Alright so I have been feeling particularly angsty lately (maybe because its almost time to go back to school) but I have been working on this little story for a few days and I figured in a last hurrah of summer I would post it.

This is a bit different from anything else Avengers related I have written. In this case, it takes place after my story 'You Can Be Damned Sure We'll Avenge It' but its not necessary to read for this to make sense.

TL;DR: Tony retires for reasons after the defeat of Thanos and Peter gets to go about his life but their relationship has gotten closer. This is four years after Thanos so Peter is away at college and Tony and Pepper have a young son named Morgan.

Just to let you know before you read, this is an Irondad/Spideyson story, so for those of you who don't like that plot line, I'm warning you now.

For those who do, I hope you enjoy!

Tony was tinkering with the brace on his arm when his phone started to vibrate against the table. The sound scared him and the head of the screwdriver jumped out of the threads, "Dammit," he cursed before reaching over his arm and tapping on the phone to answer it, smirking at the name on the caller id. "Hey, kid, what's up?" He knew that Peter was normally in class until after two so it was a little weird he was calling but he just assumed he had a break. That was until the kid did not answer, did not say anything and Tony felt that old feeling of dread creep up, "Pete…" he started, hoping the kid just misdialed him or something. Then he heard sobbing. Tony immediately hit record on his phone and started to close up the housing on the brace.

"Pete, are you there?" He tried to keep his voice quiet and calm but the fear still leaked through.

"Dad?" The voice was quiet and laced with pain.

Tony swore at the quiver in his voice, "Yah, its me, kid. What's going on?"

Peter stuttered and stumbled as he tried to answer, "I – I don't know. I don't remember much after leaving the library yesterday. I woke in this…cell and they…uh…they hit me – for…uh…for a while. It hurt. This is the first time they've left me alone. They took – um – they took my phone and my backpack but they left my watch…" He wandered off with a pained groan.

As deep as that sound cut, Tony could not help but thank god for small miracles when Peter said he still had his watch. And then he could not help but thank his anxiety because it was what led him to put pretty much every failsafe he could think of into his son's watch. He barked an order, "FRIDAY, find him." Not waiting for an answer, he turned his full attention back to the phone, "Okay – alright, Pete. I'm getting your location now, keep talking to me and I'll be there as soon as I can, okay."

"Please hurry." Peter begged, a rare inflection of fear rang through clearly with the plea.

"Hold on Pete." He tipped his head back up to the ceiling, "How's it coming FRIDAY?" But he did not hear the AI's answer because Peter's hissed demand recalled his attention.

"Quiet, someone's coming."

Tony pressed the phone tighter to his ear as he heard Peter yelp a moment before the creaking sound of a heavy door cut through the feed. Heavy footfalls were loud in the background as a voice rang out, "Who's he talking to?" The grating, nasal voice caught Tony's attention. Then it continued, "Did you leave him with a phone?" The voice rose in pitch, the same way it always did when he got caught and Tony unconsciously curled his hands into fists as the taunting continued, "Are you really that stupid?"

But the identity of the speaker lost all his interest as he heard Peter start to scramble backward as he tried to avoid the loud footfalls moving closer to him.

Then a deeper voice that was much closer to the watch answered, "It's a watch, boss."

"Well, destroy it, he's obviously talking to someone on it." The higher voice scoffed as if it should have been obvious that a watch was in fact used for communication.

An answering grunt was probably the thug that saw the watch and then Tony heard a sound that turned his stomach. Peter shrieked in pain and the reception wavered but not before he heard the sound of crunching bone. A scream pierced the connection twice more before the call finally cut out. "Pete? Peter!" Tony screamed before turning his fear on the AI, "FRIDAY, where is he?" Tony managed to ground out before as he slammed the a nanobot housing onto his wrists.

The sweet Irish tone modulated into sadness when she answered, "I couldn't find him, boss. Something was messing with the signal, it kept bouncing."

Frustration boiled over as the tortured screams of his oldest son played over in his head. In pure anger, Tony whipped the screwdriver across the room, not even hearing the satisfying collapse as it slammed into something glass across the way. He snatched the other nanobot housing off the diagnostic pad he had been using and snapped it around his wrist. Only a moment later, he felt the familiar crawl of nanobots as the armor he had not worn in four years slipped seamlessly back into place. Iron Man suit in place, Tony headed for the hanger.

Pepper was playing with their son when she heard the loud shattering of glass and other materials from the lab. Worry jumped into her throat as she assumed Tony did something stupid with one of the experiments he was running. Scooping Morgan into her arms, she took off down the stairs. Before she even reached the bottom, she called out, "Tony, is everything alright?" But the minute she turned the corner, she knew more than just an experiment had gone horribly wrong. Tugging the door open, she loudly called out to her armored husband, "Tony, what is it, what's wrong?"

He was standing at the back of the lab, headed toward the hanger when he turned and let the helmet melt back off the suit. His face was set into a sickened expression but his eyes were hard as he snarled the answer to her question, "Someone took Pete."

Pepper unconsciously shifted Morgan closer as she tried to comprehend what he was saying. Peter was at school, he was studying engineering. And no one outside of the Avengers knew who he was, her twirling thoughts coalesced into a stuttered couple of questions, "Wh-what? Who would…what?"

Morgan started bouncing in Pepper's arms when he heard Peter's name, quickly adding his question to the conversation, "Is Peter coming home soon?"

The sickened look on Tony's face morphed into something far more dangerous as he stepped up to his youngest son, so when he tenderly touched the side of the young boy's face, the gentleness was a sharp juxtaposition to the murder in his eyes, "He will be, Morgan, I promise." Then he covered his baby's ears and caught Pepper's eyes, hissing, "Someone took Pete. I don't know where and I don't know how but I'm going to find them and then I'm going to kill them." His tone did not allow for any argument.

But she was not about to argue. Pepper felt her own anger bubble to the surface as she her eyes wandered over the suit he had not worn in a long time. She could not stop him and she did not want to, "Go get him back." She ordered, pulling Morgan a little closer to her side as she watched Tony turn and head toward the hanger.

Peter curled around his wrist and sobbed. He had hoped he would be able to get a distress call out and at least get some backup but he knew that with how badly destroyed the watch was, he had to assume backup was not coming. He needed to start thinking but the pain numbed his mind. He fought it as his eyes starting to droop. The exhaustion tugged at his senses, reminding him that it had been at least a couple of days since he had slept. Then his stomach growled its frustration as well and he remembered that he had skipped breakfast and lunch to study.

Agitation built the longer he took stock of his surroundings and he could not help the tears that escaped. He desperately needed help, he really needed his dad. But he could not let himself give up. Pressing his working hand to his temple in a bid to clear his mind, he tried to remember exactly what happened. His memory was a little hazy but he could remember some of what happened. The library was the last thing he remembered clearly and then...then a pin prick? Something had stuck him as he was coming out of the hall, had someone run into him? He shook his head to clear it farther but that was a mistake as pain flared up and he had to force his head into his hand to stop the spinning. Peter knew he was supposed to be a superhero but all he felt right now was fear.

Forcing himself to take as deep a breath as he could, he closed his eyes again. He needed a plan. If his dad could find him, he would, but he needed to assume that FRIDAY had not been able to trace the call, he had to assume that he was his only way out. Whoever took him knew who he was, the one with the nasally voice had mentioned his moniker when they cut him, so Peter knew there was no reason to keep up the ordinary kid façade. He started to look around the room and found it well constructed, like they had built it for someone like him. He deflated a little further as he realized that even the door was steel reinforced concrete. He knew he could lift it, but only if he could get his hands under it.

Glancing around for a few more minutes, he kept going back to that door. So that was it, the door was the weak point.

While it was not a full plan, it was a part of a plan and it gave him something more to build on. Creeping forward as quietly as he could, Peter studied the door. It looked thick and heavy but there was a small gap underneath that seemed just a little too thin for his fingers. He could work with that. Then he pressed his head against the door and closed his eyes, forcing his senses to focus on the noises outside. There was one soft breath that he heard just outside the door and what sounded like pacing footsteps at the end of what he assumed was some kind of hallway given the relatively short time before the guard turned and paced the other direction. The guard far away would be a problem but if he could jam up this door, he might be able to get an upper hand on them both when they came to investigate. Crouching down and ignoring the way the bruises pulled across his skin, Peter took a deep breath and jammed both his hands as far under the door as he could. He bit his tongue hard enough that it bled as he felt the skin tear away from his nails and the pads of his fingers but he had a passable grip on the bottom of the door. He crouched low, ready to shift the door up before hopefully kicking it out. They might have known he was Spider-man but few outside of the Avengers really knew how strong he was. He took a deep breath as he pulled hard, trying to use whatever power he could from his legs and arms. He felt every bruised muscle and broken bone in his body start to scream as his broken wrist popped and shifted with the strain. But then the door shifted slightly, giving him a bit more room to shove his fingers underneath. The leverage let him move the door more and he groaned with the effort as the lock snapped under the pressure. Peter was panting heavily as a distinctly sharp pain shot through his chest and he felt what had been a cracked rib give way under the strain. Still he had to keep going. Pushing even harder, he screamed in his last gasp of strength as he felt the door finally give way. Dancing back a few steps, he darted forward, slamming into the door with his shoulder.

The door fell with all the finesse of a massive tree, slamming into the ground with a booming thud and pinning the guard behind its weight. Peter stumbled onto the remains, holding his wrist to his chest as he looked both directions. The guard he had heard at the end of the hall was running at him so Peter took off the opposite direction. He made it to the end of the hall, only to miss ducking under the outstretched arm of a burly man he did not sense coming. Peter fell back hard, instinctually breaking his fall with his hands and crying out as he collapsed to the left as his wrist finally gave out under him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, kid?" The bald, muscular guard drew himself up to his full height sneering down at the young man on the floor.

The guy was huge, like as big as Thor huge but he was ugly as sin. His missing front teeth were on full display as he snarled and the jagged scar across his cheek pinched with his scowling expression. And all Peter could do was crouch into a more protective stance. He tucked his broken wrist into his stomach and held his other hand out in front of him. He could taste the acidic bite of fear as he stared up at the massive man.

"You were trying to escape weren't you?" He narrowed his eyes at Peter, "Looks like we'll have to see more of that speed healing. Hey!" The thug called out to someone farther down the hallway, commanding, "Get down here!"

Four men appeared, each as large as his original tormentor. Then the large guy stared down at him again, "See here's the deal, my job is to keep you here. That's it. I was not given many parameters when it came to doing that so…" he trailed off turning to face the men behind him. "Pin him down." Each one of them moved forward, each trying to catch one of the suddenly flailing limbs. Peter threw himself at one of them and managed to land a punch square against his chest, causing the man to stumble back as he grabbed at his ribcage. But then the big brute, the one who was doing the talking stepped forward, snatched his broken wrist, and twisted.

The blinding pain of the now twice rebroken limb dropped Peter to his knees as he heaved the bile that was all that was left in his stomach. But the man was not done. Grunting some kind of command to the men in the hallway, Peter felt his arms and legs manipulated as he was pinned to the ground, his wrist screaming in agony as a knee was ground into the bone. Then the blinding pain intensified as the lead brute started talking, "Seems your not as invincible as the boss thinks, still its our job to keep you here so I figure the best way to do that is to keep you from walking out of here." And before he could even consider the implications, a metallic bar slammed into his lower leg, once, then twice. It was on the second time that Peter felt the bone snap but a third and fourth swing guaranteed that he was not going anyway soon or quickly. He could not hold back the strangled scream that tore from his throat, he had never felt pain this badly before. As his mind slowly wandered away, he could not help but think that he was glad his dad had not heard any of that. And then the world went dark as the shock and pain finally beat him into submission.

That's all I have for right now! I hope you enjoyed it so far and I will be working on getting up the next chapter as quickly as I can.

Have a wonderful day/night and keep being creative!

- Lily