It was just too easy for Peter Parker to escape. To just slip into a hooded sweatshirt like a new skin and disappear out of a back service entrance. Amid the chaos and confusion of soldiers and heroes alike scurrying to their battle stations, it was almost laughably simply to duck out of the building, leaving Avengers Tower behind, not even bothering to look back once.
After all, what would he have to look back at?
But, perhaps it wasn't just the excitement of the oncoming battle that gave him the opportunity. Maybe Bruce Banner knew what Peter was doing when the young man stammered some excuse about needing to grab his tennis shoes from his room. Maybe Bruce called off the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were meant to be guarding Peter. Maybe Bruce turned off Jarvis' notification system, so the computer wouldn't alert anyone to the young man's exit. Maybe Bruce was looking out of the window and saw Peter leaving; maybe he watched the young man and his backpack disappear down the stairs leading to the subway far below the ground.
Maybe all of those things are true, and he just didn't care. He allows Peter to go free, fleeing to the promised land of Queens, where he can sit on the sidelines of this fight and nurse the wounds of the betrayal he has just suffered.
Bruce thinks the kid is owed at least that much.
On the other hand, the S.H.I.E.L.D. team, who do not notice the absence of their hard-won prize until the Avengers are about to assemble and disperse, do not agree with Bruce's assessment, not that they know Bruce had that call to make. Fury stands with his hands on his hips, surveying his team in full uniform, and looks around as if the world is against him.
"Where the fuck is Peter Parker?" He roars.
Tony rolls his eyes as the group grumbles to themselves, asking one another where they saw him last. It was easy enough to find the kid when he was "lost" last time, so he assumes that this time will be much the same. Tony assumes that Parker's probably gotten cold feet, especially after what has happened with Lee.
"Jarvis, building sweep. Find Parker," Tony calls, his voice ringing out above the noise of the room.
Heart skipping a beat, hoping that he will not be caught for turning off the notification system in the first place, Bruce waits in anticipation, hoping the computer program will not rat him out. The room hushes and waits for an answer.
"Peter Parker is not on the premises," comes the steady reply from the disembodied voice of Jarvis.
The outcry from the room is to be expected.
"What?" both Fury and Tony shouts.
Finally given leave to share the information that Bruce blocked from being alerted initially, Jarvis rattles off every piece he has.
"Peter Parker is not on the premises. It appears that an unlimited Metro card registered under his name has been swiped at the subway station on the western side of this building's cross street."
The room holds its collective breath at this information.
"How long ago was that?" Tony asks.
"Twenty-two minutes ago."
"He's been gone for twenty fucking minutes and no one figured it out?" Fury screams, his voice pounding against the wall with the unbridled rage of a man whose plans have fallen to ruin.
No one wants to be the first to reply to that unspoken threat. Stillness settles in between all of them, separating them into unreachable corners of the mind. It is Clint who speaks first, looking at his hands. He remembers the day he almost, accidentally killed Tony's daughter, a price that Fury was willing to pay to get Peter on their side. Clint, for one, is not willing to have that blood on his hands for nothing. He almost killed Lee in order to have Peter; so have Peter this team damn will.
"We have to go get him," Clint asserts.
But Tony and Bruce don't see it that way. For different reasons, of course.
"We don't have time," Tony counters.
Breathing a sigh of relief, thinking himself in the clear as far as the blame of this situation goes, Bruce runs a hand through his hair and adjusts the clothing on his body, this uniform designed to both stretch and shrink with the introduction of the Hulk.
"We have to get Lee without him," Bruce agrees.
Fury shakes his head, attempting to regain control of the situation even as it spirals further and further from his grasp. Steve Rogers sits on a bench on the far end of the room, cleaning his shield as if this conversation weren't happening.
"We can't wage war against the Task Master with just you two and Hawkeye and Romanov," he says, the condescending italics around Clint and the Russian's names evident and insulting.
Natasha folds her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes.
"I don't appreciate your tone," She sneers.
Decisively coming to terms with this course of action, Fury sighs and knows what he has to do. He'll have to split his forces in order to both protect the Stark kid and have Parker there to defeat the Task Master. Splitting the troops is always a horrible strategy, but if he's going to take down this threat, it has to be done.
"I'll send agents after Parker. He'll rendezvous with you four once he's been recovered," he says, pointing to Steve, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint.
Bruce's stomach drops. They're going to force Peter's hand again. This time, they'll use whatever means necessary, breaking not only his heart as they have but his body as well. He feels sick at the thought of the manipulation and deceit that he has been party to all this time.
"Shit," he says, sitting down in the nearest chair, trying to recover a normal breathing pattern.
At the perceived slight, Fury raises an eyebrow and feels his blood boil all over again. This isn't a difficult operation, and for Banner to begin running his mouth as though this isn't something they can handle is too much for Fury to deal with.
"You've got something to say, Banner?" He asks.
Yes. So many things to say. So many grievances to air and complaints to make. And he thinks of voicing them. Truly, he does, for a moment, consider telling Fury that what he has done to Lee and Peter isn't worth it. That, even if they do defeat the Task Master, there will always be another threat, and if the way S.H.I.E.L.D. handles threats is by destroying two people's souls, then they don't deserve victory. He considers telling Fury all of this.
But Bruce has always been a coward. Looking down at his feet, he shakes his head.
"No, sir," he grits out.
The lie is more bitter than cigarettes, and it burns Bruce much in the same way. Satisfied with Bruce's passivity, Fury nods once.
"Good. Now, get to work. Your directive is simple. Defeat the Task Master. At any and all costs," Fury commands.
Bruce doesn't look away from his hands. But adds three quiet words to the order. To him, Fury left out the true reason for this mission at all.
"And save Lee," Bruce adds.
That is less important to Fury. And so, he doesn't even address it.
"Dismissed," he says, taking definitive leave of the room.
Tony tags along at Fury's heels, walking behind him with anxious step. It is the first time the Avengers will be going out without him, which is what he has wanted this whole time. To have Peter take his place so that Tony can leave behind Iron-Man for good…
But.
It's his kid out there. His daughter whose life is one the line.
And that scares the ever-living shit out of him.
"What about me?" Tony asks.
He can't get into his suit. He certainly doesn't have time to construct a brand-new one. And without his suit, what is he, really? Nothing useful. Not to this cause. He looks to Fury in hopes of some great wisdom, some advice for how he can be useful. But he doesn't find any. Instead, Fury look down heavy and hard upon him.
"Welcome to the sidelines, Mr. Stark."
Peter arrives back in Queens on the last train before they shut them down. The Task Master arrival has everyone crying terror, so the public transportation gets closed for the day as a precaution. If the city authorities had half the information he had, they would know that the Task Master isn't the least bit interested in the underground train system. But they can only work with what they have, so Peter just counts himself lucky to even have made it home at all.
He collapses onto his bed like a sandcastle kicked in by a malicious child. Crumbling from the top downward, he folds into himself on the mattress, closing his eyes and reveling in the silence. But after a moment, the feeling of something crinkling under his body annoys him enough to groan and roll over so as to find the source of the problem.
What he finds only tires out his spirit even more.
It's all of the photos he developed during his time with Lee. All of them. Only, the problem is, there isn't a single one of her. Blurry photos of her hand covering the lens or the edge of her shoulder peeking out of the corner of a shot.
She must have gone through and deleted all of the pictures he took of her before he developed them. It's the only explanation.
Holding the stack of photos in his hands, cradling them gently, Peter's head falls in shame.
It's as if she was never in his life to begin with. And yet, he still loves her as if she were sitting beside him this minute.
Tony is fuming. The Team has left for the fight and he's behind at the Tower. Frustrated and itching to do something. Anything. When he remembers that there is a manual override to the remaining suit down in the basement. According to Jarvis, it's now coded to Lee, but if he can get it open manually, then he can at least be of some help. He can at least put himself in the middle of the action.
He can at least try to help save Lee.
Sidelines. Pft. Sidelines my ass, he thinks to himself as he sprints down the stairs to the basement. He's locked in his own thoughts and annoyances, halfway down the staircase, when he hears it.
Bangbangbangbangbang…..
It continues like the sound of a battering ram into a bank vault door, and with each step Tony takes in its direction, the noise gets louder and louder, overwhelming and assaulting his senses. A headache instantly forms directly behind his eyes and he presses the heels of his hands into his ears to muffle the sound of metal blasting into metal.
Blasting.
"Oh, shit."
Tony speeds his pace to get to the bottom of the staircase. The door leading to the main hallway of the basement has a small window in it, giving a clear eight-inch by six-inch view into the corridor. And what he sees sends shockwaves through his whole body.
The Iron-Man suit, fully constituted as if someone were wearing it, is banging against the door, shaking the walls with its effort. Lee has the bracelet, Tony remembers. She must have pressed the suit's call button, just as he did all that time ago during the battle with Loki. The suit is trying to get to her, just as it did back then.
"Shit," he repeats at the realization.
Indecision wracks his body. If he opens this door, the suit will get out and follow the homing beacon to Lee, who certainly doesn't know how to operate it, much less save herself with it. He opens his mouth to call to Jarvis, to try and override the systems audibly and cancel whatever sequence Lee activated with the cuff.
But it's too late. The suit's repeated banging against the door had worn out its hinges. The metal entrance explodes away from its place, the impact knocking Tony into the wall with the force of a child launching a rag doll across their bedroom. Body collapsing to the ground, pain radiating from every inch of his being, Tony's woozy eyes watch as the Iron-Man suit flies up the stairs and out of his sight before allowing himself to succumb to his pain and black out.
Lee can hardly see anything out of her swollen eye. She counts the seconds of time passing by the throbbing of the various bruises covering her skin. The sun is high in the sky, but she feels as though its dangling precariously over her head, the heat tauntingly close. Hopelessness sinks into the hollow left of her chest; no one is coming for her. The suit hasn't shown up, even after her calling it. The stupid cuff doesn't even work, for god's sake. She is going to be left here to die with the Task Master. It's inevitable now.
It's sickeningly easy to accept death when one feels like they have no one to live for.
Eventually, the Task Master strolls up to her, his shadow giving her shade for the first time since dropping her in place on the hot rooftop. She relishes in the feeling, even as the impending doom of such an action stirs the acid in her stomach.
"Your father is taking longer than I expected," he intones, his voice level, tightly controlled.
There is no malice, no expectation, no disappointment. Just the words as they appear. Your father is taking longer than I expected. Lee chuckles, or rather, she blows air past her swollen lips in what otherwise might have sounded something like a chuckle. But her eyes hold no mirth or comedy in them.
"Well, I hate to say I told you so," she mutters.
She's so tired. Her body feels like it's leaking energy by the second, like the dams of power have been broken and now it's flooding out into the world, leaving her dry. It is a struggle to keep her blackened, swollen eyes open. The Task Master answers her with silence, contemplating his next move as he stands over the limp puppet that is Lee's body. It's so pathetically broken, so still and lifeless that if not for the slow intake and release of breath, he might not have known she was alive. He swallows hard and sniffs the air, feeling a shift in the presences around him. Someone has eyes on him. He can sense it. Paranoia gets the better of him; he raises and eyebrow.
"Perhaps they need a little incentive to grease the wheels, hm?" He asks, his voice light, the conversational tone often found at Sunday picnics.
Lee feels a hand wrap its way around the back of her sweatshirt, the meaty fingers grabbing up the hood and the collar in one pawful of fabric. He pulls her up to standing; she flails against his grip, her limbs relearning to move after so much time immobile on the ground. She cranes her neck and wriggles her shoulders, desperately trying to shake herself free.
"What do you-" She begins.
But he isn't listening. Single-minded and steady, the Task Master drags her body across the rooftop, his body unlistening to her struggle. For the first time since waking up on this roof, Lee feels adrenaline pulse through her veins, shoving the lead from her blood and waking her up. Everything is suddenly infinitely more clear, more focused. She can see the chipping paint on windowsills of buildings a block away and she can feel his hot breath on her neck. It mingles with her sweat and sinks down through her skin. Hyperventilation begins; Lee's eyes widen and panic settles into her bones.
"What are you doing?" Lee asks, her arms raising up behind her head, reaching with futility back to try and rip his hands from her body.
He holds her above the ground, the tips of her feet barely, occasionally grazing the bottom as she desperately fights to escape his grasp. With each step, he comes closer to the edge of the roof, closer to a forty-story plunge to the unforgiving concrete below. Lee's heart is beating so fast that they all run together into one flat line; she can't tell where one beat ends and the next begins.
"They're here, I can feel them," the man says, his eyes crazed, and his grip on her immovable.
Lee's body contorts into unimaginable positions in her battle to free herself. But it's no use. He walks her directly to the edge of the building.
And then holds her over the edge.
Her feet no longer scrape the ground. If she struggles now, there is no place for her to run. He stands safely on the rooftop and she freezes as he holds her hostage over a forty-story drop. One wrong move and he will drop her. She knows that. Locking her breath in her throat, not even wanting to take the risk of breathing wrong, Lee chances a look down below her. On the opposite street, a camp of reporters have set themselves up, and with some action finally happening on the roof, they eagerly cry out and point and angle their cameras to see what will inevitably be the death of a hostage. It will be good for ratings, no doubt, but Lee cannot think of ratings. She can only think of how the flashbulbs, as far away as they are, are blinding her.
Her eyes close; she welcomes the darkness.
"Aren't you going to beg?" The Task Master asks, the whisper louder than the anticipatory roar of the crowd below.
She is too afraid to shake her head. So, she allows herself to speak.
"No," she mutters, her lips wet with her own tears.
The Task Master's lips curve into a smirk.
"Good answer."
A good answer, but not good enough to save her.
And as Lee begins her fall, Lee's eyes close, and the metallic sting of blood and regret fills her mouth. One thought dominates her mind as she falls ever closer to her death.
I never told Peter I loved him.
AH. I know. I'm the worst at updating. I'm so sorry! but here it is! I have to say that you guys have been giving me SUCH wonderful, lovely feedback and you have no idea how much I love to hear all of your sweet thoughts and comments! I can't wait to hear what you think of this doozy of a chapter. :D