Two chapters in two days; I'm on a roll! I literally just spent hours writing this, I could not get it out of my head. Should I have been writing my history paper instead? Probably. Do I care? No.
I'm not a doctor or anything, and I don't have a beta reader, so if there are any blaring inconsistencies in my science mumbo-jumbo, please let me know and I'll try to fix it.
"Are you alright?" The King of Wakanda's heavy accent brought Tony Stark back to the present. He sighed and half-heartedly attempted to smile.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he lied, ignoring the fact that he had just been vomiting into the toilet for a full seven minutes, and was now leaning weakly against the bathroom wall. T'Challa stared at him with disbelieving eyes.
Tony looked at the floor. "Yeah, you're right," he sighed, responding verbally to T'Challa's wordless gaze. "I'm not fine. I haven't been fine for…well, I guess since Peter was kidnapped. I just, I can't get over everything he had to endure. I mean, even if Shuri does save him, it doesn't change the fact that he was kidnapped and tortured for weeks, and I didn't do a damn thing about it."
"Do you remember what I said before, about not blaming yourself for something you could not control?" T'Challa gently reminded Tony of their earlier conversation.
"Yeah, kind of hard to forget when the King of Wakanda gives you advice," Tony joked bitterly. "Great advice, Your Majesty, but I'm not the type of person that just forgets to care about the kid I should have been taking care of and watching out for. It just doesn't come naturally."
"I understand that you hate the suffering that your friend has gone through, but if your description of Peter is anything like the boy himself, he will not blame you for what happened. He will see that there was no way you could have prevented the events that occured, and love you just the same as before."
"I wish he would," Tony sighed, "but that's not how the world works, no offense, Your Majesty. Someone has to take the blame for everything."
"I agree, but in this case, the blame will never lie with you or with anyone else who tried to stop Peter's torture and save his life."
"Yeah, I guess not," Tony didn't sound at all convinced. "But-"
"Mr. Stark, King T'Challa!" Ned threw the bathroom door open in unbounded excitement. "Shuri did it! She found the cure!"
Tony and T'Challa looked each other for a split second before both taking off down the hallway behind Ned, racing to the lab.
"We will continue this discussion later," T'Challa called to Tony as they ran.
Peter had never felt happier in his life. She had done it! Shuri had actually found a cure that would work to give his mind back control of his body. He wasn't dead! He was going to live again! He desperately wanted to jump and shout and swing between buildings for joy, but that would have to wait, though only a few minutes because he was going to live again!
A soft hand tenderly lifted his rough, wounded one, being careful not to agitate the cuts and burns which covered it.
"I look forward to meeting you in consciousness, Peter Parker," Shuri said softly. "All your friends hold you in very high esteem. I should like to see for myself if you are worth all the trouble of finding this cure. Hopefully, I will not be disappointed."
Peter gulped (figuratively). The freaking princess of Wakanda expected him to be some perfect superhuman or something, which he most definitely was not. Oh well. He could always do a flip to try to impress her or something.
Several sets of running footsteps were approaching from the hallway, and within seconds, three people burst into the lab, two of them breathing rather heavily from the exertion. King T'Challa barely sounded winded.
"You have found the solution, sister?" He asked respectfully but eagerly.
Who knew the King of Wakanda would ever be eager for someone like Peter to wake up, Peter thought. Then again, maybe he was just eager to get this over with so he could leave. Yeah, that had to be it, he decided.
"Well?" Tony asked impatiently. "Can you cure him?"
"I have tested this formula on several of his cell samples," Shuri explained, "And the results have been very promising. If you would like, I can now inject it into to Peter."
"Do it!" Tony and Ned's eager voices cried out, but T'Challa stopped them saying, "What about the boy's aunt? Should she not be here for this?"
"I'm here," Aunt May spoke softly from the doorway where she had just arrived, her breath also coming in slight pants. "Please, if you think that formula can save Peter, by all means, use it."
Shuri took a deep breath. "All right," she said, "here goes."
Peter felt his shirt being opened again, his chest exposed to the cool air of the lab. He had been removed from the coffin and placed on a medical bed used for operations, and was currently hooked up to several small monitors which were depressingly silent, since he had no vital signs at the moment.
Shuri swabbed an area of skin right above his heart with an alcohol wipe to clear away bacteria. Though his body was already cold, the wipe felt colder, like a piece of ice on his chest. Then came the needle.
It pinched his skin slightly, but went deeper, into his heart, and a liquid was released. He could feel every drop of the liquid, which was neither warm nor cold, dispersing slowly throughout his unmoving heart. All in all, the needle wasn't so bad. The shock was what came after the needle.
It was a literal shock. Shuri charged the AEDs and pressed the pads to his chest, sending a wave of electrical current coursing through his body. Nothing happened. She repeated the procedure three more times before finally, to the relief of every single person in the room, and to Peter most of all, there came the smallest beep from his heart monitor.
It was just one beep, but enough to raise the hope of everyone in the room. Once again, Shuri charged the defibrillators and sent a current through Peter's body. Then it came again, a quiet beep, followed several seconds later by another beep, then another, and another until they were coming at a fairly constant rate.
They all let out deep breaths they didn't realize they had been holding, moving to embrace each other and cheer in excitement. Peter was alive!
Peter himself could hardly believe it; his heart was beating, his lungs were moving air in and out of his body. He could taste the air, smell every smell within a hundred yards, feel every bit of pain from every wound on his body. And that's when things started to go wrong.
For the past several days, more than a week, Peter had been detached from his body, feeling what he could feel but as much or as painfully as he should have. Now it felt like every nerve was competing for Peter's attention, begging to be noticed by sending as much pain as it possibly could to his brain, overloading both his brain and his heart.
He gasped as his lungs constricted, the broken ribs he had forgotten about scraping and squeezing against his lungs, and the burned flesh on his throat shrivelling and acting as a noose, cutting off his air supply. His back arched involuntarily as he wheezed for air, the heart monitor to his left going crazy as his heart-rate shot way up.
He could vaguely hear panicked voices around him trying to figure out what was wrong, but they were coming through an even thicker haze than before. He could only make out bits and pieces of sentences, like "He's not getting enough air," and "Hold him still!" His limbs were shaking uncontrollably, waving all over the place as he tossed and turned on the table. Several hands and arms reached out to hold him still, two of the hands impossibly strong. He wondered for a brief moment who else in the room was enhanced, but quickly turned his attention back to trying not to die. Again.
At least two people were holding his head against the table, reaggravating wounds but keeping his head still while Shuri delicately cut away the burned flesh from his neck, opening his lungs again. For a few seconds, he lay still, his muscles relaxed, exhausted from the exertion.
But lack of air wasn't the only thing that was causing him pain. He could now feel the full extent of every cut, scrape, punch, fracture, burn, stab wound. It all hit him, causing him to let out the most unmanly of whimpers that at any other time he would have been eternally ashamed of, but right it just hurt too much for him to even care. From the whimper, his cries turned into a kind of pathetic sobbing that only comes from someone in unimaginable pain. Tears streamed down his face, and the sobbing evolved into a louder, soul-piercing scream which broke the hearts of all who heard it. His back arched yet again, and again the hands came to hold him down and stop him from hurting himself.
"What's happening?!" He heard Tony yell above his pained shouting.
"I don't know!" Shuri responded in distress. "Perhaps his brain is reconnecting to his nerves and letting all the pain he should have felt in at once?"
"Is that a theory or a fact?"
"I'm not sure."
"Okay, so theory," Tony cried. "What do we do, how do we help him?"
"I…I don't think we can," Shuri responded regretfully. "We may have to just wait until his mind can adapt to the high levels of pain and his body can begin its accelerated healing process."
"How long will that take?"
Relative silence followed Tony's last question, disturbed only by Peter's agonized cries. So, they didn't know how long this would last, he thought dismally, somewhere above all the pain. Great, just great.
It had been almost three hours of Peter's non-stop yelling and crying. He wished he could stop, more than anything, but everything just hurt too much. He like if he tried to keep it in, he might explode.
His voice was getting hoarse now from all the yelling, and the pain in the rest of his body was now more manageable. He quieted down, reduced to only panting heavily to express his agony.
He could hear again, and unlike the past week and a half, the voices came clearly to his ears.
"Is he okay now?" May asked frantically. She hadn't left Peter's side for a single moment over the past three hours, just sitting calmly and occasionally brushing his hair away from his sweat-drenched forehead. Shuri hesitated a few seconds, but responded confidently.
"He will need much time to recover," she said, "But as far as I can tell, his enhanced healing will begin to affect his wounds very soon. He will need to be patient. He has been through a lot, and he needs to allow himself the proper amount of time to heal."
Time to heal?! Peter thought. Bullshit. He had been unconscious for days, and yes, every part of him ached and hurt like hell, but he needed to see someone, anyone. He needed to touch someone's face, to move his hands of his own accord. He needed to be alive again.
"Will he…Is he going to be different from what he was like before?" Ned asked hesitantly. Everyone looked at each other thoughtfully, and a bit anxiously.
"I hope not," Shuri said at last. "But I cannot say for sure. Just, be kind and patient with him and see what happens."
"Just don't baby me," a weak voice chimed in. "I hate being babied."
"Peter?!" May gasped. Tony's head shot straight up from his former slouching position on the couch, and he was at Peter's side before you could say 'Spiderman'.
Slowly, carefully, Peter cracked his dark brown eyes open. At first, everything blurred into one colorless blob, but as his eyes adjusted, he could make out different objects, and more importantly, different people.
Ned was on his right, squeezing his right hand like it was the only thing left in the world as he unashamedly let his tears flow. Aunt May was on his left, one arm draped over his chest and her other hand running through his dishevelled hair. Behind her was Tony Stark himself, with one hand on May's shoulder and the other gently holding Peter's left hand like it was more delicate than a soap bubble.
And the most surprising thing of all, Tony Stark was crying.
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