Peter Parker... Stark?

Hopeful Again

"What are you doing?" Tony yelled. "You already hit him!"

"If you don't use enough electricity, you're not going to be able to snap him out of it. The nanotech has to be overloaded if you want your son back!" the man said, the desperation in his voice still apparent despite it being crackly and distorted from the mask on his face. Tony paused, unsure of what to make of that information, which gave the man the chance to grab the widow bites back and fire more at Peter.

"No!" Tony cried, smacking the device out of the man's hands. It went skittering across the floor and Tony stepped in the way of the man as he moved to retrieve it, charging up a repulsor and aiming it at the man's chest. "Take another step, I dare you."

The man hesitated before slowly lifting his hands into the air. He carefully removed his mask and deactivated his wings, which dropped to the ground with a thud. "Look. I know you have no reason to, but you need to trust me on this. I promise I'm trying to help." Tony opened his mouth to argue when the man's eyes abruptly bugged out. He starting twitching and making strange noises before falling face-first to the ground. Nat was sitting up, her wrist in the air.

"Yeah, like I'm going to trust the guy who threw me out the window," she snorted, deactivating her remaining wristband before wiping some of the blood off her face and shakily getting to her feet.

Tony thanked her before dropping to his knees beside Peter. "Fri, get Bruce in here now!"

"He's on his way," she responded.

Tony's breathing hitched as he frantically felt for a pulse. How many times now had he been in this position, holding the kid and searching desperately for signs of life, not knowing what was wrong or whether it was something they could fix.

His fingers dug into Peter's neck until there, just under his jaw, was a pulse. Tony didn't try to hide his relief from Natasha, who was kneeling beside him. Steve and Bucky cautiously approached, both of them clearly hurt and exhausted. Much of the metal of Bucky's arm had been corroded away, and Steve was limping slightly.

"Has anyone heard from Sam? Or Rhodey?" Steve asked, trying and failing to hide how worried he was. Tony felt his all-too-familiar anxiety start to coil in his stomach as he shook his head. Steve frowned and turned towards the shattered windows, as though any second he expected his friends to come soaring into the room with big smiles on their faces.

The door to the stairs burst open and Bruce emerged, out of breath and a little green around the gills. "Where is he?" the scientist said, pushing past Bucky so that he could get a better look at Peter. He immediately began pulling the widow bites off the kid, and Tony and Nat quickly started helping. Peter was still unnervingly still other than his erratic breathing.

Once the last one had been taken off, Bruce turned to Steve and Bucky. "We need to get him to the med bay. Now." Steve nodded and lifted Peter over his shoulder before limping out of the room. Tony moved to follow, not wanting to let his kid out of his sight ever again, but Bruce stopped him. "I want you both in there as well, but not until I've finished with Peter. You are just going to be in the way if you're breathing over my shoulder."

Tony opened his mouth to argue, but Nat put a hand on his shoulder. "We need to find Rhodey and Sam, and we also need to figure out what to do with these imbeciles," Nat said, turning to look disdainfully at the villains scattered across the room. 

"No need," a familiar voice suddenly said. Clint was awake and slowly pulling himself into a sitting position. "I just sent a distress signal to Fury. SHIELD's on the way now." 

Natasha seemed somewhat relieved both to know her friend was okay and that someone else was going to handle the situation from here. She pulled Tony to his feet and then moved towards Clint, who gladly accepted the help and then allowed her to drape his arm over her shoulder. Bruce had disappeared from the room by now, and Tony had to take some deep breaths to try and distract himself from the growing knot of worry in his chest.