a/n: the feminine urge to villainize secretary ross<3

⚠⚠GORE, GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE, TORTURE⚠⚠

Tony's breath came out in shallow condensated puffs against the glass walls. It was cold. Goosebumps are painful as they raise up and down his arms and legs, and he's shivering against a wall with his chest hollowed out.

It's been forty seven hours. Tony has counted each one in a masochistic manner, not letting himself close his eyes until they fall on the missing member of the party he had been kidnapped with.

Peter.

A sixteen-year-old with a humble smile and an unyielding mouth on him that won't ever stop blabbering— until, of course, he's knocked out cold and his head is lolling into the side of the heavy metal government truck they both were shoved in.

It's been too quiet since then. Too fucking quiet. Tony's only had himself for company, and he's ran his thumb over the fabric of his old shirt so many times that it's starting to wear through. Not good. It only served to make him colder.

His stomach growled. He stared at his reflection in the glass; all sunken eyes and dark circles. Pale. Messy hair. Sickly.

Forty-seven hours turned to forty-eight.

He looked up at the camera, a small spherical orb in the corner of the ceiling with a red glowing dot in the middle. He spat on the concrete floor, not looking away. "I'm getting really tired of your games, Ross."

To his surprise, the metal door a little farther out from the glass prison he sat in swung open. Ross stepped down the concrete hallway in a tuxedo and Tony mustered all his strength to stumble up and lean forward against the glass in front.

"You," he hissed, jamming a fist against the thick pane. "You think you're gonna get away with this? I thought you were a smarter man than this. I signed the goddamn accords."

"Oh," Ross chuckled. "You did. You did indeed. But you also recruited your own little vigilante, didn't you? You didn't even send an email, Stark. I'm very disappointed."

"Spider-Man isn't a part of this, he never has been."

Ross clicked his tongue and shook his head, walked up to him. He tapped on the glass. "It's a real shame you think that. Perhaps they were right about Siberia making you soft and stupid."

Tony hit the glass with his fist again, feeling lightheaded. Two days with nothing to eat, not a blinking glimpse of sleep, but it did nothing to fester his rage. "Where is he?"

Ross smiled knowingly. "Who?"

"You know damn well who," Tony growled out through clenched teeth. "Where's the kid?"

"Kid?" Ross scratched his chin. His eyes lit up. "Oh, you mean the powered individual? It's unconscious."

It fell over him like a tsunami of ice water.

"What did you do?" Tony asked blankly, staring at Ross with something incomprehensible, unholy, monstrous under his skin. "What the hell did you do to him?"

"I gave it a choice." Ross crossed his arms. "It chose not to sign. Therefore I—"

A person in a white coat burst through the metal door. "Mister Secretary, the subject is flatlining."

Tony's eyes widened. It only took a millisecond for his heartrate to skyrocket, leaving him to jump up and pound harder on the glass, trying to break it with only his strength.

"Pity," Ross sighed. He waved his hand over. "Why don't you bring it in?"

"Sir—"

"Do it!" Ross snapped, curling his lip in an angry sneer. The white-coat turned around without another word and rushed out of the room.

Ross slowly looked at Tony. "I'll bring him in. I'll let them operate here... Maybe the sight will teach you a lesson about secrets, hm?"

Tony was going to kill him. He just hoped he could do it before Ross killed the kid.

"Which pen did you use," Tony asked haggardly. "To write your will. I'm guessing quill and ink, right? Because you're as old as the fucking Constitution."

Ross only glared.

The kid is wheeled in on a cot. His arms are strapped tightly in iron at his sides. He's out of it, eyes rolled back in his head as he spasmed and seized. Blood left a drip trail from the doorway to the cot, and it's freshly caked on his face, the smell of iron is pungent even through Tony's glass cell doors. He's hooked up to an IV of neon blue liquid, right into his wrist, and a heart monitor at his side that was just barely active.

He looked over the kid again, feeling bile in his throat. Peter's knuckles were scraped and bruised and bloody red– he put up a fight, there wasn't a doubt about it. 'Please keep fighting,' he thought. 'C'mon, kiddo. We'll make it out of here. I'll fix it.'

Tony wanted to scream, shout, yell, but for now he glared daggers back at Ross and clenched his fists hard enough to create burgundy crescent imprints into the soft callused flesh of his palms. Additionally, he prayed to every religion that the kid genuinely was unconscious.

"You're sick," Tony said carefully. Even speaking was making his stomach turn and gurgle. He forced himself to pull away, to instead look up at Ross. "When I'm done with you, you're gonna regret even taking your first breath, I promise."

"You want to keep it alive, Tony?" Ross asked, unbothered by his threats. He looked back to the scientists behind him, who both looked nervous as they stared at the dying heart monitor. He smiled at Tony. "Do you?"

Tony clenched his teeth.

"Fix him up," Ross demanded.

Assistants quickly swarmed around the room. They began to put pressure on the wounds that were the most open, someone else began to perform CPR. One went to remove the IV–

"Leave it in," he barked. "Leave the serum in."

–they left the IV alone. The heartrate picked up suddenly and didn't stop. Peter's chest was rising and falling with urgency, choked gasps being heard as he tried to take in as much oxygen as he could.

Peter twitched and tried to pull away from their gloved hands. He mewled a weak pained noise, like a malnourished baby possum left on the side of the road. Tony's heart dropped with the realization that he was becoming conscious.

"Kid," Tony tried softly, his voice caught. "C'mon, go to sleep. Go back to sleep."

Peter jerked away from a scientist trying to wipe the blood from his forehead with a hiss through clenched teeth. His eyebrows scrunched up, nostrils flared in pain. Tony's urge to protect him was stronger than ever. They had no right to clean the blood from him when they did this, they hurt him, and they would all pay.

Peter brokenly cried out in a wretched noise of agony, twisting and shuddering on the cot with increasing cohesiveness. His eyes were shut tight and his words were more like syllables messily shoved together. "Who...'s..."

Tony banged on the glass again. "Peter! I'm right here, okay? C'mon, look at me!"

Peter coughed, his whole body tightening, his head lifting from the cot. Blood gushed and spluttered from his mouth and Tony realized with horror that he was choking on it, a side effect of a bad internal wound that needed medical attention now.

"Turn him over!" Tony yelled. "Turn him on his side! Damn it!"

Peter's body convulsed, he looked almost inhuman with the desperation of which he was coughing blood, like an effect in a movie that looked too real. Ross waited several seconds... enough time for Peter to look both pale and blue, while his whole body was soaked with dark red, before he gave a stern nod.

Finally, finally, the kid's turned to his side. There was just so much blood, and he looked so weak. So small. Tony wiped his own face with his sleeve and found it dripping with tears. He sniffled and tried to steady himself with a deep breath. It didn't do anything.

Once Peter was on his side, he had gone still again.

"The subject is unconscious again," a scientist spoke up. "Stable condition."

"Oh, you think so?" Tony gritted out. He took another breath. "You think he's stable? Good to know. Now I know what it'll look like after I make every single one of you very unstable."

"I see your attitude hasn't changed," Ross looked over to the group of scientists. "Leave the subject. Maybe by the time that it wakes up, Stark will understand that these powered individuals aren't worth the trouble if they don't follow the rules."

"He'll never sign it," Tony said as they retreated from the room. "You'll all be dead before you even bring a pen within five feet of him, I swear to god."

The door shut silently behind them.

Tony looked back over at the kid, entirely out cold, the only movement being the occasional shudder. His heart broke, and broke, and broke again.

"Get some rest, kiddo." Tony mumbled. "Dream of something nice. Just keep dreaming, far away from this place. Dream of– of a place far away from here, somewhere warm and... safe..."

Tony leaned his forehead on the glass, wanting more than anything that he could reach through it and card the hair away from Peter's face, wipe away all the blood with his sleeve, stitch up all his wounds and carry him out of here in his arms. He swallowed thickly.

"It's okay," he said, his voice hoarse. Maybe if he kept repeating that, it would sink in even though Peter was asleep, and he'd feel even a little bit of peace. He listened to the beeping of the heart monitor and tried to drain out his thoughts. "You're gonna be okay. It's alright. I'm right here. I've got you."

Forty-eight hours turned into forty-nine.

Peter kept faking him out. Every fifteen minutes or so, he'd shift his leg, his finger would twitch, he would groan, say something under his breath. It was good, it was letting Tony know he was alive, but he had yet to stay awake for longer than a few seconds.

Tony hadn't moved from his spot right next to him, just monitoring, making sure he was alright and not still suffering from the effects of whatever they'd done to his internal organs. He was maybe halfway through some idea he had for the next update to the Spider-Man suit's code when the kid stirred again.

He seemed distressed. His hand clenching into a fist every few seconds and trying to pull away from the bars. He mumbled, his eyebrows drawn tight.

"Pete?" Tony murmured.

Peter let out a pained whimper, and tried again to yank his hands away from the bars. "Mhhmm..."

"I know, kid," Tony shut his eyes tightly. "I'm right here, buddy."

There was something deeply crushing about hearing someone so young cry in their sleep. It almost made Tony want to cry too, just out of the desperation of it all. With the heavy lump building in his throat all he wanted to was gently stroke Peter's hair until he stopped crying, until everything was alright.

He did the second best thing he could.

"Goodnight, my angel, time to close your eyes," Tony sang softly, his voice crackling from lack of use. "And save these questions for another day."

Peter continued to let out soft, crumbled sobs under his breath, struggling from the restraints.

"I promised I would never leave you," Tony mumbled along. "And you should always know, wherever you may go, no matter where you are, I never will be far away."

It was a gentle thing, like Peter was able to distract himself with Tony's voice for a few patient seconds, and then became overwhelmed by the pain all over again. Hiccups where he would sob, then take a breath, and sob again.

"And like a boat out on the ocean, I'm rocking you to sleep... The water's dark, and deep, inside this ancient heart," Tony took a breath. He wiped his face with his sleeve. "You'll always be a part of me."

Peter's muscles went lax on the rollaway bed. His sobs slowly quieted into a series of tearful sniffles.

"Someday we'll all be gone, but lullabies go on and on... They never die, and that's how you and I will be," Tony promised, trailing into gentle humming.

He heard Peter's breathing level out again.

Forty-nine hours turned into fifty.

The crying had slowly stopped.

Tony's gone through quite a few stories of his childhood, mostly the ones with Jarvis, some with his mom. The happy memories. He was trying to get his mind off the numbing malnourishment, exhaustion, and paralyzing fear he was feeling.

"And when I was fifteen," Tony spoke quietly, his eyes closed. He was sitting against the glass now, facing the wall and his head dipped down. "I was going to MIT, right? I was a scrawny thing, though, and god, I was young..."

"Anyways, first day and I got invited to a rager– horrible idea, I don't even remember the little shitstick college kid that invited me. I went though, because I was a dumbass," Tony said. "Afterwards, I finally crash landed in my new dorm, the only person to see my shameless throwing up was this seventeen year old kid who I was bunking with. That's how I met Rhodey. Best friends ever since. He didn't let me go to another party alone after that."

"Don't drink though," Tony sighed tiredly. The cold was so deep in his bones that he almost was warm. "I was younger than you when I started and I can tell you knowingly it's not worth it, alright? And get yourself some good friends. Like uh, Ned. He sounds like a good friend."

Rhodey was the best friend. The kind that organized a whole rescue mission for him even though he was an asshole. The kind that ran to him in the middle of the desert, sand whipping around under the heavy fans of airplanes and helicopters. The kind that cried and yelled because he'd finally found him, and he'd "been worried, damn it!"

"We'll get out of here, kid. I bet he'll even find us soon," Tony trailed off. The colours in his own hands looked dull and grey. "Rhodey's good at that kind of thing..."

Fifty-one hours into fifty-two.

Tony's scanned every square inch of the cell several times over. It seemed that Ross knew what he was dealing with– instead of hiding solutions, he simply didn't give any. Blank walls. The only way in was on the outside. The camera's the only thing obviously sticking out of the cell.

"Eight nine three eight zero nine five two seven two zero one," Tony recited plainly. "Zero six five four eight five eight six three two seven... Pete, I don't know how far I can recite Pi before I 'accidentally' trip and knock myself out on the concrete floor."

He glanced over at the kid, still very much asleep. The IV was empty now, the final droplets of blue serum stuck in the inside of the tube that lead into his wrist. When Tony last looked over, there was only a little bit left. He'd just been waiting for the last of it to drain, and hopefully the serum would run its way through Peter's immune system and he'd start to heal himself up.

"You know, when I told May you could come over," Tony sniffed. "I thought it was gonna be more of a stay-up-all-night-in-the-lab kind of deal. I even bought all your overpriced snacks because I knew you were coming over."

His stomach gurgled. "I think I might actually kill a man for one of your ridiculous tiny uncrustable peanut butter sandwiches. No joke."

Peter's hand twitched, and suddenly Tony was wide awake. He went silent, watching intently to see if Peter was actually going to be coherent and conscious or if he was just going to stir for a moment and go back to drifting.

Peter mumbled quietly, and his eyes were half-lidded when he finally opened them. The blood on his face was dry now, it stuck his curly hair into dark crusted clumps. He looked over at Tony and furrowed his eyebrows.

"M's'r... S'rk?" He croaked with great difficulty. "Wha's goin' on?"

"Hey," Tony said gently, sitting up as much as he could. "Hey, kiddie. Take a deep breath for me, okay?"

Peter blinked with confusion, but inhaled deeply through his nose. He cut it short, grimacing and attempting to bring his hand over his ribs. It caught against the iron bar holding it down.

He groaned painfully. "Th's is... The Bad Place."

"Are the lights super bright for you?" Tony asked urgently. He didn't know how much time he had before Ross saw Peter was awake on the cameras.

"Weren't til you... said something," Peter grimaced his way through a smile. One of his teeth was cracked. Tony winced with sympathy.

"That's good," Tony promised. "That's good, okay? Can you try and get out of the— the braces? We don't have a lot of time."

Peter nodded weakly. He inhaled once, held it, scrunched up his face, and Tony heard a small cracking noise. Peter's mouth fell open in a silent scream, and he clenched his teeth together before pulling one twisted up hand out of the brace.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Tony huffed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Did you just dislocate your own hand?"

Peter didn't say anything, keeping his teeth clenched hard. He nodded tightly in response. He half sat up with one arm free, and his face went pale again from the movement. Peter swallowed and slowly pulled at the IV, looking away and giving a full body shudder as it came out of his wrist.

"You've got it," Tony encouraged, glancing up at the camera subtly, and then the door. "Come on, Peter. Almost there. You're doing great, kid."

Peter pushed at the joint on his other hand. Another cracking noise. Tony winced for him this time. He pulled his quickly swelling hand out from the brace and slid off the cot, landing in a heap of bloodied limbs on the concrete floor in front of the glass.

"Okay," Peter mumbled, blinking slowly. Still groggy, but he was doing his best, and Tony was so proud of him. "Okay. Now?"

"I know you're tired," Tony said. "You gotta try to break the glass here. How much strength you got, kid?"

Peter licked his chapped lips and tried to pull himself off the floor. He stumbled for a second, and Tony's hands shot up to catch him even though he was behind the glass wall. Peter steadied himself, holding his side with one hand.

He looked around the room lazily, his head sinking down every few moments before jerking back up. He looked back at the glass and pursed his lips. "Got... it. Ge'back."

Tony took several steps back. "Just try not to hurt yourself."

Peter grunted. He stepped backwards, pushing the cot away, readied his shoulder.

Tony's heart lunged up his throat. "Peter—!"

Peter charged forward, slamming the whole of his body into the side of the glass. It cracked slightly, just a small fractal burst in the middle where his shoulder impacted. He made this sound, a torn up wail of pain, and quickly swallowed it down with some quickly drawn breaths.

"Okay," Peter said again. "Okay."

He stumbled backwards again.

"Peter, this isn't what I meant," Tony begged. "I said break the glass, not break you. God—"

"Shuddup a sec," Peter joked weakly. "'M tryin' save you."

He charged again at the wall. The fractal's radius grew larger, expanding outwards in several little lightning fractures. It still didn't shatter. Peter was better about hiding his pain this time, although Tony could see it written all over his face, how much agony the kid was in.

"Ugh," Peter sniffled, leaning his head on the shattered glass a moment to catch his breath. "This...'s annoying."

Before Tony could open his mouth to respond, Peter spoke again.

"Cover your face," Peter said. Tony held up his arm.

He took another big breath, and his expression went stern with intense focus. Squared his hips best he could, pulled his body back like a tightly strung bow, and then threw a punch that rattled the entire cell.

The fractals stretched endlessly across the panes of glass, even reaching the concrete, a large crack in the wall that shifted and crumbled bits fell to the floor. Tony heard it before he saw it, like the sound of an ice cube in a mug of Pepper's favourite hot tea. A series of shiny, crackling pops, and then—

The glass shattered into millions of tiny shards, falling to the floor like the world's most uncomfortable blizzard.

Peter looked up at Tony, breathing heavily. His eyes were having a hard time staying on him, and he was swaying a bit. Tony didn't hesitate to jolt himself forward and pull the kid's arm over his shoulder.

"I got you," Tony said. He brushed Peter's hair back from his face; it crunched from the dry blood. He quickly pressed a kiss on the kid's temple. "Stay awake, okay?"

"Sounds... great," Peter mumbled. "We gettin' out?"

"I guarantee it." Tony led them to the door, and paused.

He'd been to the Raft only a handful of times, and while he knew where he was, he didn't know where they put his gear, and he doesn't know how they can sneak out of... well, a super-max prison, from the inside.

"What's wrong?" Peter mumbled, lifting his chin up and looking around with his best attempt at alarm, despite his pupils blown out and his eyes being barely open. "Why'd we... stop?"

"No reason," Tony said quickly.

"I hear people," Peter swallowed. "Runnin'. Down the hall."

Tony bit his tongue, exhaled sharply and with regret. He looked down at the kid leaning on his frame. "Can you fight?"

Peter nodded weakly. Tony knew he was lying. He also knew they didn't have any other choice out of here.

"Okay," Tony said. "Just think of this as Avengers training, alright?"

"I d's'rve a raise," Peter quipped in slurred speech. "To be honest."

"Yeah, you do, kid." Tony smiled, his eyebrows creased with worry. He could hear the footsteps now, running down the hallway. "I'll make it happen. Promise. Whatever you want after this."

"Awesome," Peter said.

The doors swung open.

Rhodey and a team of other agents bounded in. Tony laughed breathlessly, all the fight leaving him in one fell swoop as War Machine's helmet flipped up and he met eyes with Tony.

"We can't keep meeting like this," Rhodey said, but his eyes were full of relief. "The kid okay?"

"Mmmh," Peter mumbled.

Tony pursed his lips. "He needs medical attention as soon as possible. Where the fuck is Ross?"

"In cuffs," Rhodey said. "He's on his way to—"

In his peripheral, Peter began to sway again. Tony quickly caught him, and supported most of his weight. The worry sank back in like sand through a sieve. "Tell us on the way to the hospital, will you?"

"Right."

The mental clock in Tony's head had finally stopped running.

Peter was scrubbed clean of blood, and he was safely in a hospital bed, bandaged around his middle where the wounds mostly resided. Pain medication is cycling through an IV that was Tony-approved. (More like Tony-begged. He couldn't stand to see the kid in pain one second longer.)

As for himself, Tony's in the hospital bed next to him, and while in any other scenario he'd be trying to get out of it, this time he stayed put. After all, he had to be a good example for the stubborn teenager next to him, who had about the same idea of being stuck in one place.

He'd been given an IV drip that the doctor told him would really help with the whole dehydration/malnutrition thing he had going. The exhaustion was still kicking him in the gut a little bit, which was weird because Tony knew he'd stayed up for way longer than 52 hours before and he was fine then, really. The only reason it's this bad, as all things, lead back again to...

Peter turned in his bed with a huff. "I'm tired of pretending to sleep now. Can you actually talk to me?"

Tony sighed, something tired and something fond. "Okay. Fine. What do you wanna talk about then, pipsqueak?"

"Don't call me pipsqueak after we both got kidnapped," Peter laughed weakly. He looked down at the pale stone-blue blanket. "That was really weird, by the way."

"Yeah," Tony frowned. "I bet."

"He asked me to sign the Accords," Peter said carefully. "Mr. Stark... wasn't that the thing we were fighting for? Back in Germany?"

Tony didn't reply.

"I don't think I could ever sign that," Peter continued. "Even if... Even if this whole thing never happened."

He looked guilty for it. He looked guilty about not wanting to sign a document that would have revealed his identity to everybody. Tony made him look like that. He brought him right in the middle of the whole government dumpster fire, as if he had any right to do so.

He tried to imagine what would have happened if Peter did sign the Accords. He remembered times where Spider-Man didn't make it to a crime scene, his mask splashed on the front cover and in all the headlines– the danger he would be in if instead of Spider-Man it was 'Peter Parker.' The lack of privacy from the media that turned all the creeps towards a kid was something that Tony Stark had been painfully familiar with since he was born.

Tony could write the book on life-altering mistakes. If he had turned the clock... if he was back in the conference room of Avengers Compound just barely a year ago, surrounded by people he used to call family, he wondered if he would make a different call. Knowing what he knew now.

(The truth was, he could have 'wondered' this alternative for years, but he knew he would have done something else. Take away Barnes. Take away Ultron. He'd do anything to keep Peter safe, even if that meant turning back the clock...)

"You shouldn't have signed it," Tony said firmly. "You know, I probably shouldn't have signed it either. For someone as smart as I am, I'm an ignorant prick sometimes. It gets people hurt, Pete. It's why I'm really not the best role model off the shelf, okay?"

Peter made a so-so motion with his hand. "I mean, maybe part of it was your fault, but you weren't the one who decided I wasn't a human when I didn't sign some legal document. You're not an old government guy."

Tony looked down, putting his face in his hands. "Geez..."

Peter shivered. "I don't know. I don't remember a lot of it. I just know it really, really wasn't fun. Did they run tests on you too?"

"No," Tony huffed a dry laugh. "They just kept me in the cell and had me wait, mostly. Just like a trip to the DMV."

"I can't imagine you in a DMV," Peter smiled.

"Good," Tony sniffed. "I don't want to be imagined in a DMV."

"I think he tried running tests on me," Peter said. "Like, not him, but his bad guy posse, you know? They were sticking me with needles and like... They would... I don't know, it felt like all the times I've been stabbed, but like, they were running this thing through my blood and I think it was taking my powers away, so everything hurt really bad..."

Tony's heart monitor was beeping with increasing speed. He inhaled stiffly, the breath caught in his chest and his eyebrows furrowed tight. He swallowed, his mouth completely dry. "Yeah."

"Are– Are you good?" Peter paused. "Should I call the doctor? What's going on?"

"Just, chill for a second," Tony stumbled. Another deep breath, shaky. He fought the urge to climb out of bed and pace around the small room. It felt like the walls were closing in. They weren't though, right? That was impossible.

(And Peter's bleeding out on a cot, they're in the middle of the ocean, and he's seizing and choking and Tony can't get to him, and Ross is laughing some sadistic laugh and Tony feels sand on his fingertips, he smells smoke and burnt flesh, and he's in the middle of the desert, he's–)

"Mr. Stark," Peter cut in quickly. "Mr. Stark, hey, hey c'mon! I'm alright! Look at me. Mr. Stark?"

"Hold on, kid."

"Look at me," Peter said again, firmly. "Please."

Tony grunted and lifted his chin up, looking at Peter tiredly through the cracks between his fingers. "You really don't listen, do you? You really don't quit."

"I don't," Peter shrugged. He gave him a small, consoling smile. "I'm all healed though, right? See?"

"Yeah," Tony said raspily. He looked at the bandages wrapped around Peter's arm, and the IV that ran from his wrist full of clear liquid. Nothing neon. Nothing unsafe. He's healing, not healed. He can't see red, though. "I know, kid."

"I'm all good," Peter said again. "Really. I feel great. That's not the pain meds talking. Probably."

The corner of Tony's mouth quirked up. His heart rate slowed.

"Rhodey said earlier that Ross isn't getting out of jail anytime soon," Peter assured. "Remember? So we're okay. We're just relaxing in a normal room, like uh, like a sleepover."

"God, everytime I forget that you're a literal child," Tony said, obnoxiously rolling his eyes. He was fonder than ever.

"I'm sixteen!" Peter argued, grinning at him.

Hi sixteen, I'm Da–

"Here's an idea," Tony said. He gestured to the windows of the hospital– the dark lit up by buildings. "It's night. There's a TV in here. How about we finish up the weekend the way it was meant to and watch a movie?"

"That sounds good," Peter said softly. He rested his head back into the crinkly hospital pillow. "Star Wars?"

Tony fished the remote out from the drawer and let the air in his lungs, the muscles in his shoulders, the clock in his head, settle.

"Sure, kiddo," Tony murmured. "Whatever you want."