Chapter Text
Ned really wished he’d asked more questions but it sounded like every word Peter got out cost him a great deal of energy and he figured it’d be best to simply hear him out and question him later. Which ended with him borrowing his mom’s car to drive around a few blocks, keeping an eye out for his clothes. The ones he’d given Spidey—Peter—but whatever.
A part of him wanted to complain about how vague Peter’d been. He couldn’t even tell him where exactly the clothes were, only their general location. It wasn’t very helpful, but Ned could tell the guy was freaking out so he pushed away his own irritation and instead parked his car before beginning to wander around, entering dangerous alleyways to check to see if the clothes were webbed up to the walls of dumpsters there.
It would have been much scarier had the city streets not been mostly deserted. Ned had been on his way back home from the dentist when his phone pinged with the messages of some of his classmates, all of them gushing about some kind of video of Spider-Man confronting the police. It’d prompted him to look for it, and then he’d just gaped down at the screen, where he could see Spider-Man coldly telling the cops shooting him to back away and warn the city to stay inside, where it was safe.
Had Ned not heard Spidey in person—and Peter Parker—before watching that video, he would have had to agree with the media and their government. This darker tone, this still posture, this intimidating aura around Spidey made him look like a threat to the city rather than one of the good guys. It looked so wrong.
Anyway, the police had taken Spidey’s warning to heart, for a change. Probably because he’d brought up that tragic death of the police captain’s daughter. Gwen Stacy. Ned couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful it must have been for him to bring her up in conversation like that.
So here Ned was, strolling along, looking for the clothes and keeping an eye out, just in case. He knew the police had yet to release the public. They still wanted everyone to remain inside, but considering Spider-Man had been the one to tell Ned to walk out again, well… he figured Peter wouldn’t have sent him on this search had it still been dangerous. Hopefully.
He entered the next alleyway and exhaled in relief. The familiar clothes were bundled together, tucked away near the wall and looking very unassuming. He recognized the Star Wars logo on the shirt and ran forward to pick them up. And now that he had the clothes, he could go toward Peter’s location. And this one was much more detailed thanks to him simply sharing his location with Ned. He would be much easier to find.
Getting back in the car, Ned checked his phone to make sure Peter hasn’t moved, then drove through the rather quiet streets of Queens. It didn’t take him long to reach the spot where Peter was, although then he realized he’d also have to climb up to the roof of a building that had a code, leaving him with climbing the fire escape as his only option. Great.
Snatching the clothes, Ned started ascending, huffing and panting and sweating profoundly. This wasn’t exactly helping his irritation, but he pushed through. He could ask what the hell was wrong with Peter once he reached him. Right now he just had to focus on breathing in and out and reaching the rooftop, where Peter had texted him he was.
Perfectly out of breath, Ned climbed over the edge and collapsed onto the cement roof with a groan. His side hurt as he tried to reorientate himself. His head was a little swirly as he gulped in air while attempting to get over turning sharply again and again for so long. He leaned his hands on his hips and wheezed.
“Never doing that again,” he gasped out. “Seriously, dude, there are lower buildings in the area, you kn—holy shit! Are you okay?”
Spider-Man was sitting with his back against the stone railing on the opposite side of the roof. One of his hands was pressed against his stomach and what seemed to be a batch of red webs stuck to it. His mask was still on his face despite having been alone up there, a little bit of blood-red smeared across its lenses. Actually, there were a lot of darker patches of red covering the entirety of the suit.
His slumped shoulders gave Ned the impression that he was completely exhausted and devoid of energy. They looked like they were supporting a heavy burden, the entire world just balanced there for Spidey to carry. His head hanging low was kind of giving the same message, almost like he was actually asleep and not even conscious enough to notice that Ned was now there.
But one of his legs was bouncing frantically, restlessly. His hands were twitching and fiddling in his lap. While his entire upper body seemed to be shut down and turned off, the lower part was clearly bursting with energy, yearning to move, do something. It was baffling to watch.
The small puddle of blood he was sitting in was alarming, though.
Rushing forward, Ned crouched in front of Spidey and looked him over frantically. “Shit. Um… you don’t look too good. Wow, okay, um… I guess that’s what happens when people face the Green Goblin, huh?”
He said it like a joke—and his voice was also high-pitched and hysterical—but Spidey flinched at the name of the villain like it was the worst thing Ned could have said. He let out a sort of guttural sound, not unlike a wounded animal, and shifted a bit before hissing in pain and pressing his hand more firmly against his stomach.
“What happened? Peter? Peter, hey, you have to say something ‘cause you’re freaking me out! What happened to you? I only saw the beginning of the fight and then you called me. I’ve no idea how it ended. Did he do this to you? Are you dying? Tell me you’re not dying!”
“…orn osbn,” he mumbled incoherently.
Ned furrowed his eyebrows. “What?”
Spidey’s free hand clenched. “Norm’n Osb’rn,” he said sharply. “It was Norman Osborn. It’s been him all along. I can’t… I found out a few hours ago and I just… I didn’t know what to do or what to think or—ow, ow, ow, ow!” He whimpered when his middle moved too much as he talked.
“What about Norman Osborn?” said Ned. “Do you want me to call him? What—”
“No!” Spidey’s head snapped up and his lenses locked with Ned’s eyes. “Do not contact him. Like, ever. He’s not who you think he is. He’s… he’s the Goblin. He’s been tricking me for months.”
Gaping, Ned reeled back. “No way…”
“I can’t believe I fell for it,” Spidey grumbled, head falling back against the railing. “I knew he was bad news. I knew he was hiding something. Or… I mean, I could tell something was off. I could feel it. Why couldn’t I have done something about it instead of standing aside and letting him go on like that? Urgh, this is why you can’t trust anyone!”
“Okay, okay, you’re going through… a lot,” observed Ned. He ignored Spidey’s snort. “But I think you’re still bleeding and it doesn’t look like a minor thing, you know? So we should get you someplace. Like a hospital or something, yeah? So they can help you before you bleed out and die. I can’t have Spider-Man die in front of me, that would be the opposite of cool and then the police would interrogate me and they’ll ask me why I never told them I knew where Peter Parker was, right? That’d be so bad—”
“No.”
“No what?”
Spidey’s head lolled slightly to the side. “No hospitals. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t—they’ll see—it’s a secret—I can’t trust them.”
Ned blinked at him. “Dude, I’m thinking that if you don’t let them do their thing, you’ll end up dying. Then it wouldn’t matter what they know or don’t know.”
For a second Spider-Man didn’t react, then he muttered, “Norman Osborn was Mr. X.”
“Mr. X?” It took him a second to remember. “Oh, Mr. X—the guy who’s helping you? Didn’t you just say he’s the—”
“Green Goblin.”
“So the one who killed Gwen…?”
Spidey let out a strangled sound as he wriggled a little, then got up on unsteady feet. Ned wanted to tell him to sit back down because he figured standing up when he was badly injured was not recommended, but the anger that radiated off of Spidey gave him pause and made him watch silently, his words lost deep in his throat.
Bringing his hand up, Spidey pulled his mask off his face in one fluid motion and crumpled the fabric in his hand as he started pacing back and forth. The only evidence that he was in pain was in the way his facial muscles would twitch a little from time to time into the beginning of a grimace before once more changing to form a frustrated scowl that didn’t seem to fit Peter’s face.
For a moment Ned had to force his mind not to freak out. He knew that Peter and Spider-Man were the same person. The fact that he’d seen Peter in the clothes he’d given Spidey kind of gave it away. And they were both aware of that, naturally. But it was one thing to know, and another thing to watch as Spider-Man pulled off his mask and turned back into the classmate Ned vaguely remembered going to class with in freshman year.
“God, I just… I want to kick myself,” said Peter. “I want to—I want to shake some sense into my past self, make him see that he could obviously not trust Norman Osborn. What was I thinking? Ned, he’s been trying to get me to work with him for months, ever since I first started wearing this stupid costume”—he waved the mask like a flag, a look of disgust on his face—“and I kept turning him down. I should have just stuck to it. I should’ve… I should’ve turned him down again. What was I thinking?”
Ned opened his mouth to speak, but Peter wasn’t done.
“No, you know what, I should’ve relied on more than just my spider-sense. Obviously that can’t be trusted. What kind of sixth sense for danger lets me feel comfortable around a monster like that? It should have been like a siren in my head the entire time I was alone with him, but noooooo, why would I be in danger while sharing the same space as the guy who’d murdered my girlfriend? That makes no sense, right? Right? That’s just so ridiculous, he's obviously a good guy that can be trusted. He’s in my corner, right? That’s what—that’s what he kept on telling me, at least. And, I mean, I could tell something was off but I literally had no one else and he was helping and…”
He faltered for a brief moment, his gaze glazing over a bit as he stared out at the view from their rooftop. Then his expression hardened. When Ned hesitantly turned to try and figure out what he was looking at, he found himself staring up at the distant but familiar tower with the glowing A at the top. Avengers Tower.
“And then Tony freaking Stark comes along and tells me Norman Osborn is bad news, and instead of listening to my instincts and gut feeling, I blame him of being biased and blind and trying to—to—I don’t even know. He hasn’t done anything to me since that first time all of the Avengers came after me. He saw me helping him out once and decided it was worth giving me a chance. Why didn’t I listen to him? He was right—he did know Norman Osborn longer. He knew how he worked, what his priorities were. What do I know? I’m a stupid, good-for-nothing teenager. I can’t even buy myself beer. My brain isn’t fully developed yet!
“I can’t—I just—how could I let him manipulate me that easily? I should have fought harder, I should have just… done something. I deal with scumbags every day, yet I let him walk all over me? What’s the point of having these powers if I can’t even protect myself? That’s so stupid!” He tugged at his curls and shook his head. “And that monster’s been trying to comfort me. D’you get that? Norman Osborn killing Gwen and then acting all sympathetic and understanding and—and—and saying her name like it’s not entirely his fault she’s gone!”
His pacing became faster, his U-turns sharper. It didn’t look like he could feel the pain from his injury anymore. His eyes were blazing with anger instead of twinkling with that warmth that Ned had seen in them last time. There was a smear of fresh blood on his cheek from his hand brushing against it. There were scrapes and bruises there too, but they didn’t look as serious as whatever it was in Peter’s stomach. And the guy didn’t seem to notice any of that, too wrapped up in his own head.
“What kind of person stabs you in the back like that? You would never face someone you’d fought and hurt with a smile on your face, right? I can’t even stomach the thought of doing something like that. I’ve been avoiding Captain Stacy for months because I can’t handle facing him after what’d happened to Gwen. And Norman Osborn just… he was such a sadist! How messed up do you have to be to try to break a person? Like, what kind of human being does that!
“You really can’t trust anyone. Every single person I turn to ends up either dead or trying to kill me. This is probably the only thing that man ever got right in his life—I can’t trust anyone.”
“You trusted me,” said Ned.
Peter froze.
A cold breeze made Ned shiver a little in his warm clothes. He expected Peter to react to the weather, mostly because he was wearing nothing more than a thin layer of spandex. But he wasn’t moving, like the cool air wasn’t registering in his brain at all. He barely even batted an eye. Ned watched him silently as he seemed to stare down at his hands, his breaths heavy and his shoulders slightly hunched. His skin was pale, his brows furrowed like he was deep in thought. The anger from a moment ago vanished, replaced by a sort of cautious wonder and curiosity.
The world didn’t stand still—Ned could hear the distant sound of people finally going back outside. The clouds kept on drifting above them, the sun’s last rays were cutting through the darkness of the approaching evening, accenting some of the strokes of blood in Peter’s hair and the fact that he was paler than Ned figured was healthy. Time kept on going, the clock kept ticking, the world kept turning.
It didn’t look like Peter was in sync with everything else, though.
Standing up slowly for fear any sharp movement might startle Peter, Ned carefully stepped closer to him and bit his lip. He reached out with his hand to put it on Peter’s shoulder, then changed his mind and let it fall back to his side. Peter’s expression twitched a bit, but that was the only sign Ned could see that the guy was aware of him coming closer.
“Look,” Ned said tentatively, “I can’t even begin to comprehend what you’ve been going through. Not just today but, like, over the last couple of years. It sounds like a lot and it’s obviously complicated. I… I’m still trying to wrap my head around you just being Spider-Man, honestly.”
Peter’s lips thinned a bit.
“And I—I get that you’re upset and hurt. It sounds like you have every right to feel this way, really. Finding all of this out must have been… a lot,” Ned continued, and Peter let out a rattling exhale. “But… but giving up on everyone because one person turned out to be a douchebag sounds like it might be the wrong conclusion to come to, you know? I mean, there are plenty of people out there who aren’t scum, right? Most people aren’t like—like him.”
Looking up, Peter met his gaze hesitantly. His eyes were glassy but no tears were trickling down. He was biting the inside of his cheek, as if to keep himself from saying something. The hand not wrapped around his stomach trembled, the mask still clutched between its fingers.
Ned swallowed and smiled at Peter—something small, but the most earnest he could muster up. “Sometimes we trust the wrong people. Sometimes we regret it. It—it happens. My mom always says the most important thing is to, like, learn to… to move past it; to learn from it, so you don’t make the same mistake twice. But… but shutting people out completely can’t be the answer. Humans are social creatures, right? We, like, need human contact. I can’t imagine how empty life would be without anyone you can or are willing to trust.”
“I don’t think—” Peter tried to say, his voice choking a little before he cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’t think I’d be able to handle it if I trust the wrong person again.”
Nodding, Ned tried to look as reassuring as possible while also completely panicking internally. He literally had no idea what he was doing, but if he was reading Peter correctly, it looked like so far he was doing all right in calming him down, at least just a bit—enough for now. He just had to make sure he didn’t mess it all up. Easy peasy.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about it right this second, right?” he said with forced levity. “Just take this one step at a time. Like—er—start from taking care of this wound you have. I mean, it looks like it’s not actively bleeding anymore, but I’m pretty sure you still need to get that looked at. Like, ASAP.”
Peter’s head sluggishly tilted down as his gaze dropped to his stomach. When he moved his hand for a moment to inspect his wound, Ned found himself nearly throwing up as he got his first clear view of what was going on there—there was literally a hole in Peter’s abdomen, the only thing blocking it being his webs. It made him queasy and fight down the bile that was rising in his throat.
This is no time to lose my shit, he thought to himself desperately. I can freak out later!
“Yeah,” said Peter faintly. “Yeah, okay.”
“Cool, cool. So you’d better switch to these clothes”—Ned lifted the bundle of clothes he’d picked up earlier—“before I drive you to the hospital—”
“No hospitals,” Peter interrupted.
“Dude—”
“Mr. Stark.”
Ned blinked. “Huh?”
Looking at him with eyes that were losing focus at an excessive rate, Peter said, “Avengers Tower. Take me to Mr. Stark. I—he already knows. He’ll help.”
His poor brain was struggling to digest the situation. “Are you—are you sure?”
Peter looked down at the Iron Man faceplate printed on the hoodie Ned was still holding for him. His face was turning paler still, his eyes duller. But there was a firm set to his jaw and something deeper shining deep in his irises, dim but still present.
He visibly swallowed.
“No,” Peter admitted in a whisper. “But I’ve gotta give him a shot, right?”
✧ ✧ ✧
Tony thought he deserved some kind of appreciation for his ability to sit through this meeting without hurling something at Fury’s head or falling asleep. He at least deserved some kind of acknowledgement from the others, to show they were aware of how much effort he was putting into keeping his hands tapping on the table instead of tapping away at his phone—which would have been a much more beneficial activity, mind you.
The only thing his fellow teammates were offering him for all his efforts, though, were annoyed glares for the distracting noise he was making. Well, beggars can’t be choosers—if they wanted his attention, they’d have to tolerate what it took for Tony to try and keep it on them rather than literally anything else.
Once again they were all discussing the issue with Spider-Man. Fury was being put under more and more pressure to capture the vigilante and bring him in already. Which meant that he was pushing the Avengers to do something about this problem so that it’d be behind them all. It was all just business at this point—not even a worry-driven mission. They needed Spidey off the streets because the people at the top were pricks who couldn’t handle a little bit of change that wasn’t caused by them.
Fantastic.
“Stark, are you even listening?” demanded Fury. “You are the one who’s gotten closest to Spider-Man. Our best bet of getting our hands on him is through you. You need to pay attention to this instead of dreaming about the Caribbeans.”
“I was actually thinking of Hawaii,” said Tony.
Rhodey pinched the bridge of his nose.
“And I believe I already told you, eye-patch—capturing Spidey is no longer on me. I think the guy should be left alone. He’s not a threat to this city or this country. He volunteered information about himself to us. Why should we still think of him as an enemy? No, I’m genuinely asking, so I can tell him next time I see him why you’re all after his ass.”
“It’s complicated,” Fury drawled out.
“Uncomplicate it.”
“Tony,” Rogers groaned in exasperation.
Turning to him, Tony said, “Excuse me, are you telling me you find nothing wrong when we’re tasked with attacking an innocent person? Has he done anything that would warrant this kind of hostility? It’s not like he’s out there, opening portals to space so an army of aliens could pass through. He’s stopping petty theft, gangs, rapists. Next thing we know we’ll be arresting the police captain for putting criminals behind bars.”
Leaning back in her seat, Romanoff said, “We don’t know his motives. That’s dangerous.”
“I told you what his motives are—he wants to help people because it’s the right thing to do.”
Barton snorted. “Yeah, because people are just that good.” He looked around with a smirk. “Looks like we’ve got a second Captain America on our hands, ladies and gentlemen.”
Rogers threw him a dirty look.
“You think he lied to me?” said Tony dryly.
The archer snorted. “That should have been a given. The guy just comes to you with the information you need that conveniently makes him look like a saint? Please, he should have at least come up with a more believable story. Doing good for the sake of doing good is rare, it’s unrealistic. He’s a terrible liar.”
Tony wanted to counteract that with the story the kid had told him about his uncle and how that had impacted him and made him look at his powers differently. He wanted to open his mouth and blurt it all out, see how they’d all react to Spidey’s motives then. But this wasn’t his story to tell, and he figured sharing such a thing would make them actually look up someone who fit such a description—a witness of a family member’s death. Then they might actually find the kid, and that was something Tony wasn’t willing to risk.
Call him impulsive all you’d like, but Tony knew when to shut up. The kid’s identity was important to him. If he didn’t want his secret to be revealed, Tony wouldn’t do it behind his back. Especially not when the people who were trying to figure it all out were the same ones the kid was scared of; the ones who were after his blood—figuratively and literally.
“Nothing to add?” asked Sam tauntingly.
“No, no. Just trying to remember how to say ‘you’re all morons’ in Indonesian.”
Rogers put a calming hand on Wilson’s shoulder before the guy could retort. “Can we please focus?”
“Please,” said Fury, his one eye darting between them all, daring them to continue this discussion when they were in the middle of their meeting.
Apparently FRIDAY decided that was the perfect moment to interrupt. Tony couldn’t be prouder of her timing.
“Boss, you have visitors,” she said in her Irish lilt.
Their heads snapped up almost in perfect synchronization. Tony had to resist the urge to laugh, instead mulling over FRIDAY’s words and turning them over in his head. He could feel a crease forming between his brows.
“Tell ‘em I’m busy,” he said flippantly.
“They’re already on their way up.”
“You let someone come up here?” said Rhodey in surprise. “It’s a personal floor.”
Tony honestly couldn’t agree more.
“Who are they, FRI?” he asked, his fingers drumming more insistently on the table as he tried to recall if there was anything Pepper had said about another meeting with someone that day. For all he could recall, the Avengers were—thankfully—his only obligation of the day, for a change.
“One individual is unknown. He doesn’t appear to be in my database.”
Barton glanced at Tony skeptically. “Oh, great. Your AI is broken.”
Frowning, Tony ignored him. “And other than him?”
FRIDAY took a second, like she was trying to come up with an appropriate answer. It only made Tony’s hand itch toward the watch where his nanotech gauntlet was stored. If there were intruders in the building, he’d like to be ready before they reached this floor. Of course, they’d have to face a bunch of skilled warriors which would make them incredibly foolish, but—
“It’s Peter Parker, boss,” FRIDAY said at last.
Now her hesitation made sense—she usually referred to him as Spider-Man with Tony, but was smart enough to know better than to bring him up with the Avengers around. Good girl, he was even prouder than before.
The rest of the Avengers hummed in confusion at the name, but Tony’s eyes widened in recognition and he stumbled to his feet, heart pounding in his chest. This was bad. So, so bad. The kid couldn’t come up here! The Avengers were literally sitting right there, all warily waiting to see what was happening and whether or not there was any trouble. They were discussing attacking Spider-Man. This was the last place the kid should have gone to.
“FRIDAY, stop the eleva—” Tony began to say just as the ding of the elevator echoed around the room.
The doors opened to reveal the kid standing there, mostly slumped against a slightly lower and—er—wider kid who looked very stressed and panicked as he struggled to hold Peter upright and prevent him from face-planting.
“What the hell?” muttered Wilson.
“Is this ‘bring your kids to work’ day? Did I miss the memo?” asked Barton.
Tony froze halfway between the table and the elevator. “Shit.”
The good news was that the kid wasn’t wearing his Spider-Man unitard. The bad news was that he was standing, slumped and clearly drained, in front of all the Avengers, leaning against someone his age that lifted his head, noticed the people in the room and instantly gasped in awe, and there was a dark patch on the black Iron Man hoodie he was wearing that made something worried and slightly alarmed rear its head in Tony’s stomach.
“I can’t believe I’m in the same room as the Avengers,” muttered the shorter kid, a starstruck expression on his face.
At the mention of the team, though, Peter’s eyes snapped up and started flitting between the people present, a dull glint of fear sparkling in his eyes. He seemed to try to push himself a little off his friend and stumble deeper into the elevator, but then a pained whimper escaped his lips and he ended up falling against his friend once more with a grunt.
“Tony? You know these kids?” said Romanoff.
“Stark, we’re in the middle of a—” Fury tried to speak.
Wilson frowned in concern. “Hey, is that kid bleeding?”
The kid Tony didn’t know glanced at Peter, then shook his head. “Oh, no, Mr. Falcon. He stopped bleeding earlier. It’s just that the wound opened again when he changed clothes and then it stopped again—I mean, what? Bleeding? Who?”
“Smooth, kid,” said Barton.
“Tony, who are these kids?” Rogers demanded.
Tony ignored them as he finally felt like he could move again. With his limbs thawed, he stepped closer to the open elevator, eyes locked on Peter. The kid was looking off into space, a blank, vacant look in his eyes. His moment of panic seemed to have passed without leaving any sort of impression on him. He almost looked like he wasn’t aware of where he was and who was with him anymore.
It was frankly more alarming than a lot of the things Tony’s been through in his life. And he’s been through some tough shit.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “You look like death warmed over.”
Nothing. Peter was still staring ahead bleakly.
“Tough crowd,” Tony muttered, then focused on the other kid. “You—explain.”
Blinking at him owlishly, the kid was silent for a moment, then blurted out, “The Black Widow is pointing a gun at me—that’s so cool! Also, my mom would kill me if I was murdered today.”
Tony glanced back and saw that Romanoff was, indeed, eyeing the two teens dangerously while aiming one of her guns at them.
“For God’s sake, point that somewhere else! They’re kids, not a national threat. Jesus, it’s like I’m working with a bunch of trigger-happy morons. All right, kid, talk. What’s wrong with your buddy over there? Was he hurt? What happened?”
“Tony Stark is talking to me,” whispered the kid, then he snapped out of it and quickly said in one breath, “I swear he talked to me before. Like, when I found him he kept on rambling, right? But then we got in the car and he just sort of zoned out and he hasn’t said a word since. I don’t know what to do. But he wanted to come here and the ceiling lady told me to get in the elevator, so I did.”
Rhodey let out a whistle. “Some lungs you’ve got there, kid.”
“My brain hurts,” whined Wilson as he rubbed his temples.
Tony felt like joining him, honestly. There were two of them now—like one rambling teenager wasn’t enough for him to deal with. And how in the world was he supposed to focus on these kids when the people behind him were constantly interrupting—or, in Natasha’s case, threatening them with murder?
“Okay, all right,” he said, looking between the kid’s overwhelmed expression and Peter’s catatonically blank one. “Where’d the blood come from? There’s some in his hair—did his head get hurt? What happened? Fill me in, come on.”
The kid shifted his weight a little while attempting not to drop Peter. “The fight,” he said hesitantly with a cautious look toward the others.
“What fight?”
“Tell me kids don’t beat each other that much at school these days,” groaned Barton. “That’s the last thing I needed to know.”
FRIDAY chimed in then. “Boss, there’s footage of a fight between the individual known as Green Goblin and Spider-Man online.”
Tony’s eyes widened in alarm and he cursed. The kid stared at him with his mouth agape, like he couldn’t believe Tony Stark just said a bad word in front of him. It would have been amusing had Tony not been busy imagining such a fight between Peter and the lunatic who’d murdered that girlfriend of his. That couldn’t have been pretty.
“The Green Goblin?” questioned Rogers. “I thought he was no longer around.”
“Spider-Man seemed to have left him a message,” said FRIDAY, and a hologram came to life near the wall opposite the elevator, showing a mass of webs woven together between two random buildings, creating the clear words: Can the Green Goblin come out to play? Tony wanted to slap the kid for doing something this reckless, but one look at him reminded him that Peter was already worse for wear.
“Was he injured during the fight?” he asked, and he wasn’t sure whether he was talking to the kid or FRIDAY.
“I think so,” the teenager said hesitantly.
FRIDAY added, “The Green Goblin stabbed him from behind.”
“Are we talking about Spidey or the adolescent kid?” someone said.
“Cheap shot, stabbing in the back,” another one grumbled, but Tony couldn’t care less about the others right now.
His eyes traced Peter’s figure. He looked fatigued, exhausted. He was using his friend as a crutch, like he couldn’t carry his own weight any longer. There was dry blood smeared on his face that seemed to have been rubbed there accidentally. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes hollow. And the dark patch on his hoodie was most likely the blood that must have oozed from his injury earlier—the kid said it’d stopped actively bleeding, right?
“FRIDAY, call in Dr. Cho. Tell her she gets overtime,” he said decisively, then focused on Peter. “Hey, bud, we’re getting you to the hospital wing of the building, okay? The medbay’s gonna have an excellent doctor who’d look over you and make sure you don’t die, yeah? Sounds good? Come on, you have to say something. Kid, is he in shock? FRI?”
“Other than the stab wound and a few minor injuries I can’t detect anything else, boss.”
Peter’s little friend just shrugged helplessly.
Tony’s eye twitched but he pushed through and tried to smile at Peter reassuringly. “Fine. I don’t need to know. Let’s just take care of you, yeah? It’s gonna be all right. You’ll be fine. We’ll deal with this whole mess easily, I mean it can’t be worse than an AI apocalypse, can it?”
“Don’t even start on that,” said Fury lowly, a note of weariness in his voice.
But Tony ignored him as his chest fluttered with hope at the sight of Peter’s eyes blinking twice and focusing on him for once, the dim light in them brightening a bit as he seemed to fight to pull himself back into his body.
Tony’s smile felt less forced as he said, “Yes, see? It’ll be fine. Whatever comes next, we’ll handle it, and right now we’ll just make sure you won’t collapse from blood loss or pain or—God only knows what you’re going through, kid. You look like hell, not gonna lie. But we’ll help you.”
“We will?”
“Of course we will.”
“What are you giving me this look for? We don’t know the kid!”
“He’s hurt—that’s all we need to know.”
“Send him to a hospital, jeez…”
Peter blinked again, a strange sheen to his eyes. His lips parted a little as he pushed himself slightly off his friend, like he wanted to say something. But no words came to him and instead he just kept on looking at Tony with a look that became more and more intense. It gave the man the feeling the kid was assessing him even in his half-conscious state, waiting to hear what he had to say and decide whether he should actually listen or not.
If he messed this up now, Tony would never forgive himself.
“Hear that?” Tony said, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder at the chatting teammates. “You’re in good hands, yeah? None of us are gonna let anything happen to you, got it? It’s all right. You’re safe. I’ll help you with everything you need. Actually, you can rest, I’ll do the heavy lifting for now—”
He was cut off by the distinct sound of Peter letting out a sound between a gasp and a sob. His eyes welled up as if on cue and tears slipped out and down his cheeks as his face crumpled with grief and misery that should never have touched someone this young. And then he detached himself from the other kid and stumbled toward Tony, running into him and knocking the air straight out of his lungs as he struggled to keep himself from keeling over the with spiderling clinging to him.
Shock coursed through his veins, making his brain stutter to a temporary halt as he tried to comprehend the fact that the kid had his arms wrapped around him, his palms pressed to his back in a suspicious way that made Tony believe he was sticking to his shirt. The kid had his face tucked against Tony’s shoulder as heart-wrenching sobs tore out of his throat, filling the stunned room.
For a second Tony couldn’t react, too caught off guard. And then his brain rebooted itself and he brought his arms up to embrace the kid right back and maybe try and hold some of his weight because it felt like he might just slide down to the floor if he was forced to hold himself without any help for much longer. He did have to readjust when his contact made the kid flinch and let out a pained gasp—apparently he’d aggravated the injury.
He felt so small and brittle like that, Tony noted gloomily. Too small to deal with everything the world was pushing down on him.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Tony, the rest of the world falling away around him as he focused on the sobbing kid in his arms. “I’ve got you.”