows sad and the silence of her massive open-concept penthouse is beating down with unfeeling fists.

“He’ll push me away. You know he will.”

Rhodey makes a sound of confirmation on the other end, pausing a moment. “I’m back in at noon tomorrow. We’ll go together, alright?”

She considers. Agrees.

They say goodbyes and end the call. Some part of all of it bothers Pepper- How little she’s tried to reach out, how the tower is an hour walk and ten-minute drive at this time in the morning. Tony is a lot of different things to her, and the twisting complexities between them is part of why she loves him so much, but it’s difficult. He’s easy to love but hard to live with, like a puppy or new pair of shoes.

The migraine is a band of tension across her forehead, now, constricting and pulling her thoughts into a dense cluster. Pepper decides, with all the gusto in her battle-hardened heart, that this is a good time to take a day off.

Ⴟ

“No actual fucking way.”

Peter drops his third plus four onto the table and, in his most innocent, unassuming tone, says “Green.”

May looks like she’s about to throttle him. Her hand is almost too large to hold; She’s forced to shift through an inch-thick stack of cards for every play she makes, and there is no way that her nephew isn’t cheating at this, because no one’s luck could possibly be this good.

Like a smug little gremlin he tosses down a green plus two, and she makes some noise twisted between a growl and a cry of pain, pulling another two reds from the deck.

“You’re cheating. You have to be. There is no way that a human being can be this good at boardgames.”

Peter tilts his head and throws a six out in mercy, smirking. “Uno is a card game, for one, and two, I’m very much offended by your insinuation. This is an art, May, and frankly? I don’t think you appreciate my commitment to the perfection of it.”

She slides a four onto the deck with surgical precision, eyes narrowed to slits, and says nothing.

Peter wins that game, and the three after that. Soon the heavy heat of a Monday afternoon is leaking into the hospital like sludge, and the shitty air conditioning can’t fight it; Like David without his slingshot, its just a rumbling in the background, impotent as can be.

They play another few games before May’s treatment is over, and the nurse repeats the same ritual, pulling spindly tendrils from her veins. It never grows to be less unsettling, no matter how much he sees it.

They meet Dr. Owens in her office aftward, a small space plastered in awards and pictures of her dog and kids. It has a weidly homey aspect to it, despite the numerous diagrams of human hearts strung up from floor to ceiling, like it radiates comfort. It’s nice, really. A little unsettling, sure, but nice.

She flips through several papers on her clipboard, eyebrows knit in concentration. Peter and May sit side by side on a narrow couch, hands woven together, and watch with steadily brewing anxiety. The doctor sets her papers down carefully and leans on crossed arms, like a highschool guidance counselor set on helping a slouching senior graduate.

“Good news first,” She says, speaking slowly. They nod in tandem.

“You’re looking pretty healthy. These shorter sessions are putting less stress on your heart, which means your body can fully recover after each treatment. That’s being helped by your change in diet for sure, as well, so keep up on that.”

Dread pricks at Peter’s neck like a handful of grass at the prospect of not touching junk food for the next few months, but he swats it away. It’s a worthy cause.

May, meanwhile, gives her cardiologist a nod, fingers clenched tight. “And the bad news?”

Dr. Owens notices the quiver in her voice and is quick to reassure. “Sorry, built that up a little too much. I just want to get an MRI from you before you bump out of here, check up on the little bastard in your stomach. We can schedule one later if you’d like, but it might not be for another week or so.”

A forced exhale through her nose and May nods, shrugging. “I don’t have much to do, anyway.”

Owens makes a noise of confirmation, rising from her seat. “I’ll go book the machine. If you two could stay in the waiting room just down the hall, that’d be good. I’ll grab you when it’s ready.”

They sit down in horribly unconformable chairs and fret with getting the right position before finding it futile, more like posed statues in stiff plastic frames than people. May’s hands are fiddling idly with her keychain, little peace signs and flowers bouncing around in harsh synthetic light, and Peter knows its what she does when she’s thinking. It’s familiar from meetings with the principle, when she and Ben would both show up even if they were working, and talk to Morita for an hour straight, with him sitting there doe-eyed. It’s one of those things that both comforts and frightens him, like horror movies or disarming gunmen.

“Watcha’ thinking about?” He says, watching the glint of her keys idly.

May startles and turns. Her gaze softens and she sighs. “Just… Ben, y’know? I miss him a lot.”

She leaves it at that because it’s enough. They talk about Ben all the time, usually in passing, now. Little memories, like when he’d make pancakes on Sunday mornings or yell at the Mets for sucking so bad but would still save up spare change for tickets to a midseason game, because You never know when they could pull through, Pete. Better to take the chance and watch an amazing game from the stands instead of our CRT.

Peter nods. His eyes sting a little, but not to the point of tears, just afterburns from painful memories. “I’m sorry he isn’t here, May.”

She whacks his shoulder softly. “No more self-blaming, kiddo. We talked about this.”

He makes a noise in protest then agrees, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “Yeah. Just- I mean, I get it. I miss him too. All the time.”

Sometimes Peter wonders what Ben would do in their position, borderline penniless and out of options. His conscience painfully reminds him that Ben would work his ass off to help May, not become a debt collector for a dangerous criminal, but there’s not that can be done, now. Peter has dipped half of himself into poison and it’s in his veins, flooding into him like toxic waste. His thoughts is a battleground between virtue and greed, thumping beats in his head like canon fire. It hurts, all the time, but he has the presence of mind to keep May out of it. Some distant part of his head, not quite his subconscious but close, tells him he is the poison, now, and spreading his burning blood is paramount to killing puppies, so it’s easier to stay inside himself. Help where he can.

“Peter? You in there, kiddo?”

He blinks. May is squeezing his shoulder and giving him a look of concern. Dr. Owens is beside her.

“Uh, yeah, sorry, just thinking. What’s up?”

The latter jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “You wanna watch the MRI? It’s pretty cool.”

Peter wipes sweaty palms on his jeans, standing. “Oh, yeah, totally. For sure.”

It is really cool, actually. May’s inside bits slowly fill the screen as the machine finishes its scan, all contrasting in tones of white and grey. Peter can’t decipher it; He’s never been good with medicine. Instead, he turns to Owens, and asks:

“What do I do?”

It slips out on accident, like batteries flying from a hastily opened remote, flying all over the carpet and rolling under furniture.

She tilts her head before replying. “About what, exactly?”

“This,” He says, hands waving at nothing. “All of this. I- She means a lot to me, y’know? Like, everything. And If I lose her, I don’t have anyone else. Its-“

Peter breaths and his lungs feel like fire and ash. Everything is singed, flame-licked, made sensitive to the world, exposed like a nerve. Burnt just enough to make everything hurt but not enough to overload his mind so he can’t feel it. “My aunt has cancer. I don’t know what to do, alright? And I pretend like I do, but I- I don’t. I don’t know.”

Owens eyes him owlishly. She looks young like this, though she’s well past her mid-thirties, and her openness is like a balm on his skin after too many days in the sun. “I can’t tell you, honey. No one can, really.”

He stops to take in a breath he didn’t realize was lodged in his lungs, trapped like sunlight beaming into a dark room. She’s steadying him, hands bracing his shoulders. “This is beyond hard, Peter. I know it is, because I’ve had to deal with it myself. And I’ve watched patients and their families. And I’ve seen people like you, kids who think they can hold up the world, try and keep themselves together. It’s hard. And I don’t have a good answer.”

She sits him down in a spinny office chair, dropping to a crouch. “You will struggle. She will, too. The absolute best advice I can give you is to take care of each other. I don’t mean to be cliché, but love is the best medicine. We can exchange heart valves and hand out prescriptions all we want, but the mind is just as important. You two have to stay strong for each other, alright? No matter what it’s gonna take.”

Peter is staring at his shoes. His head hurts, like he got a botched lobotomy. The war in his head is still there, screaming, and if anything he feels worse, now. Worse, but- Guided. Like seeing the finish line in the last quarter mile of a marathon. He swallows thickly and stands, encasing Owens in a hug. It’s sudden, and even he finds the compulsivity strange, but cancer makes people compassionate, he guesses. She reciprocates shortly after, smelling like citrus hair wash and hand sanitizer.

“Thanks,” He says.

“Don’t mention it.”

They part after a few seconds, meeting May as she emerges from the bathroom with an exam robe in one hand and her purse in the other.

“I want a day or so to look over the scan and your test results. Ill check in tomorrow,” Owens says, taking the robe. “You guys can skedaddle. Have a good afternoon!”

May holds his hand on the drive home, squeezing it on occasion. They watch How I Met Your Mother and eat low-fat popcorn, and the pineapple episode still makes them laugh even if they’ve both seen it a hundred times. They eat dinner at the dining table together, spaghetti squash, and it’s actually so good Peter almost spits out his first bite because he’s sure its laced with something.

Nightime is their only reprieve from New York’s napalm-like summer heat, and Peter takes it with gratitude. He’s tapping his fingers to some miscellaneous indie music and staring at his ceiling, counting the pauses between flashing lights from cars below.

A ding from his backpack. He eyes the side pocket where the burner phone lives, like the guilt seeping into his bones will go away if he just teleports it out of reality.

He acquiesces. It’s a message from Mason: 

“Boss has a big job. Call when you can for details.”

Peter throws the phone back into his backpack with perfect accuracy and burrows into the sheets. His life feels like too much of a movie, today, and reality needs to take a break.

Just one day. That’s all he needs.

Ю

“Tony.”

Rhodey knocks again, Pepper by his side.

“Tony. Please, man. Just open a peep hole or something. We’ve been here for an hour.”

The lab door remains sealed, mocking them, and Pepper takes over. She tries her override code and is surprised to find it still works, which earns her a why the fuck didn’t you try that a second ago? look from her interventionist partner-in-crime as they enter.

It stinks of week-old vomit and machine grease. Like mistakes, really.

Joy Division’s Digital blares over the speakers as he works beneath a car, a can of sierra mist lying next to the creeper. Day in, day out, day in, day out thumps through subwoofers like an anthem. Rhodey kicks his best friend in the shin just as Ian Curtis sings his first don’t ever fade away, because he’s nothing if not a sucker for dramatic timing.

Tony rolls from the car’s undercarriage with a plastic grin molded on his lips, sweat and oil slicking his hair back. “Well hello, Sourpuss!” He greets, and upon noticing Pepper, lets the smile slip a little. “Hey, Pep.”

She gives him a curt nod. Rhodey gives Tony a hand up, and now they’re standing in a triangle, only missing a banner and some cheap Walmart cookies for a true, by-the-books intervention. The inventor looks between them with narrowed, suspicious eyes, cleaning filthy hands on an equally filthy towel. “If you guys are here to do the ‘You should talk about what’s going on Tony, the excessive drinking and self-isolation is bad for your health’ bit, don’t bother, please. If I have to withstand another lecture about what’s good for me, I might actually lose it.”

“FRIDAY, pause the music, please,” Says Pepper, arms crossed in her ‘this is business time and you won’t fuck with me’ pose. She stares him down and it’s binding, like black ice to asphalt, making everything else feel slippery. “You haven’t left the lab in four days. I checked. This place smells like some god-awful fusion of burnt hair and Colt 45, the bags under your eyes tell me sleep is second priority, and your neckbeard makes you look like a narcoleptic DMV worker.”

She takes a few steps forward and squeezes his shoulder, head tilted. “At the very least, leave here and stay with Rhodey, or me. Get out of the tower and away from- Them. For us?”

Tony barks a sharp laugh, wrenching from her grasp and going for a bottle of water on the counter. He takes a swig and sets it down, leaning on the tabletop. “And leave my Tower, absolute marvel of engineering and one of my personal crown jewels, in the hands of international war criminals? No. I appreciate the checkup, but-“

“Oh, for God’s sake, Tony.”

Rhodey points an accusatory finger at the industrial trashcan stuffed full of empty liquor bottles and microwave pizza boxes in the corner, like damning evidence in a court case. “But isn’t an argument you can make here. I thought you got out of this stuff, man. You haven’t been drinking this bad since-“

“My parents died, thanks, I’m aware,” He says coldly, chill seeping through his bones. “Please just leave. Both of you. Right now. Because screaming matches are painfully exhausting, and I’m really not in the mood to have another.”

“We don’t need to have a screaming match. You need to get away from this place, Tony. Please.”

Pepper’s voice is pleading. She’s desperate, a rare occurrence, and it comes out in a horrible, dread-drenched stream, like a river laced with poison. “This isn’t healthy. I’m worried. We’re worried about you, for God’s sake. You’ve spent the last half a year in a drunken stupor. You’re not a moron, you know what toxic habits look like. You’ll hurt yourself even worse if you keep soaking in all this stress and rage.”

“And I don’t care.”

Tony is shouting. He doesn’t mean to. The screaming thing wasn’t a lie, he’s tired of yelling. Especially after Natasha. “Sorry. Just. I do not care if I hurt myself because all I’ve been doing is hurting, Pepper. Ever since Barnes and his spangle-clad bastard of a best friend beat me half to death. I nearly got the kid killed with my shit a while ago, I don’t need to introduce more risk into the world by- By leaving this place behind. At least if I’m here, I can watch them. Make sure they don’t do anything.”

“What are they going to do, Tony?” Rhodey says. His braces whir as he steps forward, and to Tony, it sounds like a beehive inside his skull. “They might be criminals, but they’re not villains. The Tower will be fine without you here, FRIDAY can make sure of it. Hell, I’ll stay here, if you want. Under lockdown, right in the lab.”

Another drink of water. It feels like oil sliding down his throat, clogging his airways. “I’m not leaving you here with them. I’m not leaving FRIDAY here with them. I’m staying, end of story. Now get out, please.”

Tony has his eyes locked on the ground like he’s watching a pay-per-view MMA match and it’s the final round, fighters are on their last legs, standing with blooming concussions and split lips. He can feel their eyes on him like brands, searing marks into his skin, but he can’t meet their eyes.

Rhodey sighs, something that sounds long-suffering but cut off. Tony feels the guilt prickling at his spine when he turns and can practically hear Pepper diverting her glare to him, but it doesn’t matter. After a moment, the doors slide shut and lock, leaving the two of them alone in Tony’s own personal hell.

“I miss you.”

She’s sad. He always knows when she is, because her words make time bend when they leave her mouth and her frown is like poking the fabric of reality with a knitting needle. It gives him a headache.

Tony forces his neck up and looks her in the eye. “Not sure why,” He says, smiling weakly.

Pepper jumps up onto the table next to him. “We… We ended our relationship on an argument. And I resent that, because you’re very good at arguing, and it makes things hard to work out.”

“You wanted a break and I felt like I couldn’t help you anymore, Pep. You’re much smarter than me when it comes to this stuff, I’m sure you know that.”

She nods in acknowledgement. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean its easier to come back and say ‘hey, let’s talk out our differences like adults’. You’re the counter to my rationality.”

A snort. “I’m a mess, Pep. And I-“

He sighs. “I love you and Rhodey. But right now? I don’t want help. And I- know that’s not healthy, and I know it makes you guys worried. And I drink, stay locked in here all the time, because it makes me feel safe. This place is layered with enough tech and defenses to kill three small armies, and when I’m drunk, I don’t feel like Steve Rogers is going to crack my ribcage open like a six pack of beer and shotgun the blood from my heart, so. It’s easier.”

Pepper blinks at he gruesome metaphor but shakes it off. “I know it is. But could you… At least come to my apartment? Just for a few days. Decompress.”

“I don’t feel okay with-“

“Leaving the tower in the hands of FRIDAY, I know,” She bites her lip. “Could you do me a favor?”

Tony nods, head tilted.

“Do it for me. Or Rhodey and I. I know you’ve got a thing for being the cause of stomach ulcers, but at the very least, try and spare us for a few more years.”

“Just a few days?”

“Just a few days,” She confirms. “Decompress. Stop drinking. Let us- Let us try and work some stuff out, okay? Just for a little while.”

Tony takes the hand she offers him. It feels more like aloe on a sunburn than it does total salvation, but he wallows in it.

Just one day, maybe two. That’s all he needs.

Chapter Text

Breakfast that morning is a bowl of oats with berries and honey. It’s really good, and May didn’t even burn it, which is honestly an impressive achievement. The berries are fresh, and the honey is local, so Peter can’t really complain.

They watch the morning news until ten, sipping mugs of tea. Saturday mornings are always the calm ones; They come in slowly and sluggishly, like a foam pit after the trampoline run-up. May makes it an express purpose that they have aunt-nephew time on the weekend, but she recognizes his itch to put the suit on and get to the streets, so she shoos him away and asks for him to call if he’ll be late for dinner at seven.

Peter knows he will be. It bothers him, like most things in his new career path do, but he pushes it down, away from the organized swirls in his head and into deep storage to be mulled over and analyzed at a later date. The suit gets stuffed haphazardly into the main compartment of his backpack alongside a folded duffel, and he climbs from the window, making haste down the fire escape and onto the streets of New York. He grabs the burner from his bag before slinging it over his shoulder, unlocking the phone and dialing Mason’s number.

He picks up on the third ring. “Hey. Sending you an address. Be there in 10.”

Its for an abandoned apartment complex in the Bronx. Peter recognizes it; At one point, he wanted to make it his secret lair, but May told him making a secret superhero HQ in a building that could very well be demoed at a moment’s notice would be fiscally irresponsible, so that idea went out the window.

“Got it. Meet you there.”

The suit slides on easily like it always has, worn spandex a second layer to his skin. It doesn’t feel right anymore, really, not with how he’s using it. The fact that he hasn’t gone out on a patrol since his last hit registers distantly, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He can’t, not anymore.

Early morning sunshine washes over the streets below as he swings, tinged with a soft, glowing heat. Every dip to the ground satisfies an itch in his stomach, like salad after a camping trip, clean and simple. Peter lets himself forget, just for a little while, that he’s not on the way to stop a mugging or save a cat. The war is his head quiets, just a little, before he lands with a tucked roll onto the warehouse’s asphalt parking lot.

He dips inside, a familiar tingle of fear itching at his scalp. In the corner sits Mason, hunched over a piece of weaponry with a soldering iron in hand. To his left, leaning against a metal table and nursing a cup of coffee, is a tall, densely packed bald guy, wrapped in a canvas jacket. Recognition plinks in Peter’s head like a radar, and his eyes narrow involuntary. “You’re the guy that broke my ribs with a pneumatic shock fist thing, aren’t you?”

The man looks up and nods. “Sorry about that. Gotta do what you gotta do.”

Peter pushes down the hum of affirmation rising in his throat and keeps his gaze on the man a few seconds longer before switching it to Mason. “So, what’s the job?”

“Security,” He says, looking up. “Group of guys made an offer to sell our product back to us, what with you- Y’know, doing your thing. You just gotta stick around and make sure nothing fishy goes down while Herman here makes the exchange.”

“And what’s the pay?”

“Fifty grand.”

Peter’s eyes nearly drop out of his head. That would mean only a handful more jobs before he could afford May’s surgery, be done with this mess, move past it. It could mean salvation.

“I’m in,” He says, wincing at the speed of his reply. “I’m in. When’s the drop going down?”

Mason checks his watch and attaches one more wire, putting out his iron. “An hour from now, in an alcove near the Hudson. You’ll get your payment once we’re back here.”

It’s getting scarily easy to do these things, now. He’s shocked at how simply he falls into place, the greed pulling strings in his head and twisting his blood into corrosive sludge. The warpath his mind trudges through is ridden with dying whispers of guilt and sorrow, but he’s numb to it now; The empathy exists, still, like a brick wall between the parts of himself he hates and those he barely even knows to be present anymore. Desperation is his only motivation and fear is his catalyst. Knowing how disappointed May would be if she found out about what he’s doing is a twisting dagger in his gut, sharp and jagged and ruthless, the pain unrelenting. He feels thoughtless and simultaneously so full of thought that the world is a haze of objectivity and mission plans, lines of code on a computer screen, artificial and blue.

Peter is afraid that a stranger has slid into his skin and taken place of him, walking the same streets and saying the same words he does, but with malice, with horrible, unfeeling dullness. He is afraid that, even when this is over, when he can go home to May and watch sitcoms while eating pizza instead of quinoa and vegan chili, that the stranger will still be there. That he always will be.

Peter fears the imposter, but knows deep down, in some rotting, horrible alcove of his mind, that the imposter is him.

They arrive at the underpass. It’s unimpressive, dull and smelling of sewage and vomit. The Hudson has never been New York’s crown jewel, but sometimes he forgets how awful the pollution in it actually is until he’s up close and personal with the stench, eyes watering and head cloudy.

Herman pulls duffels of cash from the van, dropping them onto the dirt-covered concrete with a thud. From his perch in a nearby tree, Peter can make out a red pickup with a U-Haul on its tail approaching, at least four men combined. They’re decked in all black and are likely armed, making his spider-sense buzz uncomfortably at the nape of his neck. He itches the trigger of his webshooters and slinks further into the branches, hoping to avoid being spotted unless absolutely necessary.

Both cars pull to a stop side-by-side and their drivers dismount, adjusting thigh holsters and tugging down shirts. His sixth sense buzzes more harshly when Peter recognizes the red truck’s driver as the guy that shot him in the gut at one of his first collections, the lines of his face harsh against midnoon sun.

“Product, then cash,” Herman says, arms crossed. One hand is wrapped in the shocker gauntlet, revamped with higher capacity charge cells that are fully capable of throwing a person dozens of feet.

Red Truck Guy nods to the U-Haul guys, and they begin unloading crates of weaponry, several of which take three men to carry. Mason didn’t say anything about heavy stuff, and the fact that they only brought a van makes him even more antsy, bringing his senses into a screaming high.

Suddenly, the precognitive corner of his mind is satisfied when a bullet comes within four inches of his chest, burying itself where he was a mere second and a half ago. The report of a rifle follows the round, and Peter spots a man hauling ass just as another several shots go off, and now Herman is on the floor, blood pooling from his sternum and neck.

Red Truck Guy has his pistol drawn, barrel still smoking, and his goonies sprinting towards where Peter tumbled from his perch. He manages to roll from the round one fires at him, but the next catches his calf, cutting straight through wiry muscle and digging into the ground. He shouts in pain but soldiers on, bull charging both men and going into a flip, webbing their heads together midair. His oppressor is shouting, taking aim with his weapon, and another round grazes Peter’s shoulder. He falls with a scream, clenching the trough of hollowed flesh the bullet dug, blood pouring from the cleaved wound.

The man and his friend hop back into the truck and pull away, tires screeching when the hit concrete and zip off onto the highway.

Peter grits his teeth and limps over to Herman, but his pulse is long gone, dried blood caking the hole in his carotid. He curses and screams, punching a dent into one of the van’s doors. He should’ve listened to his senses, then this guy wouldn’t be dead, and he wouldn’t be bringing home nothing but bullet holes and blood loss to May.

He tells Karen to dial Mason and waits, sitting in the car’s trunk with shaky hands clenched between his thighs.

“What’s up? Something go bad?”

Mason’s voice startles him. “Uh- Uh, yeah, um. Herman’s dead. I’m sorry, they-“

“What?”

His voice is strained, on the verge of tears. “Herman’s dead. They jumped me then shot him. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, oh Jesus. Fuck. Okay- Um, how bad are your injuries? Can you walk, drive?”

Peter shakes the white noise from his ears. His eyes are closed but he still sees the corpse, and though its not his first bloody body (Ben took that crown, drenched in crimson from a gut shot at point blank, another death that was all his fault,) it still sticks like a bug to fly paper, locked into his vison like some sick polaroid. “Y-Yeah. Yeah, I can drive. They left the weapons and money behind.”

“Okay. Okay. Um,” Mason sounds like he’s panicking, and that doesn’t make Peter feel great, but he supposes he doesn’t deserve to. “Load as many of the weapons and cash into the van as you can, and- Get back here, to the warehouse. We’ll figure out Herman later.”

He agrees and starts loading, wincing at the pain rocking his body. Even with adrenaline the pain is almost intolerable, and blood is still seeping out in scarily large amounts before he finally finishes stacking the crates and duffels into the van’s rear. He sprays a copious amount of web fluid on both wounds and hops into the driver’s seat, thanking whatever god still lives that the keys are in the ignition.

He navigates to his destination numbly, vision hazy and dull. The windows are tinted darkly, something he’s beyond thankful for, given the fact that he’s drenched in blood. He pulls into the warehouse’s parking lot forty someodd minutes later and stumbles into Mason’s arms after opening the door, now unable to use his leg. He’s lucky; It feels like another through-and-through, which means infection won’t have to be an issue.

“Hey, Jesus, you’re messed up- Go sit down at those tables, patch yourself up, there’s pain pills and suture. I’ll bring the van in.”

Peter does as he’s told, mindlessly ripping off his mask and tossing it aside along with the suit, jumping onto the counter in his boxers. The pills hurt going down, like swallowing a handful of pebbles, and his hands are shaking like a drunk’s as he rips the webs from his leg and begins stitching. The bullet had torn right through his Achilles tendon, and he has no idea how he was able to walk. The fibers are all nearly separated, save for a few, so he sprays it down with saline and starts stitching. The sooner it’s closed and not leaking blood, the better, and the faster his recovery will be.

The shoulder is a different story. There’s a pinky-finger sized chunk of flesh missing from where the round carved its path, weeping blood slowly. He feels a null ache in the muscle as he irrigates it, wincing at the reddened flesh and torn ligaments. It’ll heal fine, hopefully, but it will hurt. A lot.

He begins bandaging the wounds just as Mason hops from the driver’s seat, eyes growing wide when he spots Peter’s face. He knows it’s not great to show your illegal arms dealer employer that you’re, in fact, a seventeen-year-old, but there’s not much to be done about it now.

Mason thrusts a backpack full of cash into Peter’s hands and stands back. “There’s fifty grand in that bag. Here’s-“ He drops the duffel and takes out another few stacks, handing them to him. “Another thirty. Just- Get out of here, man. You’re way, way too young to be doing this kind of work.”

The basic addition hurts his head, making a migraine bloom at his temples. Thirty plus eighty- Makes a hundred and ten thousand dollars. Enough to pay for the surgery, and then some. Peter’s heart thumps and his eyes grow wide at the absurd amount of money laying in his blood-soaked lap, and he rushes to thrust it back at Mason. “No- No, man, this is too much. I got your friend killed, I shouldn’t even be-“

“Just take the fucking money, kid. Please.”

His eyes aren’t kind, but they aren’t angry, either. He realizes with a jolt that it’s pity. “That’s part of Herman’s cut, anyway. Not like it’ll be put to much use in a lockup somewhere.”

Peter stuffs the cash into his backpack and stands, pulling the suit over his body. The viscera makes it stick to him, and he feels grimy and disgusting, like the evil in his blood has finally begun to seep into the real world.

He turns to Mason before sliding the mask on. “Thanks,” He says, and finds the guilt still beating in his head like a canon. “And I’m sorry. Again. I wasn’t fast enough.”

“It’s not your fault, kid. Just- Whatever you’re doing with all that dough better be worth it.”

It will be, he thinks, even if I’m not.

“Bye, Mason.”

The entire swing home Peter feels like he’s floating on a cloud, being carried higher and higher up. The world passes like a time-lapse below his feet, seconds blending together like fruit in a smoothie, mashed into one homogeneous goo that he passes through all at once. When he finally lands on the fire escape, time smacks back into his body with a horrible, devastating slam, because through his bedroom window, he can see black smoke billowing from the kitchen.

The window slides open silently. His footsteps don’t make noise, and he finds the lack of a blaring alarm strange, because May probably burnt something in the toaster again and that usually means they have to have a whole talk with their landlord after the complex gets evacuated, so he think she must have sorted it ou-

His foot thumps into a mat of brunette hair and blood.

May is laying back-down on the kitchen tile, head bleeding slowly from a miniscule wound. On the stove, a pan of eggs long past the charcoal stage continues to burn, devoid of smell.

Peter turns the heat off and dumps the pan into the sink. It hits the tub’s sides with ringing finality, but he doesn’t hear it.  He dials 911. The ringtone feels pointless and null and so, so quiet, screaming silence against his throbbing head. He’s so tired. He just wants to sleep.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“My aunt is dead.”

The words leave his lips but he doesn’t hear them.

“O-kay. Honey, what’s your address?”

Honey. Ben used to call him that. It makes him feel funny.

He doesn’t remember what feeling is.

Apparently, he recites the address, because the vaguely southern lady says, “Just hang tight, paramedics are on the way.”

Peter ends the call. The phone drops from his hand, swinging a few inches above the ground. The two of them always laughed at how silly it was to still have a landline, but May would always argue devil’s advocate. Sometimes your phone is dead, or there’s no cell service. It can be handy.

He showers and changes clothes. The blood swirls in a maroon cyclone down the drain, mixed with scorching hot water. The part of his head that’s still intact somehow tells him to put on a hoodie and jeans to hide the massive bandages covering his bullet wounds, so he does, and opens the door when the EMTs arrive.

It’s not the nice lady and the guy with spiky orange hair this time. It’s a tall, thin Latino guy and a stout man in his forties, carrying a gurney and medical supplies. They both ask him something, but Peter hears nothing, just constant null all around his head, no silence or buzzing, no quiet Spanish ballets played over a trashy radio they’d had for years.

He just stands there as they check May’s pulse, kneeled over her body. The short one gives CPR as the tall guy presses a stethoscope against her collarbone, and Peter notices the gray at the edge of his temples, how much older the guy is than he looks.

They load her onto a gurney. Somehow, Peter ends up in the back of the ambulance, but he doesn’t mind. The sharp scent of antiseptic keeps him locked in the now, staring at a translucent cabinet. It’s full of needles and vials, probably full of a bunch of medicine, and he wonders why its there.

He’s in the waiting room, now. Someone has pressed a cup of water into his hands and sips it idly, picking at the little paper rim. It comes unstuck easily, rolls up uninhibited without a single tear. Peter envies its fortitude.

Some indeterminate, hazy amount of time passes. He can’t really tell anymore and, truthfully, he finds it hard to care. It’s so much easier to float like this, in a haze between consciousness, like dangling from the hem of his own jeans, bordering on dreams and reality.

“Peter? Sweetie?”

Owens is there, knelt in front of him. He directs his observation to her face, freckled and soft. He thinks it would be nice to look at, would make him happy, if that was something he was capable of experiencing. “Can you hear me, Peter?”

He hums.

“May- May had a stroke. She’s gone, Peter. I’m so, so sorry.”

There’s tears at the edges of the doctor’s eyes. She looks devastated. Peter wraps his arms around her back, because he hates looking at someone so sad, and Owens returns, falling into him. “I’m so, so sorry, honey, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. You did the best you could.”

He doesn’t know what to say, really. It’s hard to decipher the right words through the great null weight pressing him, flatting his mind out into a sheet of unthinking matterstuff, like the world got reset and he’s the bacterial floor of the worldsea as the Cambrian explosion takes place. He is what the world feeds from and he doesn’t feel anything about it, not rage or sadness or pain. He is the inverse of being.

“-and you’ll have to talk to her soon- Peter? You listening?”

Owens has pulled back, rubbing his upper arms and looking him in the eye. He shakes his head to clear his thoughtless mind. “No, no, sorry. What’s up?”

“Your social worker will have to talk to you soon. It doesn’t have to be now, but-“

“Can I just go home?”

Peter sounds weak, drained, pathetic. He hates the whine seeping into his words. “Sorry, I- I- I’m just tired. I’m so, so, so tired, Ms. Owens. I really want to sleep.”

She nods. “Of course, sweetie. I’ll call you a cab and then drop by tomorrow, okay?”

He agrees with a hum. There’s still some part that hopes it’ll be normal when he wakes up, May fretting over the holes riddling his body, bringing him soup and crackers and Big Gulp cups full of water.

Hope is a useless thing, the poison in him says. You will be washed away like she was.

The cab is small and cold and worn, something that feels so purely New York it makes his heart burn. Owens offers to ride with him, but he denies the offer, pulling the hood over his head and slinking down into the worn leather.

The apartment door is still open, pan full of burnt eggs sitting in the sink. There’s a pool of blood in the kitchen where May hit her head, staining the wood of their little table where they’d eat meals and Peter would poke her bun and she’d flick his nose. The tile is soaked in red, and in his pure delirium he pretends it’s spilled ketchup, because she always had her burgers and fries with a mountain of the stuff.

On the counter sits a clock, its’ seconds ticking by. Its four fifty-two P.M. Peter wonders when May died, when she really died. The doctors will have a number written down on a clipboard somewhere, to be filed away with the rest of her medical history, probably in a grotesque manila folder with DECEASED stamped on the front.

He strips to his boxers and falls into bed. The backpack full of money sits in the corner, mocking him. Like Herman’s corpse it sticks to his eyes, merciless, and he can’t shake it. It taunts him like a specter, shapeless and purposeful.

As something like sleep starts seeping into the edges of his mind, darkness starting to envelope him in obsidian tendrils, he sighs. It’s the first good luck he’s had all day.

Ю

Tony’s phone pings halfway through season one of Everybody Loves Raymond, and his hand itches to check the notifications. Pepper swats him away and grabs it instead, unlocking the screen. Her eyes widen.

“What is it, Pep? What happened?”

His heart is beating faster, out of control, dread seeping into his veins. She puts a grounding hand on his arm, placing the phone in his lap. The screen has a notification from FRIDAY: Shootout near Hudson River. Several crates of Vulture weapons and a great deal of blood found at location. Camera footage unrecoverable.

He has the AI link through into his phone, and holds it to one ear. “FRI. Any of the rogues know about this?”

“No, Boss,” She replies. “However, due to the sensitive nature of this case, I would heavily advise you to seek out their assistance.”

“Sensitive nature, FRI?”

A pause. When she speaks, there’s a horrible tone of worry in her voice. “Two men were found with Spider-Man’s web formula binding their heads together. Additionally, CSI found blood splatter and fabric samples matching his type and the specialty suit material you designed, respectively.”

Tony’s blood is cold, freezing. There’s ice in his heart. His vision is a tunnel and it leads nowhere. “Are you saying the kid was at that crime scene, FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Boss. And he appears to be very heavily injured.”

He stomps down the curses and bile threatening to wrench themselves out of his throat and takes a deep breath. One step at a time. “Start canvasing hospitals for a kid in his late teens with gunshot wounds. Also, get the rogues somewhere together. Preferably a room with that specialty CS gas, in case I get tired of Rogers’s bullshit. And get me a car, preferably fast.”

“Tony, wait,” Pepper reaches a hand out, confusion and concern in her eyes. “What are you doing?”

It’s not a what are you doing, I don’t know the point question. It’s a I thought you promised to take a second, and now you’re right back in the fray question. “I- I gotta help the kid, Pep.”

“What kid?” She says, and he curses himself, because no shit she didn’t know.

“Spider-Man. He’s a sixteen year old and is probably bleeding to death because I wasn’t good enough at playing Sherlock, so-“

“Stop for a second.”

She’s squeezing his forearm like it’s her last tether to Earth, trying to convey the strangling worry tugging at her mind. “The rogues can handle this. You shouldn’t expose yourself to that again, not so soon.”

Tony looks down to her, eyebrows knit. In place of worry there is pure, suffocating fear, and it’s digging into him with ruthless nails. “This isn’t about me.”

It’s all he can say before he’s running from the room, snagging his coat from the hangar before dashing out the door, leaving Pepper with nothing but the meaningless hum of a late 90’s sitcom and an earth-shaking realization:

Spider-Man is a kid.

Chapter Text

Natasha, finally past the bedridden stage of recovery, is able to limp her way around the medbay and Tower as a whole. Sneaking through shining hallways and curling up in tiny nooks satisfies some deep itch- Black Widow might be her name, but she’s much more of a cat than a spider.

It’s the sneaking that leads her to a conference room full of angry ex-Avengers and one barely-contained-rage current one, sitting crowded around a table with plastic water cups. She presses an ear to the door and listens to the grumble of Tony’s voice, sounding tired and stressed.

“I’m aware that I didn’t alert you all to my quote-unquote ‘investigation’. And believe me, I’ve paid the price for that.”

The creak of a chair. “Look. Rogers, you know how little I want you in my Tower right now, and I know how much you want the people who injured Nat and endangered the rest of your team. I’m willing to work together on this one, be amiable, if you assist in tracking down the dealers and buyers. I have some… Related business to deal with.”

Steve’s voice, low yet steady. “I’m willing to do that. What business are you referring to?”

“Spider-Man, that guy you fought at the airport in Brooklyn? He was injured in the fight.”

Tony sounds absolutely wrecked, like the words are draining the life right from his bones. They’re heavy with guilt and anger. There’s a pause in the room before Sam replies, voice tinted with curiosity. “What was his role there? Do you know?”

Another pause. It sounds like Tony is considering whether he can trust Wilson, as though there weren’t years of teamwork between them. Something like a realization hits her suddenly, but she files it away, tuning back into the conversation. “No. I’m gonna track him down, see if he knows anything, and if he needs medical. Then we’ll rendezvous and iron out the mission plan. Deal?”

Wanda now. “That’s it? Shouldn’t we work through the information we’ve got here more, first?”

“That’s Mr. Red-White-and-Blue’s prerogative, not mine. You all sort it out and contact me later.”

It’s evident in his tone that the only reason he’s not doing just that is because the anxiety of being in the same room as the Rogues is crushing, unrelenting. It sounds like he’s just got done trudging through a desert and had to make excuses to not go on an expedition through the Himalaya as a vacation afterward.

Through the door, Natasha hears Tony stand abruptly and move for the door, but her injured leg hinders her movement too severely. Suddenly, she’s being pushed by the stained hardwood, stumbling backward. He clicks the door shut and fixes her with narrowed eyes, as though he’d known she was there the whole time and was just waiting to cause her inconvenience. 

“Romanoff,” He greets, voice cold. “I’d love to string up a banner and have an intervention about your eavesdropping habits, but as I’m sure you know, there’s things to be done, so. Toodles!”

He waves callused fingers at her and strides off towards his lab, shoulders hunched.

“Good luck with the kid!” She calls.

Tony stiffens, turning. His eyes have something guarded and careful deep inside the irises, like he’s an abused dog and she’s trying to scratch his ears. “Thanks,” He says, voice thin.

“I- I’m sorry, by the way. For what I said a few days ago.”

He snorts. “Which part? Where you blamed me for being hurt that one of my best friends lied to me for years, or where you claimed arrogance for abandoning me without a second thought?”

The words are bitter and sharp against her skin. “You think that decision didn’t hurt me either, Tony?”

Natasha limps toward him, using the wall as a support. Her leg hurts like hell, the skin grafts still inflexible and tense. It hurts to breath, both through her abused ribs and stinging eyes, but she soldiers on. “God, I just. I keep trying to figure out how to apologize to you for this, but I can’t. I miss you so much, every part of me does. I love you. But its-“

“Hard. Yeah, it is.”

Tony leans against the wall. He’s still shut off, but it’s more like a closed door than a locked vault. There’s openings, little cracks where light can seep through.

She slides down next to him. “This team, all of you guys, its- Everything to me. Everything. And when the Accords came around,” Natasha shakes her head, hands up. “I saw the schism immediately. It split us right in half, Tony, and I tried so hard to bring us together, work as a whole, but I couldn’t.

“In that hangar, I made a decision. I knew for a fact that I had to do something drastic, and if that meant- If that meant betraying you so you’d look at it as more than a surface level problem? So be it. And what I said about Rogers needing me more than you then, I meant it. I don’t mean it now, knowing everything, but in the moment-“

“In the moment, Nat, you abandoned me.”

He’s bitter and angry and sad, so unshakably sad. His bones hurt and most fibers of his being want to leave, do something to help the kid, but the rest tell him to finish this. “You get that, right? It- It would’ve been different if you stayed, and we could’ve talked about this when it was fresh, when I needed you. But you just- Poof. Vanished from my life like a ninja turtle. Just- Just left.”

Tears are welling at the corners of Tony’s eyes, emotions in spillover that he can’t control. Natasha leans her head against his knee, a fluffy mess of bright red curls. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

He sinks down next to her and she moves closer, wrapping him in a hug. “Everything that was going on, all I was thinking about was me. And that’s- That’s not okay. You’ve been ruminating in this for too long, and that’s my fault, too.”

Natasha links their hands together and leans her head against his shoulder. “But I miss you, Tony. And I- I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this.”

“It’s deeper than that.”

Tony squeezes her hands and looks over. “I think- After what happened with Rogers? Finding out all this stuff, being one of the reasons we all split up?”

The words take some searching, but once he finds them, they flow out easily, like water from the tap, laminar and clean. “It carved a lot out of me. I feel like there’s a hole in my head where my heart used to be. I’ve spent the last half a year in a drunken stupor. I broke up with Pepper-“ At her gasp, he shrugs. “Well, I called it a ‘break’, but it was a breakup. I couldn’t handle being around other people anymore. All my empathy is just drained. And I don’t think that is something I can fix by making amends with you, you know?”

“You don’t feel like you deserve to?”

The realization hits her like a tennis racket to the skull, with a resounding twang. Natasha slaps his knee softly with her free hand, glaring. “Tony, you’re the most touchy-feely person I know. That’s part of why I- Feel so easy around you, really. You’re one of the few people I love and trust because I know you care, more than most people in the world do. It’s what makes you you.

“Let me ask you this,” She says. “Would you be looking for Peter Parker if you didn’t care?”

He jolts, twisting. “How the hell do you know his name?”

“I’m a spy, Tony. I do my digging, especially about way-too-young superheros I meet on runways in Germany. Now answer the question.”

“I- No. I wouldn’t.”

The first part doesn’t even require a reply, because duh, so she just nods. “Exactly. So…”

Natasha pulls her head from his shoulder and turns, rubbing her thumb over his. “I’m willing to work through this, but later. Because you need to find that kid.”

Tony sighs and nods. “Yeah. I do.”

He stands and offers her a hand, expression something more open, like the door’s been opened a crack. She takes it and, with considerable effort, climbs to her feet. They eye each other for a moment before he jerks a thumb over one shoulder, towards his lab. “I gotta go make sure the kid isn’t bleeding to death. Try to rest?”

Natasha cracks a smile, already limping back toward the medbay. “No promises.”

Ю

The Parker’s apartment is a mess.

There’s a pan in the sink plastered with burnt remnants of what could be eggs, cooked to the point that they’re an indecipherable mess. The cabinets are open, missing food and to-go containers, the fridge open and humming quietly. To the left, there’s a landline, hanging by its curled cord, and next to that, the thing concerning Tony the most, is a small pool of dried, crusted blood.

He picks through the apartment methodically, checking and double-checking every nook and cranny despite the staggering panic and guilt picking at his mind.

Peter’s room resembles the kitchen’s apartment; His suit lies in the corner, covered in dried blood. The hamper that used to live in his closet is tipped over, spreading clothes across the hardwood floors. He checks the bathroom and finds it covered in blood, the packaging for several large bandages and gauze littering the floor. Red patterns the tile in droplets, a Picasso of viscera, and there’s smeared handprints of it on the shower curtain and cabinets.

“Jesus fuck kid, what’d you get yourself into?”

Tony peeks around the horror movie scene for a minute more then heads out into the living room, looking for clues. Nothing. He heads back to Peter’s room and does a double sweep, sees nothing- Then a floorboard creaks.

The hunch blooms in his chest, different than a idea, but still solid. He fetches a flathead from the desk nearby and pries it up, gasping when he finally exposes the hidey hole.

It’s fucking stuffed with cash.

There’s at least ten grand in bills packed into the space, so tightly fit that they were actually threatening to push the board out of its seating. Suddenly, Tony is overwhelmed with dread in place of worry, a thousand scenarios running through his head. What in the hell was Peter doing to get this much cash?

And could it have gotten him killed?

A further search reveals a dozen more stashes throughout the room, all hidden in tiny, near-unnoticeable places. The pile of money on the floor grows until there’s a stack of hundreds a foot tall, teetering there like some kind of a demonic monolith. He counts every hundred and sums it to thirty thousand exactly, sick worry growing in his chest like the supercell before a tornado.

Tony heads back to the kitchen and its dangling landline. A dial tone hums through the receiver, obnoxious and offensive, and he grabs the gently swinging cable, hanging the phone up on it’s mount. To the left, the red light of an answering machine blinks slowly, deadly, the rush of adrenaline before a fall.

He presses down on the play button. A second passes, pure bliss as the device whirs to life, before a woman’s voice plays, prefaced by You have one unheard message.

“Hi, Peter. I wanted to call and confirm the meeting we agreed on this morning. May will be ready at ten, and your social worker should get in around eleven. Just ring me back, alright? And if you need a ride or something, let me know, I can- Pick you up, or call a taxi. Anyway, yeah. Just call me back.”

End of message.

The storm inside him has grown to a maelstrom, titanic and deafening. It overpowers everything coming in from the outside world, and all Tony can think is oh shit oh shit, a constant, unrelenting loop in his head. He dials the number back and holds the receiver to his ear, numb, jerking in surprise when the line picks up.

“Peter?”

He can’t respond, too stuck in the hallows of his mind.

A shuffling noise. “Peter? Hey, I don’t know if you can hear me, I can’t hear you-“

“Uh, this isn’t Peter Parker. It’s- Man, this is awkward, it’s Tony Stark.”

Silence.

“I- I’m looking for him, and his apartment is a mess, I saw the message on the answering machine, so-”

“Why the hell is Tony Stark in an orphaned teenager’s apartment?”

Fear; horrible, terrible guilt, numbness in his fingertips that spreads through him like tar. “Orphaned?”

The woman on the other end replies slowly, carefully, like there’s panic in his voice that he can’t hear. “Peter’s last living relative died yesterday. I dropped by earlier this morning to check in on him, and we agreed that tomorrow would be a good time for him to see the body and talk to his social worker. Is he not there?”

“No,” He coughs out, like a piece of food gone down the wrong pipe, tumbling from his lips unexpectedly.

“Okay, um. Have you heard from him at all? Phone calls or anything?”

“If I had his phone number, believe me, I would’ve pinpointed him a long, long time ago.”

She sighs and gathers her thoughts before responding. “I can meet you at his apartment in fifteen minutes, we’ll figure out what to do from there.”

Tony panics for a moment before diverting, mind working double time. “I’ve already picked through this place, there’s not much to see. What about if I meet you at the hospital? We can discuss there?”

If this lady, whoever she is, sees the pile of money in Peter’s room or, even worse, the Scream recreation in the bathroom, he won’t be able to cover up Spider-Man’s true identity for long. Pepper and Natasha knowing about it is one thing, but people he can’t fully trust are another- It’s best to play it safe, until he finds the kid and figures out what’s going on.

“Yeah, sure. You know the way?”

“I’ll figure it out. See you in ten.”

---

Dr. Andrea B. Owens is a short-ish doctor in her late thirties with explosive blonde curls and soft eyes. Tony can feel the passion she holds for what she does like a bonfire, roaring and undying. The amount she cares is evident in the letters pinned onto a corkboard in the corner, in the crayon drawings on the walls. He takes that as a good sign, despite the terrifying gaze she’s pinned him with for the past five minutes.

“Before you turn me into an organ donor or something, let me explain.”

The gaze narrows to a point instead of a wide-bore laser, but she nods, so Tony continues.

“Peter is my intern. I’ve been working with him for a year or so, and- Well, he’s a punctual kid. More like, ‘fashionably early’ punctual, not ‘arrive on the preset date and time’ punctual, so. When he missed a bunch of lab days, I got worried. Headed over to his apartment, saw it trashed, and well-“

“Now we’re here.”

“Now we’re here,” He confirms.

Owens sighs and pinches her brow. Crows feet are the only wrinkle marring her face, which is an impressive achievement, considering she spends most of her days stopping people from dying, and Tony looks like an orange left in the sun for a week when he can’t find a T6 torx. “I’ve seen people have… Intense reactions to the deaths of their loved ones. I saw a guy drive his car through a Wendy’s after his grandpa died, once. Greif makes people do crazy things, but- Peter.”

She drops the hand from her face and leans across the desk to where Tony’s sitting, arms and legs crossed, mirroring the way his mind is twisted, like a loose strand of DNA. “Peter was having a hard time dealing with May. I had to calm him down from a panic attack a few days ago, I mean- His mental state isn’t good right now, and it’s sure as hell not stable enough for him to be alone.”

He nods in agreement. “I’ll use all the resources I can to track him down. He probably just went to a friend’s house or something, tried to get away from it all. I know I would.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer before Tony works up the courage to speak, twisting the skin on his middle finger’s knuckle. “I can’t help but feel like this is my fault, you know? He’s- Just, I thought I knew him. I knew his aunt, I thought- He’d trust me enough to come to me if he needed help.”

Owens shakes her head. “May and I used to work together, right in this hospital. She was an OBGYN nurse. Kind woman, loving as anyone I’ve ever met. She always talked about Peter, whenever she had the chance. And from the time I’ve been able to spend with him, I don’t think it’s an issue of trust.”

“What is it, then? I could’ve helped, whatever her condition was. Why didn’t he ask?”

A shrug. “That kid carries a heavy burden. A guilt complex, probably. Was killing himself over not being able to help his aunt, and I think- I think asking you for help, with you being, y’know.”

“Tony ‘Motherfucking’ Stark?” He supplies.

“Yeah. That. With you being ‘Tony ‘Motherfucking’ Stark’, he might’ve been intimidated, didn’t want to burden you with something like that.”

The real reason why picks away at him slowly, painfully, like a pick into alpine ice. It always has, since the moment he made the decision. Tony’s familiar with guilt; It’s his one true vice, outside of cheap alcohol. Every great futurist is really just someone afraid of the present; His dad used to say that all the time. Blaming himself was always grounding, like counting sheep at night or taking deep breaths. Guilt is easier to hold onto, easier to anchor on. But now, with Peter in danger, it being all his fault? That’s crushing. The pressure of it makes him want to curl into a ball and sob, but that won’t fix anything; Plus More energizing than guilt is fear, and Tony hates fear. So he channels it into a space in his mind, lets it well up, static and grey, and breathes.

“Something like that.”

Tony stands and pulls out his phone, offering it to the doctor. “Slide your number in there. I’ll call you when I find him, alright?”

Owens complies and hands it back over. “I’ll be waiting. And Stark?”

She gives him another cold, hard glare, hands stuffed into the pockets of her labcoat. “If I find out you were lying to me? Hippocratic oath be damned, I will fuck you up.”

He gulps and offers his best mock salute in return, trying not to let the truth behind his eyes mix into the desperation pooling in his irises. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

Ю

“Stark.”

They’re outside of the courthouse, and Tony is taking slow, short drags off a stress cigarette, tapping his foot on the worn cement. His anxiety is worthless; Toomes is going to prison for a long, long ass time, but he worries, nonetheless.

May stands next to him as he stares out into the midday traffic. Peter is giving his testimony, decked out fully in the suit, and neither of them could stand it. He offers her the burning stump, and she denies. Tony grinds the embers into ash with his shoe, watching as the last spark goes out.

“I want to ask something of you. And this isn’t an ultimatum, ok? Don’t think of it like that.”

“Shoot,” He says.

She takes a deep breath and starts. “Peter lost his uncle, my husband, at thirteen. There was about a year where he just wouldn’t talk to me, to anyone. He shut off, shut down, all that. He was grieving. Then he got bitten by that spider at Oscorp, and everything changed.

“I think he felt he could make a difference, a real, true one, not something he thought was superficial. So he went around saving lives, stopping crime, all that. And one day, you drop by my apartment, fancy suit and black eye included, and whisk him off to Germany, use him to fight a war, then stop talking to him for nearly a year.”

Tony looks down at the ash blowing in the wind, pushed into the corners of the alleyway. He empathizes with it far too much.

“And I- Don’t blame you for that. I don’t know what went down with you and your friends, but it must’ve been bad. But now- Now, Peter goes off to fight a bunch of insane weapons dealers, tracks down and gathers incriminating evidence on them by himself, then when he makes a mistake you don’t just slap his wrist and talk it out, you rip away the clothes you put on his back and toss him away like garbage.

“My kid fought a sociopath in a metal flying suit on an airplane for you, Stark. And nearly died in the process, so here’s what I’m going to ask of you.”

May looks over to him. They’re about the same height, but she’s so much scarier, all thin and tanned Italian fury. “Either stay with my kid, encourage him, mentor him, or don’t. I can’t ask for an ultimatum because, one, those are stupid, and two, I don’t know you well enough. If you don’t think you can handle him, that’s fine. I get it. But don’t break my kid’s heart again. He doesn’t deserve that, and you know it.”

The stinging hatred in the back of his mind supplies him with a simple answer: Peter doesn’t deserve to have to deal with you.

Tony turns his head and gives her a curt nod. “I understand.”

He leaves her in the wet summer heat, eyes downturned and hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. Blindly, he navigates to the courtroom, flops down onto the bench outside. There’s a rustling, bags being picked up and suit jackets being buttoned up, before the doors open.

Peter steps out in his spandex and makes for the bathroom. Tony follows, despite the voice in his head telling him not to, finding the kid spewing up a tuna sandwich into the toilet, mask in hand.

“You alright?” He asks dumbly, fiddling with a loose thread on his dress pants.

A flush. Peter turns, sits with his back against the porcelain. “Yeah, just. That was rougher than I thought it’d be.”

They stand there awkwardly, tension building steadily. “I’m sorry,” Tony blurts, and immediately winces.

“What for?”

The kid turns, all doe-eyed and confused, and Tony suddenly understands a different definition of heartache. “For leaving you there, without your suit. It was my responsibility to keep you safe, and I failed. I’ll do better for you, I promise.”

Peter blinks. “Mr. Stark, It’s my fault I sunk that ferry anyway. And even without the suit, I managed fine.”

“Still. You’re my responsibility, kiddo. I could’ve, should’ve, done something more. To help you out, I mean. With Toomes, or anything. And I didn’t.”

More tension, tight like harpstrings. They both just look at each other, expressions indecipherable, and Tony coughs, clears his throat, pulls his suit jacket down. It feels tighter and stuffier than it should. “I’m gonna- Get out of here.”

Tony darts from the bathroom, trying to ignore the sound of confusion the kid makes as the door thumps silently closed behind him. He hates the feeling welling in his chest, in his mind, overwhelming and uncontrollable. Deep, way back in some horrible recess of his mind, he knows it’s best for Peter if- If he keeps his distance. The closer people are to Tony, the rougher it is, and he’s been through enough already.

But if that’s the truth, he wonders, why does every other fiber of his being feel like it’s wrong?

Chapter Text

There were nights, way back in the days where the wound that the death of his parents left was still fresh and bloody, that Peter would just stare at the ceiling for hours, small and afraid. He never cried, oddly; There was always this brick barricade, a desolate, impermeable wall that separated him from the world.

Sometimes, on those nights, he’d sneak out onto the fire escape and look at the city. There aren’t many stars in New York- The city that never sleeps also never turns off its lights, so there’s only a few twinkling dots, at most. But Peter loved gazing out at the skyline, at towering behemoths of concrete and glass, because it was easier to focus on the far-away things than the thoughts crammed into his own head.

He stopped doing it a few months after living with May and Ben. They made him feel safe, protected; Like he could think and speak his thoughts without them being overpowering, without them weighing on his shoulders like inconceivably dense stone. For a while, he felt free, and life was easier. His parents still hung like specters in the corners of his mind, yes, but he could deal with it. Peter’s still grateful he landed the sane secondary guardians, ones who told him it’s okay to cry and scream and beg somebody, anybody, to bring his parents back, who let his mind flourish and his thoughts find their place in the long-dark crevices at the back of his mind. Things were easy for so long, for what felt like decades, because he could finally breathe.

Then Ben died.

And then Peter’s world collapsed around him again, just like before, and there was this new drum in his head beating the to the line of cursed cursed cursed every hour of every day. The few people he could talk to were pushed away, where he couldn’t hurt them with his unbelievably shitty luck, where they were safe. Except for May.

May was too perfect, like a glass statuette gleaming in midday sun; She was smart, and kind, and loving, and even if her cooking was absolutely atrocious and she sometimes burned too much incense, everything she did was flawless in a completely imperfect way.

This one night, Peter was sitting on the fire escape, legs dangling through gaps in the wrought iron fence. He hadn’t slept in days, his head was a mess of useless, jumbled thoughts, his body ached and his eyes burned from the constant tears.  He remembers her sneaking into his periphery and the creak of old, rusted bolts as she sat next to him, mint perfume and big glasses radiating a blinding light that soaked into his bones.

“Watcha’ doing out here, kiddo?”

May was always bad at hiding her emotions. The shadow of tears streaking her cheeks and the quiver in her voice was evidence enough of that.

Peter shifted to grab her hand, eyes still fixed on the buildings. “Just thinking. Rough night?”

She nodded and smoothed back her hair, flowy and frizzed. “Most are these days, though.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a while, letting the honking of horns and quiet rumbling of the city fill in the gap. A plane’s blinking lights drag across the sky, streaks of white and red barely visible against harsh streetlights and skyscrapers.

“He was proud of you, y’know.”

May scraped at a splotch of faded paint, eyebrows knit. “Of who you’d become. After everything, losing Mary and Richard, we never thought- Well, we never thought we’d be capable enough to help you through that.”

Peter doesn’t respond. The guilt of knowing it must be his fault Ben is dead, this certainty that he can’t shake, is numbing. It feels like swimming through icewater, where the world is still moving by but feeling is a long-lost memory.

“Ben used to have this thing he’d say- ‘Identity is a social thing’. He had this- This unshakeable faith in people, y’know? Always believed being around good people made you do good things.”

She’d given him this look, like he’s the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. “He had so much faith in you, Peter. So much. And with good reason.”

He sniffs and shrugs, unsure of what to say. “I let you down, May. I should’ve done something more than just-“ Peter laughed, a bitter, wet, angry thing. “I just stood there like a statue.”

May sighed, leaning to rest her head on his shoulder. “One, hun, there isn’t a thing you could do to disappoint me. Two, that’s not the point.”

Her hair tickled his nose as she turned to look up at him. “You’re already the best person I’ve ever known, sweetie. You… just haven’t realized it yet.”

---

Peter’s hand shakes as he gives the motel’s desk clerk three twenties, and her eyebrows raise with suspicion. Somehow, he musters the strength to speak, his voice coming out cracked and desperate. “Please. I just need a few nights.”

A few moments pass where she scans him head to toe, beat-up Converse to scratchy hoodie, then nods. “You better not have robbed a bank or somethin’, kid,” She mutters, taking the bills and handing back his change.

Close enough, he thinks, but paints what he hopes is a charming smile on instead. “No, ma’am. Just need to get away for a little while.”

“Well, enjoy your stay at Richey’s Motel and Dining.”

She hands him a rusted key on a plastic ring, turning to point down the hallway. “Room 112, up the stairs and to the left. Breakfast starts at seven and ends at nine.”

It’s really not a bad motel; The wallpaper is old, sure, and peeling in places, but everything is well maintained. There’s no blood or vomit on the carpet, and the stairs don’t creek, and the lock on his door opens with a reassuring clunk when he turns the key.

As soon as the door closes Peter thumps to the bed and groans. The ceiling is bare white, not even a hint of texture, and the sheets are a painful shade of beige. It’s bland, but it’s nice- He lets the dull, blank room fill his senses for a few minutes before twisting his way up and waddling to the bathroom, backpack in hand.

He takes off his sweatshirt with a wince, peeling the bandage on his shoulder away. It’s swollen and gruesome, still sore. The stiches did a good enough job of keeping the flesh pulled taut, and the new scar left in place of the bullethole looks healed enough. His leg, though, is a different story.

He’d been limping ever since leaving the apartment. Once the pain pills and adrenaline had worn off, the agonizing sensation of splintered bone and shredded muscle had set in, achingly constant and nagging. Every ounce of pressure he puts on it makes the wound scream louder in protest. Plus, the hole hadn’t closed properly (likely a byproduct of his hasty self-suturing), so now a crosshatched pattern of newly grown skin stretches painfully every time he moves.

Peter sips on a bottle of Pedialyte as he goes, wiping away with moist paper towels and disinfectant. He’s no doctor and sure as shit can’t do sutures himself, so he settles for gooey, Neosporin-soaked bandages on both wounds instead, hoping they’ll stave off infection. They’ll need to get looked at for real sometime soon, but there’s not enough space to think about that right now.

The TV blares something inoffensive as he picks away at a bag of jerky idly, staring off into space.

His mind wanders. May hovers in the periphery, like she’s a homework assignment he needs to do but just can’t find the will to finish. Every moment without her burns; It’s a constant sort of thing, like a rash covering every inch of his body, and his mind is so busy delegating his mental faculties to the various holes in his body that it can’t fully focus on dulling the pain. It feels like it won’t ever end, and Peter thinks he’s okay with that. It’s his fault she’s gone, after all- A few days without work, a break too long, and she died. Slipped through his fingers like eggwhites and all that’s left is a yolk, blindly obvious and so easy to hold onto. May’s dead, she’s dead and gone, just like Ben. A forever-and-always thing, immaterial but so, so inescapable.

Before he realizes it the tears are streaming from his eyes like rivers, and they feel like molten lead, leaving scorched tracks in their wake. A sob builds in the back of his throat and he cries, because it hurts so badly, and Peter knows it’ll never go away. May was so different than Ben, so much more concrete and human. She burnt pancakes on Sunday mornings and yelled too loud when he got into trouble at school. She didn’t have big, calloused hands like Ben- They were more delicate, more caring, they nurtured instead of protected. He was his guardian angel and she was his tower, a beautiful, simple thing he could grow with, climbing upwards like vines, and now she’s gone, and nothing will ever be the same, he’s left to brown and shrivel away and there’s not a soul to blame but himself.

Peter’s tired. So, so tired. He just wants to curl into a ball and rot away, but something catches his attention on the TV first- A news station.

“Several bodies were found in the Hudson River this morning after what appears to be a mafia-style execution, NYPD investigators say-“

He cranks the volume and leans in, the world around him unfocusing as the anchor narrates. “One of the men identified, Phineas Mason, was a known associate of the weapons dealer Adrian Toomes, also known as the Vulture. The circumstances of his death and that of the other men is unknown; However, the New York police department’s homicide division will be reporting on any leads they gather in the coming days.”

His heart pauses and his blood runs cold. A picture of Mason’s mangled corpse, blurred to protect the audience from the worst of the carnage, flashes across the screen. Through the ringing in Peter’s ears he hears the broadcaster sign off for the night and the channel fades to advertisements, bright colors and jingles that ping against his skull like hail on sheetmetal.

He pulls up an article on his phone and scrolls through the details. He recognizes every face, and suddenly the horror runs into him and topples his mind like bowling pins under a wave because it’s his fault these people are dead. He’d hand-delivered them to Toomes without a second thought, traded them for cash like they were gold pieces instead of human beings.

Shame bubbles at the nape of his neck and travels down his spine, spreading scorching hot flames across his skin. Peter had been so absorbed in trying to help May he never stopped to think of the consequences; Lives, for God’s sake. He’d made some sick balance scale with the only person in the world he loved and a bunch of strangers that he knew nothing about.

The meeting with Toomes replays in his mind and he tried to find some spot where the guy had promised something, not to harm anyone, not to kill the charges Peter went after, but he can’t. The dread and guilt finally settle like pine resin in his gut, sticky and obtrusive, something that won’t ever go away.

He checks the clock. Ten fifty-two P.M.; the prison was closed to visitors hours ago, but that wouldn’t be much of an issue, considering the place has security ripped straight from an 80’s crime drama. A few unconscious guards wouldn’t mean much, and being spotted on security cameras wouldn’t be an issue.

Peter barely catches the way his mind sticks the pieces together, a plan forming that’s so simple yet deeply wrong it makes him slip up.

I get in, I get to Toomes, and I kill him.

There’s too many emotions running through his mind to catch and count. He knows there’s rage and guilt and violent, bubbling shame, but deeper there’s confusion. It nags at him subtly like solutions to chemistry equations when things don’t quite line up. Why would Toomes kill them all now, after massive fallout? And why Mason, someone who must’ve been his only reliable contact to the outside world?

The missing pieces are too big for him not to stop and reconsider. Ultimately, if Toomes didn’t order those people to be killed, that meant he was probably next on the list, which made him a valuable resource.

Taking a breath, he throws himself from bed, nods, and says, “Ok. Ask questions first, shoot later.”

Peter slips into his backup suit and downs another four Advil before hopping out of the window and into the nighttime bustle of the city he used to think of as home.

Not that he has one here. Not anymore.

Ⴟ

The Queens Detention Center is eerier at night, a stronghold of concrete brickwork and blinding spotlights. Peter ducks into an alcove of darkness, checking for guards, one fingerless glove against the asphalt. His old suit is rough and scratchy, uncomfortable against his skin and torn in places. The wind bites at his exposed flesh as he sprints to the back of a guard booth and presses his ear to the door. There’s a TV playing quietly, the rustling of fabric.

Peter takes a deep breath. His hands move on their own accord, a fluid motion as he unlocks the door and bangs the guard’s head against the desk with a dull thunk, putting him out cold. Whatever guilt he’d usually feel is a faint hum in the background, drowned out by the unending static that’d nested into his brain the past few days. He gets lucky, though, and there’s a keycard dangling from the unconscious man’s belt on a lanyard; He snags it and thwips up to the main building’s roof, skittering to the edge with hopes to find a back entrance.

He drops to the ground and flattens against the wall as a spotlight passes within half a dozen feet of him, nearly snagging the shining metal of his webshooters. Luckily, he spots a large steel door and dashes to it, cranking the handle slowly and peeking his head inside. It looks like a kitchen, made devoid of life by the pitch-black hour he’s sneaking around at. His vision adapts rapidly and he pokes around, ensuring he’s alone before heading out into an unmarked hallway.

It splits off in a fork to the right and a door to the left. He takes the latter, tuning in for someone on the other side; All he hears is snoring, so its either a guard slacking off or a cell block. The keycard makes the door’s lock open with a click and he opens it a crack, peeking inside.

It’s a security room, Peter surmises. There’s a wall covered in a matrix of ancient computer monitors, each a live CCTV feed of cell blocks and dimly lit concrete hallways. Below them is a steel desk, an empty office chair pushed up to its edge, spun to face the door. Clearly, whichever guard had been on rotation here had either left or taken a break, which meant he wouldn’t have much time before they returned.

One corner of the desk holds several books, each twice as thick as his torso. They’re labeled for cell blocks H through K, and Peter snatches up the tome marked J, his mind scrounging up vague memories of the uniform Toomes had been wearing. The thing is at least two hundred pages long, listing inmates first by number and then by last name. He flips through to the T-section and begins scouring the double-sided prints, tracking his query with an index finger.

His eyes scan until he finds the cell number for Toomes and barely has time to memorize it before the door behind him opens with a click, and a paunchy mid-50s security guard locks eyes with him through the mask before dropping his coffee in shock.

Peter, having already spun to face the entrance, has no time to think. He flings a web into the man’s face and flies forward, putting him into a headlock. Peter kicks the spent coffee cup into one corner and drags the guard into his chair, nabbing his keys and trying to make his limp body look somewhat natural. He figures it’d be comedic if the sensation of white-hot guilt that’s been following him all night wasn’t still there, like molten silver coating his lungs.

He shimmies out of the room and closes the door behind him, spinning on a heel and heading down the corridor to his left. Toomes’s cell is at the end of the hall, and Peter peers inside, about to knock on the bars quietly before the Vulture sits up, turning his head slightly.

“Funny seeing you here, Pedro. What’d you pull to finally get locked up?”

Peter says nothing, pulling the guard’s keyring from his pocket and trying each until the gate opens with a clunk, creaking open.

Toomes raises and eyebrow in question before Peter thwips a web to his mouth and binds his arms to his sides, dragging him from the cell by his collar. The Great God Murphy is merciful (for once in Peter’s life,) and grants him a window with inexplicable latches, which he opens, pushing the glass aside and climbing through, dragging the man behind him.

Atop the roof Peter rips the webbing from Toomes’s mouth and gets uncomfortably close, nose brushing against the whiskers of his five o’clock shadow. “Mason is dead. So are all the people I took for you. And I have a hole in my leg. I want to know why.”

“Should’ve known somebody would come knocking at this old head for answers when I saw the news,” Toomes says. He sighs, and looks to Peter with an unsettling mix of sorrow and pity in his eyes. “Look, kid. Mason was my best friend. I trusted him with my life. God knows I wouldn’t have him or the people who stole my tech killed, it’d make no sense.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “I figured that out myself. What do you know?”

The man is silent for a few moments before he decides to speak. “I’ve heard knocking about a guy named Felix Gardner. Supposedly he’s bent; Crazy is a real backward way.

“I don’t know much about him, but from what I can tell, his specialty lies in hunting high-value targets. I assume the bullethole in your leg is something that’d normally have closed up no problem?”

He nods, and Toomes does, too. “Then those rounds probably came from him. Specialty stuff. don’t know how he makes it, just that he’s the only one who does. So, if you’re looking for who’s responsible for the murders, he’s probably your guy. He’s still probably somewhere in the city, holed up with a crew.”

Just as Peter turns to leave, the Vulture says one last thing. “And Pete? If he’s taking shots at you, that means he’s your target. Try not to catch one in the head.”

Peter turns his head and gives a solemn nod before aiming a web at the nearest lightpost, rocketing forward into the artificial starlight of the New York skyline, a singular purpose buzzing in the back of his skull: To redeem all that he’s done.

Ю

Tony’s on one knee at the crime scene, a piece of red and blue fabric pinched between two fingers.

He’d been too late to get at any of the evidence before it was shipped off- The weapons to Damage Control and the unidentified body off to the county morgue. An unfathomable quantity of blood still stains the worn concrete, dried into a vile paste. He tucks the scrap of torn fabric into a plastic evidence back and stuffs it into his back pocket, looking around for clues. He’s never been the best investigator- observational skills aren’t always his strongsuit; He prefers tinkering, trial and error. He’s poking his nose everywhere he can, though, because he knows there isn’t any time for the latter.

Tony’s eye catches a glint in the sand a few feet from the bloodstain sitting at the tips of his sneakers. He paces toward it and crouches down, prying the bullet from its place, partially wedged in the concrete. Crusted in oxidized blood, it shines in the afternoon sun and, miraculously, is completely intact. A cursory lookover doesn’t show any chips or dents; just minor scratches. He drops it into an evidence bag and sits back on his heels for a second, contemplating.

Bullet wounds shouldn’t phase Peter all that much. He has absurdly advanced healing, ultra-dense bones and an obscenely strong muscular structure. If he was any more mutated, lead would probably bounce off him like spitballs. And, if Dr. Owens’s retelling of the day his aunt died are anything to go by, Peter didn’t show any signs of injury aside from a limp.

Something doesn’t sit right with him. A bullet that miraculously survived carving its way through a mutated teenager and embedding itself in concrete without so much as a hint of damage should have done more to Peter than give him a limp. There’s something more to this that he isn’t seeing.  

He ducks out of the sun and into the alcove where the weapons and body were left, placing the round on his palm and pulling out his phone. “FRI, give me a chem analysis on this thing.”

Several blue lines scan over the metal for a few seconds before the phone pings and FRIDAY gives him the breakdown. “It appears to be a depleted uranium-adamantium alloy, sir. And, my scans are showing traces of deltamethrin- A commercial pesticide. It’s enhanced with a polymer suspension, likely to increase its efficacy and durance.”

The pieces start clicking into place. He combs through the data he’s memorized about Peter’s DNA and confirms- There’s parts of spider DNA spliced into his genome. “FRI, work with me here. Peter’s part spider genetically, right? Is it possible that high enough concentrations of deltamethrin could poison him?”

There’s a pause while she considers. “At high enough quantities and a sufficient concertation, yes. In addition to the polymer suspension, it could stick around in his body and spread through his bloodstream over the course of several weeks. However, it would take a quantity greater than eight milliliters to be lethal, which my preliminary scans suggest is unlikely given the vessel chosen.”

Tony drags a hand down his face. He was already on a timer, but now he’s even more pressed. “What could the side effects be from a nonlethal dose? Any chance it nullifies his powers?”

“It’s possible his healing and metabolism could be impaired from the dose he received, assuming he was only hit once. I’m unsure how severe and long-lasting the effects could be, given I am uncertain of the original dosage.”

More puzzle pieces snap together the more he thinks. Military-grade alloy bullets, coated in a specially designed poison; An unknown man dead and several crates of highly dangerous weapons left behind. It doesn’t make any sense. Tony works with the building blocks first. Assuming Peter showed up just as the deal went bad, and took a hit in the process, why would the guys just book it? They had their hands on hundreds of thousands in highly advanced, extremely dangerous technology, alongside something they could use to kill the person trying to stop them. There’s no reason to leave them behind.

That means the second most likely possibility is that the man left dead at the scene wasn’t the byproduct of bad business practices, but something closer to a revenge killing or a paid hit. But why leave his body and take the vehicle he used to get here in the first place? And why the highly customized bullets?

He takes a deep breath and dives into the difficult questions. The tech they chose- It had to be specially designed for taking down Spider-Man. Depleted uranium-adamantium alloy was the same thing he used in the anti-tank shells for his suits. It’s incredibly difficult to get your hands on. Going through the trouble of acquiring it, and lacing it with a highly concentrated, long-lasting poison, designed specifically for one mutant?

The only logical option left is that this whole thing, the weapons and dead body and dramatic shootout, was a setup.

A setup designed for the express purpose of killing Spider-Man.

He leaves the questions of why they left when they had Peter on the ropes for later. Instead, he taps on his glasses and paints a trail of the skidmarks leading out of the alcove and into the nearby onramp. Different than the other pair, and closer to where Spider-Man was shot, further out in the open. He thinks about the money hidden throughout Peter’s house and decides in the moment he must’ve taken it, stashed it away until he could find a way to hand it over to the cops.  

Then he found May.

Tony, once again, tucks the awful consideration of what that scene looked like into he back of his mind, popping the door of his Audi and slipping inside. He’s got to get to the kid, and fast- Before whatever went down here catches up with him.

Assuming there’s anything left to get to, he thinks, and holds down the bile building in his throat as he pulls into the onramp.

Ⴟ

Peter hisses as he slips through the motel window, weighting his injured leg. It’s been getting worse and worse as the days go on- It’s more than concerning, considering two days is usually beyond enough for him to be fully healed, let alone feeling any residual pain.

He wonders what May would say. What her face would look like, contorted with worry, babying him like he’s thirteen again and vomiting up his guts into the toilet with a 107° fever; If she’d be relieved or angry when he woke up the next day changed, improved, like God snapped their fingers and built him a body of hardened steel and corded platinum from the cracked porcelain he’d been before.

Two days since she’d died, and he’s gotten nowhere.

Peter’s been searching for this Felix Gardner guy since visiting Toomes and hasn’t found a damn thing. He swung by the scene of the shooting in the early morning and found it barren, already picked cleaned by CSI crews. He can’t check traffic cam footage without access to a more powerful computer; Karen needs resources to hack into encrypted databases. He tried sifting through the footage of the attack that Karen managed to grab, but the single frame he’d caught of the pickup he baddies used didn’t show a license plate.

Tony Stark slips into his mind. He dismisses that as an option almost immediately; Getting help from the billionaire would almost certainly mean that his involvement would be investigated and exposed, and God knows where Peter would be sent for his crimes.

But you should be punished for what you’ve done, shouldn’t you? His conscience whispers, words dripping in poison and vicious truth.

He pushes it aside for now in favor of contemplating his options. They’re thin at best; Karen can only offer so much help with his investigation without access to more powerful tech, and without a single lead to go off of, he’s stuck.

Peter chews on a protein bar as he thinks. If he can get traffic cam footage, there’s a chance he could get something substantial to work with. He could try breaking into Midtown and hooking Karen into one of the engineering labs’s computers- There’s enough power there to break encryption, but-

The solution raps on the back of his head with heavy knuckles, rattling his brain. Ned has a computer strong enough to get it done. Even considering that as an option hurts to think about; Confronting his best friend with the truth about what he’s been doing and May’s death would be catastrophic. Peter doesn’t think he can survive more emotional stress without imploding. The idea of saying the truth out loud tears at his skin with barbed hooks and leaves him raw, exposed, and he knows there’s no way he’ll be able to finish this if he utters it. But Ned is his last option.

The guilt of lying grips at him too, but it’s manageable. He’s already got a towering supply of it teetering on the edge of collapse anyway, and Peter knows the more he adds to it, the more he’ll want to get this all over with. The burden fuels him, in a way- Like trying to carry all the groceries at once, knowing the faster you run, the sooner the pain leaves, the sooner building tension snaps like a bungie cord pulled taught and cut.

The sooner truth sinks its ravenous teeth in and devours him whole.

Peter finishes chewing, gulps down the last dredges of a Gatorade bottle, and slings himself through the creaky, chipped window, pooled dread weighing him down the whole way to Ned’s apartment.

---

“Thanks for letting me help, man.”

They’re sitting on his bed, Peter leaning back against the wall with crossed arms, still wearing the suit sans-mask, and Ned clutching a glass of lemonade with both hands. He looks over briefly to Peter before returning to his attention to the progress bar on the monitor slowly creeping along, scratching his neck. “Whatever you’re looking into, it sounds serious.”

Peter nods. The lie he’d told was pearlescent, wiped clean of the filth of truth until it sparkled. Ned had no reason to doubt his story-The real events cut up and stuffed into a PG-13 action movie shell, devoid of exposition and true, horrible violence- because, after all, what reason would he have to lie?

There goes his conscience again.

“It’s heavy stuff. I think whatever went on here is linked to those dead guys they found in the Hudson. If I can get a lead, I might be able to bust whoever’s responsible. Get those weapons to Damage Control.”

Ned hums in agreement and takes a sip of his drink. The late afternoon summer heat is soupy and suffocating, coating them both like tar. Karen, with access to true processing power, would be done with the encryption and download in less than an hour.

“How’s May doing?”

Peter shifts a bit in discomfort. He tries to keep his face neutral but is worried it comes off as devoid of feeling instead, hollowed out like a Halloween pumpkin until there’s nothing but exsiccated flesh and impending decay. “She’s fine. Dialysis is getting harder. We might not all get to hang out for a bit.”

Ned looks to him. His eyes are soaked with empathy and sorrow, and it’s the same look he carried for months after Ben’s death, heavy and constant. It scrapes at Peter like sandpaper and the shame of his lies boils in his stomach like acid, chewing its way into him. “I- Look, I know you guys are probably struggling with paying for all of it, and I-“

He sighs. “I don’t know if you’re doing something you don’t feel right with to help May. You should just know you guys can ask for help if you need it, alright? I mean, we’re not rich, but. We can help. You don’t have to kill yourself over this, Peter.”

You can’t kill what’s already dead, he thinks.

“I know, man, I know. It’s a lot, but-“Peter averts his eyes, gaze boring into the space between his thighs. “We’ll make it through, just like we did after Ben. We just gotta give it time.”

The words leave his mouth but still Peter wonders where he’ll really end up after this- After Gardner is in prison, or dead; after he puts some of the pieces he shattered back into place and steps back to look at it all just to realize he failed and there’s nothing left, no semblance of the original glass he’d shattered because it’s been so splintered, so pulverized into dust there’s no remanence of the original. It’s like he’s the Ship of Thesus; he can’t remain the same if no one remembers what the original looked like, and the more he stares at himself, the more Peter realizes that he doesn’t quite remember what things looked like before it all.

He wonders idly, numbly, if he’s removed himself from the world already, taken a whole bottle of Whiteout and poured it on his legacy, his history, his heritage.

He wonders if that would be such a bad thing, now.

“Peter, I have successfully breached the NYCDT’s traffic footage logs and downloaded the necessary footage. I’ll begin analysis right away.”

He’s shaken from the haze by Karen’s message and stands, unplugging the mask from the computer and slipping on as he spins to face Ned. “Thanks man, really. I appreciate the help.”

His best friend stands and wraps him in a tight hug, patting his back heavily. “Of course, dude. Text me, alright? Let me know if you need help. Or just to let me know you’re alive, or whatever.”

Peter squeezes him once, tries to feel for some sense of comfort, of nostalgia, of anything close to memory. There’s nothing there.

He slips out of the window and slings himself far, far into the sky, and gravity pulls him back down, just like it always has, inch by suffering inch. He holds on to the inevitability the whole swing back to the motel, simply to feel like there’s anything left to rely on.

Ю

Tony’s stuffing down the remnants of the green monstrosity Pepper had forced him to eat for lunch as his computer pings with an update. He nearly chokes; After the trail he tried following from the scene of the shooting turned up completely dry, he’d spent the remainder of the afternoon steeping in his own anxiety. He tosses the final wrinkled cranberry into his mouth and chews as FRIDAY narrates her findings.

“Boss, the AI in Peter’s suit just popped up. She was conducting a breach of the New York City Department of Traffic’s camera logs. The date of the downloaded footage corresponds with the day of the shooting, and covers nearly every route possible that a vehicle could have taken from the scene.”

The relief that floods Tony at the confirmation the kid’s still alive and clear of capture fills him with ravenous optimism. He slides the empty carton to the side and sighs, leaning forward to look over the summary. Over four terabytes of footage- It’s a hell of a lot to comb through, and is of absolutely zero use to him without a description of the vehicle in the first place. “FRI, start triangulating the exact spot where the breach took place. Also, get the Rouges into a meeting room. Natasha included.”

Tony pauses, dragging a hand down his face. The dread of dealing with Rogers again isn’t exactly desirable, but he needs their backup in case  threads they unravel in this mess prove too big to handle. Plus, whatever information they’ve dug up on the weapons trade going on in the city could prove useful.

He snags his half-empty bottle of Snapple and steels himself, stepping into the hallway. He’s met by Pepper, tapping one heeled toe in staccato and giving him her signature angry but only because I don’t want you to hurt yourself glare.

“Did you eat lunch?”

Tony nods and takes a swig of his drink. “Yes, mom. I ate my salad, got my veggies in. Can I go play in the park now?”

She rolls her eyes and takes a step closer, pulling his hand into hers and squeezing it lightly. “I eavesdropped. You’re meeting with the rogues again,” Pepper says, tracing the calluses on his palm. Her eyes are apprehensive, full of worry. “Leave if it gets heated, okay? Come find me if you need me. I’ll be in my office.”

Despite the multiplicity of roiling emotions in his stomach, the comfort Pepper gives him still makes him feel all warm and gooey. He doesn’t think he could fight the fires roaring around him presently without her here. “You got it, Pep.”

Tony pecks her on the cheek and spins on his heel, marching off towards the conference room, feeling steeled the whole way.

---

“So, in short, Tony, we’ve got next to nothing.”

Rogers is standing in the corner, looking exhausted and defeated. He’s slumped in on himself, and stares at the floor as he finishes up his presentation. “There’s loose strings everywhere, but so far only one of them that we’ve pulled has showed anything promising, and even that lead dried up after we followed the trail deeper. However these weapons are being circulated, it’s not centralized- There’s parties everywhere that came into possession of them one way or another, either by killing for them or fighting for scraps in the aftermath of Damage Control’s investigation. As far as we can tell, it’s just people trying for a quick paycheck.”

The Rogues all nod in agreement, sharing the universal weight of perceived failure. Tony’s sitting with his feet crossed atop the conference table, picking at the rubber on his chair. He raises his head and locks eyes with Steve through his sunglasses with curiosity. “That lead that dried up. Where’d it start? What was it?”

“Guy named Dominic Foaly got tagged by a rental company for a missing van. Turns out, bout’ half a day earlier, his bank account got a quarter mil wired into it. No one’s found the van, and he hasn’t touched that money since,” Sam says. He jerks a thumb towards Wanda, who hasn’t spoken a word since they all showed up in the Tower, and says “We worked top down for any similar transactions, looking for a pattern, but there was nothing. All the other sellers hadn’t made any big-time deals when we’d gotten to em’. It’s’ all five-figure or less transactions, never more than a handful of weapons.”

Tony scratches his jaw. “How deep did you probe into their banking info?”

“Six months,” Wanda says, pulling the cardigan she has wrapped over her shoulders tighter. “There was nothing. We could pinpoint the exact time they started selling, but the deals stayed consistent. They all stayed in the same range, no spikes. And if their testimonies are anything to go by, they never sold a large stock, either.”

Tony nods again. There’s suspicion still prickling at the nape of his neck like the tag of a cheap t-shirt, itching for him to prod a little deeper. “FRI, can you pull up the records for all the guys we’ve picked up so far?”

She complies, and the holoprojector in the middle of the table lights up, displaying the transaction history. “Filter out direct transfers lower than ten grand, then organize them by date.”

As the information shifts, a pattern starts to show up. In the last few weeks, the density of sales from all these guys has increased drastically- It jumps from a few every month to well over a dozen for each. Tony stands, feeling the thrill of finally biting into something substantial. “So why would all these dealers finally start selling in such massive quantities? They were obviously struggling to find a clientele so soon after the original bust- People are paranoid buying and using these weapons will get them caught. So who’s the new buyer, or buyers?”

Steve narrows his eyes at the data, combing through it. “What about Foaly, then? Why buy out such an enormous amount of stock from one person after buying smaller amounts from several? If they were trying to remain under the radar, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Tony stops and thinks back to earlier in the day when he’d stopped by the scene of the shooting. If his suspicion is right- If Peter was following these deals and the guys making them- This could be the lane the baddies used to lure him in. Increase the amount of sales to make the kid think something big is going down, then when a fresh lead pops up, they spring the trap.

“Boss, the triangulation just finished. Spider-Man’s AI accessed the network from a computer in an apartment in Midtown.”

He nearly trips over his own feet in the scramble towards the door, pausing briefly to jab a finger at Rogers. “We’re on the edge of something big here. Keep your ass parked in this tower, alright? When I call you, show up. Your gear’s in Sublevel 6. FRIDAY will show the way when it’s time.”

Tony barely catches Natasha’s smirk as the frosted glass glides shut behind him and he breaks into a sprint, barreling down the hallway. “FRI, get a car ready and loaded with directions to this apartment,” he shouts, pulling a sharp right at the elevators. He’s so, so close to finding Peter- So close to unravelling this whole mess.

All he’s got to do is keep it together until he gets there.

---

Tony raps his scarred knuckles on the door of apartment 311 with the same confusion that carried him through the lobby and up the elevator. He’d been expecting a secret lair, some hideout, not- This.

The confusion is multiplied sevenfold when a teenager wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and a red flannel in the peak of summertime cracks open the door and peers at him with rapidly widening eyes and says, breathlessly, “You’re Tony Stark.”

He nods because, yeah, he gets that a lot, especially from nerdish-looking teenagers. “Sure am. Say, one Peter B. Parker wouldn’t have happened to have been in this apartment using your personal computer, say, oh,” Tony looks down briefly at his watch before looking back up, “A few hours ago?”

The kid narrows his eyes, then, and nods. “Yeah. Come in.”

The apartment is nice; Lived in and lacking the gaudish tack-ons his own high rise boasts. There’s several books and paper strewn across the dining table, and a quick look tells him it’s all calculus. “I thought school got out already. Why’re you doing math homework?”

“Bored. Helps me think. Why’re you looking for Peter?”

Tony spins on a heel, shoving his hands into his jeans awkwardly. He sorely misses his sunglasses for this one, with the yet-unidentified teenager in front of him burning holes straight through his torso. “There’s a- Thing going on. I need his help.”

“A Spider-Man thing?”

He keeps Tony affixed with the same glare, arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, you know, then. Good.”

Tony’s grateful he can stop dancing around the coals on this one, and leans back against the table. “Look, Peter came here and used the AI in his suit to hack into the NYCDT’s traffic cam logs. I need to know what he was looking for,” he says, nails scratching against the hardwood. “By the way, I didn’t catch your name-“

“Leeds. Ned Leeds.”

Ned’s rooted to his spot, but his gaze diverts from Tony to the tile at his feet. “I don’t know where Peter was going. Or what he wanted the footage for. He just showed up, said he needed help, and I gave it to him. The only clue I got is that it might’ve been linked to those bodies that showed up in the Hudson.”

He sighs, and when his head raises this time the look he gives Tony is different, more desperate. “Mr. Stark, when Peter was here, he didn’t look good. His aunts been sick and-“ Ned shrugs, gaze dropping back to the floor. “I’m worried there’s something he’s not telling me. Something big. I think he might be in trouble.”

Meanwhile, in Tony’s head, alarm bells are clanging at a deafening volume, because the bodies in the Hudson just shoved a new sparkplug into his apparently misfiring brain. “Sorry, Ned. One sec.”

He whips out his phone and tosses it onto the table, tapping his watch. “FRI, that news broadcast the other day, with the bodies they found in the Hudson? What were the names of the victims?”

She pulls them up on the holographic display, matching names to mortuary pictures. In the background, Ned quietly says woah just as Tony says, “Crossmatch the list with the Rogue’s investigation and the Vulture case, and toss out any names that don’t match.”

He waits a second or two, well beyond the time it would take FRIDAY to update the list, and stares at it in confusion. “FRI? You there, dear?”

“All the victims in some way relate to the Rogue’s investigation or Mr. Toomes in some way, Boss. However, it is believed by investigators that Kevin Dulan and Dominic Foaly were both apprehended by Spider-Man at an earlier date, but were unaccounted for prior to the discovery of their bodies.”

Tony nearly chokes when his eyes hit the name Phineas Mason on the list. He’d been a suspect in the Vulture case early on, but there was no solid evidence he was guilty. If he’s popping up here, that means- Shit, that means Toomes could be starting up his empire from scratch, right from the safety of his own jailcell.

And Peter would be his number one target.

“Uh, Mr. Stark? What’s up?”

He grabs his phone off the table and spins, gripping Ned’s shoulder with on hand as he makes his way to the door. “I might’ve just figured out where Peter’s headed, and it’s not good. I’ll keep you up to date.”

Tony lets his hand slip from the kid’s shoulder and is nearly out of door when Ned yells, “Wait! Just- Make sure he’s okay. His aunt needs him.”

The tragedy of that statement makes the air heavier than he can afford, so he pulls as much of it into his lungs as he can and nods, letting the door slip shut behind him as he sprints his way down the stairs, racing against the tendrils of time threatening to pull him back.

“FRI, get me to Queens Detention Center, and fast.”

“Already got you, boss.”

A suit makes contact with the pavement just as he does, cracking itself open. As Tony slips inside and rockets off, leaving scorch marks where he once stood, the only instinct left in him is getting to Toomes fast enough for it to matter.

Ⴟ

Peter’s jerked from his nap when Karen finally finishes stitching together the truck’s route from the footage, alerting him with a ping through the mask. He drags himself from the bed and slips it on, yawning softly. “What’s up, K?”

“I believe I’ve tracked down the truck you’re looking for, Peter. Their route leads to an industrial area in Brooklyn. However, I am unsure of the exact location.”

He grunts and looks around the room, trying to decide on a course of action. It’s already midday-well past the exposure and heat of the afternoon- and swinging to Brooklyn will take him an hour at least. And, well, if Peter’s going to track down and break into a warehouse full of very well-armed people who fully intend to kill him, he may as well do it under the cover of darkness.

The Stark suit, after a scrub and a soak, is free of dried, crusted blood. It slides on easily, just like it always has, and he’s almost out of the window before Karen speaks up.

“Peter, if I could ask- What is our mission? Why are you seeking out this truck in particular?”

Her voice carries with it concern, something he doesn’t often hear from his AI. “If it’s to do with the weapons dealers we hunted earlier this month, I believe I may be of more assistance if you allowed me to patch into Mr. Stark’s network.”

Ever since initially breaking the Training Wheels Protocol, Karen’s been completely controlled by Peter. It’s a feature he figured Mr. Stark added in an attempt to preserve his sense of privacy- She doesn’t broadcast signals or enable trackers unless he tells her to. He’d kept her in the dark for all of this, never told her the full truth, and the implications of deceiving and limiting her access to information when she’s hyperadvanced and likely capable of real emotions add another poker chip of guilt to his steadily growing gambit.

Either Peter tells her now and clues Mr. Stark into his whole plan, all the evil, demented things he’s done, drags him away from the Accords and keeping a significant portion of the modern world afloat, or he doesn’t.

He lies like he has again and again, covers his tracks.

He goes with option B.

“Just closing up on a lead, K. Don’t link into Mr. Stark’s network, alright? I don’t want to bother him with this.”

She’s silent for a few moments. “Peter-“

“Trust me, Karen, I’m fine. We’re good.”

Karen is a very advanced artificial intelligence. She can parse and understand the nuances of human speech with near-perfect accuracy, and the haste with which Peter shoos away her assistance is more than concerning.

Computers run on code. Code isn’t supposed to misbehave- If Peter says he doesn’t want help, he doesn’t. She should follow that. But something is wrong.

Karen is advanced. And she knows when to misbehave.

So, as Peter slips from the window and into the ebbing summer heat, she does.

Ю

“What else do you know. I swear to God, Toomes, if you don’t answer me soon I will fly you express to the Raft and toss you in a cell until I get bored of watching you eat gruel. I need more than a name.”

Tony’s standing with his hands on the stainless steel interrogation table, Adrian Toomes sat across from him in shackles. “I already told you what I know, Stark. It’s the same thing I told the kid, too. All I’ve got is a name and some educated guesses.”

The Vulture shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “When Peter showed up here and dragged me out of my cell, he was in a bad way. Not just the gunshot wounds, he sounded so much more…”

Toomes scratches his neck before looking Tony in the eye and saying, “Twisted. Like someone just grabbed his head and wrung it out. He sounded all wrong, angry and numb. Nothing like he did before.”

Tony stares at the man across from him for a few seconds, bewildered by the genuine tone in his voice, before he himself speaks.

“There’s one more thing I’ve gotta ask you.”

“Hmm?”

Tony falls back into his chair, hands shoved into the pockets of his ratty jeans. “This Gardner guy. You said he’s the one buying up the weapons, that he put those bodies in the Hudson. Peter- And I, for that matter- had and still have every reason to suspect you’re the one behind this whole goddam mess. Why the hell should I believe there’s some kitted-up psycho hunting down Spider-Man instead of you?”

“Because Peter Parker did right by me.”

Toomes stares at the ground as he speaks, so quiet it’s barley over a mutter. “I did everything I did because I was desperate. I did it to feed my family, protect them. Raise up my daughter right. But as time went on, I did it more and more out of greed than anything else. That kid had every right to let me rot in some supermax in Colorado for what I’d done. But he didn’t.

“He chose to see something better in me, something that I couldn’t see for myself. I respect that. It takes courage to do the total opposite of what’s expected of you for the sake of it being moral.”

He looks to Tony. “I’m going to tell you something, and I’m going to trust that won’t use this information maliciously. Deal?”

A nod. “I don’t want my weapons out there. I knew they’ve been recirculating and spreading since I got locked up. I assume you know about the kid’s aunt?”

“She was sick. Died a few days ago.”

Toomes looks shaken by that, sighing. “Shit. Well, the point I was getting to is that Peter came to me a month or so ago and asked for a job. Said he’d do whatever needed doing as long as it got him enough money to help her out.”

“Wait, wait- Peter came to you willingly asking for help? The guy who dropped a building on his head?” Tony says, tone radiating disbelief.

“He was desperate,” Toomes replies. “So I gave him a branch. Paid him five figures in cash for every weapons dealer he busted and brought to Mason for me. My plan was never to kill em’, just slap them on the wrist and ship the weapons off to Damage Control. And it was working out fine, kid was getting the money he needed, til-“

“Til’ Peter took one to the leg, and your friend took one to the head right after?”

Tony stands, and there’s brimstone billowing at the heart of him. “Let me tell your ass something, Toomes. Gardner used you to get to Peter. I don’t know how he figured your deal out, but he manipulated the activity of several dealers to lure him into a trap that got two of your guys killed and left him bleeding and poisoned. You may not be the one hunting his ass down, but I’ll tell you one thing: You’re far from blameless.”

And neither am I.

He stands, throwing his chair to the side and storming from the room, sneakers squeaky against the horribly outdated checker floor. The chamber’s heavy steel door slams shut behind him and it’s as he’s making his way out of the back exit to his suit that FRIDAY pings him through his watch, softly vibrating.

Pushing his way into the sunlight, Tony jumps into the suit and takes himself to altitude before answering the ping. “Yeah, FRI, what’ve you got?”

“Boss, Karen just showed up in the network. She’s sending out an SOS. Peter’s in trouble.”

He’s already on the way to the coordinates- Some shitheap industrial yard in Brooklyn- as he says, “Give me vitals.”

Peter’s heartrate and bloodpressure are already red flags for a major puncture wound, and the basic medical scanners in the suit say he’s suffered a concussion. Tony’s throttling his boosters to max and pushing, pushing, but if he’s not there in the next ten minutes odds are the kid is going to bleed to death and there wouldn’t have been a thing he could’ve done to stop it but to try harder in the first place.

---

It’s on the third warehouse from the right when he catches another bullet to the arm.

And, really, if Peter’s being honest, he’s getting sick and tired of being shot. It’s painful and unfun and got dull after the tenth time and really has zero upsides.

Case in point: He misses a swing and crashes on the concrete, groaning as he pushes himself up.

There’s the sound of boots crunching on gravel and hurried yells coming around the side of the building; He barely flips out of the way of another round and behind the cover of a flatbed truck. Already he’s feeling more fatigued than he should, sluggish and slow, like the air’s all syrupy.

More gravel crunching under heavy feet. In one quick breath Peter springs out of cover and disarms two of the five (which is a lot in his current state, and the thought that there’s probably more is very concerning), webbing their arms to the ground. The remaining three raise their guns at him and he hauls ass to the right, spinning around a lamppost to generate momentum before propelling himself feet-first into two of the gunmen, knocking them to the ground.

The final is reaching for a radio that Peter snags right off his vest and smashes in one hand, clocking the guy in the head after his eyes widen in surprise. He tosses a web grenade into the pile they’ve formed, sliding into the space between the warehouses as he looks over the wound. It stings a hell of a lot more than the last two, and oozes constantly, soaking through the thick layer of webbing he sprays onto it with disconcerting haste.

Peter stands, wincing as a sharp pain shoots through his injured leg, and starts making his way toward the warehouse’s back entrance. The air is unusually still for Brooklyn, and if he wasn’t so preoccupied he might bask in it; the quiet feels rare, precious, a small escape from the war drums beating a constant, deafening tempo in his skull.

No time for peace and quiet now, though.

The door opens with a creak and he steps inside. The place is dusty and metallic, hazy beneath the glare of fluorescent lights overhead. He stays low and close to the wall, checking corners and side rooms and potential hidey holes only to find nothing. Peter curses silently under his breath and turns on a heel, expecting to make his way out of the warehouse to rethink his plan.

Instead, he’s met by the barrel of a gun being pressed against his temple.

Felix Gardner is easily well over six foot, with silt-colored eyes and dark black hair. His face is disturbingly neutral, robotic, and when he speaks it’s a monotone drawl. “Spider-Man. Glad you showed up.”

Peter doesn’t have time to quip; His dulled senses still pick up the steady creaking of metal as the gun’s trigger is depressed slightly, and just before it goes off he ducks, putting as much force into a gut punch as he’s able.

Gardner goes flying, skidding to a halt on the smooth cement floor before pushing himself up with a groan. “Goddam. Fisk said you’d be a pain to deal with, but I still didn’t think I’d have to go through all this fucking trouble.”

He fires off three shots that Peter just barely manages to dodge, rolling sideways before springing into a jump and landing in the rafters. His whole body feels like it’s on fire- like every molecule’s been char-broiled with a butane torch and he’s left smoking. He shoots off a few strands of web that land nowhere, and as another bullet catches him in the side he tumbles, tumbles, lands with a thwack on the ground and a wail of pain. The world spins around him in seven different colors, and-

---

“Boss, his vitals are dropping fast! He just got hit again!”

“Goddamit! FRI, put everything into boosters! I don’t care if I have to keep this fucking suit moving myself, I need to get there now!”

---

Everything is white-hot pain, but he still stands, blood seeping from his torso as Gardner creeps closer, dropping the mag from his weapon. “Specialty-made rounds, laced with a pesticide. Should make you feel pretty tuckered out, huh?”

The magazine clacks as it slides into the magwell, and he’s being slow with racking the slide-

---

“Impact in ten, Boss!”

Tony’s on the edge of hyperventilating, but he keeps it together, holds himself from shattering because he’s right there, he’s-

---

A new round slides into the chamber and Peter looks the man in the eye, and the moment reminds him so much of Ben it hurts, hurts so much more than the poison and bulletholes-

---

He crashes through the warehouse’s ceiling in an explosion of aluminum and glass and dust and pure, fireborn rage. The world around him is chaos but FRIDAY’s already got thermals queued up and searching, and that’s when he hears the yelling-

“When the hell do you people just quit!”

-And there’s a man holding a gun and he’s aiming it, raising it with one arm and aiming directly at Peter’s head.

“Kid!”

The math flashes through his head subconsciously and he knows there’s no way he’ll make it, that he was a second too late and now Peter will die for it.

Instead, though, a few things happen in quick succession:

One, Natasha Romanov appears at the warehouse’s back door;

Two, Felix Gardner falls to the ground with a grunt, a red pool filling the ground beneath his chest;

And three, a half-dead Peter Parker looks between them both, blinks, then collapses in a heap of limbs and debris.

Tony reaches him first, already out of the suit, and his shirt is soaked with blood as he gathers the kid into his arms. “Pete? Hey, Peter, you with us, kiddo? FRI, med scan!”

Natasha holsters her weapon and makes her way towards them, limp only mildly slowing her down. “I was in the area checking up on leads when FRIDAY sent out the alert. The others are on the way.”

“Boss, Peter has lost a lot of blood. The deltamethrin concentration in his bloodstream is also concerning. It has severely impaired his advanced healing capabilities. We need to get him a medic right away.”

“Okay, shit. Shit. FRI, can I fly him? Is he stable?”

Tony’s voice is beyond shaky, it’s the sway of a bridge with a whole match-step army marching across it, everything is shaking and bending and breaking, he’s breaking, because he was so close but still wasn’t fast enough.

“I wouldn’t advise it, Boss. Peter already has a concussion, and given his blood loss, flying at altitude could be dangerous.”

The world is crumbling around him, dissolving into blackened ash like burned wood, and he looks to the woman across from him who’s practically a sister and lets himself crack and shatter before her, pure desperation leaking from the fissures, desperate for salvation.

“I took one of your Lambos,” Nat says, shucking off her jacket and taking a knee on her good leg, putting pressure on the wound in Peter’s side. “Ill get us back to the tower in ten minutes flat.”

She talks with a hardened tone, the one she uses to hold things together because she’s tempered, tested; the one she uses when the option of failure is staring her in the face and she refuses to accept it, opting instead for relentless will in the face of insurmountable odds.

It steels him, fills in the cracks and splits just enough to let him heave all the splintered parts of himself back together into one heaping, half-functioning mass.

Tony looks Nat in the eye and nods, putting pressure on the weeping wound in Peter’s side and hefting him up in a bridal carry, finally doing what he should’ve done ages ago in that damn courthouse.

He chooses to be there.

Chapter Text

Cars and pedestrians pass in colorless blurs beyond the windows as Natasha speeds through the post rush hour traffic-not-traffic amalgam that perpetually clogs the streets of New York City. She swerves to avoid an SUV, and not even the ten seconds of honking that follow make Tony look up from the kid in his lap.

His blood-covered hands are shaking as he presses her jacket into the wound, and it’s impossible to tell if the tremors are from his panic-attack-in-progress or the pure force he applies, trying to stem the constant pulse of gore with rapidly deteriorating levels of success.

“He’ll be fine, Tony. We got there in time, alright? We got the kid. This isn’t your fault.”

He doesn’t look up, doesn’t even blink, just sucks in air two breaths at a time and stares, stares, stares.

Another swerve. Natasha lays on the horn and pulls the handbrake as she makes a sharp ninety-degree turn onto the final stretch of road before the tower, grateful the constant stream of cars has finally let up as she lays on the gas.

“I should’ve been there, Nat.”

He’s carding his hands through Peter’s hair, and the remorse etched into every feature of him glares so bright it’s painful, like staring into the middle of a floodlight.

“Tony-“

“No. There isn’t an excuse this time, there’s-“ Tony almost laughs, nearly cackles, but it comes out as a choked sob instead. “Jesus Christ, he’s alive because of a fluke, Natasha. If his AI hadn’t pinged me, if you didn’t show up when you did-Five seconds in either direction and he’d be dead. I let my own narcissism and self-centered hero bullshit get in the way of me being in the kid’s life and- and-“

There’s tears streaming down his face and he sobs again, he’s broken, he’s a shattered statuette that’d been patched up with wax and he’s melting under the sun, pieces falling to the ground and shattering to dust. “This is all my fault.”

Natasha wants, needs to rebut that, needs to knock some sense into him and tell him he’s wrong, he’s done all he could in the face of horrifying circumstance, but there’s no time. She stops at the curb with a skid, jumping out of the driver’s seat.

Helen Cho and her brigade of doctors and nurses and probably every medically qualified individual she could find are standing ready with a gurney and IV bags full of blood, and event despite the preparations her face blanches when Natasha opens the right-side passenger door and she sees a seventeen year old kid on the verge of achromatism splayed across Tony Stark’s lap.

“What am I dealing with?”

The truth is that Nat really doesn’t know; It’s not like Tony’s been forthright about details, and if Peter is this injured, it’s likely they’re not your run-of-the-mill bullets.

It’s not until the kid is out of his lap that Tony finally seems to jerk back into reality, pushing himself out of the crimson-stained seat. He leaves a bloody handprint on the door as he slams it shut and steps onto the concrete, pulling a small plastic bag out of his back pocket. “They’re specialty rounds. DU-Adamantium alloy, coated in a pesticide. He’s got spider DNA spliced into his own. FRIDAY thinks the interaction between the two is what’s stalling his healing factor.”

The coat he’d been using to staunch the flow of viscera is left abandoned on the curb, the corduroy making a sickening splat as it hits the ground.

Natasha has seen a lot of majorly fucked things in her life, but the image of Tony Stark staring down at a three-quarters-dead teenage superhero who’s blood he’s soaked in, looking for all intents and purposes as though he’s died and left a vanquished husk in his place- That might top the charts.

The brief lap of silence they’d tumbled into is broken when Helen snaps her fingers in front of Tony’s face and grabs his chin, making sure he looks her eye. “I will save this child, Stark. But I’m going to need every ounce of help you can give me.”

“You and your team have clearance to all of FRIDAY’s data on him, access to the whole Tower, all of it. Just,”

Tony pulls her hand away and squeezes it in his own, and his expression snaps from hollow dread to vicious ferocity so rapidly it leaves everyone blinking. “Just, whatever you have to do, save this fucking kid. Whatever it takes.”

The gurney’s wheels click and shake on the gaps in the concrete before the team passes into the lobby, and he’s left swaying there in the wind like a dried leaf, and even though there’s roots keeping him there, bound to earth and soil, he wants so dearly to just break off and float away.

“Tony.”

Nat’s standing in front on him, holding out her hand, and in her irises he can see the desperation, sea-green and begging him to stay grounded in the present. “You here with me?”

And he has to really take a second to think about that question, to stop the loop of guilt and sorrow and so many other awful, evil, venomous things chewing their way through his head and actually consider where he is.

So much shit has gone colossally wrong in the last week that he feels he’s been displaced, picked up and dropped off in some alternate universe where everything succeeded in collapsing with such speed and force that there was no time for him to consider which way was up before he was dead in the water. So, in a desperate attempt at planting his feet on solid ground, he takes Nat’s hand and nods, breathing deeply and trying desperately to ignore the metallic sting of fresh blood in the air.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

They stand there for a few seconds, basking in the aftermath, the falling action of it all. Already pedestrians are crowding into the road to get a closer look, and the thought that someone could’ve snapped a picture of Peter’s face barges its way into his head. He’ll have to get FRIDAY to trawl for that before things spiral even more.

As Tony starts to calm she drags them both towards the lobby’s swinging glass doors, and he really can’t protest- The less the storm brewing inside him howls the more he processes the awful sensation of gore coating him, and the only thing he wants more than the kid to be alright is a boiling hot shower and a fresh pair of sweatpants.

As they skirt around the edges of a rapidly forming crowd, Tony tries and fails to ignore the trail of blood cutting straight across the lobby. Nat pulls him along like a reluctant puppy on a leash until they reach the elevator leading to the medbay, and as the doors seal and push out all the noise the only thing that’s left is the relentless tapping of his sneakers against the mirrored marble floor.

Natasha’s combing through her brain and trying to remember the last time she’d seen Tony have a full-blown panic attack when she realizes she can’t. Even under unimaginable pressure he’s not the type of person to be vulnerable in front of others, even those he trusts. She worries that all these compounding factors- The rogues suddenly showing back up in his life, the Accords, his alcoholism, Peter, everything-She worries they’ve broken through his iron skin, that his mettle wasn’t enough for the perfect shitstorm it’d all steeped together to form.

She rubs her thumb against their intertwined fingers as she thinks of something useful to say, coming up blank. It’s uncommon for Nat to be speechless; After all, she’s spent her entire life learning every nuance and intricacy of human speech. But something about Tony just locks her up.

She figures some people might call that trust, but who could really say for certain.

So, instead of trying to generate some half-assed assurance for the sake of giving him some ground to stand on, Nat stares out at the steadily darkening New York skyline and lets out a breathy sigh.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

Tony’s staring at a splotch of blood on his shoe, face twisted. At her confusion, he elaborates, “A few days ago, back when this all started, I told you I didn’t think I could make amends with the Rogues, or Pep, or anyone. I-“ He closes his eyes, lids lilting shut. “I said all my empathy was just poof, gone. And-“

“I said you just think you don’t deserve to care for people anymore, Tony. I remember.”

Nat leans her head against his shoulder. “Are you still afraid of that? That you don’t deserve having people to care for?”

“No. No, I’m,” Tony opens his eyes and looks over to her, and his pupils are a whirlwind of mixed emotions, hope and anger and sadness and fear all blending from flint-grey irises. “God, Nat. I’m terrified of what thinking that means for me. I mean, Jesus, Peter’s bleeding out on an operating table up there, and- And I care for him so much, and I always have, and I just never wanted to accept it. What if I close off again? What happens when I decide I’m too much of a burden to him, or you, or Pep, or anyone? When someone finally sees how much of a fuckup I am?”

She doesn’t even take a moment to process the entire monologue before slapping him on the arm with a little more force than necessary. “You’re not a fuckup, Tony. You’re a human being with trauma and mistakes and flaws. With the amount of shits you give about every person alive on this planet, of course you’ll be petrified of actually showing just how much you care.”

Wrapping both arms around his torso, Nat pulls him close. “Not every choice we make is a good one. Sometimes we’re selfish, angry. Sometimes we do things because we’re afraid- Bad things. Even heroes fail, sometimes, at upholding whatever rigid moral structure that’s expected of us. It’s never black and white.”

They’re both quiet for a while after that, and as the elevator creeps up, and it’s Tony who breaks the silence just as they’re about to reach the medbay, his tone a confounding mix of dire uncertainty and skeptical optimism. “Do you think Peter even wants me in his life, after all this?”

“I think you need each other, actually. Even if you haven’t realized it yet.”

He scratches his collarbone, staring at the floor indicator as the number ticks steadily higher. Contemplates. “I don’t know if I can do it, Nat. Be there for him. I-“ He huffs out part of a chuckle, the end choked off bitterly.  “I can barely even be there for myself.”

“Tony-“ She sighs, taking a step back. “I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to get all guilt trippy about it, alright?”

As he looks up and nods, she continues. “I had FRIDAY read me the file she’s built up on Peter on my way over to the warehouse. He doesn’t have anyone else. You? You’re the last chance he’s got at a normal life. We all are.”

Nat grips his shoulder, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Tony, you have a whole network of people who are here to help you piece yourself back together. You have me, Pepper, Rhodey, all of us. The kid-“ She herself looks to the ground, now, at the flecks of dried blood marring the shining stone. “He’s got nothing. And that’s not your fault.

“You can still think you should’ve been there. Hell, any of us should have. He’s barely sixteen and he’s helping stave off the destruction of New York every weekend. But this- His aunt, the hit, all of it? It’s not on you.”

As the elevator pings and the doors slide open, she finishes with: “You can choose to let those burdens fall on your back, or you can shrug them off and fight with all you’ve got to help this kid. And that’s your choice to make.”

Tony gives her one final stare, and it’s all or nothing, sink or swim, life or death. “Can I trust you, Nat? To be there?”

“Of course. I’ll do whatever it takes to help that kid. And I- I won’t abandon you again. Not now. I swear on that.”

And as they step out into the lobby, Tony realizes that the sardonic ballad that’d been playing unabated since Siberia has finally begun to quiet. He realizes, with a deluge of shock and awe, that this is finally the time to hope.

ϒ

Steve Rogers stands over the body of a man he doesn’t know and tries very, very hard to figure out a next step.

The warehouse is in ruins; The brief FRIDAY had given them wasn’t exactly substantial, but apparently Tony had careened straight through the roof, leaving the majority of the floorspace covered in chunks of concrete and parts of steel beams. Still intact, though, is the eastern portion, where Wanda and Sam are picking through a breakroom that’d been outfitted into an operations hub, scouring for any evidence they can get their hands on.

He kneels and picks up the man’s sidearm. It’s a standard M9- Aside from the specialty ammo loaded into its’ chamber, it doesn’t appear to be modified. Dropping the gun into an evidence bag, Steve makes his way over to the breakroom, poking his head inside. “What’ve we got?”

“A single computer tower, several laptops, radios, and a lockbox,” Sam says, dropping said box atop a nearby folding table with a grunt. “Wanda’s working on the biggest drive’s encryption. Mind giving me a hand with this?”

Steve nods, stepping through the threshold. He takes the padlock in one hand, squeezes, and yanks, breaking off the shackle like it’s made of plastic. Sam shakes his head in amusement before opening the lid and peering inside.

It’s a rifle- A big one, too. He pulls it out and sets it on the table, alongside two magazines. “Jesus. Whatever they were gonna use this for, it was some serious business,” Sam says, picking up a magazine and popping out one of its rounds. “.375 H&H. Looks like it’s the same alloy as the other bullets, too. If this was what they were gonna use to take out that spider kid, they took a safe bet.”

“What about the weapon? Is it modified?”

Sam swaps his attention to it, pulling the rifle’s bolt and peering inside. He picks it up, feeling the weight. “I’m no sniper, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s custom. .375 H&H is a hunting round- It’s used on big game, buffalo and bears. This thing is made to be used in the field, not out on the plains.”

With a hum, Steve crosses his arms and leans against the table. “FRIDAY said this guy’s hired muscle. Where the hell are all his henchmen? There’s too much gear here for him to have been working alone.”

“He wasn’t.”

Wanda turns a computer monitor toward them, looking over her shoulder. The screen displays passport photos of seven different men and a full resume’s worth of information under each, detailing specialties ranging from medic to marksman. “Wherever all these guys are, they must have gotten away in the middle of the fight, or were never here to begin with. There could be a whole squad waiting to attack Spider-Man the second he pops out in the open.”

“Wait, wait,” Sam says, setting down the rifle and pointing toward the monitor. “Seven guys. This whole mess started with the shooting, right? FRIDAY said there were two perps that were webbed up at the scene when the cops got there. What’re the odds they were a part of this squad? Why’d we never even consider interrogating them?”

Steve sighs, cursing under his breath. “They didn’t show up in any databases. We just assumed they were street muscle and waved them off as a waste of time.”

He pulls a phone from his back pocket, unlocking it. “FRIDAY, where are the two guys that were arrested at the scene of the Spider-Man shooting? They still in lockup?”

After a moment, she replies, “Mr. Rogers, the NYPD doesn’t have anyone matching their description booked. Security footage doesn’t show them going through ingest, either. They were never even taken to prison.”

Silence passes over the three of them, a sense of foreboding steadily rising. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Steve says. “Why let them pop up in the investigation then let them go? If whoever ordered this hit has the resources to pay off officers in the NYPD, then the cops who showed up to that crimescene didn’t show up there off a 911 call. They were the cleanup crew.”

“Because they wanted to lead us on,” Sam replies, kicking one of the table’s legs in frustration. “They’ve been burying the truth this whole time. We would’ve been more suspicious if there was just a single body there- The more leads you add, the more difficult it is to follow any of them.  We got played, and played hard.”

“Steve, what do we do? The city is enormous, and we don’t have any clues. They could be anywhere,” Wanda says, spinning to face them both.

He contemplates that for a second before replying. “True, but we have the upper hand. Unless they have another cache of supplies somewhere else, this is their entire stockpile. We play the advantage, wait for them to show up here to restock and investigate, then spring a trap.”

Sam kicks off and heads for the door. “I’ll grab our gear. Let’s nab these fuckers before they give us even more of a headache.”

Turning to Wanda, Steve says, “Go with him. I’ve got to update Tony and Nat on our plan and forward them the data on these drives.”

As she leaves, he looks down to the phone in his hands with undue nerves. He had never planned to show back up in Tony’s life like this- Steve knows he’s headstrong, but he tries not be outright malicious. The state he left things was far from positive. He knows helping with Spider-Man, catching whoever’s behind this ordeal, won’t fix any of the mistakes he’d made. And, really, there’s no world where he deserves to have them fixed.

But if he can show even a scrap of good faith, and do some good along the way? He’ll take whatever chance he can get.

ϒ

Nat’s head is slumped against Tony’s shoulder as he snores, his chin dipped to meet his collarbone. She’s guessing he hasn’t slept in well over three days, and despite the urgency required for their current predicament, he agreed a bit (“Fine, Nat, a tiny bit, just a morsel of slumber,”) of rest would do them both some good.

Steve had called with an update half an hour ago, and as she watches second hand pass twelve with all the lethargic grace of a dying snail, the time they’d been waiting for an update slips into two hours. Nat’s not surprised- She’s seen gunshot wounds before, lots and lots of gunshot wounds, but Peter might be the worst. However they made those bullets, those things messed the kid up bad.

As she’s readjusting in her seat, Helen Cho emerges from the sliding doors across the hall, pulling off her surgical gown as she approaches.

Elbowing Tony, Nat stands, arms crossed over her chest. “How’s it looking?”

As the genius stirs, Cho discards the robe, pulling a tablet from it’s charging port on the desk. “He’s… Alive. The deltamethrin concentration in his blood is more than alarming, though. It’s impairing his healing factor too much.”

Blinking owlishly, Tony leans forward, forearms resting on his knees, and looks to Cho. “What do you mean by ‘too much?’ will the damage be permanent?”

“No, likely not. But Tony- It’s bad. His body is fighting back several infections simultaneously without the proper resources to do so. I just finished cleaning out and stitching up what I can, and my team is working on filtering the toxins from his blood.”

With a heavy sigh, the doctor sits perpendicularly from them both, setting her tablet to the side. “I’m making it sound more grim than it is. As it stands, he will live, and, so long as we’re vigilant about his infections and other injuries, make a full recovery.”

Tony’s gaze is stapled to the wall, and he feels so, so small when Cho says: “You need to call this kid’s family, whoever they are. He’ll need as much help as he can get.”

A beat, two, three. They share the silence but the weight split between them all isn’t even, because Nat knows that they’re the only semblance of family he has left, and Tony holds the burden of that truth like a lead cloak, and Cho is the outsider looking in, one of thousands, millions, billions who don’t know the tragedy of what’s happened here, who have no clue what weight this cataclysm brings.

He’s the one to say it, because if he doesn’t, who will?

“The kid’s aunt is dead. His whole family is. We’re all that’s left.”

Helen Cho’s been with the Avengers a long time. She’s saved all of them plenty of times, too, and she’s seen them close to loss, seen them experience it; Hell, she’s seen it everywhere, because in her line of work there aren’t always happy endings, no matter how much high-tech science she employs. But the abject sorrow in Tony Stark’s voice when he utters those words- That’s something she’s never come close to experiencing.

“My statement holds, then. He needs all the help he can get. And if we’re the only ones that can give it to him, well-“

“We fight for it,” Nat says. “No matter what. We’ll fight for this kid.”

Cho nods, brushing off her scrubs as she stands. “That’s what I thought. I’m going to check on my team’s progress. I’ll keep you both updated.”

As she leaves, Nat’s eyes stay locked on the door, arms crossed over her chest. “Do you know I have a sister, Tony?”

At that he raises his head, and the look her gives her is heavy with exhaustion and, now, outright confusion. “No. I thought your family abandoned you when you were a kid.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” She says, pivoting in her seat. She raises her knees up to her chin and rests her head on them, gaze fixated on the opposing wall. “Until I was eleven, I lived with a Russian sleeper cell in Idaho. My sister- Yelena- was… Adopted, I guess. She never found out who her family was, the government burnt her birth certificate.”

Nat shifts, picking at the leather of her seat idly. “One day, our mission ended. Yelena and I were split up, the twisted facsimile of a family I’d been living with disintegrated, and I ended up back where I’d started.

“A couple months back, just before the Raft breakout, I had some- Pertinent issues to deal with. Anyway, it turns out, my parents didn’t abandon me. I was taken, and they were paid off. Even after all of it, my mom kept looking for me, til’ they had her executed.”

Tony nods, looking down at his hands. “I’m sorry, Nat. That’s awful.”

She hums in agreement, letting quiet fill in the space between her words before she says, “It is. But finding that out-that I wasn’t just tossed out, I had people caring for me? It made me realize every family I’d had, even the con of one I’d grown up in Idaho with, mattered. My sister, even if she wasn’t blood, mattered. Because I care about them and they care about me.”

Tony looks over at her and knows exactly what she means, because this woman is his sister, too, in the same way Steve Rogers was his brother and Jarvis was his father and the way Peter might as well be his kid with the quantity of love he feels, with the way he can say with certainty that it’s not blood that makes family, it’s connection. It’s knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that they’re people you’d fight for, care for, live for.

Raising her head, Nat finally locks eyes with him. “I barely even know this kid and I’m already all in, Tony. Just from the way you act when someone says his name, I know he’s worth it.”

As the sun passes below New York City’s skyline and burnt orange light filters through the windows, he leans his head back against the wall and stares at the ceiling, and he lets a small, fragile smile creep up the corners of his lips. “Yeah. He is. He really is.”

Their serenity is interrupted when FRIDAY’s voice emanates from the speakers, perfectly crisp despite the volume of the room. “Boss, the Rogues just called in. The trap worked. They have a member of Gardner’s squad in custody. Do you want him to be brought to the Tower?”

“Nah, FRI. Get a suit ready. I’ll fly over.”

Tony stands, turning to Nat. “Mind holding down the fort while I’m gone?”

She sighs with exaggerated gravitas, sliding one of the pre-placed magazines off the table next to her and into her lap, flicking through the pages as she says, “I’ll keep the place from exploding. Go find out who hurt our kid.”

ϒ

Tony lands with a crunch on the gravel, letting his helmet retract as he approaches the Rogues. “What’ve we got, Rogers?”

Cap turns, arms crossed over his chest, and jerks his chin to the guy kneeling and in handcuffs as he says, “Caught him in the warehouse looking for the drives we took earlier today. Hasn’t said a word yet, though.”

Tony hums, dropping to one knee. The man continues to look at the ground, but Tony stares down the guy’s forehead, hoping his gaze conveys the same severity as his tone as he says, “I want you to answer one question before we throw you in prison for the rest of your life: Who ordered the hit on Spider-Man?”

He stays silent, frustratingly so, and out of steadily building frustration Tony grabs his chin with one gauntleted hand and lifts it until their eyes meet. “Your boss is dead, in case you didn’t know. I have some of the most advanced cryptology tech in the world breaking open your drives and, if you were trying to nab them before getting the hell out of dodge, I’d guess they have some valuable info. So again, I will ask you to spare me the trouble and tell me who you work for.”

“I worked for Felix Gardner. We were his crew. We aren’t told specifics because it’s not our job. We just do what the boss tells us to and hope we don’t end up dead at the end. I don’t have a goddam clue who the client was.”

The guy sounds surprisingly tired, bitter, like he was already exhausted of this whole fiasco before it even started. “I was trying to get those drives because that’s always been the fallout plan. I don’t even know the whole of what’s on them, but if I had to guess, it’s enough to get me and the rest of our team  killed, probably by whoever hired us.”

Tony scratches his jaw and sits on that idea. If Gardner’s team didn’t even know who they were working for, the information on those drives could unearth some very, very big problems. Anyone who’s able to hire a hit squad this covert and connected is not only rich, they’re also extremely powerful. Whatever scheme they’ve surfaced here, it’s not going to go down without turning a few heads.

He turns to Steve and lets his helmet fall back into place. “We’ve gotten all we can out of this guy. Box him up and bring him back to the Tower.”

“Tony, we can’t just hold a man in prison extrajudicially. He needs to go to a precinct.”

God. More problems. Fantastic. “We send this guy and all the other guys to a normal prison, they either break out or get their heads caved in by whatever twisted 1930s mafia conspiracy is happening here. I’ll call Hill and get her to deal with them afterward. For now, we need control.”

They have a staring match for a solid ten seconds before Cap relents, nodding to Sam. As they haul the assassin onto his feet and drag him off to a truck, Tony looks to Wanda and asks, “You pick up anything with your wibbly-wobbly brain stuff?”

She looks at him like he’s some kind of alien before replying, voice low. “No, Stark. I don’t read minds anymore. Not without consent, at least,” She says, looking down as she grinds one toe into the gravel. “By the way, ah- How’s Spider-Man? Nat said it was… Bad.”

He snorts. “Yeah. Bad. Swiss cheese has less holes than him,” Tony says, tone half-sarcastic but still dripping with guilt and melancholy. “He lost a lot of blood, and he’s been poisoned. Cho thinks he’ll be alright, but. It won’t be an easy fight.”

With a hum, Wanda meets his eye, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket. “You know, he’s most of the reason I’m staying. He can’t be older than eighteen and that’s-“

“Too close to the age you started fighting?”

A nod. “I know the circumstances are different, but… I volunteered to be experimented on, have my powers enhanced, because I felt like I had a duty to something. My family, myself, my country, maybe. I understand what it’s like to need to fight for something.”

Tony nearly lets a sigh slip out of him from the relief of knowing there’s more than a handful of people who know what Peter’s faced beyond the artificiality of a quick recap, instead letting his body relax a bit, even though the loss of tension is impalpable through his suit. “He’ll need every bit of help he can get, Wanda. Thanks for sticking around.”

As he fires his boosters and sails off toward the Tower, Tony tries to sift the muck out of his thoughts, tries to figure out if it’s optimism or vitriolic dread that’s making his stomach do triple-fulls like it’s a goddam gymnastics mat.

He decides it’s both.

ϒ

Nat’s halfway through her second issue of People (‘Tension at the royal palace’, of course, because when are the royals not prime entertainment?) when the medbay doors slide open and Cho peeks out, a labcoat thrown over her surgical scrubs.

“He’s out of surgery. We’ve got him in a medically induced coma for the time being while his body fixes some internal damages, but if you want to see him-“

She’s already on her feet before Helen finishes speaking, magazine left open and abandoned on the floor. “Where is he?”

Cho gestures for her to follow, and Nat hurries down the hall, sidling up next to the doctor as they make their way past sterile walls and tile flooring. Doors pass one by one until they’re at Peter’s, and Cho turns to face her before they go in.

“Natasha, you should know… He doesn’t look great right now. Cycling all the toxins out of his blood took over an hour and we still weren’t entirely successful. There’s a good chance he might not be awake for another few days,” She says, hands clasped against her waist.

There’s a few seconds where Nat mulls over that, how close they came to not saving this kid, how another few seconds or minutes or a single step in the wrong direction would’ve meant standing in front of a mortuary fridge instead of a hospital room.

Eventually,  though, she packages the terror away and summons all the strength and willpower she’s got left, and when the door finally slides open, she needs all of it just to stay standing.

Peter’s so pallid that he barely even looks alive, skin greyed to the point it matches the sheets he’s laying on. The tendrils of several machines emanate from his body, all whirring and blinking, and the shock of it all is catastrophic.

Sitting down slowly into a bedside chair, Nat takes it all in. The only way to describe him is battered. Every inch of his body is host to a cut or bruise or bandage, and his hair is matted down to his forehead, knotted from an excess of blood and sweat and neglect. It’s only made worse by the fact that there’s not a grain of stubble on his face, and he looks so damn young that it crushes her, the reality of it all coming into even starker focus.

“Cho, FRIDAY told me he was out of surgery-“

Speaking of Stark, Tony rounds the corner just as Helen turns to leave, and is stopped dead in his tracks when he sees Peter, the abject horror of it hitting him even stronger than it did Nat.

“God, Pete…”

Cho takes her leave as he slides past her, collapsing into a seat next to Nat. As the door slides closed, he grasps Peter’s hand in his own, eyes scanning over the multitude of injuries peppering the kid’s body.

Nat leans forward, hands clasped at her knees out of fear that Peter will shatter if she lays a hand on him. “Cho said he might be out for a few more days. There’s still some deltamethrin lingering in his system.”

At the lack of a reply, she turns, trying to meet his eye. “Tony-“

“Don’t, Nat. Not right now.”

He sounds tired, so tired, and when he closes his eyes and sighs it sounds like Notos blowing rainswept winds across the Earth, weighty and humid with sorrow. “Every time I start feeling optimistic I realize just how fucked this all is. I mean, look at him.”

Tony gestures to Peter’s face, and his expression is full of so much melancholia the pure mass of it presses down on her, on both of them, weighs them down to the soil and forces them to acknowledge the truth laying half-dead in front of them. “The kid isn’t even eighteen and he’s been shot more times than I have fingers. He’s a twice-over orphan and he’s stuck here dying because some goddam psycho wanted him in the ground. This isn’t just unfair, this is- Christ, it’s weighted odds, Nat. No one deserves this much pain. Especially not someone as good as Peter.”

They steep in that for a moment until Peter stirs and, to the shock of them both, speaks.

“I’m Murphy’s Law in the flesh, Mr. Stark.”

Nat and Tony both stare wide-eyed as Peter cracks open an eye of his own, looking between them both. “What? They have weak anesthesia.”

He pushes himself up on bruised elbows with a grunt, trying to blink away the tiredness in his eyes. “You guys got any Dasani?”

“Peter, what- How the hell are you awake? You just got out of surgery less than fifteen minutes ago. Cho said your body’s still fixing all the holes in you,” Tony says in disbelief.

A shrug. “Super metabolism. Also, it doesn’t have to be Dasani, just, y’know, always parched after getting shot-”

Looking to his right, Tony jerks a thumb to the door. “Nat, would you…?”

Tony finishes off his request with a look that mostly says give us some space with a hint of get him Fiji, no one in their right mind drinks Dasani, and she nods before stepping out of the room.

Tony really doesn’t know where to start. His head had been packed with all the things he wanted to say- Apologies, promises, acquitments- But with just the two of them here, crammed into this dead silent hospital room, everything in his skull gets flushed out, and he’s left speechless, grasping for anything meaningful.

“Mr. Stark, you should know, uh. Before you say anything, this was my fault. I did some- Man, some really bad things, and it ended up with this whole mess, and I’m sorry I dragged you into this-“

“Kid, stop yammering for a sec.”

Peter’s fingers play with the edge of his blanket after he stops speaking, his eyes downcast. Tony twists the watch on his wrist as he looks at him, feels the guilt and self-loathing radiating off kid’s very being, and he can’t stand it.

“Toomes already told me what you’ve been up to. I’m not mad and- And it’s not your fault. There’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent this.”

Something close to a scoff. “What do you mean? Four people are dead because of me. Me. If I hadn’t gone out of my way for that money, those people would still be alive,” Peter says, his voice coated in vile, bitter hatred, the rage against himself pouring out in a constant stream. “If I had just- Done better, then none of this would have happened.”

Tony can sense what the finale of his tirade actually meant: If I had done better, then May would still be alive.

“Peter, can you look at me, kiddo?”

Reluctantly he does, and Tony does looks at him in turn, putting everything he can into making his gaze read forgiving and protective and all the soft and gooey things he doesn’t entirely know how to do instead of hardened and iron-plated, because he can’t afford to be closed off right now. “Felix Gardner, the man who shot you? He set up all those people, including Mason, to lure you in. You were the target of an assassination, Peter. The psycho killed them to tie up loose ends.”

“Wha- I don’t- Why me? Why now?” He says, confused.

Tony reluctantly shrugs, because he honestly doesn’t have much of an answer. “I don’t know, kid. The only clue we’ve got is that the baddie’s big. Big enough to hire some of the best hitmen on the planet and control a significant chunk of the NYPD.”

He leans forward, and there’s a bit of remorse leaking into his eyes, now, as he moves away from the shop talk. “Kid, I- Karen, your suit AI, was the one who told me where you were. I was all the way in Queens when I got the call. If I had shown up thirty seconds late, if Nat hadn’t  gotten there when she did- You’d be dead. You’re alive because of a fluke and I can’t even begin to explain how much I regret not being there for you when I should’ve been.”

Peter’s quiet for a moment, looks back down at his hands, picks away at some dry skin on his palm. “I stayed away from you because I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me after the Vulture, Mr. Stark. It’s- It’s not your fault you weren’t there. I just didn’t want to bother you,” He says, voice a low mumble.

And if that’s not the most heart-wrenching thing, that the kid thought asking for help when he absolutely, unequivocally needed it constituted bothering him, Tony doesn’t know what is. “That’s not it at all. Pete, I wasn’t…”

He tries to figure out what to say, but comes up blank. His head offers nothing, just a void of absentee thought, so he just starts talking and hopes it makes sense. “Steve Rogers nearly killed me in Siberia, after hiding the fact that his best friend had murdered my parents for God knows how long. When I came back to New York, after all of it, I wasn’t what I should’ve been. Who I should’ve been.

“I guess, in hindsight, after the trial, I did the wrong thing for what I thought were the right reasons. I didn’t think I had the right or the capacity to care for people anymore so I just- Left you. There’s no world where that should’ve happened, kid. I’m sorry.”

At that, Peter looks back up and meets his mentor’s eyes, tears pooling in his own as he says, “I just tried so hard, Mr. Stark, and she still died and all those other innocent people died and- And now what? What do I do?”

Tony’s wrapping the kid up in his arms before he even thinks about it, carding one hand through his hair and pressing Peter’s head against his shoulder. “I don’t know, kiddo. I don’t. But I’m here, alright? All of us are. Whatever you choose to do, you’ve got the literal Avengers backing you up.”

He laughs wetly against Tony’s shoulder, arms still hanging limply at his sides. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

“You don’t have to thank me, kid. I’ve got you now. I’m here.”

For a while, the only sound filling the room is the sound of Peter’s sobs, and as he wraps his arms around Tony’s torso and squeezes tight Tony knows, without a shadow of a doubt, he made the wrong choice for the wrong reason all those months ago. But here, right now, is a chance for him to be there, to fix it. To do the right thing.

And he takes it without a second thought.