Lee McCarthy is dreaming.
Not in the way that she did when she was younger. Not in the way she did before she finally met Tony. Back then, she would daydream. Create wild fantasies that were so unreal that they felt more true than her own reality. She allowed herself to think on them until they became too big, too elaborate, too unwieldy for her to resign to impossibility. In her dreams, Tony would waltz into her life and take her under his wing. She had no wild pretensions about them playing catch in the back yard or anything. But she dreamed that he would love her the way she always thought a father would. Quietly. Respectfully. With great reverence and humor. At times, when she was tinkering with a new project or working calculations, it was like she could imagine him working next to him at her drafting board, both of them locked in their own concentrated worlds, but occasionally muttering something to the other about passing the pencil sharpener or the protractor.
Those were the best kind of dreams. Dreams that were almost real. Dreams that could have passed for reality if she were any other daughter with any other father.
The thing about dreams though: the smaller, less consequential the dream, the harder it is to get. She wanted such small, small things from life. And, it turns out, those were the most impossible things to get.
But now, in this moment, she doesn't dream like that. It's not quite like that, anyway. Now, she dreams in wild colors, abstract renderings. Stories that only come in half-told. Images that only make sense in the way that Rorschach paintings do. They are less dreams and more emotions, gut feelings that shake her, even in what feels like a deep, deep slumber. A pang of sorrow. A punch of desperation. A steady rain of agony and a never-ending thunderstorm of misery.
The tingle at the tips of her fingers that feels something like hope.
Lee McCarthy is drifting.
Not the way one does on an ocean, half controlled and half controlling. But more like the drifting of a thought. Unbidden and unbowed. She drifts, sometimes in- Into what or where, she vaguely wonders, more with her feelings than with her thoughts- and sometimes out, but never at her own will. The more she rises to it, the more she tries to reach, the control skitters away, just evading her. Her entire body is ablaze and adrift, alternating minute by minute, changing without warning.
She is at the mercy of the breeze; her mind is lost at sea.
She thinks that maybe she hears a voice, familiar and sweet. A goodbye or a prayer of some kind. She thinks that maybe she hears her own heart ticking off the seconds. She thinks that she maybe hears the screams of so many innocents.
She thinks she hears something.
And then she hears nothing.
Lee McCarthy is falling.
Not like she did for Peter. And not like a stone tossed out of a window.
Not with any chance or any hope of salvation.
She is falling, spiraling, plummeting, her entire body suspended in complete inactivity, controlled by the invisible hand of the most infuriatingly punctual and perfect of Newton's laws.
The conscious part of her mind knows what comes next.
But she'll be damned if it's all that happens.
So, she uses the little strength she has, clenching her right hand in on itself, her fingers pressing the red button that Tony Stark never intended someone to use.
The suit will self-destruct in ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five…four…
"Three… Two… One."
Tony Stark has been sitting here, counting his breaths, for what feels like a lifetime. Beyond a lifetime. Is there anything longer than a lifetime, he wonders, surprisingly poetic after only twelve hours of sleep across the last eight days. Of course, he knows that there is. A lifetime is so short. For some people it's only a few hours. For others, it's years upon lucky years. For some…
For some it's only eighteen years. Six-thousand, five hundred, ninety days. That's all Lee had.
Well, tomorrow will be six-thousand, five hundred, ninety-one days, he tells himself, looking at her from the small plastic chair across the tight hospital room. That is, if she lives that long.
He's been thinking that same thought every day for the last eight days. If she lives that long.
She is in a deep coma, they said. A result of the trauma that Tony cannot bring himself to relive or re-imagine. Looking at her is more than enough. A great and terrible enough reminder of what happened. What he drove her to. Tony has never felt worse in his life than in this moment. And he knows he deserve every ounce of this pain. Gulping, blinking back furious tears that he refuses to show, Tony breathes in sharply, rubbing his tired, long face.
"And here I was thinking you didn't care."
The words are so small that, at first, he is unsure that he actually heard it. His head snaps up, so hard and so fast that he thinks he might need to be examined for whiplash. And there she is… Lee. Her eyes open, well, as open as they can be, as swollen and red as they are. Looking at her makes Tony's stomach turn, not in disgust at the sight of her herself, but at the thought of what drove her to it. Her entire body is covered in bandages to cover the scarring and burns that draw mountains along her skin.
"Lee!" The word comes out of his mouth before he can help it, before he can stop himself from the childish and uncharacteristic show of paternal emotion.
"I'm- Tony-" She mutters, the pain in her body unbearable. Is it possible to be in so much pain and still be living?
It's all coming back to her now. The colors and abstract collages of sound are coming back into focus to create a real memory.
The self-destruct button. She thought she was going to die, and she wanted to take the Task Master down with her. She wanted to make Tony proud.
She wanted to matter.
So, she pressed the button for the suit to self-destruct, counting on it to implode and take her and the Task Master down in a blaze of glory. But, she miscalculated. The external suit did its job beautifully. It exploded, but the inner-suit saved her from death.
Tony nudges his wife.
"Pepper, wake up," he implores.
Pepper blinks lazily, but leaps to her feet at the sight of Lee's half-open eyes.
"Lee! Oh my- How do you feel?" She asks, rushing to Lee's bedside.
Through the incredible haze of medicated fog, the young patient in the bed takes stock of the misery taking control of her entire body. Everything hurts. Like her entire body is a rotten bruise, throbbing with every breath she takes. She could say any number of things about how she's feeling, in great and graphic detail, but she refrains, instead choosing one single word.
"Thirsty."
It's true. She is very thirsty. Her throat is like the Sahara Desert. Tony leans against the wall farthest from Lee, watching her with conflicted eyes as Pepper reaches and hands her a glass of water.
"Here."
Lee drinks greedily, ignoring the way her stomach revolts at the sudden intrusion. Watching the young woman gently, swallowing every question she wants to ask, Pepper gives her the smallest of smiles.
"How's that?" She asks.
Head falling back against the pillow, Lee sighs and lets her eyes slide closed. This time, she cannot keep the pain from creeping into her tone.
"I feel like my skin is on fire," she answers, not trusting herself to say more.
With a few quick strides, Tony crosses the room and squeezes Lee's hand, the only piece of her body not covered in bandages.
"Good," he snaps, squeezing too roughly, sending sharp needles of pain through the woman's arm.
"Ow!" Lee yowls, her entire body protesting.
His face contorted by fury, Tony lets the temperature under his collar rise higher and higher, unafraid of the feelings coursing through him but still totally and completely unaware of their implication.
"What is the matter with you?" He nearly roars.
"Tony!"
But he will not hear Pepper's protest. He cannot. The truth is a complex organism that he cannot acknowledge the existence of, but it's in the room all the same. It's as palpable as Lee's pain or Pepper's indignation.
He was afraid. He was afraid for his daughter.
He was afraid he would lose her.
Is that what being a father is?
At least… Is that part of it?
Tony continues his tirade as Lee watches, propped up on the pile of pillows in her bed, her mind racing frantically, trying to collect the information he is throwing at her.
"Pepper, I'm her father, she is my daughter and I'm going to tell her how stupid and irrational she was-"
Lee's mouth drops open. And she begins to laugh. Not a quiet chuckle. Not a half-hearted, wry harrumph. But a full-bellied, wide-mouthed, stomach aching, mind-throbbing guffaw. Tears stream down her face, and she doesn't even wipe them away. She just laughs. And laughs. And laughs.
"What are you doing?" Tony asks.
Pepper's already out of the door when he hears her worried voice:
"I'm going to get a nurse."
The door closes behind Pepper and Lee shows no sign of stopping. Laughter ricochets off of the corners of the room, hitting Tony's ears painfully. Watching those tears on her bandaged cheeks is the stuff of nightmares, but Tony stares, knowing he deserves to see them. He must. He has earned it, however painful it may be.
"What are you doing?" He asks again, stepping closer to her.
It takes Lee an unbearably long moment to choke out:
"You just called me your daughter."
The air dissolves in the room, and Tony looks at her. Those eyes she has are so very much like his own that he feels like he is staring into the depths of an immeasurably deep mirror. His knees feel as though they might buckle beneath him, and he sinks into the nearest chair.
"Oh," he breathes.
He did. He did call her his daughter, didn't he? Odd, he thinks, reflecting back on the heat of the moment that drove him to something so thoughtless. It felt… Natural. As if he had been saying that all her life. As if he knew all along that she was.
The two of them sit in silence for a very, very long time. Then, Tony shrugs, and allows a quiet moment to pass between them. The sort of moment that Lee might have dreamed about so very long ago.
"Well. It's true," he says.
Every muscle in her face throbs. But Lee smiles anyway.
"Yeah. Yeah, it is."
And so, they sat, they two, for another very, very long time, enjoying the silence that can only be shared between a father and a daughter.
Lee is bedridden. Not forever, they promise her. But for now, at least. Two weeks after the entire affair with The Task Master, and she's still in a hospital bed, growing increasingly restless and bored with each passing minute.
On the fifteenth day, she wakes up to something odd on her bedside table. A modest bouquet of flowers, nothing fancy. Mostly daisies and baby's breath, but beautiful when the sun catches the blindingly yellow petals all the same.
"He was there, you know."
The voice is Bruce's. This hasn't been his first visit to her room; he's taken the shifts that Tony or Pepper can't cover. No one wants Lee to feel alone in this odd and complicated time of her life. She furrows her brow- an amazing feat, considering that the bandages across her now scarred face only yesterday- and assesses Bruce over the flower petals. He looks encouragingly at her from a plastic chair that looks around three times too small for him.
"What?" She asks, reaching delicately for the card tucked into the arrangement, her arms screaming in pain with every muscular twitch.
Bruce waits patiently for her to pull the small card out of its envelope and read its contents. He doesn't know what it says- he doesn't need to know- but he knows who it is from. And he knows that Lee's face moves from uncertain curiosity to heartbreaking certainty in the space of a few short words. Bruce gulps and nods, watching as Lee holds the small piece of cardstock to her chest like a lifeline.
"He was at the scene. He was about to get out in his suit when you hit the button."
Peter… Was going to save her? The man she betrayed and lied to…?
"Oh," Lee says, small and conflicted, unsure what she should say. Or think. Or feel.
Bruce continues, with Lee watching and analyzing every line of his face, searching for clues from a time in her own life that she so desperately missed.
"He waited with you until they wouldn't let him stay any longer and then he sat in the waiting room until I told him you were awake."
A stone settles into Lee's stomach. He only came to the Task Master fight because he is a hero. Not because of her. Not because of her. That stings, but she knows she deserves it. She did not earn his love. She wasted it, and thus she deserves exactly the pain she is receiving. Lee nods her head, ashamed at the tear that slips out of her eye even as she tries to blink it away.
"He didn't want to see me," she says.
It is not a question.
"No, he did," Bruce reassures her.
Bruce knows because Bruce watched. Every day, every time that the door to the ICU would open, Peter would be on his feet, ready to step back and see her. He asked everyone who knew anything how she was doing. He wanted to see her. But the moment that Pepper came back and told him such a visit was alright, a revelation suddenly came across his face, one that Bruce noticed.
"Then why didn't he?" Lee asks.
Bruce thinks of the way that he's watched the young woman's life unfold. Everything has been out of her hands, no options, no freedom. Just blind trust in people who wanted to use her.
Peter didn't want to be another one of them. He wanted her to want to talk to him. He wanted her to want to see him again. Bruce nods to himself, leaning back in his chair slightly.
"He wanted you to choose."
The calendar pages slide off of the wall, and with them, new accomplishments. New skin grafts for the burned flesh of her face at two weeks. The bandages off of her arms and chest at one month. It's two months before she's walking again, those first steps leaving her like a house of cards ready to topple into a pile of rubble on the floor. Lee makes no attempt to contact Peter again. Not with S.H.I.E.L.D. so close. Not with everything so upside down.
At ten weeks after the accident, Lee McCarthy is summoned. Not asked, not encouraged. But summoned. A car picks her up from the hospital and two guards escort her upstairs to a familiar office. Behind it, sits a man who makes her blood boil.
"Lee McCarthy. Back from the grave," he says.
"Hello, Mr. Fury," Lee says, hobbling with her walking stick to sit feebly in a chair before the imposing desk and the man behind.
"How are you feeling?" He asks.
Her response is clipped, short. She owes this man nothing.
"How do I look?" She asks.
He shakes his head, chuckling to himself, at the joke that Lee finds decidedly unassuming.
"You don't want to know the answer to that question," he replies.
Grinding her jaw to keep from saying something she will regret,
"We have a proposition for you," he begins, sounding magnanimous, "You did well against the Task Master. He's now in custody, and will be there for a long, long time."
Lee nods, once.
"You're welcome."
Some great job she did. Say thank you to the lifetime of pain she will be in, say thank you to the scars she will bear her entire life. What Director Fury says next changes Lee's entire life.
"We would like for you to become a permanent member of The Avengers. Take the place we offered to Peter Parker."
For the first time in her life, Lee makes a choice. A real choice, motivated by nothing more than her own desires. Her own thoughts. Her own feelings.
She stands to her feet, and without another word, letting her walking stick assist her steps- she walks out of the room. Out of the building. And away from S.H.I.E.L.D. forever.
She does not even spare a glance behind her as the Director tries to call her name.
"You want Pizza from China Jack's and Chinese food from The Pizza Bar. Don't ask me why, that's just how it is. Don't take Callahan's class. It's a waste of time. The guy's a complete moron. You'll think circles around him."
Tony's been talking her ear off for the last twenty minutes, anxiously rattling off facts and hacks about life at M.I.T. in that Tony Stark "I'm not anxious, this is completely casual" voice. Lee looks up at him, watching as he looks up and down the street for the black car that was due to take her to JFK ten minutes ago. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, his hands shoved in his pockets, when the car finally rolls up.
"Finally!" Tony exclaims.
The driver hops out smartly, grabbing up Lee's bags and tossing them in the backseat. Lee then turns and looks at her father, taking in a deep breath. He hands the driver an envelope to pay for the drive, and then returns Lee's gaze.
"And you have your ticket?" He asks, uselessly.
Lee nods.
"Yes, Tony. Don't be such a dad."
Then, taking a huge risk, the likes of which she isn't sure she's ever taken before, Lee awkwardly puts her arm around Tony's frame, pulling him in for a hug.
At first, he stiffens. What is this? What is this child doing? Why is she doing this?
But then… He finds the sensation rather nice. He likes hugging his daughter. He likes it. Hugging his daughter before she leaves for College. How extraordinary. With his chin resting on top of her head, he returns the hug and finds himself unable to contain a smile.
"Alright," Lee says finally, stepping away, "I think I've gotta go now."
"Yeah, yeah," Tony replies, nodding as he steps back toward his apartment building, "Good luck with everything."
He waves at her, and- unable to take the emotion for very much longer- he leaves, disappearing into the revolving door of his apartment.
Leaving Lee terribly alone. The driver has evacuated into the recesses of his car, waiting for her to enter so he might complete his day's work. Drawing in a deep breath, Lee shoulders her backpack, her hand clinging to the straps.
She's finally doing it. She's finally starting her life. She lets that reality sink in for a moment, and then, once she's ready, she begins toward the car.
But stops short just as she's about to get inside it. Because on the awning above the building across from her, sits a crouched figure in a red and blue suit, looking down at her from behind a mask. Lee tries to sift through her emotions, but settles on just one. Thanks. She's just so thankful to see him this one last time. She does not say anything to him, does not try to speak. Instead, she reaches in her pocket and extracts her plane ticket. Very gently, as if she's afraid the paper might turn to dust, she unfolds the ticket and holds it up in the Spider-Man's direction so he might see the writing. So he might see that she has chosen.
The Spider-Man nods once, and Lee cannot see it, but she is almost sure that Peter is smiling behind the mask.
Then, just as quickly as he appeared, he is gone.
Though no words are exchanged, she knows what they have meant to say to each other all along.
I'm gonna be okay.
And with that reassurance, Lee slides in the car, closes the door behind her, and drives off into her future.
The End.