a sky full of stars {Irondad - Febuwhump}

i will hold you as you have held me in your heart

Day 15 & 16 – Hearing Loss & Brain Damage

{Not really a trigger warning, but open ending. Also lots of swearing and violence and whump as always}

*

Seventy-eight hours.

Seventy-eight fucking hours and Tony thinks he's going to fall apart at the seams if he has to keep going like this.

Not because he's hurt, no, Tony's barely got a scratch since they've gotten here (Seventy-eight hours ago) and Ned's doing just fine as well, eyes wide and red-rimmed, nose flushed and hands shaking in their restraints, but fine, just another wrong place, wrong time kind of situation for the poor kid.

Tony and Ned are fine.

Peter on the other hand?

"Ned, kid, I need you to breathe, okay? Panicking isn't going to do anyone any good," Tony says. He knows he sounds harsh, eyebrows lifted and hands clenched around the arms of the chair, voice coming out rough and angry. He takes a deep breath. "I know this is scary, but Peter's going to be alright."

Tony's not sure if he's lying or not, all he knows is that he's going to do all he can, even if all he can do is take care of Ned.

"What did they do to him?" Ned asks, voice so quiet in the small room.

Tony looks over at Peter and his heart sinks.

His kid, god his fucking kid, looks awful. His eyes, glazed and unfocused, slide over the room unseeingly, hands clenched around the arms of his chair like Tony's are. They realized yesterday, when he was brought back, that Peter couldn't hear anything they said, couldn't see them. It was like they'd ripped away his senses.

And worse?

Rows of stitches along his forehead, running their way into his hairline. Like they'd cut into his brain to remove those senses.

It makes Tony gag at the thought, flashes of his own forced surgeries flickering through his vision, making the cell they're in become the cave from Afghanistan, before he swallows it down, pushing it away.

"Don't think about it," Tony tells Ned who's starting to look a little green. "It's not going to help to think about it."

"What is going to help?"

The silence that follows says it all.

There's nothing they can do. Absolutely nothing.

They haven't even seen the people who took them from the schoolyard, they must be smart, Tony's willing to give up pretty much anything to get Peter out of here. Even if he did...

"Rhodey's going to find us," Tony says, trying to force certainty and confidence into his voice. "It won't be long before we're rescued."

Ned doesn't seem to believe him, eyes wary and fingers tightening into fists. But Tony doesn't even believe himself, he doesn't know for sure if they will be saved. There's no way to be sure.

And their best asset, their best way to escape, is currently probably inches away from dying, blind and deaf, with what Tony guesses is a lot of brain damage.

All he has to hope is that Helen and Bruce can fix his kid back up to what he used to be. He's sure they could work around it if it was permanent, it would be hard, but they could still do it. But for Peter's sake... It's not fair.

Blood drips from the stitches on Peter's head, smearing down the side of his face. Tony wants nothing more than to wipe it away, especially as Peter flinches away from it, eyes squeezing shut and small whimpers escaping his throat.