Peter was lying on the ground

as still as the rocks around him

Tony knelt down next to the kid

he pulled his mask off

and he could feel his heart stop

because there was blood on his face

and the mask was ripped

oh shit

he pushed the spider button on the suit

and pulled away the edge of the warm, wet fabric, hands shaking, the fear of what he might see choking him

and nausea hit him

when he saw

that Peter's chest was sticky with warm, red blood

and his skin was torn

and it was punctured with shrapnel

with debris from the explosion.

And suddenly, he was back in Afghanistan

and he could feel the shrapnel in his own heart

and he cried out in pain

and everything was blurry.

"Steady, Stark," Steve spoke in a low, calming voice, placing a hand firmly on Tony's shaking shoulder. "He's gonna be ok."

Tony caught his breath as Steve gently picked the kid up, careful not to touch his chest where the impact was worst.

And then, Tony snapped out of his daze. What am i doing? he thought. The kid — my kid — needs help. And what am i doing? I'm sitting here feeling sorry for myself. How can i not be there for him when he needs me the most? His thoughts weren't that concise — they were more like a hundred bullets being shot at him all at the same time, or like a broken record, screaming at him over and over.

Steve began to sprint toward the plane, and Tony turned on his blasters and met him there.

The rest of that afternoon was a blur.

He remembers them calling Helen Cho

he remembers her telling him to try and stop the blood flow

but he doesn't remember much else.

—

"What the hell, Tony?" Steve asked, as soon as things had calmed down, anger flooding his wide eyes. "He's just a kid!"

"He's not 'just a kid,' Rogers," Tony retorted exhaustedly. He already fully blamed himself for everything that happened and he didn't need Steve to remind him. He had to fight back even if it was solely for the sake of fighting back. "He's a superhero. I made a deal with him-"

"You made a deal with a twelve-year-old? That can't be legal."

"He's fifteen! And he needed help. He was homeless, and you made me very desperate."

"Hold on, do not blame me for this."

"Why not? Whose team caused the explosion? Who planted the explosive?"

Steve reeled in indignance. "You think I did that?"

"Well, who else would put a bomb in an abandoned building right next to where we were fighting?"

Steve was about to argue back when the door opened suddenly, stopping their conversation abrubtly. Bruce Banner walked out.

"Is he awake?" Tony asked almost instinctively, without thinking, his argument with Steve no longer of any importance to him.

Bruce shook his head. "But we think we know where the explosion came from." He lead them into his lab. "If our tests were done correctly, Peter got his powers seven months ago when he was bitten by an artificially enhanced spider. Its venom, which contained radioactive particles, entered his bloodstream. As his blood circulated throughout his body, it began to adopt the same genetically enhanced properties of the spider, proportionally relative to his size."

Tony nodded. "So, what you're saying is that the radioactivity never left his body."

"That's correct," Bruce said. "They scanned him and when they got the results of the test his whole body showed up glowing; that's why they called me in. The radioactivity entered his bloodstream, and it never left. The explosion wasn't a bomb; it was an unstable generator. That building was closed down because it was unsafe, but when Peter crashed through the wall of the building, the radioactivity that was being emitted from his body... well, it didn't mix well."

"But if he has had this radioactivity in his body for the past seven months, and it's strong enough to blow up a generator, why hasn't he or any of us had any side effects of radiation poisoning? What kind of radiation is it?" Tony asked.

"That's the thing, Bruce responded. "I'm an expert in radioactivity and this is nothing I've ever seen before. I think it's a completely new kind, or at least one i've never experienced-"

Just then the door burst open and Scott Lang ran in, shaking all over, hyperventilating, eyes red and wide.

"I'm so sorry!" he half sobbed. "This is all my fault!"