Tony wakes up somewhere in Manhattan with a splitting headache and aching lungs.
Not that this occurrence is particularly unusual, except he’s not in his late twenties partying it up in Brooklyn anymore. He’s too old for this shit now. He’s got bad knees and a shitty echocardiogram score and a multitude of psychiatric diagnoses.
He’s facedown on a park bench, which is a noticeable improvement from concrete so he’ll take his blessings where he can find them.
Bleary-eyed, he blinks away sleep like a heavy fog. There’s a imitation of his Iron Man mask, sketched out in muted graffiti and entangled with flowers, staring up at him from the beige sidewalk directly below him. Odd.
Tony’s normally a fan of idolization and worship when it comes to himself, but this just trips over the line of creepy. Come on, sidewalk graffiti? It’s beneath him.
Literally.
It only gets worse from there. Entire buildings have been colored red and gold, superhero mask and even the whole suit glaring at him from every angle.
There’s a big statue of Iron Man in downtown Manhattan with a plaque on the base that he only glances at, sees the word commemoration, and freezes.
IN MEMORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST AVENGER: IRON MAN
2012 — 2023
WE HEREBY ERECT THIS COMMEMORATION FOR A HERO THAT SACRIFICED HIS LIFE FOR THE UNIVERSE.
THANK YOU; YOU WILL BE MISSED.
Memorials, Tony realizes all too quickly, are something that honor the dead. Meaning: somehow Tony Stark died, even when he’s standing in a throng of busy civilians. Even when the in-and-out breath is ever present, a heart off-beat but still formidable.
The statue peers down at him from its tall pedestal, silently judging the passing traffic. The intention is clear, a permanent reminder of honor and sacrifice, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. Tony just sees it as a last desperate attempt to hold on to grief in a city too prone to moving on and letting go.
A woman briskly glides past him, barely sparing a moment of time to look at the towering figure. The longer he watches, the more he discovers that very few people actually acknowledge the bronze idol at all. A little girl tugs at her dad‘s hand, points up in awe. Her father, narrow-eyed, just pulls her away, and they too leave Tony behind.
He spares another glare up at his monument, and joins the stream of foot traffic as another nameless face on the street.
Is this another resurrection story? Tony’s not equipped to be a messiah, and frankly he doesn’t want the job. Too much empty faith and emptier promises.
But… dead? After everything he’d survived, Tony had kind of thought himself invincible. The end was imminent, but always something that happened to everyone else he cared about. He didn’t survive aliens and a/ rogue AI just to die of something stupid, he convinces himself. Fate has kept him alive for a reason, why would he doubt ‘the grand plan’ if it kept him cognizant and breathing?
No cause of death, he notes. Knows like he knows machinery that they gave a vague description to the public, asking around on the street would yield no firm answer.
Several people stare at him for a beat too long as he makes his way down the block, but most are too preoccupied with the goings-on of their everyday lives to worry about Tony Stark in their midst. He just thanks whatever higher power that he’d thrown on an inconspicuous hoodie, faded Levi’s, and a Yankees baseball cap before he’d left for Pepper’s place that morning.
He’s still got his wallet and watch, so he hadn’t been mugged. Yet. Even in civvies, he looks like someone made of money, and everyone in a ten mile radius can sense it.
The billionaire is wandering with no real destination, carrying a hollow feeling of loss in his calves the longer he searches. An impatient buzzing claims the stiff muscles in his shoulders, urges him to walk faster, find the final piece to slot the picture together.
Overhead, the electronic billboard switches from a fast food commercial to a news broadcast. One of the shitty ones that Tony had to sue in the past, the Daily Bugle.
This is how he sees the kid’s face for the first time since Titan.
Dumbstruck, he goes rigid in the middle of the sidewalk. A younger gentleman shoulder-checks him as he passes by, trying to get through the flow of pedestrians and to his destination. It’s almost comical, how Tony falls on his ass trying to scramble back, mouth open around a choked exclamation.
It’s not possible— how the hell could it be, when Peter had bled out on a foreign planet and left in the sediment and towering metal of a land annihilated and forgotten.
And yet—
He’s there, clad in the suit without the mask, getting verbally assaulted by a mediocre journalist with a hatred of vigilantism on a live newsfeed.
Without the mask. Without the mask? Who the hell released this child(!!)’s information to the public? Who does he have to file a lawsuit against?
Spider-Man looks both different and exactly the same, has a new suit that is unmistakably Tony’s tech but not something the mechanic had crafted for him.
Peter looks older than he ever got to be. It looks good on him, to compare with the scrawny teen he used to be and see the filled out jaw, evidence of youth sloughed off like grass stains and patterned bedsheets.
He gasps for air, chest too tight and stomach a twisting bed of eels inside his abdomen.
Recent footage flashes red, a wrecked teenager wearing the suit of a hero getting body-slammed through a thick concrete bridge. It’s a jarring image, and anger flares deep in his gut at the realization that no one else sees it as anything other than a rogue vigilante getting what they deserve.
The billionaire’s not quite sure why the public decided to name the kindest person he knows a villain, but he’s willing to fight god herself if it means that Peter could catch a fucking break.
The kid needs his help, he can feel it in his bones. Something brought him here, to this moment: he knows this intrinsically. The static grows until it’s almost unbearable, so the superhero gets off his ass and stumbles in a direction that makes it less prominent.
Tony has to find him, if he’s really still here. Alive.
He just doesn’t know where.
He’s no closer to finding the kid when the sparks appear.
About four hours walking had landed him in the residential district in Queens.
The philanthropist is somewhere in the relative area of Peter’s apartment complex, realizing that the jump to wherever he is now has rendered all of his technology obsolete. New York City and its surrounding metropolis might have numbered streets, but Tony’s still fucking lost amidst the towering skyscrapers.
Close to seven layers of chewed gum are plastered on the enclosed walls of this back alley, and Tony decides right then and there that humanity must be irredeemable for their crimes against public health.
Right as he decides to call somebody to complain, something shimmers in the deep end of the pathway, bright against the shrouded buildings.
Tony’s been around enough wizards by now to recognize the opening of a portal when he sees it. Flipping through the last couple hours in his head though, he can’t recall a single incident that had anything to do with the Sanctum or its inhabitants.
On second thought—
Scrap that, Stephen Strange is exactly the type of pretentious asshole that would have something to do with all this.
But the sight of two teenagers standing on the other side of the portal brings that line of thinking to a screeching halt.
Wait a goddamn minute—
Tony knows these teenagers. Michelle Jones and Ted, Ned? Leeds. Submitted their names to be added to the long list of the lost, swept away by a clenched fist and a singular drop of blood.
They bicker, unaware of his presence. He thinks about announcing himself, but decides against it. He thrives on chaos and spontaneity and scaring the shit out of the unassuming. It’s practically his own personal soap opera.
The place— house?— appears to be homey and lived in, the little of it that he can see through the portal. There’s an odd box with what look like runes carved into the sides of it, that contains some sort of glowing ball bouncing around inside.
He must’ve zoned out for a bit too long, because the noise cuts off abruptly with a choked gasp. A dinner roll soars through the space between them and hits his forehead with a wet squelch. Tony sputters, glares at the female who threw the offending bread loaf. “Hey!”
Trembling, the young suit-hacker stutters out, “You— You’re Tony Stark! Oh my god…”
Ted-maybe-Ned looks like he’s having an aneurysm, which is both amusing and slightly concerning, but this girl just looks exhausted, more weary than any teenager should. “Yeah. I mean, it makes sense.”
“This must’ve been ‘cause of the spell!” The younger boy exclaims.
Rubbing his brow, Tony steps through the portal. “What spell?”
MJ smacks her friend to shut him up, hisses at him to juststop talking. Tony admires the set to her jaw, her inherent skepticism. “Prove it.”
The billionaire raises a single eyebrow. “Prove what, exactly?”
”Prove that you’re Tony Stark.” She gestures to him, eyes narrowed.
Tony scoffs. “You know anyone else with this magnificent face? Top ten most attractive men in the United States, check any grocery store magazine.”
“Not good enough.” The girl just levels him with a bored stare, grabs another roll off the table in front of them, and poises it to heave at the older man.
”I don’t carry an ID with me kid, kinda defeats the purpose of literally being famous. I don’t know what you want me to say.” He lifts his hands, placating.
Ned takes this moment to recover, chimes in hesitantly, “Tell us something only you would know. About Peter.” The other teen motions to her friend, agreeing with his contribution.
The superhero hums, contemplative. Takes a moment to think. Something he knows about Peter… what does he know about the teenager that his friends would also be aware of? A half-formed thought sputters out of his mouth with little resistance. “The kid’s favorite food is this ridiculous pancake recipe with gummy worms and marshmallows and strawberry jam. It looks like the most disgusting thing a human could come up with, but he swears it tastes like heaven.”
The kids turn towards each other for a moment, shrug. “Yeah, sounds like him.”
While the others break off into a conversation, the portal dissipates with a few bigger sparks. Tony jumps away, startled. It seems as though neither MJ nor Ned notice, which he thinks is strange.
“Sooo, someone wanna tell me what’s been going on?” The man picks up a couple knick-knacks on a side table, a few cultural pieces and ornate plates that he examines with a detached interest.
“I— uh… I think you should hear it from him? Um, Peter. Mr. Iron Man sir.” Ned chokes out, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.
He shakes his head, almost patronizing. “Nope, not gonna work. What spell?”
It’s MJ that offers the information, a bit uncharacteristic but he’ll let it slide. “He screwed up a memory spell trying to get us into college. It started bringing people from other universes that know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man into this one.”
“What?!”
”Yeah…” she trails off, brow scrunching. “Peter probably knows more. That’s just what we’ve found out.”
Tony’s dumbfounded. What the hell have these children been getting themselves into?
Reaching up to scratch at his facial hair, he asks the most important question: “Where is he then?”
“We don’t know. The news said he was at Happy’s apartment, but they haven’t seen him since the— the fight.”
They all glance over at the television, still rewinding a nightmare of destruction and ruin.
Tony’s brow furrows. Remembers a haunted teen, perched on the Empire State Building on the days where the world became too loud, too expectant, too much. Remembers days spent in the lab, the relaxed curve of shoulders when the machinery and schematics surrounded both mentor and mentee. “Where would your Peter go, to get away from everything?”
Ned and MJ glance at each other, both with the same understanding that the billionaire feels left on the outskirts of.
“Yeah, we might know the place.”
When he finally gets to the high school with Peter’s friends in tow, the sun is slinking off the horizon like a neglected dog. It’s still bright enough to see, but it casts a ominous ambiance over the atmosphere that Tony is definitely not a fan of. Everything feels slightly off, dream-like. He isn’t quite sure how this is going to go.
They take a taxi, because Tony’s still got a wallet and a distrust for newfound users of amateur magic. He doesn’t know if using his money from an entirely different universe counts as financial fraud or not, but he feels no remorse as he forks over a hundred for the driver’s waiting palm.
No Iron-Man suit left for him to summon like the badass he is, he resorts to clambering up the fire escape after two teens who have no physicalities barring such a grueling ordeal. Ah, to be young again.
Ned and MJ reach him first, of course. Tony hangs back, tucked in the shadows like a dirty secret.
The storm hit like a flood; they’d watched it beat down on the windows of the taxi until the world was blurred out around the edges, intangible beneath all that water. It’s dripping down all the architecture, all the machinery towering over them, and the kid is soaked to the bone. Tony can see him shivering from here, small jerky things that he’s trying to suppress.
He lets the teenagers have a moment to reunite. Several moments, in actuality. The billionaire’s own eyes are glassy by the time MJ pulls back, tear-streaked and breathing hard. “Peter, there’s um. There’s someone here to see you.”
”Hey, Underoos.” Tony steps out into the wider space, stops hiding. One of the lights flicker as he moves, almost like a spotlight. He wishes he had his sunglasses, something to make him feel less vulnerable.
Peter’s head snaps up, fast enough to give him whiplash. Eyes like saucers, all the blood rushes from his face and he sways in place against the onslaught. “Wh- what? How are—“
At least Tony’s had time to prepare for this. To say that the kid looks blindsided is an understatement.
“You’re dead.” Dull, monotone. Fact that has had too much time to settle in the bottom of the murky water. His eyes flit between his friends and Tony, trying to figure out if this is some kind of cruel joke. “I watched you die.”
It takes a lot of effort, for the young hero to haul himself up and stumble forward a couple steps. Parker grabs onto a utility pipe for balance, shakes off the other’s attempts to help.
“You’re dead,” Tony throws back, a weighted ball launched at a court that has no player stationed at the baseline. 40 - 15, his serve.
”And yet—“ MJ butts in, “—you’re both still here and breathing. Care to elaborate?”
Peter looks at her for a beat too long, something soft in his gaze, and— oh, that’s new.
He pulls her into his side, uses two busted knuckles to tuck a curly strand of hair behind her ear. He leans in close, mumbles something that has her shivering at the proximity.
MJ steps back, eyes narrowing. She shoots a apprehensive glare over Tony’s way. “You sure?”
The boy nods in assent, and the girl leans in and presses their foreheads together. The two lovebirds separate, and Michelle snags her other friend on their way off the roof.
As he passes, Ned wraps his best friend up in another hug, already sniveling. When they part, Peter offers him a watery smile and quiet gratitude.
One last scathing look from the scary teen, and the superheroes are left unsupervised.
At first, they just stare at each other in the half-light. Tony’d seen him on the news, but that was before he got the shit beat out of him by the newest threat.
The kid looks terrible, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. He’s bleeding from pretty much every body part that’s visible, which has got to be a new record. Countless bruises, right eye bloodshot with burst vessels, left drowning in an ocean of red. Peter’s holding himself stiff, and Stark can recognize the signs of broken ribs when he sees them. Someone got their hands around his throat, coincidentally the next person up to bat on his People To Murder on Sight list.
The need to know what happened flares ugly and writhing in his gut. He knows Peter can fight his own battles, but this just might be the worst he’s ever seen the young hero in either of their universes. Tony wants to wrangle the info out of him to extinguish the fire simmering under his skin.
Instead, he takes a deep breath, and focuses on the positives.
“Sooo, you have a girlfriend?” the billionaire doesn’t exactly smirk, but it’s as close as he can get to the correct tug of lips, correct glimmer in his eyes.
The teenager flushes pink, doesn’t quite manage to sound threatening when he hisses “Shut up!”
Tony missed him, and each familiar mannerism, every stray curl and new scar just settles the feeling deeper into his bones. He wants to know the intricacies of this Peter just as well as his own.
He aches with it.
He doesn’t remember this, or rather, he’d shoved the feeling down until it had been too late.
This is his kid, the foundation that let him build his relationship with Morgan. It had scared him at first, how familiar it had been, the love he’d felt for his daughter when she’d been born. Scared him for a long time after, because they’d left the young hero to fade away on a distant planet and buried an empty casket.
Where were the paternal feelings supposed to go, without the recipient? How was he supposed to move on, knowing that they’d never addressed it, left it to linger in the things they didn’t say?
The first and last time Peter had ever called him “dad” was on his death bed, trying so hard to die in silence.
Someone like Peter was supposed to go out like a bomb; decimate the surrounding area and leave reminders on the atoms that he existed. Everyone would feel the earthquake, fall to their knees in grief for the loss, oxygen stripped from their lungs in an agonizing pull. Pollute the sky until every day was hazy and grey, stop the world on its axis with a deafening scream that never ceases. Take away the best and worst parts of daily life until each waking moment was a monotonous, apathetic ache for something better.
It was almost unfair, how his last breath came so slow, so gentle. Like looking back into an empty apartment and flipping the light switch off. Like suffocating without the panic, convinced that you’re still breathing until your lungs give out. Like palladium poisoning and slow shrapnel, a death before death, assassination in slow motion.
It had made the grief sharper, more painful, when he got back to find that the kid’s aunt and two best friends had been taken away with the snap of a maniac’s fingers. To realize that the only person really left to mourn had been him, and god if that wasn’t some cruel irony.
What was he supposed to do with all that absence?
And now, with May—
“About your aunt, kid. It wasn’t your fault.”
Automatic, knee-jerk response: “Yes it was.”
Neither startle, but somehow both are surprised at the finality.
”Peter.” Not quite a reprimand, but—
“She died for nothing, Tony. They still… they still got away.”
”Let me be the judge of that.” The billionaire’s face is passive, but his voice is dark, a warning and a promise.
Peter swallows, winces. The handprints on his neck seem to darken in front of their eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
And this is how he finds out about the last year, the bastard that is Quentin Beck, and subsequently Norman Osborn with his band of villains.
Yeah, he’s gonna rip someone’s throat out with his teeth.
They really don’t have the time, but that stops neither from wasting the minutes with their eyes on the horizon. It’s an amicable silence, as they sit and process the past twelve hours.
Something must be bothering the kid though, because he keeps picking at his open sores as if he needs the reminder that he still feels pain. Tony trusts him though, know’s he’ll speak when he’s ready.
Peter’s voice is rough, when he cuts through the static. “How’d I die?”
Straight to the point. He has always admired that about his protégée. He could talk nonsense for hours, don’t get him wrong, but these kinds of conversations… he knew the best way to get Tony to talk about things he normally avoids like the plague.
It’s an oddly comforting thought, that there are confirmations that Peter Parker is inherently the same in every universe. All these small mannerisms and considerations travel inter-dimensionally, something woven into the very fabric of his being.
“Thanos.” When the teen quirks an eyebrow, the billionaire rolls his eyes. “On Titan. You decided to pick a fight that you obviously didn’t win.”
Silence.
More, then. Damn.
”Genocidal alien threw a moon at me, it took a while to recover enough for the rest of the fight. You told me to hang back, and I just sat there and watched as Thanos ran you through with a blade from my suit.” Tony glances over at the other superhero, looking for something he can’t name. Maybe remorse. Maybe absolution. “It wasn’t a quick death.“
It’s obvious the kid doesn’t quite know what to say. Something shutters behind his eyes, surprise maybe. Peter’s mouth opens, shuts, opens again. He bites his lip until it’s pale, bloodless; it’s almost a confirmation of just how intangible he still feels. Even here. Even now.
Peter has always felt a lot like a ghost to him, and Tony is long overdue for a haunting.
There’s a sudden urgency, how he needs him to understand. Just in case it was unclear: “I would’ve followed you.”
The jagged edges of his vision superimpose orange haze and scattered dust over the dark twilight and distant skyline. Tony shakes off the memory like a phantom chill.
“I would’ve followed you,” he repeats.
Peter’s eyes are dull, tired sores amidst layers of bruises and cuts, but his tear ducts are still functional. He’s always been a silent crier, and the wet drops seem to catch every new wound, every patch of blood on their way down. It has to hurt, but he doesn’t even flinch.
Then, like it’s the simplest thing in the world: “I wouldn’t have let you.”
Out of everything, it is this that makes Tony falter. The thousands of times that he had rehearsed this conversation in his head, this had never been a response. Never an option, because it’s exactly what he needed to hear, and when had he ever been that lucky?
It should have been.
Damn this kid and his self-sacrificial bullshit. “Kid—“
“No, Tony,” he interrupts. “Any universe where you’re alive is better than those where you aren’t.” The teen gestures around hopelessly. “Just look at this place. It’s gone to shit. Nobody even kn— I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Tony can recognize a shitty coping mechanism when he sees one, and Peter is using the ones he practically invented. “Pete, you think I know what I’m doing? I never know what I’m doing!”
“But—“ his protégée raises his voice several decibels, “—I knew what I was doing, back on Titan. The world couldn’t lose you. Hell, the universe couldn’t lose you.”
Peter shifts closer, wraps tentative fingers around his mentor’s wrist to feel the slightly-elevated pulse. Tony’s automatically do the same; proof of life, right there under his hands. “I would die a hundred times if it means that you could have lived longer. It’s nice to know that somewhere out there, I died for you. Somewhere else, you lived because of me.”
The kid’s mouth twitches as he smiles, small and fatigued. “And that will always be worth it, Mr. Stark.”
How is it worth it? It’s not. It’ll never be worth it, if the world is robbed of this hero.
Wasn’t worth it, that Tony was robbed of his child, left to mourn in a world of ash.
He wants to argue, deny every word vehemently and counter with every reason that that couldn’t possibly be right.
He doesn’t.
Because he gets it. Knows if the roles were flipped, he’d say the same thing. Checkmate.
Tony sniffs, aiming for causal but he doesn’t quite hit the target. “How’d I go, then? Must be one hell of an anecdote, if I’m worth all that.”
Rush of cold, his palm left abandoned and clinging onto the suggestion of warmth. Peter’s pulled back, and Tony watches him fade back into a mirage in the dim light.
It can’t be comfortable— the position that Peter contorts his body into in an attempt to self-soothe. Especially with all the injuries he still must be hiding under his suit. But the boy doesn’t even flinch, just rocks slightly with his knees tucked into his chest.
It takes him a while to cut through the silence, a small mumble that Tony has to actively concentrate to hear.
“I dusted on Titan with the others. In this universe, that is.” The kid’s eyes are vacant, words glassy and slow. Like he’s telling a ghost story. “It took five years, but you invented time travel and went back to get the stones. Dr. Banner brought us all back, something about gamma radiation and similar molecular structure; he made it through with just a messed up arm.”
The fluorescent light starts shivering, casts strips of shadow across the bridge of Peter’s nose in reluctant intervals.
“Thanos from 2014 came through the time machine, turned the compound into a crater. Brought his whole army with him.” He swallows around a gag. “He wanted to end the whole universe, said he’d rebuild it better somehow? They didn’t tell me much. I was on Titian and Dr. Strange brought me back. But you— you got the stones from him, used them to kill him and his ’soldiers’.”
Tony gapes. “And I—?”
Peter’s hands tremble as he brings one up, tugs lithe fingers through his hair. “You didn’t make it off the battlefield.”
And there it is: the condemnation into martyr.
Tony doesn’t know if that label had ever been this heavy on his head, a phantom king on an empty throne.
Did Atlas ever fall, suffocated by the weight of the world? He must have, for the burden to stifle Tony beneath all this dust. He can taste it in his molars.
It’s not new, but the ferocity with which he resents himself leaves him gasping under the onslaught. Wild vines take up residence in his chest cavity, thread themselves around his lungs like a vice. Because— “I wouldn’t have done that.”
”—What? What do you mean, you ‘wouldn’t have done that’?”
”I believe you kid, don’t get me wrong, but—“ he inhales, strangled, “I wouldn’t do that. Sacrifice myself.”
”So… why did you?”
That’s a valid point. Why would he have sacrificed himself? There are hundreds of things that might’ve been true, but none that he can be sure of without hearing it straight from the dead hero. It’s hard to prove a hypothesis without sufficient data.
But perhaps that’s not the right question here. What made the other version of him different than this one? What the hell was the motivation that drove him to bring everyone back, to—
His kid’s thumb is in his mouth, and Tony watches as a bead of blood pools from the torn skin, falls down towards his palm.
Oh.
Of course, it’s the only difference that matters:
”You.”
The teen cocks his head, confusion evident. ”Mr. Stark, you’re not making much—“
”That’s what was different between me and him. He still… he still had you. Could get you back. I— I didn’t.”
Peter’s eyes are wide, round planets of wet emotion in the dusk. His lips flatten, neck shrinks back towards his shoulders. “But— I’m not, not worth that, Tony. Why would you have—?” He sniffs, rubs a stray tear off his cheek. “You’re good, okay? There had to have been another reason, like you wanted to save everyone? The world? It wasn’t just me.”
“You’re giving me too much credit, kid. I’m selfish.” The genius huffs, snags the kid’s wrist again with a cold hand. He shakes his head at the teen’s protest, cuts him off. “I am.”
Something clangs, on another part of the building. There’s a breeze that goes right through them, cold dusting their faces with pink.
“I didn’t even try to get anyone back, Pete.” Tony confesses, voice low and heavy. “Steve came and asked me to help, and I told him to go fuck himself.”
The teen’s face scrunches. “What? No, you helped him.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the world,” Tony realizes. “I had a wife and a five-year-old to worry about. The only reason I would’ve done what I did was because I knew you would be there after I was gone.”
If anything, the younger superhero curls up a bit tighter, glares at the ground in front of them. “No! No. Because that means it was my fault. And I’m sorry Mr. Stark, but I can’t live with myself knowing that I killed you!”
And—
Tony Stark is a man of many words, and it’s not often that he’s at a loss for them. But what is he supposed to say to that?
What does anyone say to something like that?
Especially because, and loathe he is to admit it, the kid is kinda right. There’s no easy way to convince him otherwise, when the evidence has just been laid out between them, a damnation in verbatim.
Tony looks at Peter, really looks at him; he’s got guilt pouring off him in waves, is virtually shaking with it. He’s three bruises away from a punctured lung, got pain and exhaustion and loss residing in every torn muscle, every skin cell.
The billionaire lowers his tone into a soothing murmur. “I didn’t mean it like that. But Peter, you didn’t kill me. If you want to get technical, it was Thanos, less technical, it could’ve been Strange when he told me there was a single path that led to victory, and I took it. Either way, this isn’t on you.” Tony’s lips twitch, quirk into a small grin that holds very little humor in it. “It was on me. ‘And that will always be worth it’, in your own words, Underoos.”
Peter’s not listening though, is practically inconsolable. He’s a quivering mess, huddled on the roof of his high school. There’s some metaphor to be found in that, but Tony doesn’t exactly have the brain power to think of an apt comparison.
“I couldn’t lose you. And then I did. And it was my fault!” He forces a choked laugh, almost maniacal, through labored breaths. “But you’re everywhere! No one ever let me forget what you did, least of all you!”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” His mentor prods, with less tact than he intended.
”With EDITH. You left a note for me: ‘For the next Tony Stark, I trust you’.”
Tony’s a fucking idiot.
His protégée is one of the most anxious people he knows, of course he’d overthink this last message. Why would he have remembered that fight, back on the Staten Island Ferry, when their relationship was teetering on non-existent? The comment in the car back from Germany, the grey area to operate when Tony was unsure of how hands-on he wanted to get, lest he fuck this child up for good.
It was inevitable, he supposes. There was no way to leave Peter unscathed, when this multiverse had make it a sworn duty to give him hell regardless of the role Tony played in his life.
At least this way, some version of himself had given the kid someone who kept him safe, alive.
“Everyone kept asking if I was gonna replace you. The ‘Great Iron-Man’.” Peter jerks his head, almost subconsciously. “But I can’t, I… I’m not you. I’ll never be you.”
Somewhere behind them, the light flickers, static and slow. Tony hums along with it, thinks about finding God in a convenience store, drunk on cheap wine and prescription painkillers. It’s a sobering thought, how the holy find the most destructive way to mourn.
”No, you won’t be me.” Tony’s voice is soft, quiet. Reverent. “You’ll be better.”
The villains are out there waiting for the right time to strike, and MJ and Ned are still off doing whatever teenagers do in the face of insurmountable tragedy.
But for now, the two heroes sit under the watchful eye of fate. Almost nothing but mottled skin and vacant lungs and collateral damage.
If anything at all, they are cockroaches, crawling out from under the nuclear bomb to laugh at those who dare try to kill them a second time.
It will be enough.
It has to be enough.