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[Captain America calmly stands at a badly green-screened WWII memorial, then turns and faces the camera as if you are the POV of an unexpected visitor that needs his advice]
"You are probably wondering - what could a guy like me possibly understand about the troubles of this generation? Well, kids, I know enough to tell you this. A lot of soldiers deal with post traumatic stress disorder after coming back stateside. Back in my day, they called it shell-shocked. You're all dealing with you're own kind of shell shock. Maybe it's anxiety, depression, bi-polar disorder - there's a lot that I am not going to claim to be an expert on. But as Captain America, one of the things I learned early on was how to ask for help. I wouldn't be where I am without the fellow soldiers I relied on. You need that same kind of support team. You can talk to your parents - grandparents - a teacher - a school counselor - a friend. Someone will always listen. Remember, if you need help, and just don't know how to ask for it, you can call the number at the bottom of the screen... And maybe that's the first step you've got to take for yourself."
[Fades into a mental health crises hotline number on a black screen. No music]
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PRESENT
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Mr. Stark and I stare at my unexpectedly present aunt.
"Mrs. Parker," Mr. Stark begins.
Aunt May holds up a finger. "Mrs. Parker is my mother-in-law. That's going to need to stop now. It's May. Just May. Thanks." She walks to the side of the hospital bed, her face softening. "Hi, baby," she begins, and then chokes on a sob that she did not realize was coming. She covers her mouth with one hand.
"I'm sorry... if I worried you," I try to apologize.
"Shut up," she says, putting her arms around me and tucking her chin over the top of my head, crying more than before, but finally allowing herself to.
Happy suddenly appears at the door as well, and makes a nervous gesture, pointing to Stark and then the hall behind him as if to communicate it was time to leave. Stark makes an annoyed gesture back, holding his hands out like he's asking why. Happy's face becomes admonished with wide eyes both stern and impatient, and Stark relents, stalking out of the room and stepping into the hall.
Happy peers in one last time, noting the get well basket. "Good!" he exclaims. "It arrived! I was actually on my way to go pick up your aunt and ordered from the phone so I really had no idea what would happen there. You never know with the internet..."
Mr. Stark's hands began to tug Happy out by the sleeve.
Aunt May pulls back and looks at me. "Are you all right?" she starts looking at tubes and monitors and taking stock of bandages and bruises. "What is all this shit for?"
I tilt my head with confusion. "Happy didn't tell you."
"Like a guy called Happy could say anything more than 'he's fine he's just had a bad night?" she throws her hands in the air. "It was like trying to pull teeth."
I bow my head, not wishing to do any of the explaining myself, either.
She lowers herself on the bed beside me. "Sorry, I'm upset... He did try to explain. A little. He said that you had been in a really, really bad fight."
I cringe. It's not a lie, exactly?
"The worst you've ever been in." she adds, "That some perp had stabbed my sweet boy and that you were in the 'best care money could pay for' - which coincidentally - meant you were at none of the hospitals I had started to call when you didn't come home after school like you promised."
"I am so, so sorry," I whisper.
"It's okay," she says soothingly, stroking the top of my head. "It's okay."
I didn't respond, and she sighed before continuing. "I pulled my head out of my ass long enough to realize that I could save time and energy by calling Stark. Then I realized I don't have the country's richest man's personal cell number in my phone. I called his company and I got through to the Stark Industries customer service line. Can you believe that? Customer SERVICE! I had to leave a message."
Part of me wants to laugh. A chuckle turns into a slight shudder. It seems like whatever I might find amusing is eclipsed by the fact that any moment of irony in all of this was caused by the fact that at the moment it happened, I was being tortured in a dark basement.
May, apparently, has a similar thought, though without the particulars. She sobers and wipes her eyes quickly. "I don't know if I can do this," she whispers, "It took - what - a day? Post-bail? - for me to get a call that shook me," she hit herself in the chest, hard, "Shook me, to my core. I thought I'd throw up - no, I did. I did. I got a call from Mr. Stark saying you were badly hurt and Happy was going to pick me up and then I was taking a brief helicopter ride to the fuh - effing Avengers facility. Where you were still unconscious."
I shrug helplessly. What can I say?
"I thought I could do it," she repeats. "I don't know that I can."
"This won't be uh... daily thing," I try. It sounds ridiculous. "This is an anomaly. I swear."
Is it?
"What - you getting into fights as a masked superhero?" May throws her hands in the air. "That sounds like exactly the kind of thing you would do every day as an effing masked superhero. Let's not sugar coat anything."
"No," I struggle to tell the rest of the truth. "Aunt May, I don't... Happy doesn't know the whole story, either, or I think he would have told you. I wasn't just in a fight. Fights... are nothing. Usually the bruises are gone by morning and - I mean, that's how I was able to keep it a secret for this long any how."
Her dark eyes look somehow darker with the worst of confusion. "I'm... wait, what?" she blinks and shakes her head. "So you weren't in a fight?"
"It was a little one sided."
"So you were beaten up."
"Sort of... abducted," I correct lamely, looking away. It sounds so dumb saying it out loud. Like Spider-Man is somehow above such rudimentary dangers to normal teens. "First," I say, my voice cracking and going hoarse again. "Abducted first. Then beat up." I didn't want to say the word tortured. If I couldn't handle it, how could I expect her to?
Aunt May is stunned, frozen, her face so expressionless that she might as well be frozen in time, as if I was suddenly gifted with super-speed and running around her in circles.
She can't even speak.
"How?" she manages. "How did you - no, wait. Who would want to hurt you? Who was it? No - never mind. Yes. Wait... who was it?"
"Just some... guy," I shrug again.
"Okay," Mr. Stark stands in the doorway again, arms crossed over his chest. "That's enough."
"Excuse ME?" May stands up, glaring at him. "This is a private conversation."
"Not anymore it's not. Mr. Parker. If you don't mind; I'd like to borrow your lovely aunt for an adult conversation." Aunt May looks so offended that I almost - almost - laugh. "You're mucking it up," Mr. Stark says to me. "We're not going to play this game. As long as you are under the age of eighteen, if something like this happens, your aunt is going to stay informed. Mrs. Parker - excuse me, May. Please step out into the hall with me."
Aunt May is flummoxed by the flirtatious Tony Stark facade slipping away to reveal the Iron-Man that he ordinarily is; commanding authority and transparency by his mere presence. With a slightly panicked look at me, she follows Mr. Stark's gesture to the hall and steps out with him.
The door closes behind them.
I concentrate efforts on listening to anything except the voices rising and falling in the hall. I try to keep the super-hearing down to a minimum, but I just can't tune them out. It's impossible.
" - we can gather," Stark says, "He was abducted some time Tuesday evening and tortured for approximately four, five hours or so - "
" - Tortured - ? What the hell do you mean by torture? Look, I've got two experiences with torture - sucking Westley's life away in the Princess Bride and my grandmother crying in church every Sunday about Italian mobs going on a curb-stomping trend in bad neighborhoods when I was about seventeen years old. You're going to have to be more specific."
"From what we could tell from the tape - "
"THERE'S A F***ING TAPE? WHAT THE FUH - "
"May, please. Hear me out. His suit comes equipped with a monitoring system that helps us track his whereabouts - "
"Congratulations Stark Industries Incorporated United Federation of I don't give a f***!" May's voice is steadily rising into a pure rage I've only ever experienced a few times. "So you've been tracking his whereabouts and yet MY BOY - MY BOY is in there looking awful and somehow your system didn't work to prevent that?"
"I know you're angry - I am too," Mr. Stark's voice rises as well. "I'm pissed. System flaw meant he was out of range for a time. His AI couldn't make a connection for a long time - too long. It won't happen again."
"What," Aunt May replies mockingly, "Because you're putting your 'best people' on it, right? This isn't my first circus."
"Yes!"
"And who might that be?"
"Me."
Silence.
"I'll be personally upgrading the suit. This won't happen again. I swear to you. I... swear."
More silence.
The sounds of someone sliding down the wall - oh, God. Aunt May! I am so, so sorry for putting you through this...
Aunt May is siting on the floor now, hugging her knees. In a strange show of solidarity, Mr. Stark thumps against the wall and joins her.
"Now hear me out," he says, kindly but strictly. "Let me preface this with he's going to be okay. He's lucky. He has some sort of supernatural, miraculous, gifted, mutated, inhuman - whatever the kids are calling it these days - ability to heal quickly. That saved him. Not us. We got to him. And it could have been worse if we didn't. But he's going to be okay. Eventually."
I can hear her crying. "Thank you for helping my baby," she says, almost so quietly I can't even hear her. "But he wouldn't have even been in this situation if he wasn't... caught up in all this. Since you started him on this."
"That's unfair. You know it is. He was doing this long before I came along. Ever since..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," she says bitterly. "Since my husband was murdered. Thanks for the reminder."
"I accept what blame that I can, but I can't do more than what I am able," Mr. Stark says, brutally and honestly. "But this was a horrible, horrible thing that happened to him. The responsibility of this thing lies with the person who did this to him."
She lets out a moan; I can feel the air shimmer with her hiding her face in her hands for a moment, trying to blot beneath her eyes and cool her burning cheeks. She probably feels a migraine on the way. "Back to the torture," she whispers. "What did they do to him? He clearly wasn't going to be forthcoming with me. I hate that."
"It seems as if he was collecting information for another party, stocking up on as many factoids as he could concerning Spider-Man, myself, and the rest of the Avengers... his main area of focus seemed to be this facility. How to get in, if needed. He's... disturbingly cavalier about the whole thing. He acknowledges several times that he's just a little guy working for a much bigger guy and he has no personal stakes in the process. Except for the disgusting fact he appeared to be enjoying the torturing."
Aunt May sobs again.
"I'm sorry," Mr. Stark says hastily. "That was my own conjecture, and unnecessary. I apologize."
"Who is he?" she asks again.
"One of New York's Finest, apparently. A beat cop from Hell's Kitchen."
"Yes, but who... I mean, how do we even know all this...? Reports from a team of voyeauristic yahoos you keep on hand to view footage from a monitor in my boy's superhero costume?!"
"In a sense, yes. And we get a clear image of his face before..."
"Before WHAT?"
"Before he removed Peter's mask and dropped it on the floor and stomped out the in-ear mechanisms. Facial recognition did the rest."
Silence again, I can almost feel the upheaval of each breath it takes for her to stay calm.
"Give me his name."
"His name is - wait. No." Mr. Stark shakes his head. "I know that look, and the answer is no. I sure it would be a noble attempt at revenge - but he's a well trained cop, and working for someone worse. You'd be dead before you'd even try."
"Give - me - his - name."
"I will not give you his name."
"Oh yes, you will."
"No, I won't. I gave Mr. Parker the opportunity to take the next step here - and press charges within the boundaries of the law - and he opted not to. I know, I don't know why either."
"Oh, we'll just see about that," Aunt May growls. "That's not his call. He's a child - he's my child!"
"He's actually a very, very stubborn young man." Mr. Stark sighs. "I don't mean to... cause any pain. I don't. But his stubbornness made for a much longer and traumatic event that he endured. I don't know how. He was very brave, and he didn't give vital information away despite the interrogation... techniques. A weaker man would have done worse, and sooner."
"He didn't... he doesn't look okay."
"He looked worse this morning."
"So what did this guy do to him?"
Mr. Stark begins to list off injuries like a grocery list. The broken fingers, the cut throat, the dislocated shoulder, the stab wound...
I felt panic rising in me again, flashbacks threaten to blot out their voices. My heart monitor lets out a warning beep.
Then another.
I cover my ears and bury my face in my blanket. I lace my fingers behind my head again and use my elbows to try and block out Mr. Stark's voice. I need the pressure of white noise. I need to not feel over heated. I need the static to stop.
Apparently Mr. Stark's team of "yahoos" as Aunt May called them hadn't gotten to the part in the footage yet where I gave away my name.
In my weakest moment... in the worst of them. The screwdriver poised at the corner of my eye.
you don't need an eye, do you? what happens if you lose them both?
My own name.
What happens if i shove this into your brain?
I didn't want to say my name -
Aunt May was the one I thought of when I did it -
It wasn't really my name so much as it was the names of my parents. Of Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Ben and my father - brothers. Reunited in an afterlife if there is one. My grandparents, long dead. The name that was left of them - the only thing I had. But it was Aunt May's safety now, tying back to her was exactly what I wanted to avoid. Protecting her was the most important thing.
"Peter," I had sobbed. "P-Parker. Parker."
It's only a matter of time before this comes out. Before Mr. Stark finds out. When the world finds out.
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