The day at school is extremely slow moving for Connor, and he can't concentrate really on anything other than the self-appointed mission, to find who had killed Peter's surrogate mother - Aunt May. The teachers noticed his behaviour, and they had all heard about the tragedy of what took place in the Parker household weeks back, and usually, they'd let Connor be, as Connor was known to be a close friend to Peter.
Dealing with grief did come in many forms though, and none of them was sure it was healthy when Connor came through the door of the classroom and sat down looking awful. He took a seat next to Ned, and immediately everybody's eyes were drawn to Connor's sunken look, and worn appearance.
"Hey," Ned tapped his shoulder when the teacher was back lecturing about plant cells. Connor looked up at Ned, silently questioning. "Are you alright?" Ned nudges him a bit more. Connor immediately nods, deciding that telling Ned about how his system was on a critically low battery life, and manually recharging by going into standby mode would take far too long in this current predicament.
Connor could always go for a quick thirty-minute charging break to supply another fifteen hours to him. Going into a full charging cycle would take anywhere from 8-12 hours, and that wasn't what they needed right now.
Ned looked Connor up and down, doubtfully but accepting the lie, silently wishing he had the guts to tell Connor to go home, get some sleep and from the way he looked, maybe even eat a sandwich.
The teacher assigns them all to work from their textbook to, and then pulls Connor out of class to talk to him privately in the hallway. Connor's one of her favourite students, so it pains her to see him in a state like this. She explains gently that he doesn't look so good, and maybe he should visit the school nurse, who'd no doubt refer him to the school psychologist.
Connor takes the yellow card out of her hands, its a pass to the nurse's office, and he goes back into the classroom to collect his belongings from his desk, and tell Ned that he'll try and see him later if everything goes smoothly. The school nurse is kind and doesn't say anything about Connor's dishevelled look that contrasts with Connor's normal neat look.
The nurse could already tell that Connor looked sickly, and digested with a coin in his pocket far more than usual. He directed Connor onto the scale, and after a moment frowned at the number that had shown up, 51.8kg (114lbs), but didn't comment other than writing it down in a red pen, signifying that special attention should be directed towards Connor's weight, but otherwise continued with the medical examination.
He marks Connor's height, which is 6 foot tall, towering the nurse's measly 5"6. The nurse tells Connor to remove his suit jacket, so he can measure Connor's waist circumference, so Connor does, but looks oddly fondly at the suit jacket when removing it. The waist measurements come back as perfectly healthy for his height, but odd for his weight. It should have been thinner, but the nurse doesn't see it as a concern and moves on.
The only thing wrong physically with Connor ended up being his weight, everything including his heartbeat (thirium pump) and blood pressure seemed to be normal, and his eyes reacted normally to light.
What must have been wearing Connor down was probably stress and or a lack of sleep. The nurse couldn't find out what was stressing Connor, and as expected referred him to the school psychologist. The nurse was actually quite busy at the moment with another student, and only offered fifteen-minute sessions, so Connor just had to sit in the waiting room with his light blue card that said he was allowed to be in the area.
The waiting room for the school psychologist was decorated in pastel undertones, making Connor draw up similarities to a stereotypical nursery for a baby. There was a bookshelf against one wall with popular books, and cushions and bean bags against the other wall.
A big sign read 'Shh! Quiet please.' and another had a list of positive quotes. In the waiting room, were three other teenagers, two of whom Connor had seen around the school before, and one of which Connor was sure had tried to ask him out once, to which he politely declined. She was awkward, but got over it quickly, and wasn't an ass over her rejection either.
It was an hour later when the psychologist finally got to him and searched his name up in the system to look at all the notes the teachers put in about him. He continued typing for a few minutes and finally gave Connor a large grin.
"It's going to be simple, I'm going to ask you a few questions and you're going to answer with yes or no. After that, I'll ask you a few questions where I would like you to answer with an explanation."
He gets out a notebook and asks Connor the first question.
"Do you enjoy coming here, to school?" Connor responds with a prompt 'affirmative' and the future questions roll on smoothly until, a rather vague question, in Connor's own opinion, comes up.
"Have you ever considered killing yourself?" The words are so blunt that Connor doesn't even hesitate, and can't stop himself when the 'yes' leaves his mouth. Of course, he's considered killing himself, but not in the way that he wants to die, more in the way of a sacrifice, hell he'd almost done it on that balcony during the hostage system. It was part of his job to put himself in harm's way if it meant saving another, more important, more human life.
He didn't want to die, he just wouldn't hesitate if it meant protecting anybody else.
Connor didn't know if that was brave or stupid, but he didn't exactly care.
"Recently?"
Again, pretty vague but yes.
The psychologist immediately pulls up Connor's name in the school registry and puts 'high risk' in the teacher comments section. He pulls open a drawer and gives Connor a pamphlet with hotlines on the inside, and gives Connor a leather-bound journal that has a cringe-worthy 'Positive vibes' engraved on the front.
What did that even mean, positive vibes? Positive vibrations? English was extremely weird, and everything seemed so much simpler in binary to Connor.
The next period had already started so it was too late to let Connor go back to class when the psychologist dismisses him, so Connor's told to wait out the period in the waiting room.
He does, but not before going back to his locker to prepare his books for the next class.
Its twelve minutes and fifty-three seconds later when one of the office assistants retrieve call his name out gently.
"Mr Anderson, Mr Stark is waiting for you in the front office. He's come to collect you, he says it's urgent." Her clipped voice tells him to hurry up, and that she really did think that the situation was urgent.
Connor wonders how Dr Stark was allowed to pick him up, but reasons that he probably used one of his AI systems to hack in and register himself as one of Connor's emergency contacts, and guardians, in case of the event that Hank could not make it help out.
He probably went over it with Hank sometime, and Hank probably agreed extremely nonchalantly, and seemingly not taking any interest as if he didn't care about Connor, but Connor had already learned to read Hank like an open book, Hank cared but his cold hard exterior disguised it, and pretty well too.
Tony's pacing in the office foyer when Connor arrives and Tony snaps his head up in a jerking motion. He grabs Connor's arm and pulls him into a car where Tony's driver, Happy, is waiting in the front seat to take them away.
Connor already recognises, by the exits that Happy has taken on the freeway, that they're going to the Avengers compound upstate, as there was no other probable place that Tony could be deciding to take him too. Connor isn't an Avenger though, so he's confused to why he's being taken there, and Tony must've felt Connor's confusion because the next thing that comes through his mouth is extremely panicked.
"It's Peter. He's hurt, bad."
AN: It's a pretty short update but it has come to my attention that there isn't really a clear timeline of what is happening, and I've finally been bothered to try and set up whats going down
It's right before Captain America: Winter Soldier, and I'm pulling the events of Spiderman Homecoming back a bit, so it has already happened by now..?
It's also using the Connor before he gets teh option to deviate, so between the Chapter: Crossroads and the Chapter: Eden Club