Ehhh... sorry for the long wait. Please review. They aid my highly needly/angsty soul.
"Peter!" Tony yells sprinting up to the boy. The SHIELD medivac team has arrived at the Avengers Compound.
"Bring him in here!" Jemma Simmons orders to the other agents. They comply. Tony grabs the boy's unconscious hand. An oxygen mask covers his bloody face. Due to the way the camera Tiffany Sherwood had set up, Tony and the rest of the team had never been able to get a good view of Peter's face or body. He looked much worse than Tony had imagined. His suit had done little to protect him against the games of Tiffany Sherwood. Peter's suit was one tug away from completely falling off. Whatever chemical agent had been injected into Peter's blood had caused seizures. Dried spit and blood had formed a ring around the boy's mouth. The world slows down to Tony when he reaches Peter. He runs next to the gurney never taking his eyes off his young apprentice, scared Tiffany would come back and steal him away.
"He coded twice on the way here!" Tony vaguely hears a voice announce as they move into a new room.
"He hasn't seizures since the last time he coded." Another voice continues.
"His O2 levels are low." One of the voices yell.
"There's blood in the ear canal!"
None of this registers with Tony. He barely hears the voices. Peter's face is pale, and he looks so small.
"Mr. Stark you need to let go of Peter now," Simmons tells him. They are in a new room, but what room? He doesn't recognize this place.
"Mr. Stark." Tony doesn't respond. He just stares at the face of the little Spider.
"Tony, let go of Peter." For the first time, Tony looks away from his young protege and into the face of Bruce Banner. The man looks older than the last time he saw him. Where has he been all this time? How does he know Peter? Why is he here?
"Okay," Tony answers, and with that, he lets go of Peter and allows a nurse to lead him out of the room.
"Any news?" Daisy asks Fitz as he walks into the room. Wanda, Vision, Clint, Daisy, Vision, May and Natasha have all found their way into the Avenger's living room. Its been a couple hours since Peter was found and brought to the compound.
"No, Jemma was to busy to talk." Fitz answers. "All I know is that he's not in surgery, and not dead."
"That's good," Natasha says trying to lighten the mood.
"What'd you guys do with Linda Sherwood?" Daisy asks.
"Gave her to SHIELD." Clint shrugs. "She's their problem now."
"Don't you want to try and get more information out of her?" Fitz asks.
"What's the point? She accomplished her goal didn't see?" Clint asks. "They were lone actors. Nobody else played a factor in this."
"What about trying to figure out what she injected into Peter?" Wanda asks.
"We have the syringe Tiffany used on him." Agent May answers. "Don't worry, we'll have access to her if we ever need to get any information from her."
"Doesn't Peter have an Aunt or something?" Sam asks after a few moments of silence. "Has anyone talked to her yet?"
"Well... shit," Clint mutters.
"Why did you bring me along for this Barton?" Natasha complains.
"Becuase I don't want to do this myself!"
"SO!" She hisses. "This isn't what we do! We aren't social workers. In fact, we're the opposite of social workers, we're... unsocial workers!"
"Come on Nat, have a heart!" Clint begs. "This poor woman has been sitting in the dark while he nephew has been missing for the past 5 days. She doesn't even know we found him a couple hours ago! In her basement of all places!"
"Yeah you know that's not even the worse part." Natasha begins to add. "It turns about Tiffany Sherwood had just moved into the apartment above the Parkers like 2 weeks ago. Her check hadn't even cleared yet. That's why there wasn't a current address on her."
"They were neighbors!" Clint gasps.
"Judging by the lack of recognition on Tiffany's face when she took the kid's mask off, I doubt they had ever even met before."
"Gosh, this is really screwed up." Clint groans rubbing his temples.
"You know, Tony mentioned that other day that Peter's aunt is really scary." Natasha muses. "I'm interested to see what Stark classifies as a scary woman."
"I'm pretty sure he classifies you as a scary woman." Clint smiles at her.
"Yeah, but I'm scary in a secret spy type of way." Natasha shrugs. "She's probably scary in the momma bear type of why."
"I get that, Luara can be like that sometimes." Clint smiles. It's hard for him to be away from his family this long, especially after a mission like this.
"You'll be home to them soon." Natasha smiles. "Come on, let's get this over with."
Tony sits alone in a chair outside the medical department of the compound. He desperately wants a drink, but he doesn't want to be drunk when they let him see Peter. Tony notices a smug of Peter's blood in on the palm of Tony's right hand. Peter must have had some on his hand.
"Rough day?" A friendly voice asks. Tony looks up to see a disheveled Dr. Banner.
"Is Peter okay?" Tony ask frantically as he bolts up from his seat.
"Woah, calm yourself, buddy," Bruce says placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. He takes a seat next to Tony, and in turn, Tony sits back down.
"Just answer to question Banner." Bruce looks down at his hands, nods and raises his gaze back to his friend.
"Tony I don't think-"
"Damn it Banner!" Tony barks. Bruce swears he sees a little bit of the Hulk come out of Tony.
"Okay, this helps nobody!"
"For the love of-"
"Its not good Tony." Bruce cuts him off. He realizes now the only way to calm the man down is with the truth. He's right. The second the words come out of his mouth the billionaire's expression turns from anger to something else... sadness, fear or maybe even defeat. Bruce can't tell and honestly doubts Tony even knows what he is feeling. Once he is certain the man isn't going explode, Bruce continues. "Around 30 percent of his body is covered in cuts or burns. His kneecap was shattered and his arm was broken. A couple ribs were cracked, and his appendix and spleen were removed by someone who obviously had no training. Also, some of his organs were moved around in weird places. His lower and smaller intestines were moved around to unnatural positions. We had to put them back, and then reconstruct his knee. His arm had already partially healed so we had to rebreak it so we could set it again."
"Okay, well the kid heals fast. He'll bounce back from this." Tony's voice cracks.
"Tony..." Bruce trails off. The elephant in the room needed to be addressed both men knew it. "It's not really his body we are worried about. Whatever that woman injected into Peter's neck... was... well we don't know what it was. Our labs are still trying to figure out all the ingredients, but it has caused major damage to his brain. The chemical caused his blood to become extremely thin, that's why his heart stopped and his brain began to bleed. Luckily we didn't have to perform surgery on his brain, we were able to fix it with medication and it seems his blood is returning to normal. However, we have run a CT and MRI of his brain and we found some anomalies."
"What do you mean?" Tony gulps. "Is the kid brain dead or something?"
"No, he's not brain dead. In fact, he'll probably wake up within the next day or two." Bruce informs him. "We won't know for sure until he wakes up, but there is lessened activity in the frontal cortex and his neurotransmitters are much different than the average 15-year-old boy. Some levels are high, and some are low."
"I don't understand."
"Honestly, we don't either," Bruce admits. "This could be a temporary thing or it could be a permanent thing. We don't really know anything. In fact, we could be completely wrong and the kid could be 100% fine."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, since we don't have scans prior to the introduction of the injection, this could possibly just be Peter's normal brain," Bruce says. "He is a mutant after all."
"I guess that's true," Tony admits feeling a little better. Maybe Peter is fine. He just has a different brain than must kids because of the whole genetically modified human thing.
"You know what would really help though."
"What?"
"Peter's medical records," Bruce says rubbing his chin. "Yes, him and his family. Parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, anybody who shares genetics with him." Tony's eyes widen at the word aunt.
"Damn it!" He gasps. Tony quickly grabs Bruce's arm and drags him down the hall.
"Wait, where are you taking me!" Bruce protests.
"To talk to two seriously worried and soon to be pissed off women."
AN: Next chapter will be interesting ... a little bit of rom-com relief, nothing much