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Chapter Text

Peter honestly didn’t understand how he got into these situations. 

One moment he’s swinging his way towards home for dinner– May had been adamant that meals needed to come before patrol– and the next he was plummeting towards the dirty New York pavement.

“Bad, bad badbadbad!” Peter shrieked, desperately flinging a new web from his web shooters. The web stuck to the side of a nearby building, but it wasn’t enough to pull Peter out of his fall completely. He ended up swinging in too low of an arc and having to abandon the web in favor of leaping into a tuck and roll.

He hit the ground hard. Not hard enough to break any bones (thank goodness for that. Peter’s healing factor would have fixed it within a day or two, but it would have really sucked) but he definitely crashed hard enough to leave bruises and to knock all the air out of his lungs. He skidded a few feet on the concrete sidewalk, but thankfully his suit didn’t tear. It would have been a pain to repair.

“You good Spidey?” Peter heard someone— probably a street vendor— yell from further down the sidewalk.

Peter dragged a breath into his deflated lungs and let out a low groan before sitting up. He shook the cobwebs— spider pun Ha— out of his head and cautiously jiggled his extremities. Yep. Nothing broken.

Peter turned to look at the street vendor– who was holding a phone and obviously recording. Crap. Yet another #SpideyFails video— and shot the man a thumbs up. He did a totally unnecessary back handspring to get to his feet to make his ego feel better and looked to where he had fallen.

“Hey Karen, what made me fall?” Peter asked his AI, trying to catch sight of his old web. “Did my webbing snap?” 

If his web formula was the problem, then Peter had a real annoying night ahead. He would have to walk home and figure out which batch of formula had gone wrong and how. A total pain.

Karen was silent for a moment, processing, then she zeroed in the lenses of Peter’s mask on the gently swinging end of his broken web. 

“The line seems to have been cut, not broken,” she assessed in that cheerful AI voice. 

Peter looked around for what had cut his web, but there was nothing around that could have done it. He had been swinging down a clear stretch of sidewalk. Nothing near sharp enough to cut his web in sight.

Unfortunately, that could only mean one thing.

“Well, crap,” Peter said flatly just as his spider sense started going off.

Peter didn’t take the time to pinpoint the danger. He simply listened to his spider sense and dodged . He was barely in time. A wickedly sharp knife glinted in the sun as it spun past Peter’s face. 

Aaand, someone was trying to kill him. Peter internally groaned. It was going to be one of those nights. 

Peter backflipped down the sidewalk and barely missed meeting the business end of another knife. The knife flew past– barely an inch away from his leg– and buried itself in the concrete sidewalk. Peter didn’t even want to think about how sharp the knife was and how hard it had to be thrown for that to happen. 

Peter came out of his backflip and used his momentum to leap and shoot a web at a nearby alley. He had only swung a few feet when yet another knife came out of nowhere and sliced his web. That was not supposed to be able to happen. But here Peter was, falling again. This time he wasn’t far off the ground, so he was able to tuck and roll and come out at a run. He dodged around a corner into an alley filled with trash. 

A dead-end alley. 

Technically, dead-end’s didn’t mean much for a wall crawling vigilante, but Peter just hated the word. It was so ominous and needlessly oppressive. He had a literature class once that discussed the word. It never symbolized something good.

Peter shook off the random thoughts and vaulted over the piles of trash to reach the wall at the end of the alley. He could just crawl up the sides of the apartment buildings that hemmed him in and make it to the roof, but Knife Guy would probably be able to reach him there. The person was able to cut his webs while he was mid-swing. 

He just really wanted to avoid getting stabbed today.

Peter jumped and stuck to the wall about half-way up. He started climbing and was at the top in seconds. He had just vaulted over the edge of the wall when his spider sense started absolutely screaming . 

Peter’s body bent like something out of a looney toons show in his effort to dodge. An entire barrage of darts had come out of nowhere . Peter managed to dodge through them and he looked around frantically for the source of the darts. No one was in sight, which was just gosh diddly darn fabulous because that meant that someone had taken the time to booby trap an alley. That also meant that the darts had either been poisoned or drugged. Fun times.

Peter’s spider sense was playing like a horror movie sound track at this point. Something along the lines of danger danger danger was a running loop in his head. As much as Peter appreciated his spider sense, he wished there was some sort of a snooze button. He had gotten the message loud and clear by now, thankyouverymuch.

Peter momentarily weighed the option of climbing the buildings beside him and heading for the roof again, but he ended up deciding to make a break down the alley heading for the street. He was about half-way there when his spider sense flared yet again. Peter narrowly missed tripping over a wire that stretched across the ground. He was about to congratulate himself on missing the trap when more darts shot at him. So, motion activated as well as old-school. Wasn’t that fun.

Peter did his crazy contortion thing again and almost all of the darts flew past him to embed themselves in the alley walls. One, however, got lucky enough to score a shallow cut along Peter’s ribs. It was nothing, really, in the face of his healing factor, but Peter was just worried about whatever concoction the darts were laced with. 

“Say no to drugs, kids,” Peter muttered to himself, somewhat hysterically. 

He was officially freaked out at this point. He had been attacked out of nowhere , and he still didn’t know who was doing the attacking. Well, he at least found his attacker a moment later.

Peter was still trying to make it out of the alley, wary of more traps, and he almost made it to the street. He was just a few feet shy of the sidewalk when a clanging klaxon sounded in his head and someone dropped from above to land in a crouch right in front of Peter.

…An exotically dressed someone.

It was an extremely broad and muscley man who was wearing leopard print tights and no shirt. A vest with an actual hood lined with something like a lion’s mane managed to only partially cover the man’s chest. To top it off, the man had a flowing mane of black hair and a drooping mustache that could have made an impressive wig. Oh, and he had quite a few knives strapped to his waist and legs, but come on, the fashion catastrophe was more distracting. 

“Spiderman,” the horribly dressed man greeted smugly. 

Peter couldn’t help himself from giving a small wave. “That’s me, but who are you? Let me guess. A lion tamer from the circus?”

Peter’s side was starting to tingle around the spot where he had been grazed by the dart. The cut itself was small enough that it was almost healed already (thank you healing factor), but whatever drug it had been coated with seemed to be seeping into Peter’s system. Not good. 

Lion Tamer’s lip curled beneath his fabulous mustache and flicked his hand. A knife appeared there like magic, the movement too fast for Peter to catch. “I am Kraven!” the Circus Man shouted proudly. “The greatest hunter in the world!”

Peter tried to discreetly back up a step. His side had moved from tingling to going numb, and the feeling was starting to spread. “What are you doing in New York, buddy? Are you the pigeon exterminator?”

Kraven smiled in a very unfriendly way. “My prey is a little more… arachnid.”

Peter’s spider sense blared again and he leapt and spun in the air as a knife sailed narrowly beneath him. The numb feeling had started to seep into his legs, and his landing was a little sloppy.

“Hey, there’s a monster of a spider in my garage if you wanna have a look.”

Peter lunged forwards and tried to get within punching range of Kraven. Unfortunately, that also put him within knife range. 

“You talk too much,” Kraven grunted, ducking beneath Peter’s wild right hook. He had knives in both hands now, and he slashed at Peter viciously. 

Peter did his darndest to flip and dodge around Kraven while flinging out kicks and punches, but the numbness was steadily spreading, and Kraven was fast. Peter got in a few glancing blows on his opponent, but he received two shallow cuts on his arm and his side in return.

“You seem outmatched, Peter,” Karen assessed coolly. “Would you like me to contact assistance for you?”

Peter narrowly dodged another lunge of the knife and he shot a glob of webbing at Kraven, webbing the man’s hands together. Kraven barely even broke stride. He sliced through the webbing with the knife in his hand and continued to advance.

“Yeah– probably, Karen,” Peter replied, gasping for breath. The numbness had covered his chest and was creeping through his arms and legs. He was in deep trouble.

“Calling Tony Stark, please confirm,” Karen said calmly.

Peter winced both at the new cut that had just been scored across his chest and at the photo of Mr. Stark that was floating in his lenses. He had been hanging out with Mr. Stark more ever since the whole Vulture incident, but he was loath to ask for help. He didn’t want to have to be rescued like some helpless kid. Of course, he also liked to not be dead.

Peter twisted out of the way of another knife thrust and shot out a sloppy punch that Kraven dodged with almost contemptuous ease. Peter’s head was starting to feel funny now to pair with the leaden feeling in his limbs. 

“Conf–” he started to say.

He was stopped by the knife that had appeared in his stomach. 

Peter’s spider sense blared far too late and he stared down at the knife hilt uncomprehendingly. There was. A knife. Inside of him.

Peter’s legs gave way and he collapsed to the grimy cement of the alley. His shock faded just enough for the pain to come crashing down, and Peter gasped. 

“Peter, I can’t place the call without confirmation,” Karen’s computerized voice managed to take on a worried tone.

Peter found himself staring up at the smoggy New York sky. His head was spinning and the numb feeling had suddenly encompassed just about his entire body. The only thing that he could feel was the spreading circle of agony in his abdomen. He was probably bleeding. He couldn’t really tell. Seemed like something that would make him bleed though. Or maybe the knife kept all the blood in like a bottle stopper? Peter wasn’t sure anymore. 

Kraven stepped into Peter’s view and loomed above his head with a smirk on his lips and another knife in hand.

“I need confirmation,” Karen said, more urgently now.

Right. Peter had to confirm so… someone could come help. That was important.

“Con…” Peter wheezed out the syllable and desperately tried again. Above his head, Kraven raised the knife. “Confi….”

Kraven swung the knife down and struck Peter’s head with the hilt.

Peter’s vision fractured and the word died on his tongue. Kraven raised the knife again and delivered another devastating blow to Peter’s head.

The last thing Peter was aware of before darkness flooded his mind was Karen calling his name.

****

Tony Stark stared down at the tangled mess of circuitry that was his Iron Man gauntlet. Something was causing the power to short out, and for the life of him, he couldn’t find the problem. It was driving him crazy.

Tony sighed and looked away for a moment, rubbing at the tension between his eyes. He was on… thirty-six hours without sleep? He had been frantically busy the past few days with business meetings and politics. The amendments to the Sokovia Accords were finally gearing up and Tony had been running himself ragged to make sure the amendments didn’t lose momentum. 

Tony took a swig from his half-empty mug of coffee and made a face at the cold liquid. This was his first chance to be in the lab in days and he just wished that he could enjoy it more.

“Boss, you have a call coming in from May Parker,” FRIDAY informed him, her bodiless voice floating down from somewhere in the ceiling.

Tony sighed and slapped around his workstation until he found his phone. 

“Miss. Parker!” he said with more enthusiasm than he felt. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Have you heard from Peter?” May asked worriedly, not bothering with pleasantries. “He was supposed to be back from patrol an hour ago and he won’t pick up his phone.”

“Haven’t heard from him today. I wouldn’t worry though. The kid probably just lost track of time.”

Tony put the phone on speaker and started poking around his desk for a screwdriver.

“You’re probably right,” May said doubtfully. “It’s just that Peter’s been trying so hard to be on time for our meals together ever since I found out about him being Spiderman. He knows I worry. It’s not like him to not call.”

Tony found the screwdriver he was looking for and he looked back at his gauntlet consideringly.

“I’ll have Friday check his tracker if it makes you feel better. I’m sure he’s swinging his way home now.”

“Thank you, Tony,” May said gratefully. “Please let me know what you find out.”

“Will do.” Tony stabbed a finger at the end call button and focused back on the gauntlet. 

The gauntlet stared back mockingly.

Tony poked at the mess of wires with the screwdriver and accidentally touched a live wire. A lovely shock ran up his arm and made his hair bristle. Tony bit out a curse and dropped the screwdriver back onto the desk. He swiped his hands down on his face, pulling the skin around his eyes tight, and cursed again when he felt a streak of grease attach itself to his cheek.

He sighed and tilted his chair back at a dangerous angle. “FRIDAY, pull up the kid’s suit,” he called out wearily. 

A holoscreen appeared above Tony’s workstation and displayed a street map of a section of New York. A zigzagging trail of red dashes crossed over the map and ended at a blinking red dot.

“Mr. Parker’s last known location was in downtown Queens, Boss. His suit went offline one hour and sixteen minutes ago.”

“What?!” Tony sat up too quickly and his chair landed back on four legs with a crash. He suddenly wasn’t tired anymore. “What do you mean by offline?”

“His suit seems to have been damaged and it is not responding to any pings,” FRIDAY replied, her voice subdued. “No distress calls were received.”

Tony froze for a moment, a dozen terrible scenarios flashing through his brain, and then he was standing and stumbling into a run headed for the elevator. 

“FRIDAY, get me a suit, and take me to the roof.”

Tony was flying off the Compound’s roof less than a minute later. He was bordering on supersonic as he headed for Peter’s last known location. Fast as he was, it was still going to take time to get to New York. More time where the kid was missing or dying in a dumpster somewhere. 

There hadn’t been a distress call, but Tony knew better than to take that as a good sign. For a genius, Peter was a reckless idiot that didn’t know how to ask for help. Sure, Tony did the same thing, but it was one thing when Tony did it, and another when a teenager did so. 

“FRIDAY, pull up the last recorded Baby Monitor footage.” Tony ordered. He could at least use his flight to find out what the situation was.

“Yes, Boss.”

A small square of video played in front of Tony’s eyes and tinny audio filled the helmet. 

Tony watched Peter fall, and he saw the teen dodge out of the way of a wickedly sharp knife. The camera view turned shaky as Peter took off running, flipping and dodging as he went, and bolted into an alley. 

A dead end. Tony hated dead ends, and he hated watching Peter go into one. 

The first barrage of darts flew past the moment that Peter vaulted over the wall. With the second, the camera jerked and momentarily focused on a scrape to the teen’s side. 

Tony muttered a curse and desperately wished his suit on faster. Logically, he knew that the video had occurred over an hour ago. He couldn’t do anything about it now. That didn’t make it easier to watch. 

A frankly horrendously dressed man stepped into view in the mouth of the alleyway and despite everything, Tony almost snickered. Was the man really wearing leopard print tights?  

Tony distantly heard the man declare himself as “Kraven”. FRIDAY helpfully pulled up all known information on Kraven beside the video. Looked like Horrible Fashion Sense was a big game hunter/ mercenary for hire. All around stuck up jerk. Go figure.

Tony watched Peter try to dodge Kraven’s attacks, but something was wrong. Peter was moving more and more slowly. It was obvious that he was going to lose that fight. Tony heard KAREN advise calling for help– like he should have done earlier– and Peter’s reluctant agreement. Well, at least the kid realized he was outmatched. But if he had tried to call for help, then why didn’t Tony….

Tony saw the moment that the knife entered Peter’s abdomen. He very nearly screamed when it happened. The camera’s view jostled wildly then settled on a crooked view of the smoggy New York sky. Peter was doing his best to confirm the call for help, but he couldn’t seem to get the word out.

 Tony’s stomach roiled, but he forced himself to keep watching. 

Tony saw Kraven step back into view and bludgeon Peter’s head with the hilt of his knife. The recording fizzled for a second, then cleared to show Kraven’s arm descending in another blow. 

The video went abruptly black.

Tony breathed through his nose shallowly and tried to stave off a panic attack. He was only minutes away. He could deal with the situation when he was actually on the scene.

“FRIDAY, search social media for any reports of Spiderman sightings.” His voice came out hoarse. He was honestly surprised that he could talk at all at the moment. His insides felt iced over. 

“Nothing new has been reported,” FRIDAY informed him grimly.

Tony muttered a long string of curses and pushed his suit faster. It was an eternity– or maybe only a moment– later when he finally reached the location of that blinking red dot. 

Tony landed in the grim alley with a loud Clank. He straightened, and FRIDAY started scanning the scene for evidence without being asked.

The most obvious facts were A. Spiderman was nowhere to be seen, and B. there was a worryingly large puddle of blood on the ground. Tony could give a good bet on whose blood it was.

“Local CCTV caught Kraven leaving the scene with Spiderman, boss.” FRIDAY reported. “There is no more footage past the first block.”

Tony felt his frozen insides crack a little. “Was… Was Peter alive?”

FRIDAY’s voice seemed truly sorrowful when she said, “Unclear.”

“Canopy,” Tony panted. He barely managed to escape his suit before he was losing his coffee on the already filthy ground. When he was finally done heaving, Tony rested his head on a wall and shut his eyes for a moment.

“What did you get into this time, kid?”

Chapter Text

Believe it or not, Peter had some experience with being kidnapped by supervillains. 

Every kidnapping was different, and no, he never got used to it. Some of the denial of “no! I couldn’t have been kidnapped” wore off eventually, but the sense of panic and horror-filled trepidation was a constant. 

Waking up was always the worst part.

The moment right before awake when he would have the dawning realization that whatever hard surface he was tied to or cold floor he was lying on was not his bed. The moment he would remember that he was in deep deep trouble. 

This time, Peter had the additional pleasure of a burning feeling in his gut that grew as he became more conscious. 

“Hey, I think the kid’s waking up.”

Peter groaned in the direction of the voice. He didn’t want to wake up. He would happily go right back to sleep/ unconsciousness, but the burning feeling in his stomach had turned to outright fire and he wasn’t sleeping past that.

Peter cracked open an eyelid and was immediately accosted by the sight of someone staring at him, their face far too close to his own. Even with a stab wound, Peter’s reflexes were incredibly fast, and he reacted before he could think. 

“What the hell,” a deep voice said flatly.

Peter blinked and some of the blurriness cleared from his vision. He was on the ceiling. A grimy, concrete ceiling. His stomach was burning and a bloodstained jacket that had obviously been used as a makeshift bandage had fallen to the floor beneath him. 

Also beneath him were two men. Two very familiar men.

“Crap,” Peter muttered hazily.

“You seeing this, Steve?” One of the men asked, still staring at Peter. 

It was Metal Arm Dude from Germany. Sure, he looked a little different than he had then– his hair less overgrown and his metal arm notably missing– but Peter still recognized him. 

“I see it,” Steve– Captain Freaking America– replied evenly. 

Steve was standing beneath and just a little in front of Peter. He was obviously the face that Peter had woken up to. 

Peter looked down at himself quickly and realized that he wasn’t in his Spiderman suit anymore. No mask either, although he could feel something tight around his neck. All he was wearing was the black, thermal undersuit that he had been wearing because of the cold– and thank goodness for that because Peter really didn’t want to face Captain America in his boxers. 

So, he was sticking to the ceiling as Peter Parker, not spiderman, with a hole in his abdomen that was slowly dripping blood to the floor, with Captain America and a war criminal bearing witness.

“Crap,” Peter said again, just before his grip on the ceiling gave out.

Peter fell and he expected an unfriendly reunion with the cement floor. What he got instead was a pair of extremely large, extremely muscular, arms. 

Peter blinked up at the face of Captain America and died a little bit inside. 

“Take it easy there, son,” Steve said, gently laying him back on the floor. “That’s a pretty bad wound you have.”

Peter looked between Captain America and Metal Arm Dude, noticing their somewhat grimy civilian clothes and the metal bands clamped around their throats. He quickly identified the hard object around his own throat as a matching band.

Peter felt like he should say something, but he was faced with the unusual problem of being struck speechless.

“You’re that spider kid from Germany,” Metal Arm Dude accused, stepping up beside Steve.

“You remember me?” Peter was reaching for his normal Spiderman sarcasm, but what was meant to be a statement turned into more of an insecure squeak. Peter would gladly take another stab wound before that happened again.

Captain America looked down at Peter and let out an honest to goodness cuss word. Peter nearly gasped, certain that an eagle was dying somewhere or something.

“How old are you, kid? Fourteen?”

Peter bristled at that. “I’m sixteen .”

Steve stared at Peter with those eyes that always tried to make Peter feel guilty when he was watching the detention PSAs at school. He didn’t seem pleased with Peter’s answer.

“What was Tony thinking?” he said furiously. “Bringing a kid to Germany.”

Metal Arm Dude didn’t say anything, but his expression hardened into something absolutely murderous. Peter felt a thrill of fear run up his spine at that face. Hadn’t Mr. Stark mentioned something about Metal Arm Dude being an assassin?

Peter forced himself to sit up, ignoring how the pain from the movement made his vision white out for a moment, and he scooted across the floor until he was able to lean against a wall. “Hey, I was doing Spiderman before I even met Mr. Stark! He’s done nothing but help me out. I mean the whole Germany was technically coercion, and I don’t usually do big stuff like that, and then there was the whole taking away the suit thing, but we’re totally past that! I swear. He’s been great since then!”

Steve and Bucky both stared at Peter for a long moment, then Steve turned away with another muffled curse. Peter was still shocked. He didn’t think that Captain America even knew any curse words.

Peter finally took a moment to look around. For a minute there, he had actually forgotten about the whole “kidnapped by a man in leopard tights” thing.

His surroundings were pretty depressing. He and the war criminals were in a cell barely the size of Peter’s bedroom at home. Two of the walls were made up of solid concrete, and the other two sides were formed by vertical, metal bars. The bars were extremely thick and cemented into the floor to boot. The cell door was triple bolted. Peter didn’t have high hopes of breaking out.

The floor and ceiling of the cell were made of the same grimy cement. The only other thing in the cell with them was a foul smelling hole in the floor that Peter did not want to consider the use for. 

Beyond the cell was a depressing slice of a barren, concrete room. The only thing in that area was a sturdy, metal chair that seemed to be bolted to the ground and that had mental cuffs on the arms and legs. And that didn’t seem to be a good omen. The door to the room was solid steel with no handle on the inside, so even if they got out of the cell, they were still screwed.

“So, where are we exactly? Sir?” Peter asked after a long moment of silence. 

Currently Without His Metal Arm Dude looked at Peter grimly. “You ever heard of Hydra, kid?”

Peter frowned and thought for a moment. “Sort of. We learned about them in history. They’re the people that Captain Amer—” He gave Steve an awkward look. “Well, you– fought in World War II. And then there was a big thing on the news a couple years back about SHIELD being Hydra?”

Steve nodded at Peter. “We thought that we had gotten rid of the last of them, but apparently not.”

“Surprise!” Metal Arm Dude did a jazz hand and let his head fall against the cement wall. 

Steve shot his friend a look then turned back to Peter. “We were captured a few days ago just outside of Wakanda. We don’t know where this base is located specifically. They’ve mostly left us alone until you showed up a few hours ago.”

Peter awkwardly smiled and did a small wave. “Yeah, hi. Sorry to be here. I’m Peter by the way, uh, Mr. America Sir.”

“Steve,” Captain America corrected with a faint smirk on his face. 

Steve pointed at Currently Without His Metal Arm Dude. “That’s Bucky.”

Bucky was staring at the ceiling like he was being paid to do it, but he let out a faint snort and said, “You can call me Mr. America if you want.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. America, sir,” Peter replied gravely.

Bucky let out an actual chuckle at that and Steve’s expression relaxed slightly.

“Um, so what are these collar things?” Peter asked, reaching up to tug at the uncomfortable metal band.

“Don’t!” Steve started to shout.

It was too late.

The moment Peter wrapped his fingers around the collar, before he could even try to apply his superstrength, a massive wave of electricity swept out of the collar and set his nerves ablaze. For a moment, he was frozen with his fingers still wrapped around the collar, his every muscle leaping wildly and the electricity making his stab wound hurt even more fiercely. Then, he pried his fingers away through pure force of will and the awful shocking stopped.

Peter let out an eloquent groan and fell bonelessly against the wall at his back. He felt like he had been set on fire. His nerves were still smoking and his eye was twitching. His stab wound was absolutely throbbing and it was bleeding a little more fiercely now. Peter’s healing factor was wonderful and he could already feel the tingling itch that meant that it was working to close the wound, but it had its work cut out for it. He usually didn’t get injuries any worse than a bullet graze or a broken bone or two. A large stab wound and a lovely wave of electrocution was a bit of a first and he wasn’t sure how long it would take to heal. Hopefully no longer than a day or two.

A hand landed on Peter’s shoulder and he jumped a little bit before recognizing Steve kneeling beside him. “Sorry about that. We should have warned you. There’s no way to get them off without frying yourself.” He reached a hand up rather ruefully and, not quite daring to touch, traced the air above the red skin surrounding his own collar. “We tried.”

Peter shuddered slightly and let out a shaking laugh. “Yeah, th-that wasn’t fun.” His hand fluttered to the stab wound in his abdomen and he probed at it helplessly.

“You should keep pressure on that,” Steve said, nodding at Peter’s wound. He leaned over to pick up the blood stained jacket from the floor and settled into a more comfortable position at Peter’s side. He balled up the jacket and pressed it firmly against the bleeding wound.

Peter tried not to hiss in pain.

“How did this happen?” Steve asked, focusing on holding the jacket in place.

“Some creep in leopard print leggings ambushed me on the way home from patrol,” Peter explained, stuttering only slightly. His healing factor was already soothing away the tics and jumps of electrocution. “I didn’t have a chance to send out a distress call, but I’m sure Mr. Stark knows I’m missing by now.”

Peter didn’t really understand the expression that passed over Steve’s face. 

“How close are you and Tony exactly?”

Well, that was an awkward question. Peter couldn’t exactly blurt out that he saw Mr. Stark as a father figure. I mean, there was no chance that Mr. Stark felt the same way, and how awkward was that? You couldn’t just declare someone your dad!

“Um, I’m kind of his intern?” Peter said hesitantly. “We work on projects and stuff sometimes and he helps with my Spiderman stuff.”

“Intern,” Steve repeated, unimpressed.

“Yep,” Peter said, popping the P. “Strictly boss intern relationship. Mentor mentee stuff. But completely professional.”

“But you’re convinced that he’s coming for you?”

Peter winced a little at the callous way the question came out. “I mean, yeah? He checks in a lot now. But you know in a totally normal boss way! He would definitely do the same for other interns, right? Cause otherwise it might not be a strictly boss intern relationship and that would be crazy. So, yeah. Totally normal checking in.”

Bucky let out a quiet scoff from across the cell. “Mood, kid.”

Steve turned to his friend with a frown, although he kept holding the jacket over Peter’s wound. “What does that even mean, Buck?”

“It’s an internet reference, Mr. Rogers, sir,” Peter swiftly explained.

Steve sighed loudly. “I don’t understand how you managed to pick up on all this burst culture stuff so quickly.”

“It’s pop culture, Steve. And I may be over one-hundred, but that doesn’t mean I have to be a freakin’ fossil like you.”

Peter gaped at Bucky. “You’re a hundred years old?! That’s awesome! But does that mean…?” Peter gasped again. “You’re in my history book! You’re Mr. Barnes from the Howling Commandos! Aren’t you like dead though?” Peter realized too late that bringing up the fact that someone was supposed to be dead was probably insensitive. Well, crap. He decided to blame the blood loss and the brain frying session for the slip-up.

Steve and Bucky both blinked at Peter in the face of his too-fast words. 

“Didn’t Tony tell you anything about why we were in Germany?” Steve finally asked.

“Um, not really? The whole trip to Germany happened really fast, and I didn’t really see Mr. Stark afterwards. He doesn’t really like talking about fighting you guys. He’s been super intense about changing the Accords and stuff since then.”

Steve scoffed and muttered something under his breath that Peter’s sensitive hearing couldn’t help but pick up. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m not dead,” Bucky said flatly. “I got captured by Hydra and they… did some stuff to my mind. The Wakandans have been helping me recover.”

Peter glanced around at their Hydra prison then back at Bucky. He already hated the cell and it was his first time being captured by Hydra. He couldn’t imagine what Bucky was feeling. “Um, sorry for the whole airport fight thing.”

“It’s not your fault, kid,” Bucky replied grimly. “Stark had no business bringing you there.”

Peter bristled. “Hey, I’m sure Mr. Stark was just doing what he thought was right. He didn’t want to fight you guys. You’re his friends! Why do you think he’s been trying to change the Accords and get you pardoned and everything?”

Steve sighed. “I don’t think we’re exactly friends anymore after everything that happened.” 

“I call bull,” Peter snapped, earning a startled snort from Bucky. “He’s not always great at talking about stuff, but I know Mr. Stark misses everyone. The Compound is way too big for just Mr. Vision. He’s just waiting for you to come back.”

Steve merely sighed again. Peter was really getting sick of those sighs. “There’s just some things that you can’t go back from, kid.”

Peter felt a fierce frown growing on his face and he jerked away from Steve and took over putting pressure on his stab wound. “You can’t if you don’t even try. ”

Steve merely leveled his I’m Captain America and I Know Better Than You™ look at Peter. Peter kind of wanted to punch him for it. He couldn’t remember just how many PSAs he’d had to live through at school where that exact look had come from the screen. In the beginning, it was  a pretty effective guilt trip, but the high school as a whole had long since grown immune to any of Captain America’s “I’m disappointed in you” looks. Besides, who was he to judge? Out of everyone in the room, Peter was the only one who wasn’t a war criminal. 

Bucky was the first to break the silence. “You should get some rest, kid. It won’t be long before they’re back and sh-crap really hits the fan.”

Peter really wanted to argue– mostly just for the sake of being obtuse– but ended up nodding in agreement. His healing factor had kicked into overdrive and his wound was itching like mad. Plus his head really hurt.

He slowly lay down on the cold, stone floor and settled his limp hand over the jacket covering his stomach. Within minutes, he was asleep.

****

Tony Stark was panicking.

Tony Stark was not used to panicking. 

Stress? Bucketloads.

Anxiety? Constant friend.

General concern? Well, who wouldn’t have that what with his line of work?

But outright panic was something that he thought he had abolished years ago. There was only so many times one could almost die before danger became, not necessarily mundane, but certainly less worrisome. Tony could have sniper gunning for his head and barely feel an uptick in his pulse.

But this wasn’t about his own safety. 

This was about Peter.

Peter, the most selfless kid Tony had ever met. Peter, who was probably smarter than Tony himself. Peter, one of three people allowed in Tony’s private lab. Peter, who still called Tony to innocently talk about the cat he had helped to rescue from a tree. Peter, who was just so good.

Tony had screwed up his first shot at mentoring– because, yeah, he was a mentor now– but he was trying to be better. It had taken the kid nearly dying during the whole Vulture disaster for him to realize that he was screwing things up. And then, the kid had gone and refused the Avenger’s membership. Tony probably could have left it at that– and a younger version of himself might have– but the kid was just so good. Tony couldn’t seem to stay away. He had invited the kid over to screw around in one of his labs as a spur of the moment thing, and then it had happened again, and again. The kid was just so smart and funny, and somehow he seemed to look up to Tony– and if that didn’t terrify him…. 

And now Peter was gone. 

And Tony was terrified.

Telling May had been a nightmare. The poor woman was as scared as he was. Maybe more. Tony had made all kinds of promises about finding Peter, but, ultimately he was a liar. Because he, the great Tony Stark, had no idea what to do. 

All he had to go off of was a barebones file on Kraven and a pool of blood in an alley. FRIDAY was using his satellites to search for any sign of Kraven, but Tony felt helpless. He had never been good at being helpless. 

“Tony, you need to sit before you fall over.”

Tony glanced at Rhodey and kept pacing. He was on hour forty-two without sleep, but his brain was too wired with worry to even consider rest. 

“We’ll find him,” Rhodey promised, knowing exactly what was running through Tony’s head.

Tony turned to his best friend and looked at him with red rimmed eyes. “What if we don’t? Or what if we do… and… and it’s too late?”

Rhodey shoved off from his position against the wall and he walked over to place a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “We’ll find him, and he’ll be fine. He’s a tough kid, Tony. Trust him.”

“But he’s still just a kid.” Tony’s voice broke and he swiped a hand over his face. “How could I ever have supported him as Spiderman? He’s a kid! And… and he….” he was nearly hyperventilating at this point, and he was forced into a chair by Rhodey.

“Spiderman was his choice.” Rhodey smiled wryly. “You and I both know he would find a way to do what he does even without your help. At least this way he has help.”

Tony covered his face with his hands and half- laughed half-sobbed. “Lot of good that did.”

“We’ll find him.”

“We better,” Tony whispered. “Because I don’t know what I’ll do if we don’t.”

Chapter Text

Peter woke to a hand on his shoulder and the sound of the heavy metal door opening. He would have liked to have had a moment where he could pretend that he was being woken up for school or maybe being woken by Mr. Stark after falling asleep in the lab again. But no. He woke up remembering exactly what kind of crappy situation he was in. Woke up recognizing the hand on his shoulder as Steve’s and not Aunt May or Mr. Stark. 

Reality sucked.

“How are you boys enjoying the accommodations?” 

Peter didn’t really know what he expected from their evil, Hydra captors, but the woman that stepped into the room wasn’t it. 

It wasn’t the fact that she was a woman, or even her apparent youth (she couldn’t have been past her twenties). No, it was the fact that she looked like she had just stepped out of a business meeting. 

She was African American and had skin as dark and smooth as black paint. She had a neat bun of braids piled on top of her head and a face caked in just enough makeup to be obvious. She was wearing dark red slacks with a matching suit jacket over a white blouse and had chunky pearl earrings in her ears and a matching necklace around her neck. The only incongruous part of the outfit was her black combat boots– casually slipped on to visit the prisoners. 

The woman put a perfectly manicured hand to her chest and smiled fake sweetly in Bucky’s direction. “I just want to say that it is an honor to have you back, Winter Soldier.”

Peter shot Bucky a look and found him clenching his jaw so hard that Peter could hear his teeth grinding. “That’s not my name,” Bucky bit out.

The woman tilted her head thoughtfully. “It used to be, and it will be again soon enough.”

Steve was moving before Peter could even blink. He slammed into the metal bars of the cell with a resounding clang and firmly placed his broad form between the woman and Bucky. “Don’t even speak to him.”

The woman somehow didn’t flinch in the face of a furious Captain America. In fact, she smiled again– a brief flash of white teeth. “I’m sorry, Captain, but this doesn’t concern you.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “Maybe eventually. Hydra isn’t what it once was, but two supersoldiers under our command would change that– especially if one of them was you .” She sighed. “Ah, maybe soon.”

Steve clenched the cell’s bars so hard that the metal creaked. He didn’t have the shield or the uniform, but at that moment he was emanating righteous fury and was Captain America through and through. “You can’t have him. You never get to touch him again.”

The woman wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a glint in her eyes and a twist to the corner of her lips that chilled Peter to his core. “You’re not the one in control here, Captain.”

The woman made some sort of signal and suddenly a stream of armored Hydra guards flooded the room. The guards all wore full face helmets that were reminiscent of black skulls. The red octopus emblem of Hydra was splashed across their armored chests. Each of the guards had a full armory of weapons strapped to their waists.

Peter pushed himself off of the floor, only stumbling slightly as his vision temporarily blackened, and stood at Cap’s side. He tried not to worry. After all, the woman certainly hadn’t gone to all of the trouble of capturing them just to kill them now, and even in a cell, Captain America could beat a few Hydra goons any day.

That was when the woman smirked and pulled out a silver remote. Peter barely had a chance to wonder what the remote did before she had pressed a button and the collar around his neck spat forth electric fury once more. 

Peter lasted all of two seconds before the burning pain sent him to his knees, and then the floor. He was pretty sure that Steve and Bucky were getting shocked too, but his senses were too overwhelmed with the pain to be sure. It was around that point that he started screaming.

There were some sounds above his head that managed to make it past his probably shattering eardrums. There was a loud clang, shouting, loud thuds. A boot kicked his flailing arm. He couldn’t manage to force his eyes open and see what was happening. 

Finally, what was surely an eternity later, the torture ended. 

Peter lay on the floor, boneless and feeling half dead. He could taste blood in his mouth and even his teeth were buzzing. A random muscle would occasionally jerk and send his arm flailing or set his cheek to twitching. 

Peter heard a faint cough then the sound of someone scrambling to their feet.

“Bucky?”

Oh crap. 

Peter forced his eyelids open and his fuzzy vision to focus. Steve was standing, albeit rather shakily, and frantically looking around the cell. The cell that was notably missing a person.

Double crap.

Peter gritted his still-buzzing teeth and shoved his shaking arms beneath him and pushed until he was sitting up.

Steve had turned on the bars of their prison and was pounding on them hard enough to make them tremble slightly in their foundations. Unfortunately, they didn’t move past that.

“BRING HIM BACK YOU–”

Peter was beginning to wonder how he had ever thought that Captain America didn’t curse.

He got his trembling legs beneath him and shakily made it to his feet. He stumbled over to stand beside Steve and stared around the cell again. Bucky was definitely gone, and so was the Scary Lady and the Hydra goons. The metal door was firmly shut behind them too.

Steve pounded fruitlessly on the metal bars and bit out a final curse before sliding to the floor and burying his head in his hands.

Peter looked down at Steve– one of his childhood idols – and hesitantly rested a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t try to say anything about everything working out in the end. He’d seen enough tragedies before and after he became Spiderman to know that platitudes didn’t help. All he could do was sink to the floor beside Steve and offer his silent support.

He didn’t know how much time passed before Scary Lady returned, but it was enough that his stomach was gnawing on itself uncomfortably and his eyelids were drooping again. He tried not to think about how worried Aunt May must be by now.

When Scary Lady entered the room, it was with a much different attitude than before. She flung open the door and stalked inside the cell, bristling with irritation. She still wore her fancy outfit, but it was distinctly wrinkled now and held a few stains on the jacket. Her perfect braids had escaped the bun and a few were hanging by her ear. 

Steve went from the ground to his feet with the rolling grace of a dancer. He put a steadying hand on Peter’s shoulder when he followed suit a belated second after. Peter was grateful to note that his stab wound barely even twinged. 

“What did you do to him?” The woman demanded furiously, stopping just out of reach of the cell bars. “The programming isn’t working. Decades of work has gone into the Winter Soldier and you ruined it!”

A pair of Hydra guards slowly entered the cell behind Scary Lady. They were dragging Bucky’s limp form between them by his arms. 

The hand on Peter’s shoulder stiffened and fell to Steve’s side. “What did you do?”

Scary Lady turned an absolutely scathing look on Captain America. “I already told you. I want my Winter Soldier back. Whatever you did to erase his programming, it can’t last.” She stepped closer to the bars, teeth bared. “I will wipe his mind and rewrite it however many times it takes until he doesn’t even know your name.”

“Holy cow, this is so tense,” Peter whispered to himself. Apparently not quietly enough, because the woman’s too sharp eyes swung over to him.

The woman’s eyes raked over Peter and settled on the blood-stained, but newly healed scar that showed through the cut in the stomach of his thermal suit. Peter resisted the urge to cross his arms and cringe from her invasive gaze. Barely. 

“Spiderman. Glad to see that your healing powers weren’t exaggerated.”

Peter smiled nervously and tried to discreetly inch away from the bars and further out of reach of those claw-like, red painted nails. “What? No. Whatever you heard was so exaggerated. I’m definitely not worth your time. You should probably just let me go.”

The woman’s bright teeth flashed in a humorless smile. “Oh no. With the stories I’ve heard? I’m very interested in what you can do. And what you could do for Hydra.”

Peter’s insides went very very cold.

Steve reached out a hand and pushed Peter to stand behind him. He squared up to the woman and met her eyes with a fierce glare. “That will never happen,” he growled.

The woman took a step back and out of reach, but seemed unimpressed. She reached into her pocket for the silver remote from earlier and waggled it with a suggestively quirked eyebrow. “Oh, Captain, when are you going to accept that you have no control here?”

Peter had barely a moment to try and prepare himself before she pressed a button and the collar around his neck unleashed its wrath. He didn’t even try to fight it this time. He felt his reunion with the floor but distantly and was lost for several long seconds to the pain. He felt close to passing out, and man, he wished he could just fall unconscious. Anything to make the torture stop.

It did eventually stop, but it took several seconds for him to notice. The aftershocks that zapped through him seemed stronger this time and his nerves felt utterly fried. He couldn’t tell if the floor had grown more comfortable, or if he was just numb, but he didn’t plan on moving anytime soon. He briefly wondered if this was how Thor’s enemies felt after getting zapped by lightning. No wonder Thor always won his fights. Y’know, besides the extreme muscles.

“Hey, kid?” Steve’s ragged voice roused him from his contemplation of Thor’s muscles enough for him to crack a bleary eye. The perfect jerk barely even looked affected by his little electrocution. It was disgusting, and Peter was so jealous. “Are you ok?”

Peter let his eyelid fall closed again and let out a noncommittal, “hernnnn.”

Steve huffed out something that was probably supposed to be a laugh. Peter didn’t have to open his eyes to know what expression he was making. Steve’s pained, failed attempt at a smile strained the air like a physical presence. 

There was a soft, scuffing sound, then a low murmur as Steve checked on Bucky. Peter opened an eye for a moment then quickly shut it again after one look at Steve’s wretched expression and Bucky’s haunted one. This moment wasn’t for him to share. Unfortunately, there was nowhere else to go, so he had to settle for curling up in a ball and pretending like he wasn’t listening. It was made harder by his heightened hearing, but made easier by the buzzing in his head that was drowning everything else out. Before he knew it, he was asleep again.

Peter awoke again to a hand on his shoulder giving him a gentle shake. This time he didn’t imagine it was Mr. Stark. 

“They brought food,” Steve explained apologetically, holding out a pathetically small power bar.

Peter’s stomach gnawed on itself and he was quick to snatch the bar. He practically inhaled it, and he looked down at the wrapper sadly when the food was gone. On a good day, Peter needed more food than normal humans to keep up his enhanced metabolism. After not eating for probably close to two days, and after having his healing factor work overtime, he would have happily eaten a horse. 

Well, maybe not a horse. Horses were too cool to eat. Like that one time he had met a mounted police officer and had gotten to pet the horse. That had definitely been a highlight of his spiderman career. Was there any way for him to get a horse to help him as Spiderman? Spider-horse? Man-horse? Horse-spider? It wouldn’t work, right? But what if the horse had spider powers? Like, could he develop a spider serum for a horse? That was probably animal cruelty. A horse can’t consent to scientific experiments, right? Anyway, how would it even use webs? Horses have fragile bones. They can’t pull themselves by their arms. Legs? Hooves?

“What’s got you so deep in thought?” Steve asked.

Peter blinked himself out of his musings and promptly blue-screened. The only thing left in his brain was a flashing, neon sign that read LIE.

“Uh… sandwiches…”

Steve stared at him for a moment, nonplussed. “Sandwiches?”

“Yeah,” Peter continued, warming to the idea. “It’s cause I’m still hungry and it made me think of this amazing deli by my house in Queens. Delmar’s makes the best sandwiches.”

“Sacrilege,” Bucky retorted in an emotionless tone. His head was buried in his knees and his voice was painfully raw sounding. “Steve, remember that sandwich place in Brooklyn? The one with the potato and egg sandwiches?” 

Steve looked happy to hear Bucky talking. “It was Defonte’s. Ya know, they’re still open.”

Bucky lifted his head slightly. “You’re kiddin’ me.”

Steve shook his head happily. “Nope. Nick’s grandkids run the place now. I stopped by there not six months ago.”

“I’m sorry, but did you say a potato and egg sandwich?” Peter demanded, scandalized.

“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it, kid,” Bucky warned. 

Steve shrugged. “The kid’s from Queens, Buck. We can’t expect him to have good taste.”

“Don’t think that I’m scared to fight a senior citizen,” Peter retorted. “You don’t get to insult Delmar’s.”

“Senior citizen?” Steve repeated in mock offense. “You hear that, Buck? Apparently we’re old.”

“KIds these days,” Bucky muttered. “Got no respect.”

“Exactly,” Steve agreed with a sage nod. “Why, back in our day we had to fight nazi dinosaurs on our way to school.”

“Which was uphill,” Bucky added.

“Yep.” Steve’s face didn’t betray a flicker of amusement. “Uphill both ways.”

“In the winter.”

“Ten feet of snow. We had to dig tunnels to get there.”

“While fighting the dinosaurs.”

“Some of the dinosaurs carried tommy guns. Had to watch out for them ‘cause they were usually on the mob’s payroll.”

Peter looked between Steve and Bucky for a flicker of a traitorous smile. He was met with two of the best poker faces he had ever seen. “Alright, alright. I surrender. I’ll try this Defonte place when we get out of here.”

“Take Stark with you,” Bucky suggested. “Too much rich food is bad for the brain.”

Peter snorted out a laugh then felt a guilty pang. “Hey, I’ve never seen Mr. Stark eat anything but take-out and coffee.”

“That’s even worse,” Bucky said pityingly. “Get the man a good sandwich and it’ll probably change his sad life.”

“Mr. Barnes,” Peter protested helplessly, unable to stop a small giggle.

“I don’t know, Buck,” Steve said ponderingly. “Maybe you just aren’t refined enough to appreciate the finer things.”

Bucky scoffed and pointed an accusing finger at Steve. “This from the man who had the ‘fondue’ incident.”

“Peggy told you about that?” Steve asked in horror.

Bucky grinned like a shark. “Ohh, yeah. She actually told me about a lot of interesting things that happened before I got back.”

“Buck, please,” Steve begged. “It’s been eighty years.”

“And yet you haven’t gotten any smarter.”

“My childhood idols,” Peter murmured gleefully. “What embarrassing stories do you know, Mr. Barnes? My friend Ned is gonna lose his mind if I can tell him an embarrassing story about Captain America.”

Bucky scoffed. “That’s easy. Steve’s whole face is an embarrassment.”

Peter outright cackled.

****

Tony still hadn’t slept. 

He could sense Rhodey getting ready to tranq him if this went on much longer.

It didn’t really matter. Sure his eyes were beginning to permanently blur and his hands were twitching so much that he could barely type, but it was fine. He was so close to tracking down Kraven. He had to be.

“Tones,” Rhodey finally said.

“I know. I know. I’m– I’m almost there.”

“You’re almost where? On your way to collapsing from sleep deprivation?”

“Give it a rest,” Tony snapped, not looking up from the somewhat indistinct screens that were blurring before his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“‘Fine’,” Rhodey scoffed. “The kid’s not going to be happy if he comes back to find that you’ve worked yourself into a coma. You’re not going to find him faster by hurting yourself.”

Tony lifted one of his shaking hands and half-way curled it into a fist before dropping it again. “Just,” his voice shook. “Just stop, please. Let me work.”

Rhodey sighed and ran a hand over his face. He hadn’t slept much either. He didn’t know Peter as well as Tony, but he had seen the kid around enough to know that he was a good one. It was an impression only reinforced by Tony’s current behavior. Rhodey had known Tony through his wild college days and had watched him even out under Pepper and the Avenger’s influence. Tony reverting to his old self-destructive tendencies meant that he was truly shaken. He wouldn’t be acting like this unless it was for someone he truly cared about. And goodness knew there were few enough of those.

“You can’t keep doing this, Tony,” Rhodey said gently. “We’ll find the kid, but not at your expense.”

Tony finally looked up at Rhodey and there were actual tears in his eyes. Tony would blame it on the dry burning in his eyes of sleep deprivation, but Rhodey would know he was lying. He opened his mouth to say something, but cut himself off at the sight of a flashing light in his peripheral. He turned back to the screen and began typing furiously.

“Tony,” Rhodey said sharply.

“No, I got something. Finally!” Tony let out a deranged chuckle and enlarged the screen he was bent over. A somewhat blurry picture of a man in a horrendously colored parka filled the screen. The picture was blurry, but it was clear enough. It was Kraven’s face peering suspiciously from out of the hood. “FRIDAY’s satellite picked this up near Jersey.”

Tony jumped off of his stool with only a mild stumble and called his suit to him as he ran for the nearest window. 

“Tony, wait! You aren’t going alone.”

FRIDAY opened the floor-length window for Tony just as the final gauntlet of his suit clicked into place. “Then you better move your ass,” Tony shouted back. “I’m not waiting.”

Tony leapt out of the window and into the open night air. His rockets kicked into motion and he was flying at top speed towards Kraven’s location. Behind him, the window slid back shut– cutting off Rhodey’s furious curses.

Chapter Text

“What about Falcon or Black Widow?” Peter asked. “Won’t they be looking for you?”

Steve shook his head. “They won’t know where to look. We were on the way back from Wakanda when we were captured, and we were supposed to be off the grid for about a week after that. I don’t know if they even know we’re gone.”

“‘Let’s celebrate, Bucky.’” Bucky mocked, his eyes closed and his head back against the wall. “‘You need to see more of the world, Bucky. Your goats will be fine for a week, Bucky. We won’t be gone for long. Loosen up, Bucky.’” Bucky opened his eyes and glared at Steve. “See, this is why I have trust issues.”

“I didn’t plan this,” Steve protested, looking wounded.

“I could be on a farm in Wakanda right now,” Bucky replied with a grumpy scowl.

“Wait, you have goats?” Peter demanded.

Bucky nodded, his face softening as he thought of the animals. “They’re all assholes.”

“He named one after me,” Steve said, his face a little smug.

“You mean Pre-Serum Steve? He rammed head-first into a fence post and tried to fight the cow, who else would I name him after?”

Steve’s face fell again and Peter stifled a chuckle.

Peter was about to ask about the rest of the goat’s names when his enhanced hearing picked up the sound of footsteps outside the door. Steve and Bucky stiffened a moment later as they caught the noise as well.

The trio slowly got to their feet, staring intently at the door. Peter couldn’t suppress a slight flinch when it swung open and the woman strode inside.

Her hair was back in perfect place, but she was wearing black kevlar and military wear rather than her business clothes. Her makeup and poker face were both impeccable. 

Four henchmen types followed her into the room.

“Congratulations, Winter Soldier,” the woman said dryly. “You have thoroughly stumped my supposedly world class scientists.” 

“Don’t suppose that means that we can go?” Bucky asked optimistically. 

The woman smirked. “It means that they get to test you until they can give me a better answer than ‘I don’t know’.” She tilted her head towards Peter and he didn’t think he imagined the glint that came into her eyes. “In the meantime, I have more time to devote to other projects.”

Bucky and Steve both not-so-subtly shifted in front of Peter and the woman smirked. Peter was trying to not hide behind the two super-soldiers, but he couldn’t deny the wriggling snakes of fear that were currently in residence in his stomach. He didn’t have any experience with being held captive, and he had been hoping to keep torture off his resume at least until after he could legally drink.

The woman pulled the silver remote from her pocket and her smile grew when her prisoners flinched. “I’m sure you’re all tired of being electrocuted, so I would suggest behaving.” She tapped a red nail against her chin thoughtfully. “I think this time I’ll just let the Spider take the punishment if you try anything. I wonder how much his abilities can heal before his body gives out?”

“Uh, how about we don’t test that?” Peter’s voice cracked traitorously. “I’ve heard terrible things about barbequed spider.”

The woman managed to roll her eyes in a dignified manner at Peter’s attempt at a quip. She flicked her fingers at the guards and they approached the cell. One of the guards unlocked the door while the other three stood at the ready with most likely un-fun electrified batons. The guard with the keys shoved them into some unknown pocket and motioned for Bucky to move.

Peter grabbed onto Bucky’s arm to keep him from leaving. Sure, getting electrocuted sucked, but watching Bucky walk willingly back into the hands of the organization that had turned him into the Winter Soldier was somehow worse.

Steve was as tense as a tap dancer in a minefield. He made an aborted movement to grab Peter back, but the threatening raise of the batons stopped him.

“Let go, kid,” Bucky muttered. “I’ll be fine.”

Peter’s breath was leaving his lungs in wispy huffs, and his fingers seemed to be out of his control. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he knew he couldn’t let go.

“Kid,” Bucky repeated, more urgently.

The woman gave an exasperated sigh. “Enough dramatics.” She clicked the remote and Peter fell down screaming.

Steve dropped down beside Peter and he could distantly hear him calling his name. The shocks were even worse this time around. His spine arched and his hand slammed against the ground uncontrollably. A zap sizzled through his jaw and it first tingled then went worryingly numb. He could taste blood. His lips were parted in a silent scream but his chest couldn’t move any of the air out.

“Turn it off!” Bucky roared.

Peter couldn’t turn to look, but he heard the crashes and grunts of a fight. Beside him, Steve stood and leapt into the fray. 

A moment later, Steve and Bucky crashed to the ground as well, doing their best to muffle their own screams.

“Grab the Winter Soldier,” the woman said in disgust. “I’ll take care of the spider later.”

There was the sound of shuffling and then the room’s heavy door slammed shut. The shock collar finally turned off, and Peter was left trying to remember how to breathe. The collar was choking him, or maybe it hadn’t turned off because Peter couldn’t fucking breathe. He clawed at his neck with numb, twitching fingers and desperately tried to unlock his rictus closed jaw to let in a gasp.

“Kid, hey,” Steve was suddenly at Peter’s side. He had a new cut on his cheekbone and he was out of breath, but he looked none the worse for his impromptu electro-therapy. 

Peter tried to croak something out, probably a beg for help, but his throat was closing up. It felt like one of the asthma attacks he had as a kid. He hadn’t had one since the spider bite. He had forgotten how much it felt like dying.

Steve used one hand to catch Peter’s hands away from his neck and the other to raise his head slightly off the ground. “Shh, it’ll be ok, kid. Just calm down and try to breathe.” 

Peter focused on the calm sound of Steve’s voice and felt some of his panic soothe. If Captain America said it would be ok, it would be. He managed a small breath through his nose and felt his throat loosen.

“That’s it,” Steve encouraged. “Just breathe.”

Peter managed a few more half-breaths before he convinced his jaw to unclench. “‘M sorry,” he wheezed. “Made t-things… worse.”

“Don’t start,” Steve warned. “None of this is your fault. You’re still a kid. It’s mine and Bucky’s job to look out for you right now.”

Peter was well versed in the art of angst, and he wasn’t thrown off so easily. “But I'm Spiderman.”

“And I’m Captain America,” Steve countered. He smirked slightly. “I’ve been told that’s a big deal.”

Peter’s lips quirked in a smile before a fresh convulsion sent him into a full body shudder.

Steve’s smirk dropped with a sigh. “Look, kid, Bucky and I are gonna do our best to keep you as safe as possible. You gotta let us do that.”

Peter considered the general agonies that were plaguing his body and decided that having adults in charge sounded nice. He raised his still mostly numb hand to his forehead in the sloppiest salute imaginable. “Aye aye, Captain,” he mumbled.

Steve chuckled and reached over to tuck the mildly blood-stained jacket under Peter’s head. “At ease, soldier.”

Peter’s eyes were falling closed seemingly of their own volition, and he finally stopped fighting it. All he could hope for was for his healing factor to kick in even with the little food. His battered body needed the help. 

The moment he got out of this Hydra mess, he was going to ask Mr. Stark to get burgers. Mr. Stark never said no to burgers, especially if Peter was asking. Just throw in some puppy dog eyes….

Peter was asleep again before he could finish the thought.

****

Tony’s armor landed on the concrete ground with a solid thud. 

The satellite image had lead him to a veritable concrete jungle of empty warehouses. Which, seriously, cliche much? Was it too much to expect villains to have some damn class? Even if it was a painfully boring hiding place, it still left Tony with a lot of buildings to comb through.

“FRIDAY, scan for heat signatures.”

“On it, boss.”

Tony slowly set out down a road between the eerily still buildings. His boots clanked with every heavy step.

“I’m getting something from the building to your right,” FRIDAY informed him, lighting up his screen with the fuzzy heat signature that made it through the warehouse walls.

Tony turned and made his clanking way over to the building. He paused outside of the closed door and warily eyed the heat signature that had yet to move.

“Hey, Fri, remind me to send the building’s owner a check.” With that, he raised a gauntleted hand and fired a repulsor beam. The door flew off its hinges and Tony rocketed through the newly open space. He landed in an open area– his boots sliding slightly on the floor– and turned to scan the area, his hands up with repulsors ready to fire.

He was met with silence. The entire warehouse was bathed in shadows, and the heat signature had disappeared from his screen. 

“FRIDAY, where’d he go?”

Something dropped onto the outside of his armor and Tony had barely twisted to see what it was before an electric pulse ran through his suit and darkened his screens.

“You should look up more,” A growly voice appeared in tandem with the sound of a heavy body dropping to the ground.

Tony growled in frustration and watched the rebooting sign spin on his screen.

“What does the great Tony Stark want with me?” Kraven asked, circling Tony’s defenseless suit. In the darkness, he was but a looming shadow.

“Call it a business visit,” Tony snarked. The reboot was at 20%. “I want to know what you did with Spider-man.”

“The Spider? That was a simple contract job.” The shadow paused in front of Tony’s view. “I didn’t realize he had such important friends.”

“Is he alive?” Tony demanded, suddenly desperate. The reboot was at 40%.

“Maybe. I didn’t ask what my client had planned.”

“Who is your client?”

“Nuh-uh-uh,” Kraven tutted sinisterly. “Giving out information like that would be bad for business.” Something glinted in the faint moonlight that was spilling through the shattered door. “I also can’t have you chasing me.”

Tony gritted his teeth. 70%.

“I’ve always wanted to test my blades against that armor of yours,” Kraven said thoughtfully. The knife glinted again as he lifted it in the air.

83%. There wasn’t enough time.

“Goodbye Stark.”

The ceiling above them fell in a massive crash and a human form landed with the rubble. The War Machine armor faintly whirred as Rhodey moved into a defensive pose in the midst of the wreckage.

Kraven leapt at Rhodey with a roar and the two began grappling. Rhodey was forced to dodge a seemingly endless supply of knives and yet was unable to use his own guns on Kraven. They needed him alive if they were to get any information.

“You couldn’t have waited an extra five minutes for me?” Rhodey shouted at Tony, irritated.

“You’re here now, aren’t you?” Tony retorted. The reboot bar inched the final way to the finish line and Tony’s suit whirred to life about him. 

Kraven whirled around to meet Tony and was met with a fully charged repulsor aimed directly at his head.

“Let’s try this again. Where is Spider-man?”

Chapter Text

Peter had mostly recovered from his spontaneous electro-therapy when Bucky was returned. 

The moment Bucky was tossed back into the cell, looking battered and glassy eyed, Scary Lady motioned for Peter to come out. When he hesitated, she sighed in annoyance and brandished the silver remote. “Enough stalling, Spider-man. You can come out on your own or be dragged.”

Steve had gone to check on Bucky, but he looked up at Peter in concern. There was the silent offer in his eyes to help Peter fight. They both knew it would do no good, but the support felt good.

Peter shook his head slightly and slowly walked to the door of the cell. His muscles were cramped and sore from the electrocution induced spasms, and he limped as he walked. His healing factor was flagging due to the lack of food. It was only a matter of time before it stopped helping at all.

One of the guards grabbed his arm the moment he was close to the cell entrance and yanked him out. The door slammed shut behind Peter and for a moment he stood alone in a ring of armed guards. Then, the woman made a hand signal and Peter was being dragged over to the metal chair in the center of the room. 

The metal chair did not look very comfortable, and there was the general vibe of torture in the room, so Peter wasn’t thrilled about sitting in it. He stuck to the floor with his spider powers and both he and the guard pulling him jerked to a stop.

“Enough of this,” the woman sighed. 

Peter’s collar angrily buzzed to life and the guard holding his arm jumped slightly at the transferred shock and released Peter. That would have been an excellent time to try some sort of escape attempt if not for the… ya’know…. overwhelming agony that sent him to the floor. The fork in a toaster special lasted for only a few seconds this time, and Peter was feeling singed rather than cooked as two guards grabbed his arms and dragged him to the chair. He tried to struggle a bit when the guards moved to lock him into the cuffs on the arms of the chair, but the recent Ben-Franklin-with-a-kite incident had left him weak enough that the cuffs clicked into place around his wrists without much problem. He managed to kick one of the guards when they tried to cuff his legs to the chair as well, but a moment later he was well and truly stuck.

Scary Lady made yet another hand motion (Peter was beginning to think that she had the guards trained better than show dogs) and all but one of the guards made for the door. The guard in the lead knocked on the handle-less door and it swung open from the outside, allowing the guards to exit.

Bucky seemed to have revived slightly since he had been brought back to the cell and both he and Steve were watching worriedly through the bars. Peter attempted to shoot them a reassuring smile but it came out more like an awkward grimace. See, this is why he wore the mask. He needed something to control his facial expressions.

One of the guards that had exited a minute before re-entered pushing a loaded cart. The cart looked a little like a surgical table on wheels. There was a variety of knives and syringes in addition to something that looked like a drill. 

Scary Lady smiled as she saw Peter’s face blanch. “I’ve heard some very interesting things about your abilities, little spider. I’m excited to test them out.”

Peter tried to keep from panicking even as he squirmed in his seat. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard. Honestly, my powers aren’t even that great. You should really just let me go.”

The woman kept smiling and walked over to the cart with dramatically slow steps. “I’ve seen the footage from Germany. Don’t sell yourself short.” Her fingers drifted above the instruments thoughtfully as she spoke.

Peter couldn’t seem to look away as she hovered over a scalpel then moved to a syringe. “Really, I didn’t do much,” he protested desperately. 

The woman raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “If you didn’t do much, then how did you take down Captain America?”

Peter could only blame the rising panic that was fuzzing out his brain for what came out of his mouth next. “I shot him in ze legs because his shield is ze size of a dinner plate and he’s an idiot.” The response was automatic, the German accent was terrible, and Peter could only look to Steve in horror.

The room was silent for a moment with Peter and Steve staring at each other and Scary Lady looking at Peter in confusion. The silence was broken by Bucky’s snort of laughter. 

Peter and Steve both turned to stare at Bucky who was outright cackling at this point. He laughed so hard that he choked and fell into a coughing fit.

Steve was looking more sulky now than confused.

Peter had turned crimson from embarrassment.

Scary Lady seemed to be frozen. Apparently nobody had ever started laughing so hard that they choked during one of her intimidation sessions. 

“I’ve seen that vine,” Bucky finally gasped out once he had recovered from his coughing fit. “Shuri is going to lose her mind when I tell her you said that.”

“You’ve seen vine?” Peter questioned dazedly. He was beginning to wonder if this whole situation wasn’t just a really strange dream.

“Of course I’ve seen vine,” Bucky scoffed. “I’m a hundred years old, not dead.”

Scary Lady apparently had had enough. “You will be dead if you keep talking,” she snapped. “You don’t seem to understand your situation very well if you’re laughing.” She took the silver remote out of her pocket. “Let me remind you.”

With a vicious stab at the remote’s button, Steve and Bucky’s collars both sparked to life. The woman turned back to Peter, ignoring the stifled screams from behind her. 

“As for you…. I think it’s time to see just how good that healing factor of yours is.” She finally picked up one of the scalpels. “Let’s begin, shall we?”

**

Peter almost didn’t notice when the woman left. She and the guard left him locked in the chair. They merely took the cart and left the room without a word.

Peter was barely conscious. In fact, he wasn’t convinced that he was conscious at all. He could sense the pain ready to strike just outside of the limbo of his not-quite-unconscious unconsciousness. So, yeah, he didn’t want to be awake just yet.

“-ter…. Peter can you hear me?”

No. Peter could not hear him, because that would mean that he was awake. Nope. Peter wasn’t home. Come back later.

“Peter. Spider-man. You gotta wake up, kid.”

The voice was starting to sound desperate, and it was making Peter feel bad. He finally decided to try and crack open an eyelid, and his body begrudgingly moved towards consciousness. The pain that had been waiting to pounce finally made its move and Peter let out a pained, but mostly annoyed, groan. Being awake sucked.

“Hey, Peter. You with us, kid?”

Peter tried to open his eyes, but all he managed to do was raise his eyebrows. Even that small motion hurt, pulling at a cut on his cheek.

His memory of the woman’s experiments was hazy at best, and for that he could only be grateful. An assessment of his various injuries told a story on its own. He felt like he was covered head to foot in bruises. His ribs ground together every time he breathed in the special kind of un-fun way that meant that at least a few were broken. His arms stung from an array of criss-crossed cuts. Most of them were relatively shallow, but he could feel a few deeper ones on his forearm and near his shoulder. 

His thermal suit was definitely ruined.

Peter allowed himself a groan and attempted to open his eyes again. He finally managed it, and was nearly blinded for his troubles. The fluorescent overhead light (that before had seemed too dim) hit his retinas like a flash bomb. He immediately screwed his eyes shut and groaned again as a headache flared near his temples.

“‘S too bright,” he muttered, turning his head away.

“Just take it easy, kid,” Bucky advised. “You had us worried.”

Peter  opened his eyes just enough to squint at the offending light. “What’s there t’ worry about?” His ribs seemed close to stabbing his lungs and he was wheezing more than breathing, but Peter ignored it and attempted a smile. Attempted being the key word because the movement pulled at a cut on his lip and it turned into a grimace. “‘s normal Tuesday.”

Somebody snorted in amusement, Peter couldn’t tell who, and the group settled into a comfortable silence.

Peter managed to open his eyes all the way and he immediately winced at the sight of his injured arms. He looked away quickly, but not before he caught sight of a concerning amount of blood. He let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes again. He could feel his healing factor at work— like an all-body itch beneath his skin— but the lack of food and the extent of his injuries wasn’t an ideal combination. He was hurting, and he was desperately uncomfortable. It was when Peter felt his ribs moving back into place beneath his skin that he got desperate. He needed a distraction.

“So, you know vine?” he asked abruptly.

If Bucky heard the tension in Peter’s voice he didn’t mention it. “Yeah, I love the internet. You couldn’t exactly look up a good quiche recipe in two minutes back in the forties.”

Peter sucked in another painful breath even as his lips twitched in a grin. “Thought you were… old man.”

Bucky snorted. “Steve’s the tech dinosaur. I’ve always loved that stuff.” Peter heard Bucky move to face Cap. “Hey, Steve, remember that Stark Expo we went to the night I shipped out for the army?”

Peter cracked open an eyelid at that. “Stark?”

“Howard Stark– Tony’s father,” Steve explained.

“Yeah, well I had found Steve a date and we were there watching an actual flying car on stage, and I turn around to find this idiot running off to try and enlist again. He left the girl and everything.”

Steve snorted derisively. “You had failed to mention to my ‘date’ that you were setting her up with a 5 '4 asthmatic.”

“You could have at least tried to make it work,” Bucky replied with a near audible roll of his eyes.

“Buck, she wasn’t my date. You had two dates.”

Bucky smirked. “Not my fault you’re hopeless with women.”

Steve gasped, playing up his offense for Peter’s sake. “Remind me what happened when you tried to ask Peggy to dance?”

“Hey, that was after you got all the muscles. Unfair advantage.”

“Peggy didn’t just like me for my muscles,” Steve protested. “It’s what's inside that counts.”

“Yeah, and you had a lot of muscles insides of you.”

Peter snickered at that, then bit back a groan at the flare of pain that caused. Laughing was very bad for his under-construction ribs, which was unfortunate, because Peter lived for sarcastic banter. His history books had failed to mention that Sergeant Barnes was funny.

“Have you talked to Sharon recently?” Bucky asked after a moment’s silence where the two men looked at Peter in concern.

“Since becoming a wanted traitor?” Steve sighed. “Not exactly.”

“You can’t just kiss a gal and then ditch her!”

Peter turned his head to look at Steve just a little too quickly. “Captain America kissed someone?”

Steve held up his hands as if to fend off both Bucky and Peter. “Last I checked, you shouldn’t start a relationship while on the run from the government.”

Bucky sighed. Loudly. “Steve, Steve, Steve. All this time and you still know Jack about women. Women love rebels!”

“Really.” Steve said disbelievingly. 

“Sure. C’mon, Peter, back me up here.”

Peter grunted as he felt a sharp stab of pain as one of his ribs seemed to pop back into place. It was a distinctly disturbing feeling, and he never wanted to repeat it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t likely to happen. 

“I don’t know much about girls,” Peter admitted, trying to breathe through what felt like another rib gearing up to pop into place.

“Guess I’m the leading expert, then. And I say that you need to up your game, Steve. You even have muscles now. There should be no excuse.”

Steve sighed. “You and Natasha. Always obsessed with my love life.”

“Someone obviously needs to help you out, Pal.”

This time, Peter managed to stifle his laugh before he could displace any more ribs.

“What about you, Pete?” Bucky asked, grinning. “Anyone special?”

Peter shook his head and accidentally made himself dizzy. “Everyone thinks I’m a nerd,” he mumbled.

“That’s not terrible. Girls can like nerds.”

Peter shot Bucky a disbelieving glance. “Not the nerds that get shoved in lockers.”

Steve bristled. “Who’s shoving you into lockers?”

“Yeah, kid. Don’t you have super strength?”

Another twinge shot through Peter’s chest and his breath hitched. “Secret identity? Can’t suddenly punch Flash through a wall.”

“Sounds like the kid deserves it,” Bucky said, considering. “You could at least beat him up a little and say you’ve been working out.”

“Wouldn’t be right,” Peter mumbled. “Powers and responsibility ‘n stuff.”

“Wish Steve had some of that sense. Do you know how many times I had to rescue him from getting beat up in a back alley? He was the size of a shrimp, and he was still constantly challenging people twice his size to fights.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Actually, that hasn’t changed. He just found bigger people to fight.”

“Hey,” Steve interjected. “All he said was that using his powers to beat up a normal kid would be wrong. There’s nothing wrong with getting into a fight to defend someone else.”

“It is when a strong wind would be enough to knock you over! ‘Oh, Bucky, I think I pulled a muscle’,” Bucky said mockingly. “You can’t pull what you don’t have, Steve!”

“That was seventy years ago!”

“Seventy years and you still haven’t gotten an ounce of sense!”

“Not his fault that you own the brain cell,” Peter said with a grin.

Steve looked confused, but Bucky nodded, considering, then shook his head.“I’m the former assassin here. I want to know how I’m the responsible one.”

Steve grinned impishly. “According to all the propaganda films I’ve been in, I’m extremely responsible.”

Bucky scoffed. “Says the man that jumped on a grenade the moment he was left unsupervised. I have no idea how you managed to fool everyone into thinking you’re some pinnacle of tactical planning. I’ve seen you jump out of at least four airplanes with no parachute and no landing plan.”

Steve’s grin broadened and he clapped Bucky on the shoulder. “The public doesn’t have to know that.”

Bucky shook his head. “You gotta help spread the word, Pete. I can’t have everyone think that Steve’s the smart one.”

Peter looked at Bucky curiously. “You know we watch Captain America lectures in detention, right?”

“Steve?” Bucky demanded, aghast. “Mr. Skip School and cause fights? Him?!”

Steve smirked and threw his arm on his friend’s shoulder. “Like I said, Buck. They’ll never know.”

“Why you little sh–”

Peter probably re-cracked a rib laughing, but it was worth it.

What he didn’t notice were the smug looks Steve and Bucky sent each other at the sight of a smile on Peter’s bloody face.

****

HYDRA.

HYDRA had Tony’s ki— Peter. HYDRA had Peter, and Tony had no idea where they were hiding. 

He hadn’t even known that HYDRA was still operational. Sure, that had been more Cap’s domain, but he had still checked out the situation when SHIELD collapsed. He had gone through the files that had been released, and he had found a lot of nasty stuff that was currently fueling his Peter centered nightmares, but nothing that could help him now. 

Tony’s mind went to the flip phone that Steve had sent him several months ago. He still had it, more because he couldn’t make himself throw it away than out of a desire to use it. It was actually in his desk right now. 

Tony pressed his palms into his eyes and tried to think. Rhodey had called in Pepper and the two of them had forced him into a nap, but a few hours hadn’t been enough to pay off his mounting sleep debt. He was exhausted, but that wasn’t unusual. He had been in a permanent state of exhaustion probably since he turned twelve.

Cap had the most experience with HYDRA. If anyone knew where they might be holding Peter, it was him.

Tony had FRIDAY combing for footage of where Kraven said he had dropped Peter off, but the area was secluded and he wasn’t hopeful for any leads. Steve might be his only chance of finding Peter.

Rhodey was currently asleep, and Pepper was busy keeping Stark Industries afloat. No one was around to talk him out of calling Steve.

He didn’t want to call Steve. He wanted to punch the sanctimonious bastard in the face and scream at him for a few hours. He hadn’t forgiven him for the lies, and he hadn’t forgiven him for choosing Barnes over the Avengers. Tony didn’t trust easily, and he didn’t take betrayal lightly.

Was maybe getting a lead on Peter’s location worth calling Steve? Was it worth bridging the chasm that opened between them during the fight in Germany?

Yes, Tony decided. Anything was worth it if he could get Peter back.

He reached for the top left drawer of his desk and pulled it open. He reached past the assorted junk inside the drawer and tugged on a hidden latch in the drawer’s back panel. The panel popped off in his hand and revealed a small gap that held the phone.

Tony slowly pulled the flip phone out of its hiding place and scoffed quietly at the age of the tech. Trust Rogers to find the most outdated technology just to annoy Tony. The man knew how to use a smartphone, he just pretended he didn’t so he could watch Tony rant when he sent a text formatted like a telegram.

Tony’s fingers tightened around the phone for a moment, but then he envisioned Peter’s face and all of the horrible things that HYDRA could be doing to him. If he had any way of preventing that, he had to try.

He flipped the phone open and opened the one programmed number in a rush before he could change his mind. He hesitated only a moment before hitting the call button. 

He held the phone to his ear and waited while it rang. And rang. And rang.

Finally, the dial tone ended and a computerized voice told him to leave a message.

Tony almost hung up, but he thought again of Peter and gritted his teeth.

“Hey, Cap.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I know we’re not on the best of terms, but I need… help.” The H word was hard to spit out. “Spider-man is missing and HYDRA is responsible. I’ve run out of options. You know HYDRA better than anyone. I’m hoping that you can tell me where to look.”

Tony swallowed down his pride and grew quiet. “And for what it’s worth… I’m sorry about how things went down. Just, call me back if you know anything. Please.” 

He ended the call quickly and tossed the phone onto his desk before burying his head in his hands. He could only hope that he wasn’t making a mistake.

Chapter Text

Peter wasn’t feeling great. 

Scratch that. Peter was feeling terrible.

Granted, his ribs felt loads better. His bones had stopped shifting (a fact for which Peter was eternally grateful) and his chest was only a little sore. It barely even hurt to breathe. 

Unfortunately, his healing factor seemed to be about spent. His arms were still marked by several of the deeper cuts and his bruises were only ripening. The real problem now was hunger. A measly power bar was all he’d had to eat since being captured, and he hadn’t had any water. His throat felt like sandpaper and he was so hungry that he was nauseous. He both wanted to throw up at the thought of food and fight through a crowd of rabid Justin Bieber fans for the chance of a hotdog. He would even take one of those mystery meat hot dogs that were sold on the New York street.

When the door opened and Scary Lady walked back in, Peter was a strange mix of relieved and terrified. He was thankful for any distraction from his self-cannibalizing stomach, but he was worried that the distraction was going to be extremely painful.

A guard walked in after Scary lady and silently began to unlock Peter’s cuffs. Peter didn’t even try to get away. The room’s door was still locked and the silver remote probably wasn’t far away. 

The guard unlocked the cuffs around his wrist last and stood back, waiting for him to get up. 

Peter stood, pushing himself up with hands on the bloodstained armrests, and nearly fell back down again. His head was spinning like a top and his legs felt like that rubbery pasta that May made for dinner last week. 

Peter hadn’t realized how accustomed he had become to letting his healing factor take care of everything. He and May had had some rough patches where they had to skimp on food, but he had never truly been without. He especially had never had such large injuries on an empty stomach. It sucked.

While Peter was still trying to find his balance, the guard had grabbed his wrists behind his back and locked them into a heavy-duty pair of handcuffs. 

Peter shot a mildly panicked look at Steve and Bucky then looked back at the woman. “Are we going somewhere?” His voice sounded wrecked even to his own ears. Screaming and no water tended to do that.

The woman raised an eyebrow at Peter’s wary puzzlement. “We need to test how well your enhanced healing worked. To do that, we will be needing a bit more….” She smiled. “Room.”

“The kid’s in no shape for any ‘tests’,” Steve protested. 

He and Bucky were both on their feet, their focus centered on Peter.

“For the last time, Captain , you are not the one in charge here,” the woman snapped. 

Steve met her glare evenly and clenched his jaw. “And who exactly are you? And why should I care?”

Peter was torn between saying “ooOOO!” like it was a roast battle and diving for cover. He also wished that he could have videoed that. Bucky was right. The world needed to see the sarcastic, potty-mouthed version of Captain America.

The woman’s eyes narrowed furiously, but then her expression shifted into a smirk. “Johanna Schmidt, granddaughter of the Red Skull. Rightful leader of HYDRA.” She dipped her head and flourished her hand in a mocking bow. “At your disservice.” 

Steve looked momentarily rattled. “I didn’t know that he had any family.”

“Even someone burdened with as glorious a purpose as him occasionally gets… distracted.”

“Gross,” Bucky muttered. 

Schmidt’s face darkened and she shot Bucky a vicious look. “The Red Skull was a great man with a powerful vision for the future. I am continuing his legacy. One day, I will have built the empire that he dreamed of, but was never able to achieve.”

Steve scoffed. “I’ve met the real Red Skull, lady, and you don’t measure up.”

Peter was still standing in front of the metal chair, and he kinda wished that he could just sink into the floor. Red Skull lady had gone from furious to a deadly sort of calm, and Peter had the bad feeling that he would be the one paying for Steve’s comment.

The woman calmly turned and stalked over to the closed door. She knocked on the metal and when the door opened, she exchanged a few quiet sentences with the guards outside.

Peter forgot to try and listen in until she was nearly done talking, and all he overheard were the words, “bring them along.”

Schmidt turned back to the soldier that was holding onto Peter’s cuffs. She inclined her head, and suddenly Peter was being dragged out the door. 

Steve and Bucky threw out furious threats as the group left the room, but they were ultimately helpless in their cell. The door closed and Peter could barely hear them anymore.

“I need to stop expecting old men to respect what a woman is capable of,” Schmidt sighed. “Oh, well. They should learn soon enough.”

Peter didn’t dare reply. 

The group walked down a long, cement hallway. Flickering LED tubes lit the exposed piping of the ceiling and cast odd shadows across the bare walls. They were obviously underground, or in some sort of really terribly designed building. They passed several metal doors– all closed– and Peter couldn’t help but wonder if there were more prisoners hidden behind them.

Peter’s legs were still stiff and he kept stumbling as the guard holding his arm dragged him along. The cuts on his arm stung beneath the harsh grip. He wasn’t sure what “test” Schmidt had in mind, but he didn’t think he would enjoy it.

They finally emerged into a cavernous room. The ceiling was raised at least three stories high and even though the overhead lights shone like spotlights, they couldn’t quite manage to dispel the gloom. The entire room was concrete and metal. Concrete walls, floors, and two concrete lined tunnels that Peter could just barely make out across the room. Metal beams criss-crossed part of the ceiling and there was a metal cat-walk that surrounded the room about a storey up. The main thing that caught Peter’s attention was the massive, domed cage in the center of the room. 

“This used to be an underground cage-fight location,” Schmidt explained, noticing Peter’s uneasy inspection of the chain link structure. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know if it’s appropriate for our under-age audience. Why not an ice-rink? Or a puppy kennel?” Peter suggested nervously. “Really, it’s time you redecorated.”

Schmidt smirked. “No, I think this will suit our purposes just fine.”

The guard holding Peter’s arm dragged him nearer to the door of the cage, and Peter momentarily resisted. Schmidt edged her hand into her pocket to take out the remote and Peter immediately stopped fighting. He hated the smug expression she got on her face, but honestly, he didn’t think he could handle any more electrocution right now.

The guard swung the cage’s ajar door open fully and shoved Peter inside. The guard fished out a pair of keys and began to unlock the cuffs. 

Peter couldn’t help but notice the way that Schmidt kept her hand on the remote. He wasn’t going to be given any opportunities to escape. 

The moment the cuffs were off, the chain link gate was slammed shut and a chain and padlock was wrapped around the gate’s frame. The guard backed away and took his place a deferential step behind Schmidt. They were clearly waiting for something, and Peter found out what a moment later.

Steve and Bucky– bound, gagged, and furious– were dragged into the large room by a pack of eight guards. They were maneuvered beside the domed cage and forced to their knees, facing Peter. Steve refused to go down at first, and it took two kicks to his leg and a small jab of an electrified baton before he fell. 

It was only a moment later that Peter’s enhanced hearing picked up the sound of snarling dogs.

Peter turned to look at one of the tunnels that he had yet to go inside of, and after a few seconds of waiting he was able to make out several approaching forms. Three guards stumbled out of the tunnel’s mouth, each of them clutching the jerking leash of a furiously snarling dog. One dog looked to be a PitBull, another was a Rottweiler, and the last one was a strange mix-breed he couldn’t name. All of them were massive, and all of them were looking at Peter like he was lunch.

“It’s about time that we had some good, old-fashioned entertainment.”

Peter jumped slightly and whirled around to find Schmidt standing barely a foot away on the other side of the chain-link wall.

“I’m not going to fight an animal,” Peter protested, horrified.

“You will.” Schmidt didn’t even bother to turn the statement into a threat. She simply said it as if it was a fact as dependable as Newton’s third law. “If you win, I might even give you and your friends dinner tonight.” Her makeup smoothed forehead puckered in mocking concern. “You look like you might need it.”

“And if I don’t do it?” Peter meant for his voice to be defiant, but it wavered and ended up fearful.

“If you don’t, I will throw the Winter Soldier in in your place. I don’t think I need to untie him first either.”

Peter’s eyes flickered over to Bucky and he shuddered. Bucky had a set of chains wrapping around his chest and binding his one arm tight. There was no way he would be able to defend himself.

“Most importantly, you will have proven to me that you aren’t worth my time, Spider-man. And although you make an entertaining toy…” Schmidt’s eyes raked over the tattered remnants of the thermal suit that utterly failed to cover Peter’s bloody chest. Peter shuddered and crossed his arms. “I am not in the business of keeping around useless tools.” Her perfectly painted lips quirked in a pleasant smile. “Do you understand?”

Peter’s voice barely managed to come out as more than a whisper. “Yes.”

Schmidt’s smile dropped. “Yes, what?”

Peter dropped his gaze but forced his voice to be a little more clear. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Schmidt purred. She stepped back a few paces and made a motion to the dog handlers. “Go ahead.” *

Peter backed up until his back was pressed against the chain-link wall as one of the dog handlers passed off the leash he was holding and began to raise a drop gate. 

Bucky and Steve were shouting furiously through their gags. Peter didn’t dare look away long enough to send them a reassuring smile. He didn’t think he would have been able to manage it even if he had tried.

The gate, which was probably around Peter’s knee height and not a good escape option due to the extremely unfriendly canines on the other side, was fully raised and the first dog was shoved through and untethered in the same motion. The other two were sent in barely a few seconds after, but the first dog was already charging at Peter with its mouth wide open and foaming.

Peter leapt and clung to the roof of the domed cage a moment before the dog reached biting range. He barely moved in time. He could feel those powerful jaws– filled with very sharp looking teeth– snap closed an inch beneath his foot. All three dogs gathered beneath him and leapt desperately, barking and snarling in a way that didn’t seem friendly.

Yeah, no. Peter would just hide, thanks. 

He felt his Spider Sense flare a moment before his collar flared to life. The shock only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to make him lose his grip.

One moment he was safely clutching the ceiling, and the next he was falling towards the open mouths of very angry puppies.

Peter really hated his life sometimes.

“No hiding,” Schmidt called.

Peter’s back hit the snout of the Rottweiler and he accidentally bowled the dog over before meeting the concrete ground in a reunion that was extremely unkind to his recently-mended ribs. His head was still fuzzy from the shock, but it cleared pretty quickly when he felt a mouth full of sharp teeth clamp around his ankle.

His Spider Sense flared a moment too late.

Peter stared, dumbstruck, at the Pit-bull that was currently attempting to eat his foot. He only had a moment to panic before his Spider Sense warned him of the Mix Breed that was charging at his head.

Peter reacted on instinct and threw out a hand. The Mix Breed went flying and collided with the cage wall with a force that set the metal links rattling. The dog yelped at the impact, then went silent as it landed in a heap at the base of the wall.

Peter had…. Peter had just hit a dog. And now it wasn’t moving. He hadn’t meant to, he never wanted to, but…. 

Shit. He might have to quit being Spider-man after this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, rather shell-shocked.

The Rottweiler was either ignorant or indifferent to Peter’s moral quandary given the fact that it chose that moment to charge. 

Peter attempted to dodge out of the way, but he was hindered by the fifty pounds of Pit-bull that was still attached to his leg. He managed to twist out of the way just enough so that the Rottweiler’s teeth merely scored a cut along his back instead of latching onto his arm.

The cut still really hurt. Which reminded him of the pain that he had apparently been blocking out from his leg, because ow , that REALLY hurt too. 

The Rottweiler spun around for another charge and Peter kicked his leg, desperately trying to displace the Pit-bull. 

Hindsight informed him that that had been a terrible move, because now his leg was bleeding more, it hurt more, and the Pit-bull seemed to only be more firmly attached.

The Rottweiler was aiming for his throat this time, and Peter only had enough time to throw up his arms in an attempt to protect himself. The dog clamped onto his left arm– just below his elbow– and furiously shook its head.

Peter screamed.

“You need to fight back, Kid!” Bucky shouted, apparently having fought free of the gag. “Protect yourself!”

The Rottweiler released Peter’s arm in favor of lunging again for his throat,

Peter was crying. He could feel the tears streaming down his face in tandem with the blood flowing from his arm and his leg.

He reached out with both hands and caught the dog by its neck before it could manage to bite him again. He flipped it onto its back, twisting strangely to avoid jostling his trapped leg, and pressed down on the dog’s throat. 

The Rottweiler snarled and snapped at Peter’s hands, twisting desperately but unable to reach Peter. Its back legs kicked and scrabbled at Peter’s arms. It was huffing now, searching for the air that Peter was stealing from it.

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispered, choking on the lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”

The dog thrashed harder as it started to run out of air. It was still snapping weakly at Peter’s arms, but it was mostly huffing and gasping fruitlessly. Slowly, its resistance faded until it finally went still and silent. 

Peter kept his grip for a few moments after the dog went still, and then he jerked his hand away as if he had been burned. The wound on his arm throbbed and his hands were shaking. He was crying and sobbing, and he couldn’t feel embarrassed by it. He wanted to be told where the line was between defending himself and losing himself. 

His leg sent him a sharp spear of pain as a reminder, and Peter slowly turned to look back to the Pit-bull that was slowly chewing further into his leg.

Peter wasn’t sure what to do. He had seen a video once that said to grab the dog’s tail to make it let go, but the Pit-bull didn’t have a tail. He couldn’t move his leg without hurting himself further, and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to get a grip on the Pit-bull's neck if he tried to choke it like the Rottweiler.

Peter leaned forwards and ended up having to bend his knees slightly so he could reach the dog. The Pit-bull's grip on his leg shifted with the movement and Peter had to take a moment to try and recover his ability to breathe when the pain threatened to make him black out.

“Cover it’s nose!” Bucky shouted before there was the sound of a blow. Bucky’s cursing was abruptly muffled by the gag being put back in place.

Peter didn’t look up, but he took the advice.

He stretched out a hand, trying to avoid looking at how the dog’s teeth went into his leg, and reached for the dog’s snout. The Pit-bull snarled but didn’t release his leg to snap at Peter’s hand. Peter cupped his hand over the dog’s nose and pressed against its muzzle to try and cut off its air. The dog snarled again and jerked, tearing further at Peter’s leg. Peter clenched his jaw against the pain and forced his hold over the dog’s nose to remain steady.

The Pit-bull stubbornly kept its hold for a few seconds longer, then it huffed and released its grip on Peter’s leg in favor of snapping at his hand. Peter moved before he could get bitten again and he pulled at the dog’s back leg and made it tumble over itself. 

Peter scrambled to his feet, flinching when he put weight on his injured leg, and hopped away from the Pit-bull. The dog whirled around to follow and Peter wasted a moment looking around for escape. He saw no pity on Schmidt or the guards’ faces. No hope of assistance.

Peter dove back to the ground a moment before the Pit-bull would have leapt for his face. They wrestled for a few seconds– dog vs spider– until Peter managed to straddle the Pit-bull and wrap his hands around its throat.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “I-I didn’t want to do this.”

The Pit-bull snarled and fought until it finally succumbed to unconsciousness. 

Peter scrambled away the moment he released the dog. He staggered back to his feet– his injured leg raised off the ground like a strange parody of a flamingo– and stared Schmidt down. He swiped away the tears in his eyes and glared at her furiously. 

“Is this good enough for you?”

Schmidt looked back at Peter and smiled. For a long minute she made no move, then she finally turned and nodded to one of the guards. 

The guard hastened over to the gate, unlocked the padlock, and unwrapped the chain. He pulled the gate open wide and Peter stared at it warily. The guard fished a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and smirked at Peter. “Come on, Spider-boy. I don’t bite.”

Peter scowled but took a few shuffle steps towards the gate. The moment he was in range, the guard grabbed his arm and roughly tugged him the rest of the way. He cuffed Peter’s hands behind his back and the wound on his arm throbbed.

Schmidt made yet another motion and two more guards joined the first and grabbed Peter’s arms and pulled him away from the gate. Schmidt stalked closer when Peter was out of the way and held out her hand to the guard with the keys. The guard obediently offered her his gun.

“See, I have just one problem with you, Little Spider.” Schmidt took the gun and walked into the cage. “You are too soft. You focus too much on subduing instead of ending the fight.” She stopped a foot away from the Rottweiler that was just beginning to stir. She raised the gun and glanced back at Peter. “But I think we can toughen you up.”

Peter realized what she was going to do, but he was too late to stop it. “Wait, no!” 

The gun fired and the Rottweiler gave a jerking twitch before going utterly, deathly still.

Schmidt moved to the Pit-bull and fired again. The mix breed was the last. It never even stirred.

“There,” she said, walking back towards Peter with a smile on her face. “That’s better.” There were flecks of blood on her gray pants.

* Peter stared at her mutely and felt himself shaking. It took a moment to recognize the emotion for what it was. Pure, unbridled, rage.

Schmidt must have seen something in Peter’s face because she stopped and tilted her head at him curiously. “Aw, did that upset you? It’s alright. You’ll get used to it soon.”

Peter was too angry to speak– too angry to move. He had never felt the urge to kill someone so strongly before. 

Schmidt studied Peter’s face and smiled. “I think you’re ready.” She turned to the guards. “Take him to the re-education room.”

There was a muffled shout from off to their side and Peter saw Bucky suddenly struggling furiously to escape his guards. 

Schmidt looked at Bucky and chuckled. “Don’t worry, Soldier. You’ll have your turn again soon.”

The guards holding Peter’s arms began to drag him towards the third– so far unused– tunnel, but Peter stuck his feet to the ground and refused to move. 

“Mr. Stark is going to get here soon,” he promised threateningly. “And you won’t be a match for him when he does.”

Schmidt took the remote back out of her pocket and pressed the button. She watched with disinterest as the guards received a second-hand shock before dropping Peter to writhe on the ground. She didn’t let go of the button until Peter started screaming.

“I’m getting tired of your attempts at control,” she sneered.

The guards grabbed Peter by and started to drag him away before he managed to stop convulsing. The sound of Steve and Bucky’s muffled shouts filled his ears as he was dragged into the unknown.

****

Tony awoke to the sound of buzzing near his ear. 

He lifted his head from his desk– he must have fallen asleep in the workshop again– and wiped a hand down his face before looking for the source of the noise. If it was Pep or Rhodey trying to wake him up, it must be for something important.

The flip phone was ringing. 

Tony stared at the device for a moment before scrambling to pick it up and accept the call. He pressed the phone against his ear and attempted to shake the lingering sleepiness from his mind.

“Hello?”

“Tony.” 

That was Natasha Romanoff’s voice. Not Steve. Which couldn’t be good.

“I heard your message, and I think we can help each other. We need to meet.”

“Where’s Cap?” Tony asked warily, stomping on the thrill of hope he had felt at the possibility of a lead.

“That’s something I can’t tell you on the phone,” Natasha replied coolly. “Meet me at the corner of Virginia Avenue and 20th st in DC. We can talk there.”

“Wait–” Tony started to protest, but it was too late. She had already hung up.

Tony pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a moment, wondering yet again if this had been the right decision. Finally, he tossed the phone back onto the desk with a sigh.

“FRIDAY,” he called, standing up and heading for his suit. “Call up Rhodey and tell him to meet me ASAP. We have a meeting with some war criminals in the capitol.”

****

“Kid, you need to eat something.”

Peter shook his head without lifting it from where it was tucked between his arms and his knees. 

“Kid, please,” Bucky said desperately. “You’re too thin as it is.”

“You haven’t said anything since they brought you back,” Steve observed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Peter’s shoulders shook with a muffled sob. No, he didn’t want to talk about it. All he wanted was to be sitting in the living room with May, laughing at one of her bad jokes. He wanted to see Ned again. He wanted to give Mr. Stark a hug even if they “weren’t there yet” so he could finally feel safe. He wanted out.

“I just want to go home.”

Bucky put his arm around Peter’s shaking shoulders. When he spoke, the pain in his voice was equal to that in Peter’s own. “I know, kid. I know.”

Chapter Text

Steve and Bucky had eventually cajoled Peter into eating and drinking something. They didn’t have much, but Schmidt had at least kept her word enough to send her prisoners some water bottles and a small pile of power bars.

Peter would have happily choked on the food rather than give Schmidt the satisfaction of eating her “reward”, but it turned out that for a pair of war criminals, Steve and Bucky were both massive mother hens. It wasn’t fair when he was up against the literal “I’m Captain America and I’m disappointed” look. And then Bucky had pulled out an honest to goodness mom glare that had Peter wolfing down a granola bar so fast that he nearly did choke.

Peter was finding all of the Captain America propaganda more ridiculous by the minute. “The old-fashioned, innocent, perfect soldier.” Ha. If Peter had to listen to Bucky and Steve crack one more dirty joke at each other he was going to sell a tell-all story to the first tabloid he found after they escaped. If they escaped.

Anyway, “the perfect soldier” was a ridiculous term for a known war criminal. How Steve had managed to keep that reputation while actively committing treason was beyond him.

“Who’s your PR manager?” Peter mumbled groggily, interrupting the quiet conversation that Steve and Bucky had been having above his head.

“What?” Steve asked, sounding amused.

Peter didn’t bother to open his eyes. He didn’t want to sleep and risk letting the dark thoughts in his head come to life, but he was currently comfortable in his limbo of half-dozing. He was stretched out across the hard floor, but his head was pillowed on Bucky’s legs and he was feeling the closest to safe that he had in a while with Steve and Bucky on either side. The food had helped his healing factor too, so his leg was feeling much better and his arm almost felt normal. 

“You get away with too much to not have somebody running PR,” he informed Steve, his words slightly slurred by sleepiness.

Steve thought about it for a moment. “Honestly? I think it was the government that did it. They made all of the propaganda videos in World War II, and then they just kept doing it after I went in the ice. It was strange to come back and find out that I had trading cards and comic books.”

Bucky shook his head. “They forgot how much of a little shit you are. You were committing crimes even when you were five foot nothing stick.”

“I was trying to enlist. It wasn’t my fault that they kept saying no,” Steve protested. “And I only bend the laws that don’t make sense.”

“‘Bend’,” Bucky scoffed. “Steve, I have never seen you go the speed limit.”

“If you’re a good enough driver the speed limit shouldn’t matter.”

“Do you even have a driver’s license?” Peter mumbled, squinting up at Steve.

“Why do I need one if everyone knows who I am?”

“Oh my gosh,” Peter murmured to himself, beginning to realize the true depths of how much he had been lied to. School had never covered the fact that in addition to being a hero of World War II and one of the saviors of New York Captain America was a smug asshole who did crimes. 

“You’re being a bad influence on the kid,” Bucky said disapprovingly. “Now he’s going to go off and steal library books because Captain America said crime was ok.”

“If it’s my taxes…” Steve began. Peter had his eyes closed but he could just feel Steve grinning like the little shit he was.

“Nuh uh,” Bucky cut him off. “I let a lot of things slide, but you start messing with the library and I'm going to get one of those leash backpacks that Shuri told me about.”

“You’re such a mom,” Peter informed Bucky sleepily, well aware of the fact that his position resting on Bucky’s legs did not really leave him room to talk.

“Hey,” Bucky objected, sounding truly offended.

Steve laughed at both of them.

The trio fell into a comfortable silence and Peter settled back into his half-doze. Everything was silent for several minutes. Then, Peter’s Spider Sense flared and he sat up abruptly, startling Bucky and Steve.

“Kid?” Bucky questioned worriedly.

“They’re coming back.” Peter’s voice was shaking and he felt his breath coming out far too fast. “They’re– they’re coming.”

“Hey, hey,” Bucky said hastily, putting his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Calm down. It’ll be ok.”

“But-”

The door to the cell started to creak open and Peter wasn’t proud of the squeak of fear that escaped him.

Steve rolled to his feet and took a defensive stance in front of Peter and Bucky. Bucky kept his hand on Peter’s shoulder, but he stood too, whispering reassurances all the while. Peter remained huddled on the ground. He knew that he should stand with Steve and Bucky, but his body seemed to be ignoring his commands. His mind was screaming that to get up meant going back to that awful machine. He couldn’t risk it.

The door swung open all the way and Scmidt stalked inside with her regular assortment of guards. She took in the way her prisoners were positioned and her expression took on a faint smirk.

“What’s wrong, Little Spider? Aren’t you excited for our quality time?”

Steve stepped between Peter and Schmidt, cutting off their view of one another. “Leave the kid alone. He needs a break.”

Schmidt scoffed. “He’s had a break.”

Steve decided to take a different angle and he hummed, seemingly unconcerned. “You know, I’m starting to feel left out here. I thought you were going to make me work for you somehow, and yet here I am unemployed.”

“That darn economy,” Peter couldn’t help but whisper to himself. It was too quiet for a normal person to hear, but Bucky caught it and squeezed Peter’s shoulder. It was probably poor taste to be joking in the midst of a standoff with their HYDRA captors, but Peter had his coping mechanism and he didn’t have time to develop new ones.

“You’ll have your turn soon enough,” Schmidt promised Steve ominously, ignorant of Peter’s absolutely hilarious and not at all inappropriately timed quip. 

Steve scoffed. “I think you’re scared to try it. Worried that your little project will fail? That would be a quick way to prove to everyone that you don’t measure up to Red Skull.”

Peter still felt the panic perched out of sight and ready to pounce, but he was distracted for the moment by Steve trash talking. He didn’t know what Steve thought he was doing. He was just going to make Schmidt mad and get punished.

Oh . He was trying to distract Schmidt from Peter. He was trying to get taken back to the scary machine so Peter wouldn’t have to, which was selfless but also extremely dumb . Peter could handle it. He could. He didn’t need Steve trying to protect him (even if the idea of having to leave with Schmidt again filled him with an almost painful sense of dread). He was Spiderman. He could fend for himself.

Bucky gave his shoulder another surreptitious squeeze and he pressed Peter back to the ground just as Peter had made up his mind to stand up and interrupt Steve’s stupid plan. It was a subtle order to shut up and let Steve be stupid and distract Schmidt. 

Peter kind of hated himself for how quickly he gave up on interrupting. He was supposed to be braver than this.

Unfortunately for all of them, Schmidt was not interested in being distracted.

“Like I said, Captain ,” she sneered. “Your turn will come soon enough. Now, step aside before I remind you again what those collars do.”

Ok, that was enough. Peter couldn’t keep hiding behind other people.

Peter pushed himself to his feet, ignoring Bucky’s steadying hand, and stepped around Steve to face Schmidt.

“Leave them alone,” Peter said, his voice coming out shakier than he would have liked. He could feel his hands trembling at his sides and his head was filled with a low-level buzzing. The anticipation of what Schmidt undoubtedly had in store was making his heart clench in terror.

Schmidt smirked at the expression on Peter’s face, and in that moment, he hated her. He had always considered himself a loving person. He didn’t really hate anyone– not even Flash. But maybe he wasn’t as loving or forgiving as he thought, because if he was given the opportunity, he might actually kill her.

Spider-man didn’t kill people. But, well, Peter wasn’t Spider-man right now.

“I don’t have all day,” Schmidt said impatiently.

Peter slowly moved in front of the cell door. Steve and Bucky sent him furiously worried looks, but they all knew there was nothing they could do but obey.

A guard approached with the keys and unlocked the cell door. He had a pair of handcuffs in hand, but he held the door open wide for Peter to walk through. The guard was smirking at him, obviously not expecting any resistance. Why would he? Peter was slowly breaking, and he hadn’t tried to escape before. 

Peter felt the buzzing in his head grow louder. 

He wouldn’t go quietly today.

He moved, too fast for a normal human, and was through the cell door and past the guard before anyone could react. He aimed for Scmidt, and he was across the room in two running strides.

Shmidt reached for the remote in her pocket, but she wasn’t in time.

Peter collided with her with the delicate force of a freight train. They both went down, Peter on top of her waist. He pinned her arm against the floor before she could reach the remote, and he stuck a hand in her pocket to find the device. 

Schmidt was screaming something, and the guards were shouting. The sound of a fight broke out as Steve and Bucky leapt through the still-open cell door and attacked the guards. 

Peter’s hand closed around the remote and he pulled it out triumphantly. It was unmarked– no convenient “remove collars” button– so, after a cursory glance, he crushed it in his fist. He let the broken pieces fall onto Schmidt’s make-up sculpted face. 

Peter’s spider-sense warned him as a guard came up behind him. He felt a hand grab his shoulder before being ripped away again as Steve came to his defense.

Schmidt was still screaming, and Peter came back to himself enough to hear what she was saying.

“Do something, you idiots! Shoot them if you have to!”

Peter drew back a fist and punched Schmidt squarely in the face, just below her left eye. And if he let a little bit of his super-strength bleed into the punch, well, no one had to know. Regardless, Schmidt went out like a blown out candle. She slumped to the floor and Peter released her arm to leap into the on-going fight with the guards.

The guards had remembered to draw their weapons at this point, but an electrified baton wasn’t much threat to Peter when he was unrestrained. He leapt at the closest guard, ignoring the twinge from his injured ankle, and contorted unnaturally around the baton she tried to strike him with. Peter landed with his calves wrapped around the guard’s neck, and with a spinning twist he sent her flying into another approaching guard.

Peter’s spider-sense flared a moment before the sharp report of a gunshot cut through the chaos.

Peter saw Steve fall. He heard Bucky scream his friend’s name. 

He saw the guards rally and surround their fallen foe with guns drawn.

“Stop fighting, or the next bullet goes in his head,” one of the guards shouted furiously. 

Bucky lunged at the guard– the half dozen downed guards at his feet a testament to his skill even when he only had one arm– but he was brought up short when the gun aimed at Steve’s head was cocked warningly.

Captain America could survive a lot, but Peter didn’t think that even he could survive a bullet to the brain.

Peter’s jaw clenched, and the roaring in his ears grew almost unbearably loud.

“Surrender now! Final warning.”

Bucky growled and raised his arm, putting his hand behind his head. 

For a desperate moment, Peter thought about running. The room’s handleless door was open. He could fight his way out if he wasn’t scared to hold back. No one would be able to hurt him again.

But it would mean abandoning Steve and Bucky.

Peter slowly lifted his hands in surrender. 

He was immediately swarmed by guards, and he could see the same happening to Bucky. Peter’s arms were twisted behind his back and locked into cuffs. Someone punched him across the face, and then he was shoved to the ground. He landed harshly on his cuffed hands, and he had no way to protect himself from the kicks that started raining down from all sides. 

A particularly vicious kick stuck his chest, and Peter gasped as his recently healed ribs gave way again. 

A heavy boot glanced off the side of his head, and he saw stars. 

“Stop!” Schmidt commanded. “I need him functional.”

The guards reluctantly paused their abuse, and Peter watched through blurry eyes as Schmidt pushed through the ring they had formed around Peter. She held a hand to the already swelling bruise on her eye, and her steps seemed unsteady. She ripped one of the electric batons from a nearby guard’s belt, and she stood over Peter with her chest heaving and her expression thunderous.

“You think you can beat me?” She demanded. “You think you can rip down everything I worked to build?”

She jabbed the sparking baton into Peter’s chest and he screamed as his newly broken ribs ground together. His body shuddered with convulsions, and his head knocked against the ground so hard that he saw stars again.

“You are an experiment,” Schmidt shouted over his screaming. “You obey me!”

Peter felt like he was dying. He couldn’t breathe. His mouth tasted like blood, and he didn’t know if he had bitten his tongue or if his ribs had punctured a lung. His head knocked against the ground again, and his vision fuzzed towards black.

Peter’s eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp except for the involuntary jerks from the electricity.

Scmidt didn’t stop shocking him until several seconds after he passed out. She finally tossed the baton aside, panting heavily.

“Put the other two back in the cell and bring him to the machine as planned.”

“You’re going to kill him!” Bucky shouted at her from across the room. He was being held down by half-a-dozen guards, but he was still fighting to break away from them. The guards had to strain to hold him back.

“Then let him die!” Schmidt shouted back. “His life belongs to me! All of you belong to me!”

Schmidt sent a glare around the room that made her own soldiers flinch back. She let out a screeching huff of fury, then stalked out of the room, stepping over unconscious guards as she went. 

“Bring him with me, and teach the other two a lesson,” she called over her shoulder. “Make it hurt.”

Two guards grabbed Peter’s limp body and began to drag him out of the room. The rest of the HYDRA soldiers turned on Steve and Bucky gleefully.

The cell door slammed shut again a moment after the sound of the first punch.

****

Tony landed in the park across the street from the corner where he was supposed to meet Black Widow and he let his suit retract into the nanobot housing on his chest. He felt fidgety and naked without the protection of his armor, but he ignored the feeling. Despite their issues, Tony wasn’t expecting any of the Rogue Avengers to try to kill him. Besides, that’s why he had Rhodey on backup.

“Tony.”

Tony startled and turned around to find Natasha standing right behind him. “Damn it, Widow. You’re still doing that?”

She looked different from the last time he had seen her– back at the Avengers Compound all those months ago. Her distinctive red hair had been cut short and bleached blond, nearly white. She was wearing jeans and a hoodie to fit in with the public crowds. She appeared unarmed, but Tony was willing to bet his considerable fortune that she had at least two guns hidden on her somewhere.

Despite the changes in her appearance, the smirk that Natasha sent him at his fright was extremely familiar. “I would have thought that you would have installed some fancy scanner at this point so I couldn’t sneak up on you.”

Tony sighed and wiped a hand across his tired eyes. “I would try if I thought it had any chance of working.”

Natasha smiled in a way that just barely twitched the corners of her mouth then she sobered again. “You look tired.”

Tony chuckled mirthlessly. “I’ve been a little busy.”

“Looking for Spider-man.”

Tony felt himself tensing and he didn’t try to hide it. “Why are we here, Natasha? Why are we in the middle of the capitol? One of us is on poor terms with the government, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Natasha lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug and pointed to the building on the street corner opposite them. It was a bank of some kind. One of those dramatic, marble column structures that were all over DC. A little tacky, but nothing unusual.

“There’s an abandoned HYDRA base in that bank,” Natasha said flatly. “It’s one of the locations where they kept Barnes when he was on ice.” Tony tensed at the mention of The Winter Soldier but Natasha ignored him. “I found out about this place after SHIELD collapsed and I’ve kept an eye on it since. Three weeks ago, someone broke in and stole the machine that was the main part of the Winter Soldier brainwashing.”

“That’s all fascinating,” Tony sneered. “But what exactly does this have to do with Spider-man? And where is Cap? Is he too good to answer the phone he sent me ?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Can you set aside your grade-school spat with Rogers for half a minute? He didn’t answer your call because he’s missing.”

“What do you mean he’s missing?”

“What does it sound like, Stark? He and Barnes dropped off of communication somewhere outside of Wakanda. We only noticed them missing a week ago. There haven’t been many leads since then, but your message reminded me of this place.”

“You think HYDRA is responsible for their disappearance too? Why would they do that?”

Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Tony. “HYDRA would love to get Barnes back under their control. He’s been recovering from what they did to him, but the fact that they wanted that machine back is not a good sign. As for Spider-man….” Natasha shot Tony a sympathetic look. “They will need more enhanced soldiers if they want to rebuild their organization.”

There was a moment where Tony couldn’t breathe. His mind filled with the image of Peter wearing a HYDRA uniform– his kind face hidden by a soldier’s mask. “They would use that machine on Spider-man? Make him like The Winter Soldier?”

Natasha nodded silently, her bright eyes carefully taking in Tony’s expression. He wasn’t sure what she saw on his face, and he didn’t much care in the face of the new terrors that his mind was showing him. It took a long minute before he got himself under control enough to think properly again.

“You said we could help each other,” he bit out. “Do you know where HYDRA took them?”

Natasha gave him another searching look. “I need to know first that you won’t turn us in after this is over.”

“ I called you ,” Tony snarled, offended. “Does all of the work I’ve done to change the Accords mean nothing to you?”

“And if you face Barnes?” Natasha replied, just as sharp. “Are you willing to let your grudge go? What? Are you trying to pretend that the Avengers never broke up? You know that Rogers won’t abandon Barnes.”

Tony rose up, ready to shoot back a vicious reply, but then a vision of Peter’s face crossed his mind again. He couldn’t forget why he was doing this. Peter was the only thing that mattered now. 

He took a slow breath and felt the anger drain out of him. 

“I don’t care what you and the other Rogues do. If you help me find Spider-man, I promise that you can go your merry way afterwards.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed, then she slowly nodded. “I just needed to hear you say it. 

“I am still tracking down a few leads, but I should have a location soon. I know how to contact you.”

It wasn’t much yet, but it was a promise of a lead. It was a chance at finding Peter and bringing him back home.

“Thank you.” The words came out heavy and filled with a dozen unvoiced regrets and old grudges.

Natasha nodded, accepting both words said and unsaid. She readjusted her jacket hood then walked off into the park.

Tony watched her disappear into the scattered civilians in just a few steps. He stood at the street corner, looking towards where Nat disappeared, for a long time.

He was close to finding Peter. He just hoped that he wouldn’t be too late.

Chapter Text

Peter woke up to the sound of singing above his head. 

“The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout….”

He tried to open his eyes, but something was pressed against his face. It felt like a heavy cloth.

There was the sound of water being poured, and the cloth was quickly soaked. Peter choked on a breath and jerked his head, trying to dislodge the dripping cloth.

“Down came the rain and washed the spider out….”

Peter couldn’t breathe. His mouth opened as he gasped for breath, and it filled with water. He thrashed and found his wrists attached by metal cuffs to the arms of the chair he sat in. His head was pressed back into the angled headrest of the chair. He couldn’t escape the cloth.

“Out came the sun and dried up all the rain….”

He was truly panicking now, and it made it all the harder to breathe.

“But the itsy bitsy spider never came up for air again.”

Just as he was sure that he would pass out and drown, the cloth was removed and he could breathe again.

“Glad to see you awake,” Schmidt said smugly, dropping the soaked cloth to land on the floor with a faint splat.

Peter coughed desperately, remembering his injured ribs when his chest flared with pain. He spat water onto the grimy floor– far more than he thought he swallowed– and tried to breathe and cough at the same time. When the worst of the coughing fit had passed, he cracked open his bleary eyes  and glared at Schmidt.

“No need to be grumpy,” Schmidt  reproved. “I am being kinder than you deserve.”

As Peter’s vision cleared, he was able to see the fruit of his earlier work. The bruise that was undoubtedly covering the side of Schmidt’s face was barely visible on her dark skin, but the skin was tellingly puffy and her eye was swollen half-closed and shot through with red.

Peter felt a moment of satisfaction, but it was somewhat soured by the knowledge that he looked much worse.

Schmidt glared at him for a moment, then abruptly clapped her hands with a smile. “Well, now that we’re all awake, we can get started.”

Peter suddenly recognized where he was. 

The room he was in was small and dimly lit. There was no furniture except for the chair that Peter was strapped to and the machine and controls that loomed behind his head. There were no guards around. It was just Peter, Schmidt, and the discarded rag on the ground.

Peter tugged desperately at the cuffs that held his wrists and biceps to the chair’s arms. They were made of unpadded metal, and it only took a few seconds of struggling for the edges to cut and for his wrists to begin to bleed.

 “You can stop that,” Schmidt informed him, faintly smirking. “The Winter Soldier couldn’t break free of that even with his metal arm. You have no chance.”

Peter ignored her and struggled harder. He was sitting up as much as he was able, but the backwards tilt of the chair back and the high placement of the cuffs left him without enough leverage to make any headway with the cuffs. His back was already straining from trying to remain sitting up, and it made his ribs ache all the more.

Schmidt sighed and tapped a few times at the screen that was stationed beside Peter’s chair. As the machine thrummed to life, she reached for Peter’s face and shoved his head against the back of the chair. A spinning ring descended and split apart into two, sparking,  ends. 

Peter froze, forgetting to resist Schmidt’s grip. His chest heaved, but he made no sound. His mind was filled with that roaring again, and he couldn’t think.

Schmidt released her grip, but Peter didn’t try to move.

The machine’s arms lowered until they were even with his head, then the pieces suctioned themselves to his face. One piece covered his cheekbone below his left eye, and the other piece covered nearly the entire right side of his face.

The machine lit up with electricity, and Peter’s mind shut down.

He felt like his brain had been dumped underwater. Everything was blurred and indistinct. A thought floated towards him then swam away before he could make out more than the shadow of it. 

He could hear someone screaming as if far away.

It took a while before he realized that it was him.

Peter blinked at the sudden snap of fingers in front of his nose. He noticed that the person (who was it?) had stopped yelling. 

A woman was standing right in front of his face. Peter didn’t recognize her, but his gut twisted uncomfortably. And that wasn’t fair. Peter shouldn’t be judging people he didn’t even know. 

“Do you know where you are, Spider-man?” The woman asked.

Spider-man? Who was that? Was that like a spider exterminator? A humanoid spider?

Oh, wait. Peter was Spider-man. 

Did that mean he was actually a spider? He would notice if he was a spider, right? Besides, spiders had, like, eight eyes and Peter seemed to only have two. His eyes were barely even working. They were blurry and definitely not spider standard. He couldn’t even see out of one of them.

The fingers snapped in front of his face again and he opened eyelids he didn’t even realize were closed.

“Focus. I’m trying to help you, Little Spider. After all, we’re friends, and friends help each other.”

Peter tried to nod and frowned slightly as he noticed that his head was being held still by something. He also noticed that it was cold. He felt wet, and there was a draft coming from somewhere that was making him shiver.

“I need you to promise to help me.”

Peter tried to glance past the woman. 

Where was he? Was he in the medbay? At… the place. The place where he was Spider-man. But that couldn’t be right, because there was always a different person with him in the medbay. A special person.

“Where’s Mr. Stark?” Peter asked fuzzily, still trying to look past the woman. 

“Iron Man? He isn’t here.”

The uneasy feeling in Peter’s gut had grown from a faint warning to an alarm bell in his mind. Spider-sense. That’s what it was called. It meant something was wrong.

“I wanna leave now,” Peter mumbled, his voice petulant in his own ears. “I want Mr. Stark.”

“You can’t leave. You need to help me, remember?”

He shook his head. The Spider-sense thing was stronger now. “No. You’re not good. I want Mr. Stark.”

“But don’t you remember? Tony Stark is why you’re here. He told me where to find you.”

Peter tried to shake his head and grew more agitated when he found it still stuck. “Let me go. I want Mr. Stark.”

The woman sighed, and there was a faint whirring sound.

The thing sticking to Peter’s face came into sharp focus as it lit up with electricity. There were a few moments of utter agony before his mind fuzzed out again.

“Iron Man wanted to get rid of you,” a sympathetic voice filled his ear.

He wasn’t even sure when the machine had turned off. His body was feeling further and further away.

“‘Mr. Stark’ told me where to find you. He wanted me to get rid of you.”

“No,” he whispered. He didn’t really know why, but he knew that couldn’t be true. The person was hurting him, and Mr. Stark never wanted to hurt him. Right?

“I saved you. He wanted you dead, and yet I kept you alive.”

“No,” Peter bit out with more force this time. “You’re lying.”

The machine flared to life again. 

When he came back to himself, the only way he knew he had been screaming was from the rawness of his throat. 

“I’m the only one looking out for you. Stark betrayed you. He wants you dead.”

He realized he was crying only when he sobbed and the movement stabbed his chest like knives.

“I— he–he wouldn’t.”

“He did,” the voice assured him. “I know it’s hard, but I am here for you. I can help you get back at Stark for abandoning you.”

“I–” His head hurt. The words filling his ears felt wrong, but they sounded just right enough to slip into his mind and burrow in the gray fog that filled it.

“You aren’t safe as long as Stark is out there. If he finds out you are alive, he will try to get rid of you again. It’s not safe as long as he is alive.” There was a pause. “Don’t you want to feel safe?”

His chest wracked with another painful sob. “ Yes .”

“Then you know what you have to do if you see Stark again,” the voice said evenly. “If you don’t kill him, he will kill you.”

A thought fought its way out of the fog in Peter’s brain and he hesitated.

“Spider-man doesn’t kill people.”

The machine raged and the fog in his mind deepened until he wasn’t sure if he could see the way out. 

“But you aren’t Spider-man are you?” the voice questioned, unperturbed by his pain. “There’s no suit, and I haven’t seen you do anything heroic. You’re not Spider-man.” The voice said assuredly.  “But if you aren’t Spider-man, who are you?”

The fog swirled endlessly. Every thought, every memory, was covered in a shroud. 

“If you aren’t Spider-man,” the voice pressed. “What do you have?”

“Nothing,” he whispered, ashamed. 

“That’s right. You have no one to help you but me. I can give you a purpose.”

He shuddered, wondering if the voice could take the fog away before it swallowed him whole. 

“But I need you to promise me that if you see Stark again, you will do what is necessary to protect yourself. Stark wants to hurt you, and as your friend, I cannot let that happen.”

He didn’t reply.

“What will you do if you see Stark?” the voice prompted.

“Kill him.”

He didn’t recognize the words until they were already out of his mouth.

He sensed the person smile. “Very good. I think we can be very good friends after all.”

The machine flared to life again, and this time Peter heard himself screaming.

“Let’s see what a few more hours of talking can do for our friendship.”

**

It was dark.

That was the first thing he noticed.

There was no light coming from the ceiling above, a window in the wall, or even from the crack beneath the door. 

It was dark and he couldn’t move.

Metal bands held his arms tight against the chair, and for a moment he thought another band was wrapped around his chest. His lungs didn’t seem to want to expand all the way.

His head hurt, and he couldn’t think clearly. Everything was fuzzy and indistinct. He tried to remember how he had gotten here, but the thought slipped away before it could fully form.

It was dark, and he couldn’t move.

He felt his injured chest heave in time with an uptick in his pulse.

A hazy memory (nightmare?) flitted around the edges of his mind. Something about a bird? And moving?

All he knew was that the dark was bad, and that not being able to move was bad. Put the two together, and it was double bad.

He jerked against the wrist restraints and felt his pulse race further when he could not break free. 

He had to get out. He had to get away. The bird man was going to steal things if he didn’t stop him. Or was it that the scary lady would come back with all her sharp and painful things?

His head hurt.

He pulled harder at the restraints.

 He heard the faint sound of approaching footsteps from outside of his cell, and his panic impossibly grew.

It was the bird man. Or the scary lady. Mr. Stark. Someone that wanted to hurt him. He had to get away. Get out.

He pulled desperately at his trapped wrist and it finally came free with a wrong sounding crack that was both the sound of the metal and his own wrist breaking. 

He keened in pain, but urgently pressed against the band holding his upper arm in place. He had to twist in a way that made his chest hurt even more, but he couldn’t wait. The footsteps were coming, and he didn’t want to find out who it was.

The upper arm band gave way with a crack that was all metal this time and none his bones. He immediately fought against the restraints on his other arm. He used his free hand to pull at the metal cuff– ignoring his screaming wrist– and strained with his trapped hand against the metal. The cuff gave way, and a quick tug on the upper arm cuff broke that one as well.

He staggered to his feet, putting several feet between himself and the chair, and his vision burst into multi-colored sparks as his head spun. 

The footsteps stopped just outside his door and he heard a lock click and a handle turn. The door swung open and light flooded the pitch black room and burned at his eyes.

He ignored the startled shout of whoever had opened the door and dove at the figure blindly. He knocked them to the ground and ran out the door and into the light. 

The sudden brightness left him mostly blind, and he ran through the hall relying on his other senses. It was still better than the crushing darkness.

A tingling shiver of warning arced up the back of his neck a moment before he heard the sound of several sets of approaching footsteps. He cast about for somewhere to hide, and he darted through the first door he saw through his still-blurry vision. 

He let the door fall shut behind him, but not before he frantically flipped on the room’s lightswitch. He wouldn’t be left in the dark again.

The room that he found himself in was small– little better than a closet– and mostly bare except for a tool cluttered desk that held the disassembled remains of a teched out suit.

… A familiar suit.

The Spider-man suit. 

The fog in Peter’s brain cleared for a moment, and even though it made his head hurt worse, he clung to the brief lifeline to sanity. He was Peter Parker. He was Spider-man. He was currently in hell AKA a HYDRA base. And he was with… someone. The fog rolled back in and snatched the thought away before it could fully form. All Peter knew was that there was someone else he needed to rescue before he could make his own escape. 

Peter shuffled over to the Spider-suit and looked down forlornly at the ripped fabric and undone wiring. He spied something among the detritus and snatched up the small device in his good hand. It was one of his web shooters, and yep, there was still web fluid inside.

Maybe the Parker luck had finally shifted. 

Peter glanced around for the second web shooter, but when he couldn’t find it, he clipped the web shooter he did have around his uninjured wrist. It was hard to do one handed, and he ended up having to use his injured hand to clip it into place– which, bad idea. Broken wrists made for not fun to move wrists.

Peter’s super hearing picked up the distant sound of an alarm being raised, and he decided that it was time to move. He needed to find… whoever it was so he could get out of this stupid, underground, glorified octopus tank.

Really, a hydra was supposed to have eight heads, not eight tentacles. Trust an evil nazis club to not even do their branding research.

Peter listened to the other side of the door, and when he verified the coast was clear he darted back out of the room and started back up the hall. Running on the floor in the open made him nervous, so after a moment he ran up the side of the wall and started running on the ceiling instead. He didn’t have problems with blood rushing to his head like normal humans, and he could stick flat to the roof to avoid detection if he heard anyone coming. 

Only two guards rushed past below him, and Peter let them go without revealing himself.

He emerged from his tunnel into a cavernous– and itchily familiar– room that contained a massive wire cage that set his Spider Sense buzzing. His eye landed on a hallway on the other side of the room that a group of guards had just rushed into. Whoever he was looking for, it was probably a safe bet to follow the guards. 

He had to jump back to the ground to cross the high-ceilinged space, and he practically sprinted through the open area towards the tunnel. His Spider Sense buzzed uneasily as he passed the cage. Peter risked a glance over and saw blood stains on the concrete ground. He looked away again and moved faster. 

Peter entered the tunnel and stalked behind the guards that had gone before him. He was back on the ceiling now, awkwardly crawling with only one hand. The muffled state of his mind seemed to be calling his more spider-y habits to the surface. His joints moved a little too smoothly and at angles that wouldn’t be possible for a normal human. He skittered across the ceiling as silently as his namesake. 

He turned a corner and found the group of guards he had been following camped outside of a metal door. His Spider Sense droned in a low level warning as he drew nearer, but none of the guards looked up. 

Peter glanced between the soldiers and the door they guarded. 

Five soldiers. One Spider-man. Or maybe a half a Spider-man if he was counting his various injuries. His brain definitely didn’t feel all there. 

Peter mentally shrugged at the odds and he let go of the ceiling and leapt into the midst of the guards. 

Chaos.

One guard went down under the weight of Peter’s jump. The next was knocked down by a punch delivered by Peter’s good hand. The third was webbed to the wall before she could retrieve her gun. The fourth guard managed to get his gun out, but Peter knocked it back out of his hands before he could fire and with a twist (that really hurt his ribs) and a swift kick, that guard went down as well. 

Peter’s Spider Sense flared and he dodged with an uncannily fluid movement. A gunshot cracked in his ears and set them ringing, but the bullet sailed over his shoulder. A moment later and the last guard was disarmed and webbed to the wall.

“Do–” Peter’s voice gave out after one syllable and he coughed against the dryness of his throat. His ribs did not appreciate the coughing. “Whe–” he tried again before his voice died. 

He sighed and gave up on asking. Instead he started patting down the nearest guard for keys. The conscious guards were yelling something– between the leftover ringing in his ears and the brain fog he wasn’t sure what they were saying– but they were unable to stop him from searching for the keys.

He struck gold, or in this case grimy nickel-brass, on the second guard he searched and he pulled a ring of keys from the man’s pocket. He swiftly moved to the door, and for the heck of it, tried the handle. It was unlocked and the door swung open without problem.

“Peter!” A familiar voice shouted, sounding immensely relieved. 

“Are you ok?” Another voice demanded.

Peter squinted into the room and tried to get a good look at the faces of the men in the cell inside of it. The fog in his brain beat a hasty retreat at the sight of them, and he finally felt like he could think.

It was Steve and Bucky. Of course it was. How had he forgotten Steve and Bucky?

“Kid?” Bucky asked, eyes filled with a terribly knowing concern.

Peter shook himself out of his confusion and hastened over to the cell door with the keys. He had to maneuver the key ring one handed, and he chose a key at random. He tried to shove it into the lock, but his hand was shaking and he kept missing the hole. He bit back a frustrated sob and tried again only to have the key miss again and scratch across the side of the lock. 

“Here,” Bucky said, reaching through the bars and catching Peter’s hand. “Let me.” 

Bucky took the key ring, and it quickly became clear that he was better at being one-handed than Peter. Even though he was working at an odd angle from inside of the cell, it was only a few seconds before he cycled through the key ring to the proper key and unlocked the cell door. 

The moment the door was open, Peter found himself sandwiched between two super soldiers in what was probably one of the best hugs he’d had since becoming Spider-man. Not that he kept track or anything. Even if he did keep track, the almost hug from Mr. Stark definitely wasn’t in his top three. 

“Are you ok?” Steve asked, voice gentle enough that it almost made Peter break down then and there.

Instead, Peter did what he did best and nodded (like a liar).

He abruptly pulled away from the hug and looked Steve over worriedly. He had almost forgotten that Steve had been shot last he saw, and here the man was asking if Peter was alright. He couldn’t see any obvious bloodstains, but Steve’s shirt was darkly colored to begin with, and all three of them were coated with a hefty layer of grime that could be concealing something. Oh, gosh, what if the wound got infected? Was Captain America going to get sick and die because Peter messed up and didn’t watch his back?

“Hey, Pete, calm down,” Steve said worriedly, putting his hands on Peter’s suddenly heaving shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

Peter shook his head, feeling his broken ribs grate against his chest with his panicked breaths. This was his fault. It was always his fault. He had messed up somehow, and Steve had gotten hurt. He seemed fine now, but the moment he turned his back he would disappear and Peter would shatter. He couldn’t lose anyone else. He couldn’t he couldn’t hecouldn’t.

“Breathe, kid. Breathe.”

“Y’u… hurt…. M’ fault.” Panic attacks and a voice that had almost disappeared from screaming weren’t very conducive to talking, but Peter managed to gasp out the words. It was mostly incoherent, but Steve and Bucky seemed to understand.

“I’m okay,”Steve assured him hurriedly. “We’re both ok.”

Peter shook his head again and he nearly lost his balance at the motion. His head was starting to feel fuzzy.

“I just got hit in the leg. It’s fine. I’m fine. None of this is your fault.”

Peter’s vision was starting to blur, but he looked down and finally noticed the way Steve was favoring his left leg and the hole in the middle of the thigh of his pants. Shit. Steve shouldn’t be standing, should he? What if he made the wound worse? What if he bled out? He had enhanced healing, right? But what if it wasn’t enough?

He didn’t realize that his legs had given out beneath him until he felt a strong pair of arms catch him. 

“I got you, kid.”

Peter looked up at Steve through his swiftly tunneling vision. The brain fog seemed to be rolling back in, and his head was spinning. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t….

Steve looked down at the unconscious kid in his arms and took furious note of every bruise on Peter’s face. “How would you like to help me kill a Red Skull wannabe?” He asked Bucky evenly.

“Love to,” Bucky replied, breaking off his own, furious, inspection of Peter. “But we need to get the kid out first.”

Steve sighed. “We’ll come back.”

A distant shout floated through the open cell door and Steve and Bucky shared a grim glance. 

“I seem to have my hands full. Cover me?”

Bucky grinned, sharp and mimicking the specter of who he was before HYDRA. Before the Winter Soldier. “Always.”

****

“Tony? We have a location.”

Chapter Text

Peter came to with the feeling of a breeze on his face. 

He looked up and was met with the sight of a pale blue sky and the scruffy face of an ex-assassin. 

“Why are you carrying me?” he asked Bucky hazily, his voice rough and cracking. He woke up a little more and remembered Bucky’s single arm that was managing to balance his entire weight in a kind of cradle carry. “ How are you carrying me?”

Bucky looked down at him and smirked. “In case you didn’t notice, you weren’t awake to walk yourself. And you’re skin and bones, kid. Carrying you isn’t exactly difficult.”

“Well, you can put me down now,” Peter grumbled, wiggling slightly to try and escape Bucky’s grasp. The man had managed to wrap his arm around Peter’s shoulders and under his legs and was holding him comfortably despite his one arm. If he was honest with himself, Peter was having trouble convincing himself to get back down. “And it’s not my fault I’m light. Mr. Stark says I need a lot of food to keep up with my metabolism, and I haven’t exactly been getting that.”

“We’ll get you something soon,” Bucky promised, a fierce look flickering over his face.

Peter nodded and momentarily gave up on regaining his feet. His eyelids began to drift closed of their own accord.

Peter’s brain abruptly caught up to the situation and he sat up so fast that he slipped out of Bucky’s grip and fell to the leaf-strewn ground. Leaves. Because they were outside and not in an underground HYDRA base.

“Kid?”

Peter looked around, soaking in the view of the trees with their winter bare branches, the pale blue sky that had a line of leaden clouds on its horizon, and the dirt and dead grass beneath his hands.

“We escaped?” he asked dazedly. He hadn’t realized that he missed the sky so much. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said cautiously, crouching to meet Peter’s level. “You’re the one that broke us out of the cell, remember?”

Peter looked back at Bucky blankly. No, he didn’t remember that. The last thing he remembered was…. Oh, crap.

“Where’s Steve?” he asked suddenly frantic. 

Bucky cursed under his breath and laid a steadying hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Steve’s scouting ahead. And before you ask, he’s fine. We went over this already, remember?”

Peter tried to focus on the hand on his shoulder and not the looming panic. “But he was shot,” he argued, coughing against the dryness in his throat. 

“Yeah, but Steve’s tough. He’s fine, kid. I promise.”

Peter nodded frantically, and tried to regain control of his breathing. Steve was fine. Right? Bucky wouldn’t lie about that. Unless he would. He might if he thought it would keep him calm.

Bucky looked at Peter’s traitorously doubtful expression and sighed. He cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a sound that was passably bird–like. A similar call echoed through the trees in reply a moment later. 

“There. Steve’s on his way and you can see for yourself that he’s his regular, dumbass self. Really kid, I’m more worried about you right now.”

“I’m fine,” Peter automatically replied. His throat was painfully raw and dry as a desert.

Bucky cast Peter a disbelieving look. “You’re beat all to hell, kid, and I’m worried about what happened after you left us. You don’t remember what happened?”

Peter shook his head, but cast his mind back to make sure. He remembered trying to escape and surrendering once Steve was shot. He was aware of the faint impression of darkness and water, and so much screaming…. His mind shied away from the thought before it could fully form, and when he stubbornly chased it, he ran into what seemed like a dense wall of fog that blocked him from the memory. The more he tried to find the memory, the more his head hurt.

“Peter, you’re awake,” Steve called in greeting, emerging from the trees.

“See?” Bucky murmured. “He’s fine.”

He looked fine. He was limping slightly and was bruised just like the rest of them, but he seemed ok otherwise. Of course Bucky wouldn’t have lied about that. It had been stupid to doubt him. Stupid.

“You’re ok, right?” Peter asked in a small voice, hating himself for needing the reassurance.

Steve smiled at him gently and crouched down beside Bucky. “Scouts honor,” he promised, raising his hand.

“Bullshit, you weren’t in the boy scouts.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s the principle of it, Buck.”

“You can’t swear on a scout’s honor if you aren’t a scout, Steve.”

“Well, not all of us can be troop leaders,” Steve shot back scathingly.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause you were too busy getting in fights.”

Peter felt himself unconsciously relax at the sound of the familiar banter. It was alright. They had escaped and they were alright. 

“Hey,” Bucky said, nudging Peter’s shoulder. “Do you think you can walk now, or do you want me to keep carrying you?”

“I can walk,” Peter said swiftly. He winced slightly as the words scraped in his throat. He really needed some water. “Where are we going?”

“We’re just getting some distance right now,” Steve replied. “By my guess we’re somewhere in the middle of Maine. Our best bet is to find a town or a friendly’s house and get a call out to Tony to get you home.”

Home. 

Peter blinked at the word. He had almost given up hope on going home, but now it was here, in his grasp. He would be able to give Aunt May a hug. He was going to be able to assure Ned that he was ok, and then resume work on the LEGO Star Destroyer they had been building. He might even get a nod from MJ that looked callous, but really meant that she was relieved that he was ok.

He would be able to see Mr. Stark and ask for those burgers.

“That sounds good,” he said faintly.

Bucky’s mouth quirked in a crooked smile and he stood, offering Peter a hand up. Peter grasped the rough hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. He swayed for a moment, then steadied on his feet. He couldn’t feel any obvious injuries besides an entire body ache that leached into his bones and a sharper pain in his wrist. Honestly, he was fine.

Bucky clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder and– out of Peter’s sight– sent a significant look between Steve and Peter. “I’ll take point.”

Steve nodded and Bucky slipped away from the group and back into the woods.

Steve started walking, slowly and within easy distance to catch Peter if he lost his balance, and Peter followed. The pair walked for several minutes before Steve broke the silence.

“Peter, about Tony….” He sighed and swiped a hand over his stubbly jaw, his expression more uncertain than Peter had ever seen it. “How close are the two of you?”

Peter had answered that question once before, but this time he knew Steve well enough to want to give him an honest answer. And maybe, he was just too tired to lie– even to himself. “He’s like my dad,” Peter admitted quietly. “I know he probably doesn’t feel the same way, and it’s crazy, but….”

“Tony is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid,” Steve said wryly. “If he’s half as smart as I know he is, he knows what a good kid you are. He’d be crazy to give you up.”

Peter ducked his head and felt a blush run from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. He wasn’t sure if he believed what Steve said, but it was still nice to hear.

“There’s something you should know, though,” Steve said, his voice turning serious again. “About the fight between me and Tony.”

Peter looked back up curiously. “The fight in Germany?”

Steve shook his head. “Afterwards. Bucky and I had gone to Siberia to make sure that Zemo– the man that blew up the UN– didn’t wake up any more super soldiers. Tony followed us.” He paused for a moment and sighed again. “When we got there, the super soldiers were already dead, but Zemo was waiting for us with a video. From the night Tony’s parents were killed.”

Peter stared at Steve silently, waiting for him to continue.

The guilt was evident on Steve’s face now. “Tony hadn’t known that Bucky had been the one to kill his parents while he was the Winter Soldier. I knew, and I didn’t tell him.” 

“Oh, no,” Peter breathed.

Steve winced. “We fought. I was trying to protect Bucky, and I went too far. I almost killed him. I did abandon him there. I made some bad choices, and Tony paid for it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Peter asked, a confusing mess of emotions swirling in his stomach.

“Because you should understand why Tony won’t want to see me. Why Bucky and I have to leave as soon as we know you’re safe.”

“But he has been changing the Accords for you,” Peter said in confusion. “He kept your rooms at the Compound open. I know he’s waiting for you to come back.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Peter,” Steve said gently. “I betrayed him by not telling him about his parents, and Tony does not forgive easily. I don’t blame him. I can’t say I regret defending Bucky, but I know that I am to blame for how bad the fallout was.”

Peter fell silent, walking beside the man that had just confessed to almost killing Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark had never told him much about the “Civil War” besides what Peter himself had been present for, and he understood why now. 

Part of him wanted to yell at Steve on Mr. Stark’s behalf. Wanted to scream at him for almost taking away Mr. Stark before Peter had gotten to really know him. 

The other part of him remembered a week of relying on Steve and Bucky to keep his hope and fight alive in the midst of all the pain. He remembered Steve playing up his offense at one of Bucky’s insults just to see Peter smile. He remembered the fact that having Steve and Bucky around was the only thing that had made him feel safe enough to sleep.

“So you’re leaving?” his voice cracked traitorously on the word.

“I have to,” Steve replied, voice still gentle. “I know you’ll be safe with Tony. Despite our differences, I know he’’s a good man.”

“He’s the best,” Peter agreed, trying to not let anguish building in his throat bleed into his expression.

Steve put an arm around Peter’s shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad I got to meet you, Peter. I hope to see you again in better circumstances.”

“Then don’t leave,” Peter wanted to say, but the words caught in his throat. It wasn’t fair to put that responsibility on Steve. It wasn’t his fault that Peter had gotten attached.

It wasn’t his fault that Peter had already lost too many people.

Honestly, he should have learned by now. It was his own fault if he got hurt.

“Thank you,” Peter mumbled instead, the words feeling crushingly lacking in comparison to the feelings in his chest.

Steve smiled, a little sadly, and the pair continued walking further into the forest and closer to home.

****

They had finally arrived at the HYDRA base.

It had only been a few hours since Natasha had called him with the location, but it felt far too long. Rhodey had been ready to head out with Tony within minutes of receiving the location, but they had been forced to wait to meet Black Widow and Falcon in the QuinJet. Tony would have happily left them behind, but Natasha had reminded him in scathing terms that Spider-man couldn’t fly, and if he needed medical attention the jet would be invaluable. She had also reminded him  that he would need backup, and that if he tried to go in alone he would be more of a danger than a help. 

Tony had not been happy, but he had begrudgingly agreed to wait.

Black Widow and Falcon had landed the QuinJet in the Avengers compound and Tony and Rhodey had been waiting to meet them. It had been an uncomfortable meeting, but Tony had stubbornly ignored the bad history between them and had stepped onto the plane with one thought in mind.

Bring Peter home.

“What’s our plan?” Rhodey asked, watching Tony warily, well aware that he would bolt and go in alone if given the chance.

“What the plan always is, Pookie Bear,” Tony said flippantly, trying to cover up how his hands were trembling in his gauntlets. “You and I are the heavy cavalry. We go in first and take some names and Angry Bird and Widow will sweep the place after us.”

“I don’t remember putting you in charge, Stark,” Natasha said dryly, sending Tony a scathing look.

“Do you have a better plan?” Tony retorted, too anxious to play nice.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “A better idea than rushing in without any information and punching the first person we see? Unsurprisingly, I do.”

Tony huffed in annoyance but waved a hand for her to continue.

“I will go in first and do reconnaissance. This base seems to be underground, so I’ll try to find an aboveground air duct as my entrance. Once I find out the situation, I will call the rest of you in.”

“What if the comms don’t work underground?” Tony demanded. 

Natasha gave him an exasperated look. “Then I’ll come back out and get you.

“But–”

“Tony, it’s ok,” Rhodey cut him off in an undertone. “We have a better chance of getting the kid out safe if we aren’t going in blind.”

Tony hesitated, the reluctantly gave a jerky nod of acquiesce. “Call us on the comms the moment you find something out.”

Natasha sent him the beginning of an annoyed look, but whatever she saw in Tony’s face made her soften slightly. “Of course.”

A minute later and Natasha had slipped out of the cloaked quinjet and disappeared into the trees.

A minute passed and Tony was barely restraining himself from chasing after her. He needed to make sure that Peter was alright. He needed to be there to save him from whatever hell he was living through. And yet, the only way he could help make sure Peter was safe was to sit on his hands while anything could be happening.

It was maddening.  

“What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right? Cause that’s on you. And if you died, I’d feel like that’s on me. I don’t need that on my conscience.”

Tony suppressed a flinch at the memory.

He shouldn’t have told the kid that. It was too much to put on him– too much guilt for the young vigilante that already blamed himself for everything that could ever go wrong. He understood that better now.

In that moment, Tony had sounded like his own father, and it had terrified him. He had always promised himself that he would be nothing like the man from his childhood, and yet he had run dangerously close to falling into that trap. Luckily for him, Peter was a better kid than he had ever been. After the whole “turning down the avengers” incident, he had realized that he needed to do better for the kid. They had started to hang out more in the lab and in general, and he had started to realize just how good the kid was. He had told Peter that he wanted him to be better than Tony was, but he hadn’t realized that he already was. If anything, Tony was constantly terrified that he would mess him up somehow. 

So, yeah, he shouldn’t have put that guilt on the kid’s shoulders, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been true. 

If the kid wasn’t ok….. Well, Tony didn’t want to think about what he might do.

Natasha’s voice abruptly came through the comm and Tony immediately snapped out of his thoughts to focus.

“I’ve scouted inside,” she reported, voice kept low. “The guards are minimum. Looks like someone already dealt them a number. You’re clear to come in.”

“Any sign of Spider-man?” Tony asked tensely. 

Natasha started to answer then cut herself off with a quiet curse. “Going radio silent. Meet you inside.”

“Widow!” 

It was too late. The comm had already clicked off.

Tony cursed and let his helmet click into place around his head. Falcon had already pressed the button to open the quinjet’s bay door, and the three heroes were flying out of the landed plane a moment later. 

Natasha had sent Tony the location of the compound’s entrance, and he led the group there. He didn’t see it at first glance, but FRIDAY helped zero his screen in on a disguised pair of metal doors set into an otherwise unremarkable hillside.

Tony barely slowed his pace as he shot a pair of missiles from his suit and sent the doors flying off their hinges. He flew through the now open entrance and landed in a dimly lit concrete hall. He heard the sound of alarmed shouts from the left of the hall and headed towards the noise. He was in the mood for a fight.

He turned a corner and found a group of already-battered-looking guards. 

One of the guards, who had a bruise stretching over almost half of his face, took one look at the approaching IronMan and turned tail to run. “That’s it. I’m done with this shit,” he yelled as he ran.

The guard didn’t get far.

Tony shot out a repulsor blast and the guard went down, unconscious. Tony swiftly fired more repulsor blasts at the other guards, ignoring the bullets pinging off of his armor. He saved the last guard from the repulsor and opted for a punch to the jaw instead. It wasn’t necessary, but Tony needed some therapy, and beating up bad guys was the only type available just then.

Tony spared one last, disdainful look at the groaning guards and flew past them and further into the base.

He wasn’t sure if Falcon or War Machine were still following him. He caught some distant sound of a fight, and decided to find them again later.

Tony emerged into a circular, central room that had what looked to be a fighting cage taking up the central area of the room. Black Widow was fighting off what looked like a dozen guards with her back to the outside of the cage. Another dozen guards were already downed around her feet.

Tony fired two repulsor blasts and saw the targeted guards fall as he skidded to a landing beside Natasha.

“Hey, Stark,” she greeted casually, slamming a new loaded ammo clip into her gun and shooting a guard that had gotten too close. 

“You know you could have just called for backup instead of turning off your comm like a high school drama student,” Tony said grumpily, firing more repulsor blasts at the horde. Natasha merely smirked in response.

The dwindling group of guards parted suddenly and a soldier carrying a heavy machine gun stepped forward. 

Tony stepped in front of Natasha and let the nanobots of his suit form into a concave, rectangular shield. Natasha tucked herself behind the cover a moment before the guard opened fire and bullets sprayed across the room. The shield took immediate damage, but it held well enough to protect Natasha. A bullet ricocheted off of his helmet and sent a spider web fracture through his left eye lens. He bit out a curse even as the nanobots quickly reformed to repair the piece.

“Head down,” was the only warning Tony gave Natasha before he let the arc reactor housing unit’s light flare in a flash bright enough to blind their attackers. The machine gun abruptly careened off course and one of the HYDRA guards fell under the mis-aimed fire. Tony let the shield absorb back into his suit and he flew at the guard wielding the gun. One heavy punch later, and the guard was knocked out. A few repulsor blasts after that, and the rest of their attackers were taken out before they could recover their vision enough to fight.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Natasha said dryly, walking back over to Tony. There wasn’t a scratch on her.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m awesome,” Tony replied dismissively, letting his helmet retract again. “Did you find any sign of Spider-man?”

Natasha gave him an inscrutable look, but she didn’t comment on the worry in his voice. “I didn’t have a chance to cover the whole base. I was heading down that hall when those goons showed up.”

Tony glanced at the hallway she indicated and promptly started walking that way. “Then we better get moving.”

With the last large group of guards downed, the base was eerily silent. Water was dripping from somewhere out of sight. The fluorescent lights buzzed. Tony worried.

Natasha quietly cleared the empty rooms that they passed. Tony was just resigning himself to another dead end when she called him to stop. He turned and saw Natasha standing in the room’s doorway, the tattered remains of the Spider Suit in her hand.

Tony stared at the suit, noting the rips and the dark discoloration of dried blood. His mind, which was constantly running with thoughts and plans and ideas, came to a screeching halt. A dull roaring grew in his ears and he felt his constantly fidgeting hands still completely.

“This doesn’t mean he’s dead,” Natasha said, watching Tony’s expression warily. “All we know is that he was here.”

“No,” Tony replied, his throat suddenly dry. “We know the suit was here. He could have already been….” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word, but his mind supplied it anyway.

Dead. Killed. Murdered. Gone. All your fault.

“Let’s keep searching before we jump to conclusions.”

Tony nodded jerkily, like a puppet’s head on a string. He couldn’t jump to conclusions. He couldn’t jump straight to dead, gone, allyourfault. He had to keep looking first.

 Tony turned robotically and walked further down the hall with Natasha trailing behind him, torn suit still in hand.

Two doors down the hall, Tony watched Natasha glance into a room and go suddenly still. 

“What did you find?” he demanded, pushing past her. 

The room was small and dim. There was water and blood on the floor. More blood on the arms of the metal chair that was sitting in the middle of the room. Tony had never seen it before, but he knew that this must be the brainwashing machine. There were metal restraints attached to the chair’s arms, but they were twisted and broken like someone had fought free.

The room stank of torture, misery, and fear.

Tony turned on his heel and walked back out of the room. 

“Tony?” Natasha called gently, quickly catching back up to him.

“There’s more places to check,” he said dully, carefully not looking Natasha’s way. He knew the spy would be able to catch the over-bright sheen in his eyes. 

“Tony.”

Tony walked faster.

“Tony.”

Tony turned a corner and saw the end of the hallway up ahead. Only one more door sat in the wall. He was running out of room to run from Natasha. He didn’t really expect to find anything behind the last door, but it was an excuse to not turn around.

“Tony.” There was a warning note in her voice now.

Tony stretched out a hand and turned the handle on the door. He tugged it open the same moment that Natasha’s voice suddenly sharpened in alarm and out of the corner of his eye he saw her lunge at him. 

A gun was staring him in the face through the gap of the newly opened door and ohfuck he didn’t have his helmet up and he couldn’t move in time. 

He caught a glimpse of a woman’s face behind the gun, dark eyes glinting and painted lips twisted in a sneer. 

The gun fired.

Chapter Text

Natasha tackled Tony to the side just in time. 

He felt the bullet graze his cheek with a flash of heat and pain. 

The woman fired the gun again as Tony and Natasha fell, and he heard Natasha grunt once before they landed past the doorway and safely out of firing range. Natasha was already moving by the time Tony was beginning to regather his wits. She whipped out a pistol and took barely half a second to orient herself before aiming around the doorframe and firing twice. 

There was a sharp scream and a long string of curses from inside the room. 

Natasha moved to enter the room and check on their attacker, but Tony gathered himself together and moved first. He remembered to put his helmet back up this time, and he stood in front of Natasha, confident that any further attacks would strike his much more bullet-proof body first.

The woman was lying on the ground, clutching a heavily bleeding shoulder. Her gun was out of reach by her feet and a step forward and a quick kick from Tony sent it skidding to the far corner of the room. But if looks could kill, she wouldn’t need the gun. Tony would have fallen over and died already.

Eh. She’d had her chance.

“You fucking Avengers think you can show up and ruin all of my work?” the woman spat. “You can’t stop HYDRA. We will always rise again.”

Tony cut her off with an impatient hand. “I don’t really care, Madame Octopus. Just tell me what you did with Spiderman.” 

He felt Natasha come up beside him, but he refused to look away from the suddenly gleeful expression on the nazi woman’s face. 

“Spiderman,” the woman said slowly. She smirked. “He said you’d come for him. I didn’t believe it. Not that it matters now.”

“What do you mean?” Tony demanded, starting to take a step forward before being stopped by Natasha’s hand on his arm. 

The woman’s smirk grew even more smug even as blood seeped out of between her fingers. “It doesn’t matter. Besides, you’re looking in the wrong place. Spiderman and the soldiers left hours ago.”

“Left?” Natasha repeated coolly. “Don’t you mean escaped?”

The woman’s smirk soured somewhat. “HYDRA would have gotten them back. The Winter Soldier is our property. He is my legacy as heir to the Red Skull. It’s only a matter of time.”

“So, he’s alive?” Tony asked, helmet speakers doing little to mask the traitorous quaver that entered into his voice.

“Probably.” The woman moved to sit up– most likely so she could smirk at them better– but she was halted by Natasha’s gun pointed at her head. 

Alive .

Tony felt like he could finally breathe again. Peter was alive, and he had escaped. He wasn’t too late. His brave, strong, and brilliant kid had managed to escape.

Now all he had to do was find him.

“Alrighty then,” Tony said abruptly, turning back towards the door. “In that case, I will be off. Have fun, ladies.”

“You would just leave me here?” the woman demanded, sounding ridiculously insulted. “With everything I know?”

“I’m a genius,” Tony called over his shoulder flippantly. “What you know isn’t important.”

“What about Spiderman’s secret identity?”

Tony paused mid-step, and slowly turned back around. 

“You thought I would have all this time with Spiderman unmasked and not do my research?”

Tony was going to punch her stupidly smug face in.

“If you try to send me to prison, I will make sure that everyone finds out who he really is. How do you think your little protege will cope with every villain in New York arriving on his doorstep?”

Tony pondered for a moment then lifted an gauntleted hand and aimed a charged repulsor at the woman’s self-satisfied face. “You’re assuming that I would give you that chance.”

The woman scoffed. “You’re a lot of things, Stark, but you aren’t a cold-blooded murderer.”

Tony hesitated. He didn’t like killing. He had too many nightmares about the people that he had killed or failed to save to ever want to kill people. 

More importantly, he was still acting under the Accords. The UN might overlook his search for Spiderman if he passed it off as an excuse to find the Rogue Avengers, but they would be less likely to overlook a murdered HYDRA officer that could have been a valuable source of information. There would be no way to hide it. General Ross was ready to jump on Tony about the smallest perceived wrong. He would find out, and all of Tony’s work to change the accords and rebuild the trust between the Avengers and the government would be gone. 

The woman smiled. There was blood on her teeth. “What do you think will happen? What do you think everyone will do when they find out that Spiderman is really Pe–”

There was the sharp sound of a gunshot, and the woman cut off suddenly. A nearly bloodless hole appeared in the center of her forehead like magic. Her smug expression melted away into blankness and her head hit the ground with a dull thud.

Tony let his helmet retract and he stared at the corpse for a long moment.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he told Natasha half-heartedly. 

“What can they do? Arrest me?” Natasha scoffed. “They couldn’t catch me the first time.”

The old grief of betrayal and the lighter feeling of gratitude mixed together in Tony’s throat and blocked the “Thank you” that tried to escape. 

He didn’t doubt that Natasha already knew who Peter was. He didn’t doubt that she would keep that secret.

Natasha met his eyes, and the look she gave him told him that she understood. He didn’t need to say anything.

“You’re bleeding.”

Tony lifted a hand to his cheek as if he would be able to feel the tacky blood on his cheek through his gauntlet. He glanced back at Natasha and noticed the darker stain of something wet on the leg of her already dark pants. 

“So are you.”

Natasha shrugged. “Just a graze. But next time, scan the damn room before you barge in.”

Tony was about to shoot back an offended reply when he heard Rhodey calling his name from somewhere up the hall. He turned away from the room and from the dead body of the person who had dared threaten his kid, and walked back into the hall.

Rhodey spotted him and hastened over with Sam in tow.

“What did you find?” Tony asked, seeing the worry on his friend’s face. 

“Busted up cell.” Rhodey hesitated. “A lot of old blood.”

Tony felt the fear try to climb its way back up his throat, and he forcefully shoved it down. “We got confirmation that Spiderman and Cap escaped a few hours ago. If they’re moving by foot, they can’t be that far. We can do an aerial sweep for them.”

“It’ll be dark soon,” Sam observed. “We better get moving.”

“Where did you get this information?” Rhodey asked, clearing his expression of the hope that had flickered across it.

Tony smiled strainedly and clapped a hand on his friend’s armored shoulder with an eloquent “don’t ask” look. Rhodey was the best, so he caught the meaning immediately. 

“Alright then,” he said, his voice taking on his Colonel tone. “We’ll spread out and search from the air. Falcon, take a look at Widow’s leg, then stay with her in the quinjet on stand-by. Stay nearby as we search. We might need the medical, and the quinjet’s scanners are the most powerful. Tony and I will lead the search closer to the ground.”

Sam nodded and offered Natasha a supporting arm which she promptly ignored, turning to walk back to the quinjet instead.

Tony took a deep breath and let his helmet form once again. 

It was time to find his kid.

**

Peter wasn’t sure how long they had been walking, but the sky was growing dim and his pace was growing slower. Apparently something about the last week of minimal food, water, and the– y'know– torture hadn’t been great for his ability to walk in the cold woods for hours. 

Who knew?

He had done his best to hide his growing weariness, but Steve had given him a few sideways glances, so he had the feeling that he wasn’t hiding it very well. Sure, Peter’s bones ached in a way that he didn’t think was supposed to happen until he was an old man and his previously injured ankle was starting to give out under the constant use, but he didn’t need to be carried again. He especially didn’t need to be carried around by someone with one arm or someone who was walking on a bullet wound. He wasn’t a baby.

So, yeah, he was going to keep walking and he was going to keep hiding his steadily-worsening limp for as long as he could. He was Spiderman. He refused to be the weak link.

“My leg is starting to bother me,” Steve said suddenly. “We should take a rest for a bit.”

Peter glanced at Steve suspiciously. “I can keep going.”

“That’s great,” Steve said carelessly. “But I need the break.”

Peter was still suspicious, but he also felt bad. After all, Steve was walking on an injured leg. He deserved a break. “Yeah, ok.”

Steve did the weird didn’t-really-sound-like-a-bird whistle and a replying whistle came from Bucky a few seconds later.

Steve let out a heavy sigh and pointedly settled into a seat at the base of a nearby tree. He closed his eyes and visibly relaxed.

Peter’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. This felt like an attack, somehow.

Slowly, still suspiciously, he limped over to his own tree and sank to the forest floor. Well, it was more of a controlled fall since his leg gave out half-way to the ground, but still. 

The ground was pretty soft, actually, coated with years upon years of loamy leaf-mold that made a squishy layer beneath this winter’s dead leaves and the dirt. 

He stretched out his leg and sighed at the relief of not having to stand on his aching ankle anymore. He leaned back against the tree trunk and it felt unreasonably comfortable. Weariness was lapping hungrily at his bones and he felt like he could sink right into the forest floor and never leave again. The only thing keeping him from taking a nap then and there was the chilly breeze that was winding through the trees. 

It wasn’t all that cold outside, fifty degrees at least, but spiders didn’t thermoregulate well and Peter had inherited that trait along with his powers. His thermal under-suit might have been enough if it hadn’t been practically shredded from the waist up by the past week’s abuse. It was basically being held together by threads (not that all fabric wasn’t held together by threads but, like, in the turn of phrase way) and it let every stray breath of wind through. 

Peter stubbornly closed his eyes even as he shivered. The ground was comfy and he was tired, so maybe he’d just ignore the wind and sleep anyway.

He heard Bucky’s approaching footsteps crunching on the dry leaves. The man paused for a moment at the edge of their little clearing, then he walked over to Peter’s tree and settled down beside him. He wrapped his arm around Peter’s trembling shoulders and tugged him against his blessedly warm side.

Peter opened his eyes to glare suspiciously at Bucky even as his shivering eased and he relaxed into the half embrace. “You two don’t fool me. I see through your evil scheme.”

“Scheme?”

Peter nodded. “Gonna make me fall asleep again and then carry me around even though I don’t need to be carried. Probably gonna take embarrassing photos.”

Bucky chuckled and the sound rumbled through his chest. “You got us figured out. Our evil plan is now foiled.”

Peter let his eyes close again. The breeze was cool on his face, but the arm around his shoulders and the warm body at his side warded off the chill. “Can’t fool me,” he mumbled sleepily.

Bucky snorted in amusement and he gave Peter’s shoulders a brief squeeze. “Sure, kid.”

Just as Peter was on the verge of drifting off, something brushed along the edge of his super-hearing. He frowned slightly at the noise, It wasn’t part of the forest sounds, more like a dull roar. The noise grew closer and he pulled away from Bucky slightly to sit up and focus on his hearing.

The noise was definitely coming from the sky, but it didn’t quite match the sound of a plane or even a drone. Quieter than a plane, but with a similar sounding type of thruster.  Honestly, the sound was kind of familiar.

Peter abruptly sat up the rest of the way, ignoring Bucky’s confused look. “Mr. Stark.” He swiftly stood and stumbled slightly at the weight on his aching ankle. 

“What’s going on, kid?” Bucky asked, standing with Peter and hovering his hand over Peter’s shoulder in case he stumbled again.

“I hear the Iron Man suit coming this way,” Peter replied distractedly, searching the skies above the treeline. 

Steve stood as well and joined their huddle. “Are you sure?”

Peter nodded, but made a so-so motion with his hand at the same time. “Pretty sure.”

The three of them silently searched the sky as the sound of the armor drew steadily nearer. Finally, Peter caught sight of a flash of red through the trees. 

“Mr. Stark!” he tried to shout. His abused voice turned it into more of a whisper-shout. 

The suit continued on its trajectory slightly parallel to Peter’s clearing, and for a terrifying minute he thought it might just pass them by. 

“Mr. Stark,” he tried again, still barely loud enough to even be called a shout.

Behind him, Steve took a large breath and used his Captain America height to wave his arms loudly. “Tony! Over here!” he bellowed. 

Peter wasn’t sure if it was the shout, or if FRIDAY just spotted them, but the suit abruptly turned and was suddenly racing towards them. A couple seconds later, the suit landed heavily on the edge of their clearing, and suddenly it was bleeding back into its housing unit and it wasn’t Ironman, just Mr. Stark who was stumbling towards Peter like he was an oasis in a desert. 

There was a single moment after Peter saw Mr. Stark’s face where he felt a wave of relief so overwhelming that it almost sent him to his knees. Mr. Stark was here. He was actually here. Everything was going to be ok.

And then the fog came down on his mind like a tidal wave.

“Ironman wanted to get rid of you”  his mind seethed through the fog. “He wants you dead.”

Peter shook his head like he was trying to clear his ears of water. Mr. Stark was here to rescue him. Right?

“Peter?” He distantly heard Bucky call his name.

“He’s here to finish the job. He wants you dead.”

Mr. Stark was only a few feet away now, and he had eyes only for Peter. He was unprepared when Bucky grabbed ahold of his arm before he could finish closing the distance.

“Let go, Barnes,” Tony growled, expression turning from overjoyed to murderous in a moment. 

Bucky dropped Tony’s arm, but not before he slid himself between Peter and Tony. “Just wait a second.”

Peter blinked and the fog retreated ever so slightly when Mr. Stark disappeared from view. His head hurt and his thoughts felt like they were traveling through molasses. What was going on?

“Step away from him, Barnes.”

That was Mr. Stark’s voice, but Peter had never heard him sound so murderous. It sent a swift thrill of fear up his spine. 

“He’s here to hurt you. You have to defend yourself.”

“Bucky,” Steve said warily, looking between his friend and the wrathful billionaire. “What are you doing?”

Tony let the armor form back around most of his body and he let a repulsor charge up with a threatening whirr. “Move.”

“What will you do if you see Stark?”

“Just wai–” Bucky began frantically.

Tony didn’t let him finish. He grabbed Bucky’s arm and bodily flung him aside.

Peter was once again able to see Mr. Stark’s face, and the sight of it made his vision go strangely blurry and his thoughts even more muffled. 

“What will you do if you see Stark again?”

Mr. Stark reached a gauntleted hand out for Peter’s face and roiling fog in his brain clicked into place.

“I’ll kill him.”

“Peter, no!”

Peter gathered himself and leapt for Stark’s throat. 

He had to defend himself.

Someone collided with him midair and they both went sprawling across the grass. 

Peter rolled to his feet fluidly and turned back to face Stark. 

“He’s been brainwashed,” Bucky shouted, fighting to get back to his feet.

“Tony, get back,” Steve ordered.

Peter launched himself at Stark again, but Steve stepped into his way and grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

Why was Steve fighting him? Didn’t he know Stark was trying to hurt Peter? Was he working with Stark?

Peter leapt into the air and flipped over Steve’s head, wrenching his wrist out of the other man’s grasp in the process. He was immediately bowled over again by Bucky. He growled in frustration and tried to buck off the larger man’s confining hold.

He didn’t want to hurt Steve or Bucky, but they were defending Stark for some reason, and Peter couldn’t let them do that. Stark wanted to hurt him. He had to kill him before that could happen. He couldn’t let Steve or Bucky get in the way of that.

Peter used some of his super strength to push Bucky off of himself and the other man went flying through the air to hit the ground heavily a few feet away.

Steve was getting ready to charge Peter and he let him. Peter twisted out of the way at the last moment and grabbed Steve’s arm then sent him up and over his head in a flip that should have knocked the soldier out of the fight for at least a few minutes. Steve managed to twist midair and landed on his feet. He lunged at Peter again and Peter shot out a punch that was swiftly blocked. The pair fought for a moment, Peter attacking and Steve blocking every attack, before Peter feinted a punch then actually used his one remaining web shooter to attach a web to the Captain’s arm. Before the man could react, Peter swung the web around and flung Steve into a tree. A few globs of webbing later and Steve was firmly stuck to the tree.

Peter turned back to face Stark (who still hadn’t moved to attack for some reason) and he closed the distance between them in three quick strides. For a second, they stood nose to nose. Stark was saying something, but Peter couldn’t understand it through the roaring in his ears. 

… Stark didn’t look murderous. He looked… worried.

Peter’s head hurt. Behind the fog, he was confused and terrified. 

“He told us where to find you.” There was the sharp memory of pain and fear. “This is all his fault.”

Peter shot out a hand and wrapped it around Stark’s throat. He lifted the man off the ground as if he weighed no more than a feather. 

Stark grasped at the hand holding his throat as his face swiftly went red. His lips formed the shape of some words, but he couldn’t speak.

“You have to kill him before he can kill you.”

Peter watched impassively as Tony Stark choked.

Chapter Text

Peter’s head hurt.

Every time he looked at Stark’s face it was another spike of pain to his muddled brain. With every jolt of pain he became more aware of a faintly screaming voice behind the fog in his brain. 

He was scared.

He didn’t want to be hurt anymore.

“Hey, kid.”

Peter flinched at the sound of Bucky’s voice and Stark wheezed as his grip on his throat momentarily tightened. Peter turned to find Bucky a couple feet away, single hand outstretched like Peter was a spooked horse. Honestly, the comparison wasn’t that far off. Peter was feeling pretty spooked.

“Calm down, kid. No one here is going to hurt you.”

Some part of Peter’s foggy brain that trusted Bucky implicitly made him start to relax before the logic kicked back in. No. He couldn’t relax. Stark was right there and he wanted to (hug) hurt Peter. Stark was safe dangerous, and Bucky had tried to defend him. 

Steve and Bucky had only ever protected Peter. Why were they helping someone who would hurt him?

Peter shook his head again to try and clear the mounting pain. Why did his head hurt so much?

“Hey, Peter,” Bucky said again, snapping his fingers to get Peter’s attention back on his face. “Just put Stark down and we can figure this out, ok? Steve and I won’t let anything hurt you. I promise.”

Peter glanced from Bucky back to Stark’s face– which was slowly turning purple from Peter’s grip on his throat– then back to Bucky. 

“But they said…” he trailed off, confused. He couldn’t actually remember who “they” were, but he could hear the faint echo of the words in his mind.

“Stark wants you dead. He wants to get rid of you.”

Stark was dangerous. Stark wanted to hurt him. 

But Bucky had promised that he was safe? Bucky and Steve wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.

“They said…” Peter repeated, even more uncertainly this time. 

“They lied.” Bucky kept his voice calm and soft, but there was a fury in his eyes that gave Peter momentary pause. Fury and pain. So much pain. “Whatever they said, it was a lie. Don’t listen to them, Peter.”

Peter looked back to Stark’s face, and although the man’s face had gone nearly purple, he wasn’t struggling. He had his hands wrapped around Peter’s wrist, but it was almost like he was trying to hold Peter’s hand rather than trying to pull it away. 

He didn’t look scared either despite the fact that Peter was actively choking him. He looked… worried? But not for himself. He looked worried for Peter. 

“Stark wants to hurt you.” But the voice was losing strength now.

Stark’s eyes were filled with unshed tears, but there was also so much love in his eyes that Peter didn’t know what to do. 

Stark– no. Tony– mouthed Peter’s name and something inside of him broke free.

Peter released his grip abruptly and stumbled back several feet. 

Tony dropped to the ground in a crumpled heap and he began to cough and choke as he was allowed to breathe again. 

Peter’s knees gave out and he landed on the ground with his legs twisted beneath him. He distantly felt a comforting hand be placed on his shoulder.

He saw Steve– who had jagged tendrils of webbing clinging to his arm and a branch stuck to his leg– approach Tony only to be pushed away.

Peter’s head felt like it was splitting in two. Everything was both fuzzy and sharply painful around the edges. 

“Stark is dangerous.”

No. Peter knew Tony. Tony wouldn’t hurt him. Why had he thought that Tony would hurt him?

Tony had come for him, and Peter had almost….

Oh, fuck.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Bucky said quietly, reading Peter’s thoughts. 

Peter shook his head. He was breathing too fast again. 

He glanced back at Tony and found him still struggling to get his breath back. Steve had a hand on his back, trying to coach him through a breath, and Tony didn’t push him away this time. 

Peter was struck with the sudden fear that Tony would look up and there would be hate in his expression, or even worse, fear. Peter tried so hard to keep his powers under control and to always save everyone, and yet, he had almost killed Tony. A few seconds more of hesitation and Tony would be dead and it would have been Peter’s fault. 

And now Peter’s hands were shaking in addition to his panicked breathing. He wanted to throw up, run away, or just bury himself in a hole in the ground.

And then Tony looked up and croaked out a single word, “Pete.” And all of Peter’s emotions came crashing down around his ears.

He was moving before he had made a conscious decision to do so and he felt Bucky and Steve reaching to catch him in case he was attacking Tony again. But it was too late because Peter had already moved and he was suddenly hugging Tony like he was trying to hold his entire world together.

“Dad,” he sobbed.

And then Tony’s arms tightened around him almost as fiercely as if he had super strength too. “Pete,” he breathed out through his ruined throat.

And suddenly they were both crying and clinging to one another like drowning men to a life-raft. 

It was ok. Mr. Stark was here. Everything would be alright.

****

****

Tony was done for. 

There could have been a gun held against his head and he wouldn’t have let go of Peter.

Fuck. When did he start caring so much? 

Tony replayed the sound of Peter calling him dad in his mind, and he quietly admitted to himself that he had started caring the moment he got to know Peter. He had been doomed from the beginning. 

Peter’s too-thin frame trembled with another sob and Tony planted a quick kiss on his temple. He had tears on his face too, but he couldn’t feel ashamed of it. 

Peter was in his arms, alive. Tony hadn’t been too late. He had Peter back, and he wasn’t letting him go again. Peter could turn on him that moment and try to choke him again and Tony wouldn’t have fought back as long as Peter stayed in view. 

Tony wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he heard Steve clear his throat awkwardly and call his name. Tony’s immediate reply was to put up a middle finger behind Peter’s back and to bury his face more firmly into Peter’s shoulder. Mr. Self-Righteous Asshole could entertain himself for a while longer. 

Tony faintly heard Barnes mutter something and he tensed and clutched Peter tighter. The amount of terror that had flooded his heart when Barnes had stepped between him and Peter was almost enough to send his already-weak heart into an arrest. 

In the moment, his only thought had been a desperate plea to the universe, God, anything that he wouldn’t have to watch another member of his family die at Barnes’s hands. 

Sure, apparently Barnes had been trying to protect him (and why he would want to do that was beyond Tony) but it didn’t mean that Tony didn’t re-tense every time he remembered the man’s presence. The only thing that staved off the panic was the fact that he was wrapped around Peter fully enough that any attack on the kid would have to go through him first. 

Peter pulled away from the embrace ever so slightly and he looked at where there was undoubtedly a ring of bruises ripening around Tony’s throat with a painful amount of guilt. “I’m sorry,” he croaked brokenly. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t want….”

Tony gently shushed him and pressed Peter’s head back against his shoulder. He didn’t think he could talk just then without setting off a coughing fit, but he tried to convey his forgiveness through the hand that was rubbing circles on Peter’s back. Even if he had been able to speak, he didn’t know how to say that he would happily get choked a dozen times over if it meant that Peter was safe. 

Let go before it’s too late. You’re going to ruin the kid just like your dad ruined you.

Tony, with his arms still wrapped around Peter, stilled suddenly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose and held it, trying to ignore how it whistled in his injured throat.

You’ve already gotten too close. Turn back now before you mess it up. 

“Mr. Stark?” Peter whispered hesitantly, looking up again.

No. He wasn’t like Howard, and he never would be. He would be better. He knew he would be better because Peter needed him to be better, and Tony would never let him down. 

Tony let out his held breath with a faint shudder and gave Peter another squeeze. 

“How about we go home?” Tony rasped, smiling gently to take away from the abrasive sound of his wrecked voice.

Peter’s expression crumpled– fuck he looked so small – and he smiled up at Tony mistily. “Please.”

Tony nodded, still smiling faintly, and gathered himself before he began to push himself off the ground. Peter immediately moved to support him, but then Peter faltered himself and the pair ended up half-way supporting each other. Tony didn’t let go of Peter once they were standing, and Peter didn’t try to pull away. 

Tony let out a faint sigh– that sounded more like a wheeze– and finally glanced Steve and Bucky’s way. 

The two supersoldiers had moved to the edge of the clearing to give him and Peter a false impression of privacy. Tony knew that with their super-hearing they would have to be far further than that to have not heard every whispered word, but he begrudgingly appreciated the thought. 

“Are you here alone?” Steve asked, cautiously approaching once he saw that Tony and Peter’s private moment was over.

Ah. Tony probably should have comm’d in when he found Peter. Whoops. 

He shook his head faintly at Steve and raised a hand to the previously-forgotten comm in his ear. His fingers weren’t behaving properly, but he managed to clumsily press the button to reopen the communication line. “Found ‘em,” he croaked. 

“Headed your way,” Natasha’s voice immediately came through the comm. “Any reason why you sound like death warmed over?”

Tony glanced down at Peter and found him wearing his “spiraling into guilt face”. Tony wished he wouldn’t look like that. It hurt to watch.

 “I’m fine.”

Natasha huffed into the comm. “I don’t think you know what the word means, but fine. We’re five minutes out.”

Tony let his hand drop from the comm and he gently leaned against Peter’s shoulder with a sigh. He was tired. 

“Natasha is here?” Steve asked.

Because of course he heard the comm with his stupid perfect hearing and now he was looking at Tony with his stupid face filled with stupid freaking concern. 

Captain America.

He just stood there acting like he was perfect. Like he didn’t have a dark side.

“I don’t trust a guy without a dark side.”

“Well, let’s just say you haven’t seen it yet.”

Tony blinked and tried to separate the man standing in front of him, bearded and scruffy from captivity, from the one in his mind. 

Steve raised his shield high and he looked down at Tony with a frightening darkness in his eyes. 

“You haven’t seen it yet.” 

“Tony?”

Tony blinked again, banishing the brief flashback. Peter squeezed his arm, and he focused on the feeling. He wasn’t in Siberia. He wasn’t fighting his former friend. 

He was in the here and now. He couldn’t focus on then.

“Widow and Falcon are here,” he rasped abruptly.

Steve nodded slowly. “Where do we go from here?”

“We fly back to the compound, then you go on your merry way.”

Tony felt Peter tense slightly at his side, and for a moment he wondered why.

“You’ll just let us leave?” Steve asked, eyebrows raised in surprise.

Tony tried not to scowl. “I promised Nat. Don’t read into it.”

Peter shifted and looked up at Tony with an uncomfortable expression on his face. He looked back between Steve and Tony and began to open his mouth, then he hesitated and closed it again.

Tony sighed lightly and nudged the kid’s side– an eyebrow raised that clearly said, “Out with it.”

“Steve and Bucky protected me,” Peter said quietly, his face quickly turning crimson. “I would’ve died without them.”

Tony’s breath caught at the sudden assault of guilt those words caused. 

Your fault. Dead. Gone. All your fault.

He curled further around Peter and he impulsively pressed a swift kiss to his temple, brushing away his dirty hair. Peter’s skin was warm beneath his touch. His chest was moving with breath in time to Tony’s. He was alive. Tony hadn’t been too late.

And apparently he had Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes to thank for that.

That was a thought to have a mental breakdown about later.

Tony was saved from having to think of a response by the sound of the quinjet approaching. 

The group turned as one and watched silently as the jet coasted above the treetops and hovered above their tiny clearing. The trees whipped their bare branches madly in the wind from the engines. A dead leaf blew off the ground and struck Steve in the center of his face. 

If they had still been friends, Tony would have laughed. As it was, he had to hide his smile at the sight.

The cargo door of the quinjet slowly opened and Falcon dropped out and flew to the ground. He landed a few feet away from the group and immediately went to greet Steve.

“Glad to see you’re not dead.” He said, clasping forearms with Steve with a broad smile. He pretended to have just noticed Bucky standing behind Steve’s shoulder and he affected a look of disappointment. “You’re here too, huh?” 

“Fuck off,” Bucky muttered, but an amused smirk betrayed his apparent annoyance.

Falcon smiled smugly. “Well, I’m y’all’s delivery service. Who’s going first?”

 Tony pulled away from Peter just enough to let his suit reform around his body. The helmet clicked into place and FRIDAY lit up his HUD with concerned highlights of the bruises around his throat.

“No need,” he rasped, gathering Peter into the suit’s arms. Peter squeaked at the movement and wrapped his arms behind Tony’s neck like there was any chance of Tony dropping him. Tony was extra careful anyway. He lit up the thrusters of the suit and within seconds they were floating through the open bay door.

Tony didn’t let go of Peter when they landed on the metal floor. He merely let his helmet retract and continued to carry Peter over to the small medical cot that was set against the wall.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter whined, doing nothing to escape Tony’s grasp. “I’m fine.”

Tony scoffed and dumped Peter onto the bed. He gently poked at Peter’s painfully prominent rib bones. Then, he raised an accusatory eyebrow and gestured to the general blood and grime that covered the rest of Peter’s body.

“It just looks bad,” Peter protested. “My healing factor already did everything.”

Tony shook his head and grabbed a nearby IV bag— the one that was specially labeled for Peter and contained a healing-factor-boosting cocktail— and started gathering the materials to insert it. He used a wet wipe to clean a space in the crook of Peter’s elbow; then he paused and took another wipe to Peter’s face. 

“ Mr. Stark.”

Tony determinedly kept scrubbing at a streak of dirt on Peter’s cheek. He wanted to be able to see his kid without a layer of dried blood covering half his face. Peter could put up with it.

Falcon flew into the plane and deposited Bucky inside before flying back out. 

Tony did his best to ignore Barnes’s presence, and after a moment the man drifted towards the cockpit of the plane where Natasha sat.

Tony finished getting everything in place then let his gauntlets dissolve back into the housing unit so that his hands were free. He was fairly certain that if he tried to retract the whole suit that his legs would give out, so he would keep it on until everything was taken care of. 

Peter pointedly didn’t watch the needle go into his arm. He kept his gaze fixed on Tony’s face instead. 

Sam flew back into the jet with Steve in tow and the pair moved to join Natasha and Bucky in the cockpit. 

“Are we ready to fly out?” he heard Steve ask quietly.

“Waiting on Rhodes.” Natasha replied. “Why, you in a hurry?”

“I’d appreciate some distance,” Steve replied dryly. “Not exactly the best vacation that I’ve had.”

“You need to get your throat looked at,” Peter said, drawing Tony’s attention away from the conversation in the cockpit. “It looks bad.”

Aaaand, Peter was looking guilty again.

“I’m fine,” Tony said, wincing when the raw sound of his own voice counteracted his argument.

“So, the suit isn’t keeping you standing?” Peter challenged. 

Tony huffed. Trust the kid to have noticed. 

Tony maintained pointed eye contact with Peter as he let his suit fully retract into its housing unit. Unfortunately, the gesture ended up working against him. He lasted two full seconds after the suit was gone before stumbling slightly and having to catch himself on the edge of the cot.

“Move the leg,” he rasped, moving to sit on the bed beside Peter. 

For a moment he was struck with deja vu from their first meeting. Peter had been younger. Tony had been clueless on how to deal with a teenager. Neither of them had suspected how close they would become. 

Tony wrapped an arm around Peter’s shoulders again and Peter immediately leaned into the touch. For a minute they sat in comfortable silence, then Peter yawned wide enough to pop his jaw. Tony reflexively yawned in response and he huffed out a chuckle. 

Without any discussion, the pair slowly leaned back onto the bed until Tony was lying flat with Peter curled against his side. The pair cautiously avoided jostling the IV. Tony’s arm was still wrapped around Peter’s shoulders and Peter was using his chest as a pillow. 

Tony could feel the movement of Peter’s chest as he breathed and he centered his focus on the motion.

Here was constant proof that Peter was alive. Proof that Tony hadn’t failed. Assurance that even if Peter wasn’t ok then that he would be soon. Tony would make certain of it.

Peter’s eyelids had fluttered shut within seconds of them getting settled and it took barely two minutes before his expression and breathing smoothed out in sleep.

Tony smiled down at his kid and let his own eyelids close. The past week of desperate searching finally had a chance to catch up with him, and he was exhausted. With Peter safe he could finally rest.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” he heard Rhodey murmur through his half-doze. “Tony with a kid.”

“It suits him,” Natasha replied. 

“Yeah, it does.”

And if Tony fell asleep smiling, well, no one said a word.

Chapter Text

Peter was only half awake when it happened. 

It was only the sound of voices conversing above his head that brought him out of his exhausted doze in the first place. 

“You can’t just stay in the quinjet,” A female voice said in a disapproving whisper. 

“Can,” a raspy voice replied, rumbling in Peter’s ear.

“You need to go to the med bay.”

There was no audible reply, but the arm wrapped around Peter’s shoulders tightened its grip.

“Stark,” the woman said sternly.

The woman sounded like…. But no, Peter had escaped. He wasn’t there anymore. She wasn’t here.

“Stark. He told me where to find you.” 

Peter thrashed and fell off of the cot he had been lying on. Something stung his arm and he distantly noted that he had ripped out his IV. He caught a brief glance of Miss. Natasha looking down at him before his gaze centered on Mr. Stark’s face. He froze, a rabbit in a trap, and suddenly the fog was rushing back in. 

Stark .

Stark wants to kill you .

Peter distantly heard someone calling his name, but he couldn’t focus on the voice past the crashing waves of fog that were trying to pull him under.

No. Mr. Stark— Stark abandoned you — TONY didn’t want to hurt him. He had come for him. He had rescued him.

Stark wants you dead.

Peter flinched and desperately tried to remind himself that Schmidt wasn’t there. It was just his imagination.

Right?

It was a trick. He is going to try again. You aren’t safe with him. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter whimpered aloud, clutching his throbbing head. The insidious voice was starting to sound more and more like his own. “Run.”

Another tsunami wave of fog crashed over Peter’s thought’s and he blinked at the (metal?) ceiling in dizzy confusion. 

Stark is here! You aren’t safe!

Where was here? What was happening? Peter didn’t wan—

Another wave of fog and the confusion melted away from Peter’s face. 

Stark was dangerous. Stark was here. He had a mission to kill Stark.

His head hurt.

The mission.

Something was wr—

Kill Stark.

The Spider rolled to his feet as fluidly as a gymnast. He turned to the sound of heartbeats and found a red-headed woman trying to drag Stark towards the exit of the plane’s belly. Stark was struggling against her, but he froze when he saw The Spider.

“Peter?”

The Spider advanced, faster than any human was capable of. The red-headed woman (Black Widow. Threat. Dangerous) fired some sort of electrically charged disk at his head, but The Spider bent backwards at the waist in a reflexive dodge. He reached for the Widow and grabbed her wrist shooters before she could pull away. A small flex of his grip crushed the weapon and made her face twist in pain.

Widow leapt for The Spider’s head, spinning as she did to release his grip on her arm. She wrapped her legs around his neck and twisted, sending him flying backwards.

The Spider flipped midair and stuck the landing on all fours. 

Widow was between him and Stark. 

“Peter, stop,” Stark shouted as loud as he could with his wrecked sounding voice.. “This is the HYDRA control. Don’t listen to it.”

The Spider regarded Widow for a moment, blank-faced, then he abruptly leapt to cling to the ceiling and skittered over her head to reach Stark.

Beneath him, Widow bit out a vehement curse. “I need help here!” she shouted to someone outside of the plane.

Reinforcements lowered his chances of killing Stark. He had to hurry.

The Spider dropped down from the ceiling and landed on the shoulders of his back-pedaling target. The pair crashed to the ground with The Spider sitting on Stark’s chest. 

“Peter,” the man wheezed desperately, then choked when The Spider’s hands found their way around his neck and squeezed.

His head hurt.

Your mission is to kill Stark.

He would kill Stark.

The Spider’s hands had been around Stark’s throat for barely a few seconds when Widow came up behind him and wrapped an arm around his neck. “Sorry, kid,” she muttered, pulling her grip tight.

The Spider choked and he was struck by a brief flash of fear that fought its way out of the fog. A memory of a collar cinched tight around his throat, shocking and strangling him.

His hands left Stark’s throat and flew up to grip Widow’s arm. He couldn’t get a good grip on her choking elbow, so he stuck directly to her arm with his powers and pulled. Her long sleeve tore, but she didn’t loosen her grip. 

The edges of his vision were beginning to grow fuzzy.

Stop it! Don’t hurt them.

Complete the mission.

The Spider cast aside the torn sleeve and moved to renew his grip, preparing to break The Widow’s arm if necessary.

“Peter!” A new voice shouted. “Stop!”

He knew that voice.

Bucky.

An ally?

He glanced up and saw a scruffy looking, one-armed man staring him down.

“Fight it,” the man (Bucky. Friend.) barked. “Ignore whatever orders you think you have and stand down.”

Complete the mission.

Stand down.

Peter’s arms went limp at his sides.

There was a momentary clearing of the fog in his mind like a shaft of sunlight on a cloudy day. Peter clung to the moment of sanity and did the only thing he could think of to stop himself. He leaned further into Natasha’s choke hold and desperately held himself there even as his body screamed at him to escape and gather air.

Natasha tried to slacken her grip, but Peter raised a hand and held her arm tight. He could feel the fog getting ready to take over again. He couldn’t give it that chance.

He didn’t want to hurt anyone.

He couldn’t let himself hurt anyone else.

He heard Tony whisper his name before his vision faded to black.

****

Tony watched as Peter’s face went from that terrifyingly blank expression to something more frightened but recognizably Peter at the sound of Barnes’s voice.

And then the kid was purposefully choking himself on Natasha’s arm. He even held her arm in place when she tried to pull away. 

“Pete,” Tony wheezed, trying to stretch out a shaking hand to stop his stupid, selfless kid. 

Peter’s eyes rolled shut and his body went limp in Natasha’s grip. She released her choke-hold the moment his hand fell away, and Peter toppled over onto his side, his legs still stretched out over Tony’s waist.

“Pete.” Tony mouthed, unable to get the word out past his rapidly closing throat. He reached out a trembling hand and clumsily twined his and Peter’s limp fingers. He tried to say Peter’s name again, and once again failed. 

“Tony.” Steve was suddenly behind Tony, gripping his shoulders to sit him up. “You need to breathe.”

Was he not breathing?

Barnes was at Peter’s side now and he tugged the kid’s limp body off of Tony’s legs. Tony’s heart leapt when his hold on Peter’s hand stretched and he began to lose his grip. Thankfully, Barnes noticed Tony’s rising panic and halted within Tony’s arm distance. 

“He’s just unconscious,” he reassured Tony, meeting his gaze.

Tony stared back into Barnes’s eyes, and he felt himself tremble.

Those were the eyes of the man that killed Tony’s parents. The hand cradling Peter’s head was the same one that had held the gun that had nearly shot Tony in the face less than a year before. 

That was Tony’s kid in the grip of a killer.

“Tony, breathe, damn it!”

Tony shuddered under Steve’s grip and automatically tried– and failed– to suck in a breath past his crushed-feeling windpipe.

“We need to get them to the med-bay.”

Steve scooped Tony up with a hand beneath his shoulders and his knees and Tony lost his grip on Peter’s hand when Steve stood. He thrashed weakly in Steve’s grasp, reaching back out for Peter. 

“Damn it, Tony. I’m trying to help you.”

No. He couldn’t trust Steve.

Peter was hurt. He needed to protect him, but he couldn’t escape Steve’s grasp. He couldn’t breathe .

Peter was in the hands of The Winter Soldier, and Tony refused to lose any more loved ones at that man’s hands.

Tony’s vision was swiftly fading and his struggles were weakening, but he distantly became aware of being rushed across the open green of the Compound’s lawn and towards the main building. 

He fell unconscious with the shape of Peter’s name on his lips.

**

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Tony paused in the middle of his attempted escape from the hospital bed and opened his mouth to reply only to shut it again  with a snap as he remembered the brace around his neck and his missing voice. He tried to cover his momentary slip by sending a dramatically sarcastic look the doctor’s way and gesturing in the vague direction of out and towards Peter .

Dr. Adams– who was the main doctor on the Avengers’ Compound– frowned down at Tony sternly. “Sit back down. I won’t have you injuring yourself again the moment you leave my sight.”

Tony rolled his eyes loudly. 

“You are not fine,” Dr. Adams replied as if Tony had spoken aloud. “You need to rest. Everything else can wait.”

Resting might have been an attractive idea if not for the frantic energy buzzing under Tony’s skin. He needed to check on Peter. He needed to find more information on the HYDRA brainwashing tactics. He had to get in touch with the kid’s aunt. He needed to get ahead of the shitstorm that would occur if General Ross heard about his technically-illegal mission. 

He needed to figure out how to make the Rogue Avengers leave before he was tempted to ask them to stay. 

Tony leveled a look at Dr. Adams that hopefully conveyed the ridiculousness of her order to rest, then he leaned back onto the bed and pointedly picked up a tablet from his bedside table and began tapping at it.

Dr. Adams huffed in irritation but seemed to accept the fact that Tony wouldn’t actually sleep unless knocked unconscious. “Try to leave and I call Miss. Potts,” she threatened. 

Tony looked up from the tablet and held a hand to his chest in exaggerated horror. His expression dramatically said “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I have her on speed dial,” Dr. Adams replied smugly, turning to leave the room. “I’ll be watching.”

Tony huffed to himself in mild amusement, his smile souring at the way the breath seemed to scrape at his injured throat. He had refused the good drugs in favor of being conscious, but he was regretting that decision more with every second that he could feel the oxygen tube pressing against his face and the brace cinched around his neck. 

He got to work researching HYDRA and contacting the necessary people, determinedly ignoring the rising urge to bolt from the hospital room. 

It was fine.

Everything was fine.

You’re fine . Tony told himself (You know. Like a liar.)

He had been working for about an hour before there was a tentative knock on the open door of his room. He looked up to see Cap and Barnes hovering in the doorway. Their nervousness was almost funny. Like they were trying to get up the courage to tell him that they had killed his hamster. Or his parents. 

Oh, wait. Too late for that last one.

“Can we come in?” Steve asked after a moment. “We need to talk about Peter.”

Tony tensed immediately, casting a look at the reassuringly steady vitals that he had FRIDAY keep in the corner of his screen. He took a purposefully slow breath to calm himself and reluctantly waved the two super-soldiers into the room.

“I think we know of a way to help Peter recover from the brainwashing.”

Tony raised an eyebrow for Steve to continue.

Steve hesitated for a moment. “It would mean bringing Peter with us to Wakanda.”

Tony would have laughed if it wouldn’t have murdered his throat. If Rogers thought that he would be letting Peter anywhere near him and his assassin friend, let alone would send him to a different country with them, then he had another thing coming. Tony had just gotten Peter back. He wasn’t losing him again. 

“The Wakandans helped me,” Barnes spoke up, watching Tony’s expression warily. “They fixed what HYDRA did to me. They can help Peter too.”

Tony clenched his jaw and tried to shove down the numerous emotions that that statement elicited. 

“Peter’s attacked you twice. Unwillingly,” he said hastily, when Tony turned his glare on him. “But he needs help before he truly injures someone else or himself. So far he’s only attacked you, but who knows what all they tried to program him with.”

Tony opened his mouth to reply, then stopped himself with an irritated scowl. He picked the tablet back up and typed on it furiously for a moment. 

“I will fix it,” FRIDAY’s voice came from the tablet in response to Tony’s typing. “Don’t worry about it, Rogers.”

“Tony.” Tony knew that tone. It was the stern “I’m disappointed in you voice”. He fuckin’ hated that tone. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with. I’m sure you could figure out a solution eventually, but Peter might hurt someone in the meantime.”

“He wouldn’t forgive himself if he did,” Barnes agreed, shaking his head. “He will already be a mess from attacking you.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Tony was quick to type back.

“I know that,” Barnes snapped in reply. “I know exactly what he’s going through, and I also know that the kid would feel bad about swatting a fly. If he hurts someone he won’t forgive himself.”

Tony felt sick to his stomach. 

HYDRA had tried to turn Peter into something like the Winter Soldier, and it had at least partially worked. Peter, who was always so careful to control his powers so he wouldn’t hurt someone, had been given some of the same conditioning as the Winter Soldier– the man who had killed Tony’s parents. But Peter wasn’t like that. He wasn’t. Tony had gotten there in time before that could happen.

But it could have happened.

Howard had used to tell stories of Barnes and Rogers from back in the Howling Commando days. He had held Barnes in high regard. And then, HYDRA had gotten him, and Barnes had killed Howard. A ghost, his dad’s friend, had appeared to murder his parents. 

The parallels were running circles in Tony’s brain. Tony’s son was under the same control as the man that killed his parents. And now the same man that had killed his mother, the man that was at the center of the Avengers splitting apart, was offering a way to help Peter.

“Tony,” Steve’s earnest voice drew Tony’s attention again. “Trust me. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

Tony looked at Steve’s face and felt himself wavering. 

His eyes slid over to Barnes’s face and landed on the empty shirt sleeve where Barnes’s metal arm should have been.

He vividly remembered being the one to shoot off that metal arm. He remembered the fury that had filled Steve’s eyes in response. Neither of them had pulled their punches when they fought.

“He’s my friend.”

“So was I.”

Steve’s bloodied face was locked in a furious grimace as he raised the shield above his head for what would be a killing blow to Tony’s unarmored face. Tony lifted his hands in a last moment’s desperate defense, and the shield struck his arc reactor instead. The machinery– that had at one point been responsible for keeping Tony alive– sputtered and died, and it was Steve that watched it happen. 

“He’s my friend.”

Tony had thought that they were friends too.

“Trust me.”

“Tony?”

Tony was typing before the flashback had fully cleared from his vision. 

“I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you with my kid.”

Steve’s expression shuttered. “I know things ended badly last time we saw each other, but I care about Pe—”

“No. Fuck you, Rogers. You left. You broke up the team. You don’t get to talk about trust now.”

“I wasn’t the one to break us apart, Tony. You did that yourself when you tried to make all the decisions alone. Just like you’re doing now.”

“Out,” he rasped aloud, ignoring the keyboard for the moment. The word was hardly audible, and it hurt to speak, but it held a barely contained fury that practically thrummed in the air.

“Tony,” Steve tried again. 

Tony pointed at the door, his entire body tense. “Out.” The word was even more hoarse this time, but it was said just as firmly.

Steve sighed like the old man that his birth date said he should be. “We’ll leave. Just, please consider it. I only want what’s best for Peter.”

Tony didn’t waver, merely continued pointing to the door.

Steve sighed again and turned to walk out. Barnes followed behind him, casting a final look at Tony before he went. 

The door swung shut behind the two super-soldiers and Tony fell back onto the bed like a puppet with its strings cut. 

Fucking Steve Rogers. The man that always knew what was best for everyone.

Well, he wasn’t going to take Tony’s kid. The Avengers had broken up, and Tony was going to grip the remainder of his family with both hands. 

They wouldn’t take Peter.

Tony wouldn’t let them. 

Chapter Text

Aunt May was sitting at Peter’s bedside when he woke up. 

His first reaction to seeing her was desperate relief, and then the memories crashed back in and he wished that she was anywhere else.

“May,” he croaked out, his hand twitching in her direction.

May gasped at the sound of his voice and she nearly tripped and fell in her desperate haste to escape her chair and hug Peter. “You’re awake,” she said inanely, her voice trembling with tears.

Peter– weak willed as he was– relaxed into her embrace for a few seconds before he forced himself to push her away. “N-no. I might hurt you.”

May withdrew from the hug just far enough to look Peter in the eyes. Her hands cupped his cheeks and her thumbs drew lines on his cheekbones like she had to reassure herself that he was really there. “Peter, no ,” she breathed. “You would never hurt me.”

Peter felt tears springing to his eyes. May’s touch on his face felt so nice , but she couldn’t be here. “I don’t want to,” he said, voice cracking. “But they did something…. I hurt Mr. Stark, May. I don’t want to hurt you too.”

“We’ll figure this out,” May said firmly, wiping away the tears that had escaped Peter’s eyes. “But I am not going anywhere. I trust you, Peter.”

“ I don’t .”

“Hey,” May said sharply. “We don’t talk about my nephew that way. What’s the rule?”

Peter squinted at his aunt in confusion, momentarily distracted. “What does ‘no cereal on patrol’ have to do with anything?”

May chuckled, tears still clinging to the edges of her eyes. “The other rule.”

Peter’s confused expression shifted into a reluctant smile. “‘Say later to the haters’.”

May nodded. “And that goes for self-haters. I have it on excellent authority that Peter Parker is a hero , and I refuse to take second opinions.”

Peter sniffled and laughed a little even as another few tears escaped. He wrapped his hands around May’s wrists and let himself soak in the feeling of her gentle touch on his cheeks. “Larb you, May.”

May leaned close again and planted a quick kiss on Peter’s temple before resting her forehead on Peter’s own. “Larb you too.”

Peter shoved aside the warning voice in his brain that told him to push May away before she got hurt. Before she suffered from the curse of knowing Peter. He shoved away the voice and focused on the fact that May was there and that he had missed her. 

Everything else could wait for a little while.

**

HelloThere (5:05 pm): So, I’m not dead.

GeneralKenobi (5:05 pm): Dude!! You were missing!! For like a month!!!!!!

HelloThere (5:06 pm): It was a week and a half

HelloThere (5:06 pm): But yeah. Sorry to accidentally ghost you dude . 

GeneralKenobi (5:06 pm): May said it was your Internship

GeneralKenobi (5:07 pm): She told the school you had a bad flu but MJ is suspicious. I need you to come back before she vivisects me for information.

HelloThere (5:07 pm): Vivisects? Really Ned?

GeneralKenobi (5:08 pm): She’s worried and it’s scary. 

HelloThere (5;09 pm): Fair. But sorry, I won’t be able to be back at school for a while longer. Have you been grabbing my homework?

GeneralKenobi (5:10 pm): Duh. Guy in the Chair remember? 

GeneralKenobi (5:10 pm): Also why won’t you be back yet? You good??

HelloThere (5:11 pm): Uhhhhh

HelloThere (5:13 pm): Remember that Clone Wars episode with the zombie worms?

GeneralKenobi (5:13 pm): HOLY SHIT DUDE

GeneralKenobi (5:13 pm): You got mind controlled by a zombie worm?!!? That’s so cool

HelloThere (5:14 pm): Minus the worm? It’s complicated. Tell you about it in person.

GeneralKenobi (5:14 pm): You better

GeneralKenobi (5:15 pm): (...)

GeneralKenobi (5:19 pm): You know I tried helping look for you

GeneralKenobi (5:20 pm): I guess I need to work on that part of being The Guy in the Chair for you

HelloThere (5:20 pm): Bullshit

HelloThere (5:21 pm): You’re the best guy in the chair ever. Besides, even Mr. Stark had to get extra help.

GeneralKenobi (5:25 pm): I was really worried dude.

GeneralKenobi (5:25 pm): I’m glad you’re ok

HelloThere (5:26 pm): Thanks Ned. I promise I’ll be back soon.

GeneralKenobi (5:27 pm): I ’ll have the lego star destroyer ready and waiting

HelloThere (5:27 pm): Fuck Yeah

HelloThere (5:28 pm): See? Best Guy in the Chair Ever.

GeneralKenobi (5:28 pm): Thanks dude

GeneralKenobi (5:28 pm): Try to stay safe?

HelloThere (5:29 pm): Always do. 

**

“Hello there, Little Spider.”

Peter  flinched and whirled around in a circle, searching for the voice. Darkness pressed in on him from all sides. He couldn’t hear anything but his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“You tried to leave. How cute,” Schmidt’s voice sneered, her shadow cloaked face emerging from the darkness right in front of Peter’s face. He tried to jerk away, and he was stopped by the feeling of manacles around his wrists. “You think you escaped? You can never leave as long as I’m in your head .”

Peter jerked against the manacles and his feet slipped on the foggy, dark ground. He fell, and he tensed, preparing with a harsh landing. His back hit the ground, but instead of stopping, he slipped through the darkness like he was falling through a cloud of ashy smoke.

He fell for a murky amount of time that could have been seconds or hours. The darkness swirled around him, drowning him. Faint, vaguely threatening, voices whispered from the shadows. He couldn’t make out their words despite his best efforts. 

Peter felt spindly fingers clutching at his sleeves and his hair, trying to get a grip on him even as he continued to fall. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound escaped. 

One of the hands clamped over his jaw, and he was suddenly trapped in the grasp of one of the whispering figures. The hand was covering his mouth and pressing against his nose. He could barely breathe past it. The hand tightened its grip despite his weak struggling, and the body behind the hand slipped out of the shadows and into view. 

Mr. Stark– his face sallow and his eyes frighteningly dark– stared down at Peter with a twisted smile. His fingers bit into Peter’s cheeks hard enough to bruise. Peter whimpered in fright, and Mr. Stark threw back his head to laugh.

Crack

Mr. Stark’s body jerked suddenly and the building laugh died in his throat. He looked back at Peter, and he was himself again. It was Tony– kind and loving and oh-so-afraid– that mouthed Peter’s name through the blood that flooded his lips. His hand fell away from Peter’s mouth and his knees seemed to give way. He collapsed and blood poured out of the gunshot wound in his chest to disappear into the shadowy ground. His eyes remained open, glassy and unseeing.

Peter couldn’t scream.

He stared at Tony’s body and was frozen by the grief and horror and rage that bubbled inside of him like an over-boiling furnace. A faint, choked sound made its way out of his throat, and he was abruptly terrified of the idea that if he made any sound all of the emotions would crash down and he would shatter like glass.

Tony stared at him with sightless eyes, their deep brown color already being clouded by a milky film of death. 

Schmidt stepped out of the shadows and poked the corpse with her booted toe. She had a pistol in one of her hands. In the other hand she held a wriggling, gray thing that looked… familiar.

Schmidt looked up at Peter and she smiled sharply. “You still have a job to do, Little Spider.” 

She reached out towards Peter’s face with the hand holding the weird worm. He tried to move away from it, but he was frozen in place again. He could only watch as the creature was moved ever closer to his face.

“Come on, Little Spider,” Schmidt whispered. The worm stretched out and brushed the tip of Peter’s nose. “It’s time to wake up. ”

**

Peter jolted upright in bed.

It was still dark. May was asleep on the couch across the room. The sound of his harsh breathing filled his ears. The fog swirled in his brain.

Fuck.

He could feel the HYDRA control building again like a wave ready to come crashing down. He didn’t have much time. He needed to do something before he lost control again. 

Peter rolled out of bed and hit the floor in a crouch. He pulled out his IV with the motion for the second time in recent days. He was rushing towards the door barely a moment after he hit the ground.

Little Spider….

Peter fumbled with the knob but he finally jerked open the door, moving too fast to be quiet. He heard May stirring in the room behind him, but he was already sprinting down the hallway.

You have a job to do. You can’t run from your own head.

Peter sucked in a sobbing breath and ran faster, desperately trying to ignore the building urge to kill. Attack. Follow orders.

He skidded around a corner and through a set of doors, leapt down a flight of stairs, rolled to his feet, and kept running.

Stark is here. The AVENGERS are here. This only ends when they die.

Peter turned another corner so fast that he slammed into the wall. He recovered swiftly and raced over to the keypad on the nearby wall. He pressed a couple buttons and a ballistic-proof glass door slid open to reveal an empty containment cell.

NO.

The fog seethed and Peter froze for a few seconds, his hand still held outstretched. 

He was dizzy. 

What was happening?

Kill Stark.  

But Peter didn’t want to do that. Why would he kill someone? He wasn’t supposed to hurt people, right?

Hurry.

A fuzzy image of May, covered in her own blood and lying helpless at Stark’s feet pressed itself against Peter’s eyes. 

Hurry.

Peter shook his head with a sudden jolt and before the fog could take over again, he slapped a button on the keypad and dove through the open door of the cell. The door slammed shut behind him, and he dropped to the ground, limp with relief.

You can’t save him . Schmidt’s voice whispered in his ears so clearly that he whipped his head around to look for her. You’re mine .

Peter was dizzy.

The fog was filling his mind, and he finally stopped fighting it.

His expression smoothed out to blankness. He stood up. He took a few steps towards the door. He drew back his fist. 

He needed to get out. He had a job to do.

Kill Stark.

****

“Boss, Miss. Parker is yelling for you.”

Tony blinked open his sleep-clouded eyes at the sound of FRIDAY’s voice and he frowned at the ceiling in confusion. 

“Peter has left his room and is running for the containment ward.”

Tony sat up, suddenly wide awake. He tugged the catheter off of his face and stumbled out of the bed and towards the door.

Peter needed him.

He didn’t remember much of his mad dash to the cells, but by the time he made it to the proper hallway his breath was coming in high, wheezing gasps that hurt his sore throat. He heard voices before he turned the corner and saw May kneeling in front of a closed cell.

“Sweetheart, please stop,” she begged, openly crying. “You’re hurting yourself.”

Tony covered the last few steps between himself and May, but he froze at the sight of Peter in the cell. His face was blank and he showed no sign of having heard his aunt. He was slamming his fist into the cell door over and over, robotically methodical despite his bleeding knuckles and the fact that the cell door hadn’t so much as cracked.

Tony had designed those cells himself. They would hold anyone short of the Hulk, and Peter had known that.

Tony half-sat half-collapsed to the ground beside May and he flinched when Peter punched the door again and left a red smear of blood on the glass. 

“We need to get him out,” May sobbed, clutching at Tony’s arm.

Tony had left his tablet in the hospital room. The only thing that escaped when he opened his mouth was a dry wheeze.

He could only shake his head helplessly at May. They couldn’t get Peter out before he snapped back out of the HYDRA control. They couldn’t even try to sedate him without risking hurting him or letting him escape.

It hurt Tony to watch him do it, but he knew that Peter’s efforts to escape the cell would heal quickly. If Peter hurt someone else, that wound wouldn’t go away ever.

He reached up and placed his palm on the glass, trying to catch Peter’s gaze. Peter’s arm was cocked back for another punch, but he paused when his eyes met Tony’s. There was a moment when recognition flashed in Peter’s eyes and Tony hoped, but then Peter’s blank expression twisted in a sneer and he pounded on the glass with renewed fury.

Tony fell back from the door and curled his outstretched hand against his chest. He’d made it worse. That was his kid in there, hurting himself, and he couldn’t do anything. Genius. Billionaire. Former playboy. Philanthropist. Superhero. And all of it meant nothing because he was useless here when it truly mattered.

“Tony, please, do something,” May begged, flinching at Peter’s every bloodied punch against the glass but apparently unable to look away. “Please.”

Tony’s eyes blurred; when he blinked, a wet line of tears rolled down his cheek. 

He couldn’t do anything. He could only hope that Peter snapped out of it quickly. The mind control had only lasted a few minutes previously. It couldn’t be that much longer this time. 

That’s what he hoped, but after nearly twenty minutes, he was getting desperate.

There were streaks of blood all across the cell door now, but it had yet to crack. Peter didn’t seem to care about the uselessness of trying to break down the door. He had briefly abandoned the door to crawl around the walls and ceiling of the cell, looking for a different escape, but he quickly returned to the door when that didn’t reveal anything.

Sometime in the middle of Peter’s attack, there was a clearly audible snap . Peter’s face didn’t show any reaction to the sound, but his wrist didn’t move right after the sound.

May buried her face in Tony’s shoulder and sobbed harder.

Tony couldn’t bring himself to look away.

“Tony?” Pepper’s voice floated around the corner and Tony’s head whipped towards the sound. “FRIDAY told me to come down here….” Pepper rounded the corner and her voice trailed off as she took in the scene. “Oh, shit,” she breathed. 

There were a couple seconds where Pepper was silent. The expression on her face told Tony that she was forming a plan. He was grateful. He didn’t know what to do.

Pepper was moving again and she was suddenly pulling both May and Tony to their feet. “Let’s get you out of here. I’ll send Dr. Adams down here instead. She can help Peter when he recovers.”

May shook her head wildly and tried to push away Pepper’s gentle grip. “No! No. I can’t leave him.”

“You can’t help him right now,” Pepper said firmly. “And your presence might be making it worse.”

May wailed , but she allowed herself to be led out of the cell block. The sound of Peter attacking the cell followed them for several hallways. 

Pepper carefully deposited May in a chair then she practically forced Tony to sit down as well. She pulled out her phone, and Tony dimly heard her calling Happy to stay with May and Dr. Adams to see Peter.

“Tony, hey.” Tony blinked and Pepper was suddenly kneeling in front of his chair, her thumbs on his cheeks, wiping away the tear trails. “Focus on me, ok? Everything’s going to be ok.”

Tony opened his mouth uselessly and reached up to grab one of Pepper’s hands. He could only shake his head.

Nothing was ok. Peter was hurting himself, but he couldn’t help him. He didn’t know where to begin with undoing the HYDRA control. He didn’t know what to do, period.

Tony’s one use was that he was able to fix things. He was supposed to know what to do.

He was useless here.

“Nuh uh,” Pepper chided, her own voice a little shaky. “No spiraling. I can see you doing it.”

Tony huffed out a chuckle and clutched Pepper’s hand more tightly. She knew him so well. It was a wonder that she had stuck around despite that fact.

“Boss,” FRIDAY interrupted from her ceiling speakers. “Dr. Adams is sending word that Peter has calmed down. She managed to administer a sedative and is bringing him back to the medical wing.”

Tony’s shoulders bowed and he exhaled shakily. He looked up at Pepper, unsure what to do now. 

“Let’s get you back to your room,” Pepper said gently, rising to her feet. 

Tony allowed himself to be tugged back out of the chair. He glanced over at May and found her crying into the shoulder of Happy’s jacket. Surprisingly, Happy actually seemed like he was comforting her. Huh. Something to think about later. For now, he was reassured that May would be taken care of.

It took longer than it should have for Tony to make it back to his hospital room.  He leaned heavily on Pepper the whole way.

When they finally arrived and Tony was settled on the bed, Pepper climbed up beside him and rested his head on her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, just let Tony sort his own thoughts out.

“I think I’m a dad,” Tony rasped out, glancing at Pepper’s face. The sun was just beginning to rise, and its rays slipped into the room to light up Pepper’s hair in a fiery halo.

“I think you’ve been one for a while,” Pepper whispered back, her expression soft.

Tony caught up Pepper’s hand and studiously inspected her neat fingernails even as he brokenly admitted, “I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.”

His voice was barely there, but Pepper seemed to catch his words.

“It’s ok to be scared,” she said, tilting Tony’s head with her free hand so he would look at her. “But, Tony, I know you’ll be amazing as a dad. You already are.”

Tony’s lips twisted in a sardonic smile and he gestured at the hospital room. Obviously, he wasn’t doing a good job now. His kid was sedated in the room down the hall.

“You’ll figure this out,” Pepper said firmly. “You found Peter before those people could do anything else, and you brought him home. You’ll be able to work through this too.”

“He deserves better,” Tony rasped, another tear escaping his eyes.

He couldn’t remember the last time he cried this much.

“He already has the best.”

The couple fell silent, and when the sun rose on them, it was to the picture of Tony asleep in Pepper’s arm, tear tracks still glittering on his cheeks.

Chapter Text

Pepper had had to leave for a board meeting just after the sun rose, and Tony was left working alone. 

He had gotten some more of his equipment brought up from his lab– under the disapproving glare of Dr. Adams– and he hadn’t stopped his work since. He was doing as much research into HYDRA mind-control tactics as he could, gleaning information from the released SHIELD files and the occasional hacked government database. For hours he built up holographic designs, discarded them, went back to researching, then created a new design only to have the cycle repeat itself. 

He had come up with nothing useful. He had been at it for hours, and he still was no closer to figuring out how to help Peter. 

Just like Dad… Always letting your kid down.

Tony swiped a hand down his wearied face. 

“Boss, Peter is awake and seems to be in distress,” FRIDAY announced.

Tony immediately pulled up the security footage on his tablet of Peter’s hospital room. Peter was restrained with padded cuffs holding him to the bed (and if the sight of that didn’t turn Tony’s stomach…), but he was fighting against the restraints and shouting for his aunt.

“Fri, patch me through,” Tony croaked. 

“On it.”

Tony gave it a moment, then he cleared his throat as best he could and called Peter’s name.

Peter stopped struggling and went abruptly still. “Mr. Stark?” Peter replied, his voice high and shaky. “Are you ok? Is May ok? She was gone and I’m back here somehow and I…” His voice broke; Tony’s heart broke with it. 

“Your aunt is fine,” Tony assured him, tapping at his tablet as he spoke. “Went for lunch.” 

Damn. His throat was hurting again. Dr. Adams was going to yell at him.

“Your voice…” Peter said hesitantly. “Is that because of me?”

Tony cursed at himself for not thinking to hide the injury somehow. “Wasn’t your fault, kid.”

Peter went quiet for a few seconds. “Can you put me back in the cell, please?”

“What? No.”

Peter lifted his head and made eye contact with the security camera. “It’s getting worse, Mr. Stark. I don’t… I don’t think I can stop myself again.”

“Letting you hurt yourself instead is not an option.”

“Please,” It sounded like Peter was crying. Oh, fuck, he was crying. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Please, don’t let me hurt anyone.”

Shit.

Tony glanced back at the scribbled notes and open files that were the sum of his research into a cure for Peter. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough, and he didn’t have time to make it better.

Peter needed a cure, but Tony couldn’t be the one to provide it. He had to accept that he couldn’t be the one to fix things.

“We’ll figure this out.” Tony’s voice broke and his last words were barely audible . “I promise.”

Peter nodded duly and dropped his head back to the bed. There was a few seconds of silence, then May re-entered Peter’s room and went to comfort him. 

Tony turned off the tablet and carefully set it aside.

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and spent a moment perched on the edge, gathering himself. He stood up a little too fast, stumbled a bit, then headed out the door. 

“Dr. Adams is headed your way,” FRIDAY warned as he strode down the hall. 

“She’ll have to catch me,” Tony muttered, picking up his pace.

He made it out of the medical wing without incident, but he had to pause for a moment to catch his breath before he could move further. Once the moment passed, he straightened determinedly and made for his lab. 

“Dr. Adams is asking after your location, Boss.”

“Tell her that’s classified,” Tony retorted, voice scratchy. 

“She won’t like it.”

Tony reached the door to his lab and he slapped at the lock pad beside it uselessly until FRIDAY took pity and unlocked the door for him.

“‘M busy, Fri.”

Tony made a beeline for his desk, and he immediately began sifting through the various mechanical and paper rubbish that coated the furniture like icing. The half-disassembled gauntlet that had been sitting on his desk since the start of this whole mess was knocked to the floor in his fumbling. Thankfully, his true quarry was near the top of the pile and it only took a few seconds searching before he held up the infamous flip phone triumphantly. 

“Dr. Adams has asked me to let you know that she will be calling Miss. Boss if you don’t return.”

Tony scowled at the ceiling like it would make Dr. Adams stop caring about his well being. “Tell her to give me fifteen minutes.”

FRIDAY was silent for a few seconds. “She says that you have ten.”

Tony blew out a breath and looked down at the phone in his hand. He didn’t even know if Steve had the phone still. Natasha could have kept it, or maybe Steve himself had tossed it after Tony had made his resentment clear. The chances that he would pick up the phone and still be willing to help were slim.

But Tony had to try.

The phone had only rung twice before the call was picked up.

“Tony? What’s wrong? Is Peter ok?”

It took Tony a moment to find his voice past the lump that had appeared in his throat. “Peter’s fine for now, but he’s getting worse. I… I can’t find a treatment for him in time to help.” Damn. That stung to admit. “I know you probably just made it back to Wakanda, but if you’re still offering to help–”

“Tony,” Steve said, gently cutting off his nervous rambling. “We can be there within the hour. I was hoping you might change your mind.”

Of course he had. 

“You’re sure the Wakandans can help him?” Tony did his best to make his dying voice sound fierce.

“I am.”

Tony perversely wished he didn’t feel so reassured by the simple confidence in Steve’s words. 

“I’m trusting you, Rogers. Don’t let me down again.”

And with that, Tony ended the call with the click of the phone snapping shut.

**

Tony watched through the windows as Peter stood on the green, waiting to greet the landing quin-jet.

“You’re brooding,” Rhodey accused, crossing his arms. 

Tony briefly glanced at his friend standing by his side before he turned his attention back to the window. The quin-jet fully landed and its cargo-bay ramp had barely settled to the ground before Peter was running to give both Rogers and Barnes a hug in turn.

“I don’t want him to leave,” Tony admitted, absently tugging at his sleeve cuffs. 

“Wakanda.” Rhodey shook his head and let out a low whistle. “Hell of a field trip.”

Tony nodded in agreement, still staring as Peter laughed at something Steve said. 

He wanted to be out there, but Dr. Adams and basically everyone else had decided that seeing Tony might set Peter off and that it was safer for him to remain inside. 

Honestly, if Dr. Adams wasn’t so intent on Tony’s health, he would think she was trying to kill him.

“He’ll be ok,” Rhodey declared reassuringly. 

But what if I won’t be?

Steve clapped Peter on the shoulder and began to lead him to the plane.

Fuck. Tony couldn’t do this.

“Tones, wait!”

But it was too late. Tony was already running out the door towards the plane.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter had just begun to turn around when he was struck head on by an emotional engineer.

Tony clutched Peter tightly and desperately hoped that his appearance wouldn’t rekindle the HYDRA demons in Peter. “I needed to say goodbye.”

Peter tensed for a moment, but when he didn’t break into a homicidal trance, he relaxed fully into Tony’s embrace. “I’ll be ok, Mr. Stark,” he murmured. 

“I know you will.” Tony gave Peter a final squeeze before pulling away. He attempted a smile, but it came off sadder than intended. “Won’t stop me from worrying.”

Steve and Bucky were awkwardly hovering behind Peter’s shoulder, and Tony suddenly sent them both a stern glare. “I’m trusting you to keep him safe.” 

Steve straightened to attention and his replying nod carried the weight of a broken bridge slowly being rebuilt. “I promise.”

“I could ask King T’challa for permission for you to come as well,” Bucky suggested hesitantly. “He would probably agree.”

Tony’s first instinct was to jump to agree, but he reigned himself back in with a careful breath. “No,” he said regretfully. “I have work to do here. General Ross will come sniffing around any time now.”

Peter smiled up at Tony and gave his hand a parting squeeze before he started to edge towards the plane. “I’ll be back before you know it, Mr. Stark!”

“Yeah, kid,” Tony scoffed. “I should enjoy the break.”

No one believed for a second that he meant it.

“Take care, Tony,” Steve said gravely, then turned to enter the ship as well.

Tony watched the trio walk away, and he saw Peter’s parting wave before the bay door closed behind them. He remained where he was, watching, even as the quin-jet’s engines kicked up a gusty wind in his face. He didn’t move even after the jet had disappeared into a speck on the horizon. 

The faint sound of footsteps approached from behind him.

“Tony?” Pepper’s soft hand slipped into Tony’s roughly calloused one. “Let’s head back inside, ok?”

Tony nodded dully and allowed himself to be led away.

“This was the right thing,” Pepper assured him. 

“I know,” Tony replied hoarsely. “But it hurts.”

“I know.”

The pair walked back to the compound hand in hand even as the quin-jet drew ever further away. 

“...So, about the Accords….”

“Legal dropped off what you’ll need in your lab.”

“Am I getting predictable?”

Pepper smiled and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Only to me.”

****

“What’s Wakanda like?” Peter asked. He was practically vibrating in place with barely-restrained excitement. “I mean, I know they have Vibranium, and I saw the announcement about offering humanitarian help, but I don’t know much else.”

Bucky smiled and his eyes went slightly distant. “It’s amazing. The tech is beyond me, but it’s what I always imagined the future would be like.” He glanced at the floor and his smile grew more wistful. “It’s also one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. Between living in New York, then the war, then after….” Bucky trailed off, shaking his head. “I’ll take my goats.”

Peter perked up excitedly. “Do I get to meet the goats?”

“I actually haven’t met them yet either,” Steve chimed in from the cockpit, his tone playfully accusing.

“Yeah! We need to meet Pre-serum Steve.”

“Careful. Anyone who meets Pre-serum Steve immediately loses IQ points.” Bucky tilted his head thoughtfully. “Not that different from current Steve now that I think about it.”

Steve twisted in his seat to shoot a glare over his shoulder. “Now, hang on.”

“I’m willing to take the risk,” Peter assured Bucky gravely.

Bucky nodded back, equally grave.

“Guys,” Steve objected in an almost-whine.

Peter kept his serious expression for all of three more seconds before he broke and began to giggle hysterically.

Bucky snorted and knocked his shoulder against Peter’s with a grin. 

“I swear, I will turn this plane around,” Steve threatened, voice raised to be heard over Peter’s laughter.

Peter snorted, choked, and fell out of his chair.

“For fuck’s sake,” Steve grumbled, but when he turned away from Bucky and Peter, there was a smile quivering at the corners of his mouth. 

**

The flight to Wakanda was long (and pretty boring), but Peter refused to sleep through it. When Bucky or Steve tried to get him to take a nap on the plane’s cot, he simply said that he wasn’t tired. He did his best to stifle his yawns, but he didn’t think he was fooling anyone.

Until Peter got to Wakanda and got the HYDRA crap out of his brain, he couldn’t let his guard down. Sleeping meant inviting a new nightmare of Schmidt and waking up to the aftermath of attacking his friends. It wasn’t worth it.

His eyelids grew heavier by the hour, and Steve and Bucky were starting to shoot him concerned looks, but all of that flew out the window when they neared Wakanda.

The sun was barely risen and shadows still clung to the grassland far below. They passed a herd of honest-to-goodness gazelle and Peter nearly leapt out of the plane to get a closer look. Then, the scenery shifted to a forested mountain-range. There was so much of it! So many trees and so much life within them. Peter had never had a chance to see nature like this outside of its small containers in places like Central Park. Even the Avengers Compound only had a tamed stretch of land that was barely outside of the lights and smog of New York. It was nothing like being faced with actually wild land.

Bucky had been watching Peter’s amazement with a small smile on his face, and he tapped Peter’s shoulder and pointed him towards the plane’s front windows where the forest was approaching at an alarming rate. 

“Might want to hang on for this part, kid.”

They were flying straight at the side of a mountain, and Peter barely had time to wonder why Bucky seemed so calm about crashing before they had passed through the ground and emerged into a shining cityscape.

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, grinning contentedly. 

Wakanda wasn’t anything like New York. There were skyscrapers, and the city bustled with life, but everything was clean and bright and beautiful. Actual flying cars were passing in ordered traffic beneath them, but Peter could make out the bright trappings of a traditional market as well. There was so much technology and culture and a particular blending of the two, and it was all so alien but amazing. Peter barely understood half of what he was looking at, but he knew that he wanted to learn more.

“We’ll be landing at the palace in just a minute,” Steve informed him.

They were indeed flying towards a large, circular building set in the center of the city. A river wound past the building’s base, and the double towers set on either end of it seemed to caress the sky. It didn’t look anything like the European castles that Peter was used to seeing photos of, but he didn’t have to look for more than a second to know that it was the home of a King. 

Peter suddenly felt very small in the face of it.

“So, are we, like, meeting King T’challa?” he asked nervously, still staring at the glittering palace.

“He’ll probably greet us,” Bucky replied, apparently unbothered. “We’ll be seeing his sister, Shuri, to get you looked at anyway.”

Peter would later deny the undignified sound he made at that pronouncement. “Like a princess ? Sister of the King of this country kind of princess?”

Bucky laughed at the expression on Peter’s face. “She’s not too big on the fancy manners stuff, so you can stop panicking. No one is expecting you to bow.”

“They’re royalty . Like a Disney movie!”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “And you’re Spider-man. Names and titles are just words, kid. Don’t think too much of it.”

Peter processed that advice for a moment, then he had another thought. “Do they know I’m Spider-man? Because I know I kind of told you and Mr. Rogers who I was, but I don’t usually and I’d rather no one knew that doesn’t have to.”

“Did you just call me Mr. Rogers?” Steve cried, offended.

“I don’t think I mentioned you being Spider-man,” Bucky replied with a thoughtful look, ignoring Steve. “But Shuri will probably figure it out within a few minutes of stepping into her lab. You don’t have to worry. They’ll keep your secret.”

The plane halted its forward motion and began a hovering descent onto a landing pad.

Peter nodded and blew out a breath, shaking his hands out nervously. 

The plane touched down and Bucky clapped Peter on the back with a mischievous smile on his face. “Time to meet some royalty.”

Steve joined them in the plane’s bay, and they all walked out together as the doors lowered. Peter was trailing slightly behind the older men, bouncing on his toes to try and get rid of some of his nervous energy.

“Captain Rogers. White Wolf.” A deep, accented voice rose to greet them as they descended. “It is good to see you return.”

“King T’challa,” Steve greeted in return, briefly clasping arms with the other man.

Bucky didn’t say anything, but he smiled broadly and when Steve stepped away, he clasped hands with T’challa as well and gave him a swift hug. 

“And you must be Peter,” T’challa said warmly. The full force of his keen gaze was suddenly resting on Peter and his brain promptly lost the ability to form a coherent thought.

Peter waved, then aborted that motion in favor of an awkward bow, and then he abandoned that to freeze like a broken robot.

“Kid, what are you doing?” Bucky sighed, an amused grin hiding behind his exasperated expression. 

“There is no need to stand on formality here,” T’challa assured him, politely hiding his own amusement. “You are the friend of my friends. Wakanda is happy to help in any way we can.”

Peter was pretty sure that his face was literally on fire from how red it was, but he managed to unfreeze long enough to nod and distantly mumble thanks. 

“Shuri is waiting for you in her lab. We have rooms prepared as well for you to rest after your flight.”

Bucky clapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder who– flustered as he was– nearly lost his balance under the movement. “I’ll show him the way.” 

Peter looked back over his shoulder at where Steve and King T’challa remained in front of the plane and sent Steve a panicked look. He wasn’t ready to meet a princess. He had already botched his meeting with the king!

Steve shot him a reassuring smile, but his expression read more amused than concerned. Well, at least someone would enjoy Peter’s failure at social interactions.

“Come one, kid,” Bucky said cheerfully. “It’s not like she bites.” He paused and seemed to reconsider his statement. “Actually, better not bet on that.”

Peter walked on with Bucky, but his panicked groan trailed them for two hallways. 

He was so not ready to meet a princess.

Chapter Text

“If it isn’t my favorite white boy!”

“If it isn’t my favorite princess.” Bucky grinned broadly at the girl in front of him and held out his fist for what turned out to be a complicated handshake. 

Princess Shuri, who was probably only a few years older than Peter, laughed brightly then sobered to frown mockingly at Bucky’s ratty T-shirt and jeans. “Who gave you permission to come into my lab looking like a hobo? Have you been taking fashion advice from T’challa again?”

“Hey,” Bucky protested, still smiling. “It was a rough vacation.”

Shuri made a scornful sound. “See if I ever let you leave again. But I hear that you brought me a new project?”

Peter hesitantly stepped forward from his place behind Bucky and he offered Shuri a small wave. “I’m Peter. Peter Parker.” His voice cracked slightly on his name and he promptly went crimson again. 

“You are the one that HYDRA tried to recruit?” Shuri said doubtfully, clearly taking in Peter’s small frame that was practically swallowed by his oversized hoodie. The hoodie was actually an old MIT one that belonged to Mr. Stark. It had ended up in Peter’s things somehow, and he had happily donned it for the trip.

“Shuri,” Bucky cried excitedly, clapping Peter on the shoulder again. “He quoted that vine at the HYDRA asshole. The one about Steve’s shield.”

“How did you take down Captain America?” Peter intoned automatically. He blushed even darker directly afterwards, but he dared to meet Shuri’s gaze. “It was a stressful situation.”

“Steve was so confused,” Bucky said gleefully. 

Shuri gasped and tapped at the beads of the bracelet on her wrist. “We need to show him the video.” A hologram popped up from the bracelet (and wow was Peter internally geeking out about that), and he caught a second of the video that started to play before Shuri gathered herself and dismissed it. “Later. Later. We must look at you first.”

Before Peter quite knew what was happening, he was hustleted over to a table and laid atop it. There were no visible wires or sensors on the flat surface, but it was obviously giving Shuri some type of information. A pale blue light from a scanner drifted over Peter’s body from above and Shuri let out a quiet gasp.

“You’re Spider-man,” she declared, looking at Peter wide-eyed. 

Bucky sent Peter an apologetic look that said “Told you she’d figure it out.”

“Y-yeah,” Peter replied, uncertain what to do with the manic expression on Shuri’s face. “You’ve heard about me?”

“I’ve seen the videos. I have so many questions! How did you manage to make your suit stick to so many surfaces? I made some prototype boots, but they did not work nearly as well.”

“Well, my ‘stickiness’ is actually a byproduct of the spider bite that gave me my powers,” Peter explained, shaking off some of his shyness in the face of science talk. He pressed a finger to the tablet on a nearby table and he lifted it into the air effortlessly. “See? Also, you made boots with dynamic adhesion?!”

Shuri watched Peter settle the tablet back onto the table with intense fascination. “Are your webs also organic? The tensile strength is unmatched.”

“No, those are my own formula. I built the web-shooters myself.”

The two teenagers paused and stared at each other for a moment, then they both burst into a stream of technical questions at the same time.

“Hang on, hang on,” Bucky protested, interrupting the outwardly incomprehensibly technical conversation. “Weren’t we doing something here?”

Shuri and Peter paused and looked at each other in confusion before collectively remembering that Peter was still on the examination table.

“We will talk later then,” Shuri said decidedly. 

Peter nodded in agreement. “We also promised Steve a vine compilation screening.”

Shuri’s grin took on a devilish glee. “That will be second priority.”

Bucky looked between the two teenagers and he had a moment to regret introducing them to each other. 

“As for you, Spider-boy, I see nothing to prevent us from using the technology developed for White Wolf. Your limited exposure to HYDRA’s machine will make your recovery much faster as well.”

Peter’s expression brightened and the dark marks beneath his eyes were temporarily unnoticeable. “You can fix it? Really?”

Shuri raised an eyebrow and performed a remarkably good impression of Elle Woods. “What? Like it is hard?”

Peter snorted out a laugh while Bucky just looked confused but vaguely proud. 

“We will have to put you to sleep for most of the treatment,” Shuri warned, tone growing more serious. “But we can be finished by tomorrow night. Give me a day and all of this HYDRA kak will be behind you.”

Peter’s smile faltered and he looked at Shuri uncertainly. “Is there a chance the HYDRA control would kick in while I’m asleep? I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Shuri snorted in amusement. “As if you could touch our Dora .” She met Peter’s concerned gaze and softened slightly. “You are safe here, I assure you. The Dora Milaje will remain on guard, but nothing will go wrong. I know what I am doing.”

Peter blew out a slightly shaky breath and he nodded with a renewed grin. “Well, in that case, I’m ready to get started.”

****

It took a force of nature to get the UN to agree on anything.

Tony Stark on a mission could give Mother Nature a run for her money.

The Accords amendments had already been in the works before Peter had disappeared, but Tony hadn’t really been giving it his full effort and he had let it drop off his radar completely in his search for Peter. Now, he was channeling all of his anxiety– don’t think about Peter being gone don’t think about him being too far away to help – into rallying the flagging politicians and getting the amendments ratified. The Accords had Tony’s full attention, and it would take more than the representatives of one-hundred and seventeen countries to stand against his laser focus. 

It took exactly two days to get the Accords amendments ratified with a majority vote in the UN.

Tony called Steve Rogers that night.

“How’s the kid doing?” 

“Good. Great actually. Princess Shuri is certain that he will have a full recovery.”

All of the air rushed out of Tony’s lungs like relief was an elephant that had taken a seat on his chest.  Peter was ok. Peter was going to be ok. “That’s good,” he croaked out dimly. Fuck. Maybe they could finally get this HYDRA mess behind them.

“I should have called to let you know,” Steve said hesitantly. “I’m sorry.”

Tony had the feeling that he wasn’t just apologizing for neglecting to make a phone call.

“The Accords amendments went through this morning,” he said abruptly. “The news will be coming out officially tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

Tony didn’t know what to make of the forceful exhale of that word, so he kept talking. “The Avengers now have emergency powers for time-sensitive missions, and we’re retaining the right to refuse missions that don’t have an eighty percent majority vote in the UN.” Tony hesitated for a moment, but he continued when Steve remained silent. “You and the other Rogue Avengers have also been granted a pardon. Some strings attached, but nothing crazy. Community service is in there somewhere, I think. Lang and Barton have been granted a reduced sentence on their house arrest if they take the deal as well.”

The silence on the other end of the phone stretched. 

“Got anything to say, Capsicle?”

Steve blew out a slow breath and it crackled in the phone’s microphone. “Why are you doing this?”

Tony had wondered that too.

“Call it an olive branch.” An apology. A thank you. 

“And if we took this deal,” Steve said slowly. “We would be back at the compound? You want us at the compound?”

No! You can’t trust him, Tony’s mind was screaming.

But if he couldn’t trust Steve, why had he trusted him with Peter? If he wasn’t willing to give reconciliation a chance, why would he let his kid anywhere near him?

“I hold grudges,” Tony said flatly. Steve snorted in amused agreement. “But I’m willing to admit that the team is better off together. I’m willing to try working together again.”

“And Bucky?”

Grainy camera footage of a man stalking towards a crashed car. Wild eyes barely meeting Tony’s gaze before there was gunfire.

Bucky talking Peter down from the same control he had suffered under. Bucky standing in front of Peter, protecting Tony’s kid.

“I can’t promise to be nice,” Tony’s voice came out rough. “But the invitation is for all the Rogue Avengers.”

Steve was silent again for a moment, but he replied before Tony could get too nervous. “Thank you, Tony.” Steve sounded painfully sincere. “I’ll let you know what we decide.”

Tony swallowed and nodded despite the fact that Steve couldn’t see him. “Say hi to the kid for me.” Bloody hell he sounded like a divorced parent battling for custody.

Steve let out a small chuckle. “I’ll pass it on.” He hung up without a proper goodbye.

Tony lowered the phone from his ear with a heavy breath. He stared off into the distance for several minutes before snapping out of his reverie. If the Rogues were returning to the compound, there was work to be done.

****

After everything that had happened, the process to remove the HYDRA conditioning felt rather anticlimactic. There was no big fight or last minute chase to track down a cure like in the movies. Peter felt like there should at least have been some kind of light show at the climactic moment where he was fully cured.

But no.

He just laid down on a padded table with sensors stuck to his skin and a machine above his head. One moment he was awake, and the next he was having probably the best sleep of his life. Everything was dark, cool, and soft, and– most importantly– he didn’t dream.

When Peter woke up, it was to the sound of a Vine compilation playing in the background.

“I don’t get it,” Steve grumbled. “Why does he have a towel on his head?”

“It’s the normal fashion,” Shuri’s voice replied seriously. “We must get you to try it soon.”

“Don’t forget the tesla coil. That’s the best look on here,” Bucky chimed in.

“I like your accent. Where you from?” Peter mumbled wearily, his eyes still closed.

“I’m Liberian,” Shuri replied immediately. 

“I… thought you were Wakandan?” Steve said, utterly baffled. 

Peter snorted then began to giggle in quiet hysterics. 

“You good over there, kid?” Bucky asked, sounding amused.

Peter snorted again and laughed harder. 

He had just woken up from an extensive nap, but he still felt deliriously tired. More than that, he felt light. There was no brain fog or voices in his mind urging him to hurt his friends. He was safe, and for the first time since he was captured, he felt safe.

“Captain, maybe you should show Peter his room,” Shuri suggested, snickering a little herself. “His mind has put in a great deal of work, and he will be tired.”

“Good idea,” Steve agreed. He walked over to Peter and nudged at his shoulder gently. “Let’s go, kid.”

“But I wanna see the goats,” Peter protested in-between his slowly-dying giggles.

“Tomorrow,” Steve promised. “Let’s get you to bed first.”

“M’kay.” Peter made no move to get up.

Steve sighed fondly then scooped Peter up into his arms and turned to leave the room. He walked down a quiet hall and toed open a door with his foot to reveal a large, but comfortably decorated room.

“You better get your sleep or Tony’s going to come after me,” he said, depositing his sleepy bundle of Spider-child onto the bed.

Peter hummed in agreement but cracked open an eye and smiled at Steve before he left. “By the way. Thanks. For all–” He cut himself off with a yawn. “Thanks for all the things.”

Steve smiled back at him and made his way towards the door. “Sleep well, Queens.”

“Brooklyn Bastard,” Peter mumbled in reply.

Steve’s quiet laugh followed him out the door.

**

The sun was just barely rising when Peter padded out of his room in search of Steve and Bucky. He wasn’t sure where he was going, so it was probably a good thing that he spotted Bucky on a balcony after only walking down the hallway. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he got caught wandering around the palace.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Bucky didn’t turn away from where he was watching the run rise above the mountains. THe city was laid out beneath them in all its utopian glory and it seemed to glow in the golden light of dawn. “How are you feeling?”

Peter stepped up beside Bucky and leaned on the balcony’s railing. “Good. Really good, actually.” He glanced at Bucky out of the corner of his eye and noted how his hair was pulled back in a half bun and his beard was trimmed. He had exchanged his T-shirt and jeans for a tunic belted at the waist and a pair of sturdy pants tucked into combat boots. He had a folded blanket tied around his shoulder to cover his missing arm. He looked… relaxed. More at peace than Peter had seen him before. “Are you ok?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Bucky asked, giving Peter a sideways glance of his own.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that I was only with HYDRA for a week and I think I would go crazy if I had to go back. I can’t really guess how you feel.”

Bucky exhaled softly, eyes still on the steadily rising sun. “Did you know that Stark got the Accord amended? Steve, Sam, Wanda, and Natasha are all up for full pardons.”

“Oh.” Peter took a second to fully process what that meant. “That’s good, right? Does that mean you would be coming to live at the compound?”

Bucky nodded slowly. “That’s what Steve is planning.”

“And you?”

“I’m staying here.”

“Oh.”

Bucky sighed and rubbed his hand along the smooth metal of the railing. “I’ve been fighting in one war after another for most of my life. I’m tired.” He glanced down at the city again and at the bustling shapes of people starting their day. “This is the first place where I have been able to just… be.”

“What about Steve?”

Bucky shook his head with a fond scoff. “He could never stay out of a fight. We talked about it. He’ll be going back to the Avengers.”

Peter looked at the tense line of Bucky’s shoulders and the way he was clenching the railing, and suddenly his arms were wrapped around Bucky’s waist and he was hugging him fiercely. 

“Wha–”

“Thank you,” Peter said forcefully. “Thank you for protecting me and for helping bring me here. I’ll miss you.”

Bucky hesitantly rested his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Maybe I can come visit sometime.”

“You better.” Peter surprised himself when his voice came out misty. “No one else knows the truth about Steve being an asshole who does crimes.”

“Yeah, he’s the worst,” Bucky said easily, patting Peter’s shoulder.

“Fuck you too,” Steve’s dry voice came from behind them and Peter broke apart from the hug to see the two supersoldiers– American legends– pulling faces at each other.

“I was told we were meeting the goats today?” Steve said, smoothing his expression like nothing had happened.

“Don’t we need to get this one home?” Bucky asked, nudging Peter’s shoulder.

Peter thought about the pile of make-up school work that would be awaiting his return to New York. “Goats first,” he said decidedly.

They met the goats.

Pre-serum Steve immediately tried to headbut Human Steve’s leg and fell over.

It was a good way to say goodbye.

****

When the quinjet landed back in the Avenger Compound, Tony was waiting for it. He waited all of two seconds after the plane’s doors began to open before he was rushing forward to wrap Peter in the tightest hug he could manage.

“Mr. Stark, I’m fine,” Peter protested, trying to wriggle free of the suffocating embrace. “I didn’t even get stabbed a little bit this time.”’

Tony let out a shuddery breath and reluctantly let Peter go enough to hold him at arm's length and inspect him for any non-stab wound injuries. “Promise me something, kid. No field trips for a while.”

Peter’s face scrunched up in a way that made him look fascinatingly similar to a chipmunk. “Well, we have a field trip to MoMA coming up soon.”

“Fine. Just nothing outside the city. I’ll turn my back and next thing I know you’ll be fucking off to space.”

Peter rolled his eyes but he grinned. “Can’t be a friendly neighborhood Spider-man in space, Mr. Stark.”

Tony smiled down at his kid again, then he turned his attention to where Steve was emerging from the plane. 

“Sam and Natasha are on their way,” Steve reported, standing at an uncomfortable attention. “Wanda and Vision might take some convincing, but they’ll be here soon enough.”

Tony looked at Steve’s stiff posture and unsmiling expression and he offered out his hand. Steve looked at it suspiciously for a moment before clasping it in a firm handshake.

“Thank you for bringing back my kid safe,” Tony said gravely, making sure to meet Steve’s eye. He wasn’t good at being serious, but when it came to Peter’s safety, he would make an exception.

Steve held Tony’s gaze for a moment, then he finally nodded and relaxed. “We have a lot of work to do,” he warned.

“Sure,” Tony agreed easily. He glanced at Peter, then back to the compound that was empty for now but would soon be full again with the rest of the team. A new beginning. Hopefully a better one. “But we’ll figure it out together.”

The chasm was still there, but the bridge was slowly being rebuilt. And when it was done, the team would be stronger for it.

Earth’s mightiest heroes, brought together again for the sake of a kid in a red and blue onesie. 

Tony glanced at Peter again and smiled. It was definitely worth it.