When The Bad Things Happen
“Why are you doing this?”
“I gotta know, what’s your M.O, what gets you out of that twin bed in the morning?”
“Because...”
“Because I’ve been me my whole life. And I’ve had these powers for six months. I read books, I build computers. And-and yeah I would love to play football, but I-I couldn’t then so I shouldn’t now.”
"Sure, ‘cause you’re different.”
“Exactly. But I can’t tell anybody that so I’m not.”
“When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t...and then the bad things happen...they happen because of you.”
“So you want to look out for the little guy, you want to do your part, make the world a better place, all that, right?”
"Yeah, yeah, yeah just looking out for the little guy. That’s-that’s what it is.”
Tony hadn’t moved in hours.
Moving took energy, something he was severely lacking.
He simply sat, catatonic. Motionless.
Time passed, first by the minutes and then by hours, but he didn’t bother checking a clock or asking FRIDAY.
He didn’t care.
He needed nothing but solitude, to be alone. At this point, it was a must. Once he found it, he clung to it, letting the strange silence echo each pounding beat of his migraine.
Exhaustion coursed through his every muscle, weighing him down. His eyelids were heavy, and he held his face in his hands, hunched over in the chair that took his weight.
The crash from adrenaline was powerful, a vicious anchor that nearly took him under. Had it not been for the fear, Tony would have surrendered. Fear kept him going, fear of the unknown, fear of the uncertain outcome. It was like poison, infecting him, festering in his mind.
Tony didn’t know when he got in touch with Happy or how long it had been after they arrived back at the compound. All he knew was that the phone call was short, sweet and to the point.
Get the kid’s aunt. Bring her here. Quickly.
That was the last time he spoke. It was the last thing he did, possibly hours passing as he sat and waited.
And waited.
For what, he wasn’t too sure.
It was nothing short of a miracle that he staved away another panic attack. The very thought of that woman saying goodbye to her nephew made his chest constrict under the crushing pressure of an ocean he had escaped from. But it was a possibility, a real one, and it was one he couldn’t bear to entertain.
If anyone deserved a proper goodbye, it was her. He owed her a goodbye. He owed her a lot of things, none money could buy for him but this...this at least was within his control.
Right now, Tony needed to do what was in his control.
It was quiet, for the most part. He was spent, emotionally and physically drained, unable to do anything but sit still in a chair outside of the compounds medical wing.
The area was interesting, if he had to choose a word to describe it. It was more a waiting room than anything else; TV’s hanging on the wall that he hadn’t turned on, magazines shelved in a short rack at the corner beside a potted plant. It was an area of the compound they almost never utilized. They had no reason to.
If a team member were ever injured, they typically gathered in the lounge. It was their spot, their go-to for them and only them.
This was created more for formalities, for other staff, other departments. Not for Tony Stark.
For a long time, it was quiet. No one dared to bother him, not the team, not security, not Rogers. So when Tony heard what seemed to be an argument taking place down the hallway, it quickly caught his attention.
“Mrs. Parker, please wait —”
“I’ve waited an hour in that damn car. I’m not—”
“It was an forty minutes. I broke speed limits getting us here. If you just hold on, I need to get you a badge and —”
Tony stumbled out of the chair, heavily leaning against the armrest to straighten his back, his muscles throbbing at the sudden movement. He looked down the hallway just as May came storming through, her purse swinging violently by her hip.
Happy followed closely behind.
“Mrs. Parker —”
“Happy.” May spun around to face him, a stern finger pointing in his face. “Cram it.”
Tony tensed. What little energy he had left began to boil into anxiety, his breath hitching while watching the two approach him.
Vivid memories of Miriam Sharpe flashed before his eyes, a reminder of a mother who lost her son, a child who lost their life — all because of him.
It was history repeating itself.
May was going to lose it, and she had every right to. She could slap him, punch him, kick him, spend all her loathing on dragging him down until he was nothing. Because that’s what he was — nothing. He let this happen to her nephew, to Peter. He deserved whatever came his way.
Happy sprinted to keep up with her, already slightly out of breath. “Tony, I tried getting her to —”
Tony held his hand up, stopping him from saying anything else.
“May, I...” his voice broke from disuse, his throat red hot and tender. “Listen, I —”
She narrowed her eyes, and her feet stomped up to him. “Where is he?”
“He’s here,” Tony reassured. “He’s in surgery. They’ve — he’s — he’s been in surgery. May, I’m —ofph!”
Tony let out a nearly inaudible gasp, the sound gruff and husky.
May leapt forward, grabbing him tightly in an embrace that stole his breath.
“Thank you.” Her voice was soft, shaking with a strength he was envious of. Yet any sense of composure she tried to retain was washed away in the blink of an eye as she splintered under the force of her tears. "Thank you, thank you, oh god, thank you.”
Her cries were heavy, wails that were smothered in his chest. Tony stood still, his arms dangling at his side, unable to comprehend the moment.
May repeated the same words, the same gratitude until she couldn’t anymore. Her words became messy, incoherent sobs.
He looked up at Happy, who only shrugged and gave the saddest, smallest smile he had ever seen. Tony decided to ignore the tears were glossing in the man’s eyes, reflecting from the overhead lights. If he acknowledged that, he’d crumble himself.
“He’s all I have. He’s all I have left,” May cried, heavy and ugly sobs leaking onto his shirt. “Thank you...thank you, thank you...you brought him back, you brought him home, you saved him— thank you.”
Tony's arm twitched. For a moment he considered wrapping it around her, only deciding against it when he felt the tremble that shook against his hip.
When May pulled away, both her hands gripped his face, forcing him to look directly at her as she asked, “Are you okay?”
The question made Tony's head stutter still.
“Tony, are you okay?” she impossibly repeated.
Tony tried to look away, look anywhere that wasn’t at May, but her grip was strong and he felt uncomfortable that his bloodshot, puffy eyes were so openly exposed to her. Not even in his rawest moments did he let Pepper see him so broken, so demoralized.
“I...”
The words died on his tongue. He was confident he had heard her wrong. She wasn’t asking how he was — she couldn’t be asking that. He was the cause behind this. He was the one who put her under the impression that she’d have to bury her boy with no closure to grieve with. Why would she care about him?
And yet here she was, pulling his face back to her, soft brown eyes locking with his.
“God, I can’t even imagine. Everything you’ve done — Happy told me you’ve been at this for days. This must have been hell for you.” May crinkled her nose, patting his cheek softly. “You should shower, you smell like rotten fish.”
Tony blinked, looking over at Happy and back at May, unsure if he had finally gone mad and began hallucinating.
“I’m...I’m sorry, what’s going on here?” The words tumbled out of his mouth. “Why are you not yelling at me?”
It was the least eloquent question he could ask, so blunt that any other day Tony would berate himself for failing at the basics of being more articulate.
May didn’t seem to mind. Her expression softened and she let go of his face. One hand reached under her glasses to dry her cheeks while the other moved to grip his shoulder tightly.
“I’ve done my fair share of yelling at you, more than I’m proud of. But anger won’t help either one of us right now. You’ve dealt with a lot —”
“You don’t know that,” Tony interrupted, cut and cold.
May’s frown lingered. “I might not be your biggest fan, Tony. But I’m also not your enemy here. And if you freak out, then I’m going to freak out, and that’s...that’s the last thing any of us need right now.”
Tony found it hard to look at her. He stared over her shoulder at the pale blue walls, occasional sparing a glance at Happy, too tired to argue and too tired to reflect. She was hanging on by a thread and quite frankly, so was he.
But if he was made of iron, May Parker was made of steel. Easily, hands down, there was no doubting it. It had become very obvious to him where Peter got a lot of his strength from.
He flicked his thumb over his nose, sniffing hard. “Happy will get you where you need to be.”
Tony was beyond his comfort zone of vulnerability in front of her and luckily for him, she was eager to leave. May looked over her shoulder and at Happy, who nodded while pointing straight ahead. There was no hesitation to follow the direction she was told to go.
Tony took the opportunity to turn away, bowing his head and rubbing at his temples. The migraine pounded fiercely behind his eyes and against his neck, a constant throb that wouldn’t go away. It made every footstep of May's louder than intended, shoes hammering against the tiled floors until they were barely heard.
He only looked up when he felt a different presence at his side, this time Happy standing near him with both arms crossed over his chest.
“How’s the kid?” Happy quietly asked.
Tony didn’t even turn to face him as he hoarsely answered, “Get her to him.”
“Kid, you alright?”
“Hey! Hey — get off, hey!”
“Whoa, whoa!”
“Get off — hey!”
“Same side. Guess who. Hi. It's me.”
“Oh.”
"Hey, man.”
“Yeah.”
“That was scary.”
“Yeah. You're done. Alright?”
"What?”
“You did a good job. Stay down.”
“No, I'm good. I'm fine.”
“Stay down!”
“No, it's good, I gotta get him back!”
“You're going home, or I'll call Aunt May! You're done!”
“Wait, Mr. Stark, wait — I’m not done!”
"Yeah...I'm done."
The doors leading further into the medical bay had remained closed for so long that Tony was sure it was a cruel mirage when they finally opened.
He looked up with bleary eyes. It took a moment to distinguish the figure walking towards him, green scrubs and black hair a blurry mess until his eyes focused and his sight became clear.
Stephen approached him, fingers lowering the surgical mask that was strapped around his face, letting it hang loosely around his neck.
Tony couldn’t have stood up faster. His knees cracked and popped and his back screamed with a burning fire, but he was on his feet within seconds.
Stephen waved a dismissing hand. “Stay seated.”
Tony shook his head. “I’d rather stand.”
“Yeah?” Stephen was already collapsing into the nearest chair with an exhausted grunt. “Well I’d rather sit, and you’re going to need to. So, sit.”
Tony stared at the empty chair Stephen gestured to, his hand shaking and trembling. With reluctance, he gave in and sat down, though he didn’t relax. Not with the thick silence that lingered between them.
It couldn’t have lasted for more than a few seconds, but for Tony it felt like a lifetime.
“He’s alive,” Stephen finally told him.
Tony hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear those words, not until they were finally said. He visibly collapsed, head in his hands and knees resting on his elbows, exhaling a large breath of air that heaved his entire back.
“He’s in critical condition,” Stephen added.
Tony looked over at him, frowning. “But stable?”
He anticipated the words, always hearing ‘critical but stable’ in every situation like this. Yet a beat passed with Strange hesitating to answer.
“Stable means no further deterioration,” he said. “That’s not a prognosis to be declared right now.”
Tony’s head spun, and it wasn't hard for Stephen to sense his impatience. He took a deep breath and ran his hand over his mouth and chin.
“There was a lot of internal damage your doctors had to repair. They’ll be able to better explain it to you. My specialty was in neurosurgery, I can’t speak on what all they saw,” he explained. “But I have seen similar wounds to the head, the type that typically occur from a rebar, possibly an industrial pipe of sorts. The diameter of the wound on Peter’s abdomen leads your staff to believe it was the latter.”
Tony let his head fall back into his hands, his open palms pressed heavily into his eyes.
“Christ.”
He could hear as Stephen adjusted himself in the chair next to him. “I know it’s not the most encouraging thing to hear right now, but the healing factor is still present. It’s kept him alive this long.”
It kept him alive this — Tony snapped his head up, eyes hot with rage.
“Where the hell were you?”
Stephen narrowed his eyes. “I was off saving your team.”
Tony sniffed and scoffed. “Your magical ass couldn’t be a little more timely, huh?”
If he had a response, Stephen decided to keep it to himself. It was for the best. Tony shook his head, straightening his back as his lips pressed into a thin line.
“We had one task. We were there to save him, you knew that.”
“And you did,” Stephen reminded him. “Don’t forget that so quickly because of what’s happening now.”
The lump hardened in his throat and Tony closed his eyes in resignation.
That was a joke. He knew that Peter saved himself as much as they saved him. He chewed on his lower lip, unsure if it was out of frustration or to keep it from quivering.
“He was fighting back there. Tooth and nail, the kid wasn’t going down without a fight.”
Tony wished that for just one moment, one measly second he could hear the silence that fell between the two of them. But his ears wouldn’t stop ringing, screams of agony playing mercilessly on repeat. His hands wanted to curl into fists, and he had to cling onto the armrest of the chair to stop himself.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get there sooner,” Stephen quietly said.
Tony grit his teeth, not daring to look his way. “You at least complete your job?”
The question tasted bitter coming from his mouth. This wasn’t a job, this wasn’t a mission — this was a kid, a kid he felt responsible for. “They made it personal for you.” Strange had told him. Tony huffed. Maybe his magical spirits were onto something after all.
“Yes,” Stephen answered. “Francis Klum has been dealt with.”
Dmitri was gone, Klum was gone— they had eliminated two enemies, two major threats and yet there was no celebrating. There was no win.
Of all the battles they had fought, Tony felt the biggest loss from this one.
“Good,” he muttered under his breath. “Knock out the competition and all that, right?”
Stephen sighed. He leaned forward, trying to meet Tony’s face. “I know we don’t see eye to eye Stark, but I hope you understand this was never about that.”
“What I understand is you came here to help save him and this...” Tony waved a hand around, “this is what we get.”
Tony’s face fell back into his hands, his back aching from hunching over.
Still, Stephen didn't look away from him. “You did save him. I know that’s hard to see right now —”
“Does he die?” Tony’s head shot up, angrily looking towards him. “You were here to make sure he doesn’t die. His death plays a role in my future, right, that’s what you said? So tell me — does he die?”
Tony hated that Stephen didn’t respond. He hated that his eyes locked with his, trying to tell him an answer he refused to accept.
Tony slammed an open palm on the armrest. “Come on Strange, use that glowing time stone of yours for something!”
His shout bounced off the walls, loud and surly.
Stephen didn’t engage in it. Rather he stood up, ultimately deciding to put distance between the two of them.
“I strongly believe the child will pull through. I don’t need the Vishanti to tell me that.” He lowered his chin, staring Tony down. “Neither do you.”
Tony opened his mouth, words ready to leave his lips when the rustling of wind caught his attention. By the time he looked up, Stephen had already wrapped his cloak around his shoulders, the scarlet fabric resting easily against his collar bones.
“I do have to go for now,” Stephen said, having returned to the familiar blue tunic that he once wore before. The green scrubs were gone in the blink of an eye. “Unfortunately, there’s another matter that calls for my attention.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Yeah, of course, no reason to stick around here anymore. I get it.”
“Tony."
Tony looked up, momentarily surprised at the sincerity in Strange’s voice. It sounded foreign, something else he was almost sure he was imagining.
Strange cocked his head to the side, seeming truly and honestly concerned.
Tony decided he liked it better when the man was a smart-ass.
“I will return. To see Peter, to check up on your team,” he promised, an unfamiliar softness coating his tone.
Tony held back a bitter laugh. He distantly wondered how even when unconscious and dying the kid still managed to win everyone over.
Stephen stood up straighter, chin held high. “But right now, I’ve been alerted to a dangerous situation here in New York. There’s an ancient organization called The Hand who have been using powerful occult magic and a team of vigilantes plans to go up against them. I would stay if I could, but unfortunately, that’s not something I can ignore.”
Tony stared down at his hands. He wasn’t in any position to argue, not that he wanted to, not that he had the energy to. He stayed quiet as Strange walked away, and it was only when he briefly stopped that Tony finally looked back up.
“Oh,” Stephen turned around, finger pointing down the hall. “And I also don’t want to deal with her.”
Tony heard as two double doors slammed open, just as Strange departed, leaving a rain of fizzling orange sparks where he once stood.
When the dying cracklings of magic fully dissipated, it cleared the way to see Helen Cho storming into the room.
Tony shot to his feet, the exchange with Strange already forgotten, his eyes wide as he watched her quickly approach.
“What the hell was that about, Stark!?” Helen was shouting, and he didn’t have the courage to tell her to stop. “As if its bad enough you bring a child into medical —”
He held both his hands up, both open palmed. “I know, I’m —”
“I’ve got this entire staff up my ass because Tony Stark decided to risk the life —”
“I know, I’m sorry, I know!”
Helen didn’t waste a moments breath. “I will never, ever do that again. Do you hear me? Is that clear?”
“I know—I know!” Tony had no intention of matching the volume of her voice but he was slowly losing control over his temper, and his words were starting to waver with frustration.
Helen roughly poked a finger to his chest.
“No!” she snapped, sounding eerily dangerous. “You don’t get to know. You weren’t in there saving the life of a child. A child, Stark! We did not sign up for this, not in the least bit.”
Tony swallowed back his pride, awkwardly trying to hide the tremble that coursed through him. He settled on crossing his arms and stuffing his hands deep into his armpits.
“How bad?” he asked, hugging himself tighter. “How bad is it?”
Tony barely had time to react as Helen shoved an electronic tablet straight against his chest.
“You tell me,” Helen coldly tossed back.
Any other time and Tony would have laughed at her audacity. They had known each other long enough for her to be aware that he hated, absolutely despised being handed things.
And yet here he was, his hands fumbling to catch the device she had shoved against him.
Tony looked down at the pad, letting his eyes pick out words that meant the most to him. Blunt abdominal trauma, hypovolemia, comminuted tibial fracture, malnourished, severe dehydration — this was about as bad as it came.
“Is he going to be okay?” Tony asked, his voice laced with a slight tremor.
Helen crossed her arms, her lab jacket bunching around her chest as she did. Her expression seemed to soften, if just slightly, though her lips stayed pressed in a grim line. Tony couldn’t tell if she had taken pity on his crumbling self-composure or if she had gotten rid of most of her anger. He was too preoccupied to really care.
“He’s on life support,” she answered.
Tony immediately tossed the tablet onto an empty seat.
“Christ, he —” Tony's hands dug deep into his hair, tugging harshly.
“He’s lost an enormous amount of blood that we can’t transfuse back into him.” Helen put a hand up, quickly stopping Tony from asking any questions. “You can go to Bruce for those details. Right now, you need to know that he’s critical. Our goal is to get him through today. Then the next twenty-four hours after that. This is not...this is not okay though, Tony.”
Her words were still short, still clipped with a heavy weariness attached to them. Tony knew she wasn’t just talking about Peter’s condition anymore.
He knew he had royally messed up this time, and he didn’t blame her for pointing it out.
Keeping Peter secret from everyone turned out to be a terrible idea. The kid was enhanced and he was the one who knew that. They should have taken more action when the cat was finally out of the bag, they should have had studies done on him, Bruce should have looked at him sooner — they should have prepared for this.
He shouldn’t have had an entire medical staff running around like chickens with their heads cut off because they were clueless to Peter’s physiology.
That wasn’t fair to anyone involved.
“What do we…what do we do?” Tony locked his eyes with hers, not just asking but practically begging for an answer. “How do we fix this?”
Helen shook her head. She quickly leaned down to snatch the tablet back, shooting hot daggers at Tony the entire time.
“You do nothing. This is my area of expertise.” She spun fast on her heels. “You’ve done enough.”
Tony had felt a lot of shame in the past couple of days, enough to make him physically ill. But nothing compared to the moment Helen stormed away from him. He ran a shaking hand over his mouth, letting the coarse feel of his facial hair prick against his fingertips.
The power dynamics were completely reversed and there was no ground for him to stand on. If Helen wanted to be angry with him, he wouldn’t fight it.
If May wanted to knock him flat on his ass, she deserved the right to do so.
He had messed up. Big time.
His chest was starting to feel heavy again. Tony wasn’t sure what there was left for him to do, having become so used to being pulled in a thousand different directions that the moment of quiescence left him feeling lost.
There was nothing left, his tank was on fumes.
Tony's knees buckled before he knew it, and he fell back down in the chair, losing complete control of his body along the way.
For the first time in what felt like all week, he let out a breath of air that contained everything within him and everything that held him together.
And he did nothing.
“ls everyone okay?”
“No thanks to you."
“No thanks to me?”
“Those weapons were out there and I tried to tell you about it…but you didn’t listen. None of this would’ve happened if you had just listened to me!”
“If you even cared, you’d actually be here.”
“I did listen, kid. Who do you think called the FBI, huh? Do you know I was the only one who believed in you? Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a fourteen-year-old kid —”
“I’m fifteen.”
“No, this is where you zip it, all right!? The adult is talking!”
“What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right, ‘cause that’s on you. And if you died…I feel like that’s on me. I don’t need that on my conscience.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
"Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
“I just wanted to be like you.”
“And I wanted you to be better.”
Almost seven hours had passed before they heard any news. Steve was aware of each minute that painfully went by, the night moving at such a sluggishly slow pace that he couldn’t keep his eyes off the clock. The team regrouped in the lounge long before he had joined them, and stayed there with no intention of leaving.
Once security had been handled, and once he was cleared from medical himself, there was nothing left to distract himself from the wait. Steve shed the thermal blanket the nurses had provided him and passed it onto Wanda, the girl visibly shaken once having been told of the condition Peter was brought in.
In lieu of sitting like the others, Steve paced. While he wouldn’t let it show, not knowing anything had begun to peel away at his composure; the same composure he knew he had the responsibility to maintain.
He hadn’t felt so unraveled since leaving Bucky in Wakanda.
By the time the sun started to leak through the skylight ceilings, their concern began to heighten. Luckily, it was around that same time that Bruce walked in, with Helen close at his side.
Both looked positively dead on their feet. No one commented when they quietly settled on the couches.
Bruce listlessly dropped his head into his hands and Helen handed out an electronic tablet to Steve, who took it and slowly sat down on the sofa across from them.
“He’s alive,” Bruce mumbled through his fingers, scrubbing harshly at his face. “That’s about the extent of good news there is.”
Steve frowned as he read through the data on the medical chart. Bruce wasn’t exaggerating. While he was by no means a doctor, the details on Peter’s file were far from promising.
“It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. If this were to have happened to anyone else, even you Captain,” Helen said, somberly looking at Steve, “it would have been fatal.”
They stayed mostly silent throughout the explanation that was provided, passing the tablet around for everyone to read. Only Wanda refused to take hold of it, preferring instead to just listen to Helen as she spoke.
“Infection? Muscle damage?” Sam handed the device over to Clint. “You said they think he was shoved into a pipe — he going to see any permanent damage from that?”
Helen shook her head.
“Scans came back clean, though Doctor Wu did have to remove some small intestines. The object perforated the jejunum of his abdomen but missed the descending colon by roughly an inch.” She held a hand in the air before anyone could react. “That is a good thing. It’s not an ideal situation, but it shows things could have been worse. I truly don’t believe even he would have survived such a septic reaction.”
“So no internal damage then?” Rhodey asked.
“No, thankfully,” Helen answered. “He seems to be reacting a lot better to the...well, the insane cocktail of antibiotics we’re pumping into him. I think we’ll have a handle on the peritonitis before it starts to progress. There’s a very dedicated wound care team monitoring him to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Steve could tell that she was trying to remain optimistic, purposefully finding a way to end each statement with something positive.
The problem was, she couldn’t take away the exhaustion from her voice; laced with devastation and desperation. It made reading between the lines all the more easier.
Clint’s finger scrolled through the pad, his eyebrows furrowed tight. “Why’d you cut open his leg?”
Helen sighed. “Cut open is extreme, Mr. Barton. For starters, we took every measure possible to make small incisions. He suffered a comminuted tibial fracture — that’s pieces of bone which needed repaired. Trust me, it wasn’t a procedure any of us wanted to do, not in his current condition. But we couldn’t plaster cast it and risk the bones improperly healing. Typically, with that type of fracture the patient would undergo surgical treatment for an internal fixation device — metal plates implanted directly onto the bone.”
Clint was the last person to receive the tablet, and as such, he tossed it carelessly onto the glass table in front of them. The hard case enclosing it caused it to bounce up with a clang.
“You screwed a rod on the outside of the kid’s leg,” he retorted.
“It’s temporary,” she explained. “An external fixation device was the best route to take. In the circumstance of a patient with a healing factor, you don’t want to provide unnecessary medical treatment when their body will repair itself. There was no reason to do such an extensive, internal procedure if we could avoid it. There’s a small rod connecting on the lateral side of his knee to his ankle, it’s there to keep the bones in place while it heals. This way once it does, the process of removing it will be less of a toll on him.”
Steve spared a quick glance to Clint, who leaned back into the sofa with an exasperated sigh. He knew the man was more upset at the situation than he was at Helen, they all were.
Though it was a twisted thought, he was glad they didn’t have to be there when this happened to Peter.
Fists hitting skin, bones breaking, gasping and choking on water — he already found himself constantly fighting the sounds out of his head. He couldn’t take more.
“His wrists?” Steve quietly asked. “They...Tony and I saw...”
“They’ll be okay. Hairline fractures,” Helen told him. “The orthopedic department here has been making vast enhancements in 3D printed technology to utilize for limb immobility situations such as this. Unfortunately, they haven’t advanced to the point where it would benefit his leg, but it’s working well on his hands. Barely noticeable, doesn’t even wrap around his forearm, simply a band around the wrists.”
She demonstrated with the smallest smile her mouth could manage, a visible strain that Steve didn’t have the energy to match. He curtly nodded, acknowledging her response.
Sitting next to him, Natasha had locked her gaze on Bruce, never taking her eyes off him throughout the discussion. If she hadn’t been looking directly at him, she would have sworn that she heard the man talk.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ rang in her ears, words that he never actually spoke, a personality normally so predictable faded underneath the stress of the situation.
It disturbed her how quiet Bruce had been. It disturbed them all. He was usually one to pitch in with giddy enthusiasm about how this type of technology functioned, proceeding to bore the team with details that they never asked for and could never understand.
Instead, he sat quietly, chin in the palm of his hands and elbows on his knees.
Natasha’s brows pulled together, concerned. “Bruce?”
His head snapped up, as if he now suddenly remembered where he was. Bruce looked at her, the deep lines across his face echoing her exhaustion.
Almost immediately he bowed his head again, taking his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose tightly.
“I’m sorry, it’s just...” Bruce heavily sighed, “this is bad.”
Wanda leaned forward, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself. “How bad?”
“His blood is...well, it’s mutated,” Bruce said. “Beyond what’s compatible with any other cross-match. On the surface he still has a normal B positive blood type, but beneath that it...it’s more. The antigens and protein markers have been so abnormally altered by that spider bite that he’s...he’s essentially developed an ABO incompatibility.”
Sam was the first to catch on. “He can’t receive blood.”
Bruce nodded. Clint audibly cursed under his breath, and Rhodey scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief.
“It’s...incredibly unfortunate in the current situation, but yes. We had to stop transfusing the universal O negative to prevent a hemolytic reaction,” Bruce explained.
Natasha stayed neutral. “So what now?”
Steve sat up a little straighter. “Doesn’t he have accelerated healing?”
“Yes,” Helen simply answered. “And that healing factor has certainly kept him alive this long.”
“Where’s the but?” Clint asked, arms crossed and all but rolling his eyes.
Bruce didn’t seem to have the willpower to answer the question. The tension grew twice as thick between them, and Steve was silently appreciative when Helen finally took over.
“He can only regenerate so fast. With his injuries, with the hypovolemia...he spent days dehydrated, malnourished — his body needs twice as much intake as that of a normal individual, and consequently he loses it twice as fast,” she explained. “It’s not as if he’s been stripped of his healing factor. It’s that his body is simply too weak and injured to utilize it.”
Rhodey leaned into the side of the couch, his temple resting between two fingers that rubbed at his forehead. He appeared to be able to keep up with the medical details up until now. It was typically the case for him though, superpowers always had a tendency to complicate things.
“So what does all that mean?” he asked.
Bruce put his glasses back on. “Think of it like a muscle. It takes energy to use. SHIELD's hematology doctors have a theory — one that I’m-I'm inclined to agree with. We believe Peter used a lot of strength in just trying to stay alive. It’s not a...pleasant thing to think about, but his body more than likely went into hypovolemic shock multiple times. A normal person loses a certain amount of blood, they go into shock and-and of course, if not treated, their heart gives out. They die. Peter's body, it...it lost a certain amount of blood, fell into shock and...well, began to regenerate the blood that was lost. Until it couldn’t anymore. And then the process repeated.”
His hands spun and twisted around each other, mimicking a moving wheel.
Natasha frowned. “Until now.”
Steve didn’t need to see Bruce nodding to know the answer. He felt the cushions of the sofa lighten as Natasha stood up, her only response being that she walked away from the group. By the time Steve looked up, she was standing across the room and over the stairway banister.
They all knew her well enough to leave her be.
“I would like to reiterate what I said before,” Helen cut in. “By all accounts, he should be dead. He’s hanging on by the skin of his teeth but...he’s hanging on.”
Steve really didn’t know what to say to that. Of course the kid was hanging on. He was a hell of a fighter, a soldier beyond what they could have ever expected.
He was also just a kid.
“We’re not soldiers,” Tony had once told him, the words resonating in his ears.
Steve was starting to agree with that sentiment.
“So what’s being done?” he asked.
Bruce shifted on the couch. “We’ve kept him intubated, to take the stress of breathing off his body. He’s being given plenty of fluids to try to get his electrolytes back in balance, to replenish as much blood loss as we can without transfusions. We’re feeding him through a nasogastric tube with a powerful formula of vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates — something that really provides a kick start to get his healing factor back up and running. I think...I think we all agree that the next twenty-four hours will be the most critical. We’ll be able to tell more after that.”
Steve briefly looked over his shoulder and out the large bay window behind them. The sun was starting to rise, purple and pink blending together and leaking in from the skylights above them.
This was just the start of things, and on top of everything else going on, he realized they were in for a hell of a day.
“The painkillers worked, then?” Steve asked, his voice hushed.
Bruce could only shrug. “For now.”
“I really don’t like how that sounds,” Clint fired back.
Bruce sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. He shrugged again to empathize his frustration and Helen calmly placed a hand on his thigh when he seemed to become further agitated.
“They could keep working. They could not. There’s no way to tell at this point, we know so little about his physiology and currently, we’re not in a position to play the guessing game,” she said. “Bruce and I will be spending our time working to synthesize a formula specifically to target his genetic make-up.”
“May I?” Sam raised his hand, leaning forward. “Kid needs strong painkillers, right? Just give him everything you got. Double, triple, quadruple the doses.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” muttered by Bruce and “We’ve already tried,” was quickly over-spoken by Helen.
Sam raised an eyebrow at them both.
“Why do you think Steve has his own special dope to begin with?” Clint asked.
Steve shook his head. “Sam wasn’t here for that.”
“Individuals like Steve, like Peter...they have faster metabolisms than we do.” Bruce rubbed at his eyes beneath his glasses. “It’s-it’s complicated, it involves a lot of pharmacology and chemistry but...basically, when we created Steve’s reinforced analgesic, it was all about finding that sweet spot. It’s not about the dosage given, it’s about the concentration. Essentially. Among many other aspects that —”
Helen interrupted, “Doubling the dosage would kill him. If I were to, for example, give Peter one hundred milligrams of morphine — when the normal dosage is anywhere from ten to twenty — his liver won’t safely absorb that amount of medication. He’ll overdose before he even begins to feel the effects.”
Sam didn’t try to hide his confusion. “It doesn’t affect him but it affects him? I don’t get it.”
“He has an enhanced metabolism. So his body is going to burn through the medication at a much faster rate than we do. Burning through something means it needs to process through the liver. The liver can’t handle that amount of toxicity, it’ll shut down, all within seconds.” Helen’s hands waved about wildly as she talked. “His healing factor doesn’t work that fast, his heart will give out, or his lungs, or both — it’ll happen very quickly. Which is why we need to synthesize a formula —”
“I get it,” Sam interrupted. “Go already.”
Helen hesitantly leaned forward to grab hold of the discarded tablet. She looked around at the group to ensure they were satisfied with the explanations provided, and it was Steve who nodded his head, wordlessly encouraging her to leave.
The room stayed quiet. They left, and Steve found himself breathing out a large sigh. His lungs still ached at the warm air that passed through, his chest still tight and sore from the coldness of the Oscorp bunker
Natasha hadn’t moved from across the room, leaning heavily over the stairway banister. The rest of them sat around the sofas, too busy caught up in their own thoughts to make discussion.Not that they had been discussing much to begin with. The early hours of the morning had been spent in a stressful silence, too busy waiting for any news about Peter to debrief or discuss the aftermath of the mission.
Now the sun was rising and a day new was beginning. With the medical staff no longer fully preoccupied, they’d have to notify SHIELD, who would certainly hound Steve with repercussions before the afternoon even came.
He sighed, remembering that he had a promise to uphold. There was no reason for them all to get into trouble, not if it could be avoided.
Still, he imagined there wouldn’t be much time to squeeze in a nap today.
Steve looked up, eyes wandering across the room. “Has anyone seen Tony?”
“Sorry I took your suit."
“I mean, you had it coming. Actually, it turns out it was the perfect sort of tough love moment that you needed, right? To urge you on, right? Wouldn't you think? Don't you think?”
“I-I...”
“Let's just say it was.”
“Mr. Stark, I'm...”
“You screwed the pooch hard. Big time.”
"But then you did the right thing, you took the dog to the free clinic, you raised the hybrid puppies... alright, not my best analogy. I was wrong about you. I think with a little more mentoring, you could be a real asset to the team.”
“To the — to the...to the team?”
“Yeah. Anyway, there's about fifty reporters behind that door — real ones, not bloggers.”
“So when you're ready...”
“Why don't you try that on...and I'll introduce the world to the newest official member of the Avengers — Spider-Man.”
Tony Stark had an aura, a vibe that could be felt miles away. There was no questioning his presence, no doubting whether or not he was around. The very air around him changed, thickening with a cock-sureness that couldn’t be matched.
That, of course, was on his good days. If things were rough, it was more like an approaching storm, dark and turbulent. There was density in the atmosphere that screamed trouble ahead.
Rhodey learned of that aura early on in their friendship, and three decades later he continued to test its limit.
He knew things were bad long before he took the turn into the medical wing, long before he entered the elevator that led him where he needed to be. Yet he jogged down the hallway as fast as his mechanical leg braces would take him, saying damn to all caution signs that tried to warn him of what was ahead.
When he found Tony, the man was alone. He stood idly against the wall, his forehead tucked deeply between the space of his elbow and his arm pressed flat against the drywall surface. His face was buried away.
Rhodey stiffened. “Tony.”
The sound of his own name barely caught his attention. Tony looked up, just enough to see Rhodey and just enough that Rhodey could see him.
The thing with Tony Stark was that he always emanated motivation. Even in the cruelest of times, even walking the deserts of Afghanistan with no hope of rescue, he exuded confidence and fortitude.
Rhodey had never seen him so hopeless before.
“Jesus, man.” He walked further into the room, one slow step at a time. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you okay?”
Tony visibly swallowed, his Adam’s apple quivering as he pushed himself off the wall with a forced nod.
“I’m — I’m fine,” Tony choked out. “He’s not. He’s —”
“I know. Cho debriefed us.” Rhodey gently laid a hand on his bicep. “I’m sorry, Tones. I’m...”
He sighed, ending his sentence with a squeeze of Tony’s arm. He hated that his friend looked everywhere but at him; at the chairs, the walls, the windows, but never at him. Rhodey was surprised he hadn’t masked himself behind a pair of dark tinted sunglasses yet, though at the same time he was positive Tony hadn’t left the very room they stood in since arriving back to the compound.
It led to the burning question he still hadn’t gotten an answer to.
“What the hell happened down there?”
Tony rubbed at his eyes, harshly. His mouth went to open and then closed, unsure of what to say.
“I really have no idea where to start,” he settled on.
Rhodey released his grip but stayed close by, giving a curt nod. He expected as much of an answer. It was about the same thing he got from Rogers. The details would inevitably arise later in the much-needed reports, briefings and meetings that were bound to come.
Right now, it didn’t matter. As long as they were safe, the story could wait until another time.
Rhodey titled his head to the side. “Just tell me we aren’t gonna have to worry about a certain psychopathic Russian coming around here again.”
It seemed to take Tony a moment to process what he said.
“No.” Tony immediately shook his head, his eyes clenching shut. “I mean, yes. He was — he was dealt with. Gone.”
Rhodey grimaced. That alone explained a lot of why everyone wasn’t providing details on what happened.
On one end of the spectrum, he was glad to hear the S.O.B got what was coming to him. On the other…
Rhodey sighed. This was going to be a hell of a headache with SHIELD.
“Silver lining?”
Tony barely got the chance to croak a laugh, the sound dry and empty from his throat. As he did, the doors next to them swung open.
Though the woman who passed by didn’t give them even one quick glance, Tony was chasing after her with a new found energy.
“Cho — hey, Helen!”
She stopped, refusing to turn and face him.
Rhodey looked between the two, painfully aware that Tony seemed as if he was about to fall on his knees and beg. That was not a trait he ever saw from the man, not even in his darkest moments.
“Please,” Tony said. “I need to see him.”
Helen shook her head. “No.”
“Please.”
When she spun around, Rhodey took a step back. Why, he wasn’t too sure. She radiated such intense anger that he felt safer at a six feet distance from her, five clearly being too close.
“What part of critical do you not understand, Tony?”
There was a beat where Tony didn’t respond. He stood silently, pulling his shoulders back and sniffing, hard.
“What part of I’m your fucking boss do you not understand?”
Yeah, that was more like Tony Stark.
Comfort be damned, Rhodey quickly stepped forward and placed a hand against Tony’s chest, distancing himself from the doctor.
“Whoa, Tony, back down —”
Helen stepped forward to bridge the gap. “His aunt gets to see him. Once, every hour, for five minutes. She gets to see him and no one else. You? You need to know what’s best and stay far, far away from me.”
“Fine. That’s fine.” Tony stared her down. “You’re fired.”
Rhodey huffed. “Okay, break it up —”
“Yeah?” Helen cocked an eyebrow high. “Who else do you think you’ll hire to jump in the middle of this mess?”
“Will you two — Jesus —” Rhodey bit back a groan. It was like dealing with children. Irrationally angry and emotional children. “Just take a breather, both of you.”
Tony turned away from them both, and Rhodey’s open palm fell by his side without a place to rest it against. The floors burned with each pace Tony walked, his hands stuffed deep undernearh his armpits, and head bowed low to the floor.
If there was one thing Rhodey knew best about Tony, it was that he never broke in the presence of others. That was reserved for solitude, for when he could be in private. This was beyond an unusual circumstance.
This just never happened.
“Helen, come on.” Rhodey approached her, keeping his tone soft. “Can’t you tell that the kid means a lot to him? Let him have a couple minutes.”
During his time in active duty military, Rhodey had become accustomed to dealing with hot-heads and tempers beyond his control. Sometimes he distantly wondered if that’s how he and Tony could get along so well. The man’s anger was never a problem for him to deal with.
Helen wasn’t angry. Frustrated, exhausted, emotionally tore up — sure. But Rhodey could tell she wasn’t angry.
She even seemed to soften up when she caught sight of Tony pacing back and forth, clearly distraught and falling apart.
Rhodey gripped her shoulder. “He went through hell and back to save him. He just needs to see that he’s okay.”
Even though Tony stopped behind Rhodey, his stare managed to pierce through them both. Rhodey held his breath, hoping Tony was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, hold off on his Stark attitude until Helen gave them an answer. They both knew he wasn’t in control here, that this wasn’t his playground. Someone else got to make the decisions and he needed to respect that.
When she gave a tight nod, Rhodey practically sighed in relief.
“Five minutes. You stay out of everyone’s way,” she instructed, her finger unmoving on Tony's direction. “They want you gone, you leave. Is that clear?”
Tony’s back stood straighter than a stiff board. The lines around his eyes deepened as he gave a curt nod.
“Crystal.” His voice, albeit audible, was paper thin.
Helen had already turned to walk back towards the double doors, pulling at the retractable drawstring attached to her hip and placing the ID card up to the access bar. Tony all but tripped on his own feet to follow her.
The door beeped once and Helen looked at Tony, her eyes narrowed tight.
“Five minutes, Tony.”
The sweet smell of chlorhexidine was overwhelming as the doors slid open, familiar scents of betadine antiseptic crossing into the waiting room.
Rhodey stood idly by himself, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the two walk inside.
“Thank you, Mr. Stark.”
“But I’m-I’m good.”
“You’re good? Good —”
“How are you good?”
“Well, I-I mean, I’d rather just stay on the ground for a little while. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Somebody’s got to look out for the little guy, right?”
It was a process.
The entire ordeal was a process, and far beyond what Tony felt he was capable of handling. But he trudged through it anyway.
He scrubbed down until every germ was clean off his body. He let the nurses put him in a thin yellow isolation gown, and he placed the disposable paper mask over his mouth. He did it all silently, not daring to utter one single remark the entire time.
There seemed to be five hundred steps before he could get access to Peter’s room, and his nerves screamed for them to get a move on, get this done — get it over with already.
But he kept it all to himself.
They weren’t taking any chances with Peter’s current condition, and he understood that — really, he did. It just took forever to prepare for a measly five minutes in the room.
All of it ceased to matter once he finally got inside.
Tony could have sworn his heart would burst out of his throat. His fragile, weak, shrapnel damaged heart.
Goddamn this kid.
Once there, he wasn’t sure how much time he had wasted standing uselessly in the doorway, unsure of where to go and if he should even walk inside. The room was packed and clustered with machinery, bustling with working staff. Along the way, four-hundred-some square feet shrunk dramatically in the chaos.
Peter seemed to be center of it all, laying flat on his back, motionless in the hospital bed up against the far left wall.
It wasn’t until a nurse kindly walked him in that Tony finally moved. He barely muttered thanks, too busy staring at where Peter laid— a vortex of spiraling emotions sweeping him away.
Relief, horror, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety — and somehow none of it mattered. Once he was there, once he got close to Peter, he didn’t want to leave.
He was alive.
The kid was alive, and Tony didn’t even care that he needed to rely on the beeping machinery to tell him that. The blazing flames of a burning warehouse had been drowned out by the oceans salty waters and washed them ashore — damaged, beaten but alive.
He’d cling to that as long as he could.
Tony shifted weight on his feet and grimaced. Tubes, catheters, wires — Peter was covered from head to toe in it all. A very baggy gown barely dressed him, hanging loosely from his shoulders — more like a blanket than an act of modesty. A thin sheet covered his waist, but they left his one leg exposed, something Tony adamantly refused to look at — he simply did not have that kind of strength right now.
The glimmer of a metal rod was enough to make his stomach churn.
Peter's face wasn’t faring much better, a tube snaking down his throat and up his nose, IV’s in his arms and even his chest.
Yet nothing bothered him nearly as much as the stillness.
Peter was always moving, always hyperactive and bouncing with an energy he couldn’t contain. Tony once watched the kid doze off in his workshop, and even then he was twitching restlessly. He was never sure if it was his age, the spider-bite, or both.
Whatever it was, it was Peter. Bouncing, jumping, jittery and twitching — he never sat still.
Seeing him so still, so motionless — Tony hated it. Peter looked as if he were only a shell of himself, no color to his face and no warmth to his body.
Tony swallowed convulsively against the rising bile in his throat.
This was too much.
He had thought that his panic developed more into a slow burn, a languid torture that he could handle.
He was wrong.
Tony’s hand dropped from the bed’s plastic railing, resting uneasily on the firm mattress beneath him. He hadn’t meant for his hand to fall on Peter’s, his fingers brushing up against the IVs and wires that protruded from underneath the sheets.
He also didn’t move it away.
“You’re good, kid,” Tony muttered quietly. "You’re stronger than all of us put together.”
The beeping of machines filled the air, some constant and some further apart. It practically drowned out his voice, already a whisper under his breath. Protectiveness rumbled in his chest and his sight locked onto Peter, unable to look away — unable to want to look away.
His shoulders were stiff and his neck tense, and he never paid mind to his fingers slipping underneath Peter’s palm, lightly gripping his hand in a loose hold. He never paid attention as his thumb grazed back and forth over Peter’s knuckles.
“You’re good.”
Tony didn’t notice that Helen let him stay an extra eight minutes.
He did notice that Peter’s fingers twitched underneath his touch.