Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Welcome to another story of mine, also set in my overarching series Into the Spiderverse, although if you want more info on that I suggest going to my profile on FFN/the series page on AO3. Reading the other stories in it is not required, except for the ones that will be part of this series.

Few things to note: if you've read my story heavy, dirty soul, this is gonna be similar to that, in that there will be a veryslow build. Chapters that need CW's will be marked. This is also a bio irondad/spiderson, with an added twist of bio ironson, but we'll get into that later. The other chapters will be longer than this one, ~3,000-4,000k, just didn't feel the need to add too much fluff to this one. Story title comes from Waiting by Norah Jones, very good song if you care to listen.

Next chapter will be posted in the next few days, probably. After that, I'll work out the updating schedule.

Hope y'all enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the waiting 'verse~

~waiting~

~prologue~

He was running.

Through the woods of the base, he was running, the moon and stars serving as his only guide in the night. Brambles tore at his silk pants and even into his flesh, digging wounds and causing blood he felt run down his legs. The ground underneath him squelched as his feet hit the dirt. It had rained recently, within the past day or so at most, and he could feel mud stick to his pants and his legs from his feet to his calves, already drying. They itched. He knew it was going to be hard to clean them off later, unless he miraculously found a place with a shower.

He didn't care.

His breath came out in hot pants as he looked behind him. He wasn't being followed anymore. Good. He'd heard somebody behind him when he'd initially run out of the base, a man with an American accent that had sounded distinctively familiar. Almost like Captain America's, even. But, that didn't mean anything. As he'd said before, he'd learned his lesson from his time in the base: you couldn't trust anything you saw or heard there, not unless you were actively experiencing it. Everything could fake. Everything could be a lie. Trust no one but yourself.

And right now, the only thing he could trust himself to do was run.

He didn't really know where he was going. He didn't really know where he was, period. The constellations, from a quick look up at the heavens, made it obvious that he was in the Northern Hemisphere, and never before had he been so glad to have memorized them so thoroughly. But he wasn't in the United States, he didn't think. Nor did he think he was in Canada. The flora was...different here. Was he in Europe, perhaps? Probably. It made sense. Not Scandinavia or Russia, since it didn't seem cold enough for either of those.

Then again, he wasn't sure of what month it was, either. He had his guesses from the obvious, but that didn't mean much of anything. He didn't know how long he had been held before...before then. Time passed so much differently now, when he didn't have a clock or even the light of day to go by. Well, had. He would have daylight now, he was sure of it.

He wasn't going to allow himself to be captured again.

But, as he was forcibly reminded, he wasn't exactly at his full potential anymore. As his breathing quickly went from heavy to labored, he forced himself to stop, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. His stomach felt like a bunch of popcorn was going off inside it, and he placed a hand over it, briefly closing his eyes. "I know, I know," he murmured. "You're not happy. But...just a little bit longer, okay? Then you and I are gonna be safe, I promise."

Of course, the irony of his statement was not lost on him. If he had no idea where he was, then how was he going to know where the nearest town – village – whatever it was? And even if he did find one, how was he to know if the people there were to be trusted? Maybe he could find a payphone, but...he had no money. He had only the clothes on him, and they didn't have pockets. And he didn't know what the 911 equivalent was in Europe, either. He wanted to say it was 112, but he wasn't one-hundred-percent certain about that...

The sound of a twig breaking had his head snapping up so fast his neck audibly cracked! He winced at the pain, but he didn't allow himself to worry about it as he looked around. He didn't think the noise was caused by a human or any large animal, because he didn't hear any heartbeats loud enough to signify them, he didn't hear any heartbeats at all except for the two he knew, but still...

He went back to running.

How did that one song go again, he wondered to himself as he ran? It'd been so long since he'd listened to any music besides the songs he'd sung underneath his breath, and this song hadn't been one of them. Still, he strained his mind to remember it, as he ran and he ran and he ran. It was something to focus on, besides the blood roaring in his ears and his heart pounding in his chest and, once again, his breathing. The beat was really unique...powerful.

It came to him then, like a forgotten dream. The name of the song and who it was by, anyways. The lyrics took a bit more effort, but...

"...Run, boy, run, and disappear into trees..."

Well, that was exactly what he was doing right now. He hoped that meant, like the line that came before it said, his remembering of it was a prophecy. He would escape, and get out of this alive, and he would never be their experimentever again.

"Help...me, May," he whispered, hoping she was out there listening to him, able to put in a good word for him. He hadn't called upon her before, but now seemed like as good of a time as any. "Show me...what to do."

There was something the slaves in the Underground Railroad had done, he remembered, when they were trying to escape. They had done a lot of things, actually, but one of the ones he remembered currently was them twirling around trees, to confuse the dogs on their scent. It couldn't hurt to try it, he thought, so he did just that. He looped around one tree, then two, then three. Four, five, six. He stopped before his vision could spin too much, then took off again.

The sound of running water made him think of the other thing he'd remembered. Relieved, he ran towards it, and came across a stream. Without even thinking about it, he sped into the water. It was cold, cold enough that it bit, but it wasn't freezing. He didn't think he was going to hypothermia by wading in it, at least.

He treaded the water for ten minutes, counting them down by the second, heading opposite of where the stream was flowing. He didn't know where it would end up, after all. When he counted off the six hundredth second, he climbed out of the water, repeated his trick with the trees, and was off again.

He was unsure of how long it took, but eventually, he came upon a breakage in the woods. At first, he just thought it was going to be a clearing, but as he got closer he saw that it was very wide, and didn't seem to end. Not only that, but there was a dark straight line running through it. A road.

Hope began to bloom in his chest.

He was close.

He was so close to being free.

The memories he'd denied himself for so long started to come back to him. Memories of an apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. Of going to school, and laughing with his friends...no matter of what had happened to Ned. Of LEGOs, and watching reruns of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Thai food. Of a man with a gold-titanium alloy suit colored red and gold, and his compound in upstate New York, and the one time he'd been there but had already been given his own room and everything.

"Mr. Stark," he breathed. "Mr. Stark, I'm so close. I'm...I'm coming home."

Would his mentor be happy to see him, he wondered? Well, technically he hadn't been his mentor. He'd made him a suit that he no longer wore, for the persona he no longer had, but. He wanted Mr. Stark to be happy to see him. He wanted him to come and get him from the police station in whatever country he was in, and give him that hug he'd said they hadn't been ready for yet. He wanted to snuggle up to him on the plane ride home, and feel his undoubtedly rough and calloused hands run through his hair as he fell asleep with his head in his lap.

He wanted his dad, because that was who Mr. Stark was. He wasn't just his mentor. He was his father, biologically and figuratively speaking. He'd known it ever since he'd discovered that letter of his mother's in the crawlspace of his aunt and uncle's room after Ben had died.

He should've told Mr. Stark about it when he'd had the chance.

He should've told him a lot of things.

Suddenly, just before he could run out into the clearing, he felt a tingle run down his spine. The hairs on the back his neck stood up on end. His spidey sense.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

He heard a mechanical noise, the whirring of...some sort of engine. It also sounded familiar, but he wasn't going to trust it. He wasn't going to trust anything except for himself until he saw Mr. Stark again.

His eyes darting around, he saw a dark hole nearby, a small cave or burrowing place made by some animal that looked just big enough for him to squeeze into. He nearly breathed a sigh of relief, but obviously didn't actually. Thank you, May,he thought to his aunt. Tell God I said "thank you!"

Nearly tripping over his own feet as he rushed to the cave, he got down on all fours to crawl inside it. Inhaling and exhaling as quietly as he possible could, he went in, and thanked God himself when he saw a ridge between the entrance and the rest of the cave. He maneuvered himself over it and saw how, unless you were in the cave with him, which would be hard for any of the guards from the base to do, you wouldn't be able to see him.

Laying down on the rocky surface of the cave in a fetal position, he clamped a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide open. He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

He thought that maybe he should wait in this hideaway for the rest of the night, until the sun rose. He didn't think anything else lived here. And when the sun came up, maybe he would be able to get a ride to the nearest city from a car.

Then he would be free, free, free.

The landing of something on top of the cave had him nearly jumping out of his skin. Dirt shook down from above, getting into his eyes and hair. He stared up at the ceiling of the cave wildly.

Please don't realize I'm here, he prayed. Please!

If they realized he was here, he would fight them until the bitter end. They would have to drag him back kicking and screaming, unless they knocked him out. And they probably wouldn't want to do that, because it would harm the very reason why they'd kidnapped him three days before Christmas. Or, well, the result of those reasons.

The thing on top of the cave moved in such a way it revealed itself to be a person. He heard the crunching of twigs and grass, getting closer and closer to the entrance of the cave.

No! he begged. Pass over me, like the Angel of Death!

Like the story, he reached down to coat his fingertips with some of the blood on his legs. Reaching up to the cave ceiling, he marked it with the blood. It wasn't lambs' blood, it was his own, but it would have to do. It was the only sacrifice he could make to go along with his prayer right now, even though he knew a sacrifice wasn't really necessary. Probably discouraged, too. He didn't know; he wasn't exactly all that religious, since Ben hadn't believed in any faith, let alone Judaism, and May had been a lapsed Catholic at best.

He wrapped his arm around his legs just before a light shone into the cave. The other remained clamped around his mouth.

But when his brain registered the light, confusion quickly swept through him. He'd been expecting the light to be white and blinding, not blue and soft. He'd been expecting the voice that followed it to be harsh and unforgiving, and not the gentle and nurturing that he got, and was quickly able to place. Because he knew that voice, he'd known that voice like the back of his hand ever since he could remember, even before everything in the past few years of his life had happened.

The voice said, shortly and simply, "Kid, are you there?"

. . .

. . .

"...Mr. Stark?"

Word Count: 2,128