Pain and Power

-_-_Chapter 3_-_-

It took another five hours after the removal of Peter's right arm for them to suspect that he might have entered a comatose state. His vitals were fine, he was reacting well to anesthetics, and his stump seemed to be gradually repairing itself... but it had been twelve hours since he initially went unconscious — and he was meant to have woken up by now.

It was the Wakandan doctor — Doctor Nezana — that broke the news to Tony, May, and Pepper.

She ushered them out of Peter's room quietly, leaving Morgan curled up and asleep inside, and then spoke in a steady voice. "We were unable to detect this in the preliminary tests," she explained, showing them a scan of Peter's brain. "But since the initial trauma caused by the stones, his brain has swollen significantly. The delayed reaction seems to have been caused by his healing abilities, but now..." She sighed. "He will be in a coma — we're uncertain of when he will wake up."

May let out a quiet wail, and Pepper pulled the other woman into a comforting embrace. Tony didn't know how to react. He froze, as he processed the doctor's words, and then felt the now familiar ache of his left arm. Nebula looked at them sympathetically, and let them back into the room, to Peter's comatose body.

The hours turned into days. The days turned into a week.

Tony was worried about May.

Everyone was handling the situation differently, but May... This was the worst thing imaginable for May. She had raised Peter. He was all she had left after her husband died. He was her everything.

And he was comatose, half dead and missing an arm — because Tony had let him fight. Because Tony hadn't benched him.

May spent most of her time in the room, sitting next to Peter's bed and holding his left hand, watching him intently for any signs of consciousness.

In the little time, the woman was away from Peter, she was tucked into the corner of the room, building a charity for those displaced by the blip, with Pepper and Happys help.

She also spent a lot of time on the phone with someone called Carmen — her mother in law, she'd told Tony.

She barely slept anymore — and neither did Tony.

Because it was his fault that Peter was in this situation. He was meant to snap. He was meant to be the one fighting for his life.

Not Peter. Never Peter.

He was always in Peter's room — not stealing Mays spot by his bed, but somewhere close by, trying to work. Tony felt useless, not being able to do anything to help Peter, and so tried to distract himself with literally anything else.

Morgan was with him a lot. She, for all her genius, didn't understand what was going on. She didn't understand why her brother was asleep all the time, or why he never woke when she tried to get him up, or why everyone was so sad all the time. She didn't get what a coma was.

Pepper had tried to explain it to their daughter, but Tony could tell that the concept was too strange for her to grasp.

His wife was throwing herself into work — remotely, of course, because Tony refused to leave Wakanda, and so Morgan didn't want to leave either. Rhodey had left after a few days, to help the airforce, as he had done after the first snap. Happy stayed around, helping May and Pepper however he could.

Everyone was doing something, except him. His work wasn't even really work. It was meaningless distractions — and it didn't take away his feeling of uselessness.

Tony was terrified that the kid wouldn't wake up. Terrified.

He had always cared. From the second he knocked on the door of Peter and Mays apartment; from the moment he first Peter Parker — he'd known that if anything happened to the kid, it would be on hum. He'd known that he would do anything and everything in his power to protect him.