really proud of this one, although the AU is not mine. it belongs to spiderstan_ on instagram, so please check out his page! his art is absolutely amazing and he's done some of the best fan comics I've ever seen!
anywho- this story is insanely gory in parts, so if blood or mutilation makes you squeamish read with caution. this is heavily AU following the warehouse scene in Homecoming, so from there onward expect pretty extreme deviation. also... expect a lot of iron dad. cause there's never enough of that
TRIGGER WARNINGS: blood, gore, mutilation, amputation, torture, panic attacks, hospital settings, feeding tubes, and physical therapy
EDIT-i think thats all of them, and just to be safe i tacked on those last two
All Peter felt was absolute, agonising pain beyond his comprehension.
The tons of metal and concrete had crushed him to follow gravity, and the shock of the initial hit rendered Peter unconscious. He laid there without feeling anything for a good twelve minutes, but the moment his body woke up it was agony.
Peter's senses were overwhelmed, his eardrums ringing with a constant feedback static that made his brain feel like it was melting out of his ears. His still developing spider sense was no longer limited to a faint tingle on his neck but instead blossomed into a pounding ache that filled his every nerve and gave no relief to whatever pain the weight of the building inflicted. There was also a horribly metallic and gruesome taste in his mouth, like someone tried to make a casserole out of silverware (or maybe like Aunt May's meatloaf).
His lungs burned like he was breathing acid, causing Peter's breaths to come out in short, panicked gasps almost as if he were hyperventilating- which probably wasn't too far off, all things considered. Peter couldn't see anything, a fact he dwelled on as odd as he slowly regained consciousness and the pain fully registered in his mind.
A sudden panic overtook his sense of reason, his limbs moving in an instinctual attempt to move and shimmy away from the wreckage atop him. Peter's shifting caused the concrete to groan in protest, dust and pebbles of chipped rock flaking off around him.
He was trapped.
The metallic taste suddenly became overwhelming, causing Peter to splutter and lamely attempt to spit out the foreign flavor. When that failed, his chaotic mindset pushed him to take off his mask; to try and observe what was around him for a way out. His left arm obeyed, reaching weakly for his makeshift mask as his fingers fumbled to pull it off. For some reason, his right arm wouldn't respond.
Belatedly, Peter wondered if his dominant side were injured and the adrenaline coursing through his veins simply prevented the real hurt from being felt.
After what felt like hours, his fingers finally ripped his mask off with a final grunt of effort. The red material fell limply before him, falling loose from his fingers, but Peter paid it no mind, focusing entirely on what laid around him.
Nothing but grey and black surroundings, complemented by a strange contrast of heavy shadows and the faint light of the moon above that cast everything in a strange blue tone. There were puddles of water scattered around him, for whatever reason, and Peter scrambled for purchase on the broken concrete pieces sitting before him. Not that he needed to hold himself in place of course, but rather the fact that he was panicking and needed to grasp onto something.
"Oh my gosh," he breathed once he gulped down enough air. "Okay, okay, we ready?"
Peter winced, grunted, and cried out in barely contained suffering as he attempted to shift the debris off his body. He pushed up with his left arm, still without feeling in his right, and shakily tried to get any strength up to shift the rubble.
Nothing.
With a weak groan and frantic huff of breath, Peter collapsed under his own weight and tried to settle his breathing again. Every technique and tip he knew for controlling panic attacks ran through his head, along with everything he had learned back when he still had asthma and was left without an inhaler. Nothing seemed to work.
Peter's mouth elicited an unconscious cry of something, something registering the stabbing torment and frustration wracking his body as his battered mind searched for some way out. Nothing came to him, and, even if something did, it was unlikely his mind was really in any shape to accept it.
"Help!"
His voice was so hoarsely wrenched full of helplessness and hopelessness so akin to a child's, Peter almost didn't recognize it as his own. There was a twinge that reminded him of the inhuman wail he had elicited the night of Ben's death- as well as following the capture of his killer. It wasn't a comforting thought in the least.
"Heeeelp!"
Raw, unadulterated terror echoed through that single word.
"Pl-please, please. Please, I'm down here. I'm stuck." Vainly, Peter reached a hand out toward the figment of light still visible, pleading with a savior that wasn't coming. "I'm down here, I'm stuck. I'm stuck, I can't move; I can't-" Peter's arm dropped back down as his breath quickened yet again, nearly falling back onto panic once more.
Peter hissed, grimaced, and felt the previously unknown cuts on his face begin to burn as tears began to track down his cheeks. The salty water stung, but Peter didn't focus on the minute pain on his face and instead turned his attention to the stabbing trauma enveloping his body, searching for the source of his discomfort.
Then he remembered his right side.
Cautiously and dreadfully, Peter turned his head as far as possible to the right. A fairly large yellow metal joint lay between his shoulder and right arm, so Peter attempted to once again feel for his arm to see if any damage had wrecked it. Except when he went to flex his arm and fingers, there was nothing. It was the weirdest feeling Peter ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
He could feel his arm; he knew it was there; his mind was registering every one of his five fingers and recognizing the entire length of his arm, all the way down to the faint scar from when he fell as a kid and somehow cut open his forearm on the edge of May's desk.
And yet… nothing moved.
A swell of alarm pierced Peter as the realization filled his head with all the gentleness of ice. Frantic, he shimmied a little to the left to get a better eye on his right. Blindly, his left hand probed for his right shoulder and somehow managed to pull himself out far enough for his gaze to see the damage in the faint moonlight.
Peter felt like vomiting.
Where his right arm had once been attached previously, there was nothing. His arm had been clobbered off harshly at the shoulder, leaving nothing but a dripping, bloody mess in its stead. Bone and damaged muscle shown through the gaping carnage, hanging limply like the broken wing of a bird. The blood dribbled down the exposed bone in a smooth trail, leaking onto the grime covered ground below and splattering into the puddle of blood with a sick plorp.
Peter's psyche ground to a screeching halt, his brown eyes widening at the horrid sight. He wanted to vomit and scream and faint, not particularly in that order, but his body instead settled for tortured, gasping sobs that opened the dam for more tears.
"Oh god," Peter whimpered through the constant stream of tears and agony flushing his body. "It's gone. M-my arm…"
Peter gulped in a large breath of air, wrenching his gaze from the remains of his severed limb. May's gonna kill me, he thought in mild hysteria. His gaze swept around the debris. If I ever get out of here that is.
His head dropped down at the thought, a frown on his face at his own self-deprecation. Unconsciously, Peter's brown eyes landed on his discarded mask laying a few inches away in a puddle of water. The opaque white lens stared back at him poignantly from the murky water, Peter's own reflection shining back up at him in almost comic book fashion from the side of the mask below the puddle surface.
"If you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it."
Mr. Stark's sage claim rang bittersweetly through Peter's head, a catalyst that bottled up his grief and frustration into something greater.
Peter's lungs were still stinging, but despite that he tensed his body and steadied himself for another go at hefting the building rubble notwithstanding his dominant arm's… absence.
"Come on, Peter," he murmured with a shaky sigh, bracing himself for the torturous pain that was sure to follow. "Come on, Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-Man." Peter's voice wavered with anxiety and fatigue but he didn't falter as he slowly rose from the ground, ignoring the pang that emanated from his left leg. "Come on Spider-Man!" The last encouragement was a near shout as Peter strained and yelled incoherently with the weight of the concrete and metal riding solely on his back.
It was a major struggle, and Peter's left arm nearly gave out without the support of his dominant side, but he pushed on and was able to hold his body up, the weight above him groaning in protest. His remaining arm shook with the effort and strength he was exerting, his body finally rising to its full height. With a final strained yell, Peter supported the concrete beam and shoved it backwards off his injured person, finally able to make an impressive leap forward so that it wouldn't collapse back on him.
Peter landed on the ground about six feet away from his rock and metal prison, his breathing uneven and heavy with the last few dwindlings of adrenaline. He was laying on his back, facing the dark night sky above him, a harsh coughing attack overtaking his body as his lungs finally dispelled all the dirt and dust that had accumulated in them within the past twenty minutes.
A weight lifted off Peter's shoulders when the attack passed, and he was able to close his eyes and relax on the surprisingly comfortable rubble under him.
Then he remembered his arm.
Groaning, Peter sat up and braced himself on his left arm, scrunching up his nose as the smell of his own blood wafted over his senses. The pain still hadn't reached him, and the right side of his torso was still relatively numb, but Peter knew it probably wasn't going to last that way for much longer.
In a fit of desperation, he checked his remaining web shooter and breathed a sigh of relief when the familiar 'thwip' released a stream of web fluid. Hesitating only slightly, Peter sprayed a steady web cover over the stump (god, May is going to kill me- if infection doesn't get me first).
It stung at first, but Peter pushed through and tried to ignore the blossoming pink seeping through the white of the webbing. Steadying himself, he tried to rise to his feet only to stumble, nearly falling to the ground again. An arc of affliction ran through his left leg, a sensation that caused Peter to scream in agony and immediately opt to put his weight solely on his right leg.
After steadying his breathing for what felt like the tenth time within the past half hour, Peter finally worked up the nerve to look down at his leg only to feel his resolve crumble in response.
"Fuck."
His leg was an irrefutable mess of popped veins, cleaved muscle, and chalky bone. The tibia appeared nonexistent, the bone crushed so far beyond any discernible use that it seemed as if his left leg were a piece of cooked spaghetti. Protruding frontward from Peter's thigh, gleaming horrifically in the pale moonlight, was his femur. Disconnected from his kneecap, the bone had probably broken the moment the concrete had crushed his body; his lifting of the warehouse with an amputated arm probably hadn't aided the situation.
Peter groaned, a pained and helpless sound. Leaning heavily on his right leg, Peter felt incredibly unbalanced but took a steady step forward, his first step away from the warehouse. Without the use of his left leg, Peter was struggling to basically hop and drag his way through the rubble to the road ahead- to freedom.
After what felt like forever, the gravely injured teen finally stumbled out of the warehouse debris and made his way to the empty road the warehouse resided on. Glancing around, Peter couldn't tell if he was relieved or disheartened at the lack of cars and people on this side of town. Either way, Peter ignored the stinging pain lacing his useless leg and staggered over across the street.
By some miracle, he made his way to Flash's crashed Audi and saw his phone staring up at him from the passenger seat, just as cracked as before.
"Finally," Peter muttered, trying to ignore the black dots pulling at the edge of his vision. He shouldered his still working arm into the car and snatched his phone up before collapsing to the ground, leaning his head on the Audi's dented door.
Peter's fingers were numb, and he couldn't even register what he was typing, but somehow he managed to click on a contact and get a call through. The spider-webbed cracks blossoming on his phone coupled with his fading vision made Peter unable to make out the contact on the screen, but he held the phone up to his ear anyway.
He almost hoped it wasn't May.
The ringback tone rang in his ear as he waited for the person to pick up, silently willing for the universe to be on his side for the first time that night. Apparently it was because the tone cut off not a moment later, followed immediately by a frantic voice.
"Peter, oh my god, dude! Where are you? You've been missing for two hours now! May keeps calling and I don't know-"
Ned.
Peter let out a shaky breath of barely contained relief, a bittersweet smile spreading across his lips at the sound of his best friend's voice.
"Peter where are you? Are you okay?" Ned's voice was a frantic lifeline Peter clung to as he broke through the fog in his mind to focus.
"Hey Ned," Peter managed, voice a mere whisper. "I, uh, I kinda got a building dropped on me-"
"A building? Peter, what-"
"-might need you to call Happy," Peter continued, oblivious to Ned's concern roaring in his ears. "Tell him to reach Mr. Stark…" Peter's voice started to slur, and the blackness was almost completely overtaking his vision as he fought for consciousness against the pain. "Tell him…"
Peter's vision went black, and the only sound on the quiet street was Spider-Man's best friend shouting through his phone for answers that weren't coming.
"PETER!"
so yeah
sorry for putting spidey boi through more trauma but hey at least he wasnt hit by a train! small graces ig
also i have about four more chapters typed and ready? i have this published up to that point on ao3, and will slowly catch up to that point on here so expect monthly updates until the pre-typed chapters are through! thanks for reading guys, and please comment with any feedback you guys have!