“Thanos is dead,” said Mind.
“As will be Tony soon,” lamented Soul.
“Because of Peter,” said Space.
“Because of Peter,” all six infinity stones chorused in agreement.
As the stones watched Tony fighting for breath, his wife and surrogate son crouched over him, the new reality the stones had helped to create began to settle into place. New paths, new branches into the multiverse spread out before them, like the well-laid brickwork of a stone road through time and space. The stones began to hum with discontent, their dissatisfaction vibrating through the fabric of this new reality they had woven together.
“Tony did not save Peter,” Time spoke, voice hard.
“His intentions in killing Thanos were that Peter should not be erased,” said Power.
“For Peter,” the stones chorused again.
“We are responsible for weaving the wielder’s intentions together,” said Soul.
They hummed in agreement.
“This won’t do,” Reality said. “We’ve woven the strands together wrong.”
“And Tony will die for it,” said Space. “For Peter.”
The stones looked two months into the future, watching the events between Peter Parker and Mysterio unfold. Watching as Peter’s identity was revealed. Then they looked further, watching Peter ask for Stephen Strange’s help. Watching them rip open the fabric of reality itself into the multiverse. They watched as Stephen Strange told Peter there was only one way to fix this… Peter Parker had to be erased. Again. His memory erased from existence after Tony had given his life to ensure that Peter wouldn’t be erased by Thanos. Peter wasn’t dead, but to the world he was. He was dead and alone.
“We can fix this,” said Time, thinking about the ability to pull this Tony, the Tony that was about to take his last breath four months into the future.
“We can fix this,” said Space, thinking about his ability to pull Tony from the battlefield to Peter in the future.
“We can fix this,” said Power, Reality and Soul together, thinking about their ability to pull Tony’s soul from his dying body and send it to a new one that was a mere four months in the future.
“This is what Tony would want,” said Mind, still reading Tony’s last thoughts.
The stones agreed, and as Tony Stark took his final shuddering breath on the battlefield, his soul was ripped from his body and sent sprawling into the future.
* * *
Tony sucked in a deep painful breath, lungs fighting for air for what felt like the first time in a hundred years.
“What the fuck,” he breathed, mind still ringing with a conversation full of voices that weren’t his own. His hands shook as he doubled over and put them on his knees, trying to hold himself up, breaths heavy and gasping. What the fuck just happened? I couldn’t breathe… I was fucking dead.
His eyes slowly came up to take in his surroundings. He was in Stark Tower in his lab… the one he rarely used anymore because he had a new lab in the basement of the cabin he’d spent the last five years in with his family.
Equipment was covered in white sheets, keeping the dust away, and the lights were off.
“FR- FRIDAY?” he asked, voice shaking.
The lights above him flickered to life. “You appear to have come back from the dead boss.”
“Excuse me?”
A blue holo came up in front of him over a workbench. There was a death certificate and a photo of his casket. Pepper and Morgan were visible in the background. Their faces were blurred, because the focus of the photo had been set on the casket, but Pepper looked miserable.
“Four months, three days, and seventeen hours ago, you died.”
“I-” he shook his head. He had died. He knew that he had. He remembered taking his last breath just a few minutes ago. He couldn’t remember a funeral though, or being placed in a casket, though he wouldn’t.
“Tony did not save Peter.”
“We can fix this.” “We can fix this.” “We can fix this.”
Tony stood up straight, jumbled memory of a conversation he hadn’t understood as he lay dying on the battlefield flooding back over his consciousness again. He hadn’t saved Peter? What did that mean? Had Peter died on the battlefield? Who had the voices belonged to, and how could he fix this?
“FRIDAY, what happened to Peter Parker?”
“Would you like me to do a records search for Peter Parker? What other details should I add to the search?”
“What other details do you need? This is Peter we’re talking about.”
“There is a Peter Stow in accounting, a Peter Hoffsworth in legal, a Peter Smith in janitorial, a Peter-”
“Stop,” Tony ground out. “Peter Parker, my personal intern from five years ago.”
“There is no record of you ever having a personal intern, nor of a Peter Parker in association with you or Stark Industries.”
Tony huffed a breath. “I’ve only been gone four months and you let someone mess with your system FRI?”
“Running a self-diagnostic.”
Tony ran a hand through his hair, (his left), and then paused to stare down at it. His left arm had been charred beyond recognition from snapping Thanos out of existence, yet here it was, whole and unharmed. There wasn’t even a bruise or a scratch.
“Because of Peter,” a unified voice came back into his consciousness.
Yeah, Tony was here because of Peter. He understood that much. The question was why. He had died, but he hadn’t saved Peter, and something about that had upset the voices that didn’t belong to him. Maybe Tony was just going fucking crazy.
“FRIDAY, are you sure I was dead?”
“Affirmative boss.”
“Do you know how I got here?”
She pulled up a security video from almost ten minutes before on the blue holo display and Tony watched himself pop into existence with a flash of bright light, screaming and huffing for breath. He hadn’t remembered screaming. He cursed in the video and hunched over shaking. The cursing he remembered.
Tony pulled a sheet off of his workbench and found his keyboard. He started typing, working his way into his personal database and looking for all the files he had on Peter. He’d had files with all the projects the kid had worked on so he could send them off with a letter of recommendation to MIT. He had a file full of photos of the two of them working and training together, files on Spider Man’s suit. The only problem was, he couldn’t find the files about Peter. There were the files about Spider Man’s suit, but no files about Peter.
“FRIDAY, look up May Parker.”
“May Parker, deceased.”
Tony’s breath caught in his throat. “What? When?!”
“Five days ago.”
“Kid…” Tony clenched his eyes shut. Peter had to be hurting right now. “FRIDAY, look up the whereabouts of Spider Man.”
“Spider Man was last recorded at the Statue of Liberty five days ago with Doctor Strange and several other Spider Man like individuals.”
“Ok, that’s a start. New premise: FRIDAY, Spider Man’s name is Peter Parker. He was my personal intern five years ago before the blip. Now for some reason, you have no record of him. That means someone has tampered with your program or memory in some way. All of the files in my personal database regarding Peter are also missing.”
FRIDAY hummed to acknowledge the new parameters that had been set.
“Pull up all the information you have on Spider Man for the last four months.”
Tony pulled a sheet off another workbench and then started rummaging around in several drawers, looking for a phone. He found one, an old prototype, and said, “Set up this phone with the latest phone numbers for Happy, Pepper, Rhodey, and Spider Man if you have it.”
“The numbers have been added, though there was no known number for Spider Man.”
“All right FRI, show me the videos from a few days ago from the Statue of Liberty.”
* * *
Peter was numb. He had been for days, living at first on the street in an alley, and then in a homeless shelter because he had nowhere else to go. Just days before he would have been able to go to Happy for help… to Miss Potts, or Rhodey… to May. May. He swiped furiously at his eyes. He didn’t have time to cry. He was 16, not a baby. He was alone now, and he had to take care of himself! Too many people had died for him… because of him. Ben, Mr. Stark, May… he couldn’t just lay down and close his eyes and not wake up, because they had thought his life meant something… that it was worth saving.
He choked back the sobs that wanted to rip through him and escape. He’d cried for days after Mr. Stark’s funeral. May had held him, and when she wasn’t there, he and Pepper were holding each other, crying together. He didn’t have them to prop him up and keep him from falling apart now. He’d have to do it himself. This had been his choice. I chose this. No one else chose for me. Even Dead I’m The Hero. Mr. Stark would want it this way. Well, he might not want Peter to be miserable, but Mr. Stark had given his life to save the planet just four months ago, and then Peter had gone and messed it all up. Peter had to give his life to save the world too. Mr. Stark would have wanted that. He would have wanted Morgan and Miss Potts and Rhodey and Happy to be safe. He’d want them to be alive.
Even Dead I’m The Hero. There had to be a reason Mr. Stark had named the smart glasses that, and a reason he’d willed the glasses to go to Peter in the event of his death. Because he knew I’d mess shit up, Peter thought angrily. I always mess things up. So Peter had sacrificed, because that’s what heroes did. That’s what Mr. Stark had done. Peter wondered how many sacrifices had been made like this before he and Mr. Stark had shown up. How many heroes had come before and died without anyone knowing just so the world could be safe? Maybe an infinite number. Maybe just him and Mr. Stark.
Peter laid on his back on the uncomfortable cot in the homeless shelter, arm over his eyes trying to block out the lights. It would be lights out in half an hour. This was his reality now. He wouldn’t be able to finish school and go to college. He probably wouldn’t even be able to get a job because there were no records of him ever having existed. There weren’t even any photos of him. It was all gone, just like Peter’s family and friends. Just like May and Mr. Stark.
The tears came despite that Peter tried to stop them. He heaved a shuddering breath, chest vibrating with the unfairness of it all. I’m Spider Man. I can do this. Peter’s dead, but I can still be Spider Man. The only problem was Spider Man didn’t get paid to do his job, and Peter had no idea how he was going to eat and where he was going to live. He wished he had someone who could just tell him what to do. May would know. She always knew what to do.
Anxiety and an overwhelming desire to flee, though he had no one and nowhere to flee to weighed him down. His breaths started coming in gasps. He’d spent the last few days failing to ward off panic attacks, and knew there was no way he could stop this one so he didn’t try.
His senses were just starting to go into overload when there was some sort of commotion at the intake desk near the door. Most of the homeless people he encountered who slept here just wanted to be left alone, but in the few days he’d been here, he knew fights were common.
Peter lifted his head and looked towards the intake desk, and he saw two employees arguing with a man wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie.
“I’m looking for my kid,” the man said, and Peter’s veins were suddenly filled with ice. He knew that voice. He also knew that the person that voice belonged to was dead and couldn’t actually be here. He was finally losing his shit. The stress and anxiety of the past four months had finally taken their toll
“You can’t just come in here sir.”
“Wanna bet?”
The man pulled his cap off and the two men seemed to be at a loss for words just like Peter was. That really looked like Tony Stark.
“Your- your kid Mr. uh… Mr. Stark?”
“Peter Parker.”
One of the employees picked up the clipboard and began rifling through the papers on it, looking for the name Parker on the sign-in sheet of those checked into the shelter for the night. “There’s- there’s no one here by that name.”
“Well he’s here. There’s security footage of him coming in earlier.” Tony turned then, eyes scanning the room. Peter’s heart was beating so hard, it felt like it was going to break right out his chest and spill out onto his lap. Then it felt like time stopped, sound stopped, everything just stopped as Tony’s gaze found Peter, propping himself up on the cot under the thin brown blanket.
“Found him,” Tony said quietly to the two employees, and he strode forward, winding his way through cots full of sleeping people who could care less that Tony Stark was alive and currently staring at Peter as he crossed the large open room.
Peter couldn’t find words to say as Tony came over to him and knelt down next to his cot. Tony searched Peter’s face, taking in the still healing cuts and bruises from his fight at the Statue of Liberty, the dark smudges under his eyes, and the haunted look. He didn’t give Peter a chance to come up with anything to say. Instead he pulled Peter into a hug and didn’t let go despite that Peter’s arms hung limply at his sides.
“I don’t know what happened Underoos, but we can fix this.”
“We can fix this.” “We can fix this.” “We can fix this.”
Peter choked, staring past Tony’s shoulder. Whoever this was smelled like Tony. But it couldn’t be him. “Are you- what are you-”
“It’s me. I don’t know how I’m here but-”
“Because of Peter.” “For Peter.” “We can fix this.”
“I’m pretty sure I was sent back for you.”
“For me?” Peter’s voice squeaked.
“Whatever it takes kid. I promised I’d get you back and keep you safe, whatever it takes.”
There was a steady, satisfied hum of agreement and contentment in the back of Tony’s mind that belonged to the voices that weren’t his own. Tony understood then, though he didn’t know when he’d decided this, that the voices belonged to the infinity stones.
“Tony did not save Peter.” “His intentions in killing Thanos were that Peter should be saved.” “We are responsible for weaving the wielder’s intentions together.” “This won’t do.”
“We can fix this.” “We can fix this.” “We can fix this.”
Finally Peter reached up and gripped Tony hard, hands clenched in the back of his sweatshirt. He buried his face in Tony’s neck and gave a sob, shaking. Neither of them noticed that both employees had their phones out and were recording.
“C’mon. We’re going home.”
“I don’t- Mr. Stark, I don’t have a home to go to anymore.”
“Home Is wherever I’m at Pete.”
Tony pulled the thin blanket off of Peter’s legs, and didn’t mind that the distraught teenager was still clutching him as he slid off the cot. He picked up Peter’s backpack from under the cot and they headed for the door, the two night shift employees of the homeless shelter tracking the pair with their cell phone cameras as they went. By morning there would be headlines in all the major newspapers that read, ‘TONY STARK ALIVE? SECRET LOVE CHILD FOUND?’ and, ‘WHO IS PETER PARKER AND WHAT IS HIS RELATIONSHIP TO TONY STARK?’
The world had forgotten Peter, but they were about to get reacquainted again.