Archive of Our Own ^beta

Peter's backpack feels heavy against his back as the elevator slowly rises at a snail’s pace. The numbers above the door grow bigger and bigger as they pass each floor.

It had been May’s idea that Mr. Stark should make the internship real, and one of her many conditions if Peter was going to keep being Spider-Man. She didn’t want him out in the street every day after school, at least at the tower, she knew Peter would be safe.

88, the number finally appears on the screen, and the elevator comes to a halt with a soft pling. Before the doors slide open.

He can hear Mr. Stark’s AC/DC blaring down the hall before it comes to an abrupt stop. The mechanic had added that to Friday’s protocols after Peter had a nasty sensory overload before coming to the tower. He’d ended up breaking down crying on Mr. Stark’s lab couch, before the music had made his already sensitive head pound even harder.

Mr. Stark liked to joke that it was like having a bell around Peter’s throat, albeit silent; it let him know Peter was there. It wasn’t uncommon for the man to poke his head out the second the music went off, a smile on his face once he saw Peter.

Not today.

Peter slowly steps out of the elevator and listens for a moment. The hallway is quiet, more so than normal. Maybe Mr. Stark had left for a meeting and forgotten to text him?

“Friday?” Peter asks quietly, scared someone in the other labs might hear him. He hadn’t met any of them, but he knew they were there, Mr. Stark had said as much. “Is Mr. Stark not here?” He glances towards one of Friday’s ceiling cameras.

The camera flashes red a few times before Friday’s voice comes crackling out of the speakers. More robotic and distant than it usually was. “Update protocol is active, only base functions are available until further notice. If there is a fire, break-in, or another emergency, please press your designated alert button.”

Peter sighs deeply, feeling his shoulder slump. The backpack is somehow getting heavier.

Mr. Stark had mentioned something about Friday being down for maintenance the last time Peter stopped by the tower. He’d even gone out of his way to show Peter where the two alert buttons on the upper lab floors were. One is in the elevator, covered by glass so that nobody presses it by accident. The other is in Tony’s personal lab. The other labs on the floor were equipped with fire alarms; Mr. Stark didn’t think they needed an alert button of their own.

With a heavy heart, Peter pads through the hallway towards the lab. At least he’d be able to sit there and do homework and make more web fluid before he left.

He comes to a halting stop in the open lab door.

Mr. Stark is sitting stiff as a board but the main lab table, his back turned to Peter. He looks oddly pale and sweating, and even across the room, Peter can hear that Mr. Stark’s breathing is wrong…

Peter clears his throat, taking a step closer. “Mr. Stark?” He asks, his voice cracking slightly.

The Spidey sense couldn’t always tell the difference between danger and safety when it was around people that Peter trusted. He never had a clue when Aunt May was going to throw bananas after him, because Aunt May was safe. She never made his hair stand. Mr. Stark was safe in the same way, maybe that was why the Spidey sense had remained quiet in the hallway.

But here, standing a few feet behind his mentor, the Spidey sense suddenly blares.

A heavy ringing in his ears, accompanied by vibrations traveling all the way down his neck, through his spine, and into his legs. Run, it tells him, but Peter can’t run. It didn’t take a genius to realize that something was wrong with Mr. Stark. Peter knew Mr. Stark had issues with his heart, and he’d heard rumors of PTSD and flashbacks after Afghanistan. If he were having some kind of medical episode, Peter couldn’t just leave.

Another step closer, Peter reaches out to touch the mechanic’s shoulder. Mr. Stark’s head snaps up the second Peter makes contact. It’s so fast that Peter stumbles backwards, pulling his hand back towards his chest. Almost as if he’d been burnt.

“I’m sorry,” Peter stutters, “I didn’t mean to disrupt you… I was just… You were.” Peter waves up and down to his mentor.

“I was what?” Mr. Stark’s voice is deep, coming from his throat. Almost like a growl. So sharp that it could cut if it had been a knife.

Bad mood then, Peter guesses. Though he’s never seen his mentor in a bad mood like this.

Peter takes a couple of staggered steps backwards, giving Mr. Stark the space he clearly needs. The lab feels suddenly cold, cold and quiet. It’s always felt like home before, now it doesn’t. Grasping his backpack straps tightly between his fingers.

He swallows hard, eyes flickering towards the lab table where Mr. Stark had been working. It didn’t look like any piece of the Iron Man suit that Peter had ever seen, so it must be a newer project.

“I can come back… later?” Peter suggested in a slightly shaky voice, “Or… or another day?”

The ringing from his Spidey sense grows louder, more intense, as Mr. Stark gets up from his chair. Standing at his full height. Peter feels small then, standing there in Mr. Stark’s massive lab, when his mentor is clearly angry about something. What other explanations were there? Was he drunk? Did he have a concussion? No, Peter couldn’t smell any alcohol on him, and Mr. Stark’s pupils were even, even if they were small, little pinpricks.

Cold, hard metal closes around Peter’s bicep, holding on so tightly that Peter can’t get free. Almost closing off the circulation as he pulls and pulls.

An Iron Man suit.

It wasn’t one that Peter had ever seen before. Instead of the gold and red that Mr. Stark loved, this one is painted all black. And the eyes and arc reactor glows red, rather than blue.

Peter hadn’t even noticed it sneaking up on him, but standing there in its hold makes Peter’s heart beat so hard it feels like it could break through his ribs. He should have listened to his Spidey sense, but how could he have known something like this was going to happen?

As he tries to pull out of its claws, a second suit approaches from a storage locker at the other end of the lab. Each step sends heavy vibrations through the floor, its hands reaching for Peter’s free arm, but it’s even within reach. Peter attempts to hide behind the other suit, the one holding him, even trying to climb up on its back, but the suit shakes its head and moves the spinal piece, preventing Peter from latching on with his sticky finger, so in the end, the second suit wraps just as tightly around his second arm.

Mr. Stark approached him in slow, steady steps once Peter had been restrained.

His mentor's hands were usually filled with comfort, running through Peter’s messy curls. Now the rough hands grab around Peter’s jaw, tilting his head backwards, forcing eye contact.

Normally, Peter could have fought it. Spider-Man had powers, while Iron Man was only strong in the suit. But Mr. Stark’s grasp felt almost like an Iron latch, and Peter wasn’t strong enough to break the powerful hold.

“What do we have here?” Mr. Stark asks, his eyes eating up Peter. They’re darker than normal, the soft brown having grown almost black. “Didn’t know Stark had gotten in the habit of keeping a pet. How pathetic.”

Pet? Peter wasn’t a pet; he was an intern.

Peter huffs, “Didn’t know you started talking in third person, Mr. Stark.” He tries to joke. Jokes always helped when he was wearing the Spider-Man mask. It had developed into a habit, really. He even cracked jokes in class when things got awkward or when a teacher asked something he wasn’t prepared for. Peter was smart, but even he couldn’t speak Spanish fluently, yet.

Mr. Stark frowns at him, “Keep that smart mouth shut.” He gives Peter’s head a rough pull before letting go. Peter’s chin sinks onto his chest as he takes a deep breath.

Was this mind control? He’d heard how it had been Bucky acting like a stranger, how it meant he couldn’t remember anything. But this seemed different… Didn’t it?

It was Mr. Stark, in the flesh. That much Peter knew for sure. He could smell it, even before he’d entered the lab. The aftershave and the oil from his machines. A faint scent of Pepper shampoo and the laundry detergent that he used on all the sheets at the tower. He could hear it, too. The slightly off rhythm of Mr. Stark’s heart beating, which Peter knew was a side effect of whatever had happened in the cave in Afghanistan, even if Mr. Stark hadn’t talked to Peter about it.

“I know what this is,” Peter tries to joke, “Good joke, where’s the rest of the team? Playing a mind control prank on the new guy, too? No fair!”

His heart rate doesn’t go down, his brain keeps ringing in warning.

Mr. Stark moves past Peter and the suits, heading for the door to the hallway. He snaps his fingers and trips impatiently as the suit manures Peter around and drags him towards the door too. Peter tries to stick to the floor, but his sneakers are too thick to make it work; he has no choice but to follow them. Stuffed into the now crammed elevator.

It goes up and up and up, all over again. Each number ticking over… 89… 90… 91… 95… 100… 110…

The elevator door slides open with an angry hiss, and cold air hits Peter immediately. Hurting inside his nose as he breathes in the wind.

Peter often entered through the helicopter pad when he came as Spider-Man. He knew this view, almost as well as the one out of his bedroom window at home in Queens. The skyscraper reached up high all around him, but never reached nearly as high as Stark Tower.

He’d swung here just last night. Leaving Tony’s lab after a suit repair…

The black suit drags Peter towards the ledge. Peter tries to kick his shoes off so he can stick to the concrete roof; surely they weren’t strong enough to pull him off if he stuck it like a suction cup. It doesn’t work; one of the suits grabs his ankle as he kicks, and suddenly, Peter doesn’t have his feet on the ground anymore.

Danger! The Spider sense alerts him again, the instinct to fight, to flee, traveling through his whole body. It wouldn’t help anything.

One of the suits finally loses its tight grasp on him, allowing blood flow to return. Peter’s fingers feel like they’re sleeping. Prickling with a million needles. The remaining suit walks closer to the edge until Peter is dangling there.

“Of all days I went without web shooters on…” Peter mutters under his breath.

His heart thuds underneath his ribs, almost jumping out of his chest. Breaths coming in short, adrenaline forced, gasps.

Mr. Stark stood there watching as, studying him like a Spider caught in its own web. Nothing like himself, and yet… the same person. “Look… I don’t know what’s going on…” Peter tries to keep his voice from shaking as he glances down. The cars and people below look like ants. “But Mr. Stark, I know you’re in there somewhere, just tell me what’s wrong. Okay? We’ll fix it.”

Peter wasn’t sure he could fix anything at all. He’d dealt with many things during his short time being Spider-Man. But this was uncrossed territory.

Whatever was wrong with Mr. Stark, if something was wrong with him- No. Peter couldn’t start doubting his mentor's motives now. Mr. Stark had done bad things in his past, lots of them. But he’d grown as a person, changed in ways most people couldn’t imagine. If wouldn’t try and hurt Peter unless he was being forced to. He simply wasn’t that man.

Mind control… Brain injury… Manipulation… Peter had to figure it out. And fast.

Mr. Stark huffs dismissively as Peter’s attempt to talk sense into him, he barely spares Peter’s dangling body a last glance before he turns around and starts walking back towards the elevator they’d come from.

“Drop him,” He orders the suits, “And get someone ready to clean up at the base of the tower.”

The elevator door closes behind him, and at once, Peter and the two black suits with red lights are alone. The suit holding Peter out over the edge of the helicopter pad opens its grasping claws. Peter doesn’t try to hold on; he lets himself fall.

It probably sounded counterintuitive, but whoever was in control of Mr. Stark in that very moment didn’t recognize Peter for who he was. Spider-man. If he had, he wouldn’t have asked the suit to drop Peter like this; he’d have asked for the suit to keep restraining him, or lock him up in a room with vibranium walls. He hadn’t, and Peter needed to keep it that way for a little longer.

Letting himself free-fall isn’t much different from swinging, Peter tries to tell himself as he tries to keep track of how many floors he’s dropped.

He waits, and waits. The wind rushed around him, cold and sharp. It’s loud in his ears, and adrenaline pumps harder as the ground comes closer and closer. He waits all the same, unless the Spidey sense finally becomes quiet.

Out of the suit’s sight range, Peter fully reaches out his hands and sticks to the big glass windows covering the sides of the Avengers Tower.

The free fall comes to an immediate halt.

Peter’s body slams against the windows are his acceleration stops. The bottom of his shoes slips against the glass. He once more tries to push them off, toes against the heels, until the first shoe finally slips off, then the second. Falling towards the street. He hopes they don’t hit anyone.

Finally, Peter can stick, regaining a solid grasp on the glass wall. High enough in the building that nobody would be able to identify him if they looked up.

“Need a plan,” Peter tells himself, “Help. I need to find help.”

It wasn’t that Peter was scared of Mr. Stark, but he’d experienced firsthand how strong he was now. Besides, the suits had come out of nowhere, stronger than Peter had ever seen them before. He wouldn’t be able to fight Mr. Stark and the armors at the same time.  

Slowly, Peter begins to scale back up the building.

Ideally, he’d just smash through a window and get back into safety, but he didn’t know what had happened yet. The suits were clearly responding to Mr. Stark, so it was very possible that Friday would too. If that was the case, smashing through a window meant triggering one of Friday’s alarms. Alerting Mr. Stark to Peter’s position and revealing his powers to him.

If Friday was online in the first place… Had she lied about being on the update protocol? What if she’d said that just to give Peter a false sense of security before the storm?

No, the better option was to find an open window. Or, even find someone who could just open a window for Peter to climb in through. That meant the Avengers floor.

He hadn’t fallen nearly as far as he feared when the suit dropped him. The world had a tendency to slow down when his Spidey sense rang out, so it had felt like a longer fall than it was.

It’s the light on one of the Avengers floors that brings hope and relief for Peter.

She climbs faster as he tries to do the math about which floor he’s found. Many of the Avengers didn’t use the tower full-time anymore, preferring the isolation of the compound upstate.

Through the window, Peter sees Bucky first, leaning over the kitchen counter of his, Sam’s, and Steve’s shared floor. They each had a bedroom and bathroom, but they shared a large living and dining space that Peter had visited a handful of times for video games. Clint had gifted the Military men a console last year, and Steve had turned out to be quite the shot in first-person shooters, even if the American symbol wouldn’t admit it.

Sam pops up from behind the kitchen island, backing pan in his hands. Steaming.

Peter lets his knuckles softly hit the window glass before he thinks about it. There’s no Spidey sense screaming; they look perfectly normal.

Bucky’s head snaps up, spotting Peter immediately. Getting to his feet, he opens the window to allow Peter inside.

Sam is there too, backing pan and oven mitts discarded, grasping Peter’s shoulders to keep him standing upright. “You’re pale,” He says worriedly, and pushes Peter onto a nearby couch.

Was he pale? Peter looks down at his hands, seeing his skin a few shades paler than normal. He feels tremors traveling through his body as he sits there, tiredness sinking into his bones. He blinks a couple of times, forcing his eyes to stay open.

“Something…” Peter whispers, adrenaline crash threatening. “Something’s wrong with Mr. Stark…”

Sam and Bucky share a set of confused glances above Peter’s head.

“Like wrong, or wrong wrong?” Sam asks, a hand steady on Peter’s shoulder. Peter is sure bruises are already forming on his biceps where the suits had held him.

Peter sinks into himself, his leg bouncing with nervousness. “It’s lab day,” Peter says with an insistent voice, looking up desperately at Sam. “But… but first he didn’t respond, and I got worried… and… and he made his suits drag me up to the helipad and threw me off…”

Bucky’s vibranium hand clenches tightly, eyes darkening. The Winter Soldier looks ready to go up there and barge into Mr. Stark’s lab.

“Friday?” Sam calls out softly.

“Update protocol is active, only base functions are available until further notice. If there is a fire, break-in, or another emergency, please press your designated alert button.” The AI responds.

Just like she had to Peter when he entered the building earlier.

Was there an alert button on this floor? Peter didn’t have a clue, but neither of the two heroes ran for it, or reached for phones or suits. “Friday, protocol override, Samuel Thomas Wilson, code EXO-7.”

A static sound escapes from Friday’s speakers, and the big red emergency light flickers on for a moment before turning off again.

“Update has been paused,” Friday announces, sounding more like her usual self than she had moments earlier. Peter really realized how many personalities these AIs held.

“Medical scan on Stark, stat.” Sam barks out the order.

Peter’s heart slows down as someone he trusts takes over. Bucky sits down on the couch beside him, on the very edge, clearly ready and vigilant of any surprise attacks. Peter hoped nothing more would happen, that Friday would be able to do anything if needed.

It takes a long moment before Friday pulls up a video on the living room TV. Rather than the holograms she usually used. On the screen is the blueprint for a tiny nanobot, small enough to travel through people’s veins and blood vessels.

Peter had seen it in person once, under a microscope. It was one of Mr. Stark and Dr. Helen Cho’s medical research projects.

“It appears a team of nano bots has malfunctioned,” Friday announces.

His stomach turns are the revelation; he has to hold back the dry heaves. “But… but Mr. Stark never used those bots on himself…” He argues weakly, looking between Bucky and Sam.

“He could have ingested them by mistake while Friday was down,” Sam theorizes, studying the TV screen.

Bucky nods stiffly in agreement, “He always warns us not to drink anything the bot makes.” He half growls, sounding angry and disappointed all at once.

“Dum-E,” Peter interjects, but Bucky and Sam don’t seem to hear him.

Sam waves at the TV, “Friday, shut them down then. A little fast, please. Those bots threw the kid out of the building for crying out loud.”

Friday process for another long moment, a progress bar appeared, then disappeared from the TV screen. In the same instance, the bar disappears, the emergency lights turn on again, this time followed by the siren. Blaring out into the living room, Peter’s hands fly up to clutch his ears, protecting his enhanced senses from the horrible, headache-inducing sound.

“Error, Boss has taken control over the tower.” Friday’s voice informs them. "Unable to turn off bots. The building will now enter security mode; all elevators have been disabled. We’re hoping to be back online soon…” Friday’s voice changes as she speaks. From worried, to an automated, prerecorded message that might play during a server error rather than an attack.

Sam curses under his breath before going for a drawer in the cabinet underneath the TV.

When he returns, he holds out a few packs of Mr. Stark’s good earplugs. Peter immediately takes one of the plastic bags and tears it open, stuffing them into his ear canal. Bucky follows suit.

“Someone needs to go up to Tony’s lab and manually turn off the nanobots.” Sam plans as he opens his own bag of normal earplugs. “Someone needs to go to the server room and shut off that alarm. All the noise will make it impossible to hear if there’s danger around.”

“Kid knows Strak’s lab like his own pant pocket,” Bucky grumbles.

The other hero nods reluctantly, “Pete, Bucky is right. Besides, I know tech, but not nearly as well as you do.”

Just the thought of going back into Mr. Stark’s lab makes his Spidey sense tingle.

He knew the normal rules that were between himself and Mr. Stark, but none of that was applicable anymore.

Last night, when his mentor had fixed the suit, everything had been fine. So perfectly fine… and now, nothing was.

Peter swallows hard, wanting to refuse, but knowing that he can’t. He just nods slowly, a knot forming in his throat. The adrenaline that had been fading and the heart that had slowed return at full force. His hands were shaking despite his best attempt to hold them still.

“I’ll join him.” Bucky decides, placing a hand on Peter’s shoulder. It doesn’t calm him in the slightest. Though he appreciates Bucky’s gesture.

That leaves Sam to take the server room and turn off the horrible alarm.

Sam and Bucky spend barely two minutes ducking into their rooms and return armed. Sam, with a pistol in a holster at his hip, is wearing a bulletproof vest. Bucky, in his leather jacket, had a machine gun slung over his shoulder and a large knife in his belt. Bucky holds out a small gun as a silent off to Peter; he’d tried one with Sam and Clint on the Avengers shooting range a few floors down. He hadn’t been any good at it, and Spider-Man didn’t like guns.

Peter takes it anyway, checking the safety with trembling hands, before showing it in a jeans pocket. Praying that he wouldn’t have to use it.

Bucky slams his metal shoulder into the door leading to the emergency staircase. A big black number is painted on the wall, 76. Peter and Bucky are going up, Sam is going down. Nobody says anything as they split up, just moving. Peter struggles to keep up with Bucky’s speed as the soldier takes the stairs, two steps at a time.

But he pushes on, trying to ignore the weight in his pocket.

Once they reach the lab floor, Bucky holds up a hand to make Peter stop behind him. A finger over his lips, indicating that Peter needs to be quiet, Bucky doesn’t need to tell him. His Spidey sense had gotten louder again, the closer they got back to the lab floor, and he could immediately understand why.

“What do you mean there wasn’t anything to clean up?!” Mr. Stark is shouting at the suits. Even through the heavy, fireproof doors, Peter can hear it.

Bucky and Peter take a couple of steps back down, making sure they’re out of Mr. Stark’s hearing range.

“Tell me everything you can,” Bucky instructs Peter, “Any differences.”

Peter shrugs slowly, sinking onto a step. Hand grasping the railing. “He’s strong, really strong. The suits are… they’re like his puppets, also strong, maybe the vibranium prototype he was working on… he…” Peter tries to remember, “He didn’t recognize me, and it doesn’t think of itself as Tony Stark, it knows it’s someone or something else.”

Bucky listens intensely as Peter explains, never interrupting. When Peter finishes, Bucky nods. “You’re going to stay here, I’ll go in and try and lure him out of the lab.”

“That’s a good plan,” Peter easily agrees.

It would be impossible, even with Peter’s abilities, to get to the console and do anything to turn off the nano bots with Mr. Stark and the suits present.

Peter grasps Bucky’s wrist before the Soldier can move. “What about his suits?”

The Winter Soldier sighs for a long moment, rubbing his chin. But ultimately doesn’t come up with a fix for that. “We can’t wait for Sam,” Bucky apologizes, “Maybe the suits leave with Tony, maybe they don’t. Maybe they need his command to do stuff, maybe they don’t. But Peter, you can climb. There’s no way any of his suits can reach you on the ceiling.”

“Okay…” Peter agrees after a long moment. Bucky was right after all, so Peter reluctantly let go of Bucky’s wrist. Watching as the Soldier returns up the stairs and through the door.

For a long time, Peter sits there in the empty stairway. Stretching his hearing as far as it goes, so he can go help Bucky if needed. But no such indication ever comes. Bucky’s and Mr. Stark’s voices change between them, and then, before Peter knows it, he hears four pairs of heavy footsteps outside the door, followed by the sound of the elevator.

He hoped Bucky hadn’t been captured like Peter had, caught off guard.

Peter doesn’t have time to dwell on the possibility that anything had happened to his friend. He forces himself up, taking a deep breath, and slips through the door. Into a luckily, empty lab.

Keeping low to the ground, pressed against the wall, Peter holds his breath. Glancing towards the elevator as he waits for the heavy door to close behind him.

It finally falls shut with a heavy click.

He doesn’t dare move for another couple of long seconds, listening for any sounds indicating that Mr. Stark or the suits were coming back from wherever Bucky had taken them – Or they had taken Bucky – but no footsteps ever reach Peter’s ears. Only the loud blaring of the never-ending alarm. So carefully, breathing as deeply as he dares, Peter moves across the lab. Ducked behind the lab tables.

Peter had never worked on the nano bots himself. It was Mr. Stark and Helen Cho’s project, and Peter was involved. But he’d seen the tablet Dr. Cho pulled out and connected to Mr. Stark’s holo-desk.

Quickly and quietly, Peter maneuvers under one of the smaller lab tables and over to Mr. Stark's work area. Pull the drawer out slowly.

The tablet has a black cover on it, with an S.H.I.E.L.D. logo printed on it. Peter grasps it between his hands, flipping the cover open, and pulls out the cable to connect it. The screen lights up, and with it the holo-table.

The nano bots glow on the home model, buried deep in the frontal lobe.

Would turning them off risk hurting his mentor's brain? Peter didn’t know exactly what the bots were doing; Friday hadn’t even given them much to work it. Malfunctioning, she’d said, but what exactly did that mean? Peter could imagine thousands of worst-case scenarios. Brain bleed, stroke, coma, brain death. There wasn’t one but him present who could turn off the bots, nobody he could call and have come to help. Dr. Cho was at a conference, and Bruce wasn’t someone Peter knew well enough to have his phone number.

Deciding he couldn’t hesitate anymore, Peter types in Mr. Stark’s security key. Watching the hologram pulses green for a moment, confirming that it’s been unlocked.

Sudden silence echoes through the lab as the alarm and blinking lights finally turn off.

“Good work, Sam,” Peter whispers under his breath, fingers gliding quickly over the keyboard as he attempts to navigate the bot's control menu. It wasn’t terribly different from the BIO of the laptop he had back home, except that everything was written in code, where Peter had to change things from true to false. Zero and one. It wasn’t his strongest suit; Ned was way better at coding.

Public Bot bot;
Public Button 0;
Public Button 1;

                      {
                                                          If (Bot.isActive == false)          

                                                          {
                                                                                       If Bot.isActive == 0;
                                                                                       Set Bot.powerlevel == 0;
                                                                                       Console.WriteLine (“>>Bot is Offline<<”);

                                                          }

                                                          Else

{
                                                          If Bot.isActive == 1;
                                                          Set Bot.powerlevel == 1;
                                                          Console.WriteLine (“>>Bot is Online<<”);

                                                          }

                             Bot.currentstatus.online == true;

                             }

The mouse hovers over the right code section, Peter’s heart pounding in his chest as he spams the button. He’d just need to change true to false. Then everything would be under control. It was so simple, so easy, just within-

Peter is pulled backwards, away from Mr. Stark’s holo-desk, but a rough hand grasps the back of his shirt collar. “What do we have here?” Mr. Stark chuckles darkly, eyes going to scan the screen Peter had been working at, “Trying to shut me down, are we?”

A dark bruise is forming across Mr. Stark’s right eye, and blood is spilling from his bent nose. He and Bucky had fought, and Peter feared Mr. Stark had won.

Had he gotten to Sam, too?

Peter attempts to twist his t-shirt out of the powerful hold, eyes scanning for the black suits. But they aren’t there in the lab with him and Mr. Stark.

… Did that mean they were cleaning up… after…. Bucky?

Mr. Stark’s grasp on him doesn’t waver one bit, and Peter can feel the heavy weight of Bucky’s pistol in his jeans pocket.

The man before him is stronger than ever before, and Peter doesn’t have his web shooters. What choice does it have, if Bucky and Sam are in danger? So Peter grasps for the gun while pulling away from Mr. Stark.

The gun feels heavy in his hands, wrapping around the cold metal. Peter points it right between Mr. Stark’s eyes, fingers shakingly reaching for the trigger.

In half shock and half confusion, Mr. Stark lets go, but it doesn’t last long. Jumping forward, hand wrapping around the gun barrel, even as Peter tries to dodge. “Give that here,” His mentor growls. Peter swallows hard and silently reminds himself that he needs to act. Bucky and Sam are counting on him.

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath can and pulls the trigger.

The powerful recoil makes Peter stumble a couple of steps backwards, almost falling over his own feet.

His ears ring loudly, Spidey sense vibrating down his spine.

For a moment, all he can see is a bleeding, red puddle of blood. Thick like syrup. When he peels his eyes open, there isn’t any blood.  

Mr. Stark stands almost frozen, staring at the wall behind him. Peter’s eyes catch it too. A high shot, at an angle. The bullet from Bucky’s gun has planted itself deep into the lab wall. Not into Mr. Stark’s flesh. “Did I…” Peter trails off, feeling out of breath. Had he really just used a gun?

Console, Peter forces himself to focus and runs back towards the console. Ducking below Mr. Stark’s outstretched arm, trying to catch him all over again.

The gun slips between his fingers, clattering to the floor as he reaches for the keyboard.

Bot.currentstatus.online == true;

Peter slams the backspace button as fast as he can, breathing coming in short gasps.

Bot.currentstatus.online == …

The bots don’t give up, scared to be shut off. Grasping at Peter’s shoulders as he hits the F key on the keyboard. Peter kicks back, then presses the A.

So close.

So close…

The door leading to the emergency stairs slams open, revealing Bucky and Sam. Both are looking worse for wear, but still filled with fighting spirit. Bucky’s human arm is held tightly to his chest, bruised and swollen, and Sam has bruises forming around his neck.

Neither hero hesitates to throw themselves at Tony, the three landing in a tumbled mess on the floor. After a few moments, Bucky maneuvers himself to Tony’s back, pinning his mentor's left hand against the floor with the vibranium arm. Sam takes the right arm, putting his entire weight on it.

Peter blinks, then finishes typing.

Bot.currentstatus.online == false;

The holo-desk blinks a couple of times before the message flashes before his eyes. The bots are offline.

Peter sinks onto the floor, back pressed against the table. His hands are still trembling, and pain starts to pound in his head. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been hit, but right then, he couldn’t focus enough to find out what was up and down in the pile of people a few meters away.

He pulls the earplugs out as he watches Mr. Stark’s struggle fade, the man slowly blinking back to reality. “I’m going to throw up,” Mr. Stark warns, just in time for Bucky and Sam to pull him up into a sitting position. Mr. Stark heaved up onto the white lab floors.

There are small, glittering metal pieces in the vomit. Peter pinches his nose as the smell hits him.

Mr. Stark looks up, spotting Peter. His eyes go through the five stages of grief, and in a matter of seconds, before he scrambles across the floor and reaches out to comfort Peter, but stops himself.

His rough hands were hovering inches away from Peter’s shoulder. Eyes uncertain.

Peter doesn’t say anything, just inches himself closer to his mentor. His Spidey sense was finally quiet after so long of constant danger. Long… It hadn’t been that long, had it?

With his forehead half buried into Mr. Stark’s chest, Peter glances out the lab window. The suit is set in New York City. Mr. Stark’s arms come to embrace Peter’s shoulder, hugging him close, one hand rubbing soothing circles across Peter’s back. “I’m sorry, Bambino,” He whispers into Peter’s hair, “I’m sorry…”

He sounds nothing like the normally strong man that Peter saw his mentor as. Peter wondered, but didn’t dare to ask just then, if Mr. Stark had been aware as the bots controlled him.

Watching everything happen, unable to stop it.

He finds that it doesn’t matter, instead taking in Mr. Stark’s deep scent. The aftershave, the oil. Listens to Mr. Stark’s heartbeat, slightly off and slower than it should be, a side effect of the injury. His eyes feel leaden, so he doesn’t fight them as they pull themselves closed. His breathing is slowly evening out.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t you.” Peter mumbles, before exhaustion finally pulls him under.