every me, every you

Peter — this Peter — is ten.

Tony’s expertise when it comes to children and anything to do with them is non-existent so he has to trust the information on the file Pepper hastily threw together. It seems pretty much the same, except for the later birth year. Queens, parents died when he was two, raised by Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Good grades, robotics club, regular competitor at local science fairs. It’s Peter. He just so happened to have been born later, in this universe. Tony has a feeling it will not be the strangest detail he’s going to run into.

Peter looks small, fragile in a way that tugs at Tony's heart, but his eyes are smart.

In the midst of unfolding chaos, he looks both too young to understand what’s going on and strangely, unnervingly mature. Just like—

God.

It all happened very fast.

***

“I think we got this,” Peter is saying in the comms, cheerful.

“You think? We definitely got this, sweetheart,” comes Other Tony’s voice in the background. Hearing his own self from another universe flirt with Peter is infuriating on a whole new level. But Tony will deal with it in a minute.

“Alright, I’ll drop baby-you where it’s safer and be right back,” Tony grits his teeth. He’s flying carefully low to the ground through the park areas surrounding the Expo, both to not freak the kid out too much and to avoid being seen. They already made a way bigger appearance than planned, which is annoying but… not the end of the world. Other Tony will have some explaining to do, but he’ll figure it out. That’s what he gets for romancing his other universe’s self’s boyfriend right in front of his other universe’s self. Bastard.

The whole place turned out to be filled to the brim with self-destruction systems that started going off as soon as Tony and Peter got here. That didn’t happen in other worlds — their previous missions were frankly kind of boring, as far as interdimensional travel goes. Get in, click a few buttons (a quite elaborate sequence of buttons that also needs to be customized on the spot, but, you know, easy) and get out. They didn't even need to interact with the world further than the gate’s control panel and its immediate surroundings. The fact that the place of choice to launch a possible multiverse takeover is the grounds of what’s definitely a Stark Expo speaks volumes of the mental state Tony’s self-proclaimed enemies usually exhibit. Disheartening, really.

Of course, explosions going off all around the Expo territories filled with innocent people — a huge hiccup to what should’ve been a nice and uneventful last step to their enormously crucial multiverse-saving mission. They had to split up, something Tony loathes the very concept of. But they had to. Someone had to stay and handle the system part and someone had to look for clues outside and help people. Tony went outside, to make it quicker. Peter stayed in the control room…

…where this world’s very own Tony showed up a few minutes later offering pet-names directed at Peter that Tony did not appreciate and assistance that Tony begrudgingly did appreciate. And here they are now.

Tony is almost at the edge of the trees, planning to drop the kid off close enough to a whole battalion of police and ambulance cars gathered around the territory. Iron Man doesn’t exist here, so Tony tries to be mindful to stay out of sight. Other Tony didn’t give the specifics but he didn’t seem phased by the concept either, from what Tony could tell listening to his and Peter’s interaction through the comms. Tony himself was busy scanning the buildings for the detonation devices so there wasn’t much time to be getting curious. Iron Man or not, from Peter’s — and KAREN’s, and FRIDAY’s — rushed evaluation Other Tony was deemed capable to assist so they moved on to the business at hand.

Of course, staying out of sight is a lost cause considering there’s a whole bright-eyed human who’s about to tell the world he was delivered to safety by a shiny robot-looking creature, but. Well, Tony wasn’t about to leave baby-Peter where he was — alone five feet away from the building with an active explosive core ready to go off at any moment. FRIDAY identified him automatically, despite the age difference.

“Wait, I’m a kid? Huh. Interesting,” Peter had mused in the comms. “Other Tony looks the same age? I mean, ugh, unless he’s… not aging well—”

“I’m thirty-five and aging extremely well, thank you, Peter Pan, your services aren’t required… Also, can we come up with something better than Other Tony, I’m not a fan of the hierarchy implications here—”

Yeah, same age. It is interesting. But not that interesting in the grand scheme of how different parallel universes can be. They had only started exploring the multiverse’s laws and regulations. It’s a shame they have to shut it down.

But better safe than sorry. A lesson well learned, by now.

(Not well enough, apparently, considering Tony still couldn’t abstain from creating the tech capable of ripping apart the multiverse if it gets into the wrong hands. Which it did. But he at least had a clean-up plan ready to go, this time, alright? He’s learning.)

Tony paused only long enough to scan if any of baby-Peter’s caregivers were around — they weren’t. In fact, the immediate surroundings were already evacuated and thankfully empty. So picking the kid up and getting him safe wasn’t really a debate on Tony’s part, however compromising it might be to whatever Other Tony’s thing is with not being Iron Man.

The flight is only a few minutes, Tony should be back at the main building where the portal is located in no time. FRIDAY and Peter are both giving him updates, the neutralizing code they hastily threw together with Other Tony’s help is running, the gate shutdown protocol is loading, it’s all gonna be done and peachy in under an hour. Easy breezy.

It’s the last portal. Once they deal with that one and get back, the tech will self-destruct and FRIDAY will wipe any and all data of it ever existing. Tony made sure it’s irreversible and can’t be overruled, not by him, not by anyone else, even Peter. It was a hard decision to make, but the risk clearly outweighed Tony’s emotions on the matter, which he realized even without everyone making it their life goal to point out how bad “multiverse invasion” sounds. Fury — who Tony blissfully hadn’t seen in years — showing up on his doorstep at 4am, two hours after they got the first signs of unauthorized portals popping up, was a nice indicator of how serious this was. Not that Tony needed any indicator beyond the sheer fact of someone else using tech that no one except for him should be able to have access to at all. He still doesn’t know how that happened, actually.

But that’s a problem for later, after they shut it all down and get back and put a fat check-mark on a potential disaster averted. After he actually sleeps for more than a couple hours and apologizes to Peter for almost destroying the multiverse in an attempt to impress him.

Still, Tony hates watching his creations vanish, and it’s a shame that something as fun as multidimensional travel has to be erased. The stunned smile on Peter’s face was worth it, of course — Tony just wishes they could enjoy it for longer than a week.

Speaking off… they should do a prank when they get back.  To raise the spirits, so to say. Bring some cheer into the solemn process of the systems erasing themselves and the platform disintegrating with only an extensive debrief to look forward to. They could pretend they’re not from this universe and got there by mistake — or better yet, go along like everything is normal at first and then when Clint suggests ordering pizza they can—

Tony’s HUD goes dark.

“Boss, I- B-b- -unction. Sys- -et…-ror,” Friday’s voice is cracking. “Boss, I’m afraid someth- System malf- -tion. -r- et–” 

Tony lands immediately, puts the kid softly on the ground and takes a few steps away as the suit’s bleeding off of him without command, nanites glitching with a crackling sound.

What in the—

“JACKIE, what the fuck is happening,” Tony hisses, putting the glasses on with shaking hands. The interface is lit red, which means they’re running on the emergency protocol. Jesus Christ.

“Network connection unavailable.”

“Are you f— Connect me to Peter. Now. Permission to breach national security firewalls. Turn the fucking satellites if you need to.”

It’s silent for a second that lasts a whole eternity, and then Peter’s voice comes through.

“—ar me? Shit, I don’t know if he can hear me. Please, tell me it’s working…”

“Peter, I can hear you. What the fuck happened? FRIDAY and my suit are down, JACKIE’s barely on,” Tony rattles out staring through the trees in the direction of the main building.

“Oh god, Tony! There was a trap in the portal’s power frame, we’re working on it, KAREN is down, too, Tony’s— Other Tony’s trying to—” Peter sounds worried. Tony can hear his own voice speaking loudly in the background as the sirens are going off and the connection is starting to frizzle.

Before there’s time to think, or panic, or blink — Peter is screaming, “WAIT!”

Tony doesn’t see it, just the trees and the dark skies pierced through with helicopter searchlights.

But he feels the dull thud, when the explosion goes off.

As the blast wave hits, Tony’s reaching for the kid to cover him with his body.

***

“Is this Tony Stark?... Oh my god, it’s Tony Stark! He’s alive!”

“Get the camera. Mr. Stark-”

“I think he’s… Is that a child!?”

“Tony!”

“Pepper, he’s here. I got him. He’s fine…”

Tony is not fine. His ears are ringing and he can barely see and everything is shaking. The kid’s unconscious, blood dripping down the side of his face. Tony’s clutching his small body to his chest. Please, don’t be dead, is all he can think. Please, be okay.

“Get the fuck away from him or I will break the goddamn cameras... Tony, hey, hey, Tony, it’s me, Happy. Look at me. You gotta give me that kid…”

Tony blinks until the picture settles enough to recognize Happy’s face.

“He’s hurt. He needs help,” Tony’s trying to say, not sure if the words are coming out. His throat is burning from the smoke. He sees Happy’s mouth moving but can’t hear anything. “Please, get him help…”

People are screaming. Flashes are going off. Tony squeezes his eyes shut. Someone’s grabbing his shoulders and tugging at his arms, trying to take Peter out of his hold. He lets them.

Please, be okay.

***

Tony wakes up in the back of an ambulance car to Pepper Potts sitting on the bench, her posture as straight as always. She doesn’t flinch when he gasps for air and almost falls off of the gurney as the consciousness crushes back into him. Before he can decide whether he’s relieved or terrified to see her, he notices the tight line of her mouth. The pained fold of her eyebrows. He knows this face, he’s pretty sure it means the same in every universe.

“Hi, Pep,” he tries. She’s looking at him like she’s deciding between bursting into tears or punching him in the nose. She glances down at her hands, briefly — she’s holding his glasses, or what’s left of them — and when she meets his eyes again all vulnerability is gone from her features.

“Are you from the future,” she says. It doesn’t quite sound like a question.

“No, I’m not,” he answers simply. “Good assumption, though.”

“Who are you, then?” Pepper asks, a desperate tilt to her words. “You’re not… my Tony, are you?”

Tony hasn’t had a chance to think or process or listen to his own mind for a goddamn second. He shouldn’t trust her, theoretically. But she’s here, she called him my Tony. It’s a risk he’s willing to take.

“No, I’m not,” he repeats. “I’m the same person, just… from a different parallel universe.”

“Oh, god,” she closes her eyes, just for a moment. “Where is Tony from this universe?”

“Where’s the kid?” Tony counters because he won’t make it through the explanation if he doesn’t find that out, first. “I will tell you everything but I need to know if he’s okay.”

She frowns. “He’s fine, Happy is keeping an eye on him. Why? Is he from… another universe, too?”

“No, no, he’s from here…” Tony lets out a breath. So baby-Peter is accounted for. And his Peter—

He was right in the—

“I need—” Fuck. He needs a lot of things. His watch — nanite housing unit — is still in place, heavy on his wrist. The display is off and doesn’t react when he taps it. Shit. He needs FRIDAY. He needs to know if Peter— God.

“Tony,” Peppers snaps, it’s quiet but non-negotiable. “Hundreds of people died, more are hospitalized. What's going on?!”

Tony swallows the urge to yell, the love of my life might be one of those people. Freaking out won’t help. He needs answers and without his tech he’s virtually helpless in a world he knows as good as nothing about.

Maybe he shouldn’t trust her, after all. She might be close to her Tony, but he’s not her Tony. She could be tricking him, taking advantage of his position. For all he knows, she could be anyone.

“How did you know I’m not him?” It barely qualifies as a good determination technique for evil intentions, but it’s a start.

Pepper gives him a look. “Your hair is longer,” she dead-pans. “And… all this stuff,” she hands over the glasses, which Tony takes anxiously, still deciding between spiraling further down the can’t-trust-anyone joyride or accepting things at face value. “Where is our Tony? I want to… I want to help, please. What happened?”

The lenses are cracked, the frame is bent on one side. They don’t react to his fingerprints. There are very few scenarios in which it could possibly happen. Slightly broken isn’t one of them. Ending up in a plane of existence with no metaphysical connection to the world where they were made and powered from — a strong maybe. 

Tony settles on splitting the difference on the trust issues, for now.

“Other— your Tony was in the main building, with my partner. We got here through the interdimensional portal located there, it must’ve been the epicenter of the explosion.” Tony watches Pepper’s face crumble, composure breaking at this information. “Pepper, I don’t know if they’re… I don’t know what happened. My tech is non-responsive. Can you get me something to connect to his FRIDAY?”

She blinks. “His what?”

Okay, not called FRIDAY here, then. “His AI assistant? JARVIS, maybe?”

Her expression gets progressively more confused and Tony has very little resolve left until he will resort to figuring things out with blatant force.

“He doesn’t— AI as in Artificial Intelligence? He doesn’t have a… robot assistant.” Fuck. What the hell kind of Tony Stark is that if— “Natasha is his personal assistant, she’s flying in from a work trip, should be here in a few hours.”

“Romanoff?” Tony is so startled he goes from processing straight to hollow acceptance.

Pepper narrows her eyes, nods. “She prefers Romanova, but yes.”

Okay. Okay. This could be good. Or it could be terrible. He’ll decide when they get there.

Pepper gets him his — Other Tony’s — phone. Well, the phone itself was on him, but it’s backed up on a cloud so Pepper downloads the contents to a copy. Pepper is the only one who has access to restore it. There was a protocol for that, at least, which gives Tony a grain of reassurance he holds on to dearly to keep away the fear that it was a mistake to trust Other Tony with their multiverse shenanigans if the guy doesn’t even have a freaking AI assistant. Tony was, what, twelve when he started building JARVIS? Ridiculous.

The phone seems similar enough to the later models from Tony’s world just… kind of useless for the sort of stuff Tony normally deals with and is dealing with now. No holographic properties whatsoever. No remote control of the lab equipment, or any weapons.

Pepper is already busy getting the nearest Stark Industries diagnostics lab up and going to get Tony the data he needs. The notion that he has to rely on people rather than technology he can control solely and independently is sickening. Not that it matters now. He can control people, too, if needed, he’s quite skilled in that and has a fair share of experience using people as a tool to achieve goals, sort of comes with being born into a weapon manufacturing empire and playing the business shark part for as long as he had.

Tony would much prefer machines, now, but he’ll take whatever means available.

***

“Who are we, exactly?” Pepper asks, looking up from her tablet. Tony’s been filling her in, as promised. Not in too much detail, just the bullet points: I made some cool tech, bad guys stole it and tried to invade the multiverse, we dealt with the bad guys and were cleaning up their preparations in case they have any allies or followers who might try to carry on their plan. It’s generally not a good idea to leave a few dozen interdimensional portals open in parallel universes with a more or less similar structure just hanging around for someone to inevitably attempt using.

“Avengers. World-saving superheroes by day, a motley crew of all kinds of weirdos by night. Spies, soldiers, mad scientists, mutants. There’s usually at least one god on rotation,” Tony explains, not assuming it’s a thing here, either. Judging by her stunned look, he assumed right.

Pepper doesn’t ask any more questions. The only one she really cares about Tony doesn’t have an answer for, yet.

“They’re waiting for your instructions,” she nods a minute later. Tony sends over the details of what he needs checked: thermal signatures, electromagnetic feed, some additional scans that could help determine whether Peter and Other Tony managed to jump into the portal or—

Ideally, Tony should go to the lab and check everything himself, but it’s a two-hour drive away so for now he’s forced to put his trust in a team of loyal Stark Industries employees in a world where his phone can’t serve as a projector for a holographic workstation, apparently. Not a position he would like to be in but it will have to do. They tell him it will take about half an hour to process the data he requires. Between this and about twenty minutes he’s been awake it’s offensively too long to go without knowing if Peter — his Peter — is okay. Tony hates every second of this.

“Is there a baseball hat I can borrow?” he drops decisively when there’s nothing left to do but wait in this particular crisis so he figures it’s time to move on to the rest of them. Stopping would mean acknowledging the black hole growing in his chest at the thought of possible outcomes, and there is no space for it, now. “I hope you don’t mind if I step in for my namesake, for the time being.”

The looks Pepper gives him has a complicated flavor but he’s pretty sure gratitude is mixed in, if not for a garnish. Relief is definitely a major ingredient. She conjures up a baseball hat with Stark Industries logo — same, here — out of thin air.

***

Tony finds Peter in the field tent Happy pointed at, huddled up in a gray blanket.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter gasps, eyes going huge in surprise when Tony walks right up to him. 

"Call me Tony, alright?" Tony chokes out. "What's— what’s your name?"

"Peter. Peter Parker. W-what are you doing here?”

The shock on Peter’s face makes Tony pause. It's possible that Peter didn't recognize him when the armor was off, it was dark and Tony turned away, and after that Peter was— unconscious.

Well. That could make things… easier.

“I came to check on you, of course. You probably don't remember, I found you in the park, right there," Tony waves towards the trees, a few yards behind. "After the Big Boom. You looked a bit rough there for a second… good to see you all in one piece." Tony tries to keep his tone light but looking at Peter is a constant pain he isn’t used to yet. His voice wavers.

Peter blinks. Shakes his head.

“No, I— I don’t remember. I hit my head, I think? That lady over there told me to wait here,” Peter says nodding slightly towards where paramedics are helping someone. "I think I was… trying to get somewhere safe, and then… I don't know."

Peter doesn't remember Iron Man.

He might, eventually, right? He's probably still in shock. The paramedics checked him over, Happy had said, no symptoms of severe head injury. Just a scratch that was bleeding a lot. Maybe a very mild concussion, they would need to check again. There's a band aid with cartoonish puppies on his forehead.

He doesn't remember.

"It's okay, kid," Tony hears himself say. "I was trying to get somewhere safe, too. I guess we both nailed it, yeah? High-five."

Peter gives the world’s shiest high-five, his tiny hand barely making contact with Tony’s — that’s shaking — before he hides it back under the blanket.

Tony should leave. He’s not supposed to be here. He should go. He has a million and one thing he should be doing right now instead of interfering with the flow of existence of this universe. It’s not his Peter and he shouldn’t get involved. It’s a bad idea.

“Mr. St— Tony? Do you know if they found my Aunt May and Uncle Ben yet?” Peter asks, voice thin like paper. 

Tony knows. They haven’t found them yet. Happy told him that at this point it’s unlikely they would be found alive. Tony doesn’t have the guts to tell Peter that, not now, and not— he just can’t.

He chooses hope. If not for himself, then just for Peter, he can choose hope. “I’ll stay with you until they find them, alright?”

Peter nods, small, confused. Tony stays.

***

By the time they’re put in a police car and told to wait until it’s time to go to the station — Tony has Happy and Pepper sending him detailed updates, while the lab staff is running final analysis of the electro-magnetic field and pulling up the infrared imaging per Tony’s instruction. Peter doses off, his head falling on Tony’s bicep, the puppy band aid peaking through his hair. Tony doesn’t move, lets him sleep, types the code for a precise current signature search on the goddamn smartphone Pepper gave him for someone in the lab to run it through the computers. 

Tony scrolls through the apps, contacts, recent files — it’s all his. Not his. Other his. But Tony recognizes it. As if looking at homework he didn’t write but the handwriting is his. It’s comforting and sickening in equal measure.

Tony hopes, forces himself to, that they find Ben and May, alive and well, so this Peter can go home. As for his Peter, Tony doesn’t know what he is hoping for, as the minutes drip by, or if hope is a thing he is capable of at all, in that moment, the state of shock still paralyzing his insides and blocking away everything except for the kid’s fingers in his left hand and the disgustingly non-transparent phone screen in his right.

There wasn’t enough time to load the quantum pathway destruction, the clock was still on forty-something minutes until it would be possible. However, there could’ve been enough time to jump back in. And the portal could be reopened again. The mission would be considered failed, but… Peter and Other Tony would be alright. They would have to get back here, do it all over again. 

Tony can rebuild the platform, replicate the jump capsule. How hard can it be? This world might be delayed in progress but it can’t be worse than a terrorist cave. He could figure it out.

The phone in his hands lights up with a new message from the lab.

No electromagnetic signature detected. The current shadow located at the portal coordinates has disappeared, milliseconds before the explosion set off. The field state reading matches the one from a few months ago — before this universe was ever entered from externally opened dimensional jump.

The thermal silhouettes of two human figures jerk towards the portal and— fade. A fraction of a second before its shadow disappeared, a fraction of a second before the explosion hit.

They closed it down.

They jumped back in and shut the door on the way out. Just as planned.

They completed the mission.

Tony wrote the protocol. He knows once the last of the branches is down, the program will self-eliminate. He made sure it couldn’t be overruled — neither by Peter, nor by himself, or anyone else on the team, or FRIDAY — the technology being too dangerous to leave space for doubt or human factor. He had to learn the hard way, and the beginning of this whole thing is another proof — if one person has access, someone else can get it. And Tony didn’t want to risk it, this time.

No one will be able to enter or leave this dimension, unless Tony recreates the tech, putting the safety of the omniverse in danger, again—

His Peter is back home, now. Probably freaking out, probably not knowing if Tony’s alive, probably mad, heartbroken, that there is no way to reverse it, but— he’s home.

And Tony is here.

The kid stirs. Tony squeezes his hand and allows the weight of reality to hit him.

***

Tony tells Pepper outside the police station, tears still lingering in the back of his throat. She has three phones in her hands and all of them are vibrating at different frequencies.

The truth is brief and devastating, and Tony doesn't leave space for relief after saying that they're alive, that her Tony is alive. He makes it clear that there is no way to fix this, that in the best case scenario she will never see him again.

He doesn't tell her how much he knows what she must feel. A moment later, the realization that he doesn't actually know their relationship status hits like ice-cold water. "Were you..." he can't quite get the sentence out.

She smiles, sorrowful. It's not often that he'd seen similarities between her and Peter, but they have this in common — smiling in tragedy, crying in happiness.

"No, we weren't. Not recently," Pepper says simply. Tony nods. Small mercies.

"How dangerous can it be? Making this… portal again?" she asks after the gravity of it all settles silently on the pavement, dark and empty around them. Was it raining? It must've been raining.

"Disruption of the natural world— worlds order, at the very least. Destruction, invasion, colonization. Depends on whatever maniac gets his hands on it first."

It's beyond something she had dealt with before, this much is clear. Fear overshadows the grief on her face, for a moment, and Tony wants to comfort her but knows he can't. It's not his place.

Pepper doesn't look younger, but Tony can't shake the feeling that she's much younger than him. Maybe because she behaves like his Pepper did in the beginning, when they had just met: with apprehension, holding a distance between them but not good at hiding her feelings when it comes to him. He wonders if she feels nostalgic, too. Meeting again. Or if the pain overwhelms everything.

"I can't do it, Pep," Tony chokes. Suddenly it feels too enormous, too complicated to explain, now. Maybe ever.

"I know," she says, her gaze far away, where the night is just starting to give way to dawn. "He… he wouldn't do it, either."

It brings little comfort, contemplating whether or not a different version of himself would make the same choice in this situation. But doing right by Pepper is a compass Tony is comfortable to rely on.

"I don't— I can leave, after we deal with this," Tony shrugs a shoulder towards the grim building. "Fake my, well, his death. Get a nice witness protection deal, a new name, change my hair… if you could spare me a few mil for the road, or even if not, you certainly don't have to, I'll just. I'll figure something out. You won't have to see me again."

The thought is drastic, Tony never had to consider being anything but himself, but. It could be alright, he figures. He could become a mechanic in some small town upstate, keep an eye on Peter from a distance, just in case. Spend his days mourning his past and guarding the present.

And if Peter has nowhere to go, after tonight, Tony would give him a home and a normal life. If Tony can't be himself he could be this, for Peter. And it's… it's not so bad.

Pepper is frowning, confused, and then this smile again that never stops breaking Tony's heart.

"This world needs Tony Stark," she tells him. It pierces through to his soul, the essence of him that transcends dimensions. "You're qualified for the job. If you want it."

"Are you sure? You barely know me, should I send a resume over?" Tony smiles, might as well.

She smiles back. Different, this time. Warm. "I actually think I know you pretty well.”

He extends his hand, “Ms. Potts?”

She shakes it, once, firm and gentle. “Mr. Stark.”

As they go inside, Tony is grateful.

***

“We need a statement. From you. The press conference is in four hours,” Pepper says, not looking up from her tablet. 

A young man sent to cut Tony’s hair doesn’t look him in the eyes and doesn’t say a single word. He looks at Pepper when he’s done replicating the photo shown to him for reference, she nods, and he leaves. Tony wonders what kind of NDA the poor guy had to sign. The scary kind, for sure.

Peter is currently being interrogated by cops or social workers or both. Tony hates every second that Peter isn’t in his sight but he grinds his teeth and drinks his coffee that tastes like ash and looks through the briefing slide-show on a laptop Pepper’s assistants set in front of him. Seriously, what’s with this world’s obsession with physical screens? Laughable.

“Do you have holographic tech, at all?” Tony asks because the other option is to register what’s on the screen, which is a photo of him carrying unconscious Peter out of the trees.

The assistant looks up and then back down like someone had instructed her to not look straight at Tony too much. Those kinds of NDAs then, huh. “Um, n-no, sir. As far as I know.”

Tony clicks through the slides. Photos of destroyed Expo grounds, photos of crowds pouring out of burning buildings. More photos of Tony emerging from the bushes with Peter in his arms, from different angles. None of the sources have Peter’s name yet, but Tony knows better than to be reassured. It’s just a matter of time. The headlines have words like “hero” and “savior”, but some of them offer an alternative perspective — VULTURE POSING AS A DOVE, says one in bold letters, followed by a photo of him with the kid and then one of what’s left of the main building.

That one hits a nerve, sends a cold sensation to his gut.

Peter— his Peter wasn’t there, Tony has to remind himself. He wasn’t there when it hit. He’s home and he’s okay.

Seven major Stark Industries facilities in five countries are running and rerunning the electromagnetic fields and infrared footage diagnostics, Tony adjusts the formulas and tweaks the codes and tells them to try again. The results are still the same.

People keep coming in and out. Someone sets a plate with a sandwich in front of him. He doesn’t eat it. Someone puts down documents and holds up pens for him with a business-casual “could you just sign this here for me, please” that Tony doesn’t dignify with more than a tired look. He doesn’t sign anything and doesn’t answer any questions. No one called him for an official questioning — not without the lawyers, and especially not with the lawyers. In the window — the sunrise is bleeding all the normal colors, tying the rest of the world together into something that’s familiar, easy to fall in stride with.

Tony uses the time to get his bearings and get acquainted with the local history. 

This timeline is certainly strange. Tonight was the same Expo that in his world was attacked by Hammer and Vanko’s stupid robots, except that for Tony it happened years ago, fairly soon after he became Iron Man, which was in his mid-twenties. Here, there’s no public information about Other Tony ever being kidnapped by terrorists or held in a cave, no arc reactor (as in, not even the huge demonstrative version of it), no superhero extracurriculars. Obadiah Stane died from a heart attack — around the same time he did in Tony’s world, if not for the same reason. Other Tony gave a speech at his funeral, and then elegantly used the momentum to shut down weapon production and put the company on the new path. He made it sound like a natural progression, too, like it’s something done in honor of Obadiah’s work. Brilliant presentation, really. Tony should ask Pepper about that later, find out what was strategically forgotten in the public version of the story and if things like terrorists and metal suits come up in any capacity.

Superheroes aren’t a thing here. At all. No superpowers, magic abilities, nothing of the sort. HYDRA never existed, SHIELD doesn’t exist. No tesseract, no Scandinavian gods landing in New Mexico, no mad scientists, no wizards, no serums, no supersoldiers, no vibranium. Wakanda, Sokovia, Madripoor — don’t exist.

No alien invasions. No Ultron.

The social and political side looks pretty much the same. There are people with agendas, wars, issues, but everything is… human. Normal.

Of course, Tony needs to do a more thorough research later. Just because something isn’t open to the public doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Still, the absence of any immediate data is disorienting. Tonight might be the most extraordinary thing that happened to this world in the modern era.

Tony makes a calculated effort to not give in to the dread setting in his stomach — what if he had broken an invisible veil keeping this world safe, and the chain reaction had already started, and just his presence here is oil to the fire, what if—

The door to the room opens. Tony is prepared to snap at whoever it is with whatever the fuck they want from him now… but this time it’s Happy. Tony sees it in the soft fold of his eyebrows before the words are out. “They found them. The kid’s aunt and uncle. They… didn’t make it.”

“Where is he?” Tony demands.

“Someone from social services is with him now, they should be informed soon.”

Fuck.

Tony gets up and out of the room as Happy starts leading the way before Tony has to ask. Pepper calls his name, tone borderline irritated, Tony doesn’t react, he walks out of the suffocating space and doesn’t turn around.

They took away Peter’s blanket but gave him an NYPD hoodie instead. It’s huge on him, makes him look even smaller. He looks up as soon as Tony walks in, and Tony watches the moment a flash of hope lights up his tiny worn out face, fading away just as quickly.

“May I speak with him for a moment,” Tony says in the general direction of the woman sitting next to Peter. She pauses briefly, glances at Happy — who’s already holding up a tablet with one of the heavy duty NDAs pulled up — and nods, following Happy out of the room.

“Hey, kid,” Tony says when they’re alone. He lowers down on one knee in front of Peter and wishes there was anything in the world he could do to make his next words hurt any less.

***

Peter cries in his arms.

Tony swallows down every single truth he buried tonight, and makes a promise he intends to keep at any cost. His heart, his sanity, his conscience — any cost.

***

“You can’t adopt this child, Tony.”

It’s two hours until the press conference. Tony is half-way through writing a program that should find and remove all the footage and every mention of flying and jumping superheroes spotted tonight. Judging by what Tony learned during his rapid self-taught introduction course over the last couple hours, it’s obvious that something like a guy flying around in metal armor or a guy jumping around on spiderwebs is far, far away from a normal thing to happen here. He doesn’t want to deal with that, not here and not now. He needs to lay low.

Breaching national web security protocols on a computer with an actual keyboard feels nostalgic. Seeing photos and videos of his Peter — blurred and barely intangible but still very much compromising — feels like a knife twisting in his chest. He makes sure the program creates an encrypted copy of everything found before deleting it from anywhere that isn’t Tony’s — Other Tony’s…Tony’s — personal servers.

He gives Pepper a flat look.

“I’m adopting this child,” he informs her. Not for the first time over the last hour. It’s getting kind of old.

“Besides the truly impressive list of reasons why you absolutely should not be doing that—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“—you do realize that he’s not the only kid who lost their family tonight, right? Are you gonna adopt all of them?”

It stings. She must really know him well, and the him that she knows must be close enough to Tony because that’s a low punch to the gut that only someone expertly aware of his psyche would resort to.

“No. Just this one,” Tony snaps back, cold.

“Tony—”

“Pepper. It’s going to happen and you can either help me, or fuck off.”

She looks taken aback, briefly, but covers it up right away. Tony will admit it was a bit harsh considering… everything, but. He really doesn’t have a lot left as far as emotional regulation goes.

“Why?” she asks after the abrupt pause.

Why.

“I can’t let him be alone.”

“Tony, he’s not going to be alone—”

“Pepper, I’m not leaving him—”

“You need to think about this—”

Tony smashes the final few lines into the keyboard angrily and gets up to pace the room that feels like a goddamn cage. “I really don’t. There’s nothing to think about. He doesn’t have anyone else. He’s staying with me.”

“Do you even know how to take care of a child, Tony?” she throws, arms crossed in front of her chest. Someone in the hall is calling her name, and then one of the phones scattered around the table starts buzzing. She doesn’t even flinch, just stares at Tony expectantly.

The answer is no. Tony doesn’t have the slightest idea how to take care of a child, let alone raise one. But it’s Peter. He knows how to take care of Peter.

Oh yeah, do you? And where is Peter now, well taken care of?

“I know him, Pep,” Tony confesses, because that’s the answer she wants and he’s too tired to avoid giving it. Her eyes go soft, arms falling down, defenseless, and Tony has to look away because he can’t, won’t tell her the whole truth. “In my universe he’s— he was— he’s in his twenties, and I knew him since he was a teenager. I’ll just. Reverse engineer it.”

Pepper looks at him for a long moment, then sighs. He knows that sigh. The "I don’t approve but I will help you" sigh, everyone close to Tony has their own signature version of it. Except for Peter. Peter rarely disapproves, and even then his help is never a favor, never reluctant.

Tony should probably start thinking about him in the past tense, now—

“Alright, I can accept that,” Pepper says eventually, all business-like, as if they’re negotiating terms and conditions. She is still very business-like around him, Tony had noticed. It’s only been a handful of hours since they met, even if Tony feels like they’ve been through war together. Still, he doesn’t blame her for the cold shoulder, not when he himself is running on a cocktail of shock, grief and panic, all subdued to faint flavors in the force of crisis-solving mode. “But there is a process to this,” Pepper continues. “He has to go through the system, you will apply properly…”

Goddammit.

“Or I can just take him home, how about that? How about we don’t drag a child who just lost his family for the second time in his life through the social service orphan care circus. He’s coming home with me, and we will deal with the paperwork later.” It occurs to him as words come out of his mouth that he doesn’t know where home is. Not that it matters, he’ll get a new one.

“Tony. I don’t know how things are in— but here, taking a child home, especially if it’s you, in this situation? That’s kidnapping. You’re about to have to defend yourself and your company against major manslaughter accusations. We will not be throwing a kidnapping into the mix.”

She is right, technically. Tony has enough sense to admit it but it doesn’t make him hate this any less. The thought of Peter being left alone, put into a room in a temporary facility somewhere waiting to be told what government-issued bunk bed would be his new home is unbearable. His Peter at least—

Fuck.

It hurts. It hurts so much Tony has to lean on the table and count his breaths back from ten until the symbols running on the laptop screen stop blurring. The program is working. Tony focuses on the numbers, the count of deleted files already goes by hundreds. Good.

His Peter is home, surrounded by people who care about him. Most likely. Logically. Tony should check the data, again. Get to the lab, check the tech for himself, make sure that the heat signatures and the portal’s electromagnetic imprint really disappeared before the explosion hit. He has looked over it a dozen times already, but—

Focus only on what matters for the task at hand, Peter’s voice says in his head, repeating Tony’s own words. Tony remembers it, the first time Peter saw his suit’s HUD at full capacity and was overwhelmed nearly into a panic attack from the data overload. Tony taught him how to navigate it, zone in only on what’s important in the moment, everything else can wait until it’s time to deal with it.

There is nothing he can do for his Peter, right now. Possibly ever. But if only this moment exists — he has flashcards to learn and a funeral to arrange and a universe to fit into.

He has a kid to take care of.

“Okay,” Tony drags a hand over his face. “Okay, I will play by the rules. For now. But whatever the process is, I want it started today.”

Pepper looks like she’s back to the bursting into tears or a mean right hook dilemma — but she nods.

***

Tony makes sure to see Peter before he’s taken away.

The kid is a shadow of himself, lifeless eyes look up at Tony and linger.

“I will come see you as soon as I can, alright?” Tony tells him, crouching down. He doesn’t dare hug him again, he shouldn’t, it’s weird, he’s no one to this kid, so he holds back the urge to and just squeezes Peter’s shoulder. Peter doesn’t say anything, just nods, and then drops his eyes to the floor, withdrawing.

Tony gives a tight nod to the social workers and they walk Peter out the door.

It hurts to see him leave, Tony’s heart suddenly bursts with an irrational animalistic fear that he’ll never see Peter again if he lets him go now.

Misplaced, of course.

Tony will see him soon.

***

Pepper gets him a suit to change into, a simple three-piece in deep navy. He goes to undress right away, head far away in his thoughts.

Should’ve probably calculated that one out a bit better.

Pepper gasps, when Tony looks up she’s staring at his chest.

“W-what happened to your… did you have a heart surgery?”

Tony blinks. It answers some of his previous questions, he supposes. So Other Tony really didn't have a chunk of metal put into his chest that would leave a giant ugly scar afterwards, then. Which means, he didn't wake up in a cave with shrapnel aiming for his heart. Alright, that's good to know.

"Something like that," Tony offers, buttoning up the dress shirt quickly. Pepper doesn't look one bit satisfied with that answer so he adds, "I'll explain later."

There is already a lot he'll have to explain later. He figures they'll have time.

***

The press conference goes as smoothly as it possibly can. Tony says exactly what he’s supposed to, guided by the cards Pepper gave him. No uncontrollable bursts of honesty, this time. The statement is pretty standard: we had nothing to do with it, thoughts and prayers, will investigate immediately. Tony doesn’t take any questions and leaves the finishing words to Pepper, who gracefully assures the cameras and the hunger-glassed eyes of reporters that Stark Industries will cover medical bills, funeral costs, social support and any other expenses fallen upon the victims of tonight’s tragedy. All of it feels so familiar Tony briefly considers what if he’s the one who’s been split into parallel existences, and it’s not the world’s fault at all — even the faces in the crowd are familiar, the names of the papers they say all evoke a front page image in Tony’s head, Pepper’s eyes are gentle and sincere in the exact same way he watched her learn to master, over the years since they met.

When it’s finally over, Pepper pulls him aside by the elbow as soon as they’re away from the conference room and hidden in the labyrinth of halls.

“Natasha is arriving at the penthouse right now. Rhodey is with her.”

“Are we close, here?” Tony asks, blunt. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired and it’s only the beginning.

“You and Rhodey?” Pepper clarifies, Tony sees it in the small smile before she answers. “Yeah. Yeah, Tony, you— they’ve been friends for years. Have you— are you, in your universe?”

Fuck. “Yeah,” Tony chokes out. He wants to add something else but can’t, throat closing from the overwhelming weight of grief for all the people he lost, all the people who lost him, and all the people he’s going to lie to, and—

There’s no time for this, though. No time. Pepper looks concerned but he just nods.

They will be alright, he tells himself, taking a deep breath through his nose. They will all be alright, and he needs to focus on this, here. Just like that time he had to swap hands with Clint playing Uno. Peter was way too excited about it but he cheered Tony on. "It's not the hand, it's the player, right?"

Tony doesn't even remember who won the damn game. Not that a game of Uno is a good metaphor for being thrown into a parallel universe, anyway.

The penthouse is… the same. Not the same the same but, if all the tech and superhero stuff and Peter were taken out of Tony's place back home — he's pretty sure it would look almost precisely like this. It's a strange feeling, because he struggles to imagine what would be left in his life if those things were taken out. He takes a brief walking tour to gather just enough information to keep on but not enough to push him over the edge into a total breakdown. He focuses on the differences that mark a presence of something, rather than the jarring, unavoidable absence — there's more books, he notices, actual physical books. The kitchen looks like it's used for more than coffee and an occasional burnt toast. There are musical instruments, too — a piano and a few guitars. When he steps into the master bedroom the feeling of being an intruder is overwhelming, second only to the infuriating realization that Other Tony will be walking through his house, like this, his and Peter’s, will be talking to his friends, his family, will be pretending to be him, because that’s where it will all end up, that’s where it’s going here, too — this man who still uses physical fucking screens will have a say in how to keep their world and Peter safe—

He had managed to do something to get the portal closed sooner, Tony reminds himself, over and over. Peter is alive because of whatever Other Tony did, that fraction of a second before the explosion. For what it’s worth. Which is… it’s worth a lot, everything.

Still, Tony can’t help the nauseating feeling.

They left in a rush, him and Peter, like they always do. They left the bed undone, half of the sheets on the floor, because Tony spilled coffee on it, again, and Peter complained, and Tony promised to clean it up when they get back, and Peter smiled into the kiss. They left open holo screens running diagnostics for suit upgrades, they left vinyl records scattered on the coffee table in the living room because Peter wanted to get more into Tony’s favorite music “the old-school way”.

They left their life like you leave a book open on the table when you leave the room just for a moment — and now Peter will come back to it alone…

It’s a preferred scenario, Tony forces himself to accept as blood is rushing through his ears and it hurts, a deep pulsating ache at his very core that he knows he will never shake off. It’s the best scenario there is. It’s better this way than if they didn't close the gate. Peter is home.

God.

“Tony?”

Deep breaths, one-two-three, let go of the door frame.

“Tony, are you—”

“I’m fine,” Tony says when his voice is back. The look of genuine concern on Pepper’s face is almost unbearable.

“They’re in the elevator,” she tells him and he nods, feeling like this night will never end. It’s pushing 8am now, but this night might never end.

Natasha and Rhodey both look and feel so like themselves that Tony would probably never know the difference. The mix of relief and disturbance shaken up by that feeling is starting to get sickening, if Tony’s being honest. At this point he would much prefer one or the other.

“Got us worried there, for a second,” Natasha smiles. Her accent is thicker — as in, slightly noticeable as opposed to non-detectable. She comes in close to leave a fast kiss on his cheek and immediately walks off to where Pepper is setting up camp at the dining room table, already covered in folders and laptops.

“I’m personally still worried,” Rhodey grunts, giving Tony a brief hug. He’s standing tall on his own legs, and the emotion it invokes in Tony must show on his face because Rhodey frowns, “Should I be worried, then?”

“I’m alright,” Tony forces a smile. “Good as new. I could use your help.”

“And here I thought you just invited me in for a drink.”

“That, too,” Tony smiles genuinely, this time. In the car on the way here, scrolling through their files for a formal picture and listening to Pepper’s debrief on their relationships for an informal one, Tony made an executive decision to not bother with the whole trust and honesty thing altogether, for now. He needs their help, it’s a fact that exists outside of whether he could trust them and how likely he would inevitably hate himself for lying to their faces. That can wait.

The liquor brands in Other Tony’s bar are all familiar, thank god. At least alcohol had been invented here, Jesus Christ… Tony picks up a bottle at random — Rhodey nods in approval — and pours two glasses. It burns on the way in and Tony gives it a moment to settle, before saying:

“Are there any bad guys you can pin this on?”

Rhodey doesn’t look one bit surprised. Tony hadn’t had to come to his Rhodey with something quite as outrageous as, “my Expo blew up, can you clean up for me, honeybear?”, so he can’t tell if the lack of surprise is a testament to their friendship or to Other Tony’s dark track record.

“Was it your fault?” Rhodey asks, flat and simple, no accusation but no sympathy either.

It was. It was Tony’s fault. If Tony never decided to treat the universal order of things as his playground, all this would’ve never—

“Let me rephrase that, actually…” Rhodey sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. Tony tries really hard to not seek comfort in the familiarity of it. “Did you personally have something to do with the bombs being put there?”

“No.”

“Did you know they were there?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did it? Can they be… prosecuted?” Rhodey glances down at his glass, looking almost uncomfortable in an unexpected way that gives Tony pause.

“They’re dead,” Tony says plainly, because he doesn’t have any other answer prepared and clearly lacks information to make one up on the go. Even now, it’s a relief to say it. Strange made the move and everyone, including Tony, was taken aback, their agreed-upon tactic was to capture first. “It’s safer, this way,” Strange had said, grim. “Someone with an ambition to disturb the sanctity of the omniverse is likely to try again. Or inspire others.”

Tony wonders if he is qualified to be turned into a pile of black ash too, now. Or if good intentions would count for something.

Or if his intentions are good, at all.

Rhodey doesn’t seem surprised. Whatever Tony expected wasn’t… a non-reaction. As it is, Rhodey swirls the last of his drink around the bottom of the glass for a long moment and then finishes it in one go, putting the glass on the counter with a loud clunk.

“Alright. We’ll figure something out, then.”

The lack of any questions from Rhodey raises a multitude of questions in Tony’s mind, instead. But he’s not about to look the gift horse in the mouth, for now.

Turns out, Rhodey has a long list of potential candidates and at the end of the day it’s not really clear who will benefit from this major frame scheme more — Tony or some governmental structures Rhodey answers to. 

Rhodey leaves with a promise to deal with it and a stern “get some sleep”. Natasha, Pepper, and a flock of what Tony supposes are their assistants start gathering their papers soon after.

“Something changed about you,” Natasha tells him on her way out.

“It’s been a long night,” is all he can muster, ignoring the feeling of being seen right through when she looks at him. The feeling isn’t new. It’s particularly unsettling now, here, because she is right to be suspicious. He doesn’t know where exactly they stand, and it took years to figure it out the first time. It’s too many delicate pieces to balance — his first morning in the new world. There will be time for that later.

Thankfully, she doesn’t push it. “I will be back in a few hours to start the adoption paperwork,” she says and leaves it at that, walking towards the elevators.

Pepper waits until everyone else is out.

“How long have you been awake?”

“I stopped counting,” Tony says honestly. He should drive to the lab, check the tech, see what he’s working with, run all the numbers himself, make sure that… And then, get a new place. He can’t stay here, it’s, it’s not his. He needs a place, for Peter. He should see if Peter needs something… And, the funeral, the school, and the company, too, Tony needs to—

“Tony,” there’s a cool hand on his cheek. “I got this, Tony. It will be okay. Please, get some sleep.” Pepper’s eyes are tender, Tony feels like an exposed nerve.

She leaves with a promise to call later with updates, plans, next steps. For a disorienting moment before she is out the door Tony almost begs her to stay.

He doesn’t.

It's the late morning of a new day that somehow still came, despite everything — and the city below looks the same from up here. Bright lit with sun and full of life that never stops. Tony traces the shapes of buildings, trying to find a difference, until his eyes burn.

“I’m sorry.” The glass is cold under his hands. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

He wonders if Peter, his Peter, hates him. If he stands like this now, back in the life they paused to get back to in just a minute that is now aborted. Does he understand? Does he feel betrayed? Does he know that Tony would do anything to keep him safe?

Does he know that Tony loves him, will always always love him, here and a million lightyears away?

“I’m sorry.”

Tony barely gets to the couch before his legs give out and sleep finally takes him away. In his dreams Peter is young, a teenager, like when they first met. Peter lights Uno cards on fire from a thousand burning candles floating in the air all around them. He puts lit cards into envelopes, flames licking his fingers, and when Tony tries to come closer Peter takes a step back, tears in his eyes, as if Tony’s touch is what burns.

***

“I—I didn’t think you would actually come. Miss Jessica told me you probably won’t…” Peter mumbles, eyes down on the ugly carpet.

“Well, she should work on her psychic skills. I’m here,” Tony says lightly. Miss Jessica will be out of a job any moment now, as far as he’s concerned. “Hey, I promised you I’d come, yeah?” 

Peter looks up, blinks, doesn’t say anything, looks down again.

“Are you hungry?” Tony asks.

Peter shrugs. “I don’t know.”

One of the staff members told him that Peter hasn't really eaten anything since coming here a bit over twenty-four hours ago. It’s not uncommon, they said, understandable. But Tony is a fixer and the kid is already all bones.

“What’s your favorite snack? You know, I can get you the best snacks, premium, whatever you want, how does that sound? We won’t share with Miss Jessica,” Tony attempts, conspiratorially.

Peter shrugs again. He’s picking at the sleeve of his hoodie, pulling loose threads with his fingers. Tony had seen him do that a million times — a decade older in a different lifetime — it usually means there is something on his mind he’s trying to put into words.

“Aunt May made cookies,” Peter says a minute later. “She— she said I can have some after dinner. After we come back from…”

He doesn’t finish. Tony swallows the pain down and holds out his hand. “Let’s go, then.”

Peter looks up, confused. “Where?”

“To your place, for the cookies. They should still be good.”

Peter stares at him. “Can we?”

“Of course we can, kid, she made them for you.”

Peter starts crying, abrupt and heartbreaking like someone flipped the switch. He nods, fast, tears and all, and takes Tony’s hand.

Tony gives Miss Jessica the finger behind Peter’s back on the way out. She gasps and looks away, flustered.

***

Peter pauses at the entrance when Tony opens the door to the apartment.

“You don’t have to come in, if you don’t want to,” Tony tells him carefully when Peter doesn’t make a move to come inside. “I can just grab the cookies, and anything else you want, and we can go.”

Peter thinks about it for a moment, then decidedly takes a step in. “No. I wanna— I wanna stay. For a little bit.” 

They find the cookies wrapped up on the kitchen table. Tony turns the lights on everywhere, opens a few windows, cleans up the best he can. It does little to conquer the solemn, haunting atmosphere of a home left by a family for a fun night out, with only an orphaned kid to return. The parallels make Tony’s head spin, he shakes it off and busies himself with making hot chocolate, giving Peter space.

It takes Tony a few tries — his hands start shaking periodically, and the instructions on the box seem more complicated than multidimensional travel, to be quite frank — but when it’s finally done he takes the mugs and the plate and goes to look for the kid.

Peter is curled up on the bed in his bedroom. For a moment it seems like he might be asleep, but his shoulders are shaking in an uneven pattern. “Hey, Pete,” Tony calls softly, setting his offerings on the bedside table before his hands betray him again. “I brought the goodies.”

Peter gives a small shrug.

“Is it okay if I sit here with you, or would you like to be alone for a while?”

“You can stay,” Peter says after a beat, quiet as a mouse.

The room looks eerily similar to how it did when Tony showed up here for the first time, years later or years before, poking at Other Peter’s secrets like he had any right, sitting on his bed and informing him that they’re flying to fight Captain America tomorrow. That twenty minutes in Peter’s teenage bedroom was one of Tony’s most unhinged stunts, which he was profoundly remorseful for later. But Peter always just brushed it off with a grin.

“Trust me, you couldn’t make me do something I didn’t want to do. I just… didn’t know I had permission before, I guess? I didn’t know I was, like, allowed to go hang out with actual superheroes and help out Iron Man. But I wanted it.”

“Still, you probably didn’t want Iron Man to ambush you in the comfort of your house. That’s… kind of traumatizing.”

“Oh, Tony,” Peter bit his lip, smiling, mischievous. “I totally wanted that. On embarrassingly frequent occasions.” Peter topped it off with a wink and Tony cringed, and laughed, and got turned on all at the same time—

He’s not in that life anymore. Someone must’ve forgotten to change the set — same furniture, here, same Star Wars poster — but the play is way different.

“Do I have to go back to… that place, tonight? Can I stay here?” Peter asks after a while and the sound of his voice breaks Tony’s heart.

Tony wants to say yes, of course you can stay, I will make it happen. And Tony could, actually, make it happen. But he’s not oblivious to how it may look and sound — Tony Stark spends hours with the orphaned boy he “saved” in the boy’s empty apartment. If he’s going to fit into this world and give Peter the best version of it he possibly can, he can’t afford this.

“I’m sorry, kid, you have to go back. We can stay for a little bit more, okay? And we can come back tomorrow, if you want.”

Peter is quiet for a long moment. “Okay.”

Eventually, Peter climbs out of the bed and joins Tony on the floor, where Tony gently pushes the plate towards him. After the hot chocolate is warmed up again and Peter has carefully dipped and eaten three whole cookies, Tony gets it. May, calling three times a day to get Other Peter’s exasperated, “Oh my god, yes, I ate! Yes, Tony has food here! No, it wasn’t just coffee…”

Tony gets it.

“Do you want some?”

Tony eyes the plate doubtfully. “Are they any good?”

Peter smiles. The corners of his lips twitch up, just for a moment, and it might be the biggest victory Tony has to his name, yet. “Not really.”

“I’ll have one, if you’re sharing.”

It’s admittedly the worst goddamn cookie Tony has ever had, salty in a way that couldn’t be intentional, with poorly mixed pieces of flour crispy on his teeth. Still, it’s an honor he won’t underestimate.

“We can freeze the rest,” Tony suggests when Peter seems like he doesn’t want any more, looking at the plate with a lost expression.

“Really? How— how long will they last?”

Forever, technically. Tony is a scientist. “As long as you need them to,” Tony says, instead.

***

In the car on the way back, Tony decides there is no such thing as good timing when it comes to this. Initially, he wasn’t going to have any big conversations about the future until after the funeral, to give Peter some space to process the shock. But maybe it’s not bad for Peter to have something in his future other than his family being put in the ground.

“Hey, Pete, can I talk to you about something?” Tony says gingerly. Peter looks up from the car window, gives a small nod, and Tony pushes himself to continue. “I would like to adopt you. If you're okay with that. If you want that.”

Peter gapes at him, blinking slowly, then frowns, and the expression is so familiar Tony has to look away. Maybe having this conversation in the car with an excuse to look at the road instead of the kid’s face was cheating on Tony’s part, but in his defense it wasn’t on purpose.

Peter doesn’t say anything for a whole block and half a red light, so Tony adds, “You don’t have to answer now. Take as much time as you need, I’ll be around. And I’ll be around no matter what you decide. If it's... okay with you.”

“Why?” Peter asks.

Why.

Because it’s my fault your family is dead.

Because I have failed you, both of you, and maybe if I give you a good life I can redeem myself to you, just enough to even out the damage I’ve done. Because I love you, a different you but nevertheless — the way I didn’t know I could, I didn’t know was possible at all. And any version of that love that I can give you I will. Because you’re the only thing I have to live for, here. Because if I don’t have you to take care of, if you don’t need me, I will surely finish what I started and tear the universe apart to get back to the you that I have to let go, to keep both of you safe.

“Why not,” Tony shrugs, like it’s clear as day. “We have lots in common, and call me sentimental — well, you’d be the first, it’s a new thing — I thought you were really hurt, after the… you know. I guess it kicked in some instincts. Plus,” Tony clears his throat. “I don’t have any family either. Wouldn’t be so terrible if we formed an alliance.”

All of this is true and none of it is the truth. Or is it? Maybe it is. However young his Peter was, even when they first met, he wasn’t an actual child — he was, kind of, and Tony cared for him like you care for someone who doesn’t fully operate on their own devices yet, who can’t or shouldn’t make their own unsupervised decisions. But Tony wasn’t his only or primary caretaker, and Peter wasn’t defenseless, to say the least, or even willing to accept the care, more often than not. It was strange, balancing on the edge of the gray area, being the adult in the room but also respecting Peter as his own being. It was fucking hard and it drove Tony sleepless and insane and before he knew it he was waiting for Peter to grow up already so they could just be even.

Foolish, really. Oblivious. Peter did grow up. Peter grew up and demanded Tony’s heart for his seventeenth birthday and the electric jolt of that first kiss was shocking, life-changing and mind-altering, but Tony still never shook off the feeling that he knew exactly what he was waiting for.

But before that, those first couple years — Tony could say what he experienced was definitely an instinctual calling, a need to protect that stood out from his general anxiety-driven savior complex.

What he feels here, now? A totally different beast.

No gray area and no debatable levels of autonomy, here. Tony’s not saying the whole truth — can’t, to a kid. Won’t, to this Peter. Never will. But. He didn’t lie in his answer.

Peter blinks at him.

“Just think about it, alright? Let me know whenever you’re ready,” Tony smiles, winks, hopes it’s not too much even though it most definitely is. Peter nods, his tiny face still lost, uncertain, but not alarmed, not scared. Tony decides it’s good enough.

***

The data checks out, when Tony finally gets to the lab and clicks the buttons with his own fingers. Everything checks out.

It doesn’t bring the relief he had hoped it would. Or maybe he is just numb to it, every emotion evened out by an all-encompassing shadow of regret.

But it checks out. They are alive. His Peter is home.

Tony makes it first order of business to install systems monitoring electromagnetic fields, seismic signatures, radiation, everything that could be indicative of any abnormal activity — all over the world. Over a hundred total data points that he will be able to solely access anytime, anywhere. If a quantum portal is ever opened here, or any kind of dimensional movement happens at all, Tony will be the first to know.

He doesn’t know what outcome he hopes for, and he won’t lie to himself that there won’t be moments when he hopes for something he shouldn’t. But whatever it might be — he will be prepared.

***

It takes Rhodey a grand total of thirty-six hours to find a terrorist group to blame and sketch out the plan of action. Tony doesn’t feel bad — these are legitimately terrible people who have done terrible things, and their future plans included attacks of even greater scale than the Expo, so he doesn’t feel bad, not for framing them. But the guilt sits deep in his stomach. The hundreds of lives lost that night, including May and Ben, don’t belong on anyone’s track record but his own.

“Will something like this happen again?” Rhodey asks him, voice quiet and even.

“No,” Tony answers, meaning it down to his bones. “It won’t.”

Rhodey nods, holds his gaze, and doesn't ask any more questions.

***

The funeral is as somber as any funeral is. It’s quite a lot of people: Ben and May’s friends, coworkers, Peter’s teachers and classmates with their parents, some neighbors. Everyone does a half-decent job at not staring at Tony and not paying him much attention, and Tony silently congratulates them on basic tact. A social worker attached to Peter for the day is here, too, but she doesn’t pretend that her presence is any comfort and stays aside.

Peter doesn’t cry. His expression deviates between anxious, scared, and completely blank. Some people approach to say their condolences and assure Peter that they’re here for him, that it’s gonna be alright. He nods at them tightly, eyes on the ground, and they leave with nothing else to offer. After Tony watches Peter visibly brace himself before another guest approaches, like it’s a struggle he has to overcome, Tony leans in and quietly asks if he wants to talk to anyone at all. “Not really,” Peter replies, staring at the perfectly trimmed grass right in front of his shoes.

After that, Tony makes sure to pointedly but subtly shake his head no at anyone who starts walking in Peter’s direction. They get the hint.

At some point during the process, while someone Tony doesn’t know who must’ve been close to May and Ben both is giving a speech, Peter takes Tony’s hand. Tony squeezes it back and doesn’t let go. He knows there’s nothing he can do to make this hurt any less, and he knows, all too well, how disheartening it is when people still try. There’s nothing he can do but be here, become a grounding presence that Peter can rely on, if he chooses.

When it’s all over and people start slowly wandering back to their cars, Peter looks around hesitantly.

“Hey, what’s up, kid? Do you need something?” Tony nudges gently.

Peter bites his lip, thinking. “Can I— can I say goodbye to my classmates and teachers? Because I, um, I think I want to stay with you, if you, if it’s okay?”

Tony’s heart is too big in his chest. For the past few days after their conversation in the car Tony made a severe effort to not hope for any certain answer from Peter. But he would be lying to himself if he tried to pretend this is not the one he hoped for. “Of course it’s okay, baby,” he says before he can stop himself. “I would be honored.” He smiles and Peter smiles back, just a touch, for just a second. “But… why do you need to say goodbye to them? You’ll see them at school soon, right?”

Peter frowns. “Well, I just thought, if you adopt me, I’ll have to go to a different school, right? And I know it’s good, if I go to a better school, May always said that I— but I just— And if I live with you in Manhattan I won’t see them so—”

“Woah, hey, hey there,” Tony kneels down so Peter doesn’t have to look up (Other Peter once said it makes him feel vulnerable in emotional moments, and Tony has been mindful of that ever since). “You can stay at your school, if you like it, alright? I’m not going to make you go to any other school if you don’t want to. If you would like to check out some better ones in the future, I’ll help you with that, whatever you want. But I’m never gonna take you away from your friends, Pete. And we don’t have to live in Manhattan, either. I’m not— I won’t take you away from your home.”

Peter’s face does something complicated, raw, lips quivering as if he’s about to cry, after all. Tony wonders what made him think that, at all, was it a general assumption based on Tony’s position, was it something someone told him? Or just his natural predisposition to anxiety, amplified by the grief? Whatever it could be, Tony makes a mental note in bold letters in his mind to keep an eye out for any other misconceptions Peter might have that Tony would need to debunk before they bring Peter any discomfort or pain.

Peter doesn’t cry, just says a soft okay and takes a deep breath, shoulders slumping. He looks like a kicked puppy left alone in the rain, which, essentially he is, so Tony opens his arms. “Do you want a hug? You look like you could use a hug,” Tony says, light-hearted, no pressure, and Peter steps into his arms immediately.

“Do you still wanna talk to your friends?” Tony asks, rubbing his back. Peter makes a sound too close to a sob, and shakes his head, face hidden in Tony’s shoulder. Tony holds him tighter, “You’re gonna be okay, kid. We’re gonna be okay.”

***

Tony buys a place in Queens, not far from Peter's school. It's a nice penthouse in a nice building, nothing luxurious, but still pretty slick and modern. Spacious, too — more than enough room for everything Peter would need. Lots of windows. Knock down a few walls and Tony could even fit in a decent lab. It's about as normal as Tony can probably go without straying too far from his default settings.

"It's good," Natasha smiles, coming up to Tony's side where he had zoned out in front of the living room windows.

"Yeah? Not too much?"

"I think a big change is good, sometimes. But no, it's not too much."

Tony signs the papers, Natasha assures him she'll take care of furnishing. Tony makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't want a single thing from his old place, any of his old places. Thankfully, his eccentric tendencies transcend through dimensions because no one really bats an eye at this request. And what isn't covered by his personality is easily chalked up to the shock and trauma of recent events.

He still keeps the Tower, of course, and decides to leave the penthouse as it is. For reference, mostly — like a giant crib note.

He buys Peter’s old apartment, too, so Peter can decide what to do with everything there, at his own pace. So he can always come home.

***

The adoption process takes longer than Tony would like, to put it lightly. He gives Natasha the green light to bribe, blackmail, manipulate and coerce whoever she needs to to get things moving. It works, to an extent — but the predicted timeline is still a few weeks.

Tony visits Peter every day.

Sometimes, they go for a walk. They look at buildings, at squirrels, at people, eat corndogs and argue about which street food is better. Peter is always quiet, detached — he chats back but his voice and his face are dull, like the color had been washed out. Sometimes he can’t eat and just stares apologetically at his snack until Tony finds a topic to distract him with. Sometimes he does a double-take at someone passing in the crowd and then looks at the ground for a long moment until Tony tugs gently at his hand. 

Other times, Peter doesn’t want to leave his room. Tony stays with him. He always asks if it’s okay, and Peter always says yes. They watch cartoons on a laptop Tony brought, gossip about staff members, Tony tells him funny stories about his robots, experiments gone wrong. He tries to keep it within the realm of possibility in this world, which sometimes requires adjusting the story on the go. It’s worth it, when Peter raises his eyebrows in amusement, or hums thoughtfully, or gasps a short “that’s cool”.

Sometimes, rarely, Peter tells him something about May and Ben. Something simple, mundane — how May always bought new makeup and never used it, how Ben boycotted sports TV channels whatsoever for two months when The Mets unfairly lost a game, how they always ordered Thai from a fancier restaurant when Peter got good grades, and then one time Peter was too carried away building lego with Ned instead of studying and almost failed a test, but they still got fancy Thai, to comfort him.

Peter uses present tense more often than not. Tony doesn’t correct him.

“Do you miss your parents?” Peter asks one day with no preamble. It’s a day of the first category, so they’re hanging out on a bench, theorizing if the city pigeons are immune to foods that would normally hurt wild birds. It’s certainly a topic worth exploring. FRIDAY would have an answer within seconds, but there is no FRIDAY. Tony is learning to view it as an opportunity.

“I do,” Tony tells him truthfully. “I miss my mom. With my dad it’s… complicated, but I still wish he was around.” Other Peter asked him that once, too, and Tony had a much rougher go at a reply the first time. “It gets easier,” Tony adds and allows himself to reach out and pet Peter’s hair into a more orderly position, still messy and sticking in all directions. Peter looks like he’s about to say something, but decides not to.

“Look at this one,” he points at an exceptionally ragged pigeon specimen. “He would definitely survive some chocolate.”

“Yeah,” Tony smiles. “I bet he would.”

***

The visiting hours are limited, and even though everyone turns a blind eye to Tony treating it more like a suggestion than a hard rule, he still can’t spend all day with Peter.

When he’s not with Peter, he hangs around Pepper — mostly for bonus points and as an expression of his gratitude in lieu of “thanks for helping me hijack your universe” Hallmark card, but he tries to be useful. It feels like interning for his own company and his own life: in this box we have all your inventions that we can actually turn into a product, and this giant room filled with giant boxes are your inventions that should never see the light of day, for various reasons. Just like home. He gets a grasp of SI’s course or actions pretty quick and approves everything he’s seeing so far — Pepper is the CEO, so no one needs his approval, technically, but Tony gets the gist that if he were to disapprove, technicalities wouldn’t really matter.

It’s good. It’s familiar. Tony has ideas. He keeps them to himself, for now, still wary, still only dipping his toes in the water.

“Are you always this… cautious?” Pepper asks one afternoon. Tony is staring at the immaculate glass of the panoramic windows in her office, throwing a bouncy ball at it, aiming for the imaginary charts and formulas on the empty surface. The absence of holo-tech here is a deeper wound than he expected. Second only to the absence of FRIDAY. It’s not for long, he assures himself. He can never resist giving an upgrade, and this world desperately needs one. Holo-tech shall be. AI assistant shall be, or Tony will never ever get anything done.

“Not at all, I’m more surprised than you are.” It’s time he had learned to be, after bringing loss and heartbreak to two timelines of his closest people. Everyone he loves, here or there, has lost him, in a way, whether they know it yet or not. Pepper is the only one who knows, so far, but it’s an open debate in Tony’s mind, whether she should always be the only one.

And the person Tony loves most of all lost his family and his happy childhood, here, and there? He lost the love of his—

Well, he still has Other Tony, so maybe he didn’t—

The ball bounces off the glass so hard it ricochets and knocks off a decorative… something off a coffee table.

“Oops,” Tony says, flat, pretending the thought of sending it all to hell and opening a goddamn gate here and now didn’t just cross his mind.

“I take it back,” Pepper announces, unamused. “You’re not cautious enough.”

Tony thinks of Peter, this Peter. It calms him down, paradoxically, the iron grip of guilt over his heart is a familiar presence. Familiarity can be comforting just as well as unsettling, Tony has learned, keeps learning every day, but he chooses to seek solace in this one. It helps him focus on the here and now, the practical, the unlocked part of the map. There are worse morale compasses than making amends, a lifetime of amends. Tony finds comfort in what he can do. What he can’t, or shouldn’t — is irrelevant.

“It’s a work in progress,” he grits his teeth. Pepper gives him a look and goes back to her papers.

She's been putting on a brave face. It's been two weeks, and she's going on as if… not quite as if nothing happened. But as if it's done. It's finished and there's nothing left but to grieve and move on.

Tony knows her, though. And he's the only one who knows what's really going on, the cutting depth of their tragedy — so he sees it, notices where the mask slips just around the edges. How she furrows her brow and flips the same page over three times before giving up and putting the folder neatly on the left side of the table to come back to later.

Maybe…

Fuck.

Now that the dust has settled and there is just this — nothing left but to grieve, flip over the pages until words make sense again, accept the new reality… the doubt drips in like poison.

Maybe he's going about it the wrong way. And he had his reasons, still has them, he wasn’t dramatic about the safety of the universe being at stake, but—

Maybe, in the anxiety and guilt of it he’s been too cautious.

"FRIDAY- shit."

Pepper looks up. "What?"

"Nothing." Tony is fucking crazy, that's what. Peter asked him the other day, what's on Friday? and Tony had to confess that it's a nervous tick he has to get over.

(I had a date, he joked to himself in his best Steve Rogers impression.)

(Maybe, I can still make it.)

Tony pulls out his phone. He hates typing, typing is stupid. The only exception he would make was when his Peter realized that Tony's texts sometimes were FRIDAY's texts, technically. Not always, but sometimes was enough for Peter to get offended. He said it was alright, I get it, you're a busy person. But it wasn't alright, Tony wouldn't let there be a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't smiling his face off like his high-school crush passed him a note when he was texting Peter every night. So he prohibited FRIDAY from texting Peter for him again and typed every single "on my way" with his own two hands.

Huh.

He gets his phone out, creates a new file and names it "Project: On My Way". His hands start shaking again as he does. As always, there is so many reasons why he shouldn't so much as think about it, he never just thinks about something. But. God. What if—

What if he can fix this, after all?

Everything he ever had to fix — he did.

He imagines his Peter, crying through the smile. Tony imagines hugging him, holding him so tight it would be hard to breathe, saying into his hair, into his cheek, I'm so sorry I scared you, I'm here. I'm here.

He imagines Pepper, not forced to cope with something she doesn't understand, mourn someone who's right here.

He imagines this Peter coming home to May. A different May, but Tony knows first-hand how little it really means when it comes to this.

What if they all could… come home.

“Got an idea you’d like to pitch, yet?” Pepper calls light-heartedly, pulling Tony out of a feverish haze when he’s already several pages into shaping up exactly what he swore to her that first night (to himself, just moments ago) he couldn’t do. Well, he wasn’t exactly lying, he definitely can’t do it the same way, can’t use the same technology. It would have to be something completely different. Smaller, more specific. He doesn’t need to explore infinite worlds or initiate outside entry, he just needs a one-time quick jump to a specific address. It’s different. “You seem like you have one.”

“Nah, I’m just playing Subway Surf,” Tony shrugs, not even trying to make it believable. She smiles, knowing not to push, and lets it go.

He doesn’t tell her anything. Hope can be the cruelest thing of all.

***

Tony realizes very quickly that without FRIDAY pulling off something like this will take a lot of time. And even more manual labor. Which is not a big deal, but it is a significant obstacle to the immediacy. The first computer was created with a typewriter on a piece of paper, of course, and Tony knows better than to be discouraged by a lack of resources. Nevertheless, it’s a different story when the computer in question is multidimensional travel, a safer and upgraded version of it at that, and he doesn’t even have a typewriter. Metaphorically.

Physically, it’s just too much goddamn code to write without an AI. Too much data to process. He can do it, definitely. But it will take months. Years? It took several weeks to make this technology the first time, and then several more weeks to build it and run tests. And back then he had incredibly powerful tools and state-of-the-art sci-fi dream lab to crunch the numbers and smooth the angles.

Now, all he has left of it is a broken pair of stylish glasses and a nice watch. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy them, however chilling the thought of JACKIE or the suit getting into the wrong hands might be — if he can’t get them to show any sign of life, no one in this world can. Still, he put them into a safe requiring his biometrics. Now they’re nothing more than a sentimental souvenir of his past.

If Tony wants to have a sensible shot at opening a portal to his world, without potentially sabotaging the safety of the multiverse yet again — he needs a FRIDAY. No biggie, he can make a FRIDAY. It’s just… back to square one, then.

It’s frustrating. Infuriating and exhausting. All the adrenaline of following the impulse is drained out of him at once. He’s not going to drop the idea, now, he can’t. He was lying to himself, whether he was shameless or oblivious is not clear, but he was lying to himself when he thought he would be able to keep himself from trying.

But it shapes up to be a marathon, not a sprint. A cross-country marathon with a kid and a company and a foreign world in his care. First things first, Tony needs to get seriously acquainted with the local terrain.

He’s been learning bits and pieces since he got here, when he had a moment in between hanging out with Peter and destroying Pepper’s office decorations with fidget toys. It was overwhelming, at first, which is probably why he admittedly procrastinated sitting down with a more systematic approach. Now, taking a deeper, more measured dive into it — world history, his personal history, politics, social moods, technology, science, pop culture… everything — Tony finds out it’s really not that different at all. Weirdly so, because the differences that do exist are so harsh it feels like surely the chain reaction would’ve altered everything else. Either way, he gets into the flow of it pretty fast and the details he picked up over the last few weeks help him predict the general patterns, mostly correctly.

Even though neither HYDRA nor SHIELD ever existed, the Second World War still happened and went pretty much the same course. Superheroes are really not a thing, any kind. Tony is using his own full access resources now, not just a public search, so it’s as trustworthy as can be. Not a single mutant, god, magician, supersoldier, sentient rodent, alien, scientist turning himself into a monster, no other entities with any sort of inhuman abilities. Nothing. The religious beliefs regarding some of such things do exist, however, which is… strange. Tony doesn’t know where to put it. It’s kind of like what the world was for a general audience member before Iron Man, in his universe. Well, mostly, because even then they at least had—

Captain America. Tony looks and then looks more and then spends half the night looking — he finds no record of Steven Grant Rogers. None of Barnes, either. Or rather, there were soldiers with similar names that could fit the timeframe, but Tony finds no discernable information to make sure any of them were them. They could’ve been, of course, the details could be so different Tony would never find out for sure.

He pours a glass of Redbreast and salutes silently in the direction of Brooklyn, shimmering with lights in the distance. If this Steve was anything like the one Tony knows, he probably wiggled his way to war and died there. Tony downs the drink in one go, and puts this particular grief to rest.

Looking for people from his surroundings is a rabbit hole that holds many twists and turns. Some have pretty much identical life stories — Pepper, Rhodey, Happy. Natasha’s life is eerily similar to what his Natasha first presented her life to be, which was a short-lived lie, however well-executed. She moved here as a child after being adopted from a Russian orphanage, did all kinds of things and worked in all kinds of spheres — marketing, tourism, PR. Modeling on the side, just for fun. Ballet and martial arts, also for fun. She did get a master’s in financing, somehow, which landed her a job at Stark Industries, and being a jack of all trades around town landed her a ticket to the Stark Industries inner circles, which is how she stepped in as Tony’s personal assistant when Pepper got a raise and a title change to a CEO. From the looks of it, now Natasha is more of a friend that just so happens to be on a payroll than anything else, just like Happy.

Tony wants to trust her. He decides he’ll give it a chance. As sincerely as he can, for now. Which is about 5-7%, but it’s a start.

Bruce Banner is a scientist working on cancer treatments, quite successfully. No hulking out, no superhuman serums, just boring ole’ papers and research and meds. They have never met. Same goes to Foster and Selvig — just doing their research, presenting it, doing some more. No Asgardians ever appeared, so they never really crossed paths with Tony in any way more significant than attending the same conferences.

Hammer, Killian, Musk and a handful of other low-grade villainous characters whose names Tony bothered to remember — all are doing pretty much the same thing, “competing” with Stark Industries and keeping their projects and companies afloat by corruption and dirty politics, albeit on a much less dramatic scale, here. No killer robots and turning people into bombs. From the looks of it, they couldn’t do that much if they tried.

Stephen Strange is exactly who he would’ve continued being if the car accident never happened, which it hadn’t, here — a praised neurosurgeon and an arrogant asshole. They have met, apparently. Tony finds some blurred photos of them engaged in animated conversation at an event, and a disturbing gossip article suggesting they had an affair. Tony stares at it not blinking for a solid minute before shrugging and admitting to himself that okay, it’s not that crazy of a concept. If the circumstances were correct and the planets aligned just so, he could see how they could’ve ended up hate-fucking each other just to entertain their own egos.

But Other Tony could be different in a way that Tony would never find out, so who knows. Maybe it was more than a hate-fuck. Or maybe the whole thing is just stupid gossip. Far be it from Tony to get surprised at how far gossip magazines are willing to go for clout.

T’Challa is an expansive businessman and philanthropist in South Africa, deeply invested in the growth and prosperity of the local community. Shuri, meanwhile, holds an administrative position, moving rapidly into the higher levels of the government over the past years, appealing to the younger generations with her energy and undying strive for a better future for their nation. Together, they’re doing a great job. Tony reads the statistics and the numbers don’t lie. They’re creating a better life for their country.

Tony doesn’t find any evidence or mentions or myths of Wakanda. He chooses to believe that it’s there, somewhere. Hidden and safe. Maybe not  with energy-shields and altered maps, maybe it’s much more simple, like things generally seem to be here. But Tony hopes it’s there.

Clint Barton is… an archer. The only thing he shoots, however, are fruits and bottles at a circus. And when he’s not doing that he runs a pet shelter and organizes local events for the deaf youth.

Sam Wilson is a veteran, former pilot, now working as a counselor at an AA center in Brooklyn.

Most of the SHIELD agents didn’t stray too far from the path and are in some governmental structures, except…

Nick Fury is an actor. A famous, successful Hollywood actor.

Tony has to get up and walk away from the table and question if he’s actually, actually insane, because—

He pours himself another glass of the whiskey, much needed, swallows it whole and laughs, laughs into his hands until his chest feels looser, just enough for the air to get back in.

This world — Tony realizes, exhausted and delirious, staring at dozens of files open on the screens — this world is a Canada to his America. A PG-13 horror flick to The Shining. A second-grade history book version of brutal reality.

When the blatant comedy of it all settles, what’s left is a clear, simple ache. None of them ever had to fight aliens, outlandish forces beyond their comprehension, maniacal scientists, vengeful demigods, homicidal politicians… There are no superheroes because there was never a need for them, and the challenge of their power never introduced more danger, creating a never-ending vicious cycle. The surrealism of it is startling, indigestive. Tony spent countless sleepless nights asking himself this very question — what came first, the danger or the response?

Are we to blame?

Am I to blame?

“It’s not your fault, Tony,” his Peter would say, planting tender kisses on Tony’s forehead, the line of his jaw, warm and solid in Tony’s arms. “You’re a hero. You saved so many people. You saved me.”

“I didn’t save you,” Tony would argue, “I put you in danger.” Did I bring more danger than peace?

“Of course you saved me,” Peter’s touch was so soft, Tony wanted to cry, or maybe he did cry, one of those nights, one of those liminal moments. “I was out there in freaking pajamas, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I was acting tough, but… honestly? I think I would’ve gotten myself hurt, without you. And even before all that, remember New York? You saved me, all of us.”Tony would close his eyes and let the words carry him away, let them numb the ever-present throb of despair in his chest.

He never told Peter that it was more intricate than that — yes, he grabbed a nuke with his own hands to protect his city, and it worked. In that instance, it worked. But the big picture was greater than that, greater than he could comprehend and logic out with simple facts, not anymore. He never told Peter — that he always felt like even in the moment of pure selfless courage he triggered a worser evil that would inevitably return to bring more loss, more tragedy, more death.

It doesn’t matter, right now. Peter is not here. There is nothing to soothe the fear, no light to flood out the forest until there are no shadows.

As the dawn breaks, Tony is drunk, slightly but enough, enough that his hands don’t shake when he gets into Other Tony’s personal servers, something he had been procrastinating for days for reasons too intricate for his tired heart to wrap around.

Some things he had expected — blueprints for Mark-1 are here, together with an unfinished arc reactor design. So Tony was right in his observation that Iron Man as a concept wasn’t something mind-boggling to Other Tony. However, nothing suggests that he ever tried building either the suit or the power core. Why not? 

He never had to, that’s why. He was never put into a cave with a choice to either die with the life that amounted to nothing or take the safety breaks off, reach for the stars, never look back. However, Other Tony still came to the same conclusion, didn’t he, or Stark Industries would still be making weapons.

It makes no sense. And it makes even less sense the deeper Tony goes.

There is a code for an AI, unnamed, almost as advanced as JARVIS was. The speck of joy it sparks doesn’t bring relief, too diluted with the haunting feeling of unease as Tony’s eyes scan the screen. There is no data of actual launch attempts. There are sketches of interactive holographic screens, energy fields, telepathic control systems… it’s all here. Not everything, but a lot of things. Tony could sure use this now, he would have to check the details but it’s a solid jump-start. It’s just—

Why didn’t Other Tony make them, then? Everything is at the earliest stages of development. He never even tried. What was holding him back?...

The answer, when Tony finds it hidden in plain sight in an unmarked folder, is gut-wrenching in its simplicity.

Tony scrolls through hundreds of pages — theoretical research, sociopolitical statistics. Field-specific educated feedback from independent representatives. Focus groups. Votes. Verdicts.

“Potential danger outweighs the benefits,” reads a line in a finishing paragraph of a report about AI. The results are based on opinions from five hundred people of various demographics and backgrounds who were presented with a concept of an AI powerful enough to completely run a household and make adjustments based on observation and informal communication, rather than explicit commands. The sum of their decision was that it’s a bad idea.

It was a bad idea, so Other Tony gave up the project. All those projects.

Tony stares at the words on the screen, sick to his stomach.

It took so much destruction for him to even think to ask — should I? And when the Accords were finally in place, the guidance they offered relied heavily on the consequences, rather than potential positive outcomes. And Tony knew even as he signed that it was a placebo, a half-measure, a line drawn in the sand that won’t stop him when it comes to it.

And it didn’t.

In this world, another version of him knew to ask the calculated question — should I do this just because I can, just because I want to — and follow through on the objective, focus groups and statistics based, scientifically sterile answer. Their lives were identical in everything that matters, before Iron Man, and as similar as they possibly could be, after. Tony already checked. He thought they must really be as much of the same person as they could in realities so different.

He was wrong.

This man never created an artificial intellect to remind him to eat and show up to parties — because there was too high a risk of it misunderstanding a joke and starting a house fire.

Tony started working on FRIDAY when rescue groups were still digging through the ruins in Sokovia, looking for survivors. He told himself it was different, then.

And he was about to—

God.

He was about to do it all over again.

Tony erases the file he created, hours or a lifetime ago.

He shuts down the computers.

He gets into bed in his new bedroom, in his new place, empty and soulless, just like his ribcage. Haunted with ghosts of his own doing.

My Peter is safe, he repeats to himself, as a prayer, as a quiet plea to calm down the devastating ache ripping apart whatever is left of his rotten heart. My Peter is safe. This love is the closest thing Tony has known to faith, but it’s twisting into something new and dark, an unavoidable realization that paralyzes the tears before they reach Tony’s eyes, undeserved — his Peter is safer now than he ever was.

Tony used to believe in second chances. Infinite chances. Reality is ever-changing and pliable, so who is he to decide the limits of growth and redemption?

Like many other things, it was a foolish belief.

It’s just a fitting kind of purgatory that Tony gets one more chance — sleeping now, hopefully, in a social services facility across the bridge, while his name is being passed along the governmental systems deciding if he deserves a home. In a world that never had to be defended from so many strange and perplexing horrors.

Tony has made this promise before. But he almost—

He almost went back on it.

So he makes a new one, now. Quietly, to himself.

***

It takes so long Tony is ready to find a spider to bite him so he could climb a wall — and then it’s done. Papers are signed and filed and approved, he is now Peter Parker’s very own legal guardian.

“Wanna get a cheeseburger? I’d kill for a cheeseburger,” Tony says on the way out of the grim building that Peter will never step foot in again.

“I’d love a cheeseburger. Can we get fries, too?” Peter is wincing from the sun so Tony wordlessly hands him an extra pair of shades he brought just in case. Peter puts them on, glancing up at Tony in surprise. “Thanks… wow, these are cool.” They are pretty cool, best on the market. Too big on his face, though, so Tony makes a mental note to get a customized pair.

“We’ll get fries, obviously, what loser doesn’t get fries? There is a price to pay though,” Tony crouches down when they get to the car, looking over the rim of his glasses at Peter for dramatic effect. “You will have to eat a salad, too.”

Peter smiles. “Okay, Jeez, I actually like salads. They’re crunchy.”

Tony gasps. “I was wrongly advertised, you’re supposed to disdain vegetables and my main duty is to feed them to you, that’s what that document says,” he waves the folder with the adoption paperwork.

Peter pretends to think about it, crossed arms and all. “I hate carrots, if this helps?”

“A ton. You must eat a tiny carrot and I’ll get you all the fries in the world.”

“Deal.”

They shake hands and get in the car.

***

“What’s that?” Peter asks, pointing at the little box in the corner of this new bedroom.

“Open it.”

Peter gives him a hesitant look. Tony tried to keep the tour of their new home as casual as possible, intentionally skipping a few closed doors. Everything is probably overwhelming enough for the kid without things like an indoor pool and a rooftop patio. Peter is a curious kid, he’s a scientist, after all — he’ll explore and find all these things when he’s ready. Tony made sure to let him know he’s absolutely allowed to.

Peter sits down on the floor in front of the box and studies it for a minute before carefully pressing the buttons to pop the lid off. It’s not an intricate device, mostly just a high-tech looking chest. 

“Are those…” Peter grabs a package from the inside, eyes wide. “Is it the cookies?”

“You know it,” Tony tries to smile. Peter looks shattered, turning the plastic wrap in his hands like he doesn’t know what to do with the weight of it. Tony knows the feeling. “They’re vacuum sealed, like the food astronauts have in space… but cooler. Thermokinetic packaging, dry-frozen inside — it will self-unfreeze when you rip off that blue lining in the middle.” Peter follows the line with his finger but doesn’t go to open it. He puts it back into the box instead, closing the lid slowly until it locks with a click.

“Thank you,” Peter’s voice is soft in the sudden quiet that has fallen over the room, his eyes are big and shiny and so genuine it hurts. Tony stands there defenseless, completely disarmed. 

“You’re welcome, baby,” Tony replies, and the next thing he knows Peter is here, wrapping his arms across Tony’s torso in an abrupt hug. Tony hugs him back, tight, and maybe—

Maybe it’s going to be okay.

Peter looks up a moment later, eyes still red-rimmed but hopeful. “Can we vacuum seal something else? I never… vacuum sealed anything. How does it work?”

This — this Tony knows how to do.

“Let’s go, it’s pretty fun. I might’ve already vacuum sealed everything we had in the fridge, but we’ll find something.”

Peter perks up, and if Tony’s purpose from now on is just this, making sure Peter eats and remembers how to smile after everything he’s been through…

It’s going to be okay.