Chapter Text
Previously:
It’s been a long road for Tony and Natasha, but they finally trust each other completely and are engaged. Soon, Tony will also become legal guardian to Harley Keener and his sister Mikayla to. This came after learning that their mom, Charlotte Keener, has late-stage lung cancer. She asked Tony to be their new guardian due to her having nobody else to leave the kids with. In turn, Tony made Natasha leader of the Avengers so he could focus on that, and the mild existential crisis he’s been having. Now at the helm, Natasha decided to make her family unofficial members of the team, at least until they find more recruits. She and Yelena had traveled to Los Angeles to try to get Quake, aka, Daisy Johnson, to join, amidst the Inhuman outbreak , but it didn’t go so well. Quake said no, and then Natasha was called back to New York shortly after because of an emergency.
Peter had claimed to have been sick the past couple of days with the flu before she left, but then he showed up at the facility unannounced in agonizing pain. At first, Tony and Melina thought he had been infected with a neurotoxin during an altercation with a guy calling himself Scorpion, but it turned out to be much worse. Instead of a neurotoxin, there was a parasitic symbiote trying to take over Peter’s body. He was near-death, and only after some questionable methods was Tony able to hi-jack his immune system with nanotech and help his body fight off the parasite before it could merge with Peter completely. The symbiote was not happy about this, and now it’s on the loose in the facility - hungry, and looking for another host.
The metal barrier barring the front door closed finally releases with a pneumatic hiss, echoing throughout the facility. Natasha steps through in her Iron Widow suit, spotting Tony leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He looks like absolute hell - hair sticking up at all angles, dark circles under his eyes that could pass for bruises.
"Well, don't you look like shit," she says, by way of greeting, but her voice is soft and full of concern.
He gives a weak smile.
"I wish you would’ve stayed outside."
“I know.” She retracts her helmet, coming to stand in front of him. “But you knew that wasn’t going to happen.”
He nods, regrettably, and she closes the distance between them, her hands immediately going to his face, thumbs brushing over the overgrown stubble on his cheeks. "You okay?”
"Yeah. Peter's the one who-" He stops, giving a sigh. "He's stable. For now. Melina told me he woke up a little while ago. I haven’t seen him yet.”
"Then let’s go see him,” she says, leaning up to kiss him.
He pushes off the wall after, and they walk through the silent halls, their footsteps the only sound. The facility feels eerie, every room sealed, red quarantine lights pulsing along the walls in some areas.
"Where is everyone?"
"Containment levels. FRIDAY moved all non-essential personnel to the sub-basements. The Keeners are still on their floor, but Rhodey is watching them. How did it go with Quake?”
“She said no, but she’s injured, and I told her I should bring her in for domestic terrorism. I left Yelena with her to watch her.”
“Well, that should make her want to join,” he jokes as they climb into the elevator.
“Yeah...I’m sorry I yelled at you on the phone.” She looks over at him.
He looks back and smirks, shrugging.
“It’s okay. I’m getting used to it.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Used to it?”
“Yeah. You’re always yelling at me lately.”
“Am not.”
“Are to.”
“Well...I’m sorry.” She leans up and kisses his cheek. “You know how much I care about Peter.”
Tony wraps his arm around her and hugs her to him, suit against suit.
“I know. It’s okay, but I don’t want you to be alarmed when you see him, Tasha.”
“Why?” She pulls back, forehead creasing. “Did you call May yet?”
“No...and because he almost died. At least, I think he did. This thing...I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“But it’s out of him now?”
“Yeah, but we’re still monitoring the lasting effects.”
“You saved him though.” She takes his hand. “I knew you would. That’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, but I was terrified we wouldn’t,” Tony admits, quietly. “It was starting to look like something else.”
“Tony, I had no doubt that you would do whatever you had to in order to save him.”
“And I did, but if I had listened to you that something strange was going on with him, we probably could have gotten to the bottom of this sooner and caught this thing earlier.”
“Well, now you know for next time, don’t you? That I’m always right,” she teases.
He chuckles as the elevator stops, placing his hand on the scanner. The door slides back open, revealing the med bay.
The lights are dimmed, and when they get to Peter’s room, Natasha, despite being forewarned, gasps when she sees him.
“Peter?” She whispers, staring from inside the door.
She can see his chest rising and falling steadily, but his skin is so sickly pale.
Melina looks up from a monitor, her expression shifting from focused to relieved when see’s them. "You’re back. Your boyfriend is a madman."
"So, I've heard." Natasha’s eyes never leave Peter though. She moves to his side.
“How’s he doing?” Tony asks Melina.
"Stable, although appearance wise he doesn’t look the greatest. He’s recovering, asking specifically for you two. The symbiote's expulsion was... violent, but effective. The nano swarm is still active in his system, monitoring for any residual traces."
Natasha reaches out, her fingers shaking slightly hovering over Peter's hand, before she gently takes it. His is clammy, but she can feel his pulse, weak, but steady.
"Peter?" She says again, squeezing his hand.
His eyelids flutter open. His gaze is unfocused at first, but when it lands on her, a faint smile tugs at his lips. “Natasha... you’re here.”
"Of course I am," she says, her voice wavering. "You think I'd let you get away with lying and scaring us like this again?"
"Sorry," Peter croaks, “didn't mean to..."
She brushes the sweat-soaked hair off his forehead.
"It’s okay. Just rest."
Tony moves to the other side of the bed, his hand resting on Peter's shoulder. "You’re gonna be okay now, Pete. That thing is out of you."
Peter's brow furrows.
"Thing?"
Tony glances at Melina, figuring she would have filled him in, but she shakes her head.
“He’s been sleeping most of the time.”
"Oh...uh, the toxin,” Tony explains. “It wasn't just poison. It was... alive."
"Alive?" Peter's eyes widen.
He tries to sit up, but Natasha pushes him back down with a firm hand.
"Don't even think about it," she commands.
"Yeah, whatever this Scorpion injected you with was some kind of organism. A symbiote. It was trying to bond with you. Use your body as a host. I created a nano swarm that worked with your immune system to force it out, but it's still somewhere in the facility.”
Peter's face goes ghostly white. "It's loose? Here?"
“Yeah, but don't worry about that. That's my problem. Your problem is getting better. Just don’t think we’re not going to have a nice long chat about you keeping things from us again when you’re better."
Peter winces, but nods weakly, looking appropriately chastised. "Okay."
Natasha looks between them, chewing the inside of her lip.
“Peter, I know you don’t want to, but I really think we need to call your aunt on this, and let her know what’s happened.”
Peter closes his eyes.
“Please don’t. She’ll find out I’m Spiderman.”
“I know, honey, but maybe it’s time she knows the truth. After this...how do you think she would feel if things had taken a worse turn and she wouldn’t have had any idea? She must be worried sick about you right now. She doesn’t even know where you are, does she?”
Peter looks down.
“Well, I kind of lied and told her I was staying at Ned’s. She’s been working a lot lately. I know you’re right, but I just don’t want her to worry about me. And if she finds out about this, that’s all she’ll do. She won’t want me to be Spiderman anymore. You guys don’t understand. Ever since my uncle Ben died...I don’t want to put her through anything like that ever again.” He looks up at them both, tears in his eyes.
The monitoring equipment starts to beep faster, indicating how much the subject is stressing him out. Tony shakes his head.
“Okay, okay. Look, just relax. You get some more rest, and then we can talk about it. In the meantime, why don’t you text her and check in at least. Here’s your phone.” He grabs the cell with the busted screen off the table. “How the hell do you see anything with that, by the way?”
“I manage. I drop it alot.”
“I’ll get you a new one.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mr. Stark.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But it’s giving me a headache just watching you use it.”
Peter takes the cracked phone from him. "Thanks...for everything."
Tony laughs it off, but Natasha catches the split second of grief on his face.
"Yeah, well, just remember, kid, everytime you do some shit like this, you’re just taking a year off my life. This whole incident was two years, at least. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to see you graduate."
“I’m sorry.” Peter sulks.
“Yeah, I know, Pete.” Tony ruffles his hair. “I’m just glad you’re okay. But now I’m gonna go track down the alien slime you drug in.”
“Tony, we should speak more about all this first,” Melina says, before he leaves the room.
“Now?” Tony stops.
She nods and they step outside the room, leaving Natasha and Peter alone.
Peter slumps into the pillows.
“He’s mad, huh?”
“No, Peter, I think he was terrified you were going to die. How many times do we have to do this before you stop with all this lone wolf crap?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know, you keep saying that, but you keep doing the same things. At some point, sorry loses its value.”
“I just don’t want to be a burden to you guys.” Peter stares at his hands.
“But you’re not a burden. Why would you think that?” Natasha knits her brows.
“Because.” He looks down. “It’s not like you guys are my parents or anything. I’m not your responsibility. Not really.”
Her heart aches hearing him say that.
“Well, maybe not, but that doesn’t make you a burden. And Tony and I love you. Everyone here loves you.”
“...you do?” He looks up, like it’s a suprise to hear.
“Yes.” She brushes his hair back again. "Listen to me. You are not a burden. You’re family. Avengers family. "
Peter’s throat bobs as he swallows. "I just... I keep messing up though. I thought if I handled Scorpion on my own, if I didn't bother you guys with it..."
"That’s not how this works," she interrupted. "You’re sixteen, Peter. You’re allowed to need help. You're allowed to be scared. Tony and I want to help you. We like having you around. Everyone here does. So you need to stop this. Right now.”
A tear slips down his cheek as he nods. Natasha huffs feeling her own eyes start to burn. Thankfully, Melina strides back in, a medical tablet clutched in her hand.
Peter quickly wipes his eyes.
"I...told your boyfriend he cannot go hunting for the symbiote alone in his current state,” she says, hesitantly, seeing she is interrupting something. “He’s running on forty-eight hours of no sleep and enough caffeine to kill a small horse."
"And he went anyway," Natasha says. It wasn't a question.
Melina nods. Natasha looks back to Peter.
“We’ll talk more about this later, alright?”
He nods once, trying not to cry anymore.
“You’re not a burden, Peter. I need you to stop thinking that to,” Natasha says, softly. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
As soon as Natasha exit’s the room, her helmet closes back into place and she sighs linking up with Tony’s HUD.
“Seriously? Good job sneaking away right when I’m in the middle of explaining to our kid he’s not a burden.”
“Huh?” Tony frowns into his camera.
“Yeah. That’s why he didn’t tell us. He said because we aren’t his parents, it’s not our problem, and he doesn’t want to be a burden.”
“Well, I wish someone would have told me that the past couple of days while he was in a coma and I was fighting to save his life, because it sure seemed like my problem.”
“He thinks you’re mad at him.”
“I am mad at him. Aren’t you? He’s frustrating me to death. But I can’t worry about his hurt feelings right now with an alien blob slithering through the halls.”
“Yeah, well, where are you?” She’s already in the elevator.
“What? I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up.”
Her face goes flat.
“Very funny. Friday?”
“Boss is in the lower maintenance levels, Sector G,” Friday replies. “He’s tracking residual organic matter from the symbiote’s path. I should warn you, he’s armed and irritable.”
“Friday!” Tony glares. “What the hell!? You know, I’m sick of you to ganging up on me.”
Natasha chuckles, punching the button for the sub-levels. “Thanks, Fri. Can you patch me through to Yelena now real quick?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The line rings.
“You’re not still yelling at the tin man, are you?”
“No, now I’m hunting an alien parasite with him. How’s Quake?”
“She keeps trying to vibrate my bones apart. I had to knock her out. If she doesn’t want to join the Avengers, than why are you making her?”
“I’m not making her. But she’s hurting people and I can’ t let her keep doing that.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Just...keep her there. Keep an eye on her.” The elevator doors open with a ding. “I have to go. Try not to get shaken to death.”
“Love you too, sestra.”
The corridor ahead is dark, but the suit’s night vision kicks in. Natasha can see the scorch marks on the walls from Tony’s repulsors, and a trail of something black and viscous that seems to absorb the light rather than reflect it.
“Tony?” She calls out.
“Left,” comes his reply.
Natasha turns to see him step out from behind a cooling unit and a wall of pipes.
“It’s playing hide and seek,” he says, gesturing toward a ventilation shaft that’s been torn open, the metal edges melted. “Smarter than I gave it credit for. It’s avoiding the high traffic areas, staying in the walls. I’ve sealed the facility’s exterior exits, but it knows it’s trapped. That makes it desperate.”
“Desperate symbiotes. Great. Any heat signatures?”
“Intermittent. It’s regulating its temperature to match the ambient - ” He stops, head snapping up. “Did you hear that?”
Natasha goes still, her suit’s audio sensors tuning to maximum.
Yes, she hears it. A wet, slithering sound, like meat being dragged across concrete, coming from the ceiling.
“Above us,” she whispers.
Then the ceiling explodes.
A black, tar-like substance pours down, not falling, but lunging at them, a mass of writhing darkness that splits mid-air into three tendrils. One strikes at Tony, and he throws up his arms up, repulsor blasting and scattering the mass, but it reforms instantly, wrapping around his gauntlet.
“Son of a-” He grunts, trying to shake it loose. “It’s strong!”
Natasha doesn’t hesitate. She fires the sonic beam at it. The symbiote shrieks horribly, a psychic scream that rattles her teeth. It recoils, pooling on the floor before rising up into a towering, shifting column until transforming into a beast with wedged silver eyes, and a tongue that would put Gene Simmons to shame.
The thing is easily eight feet tall, a rippling construct of muscle and fury, silver veins pulsing through its black form like lightning.
“Hungry,” it whispers, the voice oily and deep. “So hungry. The boy was strong.”
“What the hell are you?” Tony asks, a chill running down his spine hearing it speak.
Right now, he and Natasha have everything but a nuke aimed at it, and still, it doesn’t feel like enough.
“We are Venom,” it hisses, saliva dripping from it’s mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth.
“What do you want?” Natasha’s heart pounds.
"We want the boy," Venom hisses, its tongue lashing out. "We want Peter. He is... compatible. Strong. Ours."
"Over my dead body," Natasha says, her voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her. Her wrist blades extend with a snikt, glowing white-hot.
Venom tilts its head, those silver eyes narrowing. "That can be arranged."
It lunges.
Tony fires first, a concentrated unibeam blast that hits Venom square in the chest. The creature staggers, black flesh bubbling and reforming around the hole punched through it, but it doesn't stop. It charges, moving with impossible speed for something so massive.
"Tasha, left!" Tony shouts, rocketing upward.
She rolls left, firing her repulsors at the floor to propel herself into a spinning kick. Her boot connects with Venom's jaw, the impact sending shockwaves through her leg, but the creature barely budges. Instead, it backhands her with a casual swipe, and she goes flying, crashing through a maintenance door with a sound of crunching metal.
"Natasha!"
Tony dives, both fists glowing, and unloads a barrage of missiles from his shoulder pods. They explode against Venom in rapid succession, filling the corridor with fire and smoke. For a moment, the beast is obscured.
Then it roars with a sound that makes the walls shake, and bursts through the smoke, a tendril wrapping around Tony's ankle. It slams him into the ceiling, then the floor, then the wall, like a child with a ragdoll.
"Tony!" Natasha emerges from the wreckage, her suit scuffed, but intact. She sees Tony pinned, the symbiote creeping up his leg, seeking the seams in his armor. "FRIDAY, sonic burst, maximum frequency!"
"Copy, ma'am."
The sonic blast hits Venom from Natasha's suit, and the creature convulses, shrieking that psychic scream that makes their teeth ache. It releases Tony, who drops to the floor with a grunt, and recoils, writhing.
"Fire!" Tony coughs, blood on his lip inside his helmet. "It hates fire and sound!"
"Working on it!" Natasha deploys her flamethrower attachment and unleashes a stream of blue flame.
Venom cries out and retreats, flowing backward like a nightmare in reverse, disappearing into a ventilation shaft. The fire scorches the edges but doesn't catch the creature itself.
Tony struggles to his feet, his armor sparking. "It was toying with us. It could have crushed me."
"Yeah," Natasha says, retracting the flamethrower and moving to steady him.
"That fucking thing nearly beat two Iron Man suits," Tony mutters, wiping blood from his mouth. "Great."
They stand in the wreckage of the corridor, breathing hard.
"We need to get back to Peter," Natasha says, her helmet retracting. Her face is pale, a bruise forming on her cheekbone. "If it wants him that badly..."
"Yeah," Tony agrees, his faceplate sliding back. "It'll go around us. It'll find another way."
They start moving, fast.
"Friday, status on Peter?"
"He's still in the med bay, Boss," Friday replies, her voice tight. "But I'm picking up organic matter moving through the ventilation system on his floor. It's avoiding the main corridors. It's using the maintenance shafts."
"Seal the med bay," Tony orders. "Full quarantine. Nothing in or out."
"Already done, but Boss... the symbiote is already inside the ventilation system for that wing. It'll reach him before you do."
"Then redirect all power to the sonic barriers around the med bay!" Tony shouts. "Don't let it get to him!"
"Working on it, but it may—"
"Just do it!"
They round the corner to the elevator bank, only to find the doors sealed because of the new lockdown requirements.
"Boss, it's heading for the med bay." Friday reports. "Estimated arrival... thirty seconds."
Natasha looks at Tony. "Stairs?"
"Stairs," he confirms.
They blast through the stairwell door, straight up flying up the center shaft.
When they burst onto the med bay floor, it's just as the ventilation grate at the end of the hall explodes outward. Venom pours out, reforming into that massive, terrifying shape, fixing on Peter’s sealed med bay door.
“What haven’t we tried?” Natasha yells as they blast at it.
“What do you mean?! We’ve tried damn near everything!” Tony yells back.
She extends her left wrist, not the blades this time, but the smaller compartment - her classic Widow’s bite, and fires. A concentrated bolt of high-voltage electricity arcs across the hallway, and hits Venom square in the shoulder.
The effect is immediate and violent.
Venom convulses, its massive form seizing as electricity surges through the midnight flesh. The creature screams and crashes to its knees, losing cohesion, its form rippling and destabilizing.
“The electricity!” Tony is already slamming his palms together. “Again. Now!”
He dumps capacitor charge into a sustained lightning stream from his gauntlets, chaining into Natasha’s blast. She fires another, and another, until finally the thing is an unconscious puddle.
“Is it dead?” She asks, when they let up, hesitantly.
“I have no idea. Holy fuck. How did I miss that?” Tony asks himself out loud. “We need to contain it.”