Peter couldn't believe what he was seeing. He had almost forgotten what it looked like. He thought for a moment that Tony was playing some kind of prank, because Peter hadn't expected to see this, well, ever again.

"That's my suit."

He looked at Tony, hoping for some explanation. His statement hadn't been a question exactly, but he hoped an answer would be forthcoming.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Real observant. Well," he amended, crossing his arms and looking critically at the workstation, "It is and it isn't. Your suit, that is. Some of the individual parts are recycled, but most of the original was pretty trashed. I had to make some serious adjustments."

Somehow, Tony didn't seem too annoyed about that. Peter knew him well enough by now to know that he probably enjoyed rebuilding Peter's suit the same way he constantly upgraded his own.

"Plus," Tony continued, "There's the small matter of actual ownership." He suddenly became serious, forcing Peter to look him straight in the eye.

"You are a long, long way off being allowed to use this thing again. I'm only showing it to you because I think maybe if you have to help build this thing yourself you might not be so eager to destroy it next time. And if you're going to take time off school you may as well do something useful while you're at it. But for now this suit stays locked up nice and tight in the lab, capisce?"

Peter nodded. Tony seemed surprised, and frowned a little.

"What, no backchat? Ok… Good. That's that then."

Peter moved closer to the suit, reaching out to brush his fingertips over the surface. H inspected it further, testing the weight.

"Did you change the alloy?" He glanced at Tony to confirm. The man smiled.

"Very good. I figured with your specific skill set we should aim for maximum flexibility. I tinkered with it for a while though, just to make sure the overall strength wasn't affected. Here, let me show you some of the special features."

They spent the next few hours working on the suit, going over the small details left unfinished. Tony watched Peter like a hawk, and double checked anything he did, critiquing his technique at every turn, but Peter found that he didn't mind at all. He was working on his suit with Tony Stark! Tony was letting him work on his suit! And the suit itself was brilliant. Not quite Iron Spider level, but far, far better than before. Or, it would be when it was finished. Peter was just thrilled that it hadn't been destroyed completely. He hadn't had access to any chemicals for a while, and he was 99.9% sure May had got rid of his old homemade web shooters. Tony had even reinstalled Karen, and he let Peter switch her on for a while before getting annoyed when Peter constantly used her to play music that Tony didn't approve of.

"You need a real musical education." he said, scoffing at most of Peter's choices.

"Past the 90s music went to shit. AC/DC, Queen, The Who, now they were classics. Legends, all of them."

"I do like some rock!" Offered Peter. "I like the Ramones."

Tony just shook his head and stared at the ceiling, aghast.

"Punk." He said with despair. "The boy likes punk, and he has the nerve to call it rock."

From then on, Tony was in charge of the playlist. And it wasn't bad either. Occasionally Peter managed to slip in something a little more recent than the 80s, which was just about tolerated. But, slightly outdated music aside, things couldn't have been better.

There was only one downside to the whole thing. The workshop was Peter's personal idea of heaven (although he'd had to reevaluate his ideas a bit after dying for real) but as soon as he had seen the suit, he had seen the problem. And it wasn't going away, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. They had been working for hours, and Peter knew he should have said something earlier but he just hadn't been able to bring himself to do it. Still, they were just wasting time until he did, so eventually he managed to work up the nerve.

"Um…Mr Stark?"

Tony grunted, and didn't look around as he adjusted some plans using one of the holograms. Actually, not having to look Tony in the eye was preferable, so Peter decided to just go ahead.

"Mr Stark, I can't use this suit."

'Oh, now he looks around.' Thought Peter. 'Perfect'

"Well, no, obviously not." Said Tony, looking quizzically at Peter. "Didn't we go over this already?'

"No, I mean, yes." Peter felt his cheeks begin to heat up as he tripped over his words. Tony raised an eyebrow.

"Yes or no kid, which is it?"

Peter sighed. 'I mean… I can't use this suit, at all. Not…like this."

Tony looked hard at him, eyes wide, hand outstretched. "I got nothing, kid. You gonna tell me what's going on?"

With a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, using his left hand Peter gestured to the arm still contained in a sling.

"The suit's not set up for my arm."

"Well, nooooo."

Tony spoke as if Peter had suddenly suffered a significant drop in IQ, but he was beginning to look pretty spooked.

"Its not set up now obviously, but by the time you're allowed back onto the streets as Spiderman your arm will be completely healed. You didn't think I'd be letting you try it on at any point, did you?"

Peter shook his head. "No, you're not getting it."

"What exactly am I not getting?" The voice was hard, flat.

"My arm isn't going to heal. I'll be like this forever."

"Yes, it is." Tony spoke a lot more forcefully now.

"No. It's not."

"Pete. Quit with the melodrama, please. It's just taking a while, that's all. You have to give it time."

"I have given it time!" Exclaimed Peter. "Lots and lots of time! But there's no improvement, Mr Stark. None."

"Have you been doing the exercises from the physio?" Asked Tony. It still didn't seem to have cracked the surface with him, and Peter hated, really, really hated having to explain it further. Because that made it real.

"I stopped going to the physio weeks ago. There was no point. They couldn't do anything more. The doctors said the nerve damage extends all the way to my shoulder, and it's not gonna repair itself."

"Then we'll get you better doctors."

"Mr Stark."

Peter hadn't said this to anyone yet, not even May. She had kept him on a military regimen of exercises, creams, everything but the kitchen sink, and Peter just hadn't had the heart to tell her that none of it was working.

"Mr Stark, the doctors recommended amputation."

"Nope. Nuh uh. We're not doing that." Tony turned away from him and continued scrutinising the schematics hovering in the air.

"We'll find you better doctors and better physios. You're just getting downhearted what with the long road to recovery and all."

Gritting his teeth, Peter pushed down his irritation and continued trying to get his point across to Tony.

"There's no point. This isn't something that can be fixed with doctors or medicine. It's permanent. They know by now it's not getting any better."

"Well, what about a brace, like Rhodeys?"

More shaking of the head. It wasn't like Peter didn't appreciate Tony's optimism, but he knew in his heart that things weren't going to get better. He just wanted rid of this stupid arm once and for all.

"It's not a big deal, really. Y'know, I saw a guy during the battle at the compound with a metal arm. Maybe I could get one of those?"

…

Tony was struggling to come to terms with it. Had things really got so bad that the kid needed amputation? He was no stranger to prosthetics himself, and yeah, sometimes they were necessary, but Peter was so young… And talented. And he shouldn't have used the infinity gauntlet in the first place, it just wasn't fair. The familiar guilt was worming its way past his shoulders, like it had never left.

"Be a lot harder to do your fancy acrobatics with a prosthetic arm."

Maybe if he could just convince the kid to wait a little longer, steer him away from amputation until Tony had the chance to get some expert opinions. He wondered if he should get Strange involved.

"Not exactly doing any stunts at the moment though am I." The kid sounded almost belligerent, an unusual tone for him.

Looked like Peter had made his mind up. Tony's fingers tapped nervously upon the table.

"Look, Kid… The way I see it, even if your arm was in tip top shape, you're not going to be using the suit anytime soon. And you have to speak to May before doing anything else. So there's no harm in waiting a bit longer, is there?"

Peter looked as though he was struggling to say something. Tony was pretty sure he had him beat. Eventually the kid gave in, but he didn't look happy about it. His face was doing that kicked puppy thing that always left an uncomfortable twisting in Tony's stomach. They decided to turn in for the night.

"You haven't seen my phone at all have you?" Asked Peter as they left the workshop for the night.

"It wasn't with your stuff? Oh, um, check the car."

He handed over the keys, and the boy went off in search of his phone. Tony went to bed. He tossed and turned for a while, but couldn't seem to get comfortable. The thought of Peter with a metal arm…it was just wrong. Tony was sure he could make a good one, definitely better than any currently on the market, but that wasn't really the point. The point was, Peter had suffered enough already. For a minute there he really had thought the kid had been given a free pass.

'I guess that was just a bit too much to ask for.' Thought Tony as he stared at the ceiling. He wouldn't be getting much rest tonight.

…

Peter was currently wedged between the dashboard and the front seat of Tony's sports car. The garage was dimly lit, but his enhanced eyesight made it easier to see under the seats. His phone was lying just a little too far under, and he had to wriggle almost onto his back to fit his left arm far enough through. His fingers scrabbled for a few seconds before finding their target, and with some difficulty, and a few complaints from his damaged arm, he was able to pull it out.

"Please have some battery, please have some battery." He muttered under his breath as he pressed the on button. He sank into the front seat, filled with a mixture of relief and apprehension as a white symbol flashed on the dark screen. A few seconds later the phone turned on. His screensaver was a picture of the academic decathlon team after the infamous Washington trip. Most of the team was standing in front of the monument, looking shaken. Flash was clutching the trophy with a look of abject misery. There was a smudge of red and blue in the background that Peter was pretty certain was him, just about to make his getaway. I had made him laugh the first time he had seen it, on an online blog. Taken on someones phone, so he had kept it, and hadn't changed it since. Not that you could see much of the picture now, obscured as it was by multiple messages. One or two from Ned, he scrolled past those. A few from May. That was to be expected, but he scrolled past those all the same. At the bottom there was a voicemail, from an unknown number. Peter pressed the button, and held the phone to his ear.

The voice came through much louder than he was expecting, and he scrambled to turn it down. Not that there was anyone around to hear, but still.

"Parker. Thursday morning, eight o'clock. You know the place. Hope to see you there."

The phone beeped. That was all. Peter's hand fell to his lap. Thursday… that was only three days away. Chills began creeping up Peter's spine. Was he really going to do this? Tony would be furious, May even more so. But only if they found out. Doctor Strange was using time travel, Peter could be gone and back in the space of a minute and they would never even have to know…Until Nat was around again, and then maybe they would be pleased… These were white lies, and if it worked then everything would be worth it. Didn't change the fact that he hated lying to Tony.

Peter made his way through the house, and into the extremely luxurious bed with a hollow feeling in his chest, and a feverish nervousness taking over his body. It looked like he would be needing the suit soon after all.

Yes, this chapter is a little shorter than usual, but on the bright side… it's another chapter? Sorry if the reveal wasn't quite as exciting as you hoped. Action will be coming fast in the next chapters so please stay tuned for more! Also, I wasn't sure if maybe the whole thing with the arm was more dramatic than it needed to be? I mean, I know if I was in that situation it would seem like a big deal… but maybe it's not? Hope you enjoyed.