Avengers Family

Guilt and Control (Peter Centric)

Requested by rebelfornoreason:

"Can you do a hungry peter? Like he somehow decides that because food isnt cheap he should eat less of it to help may out and just decides to starve? This time maybe some sort of self-harm behaviour . He messes up during a mission or something and feels like he need to be punished."

"Kid, get to the west end and start knocking out drones." Tony suddenly ordered through the comms as Peter narrowly avoided a hit from the HYDRA agent in front of him.

Peter's eyebrows narrowed. The drones? They had been useless for the entire flight. Since the start, Tony and Bruce has determined that they were collecting data and appeared to be unweaponized. Is Mr. Stark just sending me away because he thinks I'll get hurt here?

"Ironman, I can handle these agents."

"Kid, you need to follow my instructions now. They're about to -"

There was a deafening crack and a thin blue line sliced through the air. When it came in contact with a nearby skyscraper, the top of the building came completely detached. In slow motion, twenty stories of steel and glass plummeted down into the streets of New York. A swarm of drones began looting the newly opened space. Immediately, all the Avengers moved their efforts toward destroying the drones - two more buildings still fell.

The second and third had been in the middle of the battle - a mandatory evacuation zone. The only casualty was property. The first had also been evacuated of its usual occupants, but because of its location away from direct action, it was being used by police and fire safety as a base. All the men and women had been on the first floor, so there were no deaths, but many were injured- some terribly.

Peter was glued to the spot as he watched medics carry their own out on stretchers. The team had done everything to keep innocent people from getting hurt - they evacuated a huge area and contained the fighting - but they hadn't been able to help the brave men and women protecting the city with them from harm. Most of the officers and firefighters insisted that they were fine, that everything was alright. They were prepared for dangerous situations and the whole team had first aid training to reduce the likelihood of anything permanent. That didn't curb Peter's guilt.

He'd been a petulant teenager, stubbornly ignoring orders solely because he thought he'd been being treated as a child. He'd risked the lives of good people because of his attitude. Why couldn't he have just listened to Mr. Stark? Of course the genius superhero would know best. How could he have been so stupid?

Peter clutched his stomach, overcome with nausea. He made his way to the trash can and emptied out this morning's breakfast. It didn't make things any better that this was the first time Tony had trusted him with something important during a team mission.

He was quieter than usual as he entered the Quinjet. He took his spot on the bench and sat down, unusually still. He flinched when Tony sighed loudly across from him.

"Why couldn't you have just listened to me? Why do you always have to go out and do the reckless, dangerous thing? Can't you just accept that I know best sometimes? Those people could've-"

"-But they didn't. Peter, it's okay you made a mistake. It happens. But you need to remember that this is a team and you need to be able to listen to your teammates. We can't trust you with our backs if we can't trust you to listen." Steve cut off Tony's rant, but his stern lecture wasn't much better.

After that, the team dropped the incident. At some point or another, all of them had made mistakes - most more costly than Peter's. By the time the jet was touching down on the tower, they were all chatting happily. Except Peter.