(This is for the wonderful Jaspersvlogs on tumblr I hope you like it!)

"Peter, take notes."

The teenager nodded, grabbing his laptop and scooting eagerly forward in his seat, trying to see the specimen through the heavy, reinforced glass surrounding it.

Tony pointed to the object in question, raising an eyebrow at Peter. "What do we currently know about it?"

The kid glanced down at his computer. "Pretty much nothing. It fell from space and landed on earth three days ago. The trajectory suggests it came through the Triangulum galaxy but not necessarily from there. Its temperature was first recorded at around 4,500 Fahrenheit, which is more than double the temperature of lava, but it's been slowly cooling since it was found."

Peter shrugged. "So, basically we know it landed on earth and is super hot. We don't even know what species it is or where it's from."

Tony nodded, pleased. Peter was a smart kid and Tony couldn't wait to see the grade he'd get on what was going to be the best science project ever.

Peter had come to him with a research assignment on extraterrestrial biology and Tony had given him a real, live alien egg. The awed look in Peters wide brown eyes was priceless, as had been his grateful squeak. "Thanks, Mr Stark! I'm gonna have the best project in the whole school!"

Hell yeah, he was.

Tony tapped the glass of the containment unit. "What do we do first when studying the specimen?"

Peter opened his mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by an excited booming voice.

"Tony! You have a Darr'mor egg? Why didn't you tell me? I haven't seen one in a millennium!"

Tony frowned, confused as Thor ran in and pressed his hands to the glass, smiling at the egg excitedly. "Umm, what?"

Loki came in behind his brother, hands clasped behind his back as he peered at the egg with interest. He was markedly more resigned but clearly as eager as Thor as he spoke.

"Darr'mor? Your ancestors called them dragons. They're magnificent beasts that live on the embers of dying stars. Very rare."

"The hatchlings are so cute." Thor was practically cooing at the egg and Loki raised his eyebrows as he regarded his brother.

"I wouldn't think of petting one. It would melt your hand to the bone."

Peter hopped off his chair and put his laptop down, going over to the glass beside Thor, eyes huge with curiosity. "Dragons are real?!"

Thor nodded, raising his hands above his head and curling his fingers into claws in an imitation of the creature he was describing. "They're huge and fearsome! They burn so hot and fly through space so fast that sometimes your scientists think they're meteors! They breathe fire and have bellies full of lava!"

Peter was enthralled, forgetting all about his note-taking. "Whoa! That's so cool!"

The egg rumbled, the bright red shell around it bruising to grey as its audience watched, amazed.

Loki frowned, raising his hands as he backed away. "Not so cool anymore. This needs to be sent back to its parents."

The egg rumbled again, it's huge form, about half the size of Peter, shaking the ground beneath it. Tony pulled Peter back from the glass and stood in front of him protectively. "Why? Whats happening? Is it going to hatch?"

Thor shook his head, pointing to the black spreading over the eggs rough shell. "No, it's cooling down. The egg has to be kept warm or it'll die and if it cools too much-"

Loki finished his brothers sentence for him, voice rushed and panicked. "In order to survive, it'll send out signals to the brains of those around it."

Tony wrapped his arms around Peters' head, pulling him to his chest and pressing the kid's face to his shoulder. "What?!"

"It's like hypnosis! Anyone affected will have an uncontrollable urge to protect and warm the egg. Don't worry, it only happens when you're asleep."

Tony's hold relaxed on the teenager and Peter slipped from his grasp to watch Loki sneer at the egg. "What if we just warm up the egg, so it doesn't have to make anyone sleepwalk?"

Loki didn't bother looking his way. "Sure, have anything that burns as hot as a red giant?"

Peter deflated. "Oh. No."

Loki lifted a dramatic hand as if to silently say 'well, there you go then'. Tony wasn't interested in his unhelpful nonsense and addressed the nice Asgardian instead.

"Thor, what do we do here? Do we destroy it?"

The god looked offended, eyebrows furrowed over his eyes as he shook his head. "No! This is a rare and respectable creature, you can't kill it! We can't let it die. We must find its parents and send it back."

Peter didn't want to kill it either and pressed his hands to the glass next to Thor's. "How do we do that?"

Loki spoke up from across the room as he waved his hands over Tony's screens, having materialised there from where he'd previously been standing by the containment unit with the others.

"It will take me a few days but I should be able to use its heat signature to find that of its parents. Then we can send it back to them and hope they don't come and destroy us all for deigning to play with their youngling."

Tony threw up his hands, tired already. "Well, that's just great."

It was supposed to be a simple science project but nope, of course, it had to turn out to be complicated. He rubbed a hand over his forehead, feeling a headache forming.

"Sorry, Peter. We might have to find something else for you to study."

Peter, however, had no intention of leaving. His eyes were huge, pupils dilated till the iris was nothing but a thin ring hugging his ink black pupils. His voice was quiet and warm, with an edge of determination. He was not leaving that egg.

"No way. This is perfect."

…..

"Okay, kiddo. Off to bed." Tony placed his hand on the small of Peters back, pushing him down the hallway as the teenager groaned.

"I'm not a kid! I can hang out with you guys!"

Tony held in a laugh at Peters whining. He would have been plenty convincing if he hadn't been yawning through his last two words.

"Yeah, okay Pete. Whatever you say."

They'd been studying the egg, learning what they could from ancient texts on dragons and the stories that Thor and Loki regaled them with. Peter had sat there with a huge smile on his face as Thor stomped across the room, roaring and pretending to attack his brother who playfully pushed him away before using his magic to turn into a dragon in the middle of the living room.

Tony had watched Peter laugh, heart, warming pleasantly as the kid dodged a kick from the god of thunder as he tripped and fell over the couch in surprise. Loki melted back from a dragon to his usual form and laughed at his brother, who promptly got back to his feet and tackled him right over the coffee table. Peter had laughed so hard he'd almost fallen off his seat and Tony couldn't help but think the bill for the broken furniture was worth it.

But now it was bedtime for the little squirt, who had barely been able to keep his eyes open after dinner.

Tony pushed him towards his bedroom, having given the kid his own room in the compound months ago.

Peter groaned again and flopped face down onto his cushy queen bed, practically asleep already. Tony shook his head with a smile and started pulling Peters shoes off, before rolling the kid over and tucking him under the covers.

Peter didn't even open his eyes, snoring softly on as Tony ruffled his curly mop of hair. "Sweet dreams kiddo."

Unbeknownst to Tony, Peters dreams were anything but. They were filled with fire and the thumping, racing heartbeat of the creature that called out for him. It needed him, emplored him for his help and Peter did not possess the ability to say no.

So, halfway through the night, after Tony had just gone to sleep himself, Peter rolled out of bed.

His eyes opened, sluggish and glassy, unseeing, as his feet stumbled forward, walking him right out of his room and down the hall with a single purpose pushing him on. Protect the egg. Keep it warm.

…..

Loki missed Asgard. He'd never been woken up by an arachnid child stumbling down hallways in Asgard. Stupid mortals.

He rolled over in his silk sheets, glaring at his door as footsteps thumped outside his bedroom.

They weren't the heavy thumps of his brother's feet that he had heard since childhood, they were more like the clumsy stomps of someone that was walking around with their eyes closed.

Thump. Bang. Stomp.

Loki groaned and pressed his face into his pillow. Whatever was happening wasn't his problem. Stark could sort it out, it was his building.

The footsteps faded as whoever made the noise walked off further into the compound and Loki sighed, hoping to get back to sleep. And then the alarms started blaring.

Loki had had just about enough, flipping his sheets off and bursting out the door to see who was making such a fuss at such a ridiculous hour.

The sirens blared throughout the compound, alerting the occupants to some sort of danger, but Loki wasn't worried. He was just tired and annoyed.

He made his way down to where the commotion was coming from, silk robe fluttering around him as he hurried to the labs where the alarms were loudest. As he got closer, however, he began to hear other sounds too, which were far more disturbing than the sirens.

Something was being smashed, something that didn't want to be smashed. Loki ran faster, hearing grunting and crunching as he got closer to where the egg was being kept. Crap, the egg.

The god of mischief ran around the corner and into the lab, the sight greeting him far worse than he had hoped. There was the little arachnid himself, Stark's ward was the one making the racket, slamming his fist into the glass of the containment unit.

Loki paused in the doorway, shocked. He knew the kid was strong but he was being a little excessive. Peter didn't seem to notice him there, face blank as if in a trance as he slammed his fist over and over into the cracking glass keeping him from the egg.

His hand was covered in blood, smeared over his split knuckles as glass embedded itself further into his skin with each punch. Loki stood there frozen as the glass cracked under the pressure before Peters' hand was coming back, readying to strike again but there was something wrong with the shape of it. Something other than the streams of red flowing down to drip onto the floor and the shards of glass in his skin. His fingers were mangled, crumpled and broken. It must have been agony but it didn't seem to be slowing him down any.

Peter threw his ruined fist to the glass again, and this time Loki moved. He surged forward, making his way to the young Avenger, trying to get to him before he could cause any more damage.

He didn't get there fast enough, hearing instead, the awful, sickening crunch of bone as Peter broke his own wrist.

"Stop!" Loki grabbed the kid, pulling his good arm back and yanking him away from the glass.

Peter's face was blank, just as Loki had thought it would be, his eyes open but glassy. He was being affected by the egg. Of course, he would be, the kid couldn't keep out of trouble for more than five minutes.

Peter threw off his arm, pulling away from him and going back to the glass. He'd almost gotten through it, slamming one last kick to the cracks before it smashed open, the reinforced glass giving under Peter's strength.

Loki tried to grab him again, only for Peter to turn and kick the god, sending him soaring across the room to hit the wall and crash onto the ground.

It was only then that Tony and Bruce ran in. They sprinted into the room just in time to see Peter climb through the hole he'd made in the glass.

Tony reached forward, eyes wide with fear as he desperately called out. "Peter, stop!"

Peter hadn't known, probably wouldn't have cared in his trance had he known anyway, but Tony had set up a number of security protocols within the containment unit.

The strength needed to break through the glass could only be possessed by someone like the Hulk or Thor or an alien, all of whom would be able to withstand the nasty surprise that Tony had set up for anyone that broke through the containment unit.

But for Peter, it was too much. When he stepped inside it set off the electrical pulse that Tony had programmed, electricity running up from the floor to shock him. His whole body went rigid, muscles locking up in an instant.

Bruce called out, voice panicked. "Friday, turn it off!"

Thor ran in, still looking half asleep as he made his way to his brother, helping Loki off the floor.

"What's going on?"

Loki didn't answer, still watching the kid. He may not have been as fond of him as everyone else seemed to be but he did care and it was an awful sight.

Peter was shaking slightly, the electricity running through him locking him up like a statue but when Friday turned the current off he dropped like a stone.

A soft breath left his mouth, eyes rolling up into his head as he fell to the floor, boneless. His ruined arm lay, disfigured and bleeding.

Tony made his way to the wrecked containment unit, voice warped with fear.

"No, no, no. Peter? God, what happened?"

His eyes suddenly turned to Loki, eyes accusing and voice hard. "Was this you?!"

He had a right to think so, with Loki not being the most trustworthy person and all, but the god still frowned. "No!"

Loki groaned as Thor pulled him up from the floor, brushing himself off. "He's been affected by the egg. He wasn't in control."

Tony knelt beside the teenager, placing his fingers on the kid's throat gingerly, trying to be careful not to move him before Bruce looked him over. "I thought it just made people sleepwalk? This is insane, he's-"

Tony's confused frown slipped from his face, eyes widening in fear as his breath halted in his chest, words quiet and shaky. "Bruce, his heart...it's not beating."

Bruce ran over as Tony's hand slipped away from Peters' neck. Thor sprinted over and dropped to his knees in the mess, not bothered by the broken glass littering the ground.

The god of thunder slipped his careful hands under the teenager and turned him onto his back, Peter limp as a ragdoll in his hold. Bruce looped his hands under Tony's arms and dragged him back, away from the kid as Thor started chest compressions, knowing Tony and Bruce didn't have the strength needed to manipulate Peters' ribs.

"One, two, three, four- Bruce fix him!" The god panted as he pressed down on Peters breastbone while Bruce grabbed supplies from the, thankfully, well-stocked lab.

"Is he breathing?"

Thor kept pressing down, rhythmic pumps of his hands forcing Peters heart to beat, before he paused, holding his hand above the kid's mouth. Nothing. "No."

He resumed chest compressions as Bruce came back with what he needed, pulling out an Ambu bag and placing the mask over Peters' face.

"Come on, kid. Come back to us." He and Thor worked in tandem to get Peter's heart going again, Thor counting out compressions before pausing and allowing Bruce to pump air into Peter's mouth, both waiting to see if he would breathe on his own before resuming their ministrations when he didn't.

Tony's chest rose and fell in choppy heaves as he stared at Peters lax face, mangled arm laying out amongst the sea of glass scattered across the floor. His voice was rough, choked by fear that wrapped around his throat and squeezed with every push down of Thor's hands on Peters' chest.

"Bruce is he…?" The word didn't come, stuck in Tony's throat, but Bruce knew what he meant. He shook his head, not having time to look behind him at Tony as he answered.

"No. We'll get him back." Peter wasn't dead. His heart may have stopped but he wasn't dead until they gave up. His brain was still alive, there was still time, but the longer he went without oxygen the harder it would be to pull him back.

Bruce didn't want to do it but the compressions weren't enough and he had no choice but to pull out the defibrillator.

"Dammit, Peter." He dragged the gear towards him, ignoring the scraping of glass underneath it, and charged it up, hearing Tony's breathing pick up further with the whine of the machine.

Thor watched Bruce carefully, waiting for the nod to stop compressions. Once it was given he sat back as Bruce tore Peters' shirt open, exposing his unmoving chest to the night air.

Tony made a strangled noise at the back of his throat as Bruce slapped the pads onto Peters' skin.

"Clear!"

Thor raised his hands away from Peter, giving the call. "Clear."

Tony couldn't look. He couldn't bear the sight of Bruce pushing that button, electricity arcing through Peter, muscles clenching and back raising off the floor only to thump back to the ground. He couldn't bear to watch Peters lifeless body being shocked, pale and empty. It was too...corpse-like.

The sound was bad enough. The whine of the electricity, the heavy smack of Peters body hitting the floor. Tony could barely take it.

Especially not when it didn't work. Bruce cursed, low and angry as he tried again. "Clear!"

Tony turned his face away, hand over his eyes as Peters' form once again strained upwards with the force of the shock racing through his body. He clenched his teeth at the slap of Peters' back hitting the ground, and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the blood pooling under Peters' broken fingers.

But finally, it came. The sound he'd been waiting for. Peter sucked a thin breath into rattling lungs and Bruce sighed, exhausted.

"He's back."

(Please tell me what you think? There is another chapter coming)