I said I would continue! So here's next chapter, sooooooooooo sorry for the wait and yes, I suck. I was busy, like with school work and stuff because we had important exams that counted towards what you could pick as subjects for GCSEs and stuff, and also since last I updated I got into like at least a hundred more fandoms (I'm not even kidding I watched so much since last update literally I watched more TV shows than I can think of right now). And also I am suuuuper bad at managing my time so I can actually publish like regularly instead of every six months -_-
And, one tiny thing, I have no autocorrect or anything on this because I don't have Word so I apologise in advance for any spelling mistakes I will inevitably make. Okay, enough rambling and on with the show!
Oh, and you guys can thank yourselves for an update now because I basically forgot about it but your reviews and PMs were much appreciated and forced me into continuing to avoid like more social interaction than normal because... no no me no gusta :S no just kidding haha you guys all rock :D
Oh, one last thing, I got a laptop for Christmas which means I can now write freely, and I now have two and a half hours of doing nothing at all except sit on the laptop (because I wait in the car while mum works till half five after my school ends) on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, so just so you know that if I am not updating more often than twice a year then it is totally me being a lazy cow and that you should hate me if I don't update at least once every three months (yeah I know still a long time but hey I have to cut myself some slack :P ) Okay, now on with the show!
Warnings: Blood, bullet wounds, descriptions of injuries, badly enforced medical stuff (dammit man I'm a teenage girl not a doctor!)
The costumed group reached the double doors of Stark Tower (now 'A' Tower) in minutes. Spider-Man was bleeding profusely, even with pressure applied to his wounds from an uncharacteristically worried Cap. The kid they didn't even know the name of was passed out in Cap's muscly arms, Bruce regularly making sure he didn't choke on his own blood currently pouring from his mouth.
Tony stepped forward and, upon finding that the keypad for the doors was smashed, flew up to his floor to let them in manually. It took him around a minute to navigate through the 100+ floors in his clumpy suit, but he reached the front doors and opened them by taking off his gaunlet and getting a fingerprint scanned.
The Avengers rushed up the 3 flights of stairs to the medical floor, where the medical staff had all evacuated the building, leaving Bruce and Tony to treat Spider-Man.
Cap lay him on the nearest bed, and the kid stirred, but didn't wake. While Bruce and Tony milled around collecting equipment and cleaning their hands Steve held his hands tightly over the wound on Spidey's abdomen, while Hawkeye pressed on his knee.
Natasha and Thor left to go find Loki somewhere in the Tower, leaving the four Avengers with the unconscious kid. Bruce stood next to the bed, still shirtless and carefully lifted Spider-Man up to a sitting position leaning on his shoulder to check to see if the bullet went all the way through. It hadn't, which meant he would have to dig it out.
He told Hawkeye to do the same with his leg. That had not gone through, either.
"Tony, will you do me a favour and get my bag from my room? It's under the desk." Bruce's bag had the right equipment in to deal with superhumans, as this medical bay was generally for the staff of the tower who had managed to get themselves injured, so it didn't have the right things. Only SHIELD and Bruce did. Tony left for the 42nd floor, his boots making a loud clumping noise when he walked.
"Okay, Clint, will you pass me the scissors?" Bruce asked, holding a hand out after laying Spider-Man back down. Clint scanned the room until his eyes fell on the scissors near another bed.
"Thank you," Bruce said, taking them and slicing down the material of Spider-Man's costume to cut off the top half of it, leaving the bottom but cutting off from the knee down on the injured leg. He removed the kid's gloves carefully, trying not to jostle his wrist too much.
But Spider-Man woke up. His eyes opened wide and he gasped in pain, instinctively holding a good hand to his abdomen and wincing.
"What- I-?" he slurred.
"Try not to talk too much." Bruce advised. "You're in Stark Tower, you were shot twice, no one's going to hurt you now."
He nodded slightly, bewildered until the memory came rushing back. He lifted his hand to his face urgently and gasped.
"It's okay," Bruce said quickly. "We don't know who you are."
The kid breathed a sigh of relief, still tense because of his mask being off but more at ease now. Bruce bit his lip; he would have to know who the kid was to see his medical history, and also to be able to use his actual name to wake him up from unconsciousness if he passed out again.
Bruce sighed. "But, I will need to know." The kid looked up sharply. "Just me, it doesn't have to be anyone else, except maybe Tony if you're okay with it. But I need to know to look up your records and what not." he still looked reluctant, so Bruce continued. "Okay, see, you are the only one outside of the Avengers and SHIELD who know who the Hulk actually is, you are the only one outside of the Avengers and SHIELD who know that Hawkeye and Black Widow are even in the Avengers. If that doesn't show we can keep secrets, I don't know what will."
Spider-Man chewed on the inside of his cheek thoughtfully, eyebrows creased in curiosity and worry and pain. "Okay," he sighed. "I'm Peter Parker." Hawkeye looked up at the kid, Peter now, as though seeing if it was okay that he knew, too.
"Great," Bruce smiled. He turned on his heel and approached one of the computers, typing in Peter's name into the Stark Medical database. "Hey, you don't happen to be related to a Richard Parker, do you?"
"Yeah. He was my dad, did you know him?"
"Was?" Bruce turned around sharply. "What happened?"
"He died when I was small. Plane crash. You knew him?" Peter asked again.
Bruce raked a hand through his hair. "Yeah, before the Hulk, the last time I saw him we had argued. I thought he was ignoring me all these years, so I forgot about him. I'm sorry, Peter."
"Nah, it's okay. It happened a long time ago." Peter coughed weakly and cringed at the pain. He kept talking to keep his mind off it. "So how did you know him?"
"We went to the same university and became lab partners after. We were close, for a while. Then he met your mother, and he got a bit... I don't know-" Bruce made a vague gesture beside his head, "-Distracted. He started on about these theories, they didn't even make sense. He kept saying he was being watched, then one night he came to me and told me to run with him and his wife, and I thought he had gotten himself in trouble or something, and in short, we argued, he left, I never saw him again."
"I thought Doctor Connors was his lab partner?" Peter asked, confused.
"I worked with them. The three of us were working on cross-species genetics, and each of us had our specialties, so we worked together."
"He never mentioned you in his log."
"Really?" Bruce frowned. "Why?"
"I don't know." Peter shrugged.
Bruce frowned at the ceiling for a minute in thought, then shrugged and turned back around to the computer. He clicked on Parker, Peter Benjamin and was instantly given an extensive list of all of Peter's illnesses and injuries.
In the mental part he saw that Peter suffered from OCD and mild anxiety, with a note that they were probably a result of the guilt from his uncle's death. Bruce didn't ask, and went to the injuries. He found that Peter had had two broken arms, a sprained ankle, broken wrist and a broken leg, but nothing out of the ordinary.
"Peter, are your injuries from your, um, Spider-Man-ing on this?"
Peter shook his head. "No. I deal with them myself, or get my girlf- my friend to help."
"Ah." Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose more and stood up, abandoning the computer. "Well, can you tell me what injuries you got?"
"Yeah-" Peter groaned suddenly, trying to hide the pain and not pass out. "Three stab wounds, two gunshots before this and a giant lizard nearly sliced my lungs out." He forced his eyes to stay open, while Cap and Hawkeye still pressed on his wounds, both now only bleeding sluggishly. Bruce stood quickly to go to Peter's aid, but he couldn't do anything until Tony arrived with his bag.
"Just hold on, a few more minutes and you'll be fine." Bruce lifted Cap's hands to see the wound, noticing it was partly covered by the webbing. "This is safe, right?" Bruce asked Peter skeptically.
He looked up slowly, frowning as he figured out what Bruce said through the haze of agony. Peter nodded lazily. "I think."
"Oh, well that's reassuring," Bruce mumbled, beginning to get very impatient.
Finally Tony entered the room, red faced and with half a suit on, both feet gone and half of its torso. "What the heck happened to you?" Bruce asked, taking the bag and rifling through it.
"I found Loki." Bruce looked up sharply. "But Tasha and Thor took care of him."
Bruce nodded and found what he was looking for; a hypodermic needle that Tony had designed, which took a blood sample and then immediately told you everything about the person- mainly a superhuman's powers- you would need to know.
Peter was revealed to have increased healing factor, but only double that of a human's, proportionate strength of a spider, speed, agility, and could stick to walls. "Should make this easier," Bruce muttered about the healing factor.
"Yeah," Tony agreed. He turned to Peter. "How you doing, kid?"
"Oh, just peachy." Peter replied automatically. He coughed into his hand and blood spattered from his mouth.
"Okay," Bruce said, filling a syringe. "This is a double dose of sedative, and will hopefully work with your powers. You mind?"
Peter thought for a second, then shook his head; he trusted the Avengers. Really though, if he couldn't trust them who could he trust?
Bruce held his arm and stuck the needle into him, injecting the liquid into his body, hoping it would work.
*I got like halfway through Bruce and Peter's conversation and realised that yeah, it's way too relaxed and there's like a sixteen year old dying of two gunshot wounds and they're having a conversation about his dad like what, but I left in most of the conversation because I kinda like the idea of Peter's Dad and Bruce being all chummy like because that's super coolio. Or something. Just, I don't know, imagine the conversation's actually really fast or something and they can just talk super fasto. :P
Gah I'm soooooooooooooo tired but I promised Guidiani I'd publish by the end of Saturday at the latest (which totally didn't happen because right here it is now 4am on Sunday so yeah but for America I think you guys are like six hours behind so heheheh for you Americans I'm actually ahead of schedule hehehehehehe). Hope you enjoyed and (though I doubt it) I hope it was worth the wait! No but literally like nothing hapened in this so I'm really sorry I swear I will try and update so much sooner than last time I suck gah sorry sorry! But on the bright side I was gonna leave the cruellest cliffhanger ever but I decided not to in case I can't/don't/won't update for ages so I just left you on that mild one but like so nothing happened in that chapter like at all not even Loki stuff and gah now I'm rambling and I'm tired and bye.
And I also didn't proofread this so oops if there are like wrong things. And there probably will be because I am so tired right now gah
I'll say it before and I'll say it again: I will update sooner this time! Definitely sooner than six months but like ugh I think I'll be more in a Marvel mood after like Captain America Winter Soldier's out so probably maybe around that time but sorry for the cliffhanger I'll update as soon as I can!
Review please if you don't hate meeeeee?