A/N: Hello, all. Apologies for the late update. The week before last, I had what can only be described as an absolute motherfucker of a day, if you'll excuse the language. Last week, I had a big family party. Fun times.

Anyway, here's the long-awaited Chapter Seven. Sorry to have left you on such a brutal cliffhanger, and sorry for the angst that is to come. I'm trying my best here.

Many thanks to my lovely reviewers: Ashburk712, LoonyLovegood1981, One Wing In The Fire, EmilyF.6, Guest, hhh, and DaWriter06. You guys are my life.

I have a bunch of exams coming up, so the next update may not be for a while, but I'll see how it all goes. See you then.

Enjoy.

ICARUS

7

ACTING OUT ALL THEIR FEARS

The first time Peter wakes up, he's moving. Fast. The lurching motion is sickening. He opens his eyes and is immediately assaulted by blinding, white artificial lights, moving past his panicked, blurry field of vision. Something is pressing down on his skin, around his nose and mouth, on his cheeks. People are shouting. He lifts his arm and tugs at the Thing on his face. Someone tears his hand away and he cries out.

He's breathing fast, but there is a tremendous weight pressing on his chest - and it hurts. Like he's been shot a thousand times through his chest, his stomach, his shoulders ... everything aches, but it's more than that; it's burning, stabbing at him, forcing him to take shallow, ragged breaths. His whole body is quivering. His chest isn't working like it should. It feels like his lungs are full of fluid - he can't get enough air - every breath rattles horrifyingly in his lungs. That sounds like a fucking death rattle.

Holy hell. Is that a death rattle?

Peter tries to focus and think about how he got here. He remembers the tingling at the base of his neck, the way his hairs stood on end, the way his senses screamed DANGER, DANGER, DANGER. Running towards Tony, panicked, catching a glimpse of a horror-stricken face - did he know about the danger too? Hurling his mentor through the air, and damning the consequences, because that was the only way Tony was ever going to make it out of this alive. Not knowing what the hell was about to happen, but that it was going to be bad.

Then there's a strange blank spot in his memory. The next thing he remembers is looking up at a white face tinged with grey, lips repeating his name over and over. Pressing down, agonisingly, on his chest. He tried to breathe but could barely make his lungs expand. There were snippets of sentences - you gotta breathe for me, buddy - but after that ... nothing. Until now.

He lifts his head to look at the piece of metal sticking out of him, but a firm hand is placed on his forehead and it pushes until he's lying flat again.

The fiery pain is so intense that he wants to scream. His heart is pounding and as his bed, or whatever it is, jolts, he cries out in pain and fear and confusion. He can hear himself gasping, gurgling, hear his frenzied heart beat the blood out of his body. Everything he can taste and smell is metallic, bitter. Blood.

"What the fuck? Why isn't he under?"

"He's enhanced. Just give him more!"

A hand slips into his. "Peter, I need you to try and stay calm. Fall asleep if you can. You've got to stop fighting us, okay? We're trying to help you."

"He's already on twice the normal adult dose! Any more could kill him!"

"If he stays awake for much longer, he's going to die anyway! Just give him some more!"

He tries to move away and the resulting agony is so white-hot and intense that his vision whites out for a second. As he comes back to himself, he dimly registers that someone is screaming. That can't be good. He tries to sit up and save them, but hands are already forcing him down, wrapping restraints around him.

"Peter!" someone is shouting. "You have to relax! You're breaking her hand!"

He feels the unmistakable crunch of bone beneath his hand and realises that it is the doctor beside him who is screaming. The feeling of metal in his chest has his back arched, all his muscles tensed.

There is a sharp prick in his arm. Something that isn't oxygen is coming through his mask. Something else slides into his neck, but the sting feels like nothing compared to everything else.

Fight it. You have to fight.

He bucks against the restraints wildly, tring his best to ignore the sobs coming from the floor beside him. But the drugs filling his system are too much even for Spiderman, and he finds himself slipping away and weakening until he is no longer able to.

Peter spirals into an infinite void full of nothing.


The second time he wakes up, he is a little more lucid, though he isn't entirely sure if he really is awake at all. Perhaps it's just a dream. He understands where he is, but doesn't bother trying to open his eyes. He can feel the drip in the back of his hand, the thin hospital blanket, the large plastic tube that has invaded his mouth and goes into his throat and makes him want to gag. In the background, a heart monitor beeps calmly. Peter listens to it and lets it ground him for a while. There is a hand in his again, which is probably a mistake, given what happened last time.

He doesn't hurt so much any more, though his whole body aches. His limbs are heavy and he's too exhausted to even try to move. The tube in his mouth seems to be forcing air into his lungs, which is equal parts concerning and relieving. Should he even be conscious?

Focus on the hand. That seems important. It's warm and calloused. Large, strong - feels male, but who is he to make assumptions?

When he hears a voice, he is almost certain he is dreaming. The voice is familiar - it's Tony's voice. It keeps cracking and is hoarse and all in all sounds deeply unhealthy, but at least it means that he is alive, and not confined to a bed, and able to speak.

"Look, kid. I don't want to get sentimental here. But ... try and fight this, okay? I need you to not die. Your Aunt May needs you to not die." A shaky laugh. "I told her you were on a two-week tour of all the Stark Industries labs. I've been texting her from your phone. She keeps asking you to call her. You really want to do that to me, kid? You want to make me look her in the eye and tell her that her nephew isn't coming home because he died saving me?"

He sighs heavily. "See, it's like this, Pete. When someone close to you dies, it - well, it hurts more than anything, right? God, you probably know that more than anyone. But when they die because of you - that's - that's something else entirely. When they die because of their association with you, and if they didn't know you then they wouldn't have died ... that's hell. Whether or not you meant to let them die, whether or not you wanted them to - that's their blood on your hands, like it or not.

"And then there's when they die to save you. You know what that feels like, Pete? It feels like there are a thousand knives stabbing at your gut the whole fucking time, because no matter who you are, you never feel worthy. You never feel like they should have been given the right to make that decision - that their life is worth less than yours - because the very fact that they made it makes them better. A hundred times better. A million times better. And then you have to spend the rest of your fucking life trying to make yourself seem better, to stop their sacrifice from being completely in vain, but you can't. No matter how hard you try, it will never be enough. You ever felt that, kid?

"Shit." Another hollow laugh. "I didn't mean to get angry. It's not like you can hear me anyway. Look, what I'm trying to say is don't die. You don't get to make that call. Not yet. People still need you Peter - Ineed you. I need you to come and talk incessantly in my lab when I'm trying to work, to make weird references to pop culture that no one under the age of twenty understands, to wear your crappy t-shirts with dumb science puns on them. God knows your aunt needs you. And the people of New York? I feel like they need you too, Spiderman. So don't fucking die, okay?"

He sounds utterly defeated, his voice quiet and hollow and somehow dead. Peter wants to open his eyes, to reassure him that he heard him, that things will be okay, but he can't. He can't even squeeze the trembling hand in his.

Instead, with immense effort, he manages to twitch a finger. There is a sniff, then silence. " ... Peter?"

But even this simple movement is too much and Peter slips backwards, away into the dark reassurance of dreamless sleep.


The third time he wakes up, he's ill. He knows this because he's sweating but also freezing, and his whole body aches, and he's too restless to keep still, but at the same time he is shaking and so exhausted he could sleep for a month.

He is breathing fast - the tube in his mouth is gone - and someone's trying to talk to him. He can barely hear what they're saying.

Peter writhes and twists on the narrow bed, trying to find some comfort in the hot, damp sheets. "He's going to rip out his IV!"

"Someone sedate him, now."

"Do you not remember the surgery?"

"Give him the stuff Banner designed for Steve Rogers."

"Are you kidding? That could kill him!"

"Just do it!" He recognises that voice. It's someone he knows, isn't it? "Peter, buddy, listen to me. Your fever's way too high. We need to bring it down, so you gotta trust us, okay? Just try and stay still for a minute."

Peter whimpers. It hurts. Too much. He has to get some fresh air.

He rolls sideways, trying to get out of bed. Several things happen at once. The skin on the back of his hand tears; something, horrifyingly, starts to be pulled out of his nose; things that were stuck to his skin rip off; everyone starts shouting.

"Shit!" yells a male voice.

He opens his eyes. His father is standing right beside him, trying to heave him back into position. "Dad?" he says wildly, blinking up at him through watery eyes. Hope swells in his chest. He feels like he could sing with joy. Is his dad still alive? Where did he go? What's he doing here? "Dad?"

"I'm not your dad, kid," says Richard Parker. "He's ... not around any more, remember? It's me. Tony. Mr. Stark. Whatever the hell you want."

"Dad, it - it really hurts."

"I'm not - "

"He's hallucinating, God damn it!"

"Please," he persists, desperate now, needing someone to understand. "You gotta help me - I'm sick - it really hurts."

Someone squeezes his hands and lets out a huff of air. "I know, kid," Richard says softly. "I know it hurts."

There is a sharp sting in Peter's neck. He groans, but suddenly his limbs are too heavy to move.

Time to go, says a little voice in the back of his head, and he sees no reason to argue.


Peter blinks awake hazily. This time, he's okay. He feels fine. A little tired, perhaps, but fine. It's like the moment in movies when the character wakes up and knows, this time, that they're in the clear, that there will be no more hallucinations or fevers or surgeries or falling asleep halfway through words.

He looks around him. He's in a hospital room, fairly small, but private - white walls, pale blue linoleum floor, large windows overlooking the city. His legs are covered with a thin blue blanket. He appears to be wearing a hospital gown, which is every bit as unpleasant as films and books have led him to believe. Underneath this, he can feel a large dressing on his chest, and bandages wrapped around his torso. A tube is in his nose again. There's a heart rate monitor on his finger, and a drip connected to his hand. He doesn't remove it, because he's not a total idiot.

Across the room, Tony Stark is asleep in a chair. He looks pretty rough. Peter is trying to decide whether or not to wake him when the other man suddenly opens his eyes and straightens with a start, and then immediately looks straight at him.

"Peter?" he breathes. "You with me?"

"Yeah," Peter says, a little disturbed at how hoarse his voice sounds.

Tony stands up and walks four feet across the room to stand beside his bed. He looks even worse up close: he's unshaven, his hair is in disarray, and his suit is crumpled and looks as if it hasn't been changed in days. There are bags under his eyes, and butterfly bandages across a small cut on his forehead. He's scanning Peter's face, as if to check that he really is okay like he says. Then he moves over to the heart rate monitor to read Peter's vitals, staying silent the whole time.

"Uh, Mr. Stark? No offence, but you ... you look like shit."

Tony looks at him and shakes his head, smiling in amusement. "Yeah, well, you don't look too hot yourself, Parker."

Peter doesn't really know what to say, so he opts for the first thing he can think of to fill the silence. "What - uh - where am I?"

"You're in a state-of-the-art medical research facility in New York. We're not too far from the Tower."

"M-medical research?" He can feel the blood draining from his face even as he says it.

"Relax. I haven't shared your secret, Spiderling. Helen Cho was here, and she's just about the best possible doctor to treat you. She's worked with some of the Avengers before. Plus, they have the strong shit that Bruce designed to knock out Steve."

Peter lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" Tony's face is grave. "There was a bomb. Turns out, the guy we were meeting was a raging psychopath who wanted to kill me because I was rude to him at the last meeting. I get people like that from time to time.

"Yeah, me too."

The heart rate monitor beeps steadily, doing little to fill the pained silence that fills the hospital room.

"For fuck's sake, Peter." Tony sits down heavily on the side of his bed. "Should I have let you die? Were you ever going to tell me? Were you just using me this whole time?"

"What? No! Of course not! I - "

"Shut up, kid. That was a rhetorical question. The adult is talking. And what he is saying is what the hell were you thinking? I don't get it. I really don't. How did you even know there was a bomb?"

Peter swallows. "I have a - a - I guess it's kind of a sixth sense? Tells me when there's danger."

"Jesus. So your natural response is to run straight into it? What was it, Peter, teenage angst? Academic Decathlon wasn't good enough for you? So you just decided to put your life on the line every single day to stop some kid from losing their backpack? Jesus. Do you even know how much danger you were putting yourself in?"

"I - "

"No. Don't talk. I've been mapping this out in my head for a week. Shut it."

"A week?" Peter says, aghast.

"Yeah. That's how long you've been asleep, Parker. A week. After you decided that you had to try and save my life. You know what? I almost get the Spiderman thing. Not the refusing to tell me, after so many opportunities, not the stealing my tech, not the downright recklessness, but yeah. I can sort of see your twisted reasoning. But what I don't get is where the fuck you got the idea that you get to trade lives. That you get to decide which one of us lives or dies. That you get to sacrifice yourself for the likes of me, a fucked up excuse for a human being, when I'm the one who's meant to die! Don't you get it, Peter? You're not the one who gets to make that call!"

"Wouldn't you have done the same?" he asks quietly, because he really doesn't know what else to say.

"Of course I would! But that doesn't mean that you're in the right! We are very different people. You have your whole life ahead of you. You're smart. You're a good kid. You're - whatever. I don't care. It should have been me to die, not you. You - "

"Mr. Stark, you're talking as if I'm dead."

Tony opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, looking furious. Peter shrinks back against his pillows. "Oh, you really don't get it, kid. You don't get it at all. You died. You flatlined twice on the operating table. Then you were on a ventilator for two days because you weren't strong enough to breathe on your own, because your chest was so fucking wrecked. Then you got an infection because there was a tiny piece of metal stuck inside you that your superhuman immune system decided, for whatever reason, to try and destroy by heating up your body until all the bacteria on it was killed - you had a fever of 107.4. You nearly died then as well. And every time you woke up, you would thrash around and tear out your IV and generally make life hell for Dr. Cho and all her coworkers - you know you broke someone's hand? - so they had to sedate you for pretty much the whole week because you kept making your condition worse."

As he talks, he keeps glancing down at his watch, as if for reassurance.

"I'm not going to apologise for saving your life, Mr. Stark."

Peter knows he's making things worse for himself, but he's stubborn. He forces himself to look up and meet Tony's eyes. They are shining with unshed tears. Oh.

"Of course you're not, you goddamn idiot. You think that being a hero's all fun and games and flowers. You're wrong, Peter. I'm going to find a doctor."

With that, he stands up and leaves the room. Breathing heavily, Peter stares at the closed door, a blank expanse of grey, and tries to process everything that's just happened. His eyes feel heavy and keep sliding shut of their own accord, but he wills himself to stay awake - at least until the doctor gets here and can answer some of his burning questions.

It feels like an eternity before the door finally swings open. A young Asian woman steps in, glossy black hair tied back into a tidy bun. "Peter?" she says, with a small smile. He feels infinitely reassured by her cool presence. "I'm Dr. Cho. I've been in charge of your case since you got here."

"A week ago?"

She nods. "Yes. You've been asleep for just over six days now. Do you mind if I check your vitals?"

"That's fine," he says.

"Thank you." She starts reading monitors and writing notes on a chart. "We've had a fair bit of trouble with you, Peter."

"Sorry."

"It's not your fault. You're enhanced, yes? That sped up your healing quite considerably, and doubtless saved your life. Our problem was that you were healing too efficiently for us to be able to operate. Parts of your tissue were already starting to grow over the pieces of shrapnel lodged in your chest, which meant that our surgeons had to do further damage in order to remove them. Your increased bone density made it very difficult for us to break your ribs in order to enter your chest cavity. Mainly, because you healed so fast, there was a very high risk of healing wrong. That's why your body had such a powerful negative reaction to the piece of shrapnel still stuck inside you. My apologies for that."

Peter swallows, feeling a little queasy at the thought of people cracking open his chest to dig around with tweezers. "That's fine," he says faintly. "If you don't mind me asking, why are you telling me all this?"

"Tony asked me to outline the extent of your difficulties," she replies, putting down one chart and picking up another. Of course he did. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Yeah, that's probably for the best. Thanks, though." He tries to force the image out of his mind. "Uh ... how long do I have to stay here?"

"I was told that you're trying to keep your identity a secret, which means that you'll want to return to school after the end of spring break." She's watching him carefully. Peter nods. "I'd like you to stay here on bed rest for the rest of the vacation. After that, you can return to school, if you return here for check-ups every few days, and with no exercise. After a few weeks, we'll see about putting you on light exercise. It will probably be one or two months before you're back to normal; we don't know how fast your recovery process will be. The most important thing is not to strain yourself too soon."

"The rest of the vacation? But - my healing factor! I can't just - "

"Peter," Dr. Cho says gently, "it would take a normal person months to recover from this, even if by some miracle they were lucky enough to survive."

He stares.

"I'm very sorry."

They look at each other in silence for a few moments. Peter can feel himself panicking, can hear the quiet bleeps on the heart rate monitor getting faster, but doesn't attempt to steady himself. He can't stay here for the rest of spring break. He can't. He has stuff to do - homework - has to meet Ned - "Oh God," he says. "Aunt May."

"Tony said he's told her you're on a tour of all the Stark Industries buildings. Your phone is here, if you want to speak to her, but right now I would recommend getting some sleep. You've been through a lot, Peter."

"Dr. Cho?"

She pauses. "Yes?"

"Can you tell Mr. Stark he doesn't have to stay with me anymore? I'll be fine by myself. I've inconvenienced him this week, and he made it pretty clear that all of this is my fault." He did more than that, he thinks bitterly, but stays quiet, because how does he explain to this total stranger that the misery of having the man he idolised scream at him, tell him that he's wrong, hurts far more than the piece of metal that was stuck through his chest? He's only going to cause Tony more problems by making him visit him every day than by cutting all contact now.

Dr. Cho looks at him in surprise. "Are you sure?" she asks cautiously. "You know that he barely left your side the whole time you were asleep? His friend Colonel Rhodes was bringing him food and clothes this whole time. Dragging him away to shower and sleep, even - not that he got much of that. You had him worried sick."

"I'm sure," Peter says harshly, and for a moment she looks at him with such sadness in her eyes that he considers changing his mind. But no. Everything about their earlier argument makes his insides twist painfully; he's had enough. He's had enough of Mr. Stark putting him first, shouting at him for trying to save his life, making him feel small and worthless for trying to do the right thing, for trying to save lives - his life. This whole situation is brutally unfair, and the thought of facing Tony again after what he said makes Peter feel sick to his stomach.

He's clearly caused so much pain and anger that Tony would be better off without him, better off without all the worry that apparently comes with being around him. He trusts him not to tell anyone about Spiderman. That's not his secret to share.

And Peter? Peter will be just fine on his own.