✔️A Spider's Journey

Chapter 24(Recovering While Chatting or Chatting While Recovering)

Consciousness came slowly. A numbness in the body, followed by aching pain everywhere, the darkness turning into a fuzzy gray, sticky eyelids struggling to open as if weighed down by gravity, a sliver of blinding light, eyelids squeezed tight, pain increasing, tingling fingers and toes, a twitch, what happened, memories like a broken up film, snapshots of life in a nightmarish haze, humming noises filtering into the ears, an incessant beeping, chapped lips opening, parched throat trying to let out sound, pathetic croak, eyelids trying to open again, slowly, slowly, light becomes bearable, white ceiling tiles, beeping, humming machines, white sheet, pain coming to the forefront of the mind, twitch of limbs, have to make sure its all there, a cough, a sigh, feel like sleeping, have to stay awake, a sound, not a machine, turning the head, aching neck, slumped figure in a chair.

"Tony..."

Tony jerked awake at the sound of a voice. If that was Cap again telling him to go sleep in his room he would.... "Peter!" Tony stood up and quickly stepped up to Peter's side. "Hey, kiddo how you doing?"

"Fine." Peter croaked.

"that's a lie." Tony said looking stern but amused. Peter looked at him sheepishly. "Can you remember what happened?" Peter nodded. "That's good. You had a slight concussion."

"How bad?" Peter said his voice hoarse and Tony grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table holding it so Peter could drink through the straw.

Tony hummed, "Just a couple broken ribs, several cracked ones, a broken arm, broken leg, severe bruising. So not to bad." Tony said sarcastically.

Peter let out a little chuckle. "I've had worse."

"That definitely does not make me feel better."

Peter chuckled again. "How is everyone?"

"They're all good, minor injuries, Cap broke his arm," Peter looked alarmed, "Don't worry he's got super healing, he'll be fine in a few days."

"How long has it been?" Peter said his voice feeling a lot better after drinking more of the water.

"The fight was yesterday." Tony said looking at Peter with a little curiosity. "You've pretty much finished healing."

"Thank goodness for healing factors." Peter grinned. Tony frowned at him. Neither sad anything for little bit.

Tony fidgeted not quite sure how to ask what he wanted to, "Um, to help set your broken bones we had to take your suit off,"

"Of course,"

"and we saw a lot of, umm.., scars."

Peter's smile disappeared. "You're a hero Mr. Stark, you should know scars come with the job."

"Yes, but you're just...so young."

"You were going to say kid."

"No I wasn't." Peter raised an eyebrow at him, "Fine, I was going to say kid. But it's true, you're too young to be covered in scars like that."

"I'm sure you've seen worse things in this line of business."

"That's not the point!" Tony said getting frustrated. Why was it so hard to explain that seeing the kid like that just, hurt. Tony couldn't stand seeing how much suffering the kid had obviously gone through. He should have prevented it. That's why Tony was a hero. To prevent these kinds of things from happening.

"Hey," Peter interrupted his internal rambling. "I get it. I know I started pretty young. Most 14 year-olds," Tony made a choked sound, "are focused on school and friends and stuff, not heroing."

"You started at fourteen!" Tony said his voice a litter higher than he would like to admit.

"Yeah," Peter said shrugging slightly. He was feeling a lot better, his healing factor had taken care of the big stuff and was now focused on reducing the smaller aches and pains.

Tony groaned. This kid was going to be the end of him.

There was another silence, not uncomfortable, just there.

"I thought you would have known I started early. I mean, wouldn't have looking back in the news shown when I started out?"

"The news only started talking about you a year ago."

"Really? But I thought the Lizard made big news. And that was my first year."

"What! You were the mysterious vigilante the news mentioned! But the Lizard was, like, a kinda big baddy."

"Not the worst I've faced. The first time I faced Mysterio, that was a literal nightmare. But now that I know his tricks it's not as bad. At least not most of the time. Then there was Electro, he almost decimated the power grid."

"Those were in your first year?" Tony said dreading the answer.

"Yeah."

"Wow, kid. You shouldn't have had to face those villains alone."

"Well, I mean, no one else showed up. And they aren't exactly Avenger level threats. But someone had to stop them." Tony lowered his head. Peter saw his expression and his eyes widened. "Not that you guys were expected to be there. That sounds wrong to." Peter was talking faster and faster. "I mean, they weren't world ending threats, not that that's all you care about, but, I mean, what I'm trying to say is,"

"Kid, it's alright."

"I mean, even the news didn't know things were wrong till I was already out there beating up the bad guy. And the others were just small time criminals. If you guys spent all your time going after purse snatchers then you wouldn't have time to save the world. Not that you don't care about the ordinary crimes..."

"Kid stop." Tony said holding up his hands. His lips twitched into a small smile as Peter stared at him wide eyed. "I get what you're trying to say."

"Sorry."

"There's no need to apologize."

"The Avengers are awesome."

"Kid."

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing, there's no need to apologize."

"ok"

Tony sighed.

"So the news really didn't start talking about Spiderman till about a year ago?"

"Yeah, before that it was just some mysterious vigilante. I didn't look to much into it. Though thinking back to it, the glimpses they caught of the vigilante did appear to be swinging not flying, as the news claimed."

"Huh. I wish I could fly. That would be so cool."

Tony chuckled. "I'm glad you're alright." Peter smiled and then yawned. "I'll leave you to get some rest."

Peter mumbled something unintelligible and closed his eyes. Tony smiled as he left the room turning off the lights. His kid was going to be alright.

Thanks for reading!

Tell next time

Sayonara peoples!