Chapter Text
Why does shit like this always happen to me?
Okay, Peter wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but given his aching brain and the fact that he couldn’t feel his left arm, he had to assume it was bad.
“Ah, fuck .” He groaned, peeling his eyes open. It only took a second for him to realize that whatever had happened had badly damaged the suit’s visor, because the display was nothing but glitches and black spots. “Karen? Are-are you there?”
It took longer than he would have liked, but his AI’s voice eventually came up with a “Yes, Peter. You appear to have sustained a moderate concussion, along with a dislocation of the left shoulder and several minor lacerations and contusions.”
“Are there any cameras around?”
“None that I can pick up with my sensors.”
That combined with his spider-sense telling him no one else was around was enough to convince him to yank off his mask.
Sitting up, Peter rubbed his temple, more than a little relieved when no blood came back on his fingers. Tony had been right to insist that he take some basic field medicine lessons from Bruce. Not that he would have turned down Bruce Banner teaching him anything.
Tony.
Oh. Oh.
It all came flooding back to him then. He was in the Rocky Mountains on a mission with the Avengers, looking for an abandoned underground Hydra weapons bunker from the early days of the Cold War. One that had been scrapped after an earthquake brought a lot of it down, but was suspected to be the hiding place of some agents that had managed to evade capture for the last few years.
Well…the good news was the intel had been right.
The bad news? There had been a lot more agents than any of them had expected.
Peter’s job had been to stay on the edge of the bunker’s suspected above-ground perimeter and web up anyone who tried to escape. It hadn’t seemed particularly important, and he had told Tony as much on their way to the Rockies.
“Pete, it’s not about importance.” His mentor had said on the Quinjet. “You haven’t been on a mission involving Hydra before. I don’t want you biting off more than you can chew.”
“We don’t even know exactly where the base is!” Peter had protested who knew how long ago. “What if-”
“Parker, this isn’t up for debate.” Tony had put a stern but gentle hand on his shoulder, and the look on his face had told Peter that he wasn’t going to budge. “None of us want to see you get hurt out there, so just do us all a favor and stick to the plan, okay?”
Peter would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little offended. After all that he had done in the year they had known each other, Tony still didn’t trust him to take care of himself. Even during the actual mission, he’d hear Tony over his comms every couple minutes, asking if he was okay, if he needed backup, all that.
It wasn’t that Tony’s concern was unappreciated. Having someone looking out for him was nice and all, but every time his mentor chimed in or had one of the other Avengers go over and check on him, it made him feel like some untrustworthy child. It drove him nuts, and before he ended up wherever he was now, he had been about ready to yell over his comms that he was fine , and he knew what he was doing, and how much he would have appreciated having ten minutes without someone hovering over him.
Hold up-his comms.
Karen’s voice was the only one he could hear. If his comms were working, Tony or Steve or Rhodey or someone would be frantically yelling at him by now, trying to figure out what had happened to him.
“Shit.” He muttered, a knot of fear forming in his stomach. “Karen, can you get through to Mr. Stark? Or anyone?”
“I’m sorry, Peter. You appear to be too far underground for any signal to reach.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I am very much not kidding you. I would also recommend that you realign your shoulder imminently, as your accelerated healing will-”
“-cause it to heal wrong. Right.”
Looking down at his shoulder made him feel sick. It wasn’t catastrophic, but not being able to move it in the slightest only made his fear skyrocket.
No, no, no-don’t freak out. Just because Tony isn’t here to help you out with this doesn’t mean you can’t fix it yourself. Dr. Banner taught you how to realign dislocated limbs months ago, remember?
Taking a deep breath, Peter laid back down, pulling the bad arm up by the wrist. It took a minute of careful maneuvering (and a lot of hoping that his memory served correct), but at last, with a sharp surge of pain, his shoulder popped back into place.
“Karen?” He asked, gasping. “I did it right?”
“Yes, Peter. The damaged tissue is already beginning to repair itself. I would advise using your left arm as little as possible until you get professional medical attention.”
Even though he knew Karen couldn’t see him, he nodded. His whole left arm was still incredibly sore, not to mention scraped up and bruised in a number of places, so it probably wouldn’t be much help in his current situation.
With that problem dealt with, Peter finally took a moment to look at his surroundings. He was in the bunker-no doubt about that. There were several flickering fluorescent lights above him in a cracked, pipe-filled ceiling, confirming that unless someone forgot to flick off the light switch 60 years ago, the base had been used recently. There was a pile of collapsed metal shelves a few feet away from him, and the hallway he was in seemed to slope down in a way it definitely hadn’t been built for, if the massive cracks in the floor were any indication.
But none of that made his heart race and his breathing speed up until he was nearly hyperventilating. No-that honor went to the massive pile of fresh rubble behind him.
When the fleeing Hydra agents he had been trying to catch had shot at him, it hadn’t been hard for him to dodge. In fact, it had seemed like they had intentionally missed him. He hadn’t really had time to process that, though, since not two seconds later, something exploded from behind him, and the last thing he thought of before he lost consciousness was how cool exploding bullets were.
By some miracle, when he had fallen into the bunker, he had rolled in such a way that he hadn’t been buried beneath the debris.
Just barely.
Suddenly, he felt like he was back underneath the warehouse. Crushed in such a way that he couldn’t get a breath in, screaming for someone that never came to help him. He had only told Tony about it a few months ago, and the look of abject horror on the mechanic’s face was something that he would never forget.
Breathe. Don’t panic-just breathe. You aren’t under there. Well, you are underground, but you can move around. You can find a way out. And if not, Tony will find you. Or Steve, or Rhodey or something. You are not going to die down here, okay? You are not going to die down here.
Pressing his hand over his heart, he forced himself to breathe normally. Gripping his broken mask in his other hand, he closed his eyes and whispered, “I am not going to die down here.”
Then he stood on shaky legs, and began to descend into the bunker.
—
Tony was, for lack of a better term, freaking the fuck out.
He didn’t want his teammates to know that of course, but since Peter had stopped responding to his comms nearly three hours ago, it had been pretty hard to hide. The fact that the entire signal from the suit just up and vanished at the exact same time definitely hadn’t helped.
He had lost count of how many times he had scanned over the last spot where Peter’s signal had been, and every time F.R.I.D.A.Y informed him that there was no sign of the kid in the stone-filled crater, his blood pressure skyrocketed ten fold. He hadn’t gotten blown up. If he had, there would have been his…debris.
How had that sickening picture gotten into his head? Steve wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
He knew it was Cap’s typical strategy for dealing with unexpected mishaps on missions-bottle up the panic, turn to logic and reason, and try to solve the problem. It was what Tony should have been doing. What he would have been doing if it was any other of his older, far more experienced teammates.
But this was Peter. And every time Steve came up with some terrifying theory about what had happened to the kid (God, he really was just a kid ), it made Tony want to strangle him.
He had just done a flyby over the woods and lake in the area when he landed back in that stupid spot. Steve, Rhodey, and Clint were there, discussing the potential circumstances of their youngest teammate. Clint looked at Tony with something that almost looked like pity, but Tony barely processed it.
“Anything?” He asked, making a point of looking at Rhodey instead of Steve.
War Machine shook his head. “Zilch. Personally, I think he fell into the bunker. If there was nothing under here, there would be a lot more debris up here. Most of it probably went underground, along with the kid.”
It was a solid theory, and one that Tony despised because of how likely it was. If-and it was a big if-Peter really had fallen into the bunker, there was a chance that he could have gotten out of the way of the stone, dirt and plaster that went down with him. But if he hadn’t…
The kid had been buried by a building once before, and Tony hadn’t been there to help him. Peter had barely been able to admit the details of what happened with the Vulture, and on top of the burning urge to head to the asshole’s prison cell and snap his neck, there was the massive weight of guilt for taking the kid’s suit in the first place.
Now, he couldn’t even get anything from the damn suit. Even he had issues with using his equipment underground. Why hadn’t he worked harder to correct that?
“Then we blast our way down there.” Tony said without hesitation. “Find the kid, whoever else is down there, skedaddle.”
Whoever else was down there. If any Hydra agents were down there with Peter, Hydra agents who regularly hunted enhanced humans-
Goddammit, the kid had been gone too long.
Clint put a hand on his shoulder. “Stark, calm down. You can’t just blast down there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, but did you not hear the part about a teenager potentially being buried under there?” He snapped back.
“Yeah, no shit. Which is why this-” He gestured at the suit. “Isn’t a solution. The bunker has been virtually abandoned for more than half a century. One wrong move could bring the thing down on that aforementioned teenager, who is way too smart to have been buried already.”
“He’s right.” Steve agreed. “And we don’t even know if he’s down there. We could be destroying our mission’s objective for no reason. We have to rule out all other possibilities first. Tony, I know you don’t want to hear this, but Hydra might have take-”
Tony whirled around on Steve, staring at the almost-centenarian with murder in his eyes. “Rogers, I swear to God, if you finish that sentence-”
“Tony, it’s not worth it.” Rhodey said, stepping in front of Steve. “Look, until we learn otherwise, the kid fell into the bunker, okay? We need to find a safe, reasonable way to get him out, or hope that he finds an exit on his own.”
Sometimes, Tony really hated when other people were right. Especially now, when he couldn’t find the kid. Couldn’t do anything but hope he was okay, that he wasn’t in Hydra’s clutches. Peter could be just a hundred feet below him, and Tony couldn’t get to him without risking killing him.
Goddammit, Pete. You better be alive down there.
—
Peter had just stepped on a ribcage.
Not like the one in Midtown’s biology lab. Like, an honest-to-God, partially decomposed skeleton’s ribcage.
That was a first.
He hadn’t been paying attention to where he was walking, far more focused on how much his shoulder fucking hurt. According to Karen, he had been unconscious for two hours after he had fallen into the bunker, meaning his healing factor had already kicked in by the time he woke up. Putting it back in place had been the right thing to do, but now, it was like his body wasn’t sure how to fix the tissues, muscles and bones.
It sucked, to say the least.
He had been wandering around the surprisingly large base for the last four hours or so. He had been trying to stick with the hallways that led up, hoping to get a signal from his comms. When that turned up fruitless, he had started going to lower levels, just to see if there was some secret exit that went down for some reason.
Peter had been experimenting with moving his left hand and fingers when he had wandered into a large room without working lights. He had found an old flashlight that surprisingly still worked in an otherwise empty supply room, and it had come in handy in more than half of the rooms he’d discovered. He hadn’t assumed this one would be any different.
That was before he had felt the crunch underneath his feet.
“Oh God, please be a stick.” He whispered to the empty space before looking down and feeling his heart plummet. “Holy shit- not a stick !”
He had unfortunately seen his fair share of dead bodies before, thanks to his chosen profession. But there was something about stepping on a fucking skeleton that made him scream and jump back against the wall like he was in a Stephen King novel. Definitely not the reaction an Avenger should have.
Had Tony ever seen anything like this? He probably had, given all of the stuff he had gone through over the years. New York, Ultron, that Mandarin thing, the cave that started it all…who knew how many corpses he’d seen. What states they were in.
A thought occurred to him then-one probably brought on by how exhausted and dehydrated he was. He slouched onto the floor, unable to take his eyes off of the ribcage, and pressed his head back against the wall.
“Isn’t this crazy, Mr. Stark?” He muttered, even though he knew his mentor couldn’t hear him. “I’m stuck in a cave, too. I mean, it’s not really a cave, but it’s close enough. I know you don’t like talking about it, and I get that, but…I really hope that it was better than this.”
Yep. Definitely the dehydration talking.
God, his shoulder hurt. He really needed to start thinking about something other than that and how thirsty he was. His mind drifted back to the Quinjet. Back to the moments right before Tony had relegated him to the edge of the field. Before he had gotten upset, but still resolved to do his job to make his mentor happy.
Tony had been reluctant to take him on the mission at all, but some light arguments from Rhodey and Steve had finally convinced him. Still, Peter had noticed that he always made a point of staying near him on the Quinjet, and how anxious he appeared compared to other times Peter had been with them. Eventually, he had pulled Peter away from everyone else, so the two of them could have some privacy.
“Pete, I need you to listen to me.” He had said, giving Peter a deadly serious look. “For real-if there is anything you need to remember during this mission, it’s what I’m about to tell you.”
Peter had nodded, suddenly feeling a bit uneasy. It was a bit too reminiscent of the aftermath of the ferry incident for his liking.
“These guys-they aren’t like the people you fight in Queens. They’re prepared for people like you. Like Capisicle over there. People who are…”
“Enhanced?” Peter had offered.
“Yeah. They have a tendency to…to try and catch enhanced people. And as you can imagine, when that happens-well, they aren’t exactly inclined to treat their captives well.”
Peter had already known that, of course. But hearing Tony say it in a genuinely nervous way had made it seem less like something out of a comic book and much more…real.
“Just…be careful out there, okay?” Tony had said, sounding a little desperate. “Your number one priority on this mission is to keep yourself safe and alive, you hear me?”
“But I thought-”
“Kid, I’m not fucking around here. If you think there is even a small chance they’re going to get the upper hand on you, you call me. Got it?”
Peter had been prepared to insist that he was going to be fine, that Tony didn’t need to keep treating him like he didn’t know what he was doing, but the look of utter concern on the mechanic’s face had shut down that argument. He had agreed, and a few minutes later, he had been back to being upset by his mentor putting him to the side of the fight.
Well…technically he hadn’t known that those guys on the surface were going to get the drop on him, so he’d had no reason to call Tony.
But seeing that pile of bones on the ground made him realize just how worried his mentor had been for him. He had no idea if they were the remains of an agent or a captive, but it still shook him to his core.
God, did Tony think he was dead? Or that he had been captured? He hoped not. He hoped that he realized that he was stuck in the bunker and he and the others were looking for a way to free him.
“I’m not dead.” He said, readjusting his shoulder so it would hurt less. “I can hear my heartbeat right now. I’m not dead. I said I wasn’t going to die down here, so I'm not going to die down here. And when I get out, I-”
Wait.
He knew the sound of his heartbeat. He heard it whenever he was incredibly stressed out. He heard other heartbeats, too, during those times. His classmates, his teammates, whoever happened to be near him.
He was alone down here. Or at least, he thought he was.
So…why did he suddenly hear a second heartbeat?
For half a second, he had a burst of hope that Tony or someone else on the team had found a way down here. Then logic told him that if they had, they would have been close enough for a comm signal to get through, he undoubtedly would have heard everyone yelling at him through his earpiece by now.
So, if the Avengers hadn’t found him, then-
He felt his face go completely white, at the exact same moment he heard a deep, decidedly unfriendly voice echoing through the bunker’s halls.
“Come out, little spider. You’ve got nowhere to run.”