“It’s Sirius, right?”
Tony stepped off the elevator, sore, bloody, and not feeling much like a winner.
“Oh thank God!”
Before Tony could even make it past the entrance room of his place, he was attacked by a small and hard body that slammed in him with enough force to knock Tony in the wall.
Tony looked down and saw Harry’s hair - Harry’s really greasy and tangled hair - while his son clung to him like he thought Tony wouldn’t have returned. In the living room, he saw Pepper and Rhodey with stricken expressions.
Pepper bit her lip, Rhodey raised his brows, and Tony shook his head.
They won, but they lost too.
“You’re fine?” Harry pulled back and looked at Tony carefully. His eyes, so filled with joy, dimmed some when he saw the drawn expression on Tony’s face.
“Who…?”
“Come on,” Tony said, wrapping his arm around Harry’s shoulders and turning him back toward the elevators. “The others- they’re in Bruce’s lab.”
“It’s Sirius,” Harry said flatly, his entire body shrinking in Tony’s side. “Right?”
Tony inhaled and his breath was shaky on the exhale. “Right.”
It was Sirius and it was Wanda and it was Pietro.
And it was Tony’s kid with the shaking shoulders preparing himself for the worst.
“Tony—”
“We’ll be back and I’ll fill you in,” Tony told Rhodey wearily over his shoulder.
God, it was like the weekend that had never ended. Tony couldn’t even remember the last time he slept and at the rate things were going, he wouldn’t be able to sleep anytime soon.
“Is he dead?” Harry asked dully while they rode down to Bruce’s floor.
“No,” Tony said. He couldn’t lie to him though. “But if we don’t get someone to fix him quick, he will be.”
Harry’s head snapped up and Tony saw a spark in them. “A doctor or a wizard?”
“Wizard, preferably,” Tony said. He ran his free hand through his hair, pulling on it while he tried to think. “I called Strange on the flight, but he said he doesn’t do that kind of magic and I couldn’t get ahold of Quahog. I could try—”
“Shut the hell up,” Harry snapped. “Give me your phone, quick. HURRY!”
Tony grabbed his phone and gave it to him, unwilling to fight with the kid whose godfather was dying on a bed because Tony wasn’t quick enough to save him.
Harry worked quickly with a single-minded focus, unlocking Tony’s phone and pulling up the contact list.
“You snoop on me all the time and you didn’t save Hermione’s number?” Harry muttered, scrolling through the hundreds of contacts Tony had.
Tony coughed quietly. “Bushy Haired Girl.”
Any other time that would have earned Tony a snarky comment or a quiet snicker, but it didn’t get a reaction at all aside from Harry scrolling from the H’s to the B’s.
“Pick up, pick up,” Harry murmured when they stepped off the elevator and Tony led him toward the makeshift hospital they had in Bruce’s lab.
“Pick up, pick— Hermione! Listen, quick, you have to send someone,” Harry said, talking frantically while he skid to a stop outside the door and the blood drained from his face.
“It’s- it’s Sirius, okay? He’s hurt and… and he might be dying,” Harry said, his voice quivering. Tony grasped his shoulder tightly, guilt eating him alive.
He should have done more, been better, been faster.
He wanted to protect the world for his kid and in his unforgivable arrogance, his kid was going to lose the world if Sirius died.
And Tony had a team of doctors in that room - the best damn surgeons he could get to beat the team on arrival - but medicine could only do so much.
“I don’t care if it’s fucking Snape, Hermione!” Harry screamed shrilly. “Go, run! Find someone, anyone, and send them to Stark Tower with potions and shit. RUN!”
Tony waited silently when Harry hung up on his friend and he trembled under Tony’s hold.
“Hermione’s going to send someone,” Harry said like a prayer. “She’s going to send someone.”
“JARVIS, if anyone shows up, send them here,” Tony said. He got confirmation from JARVIS and then waited for Harry to stop shaking with silent sobs to give him a little nudge.
“You ready?” Tony asked Harry gently, nodding his head to the lab door.
“No.”
“Okay, let’s wait,” Tony said. He pulled Harry to his side and held him close. “Your hair stinks,” Tony murmured after burying his nose in Harry’s sweaty and greasy hair.
“Sirius was the one who got shot?” Harry asked quietly. “Is anyone- anyone else… is anyone else hurt?”
“Pietro’s in bad shape, he took a bullet to protect Clint, and… Sirius, he… he was flying and he got hit by a spray of bullets from behind.”
Tony was so selfishly glad that he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t had to watch Sirius fall from the sky and spray the ground in blood. Nat had caught him, took him straight to the jet, and her choice to try and keep Sirius alive took her out of the play.
“Wanda’s gone,” Tony said bluntly, trying to push through the guilt. He hadn’t liked Wanda, he didn’t trust her, and when she went running for Pietro- Tony let her go.
Tony let her go.
Tony took his team on a fucking suicide mission and…
And Wanda was twenty-one.
Pietro was twenty-one.
Sirius was thirty-five and just got a life back.
And Tony led them all to their death because he hadn’t been good enough, fast enough, once again.
“I’m ready.”
Tony looked over at Harry and measured him up. Harry’s eyes were worryingly dry and he was pale, too pale, but he had Tony’s stubborn set to his jaw and a well of misery lurking in the back of his eyes, just waiting to swallow the kid whole.
“No shame in waiting until magical backup arrives,” Tony said.
Harry rolled his neck and shook off Tony’s arm. “Yeah, there is.”
As much of a fuckup as Tony was, he’d clearly given good genes to Harry because Tony wouldn’t have been able to walk through that door like Harry did.
Pietro was back on his feet, standing beside Wanda’s body on one side of the room, looking like a lost little boy when he stared down at his sister.
Clint stood beside him, his hand on Pietro’s back, staying steady and solemn while Pietro looked ready to collapse.
Nat, Bruce, and Steve were clustered in the back, speaking quietly with the surgeons that weren’t even touching the bullet ridden body on the other bed in the room.
Harry gravitated to that body, shivering every step, but still soldiering on.
“Tony, he can’t—”
“My kid, my rules,” Tony told Steve, holding his hand up when Steve moved toward Harry. “Back up, Steve, I’m not fighting you.”
Because Tony was so exhausted, exhausted clear to his soul, that he’d just as soon shove Steve out the window and not wait around to see if he stuck the landing.
Harry pulled the sheet off Sirius, exposing his destroyed torso and the wires and tubes hooked up to him, and the kid hit his knees and let out a keening high-pitched cry that Tony would never forget.
Tony stood there just as they all did and watched while Harry cried and the monitors beeped on, showing Sirius’ poor prognosis.
It was the single most heartbreaking thing Tony had ever seen.
“I was so jealous,” Tony breathed to himself, watching as his son’s heart was ripped in half. “I was jealous that Harry loved him.”
Tony thought the more Harry loved Sirius the less love he’d have for Tony because that was how everything worked in Tony’s world.
Everything had a number, a measurable unit.
And Tony had wanted to take Harry’s units of love away from Sirius for himself. If Sirius died though, Harry’s units of love would just be gone. They’d be gone with Sirius, never to return.
“Mister Stark, Albus Dumbledore and Remus Lupin are here.”
“You called the wizard?” Clint demanded loudly. “Tony, we can’t trust—”
“Send him here, quick,” Tony said, ignoring Clint’s protests. Gandalf could bring the pink witch herself if it meant they could save Sirius. Tony went to grab Harry, move him away. “Harry, kid, come on. It’s time to move, let Gandalf do some voodoo.”
“I can’t leave him,” Harry sobbed, clenching hard to Sirius’ limp arm. “Siri- Siri, please, please.”
The door opened and Tony couldn’t even look to see Dumbledore stride through the room with the a grim-faced Remus following his steps.
“Harry, come on,” Remus tried to grab Harry and Tony shouldered him away.
“Don’t touch my son, I’ll get him.” Tony grabbed Harry around the chest and began pulling him away while Harry screamed and reached out for Sirius. “Fucking fix him, do you understand? Fix him.”
“I’ll carry him,” Steve said, rushing to Tony’s side when Harry was fighting him tooth and nail to get back to Sirius. Steve bent down and picked up the thrashing and sobbing teenager like it was nothing and looked gravely at Tony. “We could sedate him until it’s over.”
Tony looked at the horrible pain his kid was in, the way Harry didn’t even look like he was with them then, his eyes locked on Sirius and his head who knew where.
“SIRIUS! PADFOOT, PLEASE!”
“Do it,” Tony said, his chest aching in tangent to Harry’s screams.
Bruce jumped forward immediately, a syringe ready to go that he stuck in Harry’s shoulder without hesitation. It took half a minute for Harry to begin calming down, his shouts becoming hoarse whispers for Sirius, and Harry then looked for Tony and reached out to him.
“Don’t let him die,” Harry said when Tony grasped his hand. Harry was focused solely on Tony. “Don’t let him die, Dad, please.”
“I won’t,” Tony said. He looked at Steve when Harry’s lashes began fluttering. “Go lay him on a bed,” he ordered him.
Tony prayed to every god he could think of, the ones he didn’t even believe in, that he hadn’t just lied to his son.
“What happened?” Remus asked when Tony moved to watch Gandalf as he worked feverishly on Sirius. The wires and IV cords and the intubation tube disappeared with a wave of Gandalf’s wand and the blood was gone with another flick, leaving Sirius’ torso to show the extent of the damage from what Tony could quickly count was eleven exit wounds from bullets.
God, he looked like Swiss cheese.
“Black took a back of bullets and then fell eighty-five feet from the air, landing on a car and splitting his skull,” Nat said, answering for Tony when he was incapable of doing it.
She, graciously, left out how it was entirely Tony’s fault.
“Dittany, Remus,” Albus said calmly, continuing to wave his wand around in an elegant twirl. Remus pulled a large glass bottle of a thick amber liquid from his cardigan pocket and handed it quickly to Albus.
“What’s that do?” Bruce asked, drifting closer to watch with calculating eyes.
“It is a powerful curative potion that assists in healing,” Albus said as he liberally poured it across Sirius’ chest and used his wand to spread the liquid around without touching him. They all watched as Sirius’ skin began regenerating, stretching and struggling to repair itself.
“Is he in pain?” Bruce asked. His forehead was creased and Tony knew he was thinking of the people he hadn’t saved, the ones that the Hulk might have actually injured.
God knew that Tony wasn’t going to forget the bodies that littered the ground when they left. Men, women, children, infants… they all just woke up one day and had to deal with the consequences of Tony’s brilliance.
“Excruciating, I would say,” Albus murmured. “We like to believe we are so different and yet we all design weapons meant to maim and injure and kill our fellow man.”
Nat raised her eyes where she stood on the other side of Sirius’ bed and tilted her head to the side. ‘Is he serious?’ she mouthed to Tony.
Gandalf could stand there and act as wise and brilliant as he wanted to be and Tony would let him as long as he worked on Sirius.
Tony looked around for Harry and saw Steve had him laying on a bed while he had a protective hand on Harry’s sleeping shoulder.
Pietro still stared at Wanda and Tony looked away before he had to see that flaming red hair haloing around a cold and lifeless face.
“So you’re healing the skin and the organs or are you just covering the organ damage with skin?” Bruce pressed. “Because Doctor Chow was worried about the kidney damage…”
Albus looked up and have Bruce a patient and condescending smile. “I do not doubt that your healers have done as much as they can, I’m fortunate to have magic that follows different laws.”
“I don’t understand…” Remus turned to Tony and Tony saw a lifetime of grief in his eyes. “Who shot Sirius? Where was he flying? Why is he even here?”
“You two don’t keep in touch?” Tony asked, surprised. He kept a watch on Albus from the corner of his eye, his mind only partially on his conversation with Remus.
“I haven’t heard from him in weeks,” Remus said. “I assumed, hoped, he was here with Harry. But then Albus tells me that Hermione Granger told him Sirius was hurt- was dying? So I’m asking you, Tony, what the hell is going on here?”
“It’s my fault,” Tony said tightly, speaking to Remus and watching Sirius. “We got his name cleared here. He was free.”
“And that somehow got him shot?!” Remus snarled.
“Back off,” Nat said, at Tony’s side in an instant. “Black joined us on a mission, he was fucking around and he got shot. That’s the risks.”
“Remus, assist me, please,” Albus called calmly from Sirius’ bedside. “Do you have the blood-replenisher?”
“Yes, yes, sorry,” Remus said, frazzled when he turned around. He dug another bottle from his pocket, a dark red one, and unstoppered it. “Shall I spell it in him?”
“Quickly, yes,” Albus murmured. “Mister Stark, how is your son?”
Tony turned and looked to see that Harry was still sleeping off the sedative, dark bags under his eyes evident from across the room.
“Not so great right now,” Tony said, none of his usual vigor in his tone.
“Can you wake him?”
“Let him sleep,” Steve called to them. He still had his hand on Harry’s shoulder and Tony could only be grateful in that moment. Tony couldn’t touch his son until he knew he hadn’t gotten Sirius killed.
“He’ll want to know that Sirius will make a full recovery,” Albus said, straightening up and pulling a blanket from thin air to cover Sirius’ body with. He smiled at Tony, as if Tony had done anything recently to earn a smile. “I’m glad that Miss Granger was able to get the message, I’m not sure that Sirius would have survived without magical intervention.”
“He’s- he’s fine?” Tony took a quick step toward Sirius and staggered before Nat grabbed his elbow and kept him from falling on his face.
Sirius’ face had some color again, he could have been sleeping when Tony looked at him wondrously.
“We’ve given him a Dreamless Sleep to ensure his body has adequate rest to recuperate, but when he wakes, he should be fine,” Albus said. He patted Tony kindly on the shoulder for an instant. “Sirius is a strong man and he loves your son, I’m glad you were able to do for him what I was unable to.”
“Get him shot?” Tony scoffed. “I’m sure you could have if you tried a little harder.” He reached out and gently touched the side of Sirius’ neck; it was as if a thousand pounds of steel lifted off Tony’s shoulders when he felt Sirius’ carotid artery beating steady beneath his finger.
“You really cleared his name?” Remus asked, crowding Tony on his other side. His eyes sharpened when he saw the liberties Tony took with touching Sirius’ face, but Tony couldn’t worry about his petty jealousy when Tony needed Sirius to live so Harry didn’t die.
“Apparently President Quahog is moderately more intelligent than your Prime Minister. This is the land of the free,” Tony said. “Albus, I… I can’t thank you enough.”
“It is of no consequence, Mister Stark,” Albus assured him. “I should thank you, truly. I’ve been recently exposed to a delightful read that Mister Creevey gave me to educate me on what ‘Gandalf’ was meant to mean.”
Albus smiled at Tony with a twinkle in his blue eyes and Tony just sighed and offered him a tired hand.
“For a meddling old man who clearly doesn’t run background checks at his school, you’re not the worst person I’ve ever met,” Tony said, a truce and an apology in one.
“I hope we can meet soon and discuss our mutual problem,” Albus said amicably as he shook Tony’s hand. “If it is acceptable to you, I do need to return to the school. Remus is quite willing to stay until Sirius wakes to ensure there are no lingering pains.”
“Yeah, of course, thank you,” Tony said again. His eyes flicked to where Harry was and there was something so horribly vulnerable the way Harry slept curled up on his side, his face slack with tear streaks down his cheeks.
“Seriously,” Tony looked Albus dead in the eyes, “thank you. Harry- he… we…”
“I understand,” Albus smiled. “I’m pleased that Sirius has a family once again.”
“A family that got him shot,” Remus muttered under his breath when he pulled a folding chair up to sit by the head of Sirius’ bed.
“That’s pretty par for the course around here,” Bruce said with a quiet and relieved chuckle.
“Wait! Do not leave!” Pietro blocked the door with his entire body, staring at Albus like a man staring at his last lifeline. “My- my sister, please, can you help her?”
At once, the relief Tony felt changed to crushing guilt. Everyone looked at Pietro, hearing the desperation in his voice and the wild look in his eyes.
Tony did that.
Tony broke that kid by killing his sister.
Albus went to stand beside where Wanda laid with her hands folded on her chest and he touched the crown of her head softly.
“Dear boy, I’m sorry.” Albus looked to Pietro with genuine remorse pooling in his eyes. “There is no spell in the world that can bring back the dead.”
“Try,” Pietro insisted, still blocking the door. “Get your magic wand out and try.”
“She’s gone,” Albus said gently. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“GET YOUR WAND OUT AND TRY!” Pietro’s voice broke and everyone felt it echo in their own chests. “You haven’t even tried! TRY!”
“I have to go update Rhodey,” Tony said to no one in particular. He was suffocating in that room that was so filled with Pietro’s grief there wasn’t space for oxygen.
Pietro stepped aside for Tony and Tony fled the room like the coward that he was.
“You did the best you could, Tony,” Rhodey said after Tony finished filling him in back in his office. Rhodey poured Tony a drink and Tony shook his head, waving it away.
“The best I could do got someone killed, Rhodes. It could have been three people. Hell, I could have gotten them all killed!”
“But you didn’t,” Rhodey insisted. “It’s terrible what happened to Wanda, but it wasn’t on you, Tony.”
“Yeah?” Tony grabbed a mug off his bookcase, a stupid mug someone gave him once that said ‘World’s Best Boss’ and he turned at threw it at the door, shattering it.
“It feels like it,” Tony said in a harsh tone. “It damn well feels like I got that girl killed today. Hundreds of people killed.”
“And you saved thousands- no, millions of lives,” Rhodey told him calmly, sipping Tony’s stolen scotch. “You’re a hero, Tony, and it sucks.” Rhodey lifted his glass to Tony in a mocking toast. “Congrats.”
“I’m going to quit,” Tony said. “I’m quitting. I’m retiring the suit and calling it quits.”
“You do that.”
“I will,” Tony said determinedly. “As soon as I find Darth Vader and Harry’s safe and—”
“And until the next big bad thing shows up,” Rhodey said. “Then it’ll just be ‘one more thing’ until the next one dead from a mission is you, and I don’t think Harry can handle it.”
“What?” Tony scrunched his face up and focused on Rhodey. “What happened this weekend?”
Rhodey chuckled and held his hand up, ticking things off his fingers as he went. “Your kid’s allergic to shellfish, we found that out at dinner with the Obamas where he wore a trashy band shirt too.”
Tony grinned for the first time in days and went ahead and snatched Rhodey’s glass, taking a sip.
“Then he stole the remote from me like a little ninja shithead and refused to stop watching the news the instant they began reporting on you guys.”
Tony took a larger drink, closing his eyes in more guilt.
“Let’s see… oh, he threw his phone at my TV when the footage was cut off, you owe me an 80” plasma.”
Which explained why Harry didn’t have his own phone to call his friend.
“Then he started running until he made himself sick, he punched a tree and broke his knuckles—”
“Damn it, Rhodey, why didn’t you tell me his knuckles were broken?” Tony scowled. “JARVIS, tell Mopey McGhee to fix Harry’s knuckles.”
“Would that be Remus Lupin, sir?” JARVIS asked smoothly.
“Obviously,” Tony drawled with a roll of his eyes. “Rhodey, what else?”
“Then when I fell asleep your dumbass kid decided he was going to fly his broomstick to Sokavia to help you and set off my security system.”
Tony finished off the scotch and scrubbed his face with both hands. “Of course he did,” he mumbled. “Of course.”
“Then we came here and the kid sat like a statue until you came home. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t shower… the best we got was him taking his medicine and that’s only because Pepper guilt tripped the hell out of him.”
“He’s half in love with her and half terrified,” Tony said. He yawned and slapped his cheeks lightly, trying to wake up some. “I should—”
“You should go get some rest.” Rhodey put a hand on Tony’s shoulder and gave him one of his little ‘I’m not just your buddy I’m also your only friend’ smiles. “You did good, Tony. You did your best. Go grab a cot by your kid so you’re with him when he wakes up.”
“Who said you were just a pretty face?” Tony asked Rhodey with a forced grin. “Thank you for keeping him alive.”
“He didn’t make it easy on me,” Rhodey laughed. “It was mussels, Tony, he started swelling up in the middle of dinner and then thought Barrack had tried to poison him.”
Tony shook his head and chuckled to himself on his way back up to their makeshift hospital.
It was both terrifying and adorable that Harry tried to ride a broomstick to come help his old man in a fight.
But that was exactly why Tony couldn’t keep fighting.