Chapter Text
Although Stiles had returned, Peter hadn't been doing any better than he was, he was still in an almost dazed state, as if drugged by the same thing his friend was recovering from. None of them could fix it, not Pepper asking him if he wanted to help with papers for Stark Industries, not Bruce offering to help him get an early start on his science fair project, not even Stiles sleeping in his room. Tony had found them the night before, Peter in Stiles' arms, the pair of them sleeping like logs, but Peter woke just the same, quietly, slowly, and seeming drained of all his peppy energy.
That day, he had seemed particularly drained. Stiles was up and walking around but that day, Peter didn't want to see him, so the teens all scampered off to entertain themselves when Tony came down to talk to his mentee.
"Hey kid." He called out, waltzing into the room like he owned the place, because he did. He threw the Spider-man suit at his ward and smirked as he pouted when it hit him. "Suit up. I got somethin' to talk to you about."
"Mister Stark" that was another thing, he had yet to call him Tony since Stiles came back, "I really don't feel up to it."
"Mmm not an option kiddo, no sick notes today. Come on. Up and at 'em." He laughed when the boy groaned in dislike. "This is me not caring bud, get up."
"I really don't wan-"
"Ah!" Tony cut him off. "Suit. Now."
Moments later Peter left his room with a face like thunder, his mask hanging from his fingers and his suit on. "I'm ready. Now can you tell me what we are doing?"
"Nope." Tony tapped his watch and he too was clad in his suit. "Just follow me and don't pout." His mask flipped over his face, Peter putting his on, Iron Man flying through the ceiling that F.R.I.D.A.Y had just opened, and SpiderMan swinging out after him. "Think you can keep up Spiderboy?" He could practically feel Peter rolling his eyes under the mask. "Such a sulk!" He said through the coms. "Come on kid, almost there."
When they finally stopped, it was at the top of the Brooklynn Bridge. It reminded him of the time Coulson came to talk to him while he was drunk and eating doughnuts in a giant doughnut. He told that to Peter, but the boy didn't even twitch in motion of a smile.
Tomy took a deep breath and steadied himself for what was about to happen, a hard conversation he had gone through many times. "Okay kid, intervention."
Peter took off the mask and furrowed his brows.
"Things with you, recently, have not been okay." He turned to face him. "Wanna explain to me why?"
He shrugged, and Tony sighed. Peter pulled his mask off. "Mister Stark, if I knew? I would tell you. But I don't know. I just...it...it hurts."
"What hurts kid?"
"Everything. People. Thinking. I just..." he looked out at the water. "I can't help but feel like I'm nothing. When Stiles disappeared, it hurt everybody, they way it affected them, they all jumped in to find him. If I disappeared, would anybody even care? Would it matter? If I'm nothing without this suit" he ran his thumbs over the material of his mask, "then I shouldn't have it. Right?"
Tony was hurt by the words he had once said in anger towards the young boy. He had only been fifteen. A kid. Heck, he still was. Yet, he had been through hell and back, more than once. With Vulture, in Germany, with May, then Stiles. It was too much for a grown man, let alone a teenager, who still had to worry about school and hormones and college applications.
"Peter, I think...I think we need to get you in to...see...someone." Tony said delicately. Peter hadn't outright dismissed the idea of therapy when they brought it up during his hardest time, mere weeks after May had died and je was still refusing food, but Tony hadn't really pushed for it up either. "I think it might help. You...you really aren't okay kid, I just want for you to be okay."
"Mister Stark I..." Peter sighed. "I'm not gonna lie to you Mister Stark. I'm not fine, like, at all? B-but I...I wanna be."
"So you'll talk to somebody?"
Peter nodded and swallowed nervously, messing around with his fingers. "I just...I can't...stop...seeing her. Seeing them, all of them, but, mostly her." He grit his teeth and clenched his fists, feeling the open cuts twinge in dislike of being moved in such a way while they were still healing. "It's all my fault Tony. I did this."
Tony took a deep, harsh breath. "Kid. This is not on you." He let his hand rest on the boys shoulders. "Peter?" Ignored. "Pete, look at me." Ignored again, he saw Peter's eyes drifting off, his mind no doubt close behind. "Look, Pete. I...I really need to tell you something about that day."
Peter gave a dry, empty, near soulless chuckle. "Oh yeah? Like what? Like if I hadn't been pulling some moody teenager crap that it wouldn't have happened in the first place?"
Peter jerked away from the man and it was then that Tony could see. Peter had worn a suit with detachable gloves, a little too big since he had lost some weight. The gloves slipped down his pale skin and revieled raging marks. Tony saw red, as red as the fresh blood staining his wards suit. How did he miss this? "Damnit Peter Parker will you just listen to me for once?!" He snapped.
"Why the hell should I?! May is dead because of me!!"
"No she isn't!"
"Yes she is!"
"No she isn't, this is not because of you, she did not die because of you Peter Parker because if that asshole wasn't dru-" he cut himself off, skin paling, he hadn't meant to tell Peter this way.
"If...if who wasn't what, Mister Stark?" All of a sudden it was as if something had taken over the shy yet hyperactive teen he had met with striped twin bedsheets and a puppy dog look about him not all that long ago, and replaced him with something menacing, and hollow, something dark. He felt genuinely scared of how the boy had changed to this person infront of him, and attempted to swallow the anxieties overwhelming him. "Tell me. What you know. Now."
A nervousness that hadn't been present in his life since the last time he saw Hartley settled uneasily in the glow of his Arc Reactor. "The driver was drunk. It was a hit and run. The car behind May's, they just couldn't stop in time, so it made it seem like it was their fault."
Silence screamed in the air around them.
Peter's chest began to heave, his eyes ablaze with rage. "Is that why you never followed through with any charges? Because they didn't do anything?" What more could the older do than nod meekly. "You...you let me carry this around...for MONTHS?!" He threw a punch at the man, though his spider sense wasn't much of a challenge for the Iron Suit.
Tony dodged the movements, hoping he wouldn't be hit for Petere's sake more than hid own. He didn't want to hurt the kid, not any more than he already had. "You let me think it was my fault and it was some drunken idiot who couldn't even be bothered to stick around after?!" Another punch, another miss, and Peter felt like he could vomit right off the edge of the bridge.
"Peter, kid, you gotta calm down!"
"Who was it." Tony inhaled deeply, bit didn't answer. "Who. The hell. Was it."
"Harry Osbourne. Norman Osbourne's kid."
Peter ground his teeth together. "That spoiled rich kid? Oh then I bet Norman Osbourne just paid to have the data erased from any and all security cameras in the area, and probably paid off the police too!"
Tony supposed the time for secrets was over. "I asked the police not to tell you about it being a hit and run. Peter, you were so broken and they didn't find any proof until after the funeral, so, we told you it was the car behind May, and that it was just a simple accident, a problem with the brakes."
He couldn't even look at his mentor. He lied, he covered things up, and it hurt, it hurt too much to bear it any longer.
"I hate you."
He swung off and Tony wanted to go after him, he was sure something was about to go down at the Osbourne residence, but he was frozen in place, the words 'I hate you' echoing in his head, his chest rapidly rising and falling.
"F.R.I.D.A.Y, call the teenage mutant ninja nerds, Peter needs them."
"Right away sir."
He took a seat on the edge of the bridge and stared at the horizon where the sky and water seemed one in the same.
What had he done.
- the teenage mutant ninja nerds -
"Excuse me, I hate to interrupt." F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice rang out above the teens as they sat responsibly in Lydia's room, each working on their homework, surrounded by different books that were coated with vibrant sticky notes and varying highlighed sentences.
"WussU fryay?" Stiles' responded, words muffled by the thick highlighter held between his teeth.
Lydia rolled her eyes. "It's alright F.R.I.D.A.Y, everything okay?"
"Not particularly Miss Martin. Peter is in a state, and is headed toward Norman Osbournes home in New York. He needs you."
Their eyes all widened and MJ rose at lightning speed, her books falling from her lap with a thud that broke the silence. "Stiles, you need to drive us down there right now."
"Who's Norman Osbourne?" He grabbed his jacket and they started speeding off down the hall toward the garage.
"The Father of the kid who killed May Parker." Ned rushed past him and threw open the doors to the van. "Everyone in, now."
"Shit." Stiles clambered into the drivers seat and they sped off. "F.R.I.D.A.Y, directions please." The directions came up on a holographic screen on the front window. "Ned, MJ, context, now."
Ned swallowed nervously and looked to MJ. "MJ hacked into the security, before it was wiped clean, and we saw Harry Osbourne get out of his car, he couldn't even walk straight!"
"Dude was drunk beyond belief, and he got back in his car and drove off. Peter was finally doing better, and we found out Mister Stark knew. He told us we shouldn't tell Peter, and we agreed. Tony mustve told him." MJ added. "Look, we did it for Pete."
"Nobody thinks this is your fault." Lydia told them. "How do you tell someone something like that, there is no way you couldv'e known what he would do, what any normal person, would do." Lydia shot a glance to Stiles and he felt a lump form in his throat.
Ned shook his head. "You didn't know Peter right after it happened. He got really, really bad, he was so depressed. He didn't come to classes, he stopped his super hero patrols, and he got...he got a little dark."
"Dark how?" Isaac asked from the front seat, clinging to the door as Stiles turned a corner a little too closely. "Jeez Stiles be careful!"
"It isn't our place to say. It's Peters. Right now, we just need to be there for him, and get him out of his head."
"He's probably about to beat the living daylights out of Harry Osbourne." Ned added. "He may not seem like the type I know, but May was special, I can't, and do not want to think, about what Peter could do to this guy."
'Especially with his powers' Stiles thought to himself, turning another corner. "Are we almost there?!"
"Almost! Just hurry!"
It seemed to take forever for them to arrive, though they didn't bother with their suits. Stiles bolted upstairs with Isaac, throwing open doors across the seemingly neverending hallway. "Oh my god do rich people really not label every identical freaking door in their house what is wrong with them?!" Stiles growled as he came across another empty room.
"Stiles, do me a favor?" Isaac asked, his nonchalance aggravating Stiles even further. "Shut up for five seconds." He pointed to his ears and Stiles huffed, closing his eyes, the slowly building heat remaining at a level he labelled "near burnt pancake". The two supernaturals relied on their heightened senses to seek out their friend. Isaac twitched, and opened his eyes. "C'mon, quick, I know where he is!"
They sprinted and slammed into a door heavy enough both supernaturals groaned in pain, but it didn't stop them.
Peter was stood above Harry Osbourne, his knuckles and lip bleeding. At least he had been smart enough to take off his suit, he wasn't completely out of his mind, at least not before he arrived. Now though, chest heaving, bloody spit tricling from his lip, and a crazed look in his bloodshot eyes? Now, they couldn't be quite so certain.
"PETER!" Stiles grabbed at the boys shoulder, trying to tear him from the bloody mess of a man underneath him. "LET HIM GO! ISAAC, HELP!" The wolf stepped in as backup, each taking a shoulder and pulling him until the three stumbled back and hit the floor with enough force to elicit a grunt of pain even from Isaac.
"He...he k-killed...M-May." Peter stuttered out, wiping the drying blood from his already healing broken nose. "He was DRUNK! And he LEFT HER THERE ALONE TO DIE!" He tried to stand but the two boys held him to the ground. "He didn't...he didn't even call...call an ambulance." He forced out between ragged breaths and flowing tears.
"Then he isn't worth it." Isaac told him. The two eyed him curiously, tears slowing for Peter, the man on the floor groaning.
"Shut it jackass!" Stiles barked at what could have been a corpse if they hadn't arrived sooner.
"Peter, he did this okay? Not you! So what's killing him gonna do besides make you a murderer?" Isaac pleaded.
Peter shook his head and grit his bloody teeth. "He won't go to jail. Rich father wiped the security footage."
"Then let him live knowing what he's done." Isaac was reminded of his father, of the abuse, the pain. The Kanima taking that scumbags life never made him any less of a trauma inducer, it never gave Isaac peace, he was still in danger 24/7, only now he could fight back.
"Let him live knowing who he's hurt, and how, and trust me, one day, he will get what's coming to him." He looked to Stiles and they shared a silent thought.
Danny.
If anyone could get into the alleged missing security footage of this guy, then they could put him away, and Peter could get atleast some closure.
"Peter?" Stiles asked, shimmying his way from the floor and onto his knees to look at his hurt friend. "Peter." He softly took the boys face in his hand and turned it, only to be met with flooded brown eyes. "Hey. Let's go home, yeah?"
A moment passed.
A silent nod with falling tears gently brushed away..
"Okay, c'mon, lets go home."
One more kick to the spineless drunk and a threat to his existance for good measure.
"Holy crap Peter!" MJ helped the wolf lay him down, his head in her lap, taking a tissue from her pocket and dabbing at the blood on his face. "This is why we don't do impulsive things!"
"You s-should see t-the other g-guy." Peter forced a painful smirk.
Stiles watched as Lydia's eyes grew wide. "Stiles. We need to get back to the compound, or to a hospital."
He knew Peter was a bit beaten up but he had super healing, he didn't look like he needed a hos- Stiles nearly choked when he saw the blood on his sleeves. "Peter, what the hell did you do?" Stiles asked, pulling up the long stained sleeves, the angry cuts screaming out at them. "Damn it. Peter, w-why?" The boy didn't answer, but looked away from Stiles in shame. "Isaac." He looked up at his friend, his chest beginning to heave in panic. "W-what...what do we..."
"If we go to the hospital they're gonna ask how this happened, we can't exactly explain this away." Isaac told them. "Stiles, get us home. Now."
He shook his head. "Someone else drive." He held Peter closer to his chest.
He wasn't sure who took the wheel, and he didn't care.
Peter couldn't bare to look at Tony when they arrived back at the Compound after a long and silent drive. He still felt betrayed by the man, more so than when he took his suit away, told him he shouldn't have it if he was nothing without it. He felt like nothing without May.
"He went after him." Tony more or less stated than asked. He had a feeling this might happen. He wasn't stable right now, he was just a kid. But he wasn't just a kid. He was Spiderman, he had super strength - Tony just thought he was above something like this.
"Why did you tell him?" The teenage girl shoved at his chest. "Idiot!"
"I know okay?! I know!" Tony yelled, running his hands up and down his face. "How much damage?"
"Oh you'll find out." She stormed away from him to catch up with her friends, throwing the middle finger back at Tony. "Bruce is gonna get you patched up Peter." The boys helped him limp down the hall. "It's gonna be okay." Peter whimpered.
"Lydia, call Danny, tell him we need a favour and there's something in it for him if he does it. Stiles, help me out." Isaac hoisted the boy a little higher, and he flinched. "MJ, you much of a hacker?"
"Can be." She replied.
"Good, Danny might need a hand."
Peter whined heavily and he tripped. "Sorry Pete, we'll get you downstairs asap okay? He F.R.I?" Stiles called out to the A.I. desperately. "Could you take us down to the medbay and tell Bruce we are here please? Thank you!" He didn't wait for an answer, fumbling about as the three clambered into the waiting elevator, and he couldn't stop the thought crossing his mind that they had essentially made the medbay their personal hangout as of recent events. Heck, they even had their own bed sheets down there instead of the generic ones. "It's gonna be okay Pete. I promise."
He nodded at the comforting words, but passed out before he could hear his friends telling him they would fix it, before he heard Lydia come in with a confirmation that Danny and MJ had gotten hold of the video footage.
"Stiles-"
"Back off Stark." Stiles bit out, his eyes flickering like a lightbulb on its way to broken. "You lie to me about my Mother, and you lie to him about his Aunt. So right now? You do not get to speak. Get the hell out." He demanded, throwing a finger at the door.
"Kid, he needed to know."
"Then you should have told him when it happened. But since you didn't do that, you need to back off right now. So I'm going to say this one last time because I am so, so pissed at you. Get. Out." His calm voice was scarier than when he was yelling. Like the peace inside him made him capable of something more than he seemed.
Each of the teens stared him further into the pit of guilt than he already was, and he gave in. He felt awful that everything had gone so wrong so quickly, and he tried to crush the part of him that wished Stiles hadn't come back. That may have been when the trouble started, but it was also when Peter genuinely started to smile again. He didn't care how mad they were at him. They were still his boys.
And he would look out for them, even when Fury came to take them away.