It was pain that finally woke Peter, fully.

He opened his eyes, sleepily, and found that there was a small crowd of people around the bed that he was in. He turned his head toward the pain that he was feeling and saw Stephen standing beside the bed with a man who looked familiar, but Peter couldn't remember why – or who he was. He guessed that he was a doctor, because the man had a pair of scissors in one hand and was carefully cutting bandages off the boy's right hand – all the way up his arm – while Strange was supporting the limb.

"Hold still, Peter," Strange told him, calmly. "We're almost done."

He felt, rather than heard, someone to the other side, and turned his head away from the two doctors and saw Pepper and Tony standing on his left. Pepper was holding his hand in both of hers, and Tony was hovering, protectively, close by the upraised head of Peter's bed, with the Cloak of Levitation draped over his shoulder, seemingly watching the proceedings as well.

"You're okay," Tony told him, his hand going to Peter's forehead and staying there. "Just hold on, alright?"

"You're okay?" Peter asked, feeling off-kilter and confused.

He felt his voice grate, as if his throat was coated in sandpaper, but it didn't hurt to talk – and no one told him that he couldn't.

"We're fine," Stark assured him, his eyes warm and filled with nothing but love. Not even any concern. It was either a great bluff to make Peter sure that he really was going to be alright, or Tony really felt that he was in good hands. "Hold still, son. We don't want to have to sue Flash's dad for malpractice if he slices your arm off."

Peter smiled at the teasing tone in Tony's voice, and turned his head, realizing that that was why the strange doctor looked familiar.

"You're Flash's dad…" he didn't make it a question but was still out of it enough that it sounded normal to repeat what Tony had just said.

Luckily, the doctor had good bedside manner, and was apparently used to dealing with heavily medicated patients. He nodded without looking up from what he was doing, the sharp scissors making short work of the bandages – but there were a lot of them.

"I am."

"I thought you were a heart guy…?" he frowned and looked down at his bandaged side. "Are you operating on my heart?"

Strange wasn't the only one to smile.

"Your heart's fine, Peter. Hold still."

He fell silent, and all of them watched as the bandages were carefully pulled away from the injured hand and arm. Peter heard Pepper's sharp intake of breath, and her grip on his hand tightened – as did the hold Tony had on his forehead. The boy looked at his hand, felt himself suddenly go light-headed, and was suddenly bolstered from the inside by Alec, who sent him a wordless surge of reassurance.

"It looks good," Doctor Thompson said, approvingly.

Peter looked up at him, uncertainly.

"It does?"

"Considering where it was four days ago?" Strange replied before the other doctor could. "Yes. It's healing amazingly well."

"It's black…"

"That's from the energy that was sent through your arm and your hand," Flash's father explained. "It was badly burned – more like an electrical burn than anything. It's clean, and the edges look very good. The flesh is nicely pink, and healthy." He looked over Peter at Tony and Pepper. "It's amazing."

Tony smiled, relieved.

"Peter's an amazing guy."

"More of the same," Stephen said, to the other doctor, as well as to Tony and Pepper.

"Definitely," Thompson approved. "We'll continue using the nanotech on the bandages until the burn wounds are completely closed, then we'll start him on physical therapy – minimal to start, and more as the hand heals."

"Thank you," Pepper told him, looking relieved by how confident he sounded.

"You're welcome. I'll prepare a new set of bandages. It'll take a few minutes, but it won't hurt the wounds to get some air, at any rate." He looked at Peter. "Hold your arm and hand as still as you can until we get you bandaged, again, yeah?"

Peter nodded.

"Okay."

Thompson left and Tony looked at Stephen.

"How does the rest of him look?"

"We already know that he recovers well," Strange reminded them. "His stats look pretty good." He looked at Peter, and now it was his hand that went to Peter's forehead, making Tony move his own, "How's the head?"

"It doesn't hurt," Peter told him. "Not much, anyway."

"One to ten?"

"Two?"

"And any pain anywhere else – aside from the hand, of course?"

"The hand overpowers everything else," Peter admitted, truthfully. "If anything else hurts, I can't feel it."

"That's not unexpected. Or uncommon."

"So we keep him in bed?" Tony asked.

"No." Strange turned his attention to the IV that was hanging at Peter's bedside and fiddled with it for a moment. "We get him on his feet as soon as the new bandages are on."

"Are you sure?" Pepper asked, and now she did look a little concerned. "He's in pain."

"It isn't his leg, though. The sooner we get him upright and moving around, the less complications we're going to be looking at. He doesn't have a fever, and the burns everywhere else are fairly well healed, already. I want him on his feet and eating solid food as soon as possible."

Tony frowned at his friend, and then down at Peter.

"How do you feel?

"Tired."

"Saving the universe will do that to you," Stephen told him. "Are you hungry?"

"Not really."

"Do you feel sick to your stomach?"

Peter hesitated and then shook his head.

"No."

"We'll put him in a sling to immobilize the arm and protect the hand," Strange told Pepper and Tony. "If we get him mobile, though, we can move him out of this room and into his own – and get rid of the catheter."

Which was a great way to get Peter on board with the idea. He'd much rather be in his own bed than where he was, of course – and he didn't like the catheter. Tony and Pepper were a little harder to convince, though.

"We're not pushing him into too much, too soon?"

"If it were someone else, yes," Stephen conceded. "But Peter's tougher than many, and he has the tech that can keep an eye on him in case he has any kind of medical emergency – which I don't expect him to have," he added quickly. "Again, the sooner the better."

"Did I miss homecoming?" Peter asked.

"Homecoming is in two days," Pepper told him.

"That isn't going to happen," Strange confirmed. "Until the skin is healed on the hand and arm, you're staying in the compound and with nominal contact – just to minimize the risk of infection."

Peter's expression must have told them all just how disappointing that was, but they were all in agreement on it. At least, Pepper and Toy were willing to follow Stephen's lead on anything that had to do with making sure their son didn't have any setbacks. Especially now that he was awake and seemed much more lucid than he had been.

"It won't be that long," Tony assured him. "You know that."

"Too long," Peter said, softly.

Under normal circumstances he would have been able to do a better job of hiding his disappointment, but he was hurting, exhausted and still reeling emotionally from all that had happened, especially now that he was more awake and was remembering what had happened in bits and pieces. He just didn't have the energy or the focus, just then, to handle any of it with any amount of positivity.

They all understood, of course, and none of them were annoyed. It wasn't a typical teenaged angst kind of situation, after all, and Peter wasn't prone to that, anyway. Rather than embarrass him, though, by pointing it out, Tony just leaned over, not at all self-conscious about pressing his cheek against his son's.

"We'll get you healthy, first," he said, as the cloak crooned softly into Peter's mind, brushing against the boy's cheek, as well. "Then we'll find a way to make it up."

Peter nodded, and then frowned, looking at Pepper as Tony pulled back, unwilling to risk him moving the injured arm and hand – especially without any protective bandages on it.

"Did I miss your birthday?" he asked, uncertainly – proving that he still wasn't all there.

He hadn't been awake that long, really.

Pepper shook her head.

"No. Not even close, yet."

Before he could say anything – or ask any other questions, the door opened and the other doctor was back, a tray with a new set of bandages on it in his hands. Stephen looked at Tony and Pepper, pointedly.

"We'll get him ready to be moved out of here," the sorcerer said. "Why don't you two go make sure that his quarters are set up for him?"

Meaning that he needed Pepper out of the room so they could take care of the catheter without a feminine audience, and to get them clear so they didn't have to watch the boy's damaged hand and arm get trussed up in a new swathing of bandages. Pepper nodded, understanding, immediately.

"We can do that," she agreed. "Are you hungry for anything in particular for dinner?" she asked Peter, squeezing his good hand, gently.

"Anything."

"Soup and a bland sandwich," Strange told her.

Tony rolled his eyes.

"It'll be interesting to see him try to eat soup with one hand."

Which made the doctor frown.

"Good point. Just the sandwich."