Stephen wasn't the only one to show up in Peter's bedroom. When he arrived, Doctor Thompson was with him, which made Peter think that he must be staying in guest quarters near Peter's own rooms. The boy was pretty sure that Strange wouldn't want to pop in and out in front of someone who wasn't already in the know when it came to what his abilities were, after all.

"How are you feeling?" Thompson asked, watching Peter shift so he could sit on the edge of the bed when Stephen gestured for him to do so.

Flash's father set a new bundle of bandages close at hand to replace the ones they were taking off.

"I'm okay."

"Sore?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

"Stabbing pains?" the doctor asked. "Or throbbing all the time?"

"It just aches," Peter told them all, sounding apologetic – even to himself.

He watched with the others as Stephen held his arm, carefully, while Thompson cut the bandages that ran from his fingers up to his shoulder, and then peeled them away, carefully.

"Wow…"

Peter looked up at Dr. Thompson's softly uttered word, and then down at his hand.

"It doesn't look too bad…" he said, uncertainly.

It hurt a lot worse than it looked like it should.

"It looks incredible," the doctor told him. Then he looked at Tony and Pepper. "It looks great, guys. Even better than I expected."

The two looked relieved, and they watched as Strange and Thompson turned Peter's hand, palm up, now.

"Flex the fingers, if you can…" Strange told Peter.

The boy complied, but the hand felt stiff and sore as he did it.

"Does it hurt?" Thompson asked.

"Yes. A bit."

"Bend the elbow."

Peter did as he was told, and that didn't hurt so much.

"That's enough for now," he was told. The doctors started wrapping new, wet, cloths around Peter's hand, making sure to wrap each finger individually before they wrapped the entire hand, and then the wrist, the forearm and the rest, all the way up to his shoulder, once more.

"If his rate of healing continues, we'll probably check the hand again in a few days," Flash's father told Peter's parents. "The tech is even more efficient than I anticipated."

Of course, he didn't know that Peter was enhanced – and that was almost certainly driving the boy's recovery rate.

"Cutting edge," Tony agreed. "Thank you for staying so close."

"You're welcome." He shrugged. "You really don't need me here, now, though. His health is good and the hand is progressing well. I don't see him having any medical emergencies in the near future. I'm going to go home. I'll be back in three days to replace those bandages."

Tony looked at Stephen to see if he agreed with the other doctor. The billionaire was more than willing to keep Thompson close if needed. He could pull strings and make it worth the man's time to stay if the sorcerer supreme thought it was needed.

"He's right, Tony," Stephen agreed. "The hand looks good."

"Good enough to go to the dance tonight?" Peter asked, already knowing that they were going to say no, but figuring it was worth a shot.

Strange shook his head.

"No. The hand would survive, maybe. You're using a lot of energy to heal, though. I doubt you'd make it out of the car."

Peter nodded, trying to hide his disappointment.

"What dance?" Flash's dad asked.

Peter looked up at him, wondering how he didn't know.

"Homecoming's tonight."

"Oh."

"Is Flash going?" Pepper asked, politely.

The doctor shrugged.

"Most likely. He enjoys those things, from what I understand." Thompson finished what he was doing. "No dance for you, however," he told Peter. "Probably not for several weeks. No school, either, though, so take the vacation while you can, hey?"

"Yeah…"

Nutmeg wandered over and rubbed up against Peter's sling, purring and looking for attention.

"I'll check in with Doctor Strange, here, before I leave the compound," they were told. "But feel free to call if you have any questions."

"Thank you."

They watched as he left, and Peter picked Nutmeg up, rubbing his chin against the top of the kitten's head, thinking idly that if he could grow any facial hair on his chin he could use it to tease the little guy. Of course, by the time he was able to, Nutmeg would probably be in a kitten nursing home.

"It really looks okay?" he asked, looking at Strange.

Flash's dad seemed like a nice enough guy, but he wasn't Peter's doctor, and maybe he was just trying to make them all feel better…

"It looks fine," Stephen assured him. He reached over and gingerly took Nutmeg from Peter. "But since he's gone, we need to talk."

"About what happened last night?"

Tony frowned.

"You remember last night?"

"No. But you're all acting odd and looking at me funny, so I must have done something. Something weird, but not too dangerous, from the looks of things?"

Maybe he'd done some sleepwalking? Had he been making drinks, again?

Tony's smile was a little forced, but he shook his head. Peter didn't need to know about the sleepwalking – or sleepteleporting – that he'd done the night before; he and Pepper had already discussed that. They'd mention that the rock appeared in his hand, though, to lead up to the interesting part of the story. He definitely needed to know what his kitten was capable of, after all.

"No. You didn't do anything. This is about Nutmeg."

Oh.

Peter immediately looked around for the doll, thinking that Nutmeg had destroyed it and they were trying to think of some way to tell him, gently. He saw it half sticking out from under his pillow, though, and breathed a sigh of relief. Not that he was so enamored of the thing (although he liked the sentimentality of it) but the toddler was far more active than was comfortable sometimes, and that little boy definitely made his thoughts known when he wasn't happy about something.

"What did he break?"

"Nothing."

Pepper sat on the edge of the bed next to Peter, just in case he freaked out, while Tony told his son what Nutmeg had done.

OOOOOO

It didn't take long. It wasn't a long narrative to tell, after all. Peter frowned, though, looking from one to the other, his eyes uncertain.

"Is this a joke, or something? I don't understand."

"Tentacles, son," Tony replied. "Longer than my arms, and they just sprouted out of his mouth, took that rock right out of my hand – without doing more than brushing against my skin – and then he ate it."

The boy heard Alec chuckle in his head, but Peter cast a sidelong glance at Pepper beside him (who was watching him, intently) and then looked back at Tony.

"Have you been drinking…?"

Now Alec snorted. A sound that made Peter smile, despite all the craziness going on around him. Pepper smiled, too.

"I take it that you've never witnessed him exhibiting any such behavior?" Stephen asked, unable to suppress his own smile at Peter's confusion.

"Never saw my kitten sprout tentacles?" Peter asked. "I'm sure I would have noticed."

Sarcasm wasn't Peter's first talent, but he'd lived with Tony a long time, now, and while it wasn't second nature to him, it came out easily at times.

None of them were offended.

"I know it sounds crazy," Stark said. "But we all saw it."

"He ate my rock?"

"Seems to have."

Peter frowned.

"What if I summoned it, then? Would it come bursting out of him?" He reached for Nutmeg, much more worried about that happening than the crazy tentacle thing. Stephen let him have the kitten, and Peter tucked him between the bandaged arm and his side, using the free hand to prize open Nutmeg's mouth, gently, as if he could see the rock.

"Peter… don't do that…" Pepper said. "Please…"

Nutmeg didn't do more than move his head away, letting Peter know he didn't like that, but why tempt fate?

Peter pulled his fingers from the little mouth. He could tell from how they were acting that they were serious about what they were telling him, so there probably wasn't a hidden camera somewhere waiting to catch his reaction.

"I don't understand…" he finally said. "He's not a kitten?"

"Doesn't seem to be," Stephen agreed.

"Maybe we should keep him somewhere else…" Tony told him, uncertainly, well aware what the reaction to that particular statement was going to be.

Sure enough, Peter's brow furrowed and his grip on the little fuzzy body tightened, almost imperceptibly.

"What? No."

"What if he hurts you?" Pepper asked. "We think that he just solved Natasha's mystery about what happened to that thing that broke into your rooms during the fight. If he can eat something that big and vicious, then what's to stop him from doing that to you?"

Her concern was valid. Peter didn't need Alec to tell him that. The sudden worry in her eyes was plain to see.

"He hasn't yet," Peter pointed out. "He likes me."

"But-"

"I'm not giving him up," the boy said to her. To all of them. To his chagrin, he felt his eyes burning with tears, and couldn't do a thing about it. Either the toddler was in complete agreement with him or Peter was too tired and miserable to be able to hold his own feelings back like he might have been able to another time. "He's a baby, and he doesn't have anyone else. Just us. We took him in… even if he turns out to be a weirdo, it's no reason to get rid of him."

He realized the similarity of his own situation, and the tears were suddenly falling. Peter had been taken in, too, after all, and if he didn't classify as a weirdo, who did?

"You're not weird," Alec told him, immediately. "You're incredible."

None of the adults were immune to how distraught Peter was, and Pepper made a soft noise and gathered him into her arms, kitten and all.

"He's different is all…" Peter sobbed, and then buried his face against Pepper's collarbone, unable to say anything else.

She gave her husband and the sorcerer supreme a wry look as she comforted him, making soothing noises as Peter cried out all the frustrations of the past several days and weeks. All the fear. The pain and the uncertainty that he'd been through. Tony stepped close so he could run his hand along the back of Peter's head, unable to stand idly by when he was so upset.

Finally, with a soft, woeful sniff, Peter pulled away from them, wiping his eyes with his bare arm.

"I'm sorry…" he told them. Throwing a tantrum probably wasn't the best way to get what you wanted. "I-"

"You don't need to apologize," Tony replied, using his thumb to wipe a tear from Peter's cheek. "But I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to upset you. I just… he's dangerous, son. You understand that, right?"

"Not to us."

The kitten was looking a little ruffled, now, from being stuck in the middle of Peter's outburst and Pepper's comforting. They all looked at him, and Nutmeg looked back at them, unaffected by any of it. He yawned; little teeth bared to the world for all to see, but not a tentacle in sight.

Tony looked at Pepper, who smiled and ran her fingers through Peter's hair.

"You'll tell us if he does anything like that where you can see it?"

"Yes."

"And try to get some video proof," Strange added. "Otherwise the others are going to think we're nuts."

Tony already thought they were nuts; allowing Peter to keep something so potentially dangerous so close. But he didn't say anything else about taking Nutmeg away. Peter had made his opinion painfully clear, and Tony couldn't have taken the kitten away, now, even if the thing had sprouted an arsenal of bombs and machine guns out of its bottom. He already knew that he'd do anything for Peter, and he supposed this was one of those things.

"No experimenting, though…" he told his boy.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean; if you're holding the cat and you concentrate really hard, will the teleportation stone still send you someplace?"

Peter's eyebrow went up, and he looked down at Nutmeg, speculatively. It was obvious that he hadn't even considered that. Even more, Strange's expression was suddenly just as interested.

"Yes, Peter…" the sorcerer said, casually reaching for Nutmeg, who went willingly. The doctor held the kitten in one hand, caressing him with the other. "No experimenting…"

They all watched, knowing full well what he was doing. When he was still in the same place a minute later, he shrugged and handed the fuzzy creature back to the boy.

"Nothing?" Tony asked.

"No." He looked at Peter. "Eat something and get some rest. I'll be back later to check on you."

"Okay."