Give him back to me, or so help me god

Chapter 9: The Returned

It was the overwhelming, and very urgent, need to pee that finally woke Peter. He had no idea what time it was, but his room was quiet for once so it must have been late. Or very early. Either way, no time to be awake.

Except he really needed to pee.

"Ugh."

His eyes stuck together, as if someone had spilt an entire can of adhesive in the crevices of his eyelids. No matter how hard he tried he just couldn't pry them apart.

Something warm and soft stroked through his hair. Sliding through the curls with aching familiarity.

"Hey, hey," an equally familiar voice murmured from somewhere close to Peter's ear. "You awake?"

Peter forced his eyes open through pure will alone. For a moment everything was a dimly lit blur.

But he knew that voice.

"May?"

She materialized above him - leaning out of the plush chair she was sat in, pushed up to the very edge of the bed Peter was currently occupying, and over Peter. One hand lost in Peter's hair as she continued to stroke long fingers over his scalp.

The motion nearly had him back to sleep before he could process being awake.

"Yeah, honey," she whispered, the hand that wasn't lost to the wilds of his curls moved to rest of Peter's chest. "It's me."

She looked tired- exhausted - but content when she smiled down at him.

Had she been on night shift? Peter couldn't remember, and despite being in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed, it was that that fact that tipped him off that something was not quite right. He always knew her shifts.

His eyes squinted as he tried to bring her more into focus.

"Y'kay?"

His tongue felt too heavy. And cold. Actually the entire of him felt cold. And heavy.

"Yeah," her smile grew, just a little, as she chuckled softly. The fingers in Peter's hair didn't slow. "I'm fine. You're fine. Everyone's fine." Peter - using every bit of force he had at the moment - managed to raise a shaking hand off of the bed. It hovered in the air between them for barely a second before May was wrapping a hand of her own around it. Pulling it closer so she could press a soft kiss to his palm. "Got back to sleep, baby."

Peter wasn't sure if he nodded. He'd meant to.

"M'Kay."

And then it was all gone again.

When he woke again it was in the same bed, and the same strange room. And to the same, now desperate, need to pee.

He was alone now though. May must have ducked out because the chair next to his bed was still there, pushed right up against the med-bed, but it was empty. The bed itself was definitely medically purposed. Peter hadn't really noticed the last time he woke, but as he pushed himself into a sitting position the assorted equipment and wires came into focus. And there were a few of them - some still connected. Most were sticking to his bare chest, and looking up he could see that they were reading his heart-rate, blood pressure and temperate. Actually there were several machines close to the bed that were reading his temperature.

It was there – sat as upright as he could get - in the dark of the plain, cream covered room, that it all hit. All of it.

The attack on the school. The submarine thing. Their escape. Drifting.

Drifting away.

"Wanda." Her name slipped from between his lips before he could even register it.