They didn't find Peter that day. Or the next. Or the day after that.

Or in the four that followed.

"What do you mean you can't find it!?" Tony roared at his monitor as he flipped through satellite images fast enough to make his already aching brain burn with the exertion. "It's a giant, fucking tin can in the middle of the Atlantic! How do you loose that!?"

"The Raft fell out of satellite view at approximately 4:21am on the day in question and has not resurfaced according to data taken from satellites monitoring the region." F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice echoed through the lab.

"It must have." Tony thundered slamming both hands down onto the metal desk in front of him hard enough to wake Sam from the soft-doze he'd been in for almost an hour now. The man shot upright awkwardly on the couch he'd been sprawled across shooting a glance at Steve – who stood completely rigid in the centre of the lab, as he had for the last day or so as their leads disappeared and Tony became more and more desperate – and Steve gave him a short shake of his head.

No.

No they hadn't found him yet.

Tony was ready to break something – several some-things. Preferably the bones in Ross's face. And then neck.

"They had to get him on-board somehow," Tony continued to roar at his servers as he shoved away from his desk and towards another desktop he had running to get him access to a Chinese, un-manned, space station that swore up and down it had no surveillance technology on board.

Tony was about to dis-prove that claim, and then abuse that technology as much as he pleased.

"It's the only place they could hold him – cells build for the enhanced, and Ross's own men in charge, meaning no one with a moral compass who might have a problem with shooting up a school and illegally abducting a fifteen-year-old-"

"Have we heard back from the school?" Rhodey's voice cut across the tense lab from his place leaning against Tony's main working station, only a few feet in front of Steve, with his chin hung down and resting against his chest. Like Steve he'd been perched in the same place for almost two days now. Had it been anyone else Tony would have kicked them off the instant their but-cheek hit the gleaming stainless-steal, but having Rhodey over his shoulder was more comforting than he was willing to admit. He always had been. All the way from college to that night on the bank of the lake, with Peter –

No. No. He wasn't going there. He couldn't afford to panic.

Peter couldn't afford for him to panic.

The assassins hadn't been back to the Compound since the day Peter had been taken. Both had slipped under the radar as soon as they'd established that Peter was long gone from the school, searching for him where Tony and the others couldn't go. Steve had even gotten in touch with Scott, who had set out on his own to dig up something within hours of the school attack. With nothing else to go on, the rest of them had retreated to the half-built Compound to continue searching, but now, days later, even Tony had to admit that they were no closer.

Their shared frustration had sent Bruce upstairs to meditate hours ago. He hadn't been back down since – the green guy brimming a little too close to the surface.

Steve nodded at Rhodey shortly. "No casualties. Minimal injuries." He said, his voice deep but empty. Mechanical almost. Just like his every movement in the last few days. Where the others seemed on the edge of slipping into a coma from exhaustion, Steve seemed to be shutting down internally. As if he were saving energy – or trying to bury something so deep down in his chest that it could never find its way to the surface, no matter how much it tried.

Tony was more than familiar with that feeling from the last few days. It was like a gnawing hole, buried deep in his gut, but never truly gone. Every moment it threatened to swallow him, churning so forcefully that Tony thought he might throw-up despite not having eaten anything solid since he'd fled that courtroom. Rhodey had forced a protein shake on him every few hours after the first day – threatening to cut power to the lab if Tony didn't drink it.

"Just as intended, I imagine." Vision's voice was soft, and even – as it always was – but there was something in it that Tony just couldn't pick. Tension?

Fear?

Tony, in the few moments between each world-ending calamity, had found himself wondering what the extent of Vision's experiences on earth were – how he processed? If he felt things like they did? Vision had had no qualms in answering Tony's arguably prying questions, concluding that he did feel, but not, as he imagined, Tony did. No less – just differently.

Tony had begun to doubt that analysis over the last few days. Fear – he was beginning to suspect – Vision felt just like them all.

Every crippling inch of it.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y any hits on Wanda?" Tony asked as he punched in a few last keys to get access to the Chinese space station. He set it searching in the area where the Raft had last been spotted, and then set about getting access to it's video logs.

"None, Boss." F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice answered.

"I have found none either," Vision added from his place on the floor, in the far corner, by Tony's holographic servers. His purple skin was awash with blue light, leaving him almost pale looking. "Nor anything on young Mr. Parker, or the man he saw at the cemetery."

After Ned had finally calmed down enough to coherently piece together what he and Peter and stumbled into, it had been all Tony could do to keep himself from reaching out and strangling the still sobbing teenager. When they found Peter – and they would find him, or so help god – Tony was going to kill him.

Walking into dicey, government funded, human trafficking deals. Attempting to sow up bullet wounds at home. Opening stolen, government encrypted, hard-drives at school. Yeah. There was a stern conversation in his future. Peter had to be the only recorded teenager in history who was colour-blind to the colour grey – because these were so far from the grey area situations they had discussed that it wasn't even a little bit funny anymore.

The hard-drive, he did have to begrudgingly admit, was a goldmine. Every shady deal of Ross's was there in perfect picture. If Tony had had it days ago he would have leaked the whole thing online – and sent along a few videos in personalised emails to a couple of senators who would be none to pleased with Ross's extra-curricular activities.

As it stood now though, he could do nothing. Not without risk of retaliation. Ross would have retaliated before – without a doubt – but before that would have fallen on Tony, and Tony alone. Now, he was almost certain it wouldn't. What could Ross do to him after all? Use his political strings to make his life hell? He wouldn't be the first Politian to target Tony, nor likely the last. And with his career in disgrace from the leaked hard-drive, he would barely have a leg to stand on.

But Peter? Even disgraced and under investigated Ross could hurt Peter. Could keep him. Keep him from his home. From his friends and May. From Tony.

Releasing the hard-drive wasn't an option now – and he was almost certain Ross was counting on it, though he couldn't be entirely sure as, yet another person they had been unable to track down, was Ross himself. The man seemed to have dropped off the earth after Tony fled the courtroom, and was now publicly unavailable, and privately un-fucking-traceable. If Tony had to put money on it he was willing to bet that Ross was hold up on the Raft with Peter, and the very idea churned in his stomach.

"Sir," F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice cut across the lab as Tony spun away from the computer and back to his workstation in the centre of the room. "May Parker is calling." Tony dropped into his chair just a foot or so from where Rhodey was leaning against the desk.

"Answer it."

May's voice flooded through the silent room.

"Stark-"

Tony cut her off before she even got the question out. There was no point waiting for it. They both only had one question at the moment – and every minute he spent answering it was a minute he wasn't spending solving it.

"I haven't found anything yet."

Behind Tony Steve was still standing in the middle of the workshop, his parade rest becoming more and more tense by the minute.

"Shit." She breathed across the line. She sounded as exhausted as he felt. "Maybe – maybe I should call the police. Officially report him as missing, I-"

"No."

May fell silent for a moment. "No." She repeated, her voice so cutting that Tony felt himself hunching over his keyboard, as if he could somehow use his shoulders to brace against her fury. Her absolutely justified fury. "That's all you have. No." She thundered over to line, her voice rising with each word. "Why the hell not?" She demanded. "He is missing! Maybe the police can-"

"The police can do nothing." Tony deadpanned. "He's not missing." Those words were met with absolute silence. Not May, nor the men spread around hurricane that was Tony at the moment, made a sound. "We know exactly where he is – the problem is that that place is in the hands of a filthy-fucking secretary of defence with a quickly diminishing life expectancy-"

"The police can't help him May," Rhodey cut over the top of Tony's violent ramblings, and brutal keystrokes as he continued working despite them all. "This will be easier without a media fan-fair watching our every step." Rhodey went on. "I know this is hard, but you need to trust us." May said nothing. "We'll find him." Rhodey murmured in that calm, assuring kind of way that had even Tony believing him. Just a little.

They would find him. They would find him. He would-fucking-find him.

The line stayed quiet for such a long stretch that Tony almost thought she had hung-up, but after a full minute of silence the distinct sound of a call cutting off sounded without May offering another word.

The tension in the room didn't ease. If anything it grew. Tony's keystrokes were beginning to severely endanger the structural integrity of the keyboard.

"Someone should go check on her," Steve's voice rung out behind Tony.

The distinctive sound of stiff joints cracking at the very back of the lab announced Sam's battle to free himself from the small couch there. "I'll go." He said, moving into Tony's peripherals where the Captain was still modelling the tensest parade rest Tony had ever laid eyes on. Steve gave him a short nod. "Call me if you find anything." Sam murmured, running a hand over his blood-shot eyes and sparing the lab one last look – as if he might find Peter hiding behind one of the cluttered desks.

"Take your gear." Tony said without looking away from his screen, where he was back to coming through Peter's suit's recordings. "When we find something, we'll be moving quickly." He added, aiming for harsh and falling far short. He just didn't have the energy anymore – and the idea that they might be giving up already only drained that energy more.

He would-fucking-find him. Tony would dig up the goddamn earth, alone, if it came to that.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y why the hell didn't I get an alert as soon as the suit got a good look at Wanda?" Tony snapped, doing his best to block out the movement behind him as Sam set about gathering up his suit. Steve moved to help him. "Is there a malfunction in the facial-recognition-"

"There was no malfunction." F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice cut him off. "There have been no sightings of Wanda Maximoff in the Itsy-Bitsy mark 2 suit."

Tony's frustrations with Sam and the others vanished for a second as confusion washed over him. "I am looking at her-" Tony said, watching the camera footage he'd downloaded from Peter's suit. He'd been over and over the cemetery footage. She was right there. Completely exposed and clear as day – a little too exposed for comfort even. You could have cut the tension in the lab with a knife when they'd first watched her be tugged from the coffin and thrown, half-naked, into the mud at Ross's man's feet. "I am seeing her all on my own – with my eyes – and I can see it's her." Tony went on, pulling up the suit's coding – and F.R.I.D.A.Y's for good measure – to try and find the problem. Was it in his coding? No. The suit hadn't had any problem with facial recognition for anyone else – "How the hell can you not-"

"Her eye colour has altered."

Everyone in the room paused.

Tony's head snapped up to Vision – who was still sitting cross-legged on the floor watching the holographic screens. His eyes never left them.

"What?" Rhodey asked, throwing a look between Vision and Tony.

"Her eye colour has altered since original facial imprints were taken," Vision clarified in that frustratingly calm and logical voice, as if he weren't just throwing something out there that wasn't possible. Shouldn't be possible – "As face-recognition takes a great deal of its primary markers from the retina, it is now unable to recognise her."

"Eye colour does not change – not that much." Tony muttered even as he pulled up the cemetery footage again and enhanced as far as it would let him. What he found did not make him feel better.

He froze the footage as Wanda hit the dirt at Ross's thug's feet, her face turned away from the man above her and towards where Peter had crouched. From that angle the footage caught a clear view of her eyes – her very not-green eyes.

The once green irises were now clouded at their centre with a striking ring of topaz.

"What the hell is that?" Tony breathed as he fought to clarify the footage and enhance it even more.

Across from them Vision had not moved an inch from his place. His eyes had not strayed from the holographic screens – but his voice was softer when he spoke again. Hesitant. "I am not sure."

That was a problem. A mildly disconcerting problem.

But not a problem for right now.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y scan images 8213 and 8214 for identifying facial markers and then start the search again. Work backwards and close – start yesterday in midtown. Find her and Peter, and then track from there. I want to know everywhere she's been in the last few weeks." Tony barked, trying to push the discomfort in his gut down as he re-focused on the problem at hand. Find Peter. "And you know, where she is now. That would be preferable to everything else," Tony added. "But using the last few days as a reference point, I doubt the universe it going to be that kind to us."

"Searching." F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice echoed across the lab. With that they all settled back into the tense silence they'd inhabited for the last few days – Rhodey leant against the desk, Steve taking up parade rest behind Tony once more and Vision still unmoving by the holographic servers.

After a few moments Sam became the only source of moment in the room other than Tony's vicious keystrokes.

"I should get going." Sam said, pulling his bag – with a compact model of his wings crushed inside – higher on his shoulder. "Call me when you find something." He murmured.

Tony would typically have taken the words as a jab, and done so in his stride, but when his eyes darted up to meet Sam's for the first time in days he found a sincerity he hadn't expected.

"Happy's outside." Tony said, his attention falling back to his screen. "He'll take you – he knows the place."

Tony watched Sam give a short nod in the reflection of his monitor. He turned to Steve, who offered him one of his own, before moving to the elevator. He barely made two steps before he was jerking to a stop with the rest of them as F.R.I.D.A.Y's voice flooded through the lab.

"Sir, I have a real time match."

"What?" Tony breathed, throwing himself back to his monitor. "On who?!"

The A.I's response was immediate. "Secretary Ross, sir."

Something froze in Tony's gut. "Where is he?"

"He is currently letting himself into the main recreation room, just off the lobby."

Tony's every limb locked in place.

Steve took the smallest of steps forward, now only inches from Tony's chair. "He's in the Compound."

"He is."

Peter's eyes adjusted to the dark – eventually. He'd crawled into the furthest corner of the cell what felt like weeks ago, and had barely moved from it since. The lights hadn't come back on since that first day when Ross was waiting for him. No one else had visited him either. For the first few days that had been a relief, but now, having been in the dark for so long that he was beginning to worry what might happen if he ever saw light again, he would welcome a visitor. Anyone. Ross. A serial killer. Adrian Tombs. Literally anyone. He'd do anything to turn the lights back on.

But no one came.

The sensations that came with the lack of light almost made the cell worse. Every now and again Peter could swear he felt it moving. Almost jostling, as if the building he was in were being battered by wind. And then, arguable worse, were the times when he felt like it was sinking. He could feel it in his ears as they popped and protested the change of altitude – but it could really be sinking. Right. Buildings didn't do that.

Maybe he was going mad.

Peter let his head fall back against the wall behind him. The pain was a welcome release from his otherwise sensationless state.

He was almost at the point where he was prepared to start running head-long into the walls with as much force as he could – just to see if he could spur a reaction from someone. He never got to test the theory.

Right as he reached the point of desperation where he was willing to give it a go, something loud echoed through the wall where his head was rested. Peter was on his feet within seconds.

It was the first noise he'd heard beyond his own voice in weeks.

A moment later it echoed through his cell again. A loud, painful sounding thunk.

Every bone in Peter's body – which seemed to have gotten heavier and heavier with every passing day stuck in the cramped cell – suddenly felt as if they were lighter than the stale air around him. Humming with anticipation.

It was Tony. It had to be.

He'd come for him.

A shout followed the next thunk, but it was cut short by the thunk after that. They were definitely getting closer. Peter could feel the cell shake more and more every time.

He crushed himself back into the far corner of the cell – he'd seen Tony's repuslors up close and had no desire to get any closer – hands pressed against the walls, ready to throw himself out of the cell as soon as it opened.

The next thunk was so forceful that it almost shook him free from his corner. The entire cell veered to the left – the leftmost wall somehow dipping down as the floor rose beneath him. What the hell.

Another thunk rung out, and again the cell tipped. The left wall dipping so drastically that it almost took the place of the floor.

Was he...rocking?

Peter has assumed he was locked in a basement somewhere. Locked under tonnes of concrete in some black-site on a hidden continent, or something along those lines. But in his experience concrete did not tend to sway like that. Or at all.

It certainly hadn't when a solid 10 tonnes of it had fallen on him in that garage.

The most vicious thunk yet rang out – followed by a blood-curdling scream that Peter tried not to focus too closely – and the cell dipped with enough force and speed to throw Peter from his corner.

Somewhere between hitting his head on the metal bedframe and crashing down to the right wall – which had now fully taken the place of the floor – Tony's voice trickled to the front of his mind.

"Well, it isn't exactly a long list of people who could hack into his glorified, floating, soda can."

They had never really discussed Ross to any great extent. Tony had a habit of shutting him down every time he broached the subject – deflecting with a nothing you need to worry about, kid – but he had mentioned his facility once or twice, just in passing.

Floating soda can.

Floating soda can.

As swiftly as it had dipped, the cell righted itself, hurling Peter back into his corner.

Floating. Floating.

Oh shit.

Without warning the cell righted itself, sending Peter spiralling back towards the metal bedframe. He collided forcefully with the base, his head smacking against the frame again, but felt nothing. The unsettling sensation of something warm, and sticky, trickling down the back of his neck hit him a minute later.

And then the gas started. Peter could feel it pouring in through the small vents at the top of his cell – flooding the small space in seconds. Soon he wasn't sure if his eyes were spinning from his forehead's close encounter with the bed, or the gas.

Or maybe the room was actually spinning.

His brain was still occupied trying to compute the implications of that when the lights flashed and then turned on.

Oh God. God it hurt.

Peter let out a guttural cry as the harsh fluorescence cut through his now light-sensitive eyes burned. It was blinding. The light, and the pain that came with the light, took every inch of awareness he had. The light whited out his sight, and the pain took everything else until he was curled on the floor, his head clutched tight between his hands, in an attempt to block it all out. The light. The cell. The weeks in the dark.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't go back to the dark – but god the light burned.

He couldn't – he couldn't.

He just wanted to go home. He wanted to screw his eyes shut so tightly that this had to be a dream. That any minute now he'd wake up in his bed with May leaning over him – because she always came. No matter the time, or how many times Peter had already woken her, she was always there when Peter came thrashing out of a nightmare. And she always stayed. They'd curl up together on the bottom bunk and watch Peter's favourite Star Trek episodes. After that night at the Compound, when Peter had first come home from the MedBay at the Tower and Tony was still calling him almost on the hour to check up on him, May had stayed with him almost every night. He'd fallen asleep with her fingers running through his hair, smoothing his curls, as Trouble with the Tribbles played over and over.

"Peter!"

God. Where was May? Was she here? Had they taken her too? Or, had they done nothing? Left her alone, with nothing, to look for him. And she would. She'd look for years – and she would be, because Peter was gone. Stranded in the dark for so long now that he'd never be able to leave. Never be able to open his eyes to the light.

"Peter!"

Something seized a hold of Peter's arm, yanking him away from the bed and out onto the open floor. The movement caught him so far off guard that it startled him into opening his eyes – a movement he regretted almost as soon as the light hit his retinas – but the light was no longer blinding. It was still too bright, and far too much, but in the light he could see shapes. Colours.

Red.

"Peter you need to get up! We need to go!"

Slowly, far too slowly for Peter's comfort, the shapes gave way to a face. Wanda was leaning over him, dressed head to toe in black, blood oozing from a cut across her forehead. A couple of stray droplets fell to Peter's face, leaving a scarlet stain across his check, but he barely noticed.

Her eyes had finally come into focus, and they were consuming.

They whirled with more colours that Peter had previously thought existed. The amber in them that he had noticed on their first meeting had given way to a churning mass of light.

There were whole stars being born in those eyes.

"PETER!"

"Wanda?" Peter's mouth was slow to co-operate, and his voice even slower. It had been so long since he'd spoken. Really spoken – to another person. "Wha-what's happ-"

"We need to go!" Wanda was pulling him again, but this time upwards. Towards the cell door – or where the cell door used to be. There was no door now. There was barely a cell. Half of the small space had been blown away, scattering debris out into the observation area outside the cell, and the cells just beside.

Wanda managed to get an arm underneath him and used it to yank him upright. His still spinning brain did not appreciate the sudden movement – sending them both tumbling back down to the metal floor. Peter groaned. His head was really starting to hurt now. He'd changed his mind. He wanted to stay right here – right on the cold metal floor where nothing hurt.

Wanda had other plans.

As soon as they hit the floor she was scrambling upwards, digging her hands into Peter's sides and hoisting him back up. God. Why wouldn't she just leave him? Couldn't she see that he was broken? Too far beyond repair to leave this place now.

The sound of stampeding footsteps echoed down the hall.

A blinding flash of red across the cell and out into the corridor beyond – causing Peter to screw his eyes closed as the light burned his eyes. He was kind of glad he did too. He wasn't sure he wanted to see what was happening to the men just beyond the observation room – he'd never heard screams like that.

As soon as it had come the red light faded. And the sound of footsteps with it.

"Come on, get up!" Wanda hissed at him as she dragged him out of the cell and through the small observation room. His legs were under him – barely – but they still refused to move. Wanda all but dragged him into the corridor beyond his cell and the observation room.

What they found there nearly made him want to turn right back around.

The guards who must have been running to stop them were frozen in narrow, metal corridor. A red mist hovered around their eyes, tinting the irises a vivid scarlet. Their expressions were vacant – except for some, their faces seemed to be caught in a silent scream that never ended. It was as if time itself had stopped, as the men stood in complete stillness all over the corridor, their weapons and purpose forgotten.

Wanda dragged Peter through the forest of stationary soldiers, seemingly careful not to touch them, but none to worried about the noise they were making as they stumbled along the metal walkway.

Not a single soldier noticed.

They staggered through corridor after corridor – winding and twisting their way through the maze of metal walls of vacant soldiers.

The silence was almost worse than the sight of the soldiers. Gone were the thunks that had left Peter's cell swaying. Now there was only their uneven footsteps, and the ominous creaking of metal.

Eventually the corridors came to an end and Peter found himself at the railing of a lookout from which he could finally see extent of the situation he had gotten himself into.

Tony hadn't been kidding. It was a giant, floating soda can.

"Holy shit." Peter breathed, leaning heavily on the railing as Wanda pulled away. He could see every level – and there had to be at least ten of them. Peter found himself wondering if they were all full of cells. Hundreds upon hundreds of tiny, dark, cells ready for people just like him.

Suddenly the gaping whole in his head, and blood trickling rhythmically down his neck, were not the main reasons he wanted to vomit.

As his eyes made their way up Peter found himself fixating at the roof – or more specifically the two panels of thick looking metal that joined directly in the middle. An opening.

A door.

They were leaving.

"How the hell are we supposed to get up there?" Peter croaked, turning to see where Wanda had gone – not nearly as concerned as he probably should have been by the fact that he'd forgotten she was there at all for a second.

"There's an emergency staircase in case of malfunction," Wanda panted, just behind Peter. He threw a glance back at her. She had a hand raised to the steel wall before her. The sound of protesting metal grew and the wall began to vibrate. Or maybe that was just Peter's eyes. Everything was still a little blurry in the light.

He took a step forward but paused when something cold dripped onto his forehead – mixing with the blood there before running along the length of his nose. What the? He looked up and another droplet hit him just above his left eye.

"Ugh," He started, staring up at the sealed gates in the roof. "Wanda?"

Wanda turned, pulling her hands away from the vibrating wall and looking over at him. The wall stilled.

The sound of groaning metal didn't fade.

Peter tore his eyes away from the roof to meet hers.

"I don't think that's good." Peter said, his voice nearly lost to the almost deafening groaning now.

Another drop hit home on the very top of Peter's head – lost in his hair as soon as it made contact – and then the groaning stopped.

And the roof gave way.

"RUN!"

Wanda had already latched onto him, and started hurtling along the walkway, before she really got the word out.

Peter's brain was a still a mass of basically non-functioning tissue, but his legs seemed to catch on to the severity of the situation, hurtling alongside Wanda as a thousand tonnes of water cascaded into the dome.

They were at least four stories up – and thank Christ for that as the first two levels had been washed away in seconds – but the water was rising quickly, and with every inch it gained the floating soda can became a sinking soda can.

Peter's legs – finally awake – overtook Wanda in just a few seconds, but those seconds were precious. The first door along the walkway he found he tore open, and then shoved them both inside.

Water was already trickling in when he shoved the door closed.

"What do we do?!" Peter stuttered, almost tripping in the pool of water by the door as his limbs trembled. His spider-sense was screaming at him. Run. Run!

Run where?

The door he'd sealed had already begun to groan under the pressure of the rising water.

Wanda had pulled away as soon as they'd lurched into the corridor, sprinting along the line of thick metal doors and yanking on each. Only one opened.

"Get in!"

Peter stumbled inside after her and yanked the door closed.

It was a storage room – barely big enough for the two of them – but Wanda didn't seem to care. She shoved him as far back as he could go and then started on the door. Red sparks striking the sides and bending the metal of the door back against the wall. Sealing it.

She was still going when the boom of the door just beyond them giving way sounded, and water began to trickle in through the unsealed gaps.

After a couple more seconds Wanda lowered her hands – one hanging heavily at her side while the other curled around her torso, hand clenched over where the bullet had hit her when they first met.

"What do we do?" Peter said again, his whisper barely audible over the sound of trickling water as it dribbled in through the cracks in Wanda's work. It was already up to their ankles – and rising.

Wanda leaned heavily against the door, her skin pale and eyes drooping closed.

Blood was dripping through the fingers clenched around her side.

"I don't know." She whispered.

Peter found himself nodding slowly as the water inched past his knees. "Okay." He said, eyes darting around the small room as if a door that he hadn't noticed might suddenly appear. "Okay." None did. "I take it this wasn't part of the plan?"

A bitter laugh broke out of Wanda's chest, sending her into a coughing fit that only left her more pale and gripping her blood soaked side like a lifeline. "There was no plan." She murmured.

"Then why come?" Peter found himself asking. The freezing water was licking at his sides now – no time to be tactful. "Why risk it? You were free."

Those swirling topaz eyes flicked up to him. "You weren't." She said, as if it were the most simple of answers. She sighed and then straightened a little, groaning, as the movement must have pulled on her side, to avoid the water now rising over her chest. "Ross is watching the others – their every move – they had no chance." Her eyes slid closed.

"You do."

The words escaped Peter's mouth before he'd realized they were there – but he meant them. God he meant them.

Wanda's eyes opened slowly and flicked back to him, confusing clouding them.

"Deserve a place with them." Peter elaborated, her words from the Chinese restaurant echoing in brain.

The water had inched high enough to touch his chin.

"I don't think that being innately good at blowing things up should be an automatic qualifier." Wanda said, arching her neck to keep her head from sinking into the freezing water.

"It's not." Peter nodded, working to keep his lips above the water line. "Doing the right thing is – even when it hurts." Her eyes locked onto his, and didn't waver. "They miss you." He stammered through the water that was licking his lips. "You have a place – when you're ready for it."

Her lips twisted into the ghost of a smile. "And you've found yours already." She murmured, the words all but swallowed by the water.

Peter's hand found hers in the swell of water as they both gasped their last breaths.

He clasped onto that hand like it was life itself as the water slipped over their heads.

"Tony!"

Something clawed at the sleeve of Tony's hoodie as he thundered up the stairs, but he threw it off – almost tumbling right back down to the lab in his effort to do so. Steve and Sam thundered ahead of him, their shoes disappearing from sight up the next flight.

"TONY!"

Rhodey appeared in Tony's very red tinted line of sight, his bionic legs shooting up the stairs beside Tony to come to a stop right in front of him. Blocking his way up.

"Move."

There was enough venom in the word to kill a reasonably sized house pet.

"No." Rhodey thundered, reaching a hand out to rest on Tony's heaving chest. Keeping him in place. Or attempting to. Tony was three seconds away from shoving straight through it. "You need to think about what you're about to do-"

"Oh, I've thought about it." Tony hissed, pushing past Rhodey with everything he had. It worked, for a couple of steps at least. "In great, graphic, detail."

Rhodey lunged in back in front of him, his metal braces slamming against the stairs as he parked himself on the step above.

"Attacking Ross now is not going to bring Peter back."

Tony stopped barely an inch away from him.
"I'm not going to attack him." Tony said, voice even and firm. Of everything that had happened in the last few days, this was the one thing he was sure of. "I'm going to kill him." Tony breathed through his teeth. "And then I am going to kill the next person who gets in my way, and the next after that until I have my kid back." He took another step forward, bringing him nose to nose with Rhodey. "Do not test me on this Rhodes."

Rhodey didn't move. Didn't step back or aside – but didn't push him away either. He let Tony stand there, and seethe, as he watched with that too calm face. Too understanding eyes.

"You cannot kill the Secretary of Defence in your lounge-room." He said eventually – but for the first time he sounded unsure. And he had right to be.

Because that was exactly what Tony was about to do.

"Fucking watch me."

Tony pushed past again and lunged up the remaining stairs to the landing, with Rhodey barely a step behind him. He threw open the door to the ground floor and thundered through the hall, twisting and turning in a blind rage until he found himself at the glass door of the recreation room.

Steve and Sam stood just inside the door, shoulder to shoulder, staring down at Ross who was spread across the three-seater couch like he hadn'tjust waltzed into his own execution.

Ross's eyes darted up as Tony slid inside.

"Stark." He called, a smile twisting at his lips. His eyes ran Tony up and down with no small amount of pleasure. "You're looking a little run down – something keeping you up?"

Despite Tony's crippling need to lash out it was Steve who got the words out first.

"Where the hell is he?" Steve's voice echoed in the almost silent room. He hadn't spoke loudly, but he really didn't need to. Even Tony had to fight the urge to take a step back at the force of that voice.

Ross apparently didn't, as he remained lounging across the sofa – only his eyes lazily flicking towards the Captain.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." He shrugged, that twisted smile growing. It curled at the sides of his lips – crinkling the skin around his eyes.

"Don't play with us." Steve's voice cut across the room again. "This is not a game."

"It is to me."

"Then you've already lost."

The words were out of Tony's mouth before he realized he was speaking – but they were true.

He would ensure that much.

Ross didn't seem to agree. Those lazy eyes drifted back to Tony, fixating on the tension emanating from every inch of him, and basking in it.

"No, Stark." He said. "You have." He gave the coffee table just in front of him a nudge with his foot. Atop the table the Sokovia Accords slid further forward. "Accept it." That smile hardened. "Sign."

Tony's eyes dipped to the Accords.

He wanted to march across the room, seize the 3489 page document and beat Ross to death with it.

But if it got him Peter back...?

"And if I do?"

A small chuckled slipped through Ross's smile. The sound burned deep in Tony's chest.

"Then I'm almost certain that everything will work out for you." Ross shrugged again. His eyes focused more heavily on Tony, taking in every inch of him. "And whatever you may, or may not have, miss-placed might crawl its way back home."

Tony threw himself across the room.

He would have done it. He was so close. His hands were only inches away from the Accords - still not sure if he was going to sign them then and there or beat Ross to death with them - when Steve's iron grip latched onto both of his arms and wrenched him back.

Ross leapt to his feet, backing against the couch, but his smile didn't fade. If anything it grew.

He was enjoying this.

"Go on." Ross said, reaching forward and snatching the Accords off of the table. "What else do you have to loose?" He threw them down at Tony's feet. Steve's grip tightened.

Somewhere in the room a phone started to ring – Tony barely noticed though as he fought to pull away from the iron grip Steve kept around his arms.

Tony watched as Ross pulled a phone from the breast pocket of his jack and raised it to his ear, that same smile boring down on Tony as he did.

The smile faded, however, when whoever was on the other line began to speak.

Faded completely, until it was gone. Replaced with wide eyes and a pallor that had to match Tony's.

Those wide eyes flicked up to Tony.

"What the fuck have you done?"