Homecoming
Tony stumbled into the compound, his legs tripping over one after the other as he dragged Peter in by his armpits. They barely made it four steps before he collapsed flat onto his back. Water flowed around him, trickling across the marble floors. Some leaked in from the portal that Strange had promptly closed. Most came from his own dripping wet body.
‘We made it.’ He rolled his head to the side, spitting out a mouthful of salty ocean water. ‘We made it — holy hell that was close.’
Tony heaved enormous breaths of beautiful clean, fresh air. One after another, not enough, never enough. It was crisp in his lungs, albeit artificial, and each inhale cleaned away the dewy sea moisture from his chest cavity. He stared up at the ceiling, the sudden onslaught of bright lights stabbing his eyes like knives, the hanging fluorescent fixtures burning into his skull.
“We have to get him...” Steve panted breathlessly. “He needs help...”
Combat boots pounded against the floor next to him, and Tony grimaced when water splashed onto his face as the man ran by.
“Where are your medics?”
Strange’s voice caught his attention, steady and firm. A strong breeze passed over him when his cloak whisked in the air, renewing the cold that coursed over Tony’s skin.
The hammering of Steve’s boots began to dwindle in the distance. “We’re on the east wing, they’re not far away — the intercom system, it’s in the lounge, I’ll...”
The conversation whittled away into white noise without warning. Tony would have called them back, but the brief, unthinking, foolish, relief choked him in the throat as crushing fall of reality shoved it back hard down into his gut.
The weight of Peter’s body on his legs suddenly became very a real and grounding thing.
Tony’s heart rate spiked violently, and he felt the burning bitter taste of bile at the back of his throat. He forced himself to turn to his side. His muscles burned from exertion, his knees throbbed as he tottered to kneel on the floor.
“Pe—” He hissed, ignoring his body’s protests to lay still. “Peter — shit.”
There was no time for him to take in the sight below him. A blue, luminous glow of technology surged along the Spider-Man suit, rising from the toes of its feet all the way up to its chest.
The shrill alarm that followed had Tony doubling over, the palms of his hands smothering his ears.
“WARNING! Screwed the Pooch Protocol activated. WARNING! Suit integrity compromised. Screwed the Pooch Protocol activated. Engaging emergency notification system.”
FRIDAY’S voice came from the small chest plate attached to his suit — ‘When the hell did the nanites come back online!?’ — and holographic images shot out from the device that served to encase his armor.
Tony’s eyes darted frantically between the multitude of screens. A 3D image of Spider-Man stood center of it all, the normally light blue diagram of his suit overtaken with red, showing him where every injury was. Caution signals for vitals flashed rapidly — heartbeat, respiratory rate, temperature — and their own location in the compound hovered near that.
He swatted it all away in the verge of hysteria.
“FRIDAY, disable — disable alarm!” It was so loud, a repetitive siren that blared into the hallway. “Dammit, deactivate!”
Tony could barely see Peter beneath the array of graphics. He swiped and swiped, his hands waving desperately to rid it, clear it, just ‘make it go away!’
“Request denied. Per protocol, vitals are too unstable for deactivation. Emergency notification system remains engaged.”
Tony couldn’t think straight. He needed it to be quiet, he needed to shut it down, ‘shut it up!’
He couldn’t see the past the screens when he needed to see Peter and yet more shit kept popping up, telling him things he didn’t have the time to process.
“Suit structure is highly compromised. Immediate medical attention is required.”
By instinct, Tony kept swiping at the graphics, none moving, none disappearing. When he realized that wouldn’t work, he clawed at his own armor, wildly trying to rip off the small, triangle box that produced the images and sounds. His wet fingers slipped maddeningly away with each attempt.
“Goddammit!”
“Boss, I am picking up signs of fatal bradycardia, pulse rate currently forty-five and dropping,” FRIDAY said. “The suit is sending indications of three fractured bones and two partially fractured ribs. There are two open wounds in similar diameter of one and a half inches right below the intercostal space of the twelfth rib. If medical attention is not immediately sought out—”
Tony lunged forward, moving for one final and desperate attempt. He slammed an open palm on the center of Peter’s suit, making direct contact with the black spider emblem.
The fabric immediately sagged around him. His shoulders dropped in short-lived relief as FRIDAY was disconnected from the systems. The holograms flickered away and most importantly, the alarm shut off.
With the distractions gone, Tony was left to witness the damage.
In full light, the sight of Peter was more gruesome than he feared. His hand stayed on the boy’s chest, trembling, unable to move away.
‘Fuck he’s pale.’
Peter’s lips had tinted blue, the ugly purple bruising around his throat standing out from the blanching gray of his skin. And the blood — it was already pooling around them, making the sleek marble floors even darker.
Blood.
Right.
Blood loss.
Tony hesitated but moved his free hand to staunch the bleeding, pushing away thoughts of ‘what’s the point?’ and ‘you’re being too gentle’.
He had to do something, he had to — he removed his other hand from Peter’s chest and stacked them over top of each other, fingers locking together to push down with firm pressure.
Peter wasn’t moving.
His face was slack, his chest barely lifted, blood seeped between Tony’s fingers —
“Help,” Tony croaked, breaking his stare and looking down the hallway. “Somebody help!”
Coincidence or not, his plea was met with the sound of squealing wheels, a gurney and —‘ Thank fucking God’ — a dozen medical personnel following suit. They ran down the corridor like a saving-grace crusade.
Steve led the way.
“He’s here, c’mon, hurry!”
Steve slid down on his knees, leaving a trail of slippery water behind him. Tony watched with wide, panicked eyes as he quickly scooped Peter into his arms. He was back on his feet in seconds with the kid cradled to his chest.
Tony couldn’t help but notice that Steve appeared frighteningly pale himself. Dark red blood trickled down his forehead, a deep cut running from his scalp and into his drenched, blond hair. If his injuries were even remotely serious, he wasn’t letting it show. He helped the team strap Peter onto the gurney, pulling and buckling straps faster than all of them combined.
Stephen was hot on their tail, leaping onto the moving bed the moment he reached it. He swung over the gurney as if it were a horse, straddling Peter’s still form and ripping the spider-suit down his body the best he could with the straps around him.
Tony, meanwhile, barely stumbled to his feet.
“Get him to your operating room, he needs prepped for surgery,” Strange instructed, a professional steadiness lining his tone.
Tony followed closely. There was no hesitation when he pushed away staff, not letting anyone tell him he needed to step aside. While Steve was much more cooperative, allowing nurses and doctors to take him into another room, Tony remained stubborn. His own health was the least of his concerns, not right now, not with Peter so close to —
No. He didn’t save the kid just so he could die.
That wasn’t happening.
They quickly reached the medical wing, the compound’s version of their own dedicated hospital. It took less than a handful of minutes to get there, yet everything seemed to move in a demented version of both slow motion and high-speed.
Tony felt frozen in place, consumed by the chaos.
“Mr. Stark, you need to —”
“Do not touch me!” Tony shoved the nurse away with more strength than intended. He couldn’t muster up the will to care. His eyes reflected a rage that said it all.
The noise was overwhelming, everyone seemingly speaking at once. Tony couldn’t pin anyone’s voice to the mouth it belonged to, not even if he had tried. Time seemed to slow down for him to hear the things that mattered, the things that stood out to him the most.
“Blood pressure sixty-two over forty-five.”
“Pulse OX forty six — what the hell? That can’t be right! Check it again!”
Tubes, catheters, bags, and needles were passed around in the handful. Fast. The nurses and techs in scrubs moved at lightning speed. They started bringing in numerous equipment, attaching wires to Peter, each machine blocking Tony's view, each switch they turned on creating more noise.
He fought to keep a line of sight.
“No time, he’s hemorrhaging. Pack those wounds, get imaging and hematology in here STAT.”
In the middle of the room and still straddled on the gurney, Strange helped a nurse pull Peter’s limp arms out of the Spider-Man suit.
“Call them all to your OR,” Strange repeated, this time with slight annoyance. “If these wounds aren’t flushed out he’ll develop secondary peritonitis and then you’ll have a septic patient on your hands.”
“Dr. Cho will make that call,” a woman in scrubs coldly stated.
Stephen narrowed his eyes. “Dr. Cho needs to call your anesthesiologist and get this kid into surgery. Now.”
Tony fought to get by. He felt claustrophobic, nauseated, white coats and scrubs knocking him aside in a hurry. Every time he saw a glimpse of Peter, someone stepped in his way. He’d see brown hair, a hand, a red clad foot — but never all at once.
A doctor in a lab coat spun around to face the gurney. “Who the hell are you!?”
Stephen snapped his head over to the man, both hands pressing hard down on Peter’s stomach.
“Doctor Stephen Strange,” he bluntly answered. "And I think I know what I’m talking about when I say —”
“I don’t give a damn what you think! You can’t come in here and —”
“Listen to him,” Tony croaked. “Goddammit it, listen to him — just do something, people!”
The sudden and distressed plea caught the attention of both men. The doctor huffed, his exasperated sigh barely heard over the shouting staff and blaring machines. Both Tony and Strange watched as he quickly spun on his heels, deciding instead to help prep an IV line.
Strange took it as a win, returning his focus to Peter, holding the boy’s arm steady as a nurse drew a vial of blood.
“Butcher shop doctors,” he muttered under his breath. “You’re all unbelievably eager to gain a second opinion when the first is so aptly competent.”
“You really know how to flatter the room,” the nurse didn’t even look at him, handing off the tube to the nearest tech. “Page the blood bank, get this processed for Rh type and cross, run O negative wide open until the lab gets results. That is, unless, you know his blood type, Doctor Strange.”
Stephen shook his head. “I don’t even know the kid.”
The tech rushed by Tony, the tube of blood carefully in his hands. Tony didn’t even notice as he bumped into his shoulder. His mind was preoccupied, teetering on hysterics. An anxiety attack he had been struggling to push away began to surface, no longer within his control, threatening to swallow him whole.
The staff clearly noticed. Two male nurses pushed him aside, hands against his chest that gently though forcibly walked him to the door.
“Mr. Stark, you need to leave.”
“Please, let the others treat you. You’re shaking, you could have hypothermia.”
They held his arms and walked him back, but Tony's eyes never moved from the scene straight in front of him, his feet tripping over themselves with lack of attention to his surroundings.
They reached the entrance just as a petite Asian woman came running through, her small figure taking the room by storm.
“Don’t bother settling him here — what did I just say!?” Helen’s voice shouted above everyone and everything. “Don’t lock those wheels, get him to the OR. Now, let’s go!”
They were quick to listen to her demands, pushing the gurney and taking off. Stephen, still settled on top, spared a glance behind him at the infuriated male doctor.
“Told you so,” he sniped.
They were millimeters away from smashing through two automatic doors, moving faster than the technology could keep up with. Doctors, nurses, and techs poured through, squeezing in, some pushing each other aside as they rushed alongside the gurney.
Tony went to follow. His jaw clenched with a searing need to be involved, to be as close as he possibly could — to never lose sight of the kid ever, ever again.
Just as the doors were closing, a man stepped in front of him, latex gloves pressing heavily against his chest.
“Mr. Stark,” he started, “you can’t go in there.”
Tony shook his head, eyes staring past him and into the other room. “I have to — he’s my —”
“You can’t,” he firmly repeated.
The noise across from them seemed to increase, words mixing with obnoxious beeping and alarms that made his ears hurt.
Tony swallowed hard. “I need to —”
“You’re not sterile. You’re not even clean,” the man explained. “I need to ask that you leave.”
“No, I... I—”
“Mr. Stark.” His hand pushed harder, his voice more strict. “Back down.”
Tony didn’t have the time to argue. The man retreated, rushing away. Though in his head he screamed to follow, his feet stayed glued to the ground, and he wasn’t sure what made him stay. Tony Stark wasn’t the type of person to take orders — but this wasn’t about being submissive.
This was about knowing where his place was, what help he could and couldn’t provide.
He had done his part. He got Peter home, they completed their mission, now he needed to let his staff do the job he paid them for.
He wasn’t any use in there.
It was out of his hands now.
Awareness began to smother him, each breath Tony took turning into a hissing wheeze, his lungs painfully constricting. They felt smaller. Tighter. Fighting for air. His chest suddenly felt too small and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t...he couldn’t…
Tony smashed a fist against his sternum, activating the triangle arc reactor that sat on top of his armor.
“Deactivate, FRIDAY,” he demanded. “Get this — get this off of me, now.”
The AI was quick to comply. The nanites cleared away from his skin, his tech shedding the protecting armor and assembling it back into the housing unit.
The shirt he wore underneath did nothing to stop the strong, violent shudder that coursed through him. He wasn’t cold, not anymore, not with the bitter icy metal retracting from his body. He actually felt hot, his dry skin flushed and sweat rising from his pores.
Look at that, you walked away fine. You always do.
Open palms rubbed furiously at his eyes, scrubbing them until he saw stars.
Rogers is likely injured, probably has hypothermia while you’re dry as a desert. Way to go, Stark, great job using that tech on yourself. You always come out fine.
Tony clung to the wall to steady himself. His breaths came in quicker, faster, too fast to control. The air was stuffy, dense, and there wasn’t enough of it. He knocked his forehead against the wall and clenched both his fists near his ears, desperate for a handle, a grip.
For some goddamn control.
Peter’s hurt.
That’s your fault.
Dmitri was your fault.
Everything will always be your fault. This is on you, Stark.
It’s always on you.
A monster he couldn’t see echoed in his ears. It threatened to take him elsewhere, far from where he needed to be. Each word it spoke began to eat him alive, chew and gnaw away until he was nothing but a remnant of himself, an empty, violated shell.
‘God, not now.’ Tony thought. ‘Not now, please not now.’
He tried telling himself it was okay. They were alive, he was alive, Rogers was alive, Peter was...god, was he dying just one room over from him?
Yes.
He is.
Tony shook his head, his jaw locked tight, teeth biting into his tongue and the copper taste that followed causing nausea to boil in his stomach. It reminded him of the smell, the awful smell of blood and how much was pouring freely from Peter and — God, did the kid’s healing factor keep him alive just so he could die?
‘Stop it, Stark. You’re in control. You’re in control. You’re —’
“— unbelievable!”
Tony whipped around, wide eyes startled at the sound.
Helen stormed in from the other room. “You’re unbelievable! What in the living hell did you bring me!?”
Tony pushed himself away from the wall, eyebrows furrowed with confusion. “Wha — what? What?”
Helen’s anger was so intense he could practically feel it radiate off her, her eyes hot with rage.
“That!” she hissed, finger pointing behind her. “That...child! I’ve blown through Propofol, Ketamine, Fentanyl — nothing works. We’ve given him enough anesthetic to kill an elephant ten times over and he won’t go under!”
She was shaking, her finger swinging back in his direction, pointing at his chest. Her body shook, trembling fiercely. He realized he had never seen the woman so unnerved, so incredibly unraveled. Not even after everything with Ultron.
And she had every right to be.
He cataloged the information, his mind running through the problem to find a solution, utterly baffled as to why they had used so many painkillers, narcotics, anesthetics and yet none—
Tony blenched.
‘Reinforced analgesic.’
“What’s-what’s that? Reinforced analgesic…” Peter seemed both confused and interested.
The memory was fresh, clear in his mind, colorfully retained. His own voice rang nack in his ears.
“You hear that?” Tony looked at Peter, smirking. “Bruce wants you for a day so he can poke and prod at you.”
That was...that was, what, a week ago? Two? No, that couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t let that happen — no, he wouldn’t have let this happen.
Tony couldn’t blink. His eyes burned, liquid gathering at the edges to relieve the irritation. His throat closed up, words he wanted to say lost in the panic. His head bowed and his eyes locked below, staring at her finger, her nail digging through the fabric of his shirt.
Bruce leaned back. “Steve and Natasha have had him all week for training, but once I get a chance I’d like to get him into the laboratories, run some test —”
“Poke and prod, got it.” Tony pointed to the scrap piece of paper on the table in front of them. “Let’s poke and prod this first though, shall we?”
Pins and needles ran up his spine and his vision blurred.
They didn’t have working medication for the kid.
‘Christ,’ Tony realized. ‘How the hell did we not...how did I...’
“Tony!”
Helen’s voice broke through the haze. His neck snapped up, wide eyes boring into hers. She seemed less mad and more alarmed, and Tony wasn’t sure which he preferred.
“What is he?” she asked. “Is he like Rogers?”
Tony shook his head. “No, he’s — he’s —”
“Is he different!?” Helen snapped, her impatience thick.
“Yes — no — he’s...” Tony stammered, “he’s enhanced.”
“How? Like Wanda?” Helen snapped her fingers. “Give me something here, Stark!”
He was having trouble staying present. Her voice was floating away in the cluster of thoughts and memories that disrupted his focus. Anxiety was stripping him of his dignity, no longer able to form a complete sentence, his words coming out as garbled sounds.
“No, no, no, he’s... he's..."
Helen stared him down, waiting for the explanation. “Where are his studies?”
“What —” Tony frowned. “What studies?”
“His studies,” Helen firmly repeated. “What studies have been done on him? What information can I use?”
Tony ran both his hands down the length of his face.
“He’s never had...none. He’s never —”
“Ji-geum nong-dam-ha-neun geo-ji?!” The Korean rolled off her tongue, Helen's shock so expressive she momentarily slipped her native language.
“His DNA was altered,” Tony tried to say. “He’s enhanced, he’s —”
“— in need of an operation that I refuse to do while he’s not sedated!” Helen interrupted. “I absolutely will not have any of this staff cut into a conscious —”
Panic disintegrated into a poorly structured epiphany.
“Rogers supply.”
Helen gawked, her forehead creased with confusion.
Tony went on to explain, “His reinforced analgesic, the one you created for him. He’s got a supply, right? Use that. It’s – it’s something, it might —”
“Find it. Bring it to me,” Helen demanded, not waiting for a response. “Go!”
He watched as she quickly turned away, her lab coat flapping in the air when she jogged back to the other room. The two double doors briefly parted, letting in the sharp screech of alarms and hollering shouts.
Tony was out of the room before the doors had even closed shut.
He ran down the hallway, sliding on the trail of water that they had brought in, floors wet and slippery from their arrival. Rather than returning to where Strange had initially brought them, he took a sharp left in the opposite direction. It led him exactly where he needed to be.
Tony gripped the door frame tightly, coming to an abrupt halt.
“Where is it?”
A team of doctors swarmed around Steve, the man sitting on the edge of a bed. Wrapped up in a foil shock blanket, he looked at Tony with growing confusion, his eyebrows furrowed right.
“Where’s what?” he asked.
“Your supply!” Tony shouted, his voice cracking. “Where do they keep it?”
“My what?” Steve shook his head. “Tony, what are —”
“Your painkillers, Rogers! The ones Cho created, the ones we use to knock your super soldier ass flat on the ground. Where are they?”
The horror seemed to sweep over Steve’s face all at once, his already pale skin somehow going even whiter.
“Pharmaceutical,” he quickly answered, “They keep it in the pharmaceutical wing.”
“Which part, that’s two levels of medical R&D. Is it near bio-med or —”
Steve grabbed his Captain America helmet and hopped down from the bed. He quickly rid himself of the silver blanket, letting it fall to the floor below, now only dressed in a white tank top and his blue combat pants.
“I know where it is, I’ll get it!”
His speed nearly knocked Tony off his feet. Steve dashed out of the room, not only running but leaping with each spread of his legs. It was amazing that Tony managed to keep him in his line of sights, let alone stay a few feet behind him.
Steve quickly passed by the elevators, going instead for the stairs. Trying to keep up with him made Tony dizzy, the halls of the compound blurring together in a rush of adrenaline. While Steve hopped over railings, jumping on banisters and landing down stories below at a time, Tony ran behind him as fast as he could.
Now he really couldn’t breathe, a fire engulfing his lungs, his vision darkening at the edges from the stress of it all. He didn’t stop moving. His feet hammered against the steps, his hips twisting hard at the turns of the staircase.
The pharmaceutical wing was exactly two floors below them. Steve made it there first, hastily punching in his access codes to the room, a green light hovering above when the door clicked open.
By the time he had reached the medicine coolers, Tony had caught up. Steve patted all around the glass, looking for a door handle that didn’t exist.
“They’re locked, Stark.” Steve let one hand rest on his hip and the other dangle at his side, gripping his helmet.
Tony panted, stumbling when he approached the ceiling to floor cabinets. “FRIDAY, get me access to these things.”
The large refrigerators were encased with glass, no handles on doors that were built to retract within themselves. It was a sleek design that unfortunately remained incredibly impractical for their current predicament.
“Access denied.”
Incredibly impractical for their current predicament.
Tony flailed. “Access den — what!? I own the damn building, FRI!”
Steve bowed and shook his head, his own chest heaving deeply for air.
“Additional permission is required from an authorized physician, chemist or geneticist to gain access to the contents of this room. It appears Dr. Helen Cho is currently in the medical bay, and as she is an authorized staff member I could call —”
“Yes, I know where she is!” Tony snapped. “She’s very busy, and I need what’s in these cabinets — now. Override from Tony E. Stark, code SITStark5291970.”
“I’m...sorry, boss. Override code denied,” FRIDAY said. “The pharmaceutical department contains highly dangerous and addictive substances, and as such, a protocol was created to designate another authorized user to gain access. It was a fail safe you designed, sir.”
Tony let out a shout of frustration, a strained mix of both a growl and roar. He had never been more angry with his past self than in that very moment.
The vials they needed sat right in front of them, labeled boldly with Steve Rogers name, taunting them. The vials that Peter needed. Tony clenched his jaw, ignoring the creature that swelled up inside of him, provoking him.
Peter’s suffering because of you.
Tony barely paid attention when Steve stripped off his white tank top, his bare chest still dripping with sea water. He began wrapping it around his hand like a boxer’s glove while Tony dug his fingers deep into his sweat-matted hair, pulling harshly.
There was no concentrating through the jumbled thoughts of ‘hurry hurry goddamnithurry, the kid can’t keep waiting!’
“Okay, okay..shit, okay — call Helen,” Tony instructed, his voice laced with pure, unadulterated panic. “Get her down here, tell her —”
CRASH!
Glass shattered, raining down on the ground in a thousand tiny pieces.
The sound was haunting. Tony’s muscles immediately locked up in anticipation, waiting for the water, so much water, drowning in the ocean —
Alarms blared around him. A red strobe light brought him back to reality, blinking in rapid succession, forcing him back into the present. One long, piercing siren wailed from the ceilings and he snapped his head over in Steve’s direction.
“The computer was moving a little slow for me,” Steve stated, deadpan.
He had his shirt wrapped around his fist, half of his forearm inside the large, cold refrigerator where shards of glass dropped down below. His eyes locked with Tony’s, and he shook the excessive glass away from his hand.
“Boss, there appears to be a breach within the pharmaceutical department,” FRIDAY paused, going on to ask, “You wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with that, would you, sir?”
Tony gaped as Steve hauled away handfuls of tiny vials, ridding the entire supply of medication, filling the inside of his blue helmet to the brim.
“Yeah...” Tony distantly answered. “Now deactivate the alarm.”
Within seconds Steve had gathered everything they needed, immediately shoving the helmet against Tony’s chest. The glass vials inside shook and rattled against one another.
Tony forgot what he needed to do. The alarms shut off, the lights returned to normal, and he stared at the helmet, oddly detached from the pressing matter.
The monster clawed at his chest again. It reminded him that he wasn’t safe, he wasn’t in control. He could only prolong the inevitable appearance that it would soon make, feeling as it crept up on him, taunting in his ear.
This is your fault. You hurt people. You cause them pain. You need to go—
“Go.” Steve pressed the helmet harder against his chest. “I’m going to have to explain this one to security.”
Tony looked back up at him, grabbing onto the helmet. “I’ll send Happy over, he’ll vouch for you.”
Steve didn’t seem fazed, the stern look of determination lining his features.
“Go, Stark,” he urged. “Now.”
With those three words, Tony snapped like a broken cable car.
He ran, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He stumbled to the elevator, cursing himself for taking it because his knees were buckling and his chest was burning and his entire body was sore, muscles screaming for him to stop.
Pride be damned, collapsing in the stairway was the last thing he wanted to do right now.
He never once broke sight of the contents inside Captain America’s helmet, not once during the entire ride back up to the med bay. The little jars clattered against each other, bouncing around as his hands trembled fiercely.
If this didn’t work...if this…
A soft chime dinged and the elevator doors began to split apart. Tony squeezed through before they had fully opened, his collarbones screaming at the pressure, his thighs bruising against the metal that wasn’t ready for him to pass by yet.
The sound of pandemonium was his compass. Each step brought him closer, the walls blurring together, his line of sight a clouded mess until finally, he made it through the automatic doors of the surgical prep bay.
Alarms blared — different alarms, the kind that made his blood curdle, the medical equipment screeching warning sounds that a life was in danger.
“Temperature drop to eighty-five degrees.”
“Pupils delayed but responding.”
A gasp, wet and hoarse. “Get — g-get off me!”
“Positive Babinski reflex test.”
“Large bore IV’s set in the left and right AC. Fluids wide open.”
“Please — ple-ase st-stop!”
Tony walked straight into a war zone.
His eyes went everywhere, looking all across the room, trying to find anything that would stand out among the white coats and scrubs. He didn’t even realize that his hands were still trembling, the rattling of glass vials lost in the cyclone of chaotic undercurrent.
“Pulse OX sixty-nine. Respiratory, if you can’t intubate then you need to get started on non-invasive oxygen.”
“Easier said than done when we can’t get two feet near the boy!”
Seeing faces that he recognized was like finding a needle in a haystack. He vaguely noticed Bruce standing across the room, his concerned and stressed expression more noticeable among the array of calmer medical staff. He was side-by-side with Helen, both reviewing multiple x-ray scans on a large monitor — even from a distance, Tony could see the shattered bones that painted the picture they both studied, intently.
Across from them and on the opposite side, Strange came striding over, gowned in green scrubs and slapping on latex gloves. Tony briefly wondered when he had the time to change out of his ridiculous Monk getup, only to shrug the answer off to magic. He was immediately hidden behind other staff once he approached the gurney.
“Peter? Peter, you need to calm down.” Strange practically shouted to be heard. “These people are trying to help you, they’re —”
A tray of instruments crashed to the floor, followed by the sound of a woman yelling out in surprise.
“Whoa, whoa!”
“Get the restraints, he’s combative!”
A gasp wetter than the last barely broke through the chaos. “No – no, pl-ease, g-get off!”
“Hold on, hold on!” Strange yelled over them all.
The bodies cleared away, most attending to the nurse that was knocked onto the floor. They parted all at once. Tony fought to brace himself against the familiar heat of anxiety, his fingers tingling the harder he gripped Steve’s helmet.
“Somebody take this!” he finally shouted, storming forward and shoving the helmet to the nearest tech. The bottles shook inside, a few almost falling to the floor had it not been for the woman’s quick reflexes.
Tony didn’t care. Everything else ceased to matter, his only focus, his only concern — he had to get to Peter. He couldn’t reach the kid fast enough, his heart racing, pounding.
“Pl-ea-ea-se, pl-ease, g-get away! S-stop!” Peter sobbed, his cries wet, hoarse, exhausted and yet purely agonized.
“Hey, hey, Peter — it’s okay.” Tony reached the gurney, standing at the top near Peter’s head, hands firm on his shoulders to lessen his thrashing movements. “Hey, Underoo’s. Same side, okay? Same side.”
Glassy, blood-shot eyes looked all around the room, frantically darting at the mayhem that surrounded him. They locked in place the moment he saw Tony.
“M-make ‘e-em stop. P-please,” Peter begged, hyperventilating and grunting with ragged breath. “Ma-ake them sto — gah-agh!”
Tony pressed a firm palm against his forehead. “They’re here to help you, kid. I promise. We’re only trying to help.”
“Administering first dose, Captain Rogers anesthetic. Fifty milligrams.”
A doctor injected the contents of a full syringe directly into the IV settled in the crook of Peter’s arm. Tony watched from the corner of his eyes as colorless liquid traveled up the clear tubing.
Almost immediately the kid was jerking away, three other nurses plus himself struggling to hold him down.
“Ah-ah-gah!” Peter howled, his back arching from the gurney. “It burns! I-it — it burns, pl-please stop!”
His cries were so loud that his voice began to break, weak and wrecked from screaming, the strain tearing his throat raw.
Standing at the top of the gurney, Tony cupped his palms around Peter’s cheeks. His fingers gripped his chin, hands closing in around his ears in hopes that it would dim the sound of hell that encircled them.
“You’re alright.” Tony held his face tighter, repeating the words like a mantra. “You’re alright.”
Nurses pulled away at his spider-suit, his body jostling and buckling with every movement they made, yanking it down and leaving it to grip at his hips.
Peter tried to look below. He lifted his head the best he could, wide eyes terrified, his forehead creased with what Tony was sure could only be unbearable agony.
Looking down with him, Tony proved himself to be right. His stomach lurched and he quickly swallowed a mouthful of vomit, the taste of bile burning his throat hot. It was like watching a goddamn horror movie, blood mixing together with dark scarlet and vivid red, old and fresh and too much of it.
He eyed one doctor in particular, watching as the man shoved the tip of an irrigating syringe inside the gaping wound near Peter’s side. With each push he flushed out dirt, clumps of seaweed and blood that poured onto the floor below them, repeating the process over and over. The saline never came out clear, always a twisted mixture of light pink. It spilled onto the white linoleum floors and around Tony’s shoes.
Peter convulsed with sobs, his clenched eyes and dripping tears down Tony’s knuckles. The wet warmth on his hands caught his attention. Tony tried to wipe the tears away, his thumbs cupped around Peter’s cheekbones — but they came too fast, too quickly.
“Pl-please, plea-se.” Peter choked on a gasp. “Pl-please —”
“Administering second dose. Another fifty milligrams.”
“Mr. Stark, you need to leave —”
“D-don’t go,” Peter begged, the back of his head hitting the gurney. “Pl-please. D-don’t lea-leave me.”
“I’m here, Peter. I’m not leaving.” Tony kept his voice steady, squeezing his grip. “I’m not leaving.”
Tony kept his eyes locked on Peter, refusing to look as doctors manhandled him, shoving in tubes and creating more holes, treating broken bones, injecting medicine — he kept his eyes focused on Peter’s face and only that, saving the kid what little dignity he had left.
His erratic struggles were slowing, just slightly, just enough that Tony noticed. Thrashing turned more into weak buckling, and his screams died off into pained, nasally grunts.
Peter’s eyes flickered back up to him. “Mr-Mr. St’k, help. It-it hurts. It hurts.”
“Give it one last chance. Push one hundred.” Helen’s voice cut through. “OR is prepped, Doctor Wu is waiting. We can’t keep stalling.”
The room tilted briefly and Tony dropped one hand from Peter’s cheek, clinging onto the mattress of the gurney to steady himself. He could hear as a doctor stated, “Administering last dose. One hundred milligrams.”
‘Jesus Christ.’ Tony closed his eyes, feeling the panic as choked him. It took one of these things to knock Cap flat on his ass. Peter was up to four.
If this didn’t work...God, if this didn’t work…
“Let go, kid,” Tony begged. “You gotta let go.”
He was desperate to end this god-awful nightmare. He wasn’t even sure if he was still talking to Peter. He wasn’t sure if Peter could even hear him — not over the sound of doctors, beeping and screeching machines, not over the sound of his own cries.
Tony smoothed back his wet hair, pushing the curls away, carding his fingers through the tangled mess.
“It’s okay, Pete. You can let go,” he whispered, his voice soft under his breath. “You’re safe now. It’s okay to let go.”
Frantic jerking morphed into mild spasms. They were still strong underneath his grasp, shoulders harshly lifting off the padded gurney, but Tony noticed the difference.
Peter seemed to swallow his next groan, the sound smothered in his throat. The one after that came out as a whine, dying off before it even escaped his lips.
It was both the most beautiful and horrific thing Tony had ever seen when Peter’s eyes rolled back, half-lidded, whites staring back up at him. He let out one final moan, a soft whimper, and his body fell slack.
“I’m rolling with it.” A doctor pushed Tony aside with force he wasn’t expecting. Almost immediately he had Peter’s head tilted back, opening the kid’s mouth wide with a metal laryngoscope and sliding a tube down his throat —
Tony couldn’t watch. He had to turn away, eyes closed as his gag reflex made itself known.
The gurney rushed by him, staff pushing the bed out of the room, creating a cool breeze that brought up the smell of antiseptic and blood.
A hand laid gently on his shoulder, startling him.
“Tony.” Bruce squeezed his grip. “You need to leave. They have this handled.”
Across the room, the bedlam hadn’t stopped. Tony looked over, watching as they rushed away, continuing to shout orders at each other while multitasking — techs held up IV and blood bags, a nurse pressed thick clumps of gauze against Peter’s bare stomach, a doctor squeezed air from an ambu bag that attached to the tubing in Peter’s throat — they functioned like a well oiled machine, fast and steady.
He could hear as they kept talking. Helen and Strange were lost in the abundance of others, but their voices stood out among the disarray.
“Doctor Strange," Helen was firm and professional, "will you be assisting us?”
“Assisting? I don’t think so.” Tony vaguely saw as Strange brought up a shaking hand before immediately hiding it away. “But I will help in any way I can.”
“Then you might be more useful to Doctor Banner.”
The voices moved further away, more distant as they mixed in with blaring machines. Bruce must have taken that as his cue to leave. He had let go of his grip on Tony, quickly walking backward to the chaos that was departing.
“Tony — go. We got this,” he insisted.
Go.
Go away.
Tony stood idly as everyone left, departing into an area beyond where his eyes could see. He was alone, standing amidst the mess left behind. The lights were bright against the pale blue walls and white floors, showcasing every bit of wreckage — supplies, trash, blood — destruction surrounded him.
Fitting.
The merchant of death.
You destroy everything.
Far from where he could see, he heard doors open with a bang, wheels of a gurney squealing under pressure. The noise echoed in the empty space of the pre-surgical room, loud, making him visibly cringe.
It masked the sound of the strained cry that escaped his throat.
‘Not here. Christ, not here. Don’t—not here, not here.’
Tony left in a hurry. His legs faltered as he clung to walls to steady himself, having no real direction of where to go, no destination outside of escaping — leaving — finding solace anywhere from here.
He managed to make it to the nearest room outside of the med bay, a one-stall restroom down the hall. The door slammed shut and he spun around, immediately emptying the contents of his stomach into the sink.
Tony gasped, trying to breathe through each expel of vomit that splashed down below, pungent liquid getting caught in his lungs and burning in his nostrils. He gripped the white ceramic sink, the edges of the sleek, square design digging into the palms of his hands.
His back hunched as he retched, desperately trying to purge the last forty-eight hours. Only bile came up, bitter and acidic in his throat.
“Pl-please. D-don’t lea-leave me.”
Tony lost it.
“Mr-Mr. Str’k, help.”
Between the gagging, between the hiccups and dry heaving, he lost it. The throbbing feeling in his chest sharpened as he sunk further away, the claws of failure digging in deeper, sobs full-throated but restrained in the sleeve of his arm.
The monster had won.
Everyone close to you suffers.
Tony trembled with a pain he didn’t know existed, a paralyzing ache he didn’t know was possible ripping him to shreds. He was alone, no one at his side to calm him down, no one there to steer him out of the panic attack that washed him away.
Tony crumbled to the floor, swallowing heavily, again and again, unable to choke down the raw emotion that drowned him. He slumped against the bathroom wall, collapsing in on himself with his head between his knees, and he lost it.
“Don’t waste your life, Stark.”
He shouldn’t be alive.
Time after time again he was given second chances when he didn’t deserve them.
He failed Peter. He failed his team.
Why was he walking away from this?
“Why didn’t you do more?”