Sticks and Stones

23

—One Year Later—

"Ya boi got a drivers license!" Peter announced, bursting into the room.

"A drivers license? Please tell me it's yours." Tony said.

"No, I stole it." He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, it's mine!"

"Congrats, kid." Sam grinned.

"Thanks." Peter frowned as he saw something in the distance. It was approaching quickly. "Hey, uh... what's that?"

There was a loud explosion, and everyone was thrown back. HYDRA agents swarmed in and took advantage of their moments of weakness to kidnap a barely conscious Peter.

—

"Why is it always me?" Peter grumbled when he woke up. "You guys had me for two years! I'm not special."

No one replied, just continuing in with their work and ignoring him in his cell. "I know you can all hear me!"

His hands were wrapped around the bars of the cell, and he was suddenly shocked with electricity. "Ow!"

He backed up and sank down to the floor, thinking. 'Webs! I can use my webs to maybe pull the door off?'

Mentally preparing himself, he webbed the door and wrapped the webs around his hands, and pulled as hard as he could.

The door flew towards him, and he ducked, then sprinted out. He ran blindly, barely watching where he was going.

Peter crawled quickly up a wall and kicked through a window, then shimmied outside before jumping down. He rolled on impact and ran in a zigzagging line to avoid being
shot.

He kicked into a front-flip and webbed a few of the agents following him. In the distance, he could see the quinjet approaching.

"Yes!" He whispered quietly, but then someone grabbed him. "No!"

He kicked back and wrapped his legs around their waist, then grabbed their legs and tripped them. They dropped him, and he fired a web back at the building and swung up and around, knocking down agents as he went.

Peter crashed through a window and then slammed into a wall. "Dammit!"

"You okay, kid?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"That was pretty badass."

"I know, right?" He grinned.

—

On the ride home, everyone was fussing over Peters injuries. He had a black eye, and multiple cuts all over his arms, face, legs, and chest from breaking through two separate windows. There were bruises like fingerprints around his neck, and two more of his nails had been ripped out.

"I'm fine," he insisted. "I just need to slap on about a thousand bandaids and I'll be fine."

Which is exactly what they did. Steve had bandaids in his utility belt, so they spent the next half hour putting them on every cut on Peters exposed skin.

"Excellent." He grinned.

—

"What happened to you?" Wade scoffed, looking Peter up and down. "And where you been the past two weeks?"

"I was kidnapped."

Concern overthrew Wade's sarcastic facade. "Are you okay? I'm gonna kick their asses, all of them. I want names and serial numbers. They're gonna regret ever even looking at you."

Peter chuckled. "I'm fine. We took care of it."

"You don't look fine. And what the hell is on your wrist?"

He yanked his wrist away from Wade, pulling his sleeves down back over his hands. "Nothing!"

"Do you cut yourself, Peter?" He demanded angrily.

"I have to go."

"Get back here! Dammit, Peter!"

"No, Wade! I have-" He sighed and shook his head. "I have to get home."

Wade watched Peter rush away, and whipped his phone out. "You're Ned Leeds."

"Who is this?"

"Wade Wilson. Peter's friend. We need to talk."

—

Peter was in the lab, working on bug fixes with Jocasta, when someone knocked on the door.

"Let him in, FRI," he said quietly. He was still focused intensely on the computer screen and fixing the glitches in his AI's system.

"Hey, Peter." Steve said softly.

'Oh, no, that's his 'you did something that upset me' voice.' He tensed up, and Steve noticed.

"I'm not mad, Pete." He sighed. "I... we need to talk about something."

"And, uh- what would that be?"

"Have you been hurting yourself?" Peter could tell Steve was struggling to keep his voice steady.

He said nothing, just stared at his hands as tears gathered in his eyes.

"Peter..."

"I'm sorry, dad." He sobbed. "I'm really sorry."

"Why? Why did you do it?"

"I..." Peter couldn't say he didn't know, because he knew exactly why. It was the peak of his depression, and he felt like he couldn't talk to anyone. He was embarrassed of what he was going through and didn't ask for help. Boys weren't supposed to ask for help... right?

"You can tell me, Peter."

And then he admitted everything. How he'd first started two years after Steve and Tony had died, how as soon as he'd turned thirteen, he'd locked himself away in the lab, trying to find some way to 'cure' his feelings, how he was afraid to talk to anyone and how he was ashamed of feeling so depressed, and then he couldn't stop. He told about Flash beating him up and telling him he didn't deserve to be Spider-Man, and how Flash had said that Steve and Tony had killed themselves so they didn't have to deal with him.

By the end of it, Peter was crying so hard he could barely breathe. Steve tried to be strong for him, but the second Peter hugged him, he started crying, too.

"I'm sorry, dad."

"It's okay. Will you promise me something, though?"

Peter looked up at him.

"The next time you feel like- like hurting yourself, you'll talk to someone. Please?"

"Okay. I promise."

"Thank you."