I'm Sorry
Tony didn’t know how he should answer that. He knew what he should say. That he only just found him-and if he was able to he wouldn’t have ever lost him. That he was there now-and they could ‘figure out what happened’ if Peter didn’t already know. (It seemed like Peter already knew.) Tony knew what he should say-and he still found that it felt impossible to say it.
He couldn’t just sit there in silence though, now could he?
“I came to find you as soon as I could Peter.” Peter took his hands away from his eyes long enough to stare at him through a pair of suspiciously watery eyes. Peter softly shook his head, averting his gaze to the steering wheel.
“If-if you-” Peter swallowed, decidingly pressing his lips together, “If-if you knew I was…I was me, and you-you were alive-why didn’t Happy tell me?” Tony wasn’t sure-there were a lot of unusual holes in his own reasoning-Happy would have told him if he knew he hadn’t died yet-but he knew when Tony woke up-and Peter was left in the dark? That didn’t make sense to him. A lot of this didn’t make sense to him-but he couldn’t exactly tell his crying-kid that, now could he?
“Kid, Happy doesn’t even know who you are.” Tony didn’t feel good about this. In fact the look that slipped onto-and back off of Pete’s face for a moment made his artificial chest hurt. “Pete, if I knew what happened, I would tell you, but I don’t.” He didn’t think him being there would make Peter so upset. “I wish I knew what happened, but y’know there’s a lot of blanks.” If he had known he would have tried to be a bit less forward. He might not have chased him down at all-at least not like this. “All I know is that I woke up one day, and I didn’t know who you were-I was just…there. No one else knew you-I didn’t know anything about Spider-Man or you-or anything until I got back to the lab-and well…FRIDAY asked about you, and it all came back.” Okay-so that was a bit of a reprise, so what? It got his point across, and it got Peter do something other than press his face into his hands.
“Oh.” Peter’s sudden voice-crack reminded Tony a little too well of the kid who had called someone who thought was dead, sobbing over his Aunt’s death. “Why does everyone else think you’re dead?” It seemed like an honest enough question, unlike the accusatory ones Tony had been receiving for an hour now.
“Yeah, being dead to the public has it’s perks. I don’t know why you weren’t told Peter-but I promise if I had been there you would have been the first person I wanted to see. I just don’t know what happened to me-or anyone else.” He could practically still hear Peter telling him about their victory. He would have liked to talk to him about it. Peter’s face slid into something guilty when he took them out of his hands.
Maybe Tony would figure out what happened after all.
“Do you know what happened?” Peter slid his hands back onto his face-seemingly uncaring about EDITH being trapped upon his forehead.
He thought he was going to go all stoic on him again-he didn’t want him to slip back into the silence, or to sit there quietly, ignoring everything Tony did until he dropped him off-but instead of proceeding to ignore him, shook his head.
“I do.” Well that was kind of conflicting, wasn’t it? “I-I do, and I’m sorry.” Peter’s shoulders hunched up around his neck, as if that could stop him from crying.
Oh Peter.
“Kid, I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.” Tony already knew about the trend his kid was on, and if he could help it he wasn’t going to let it grow. Tony knows plenty about self-blame and he’s sure some monster trying to erase Peter from the earth entirely wasn’t Peter’s fault. He was a kid-a very large kid now-but a kid nonetheless, and kids with almost no real life experience can’t really be at fault for mistakes they didn’t know not to make-especially when it comes to crime fighting.
They were right when they told him not to bring a thirteen year old into this. He should have listened, if Peter was never dragged into an Avenger’s dispute they might not have been this close-sure, but he would likely have been safer.
It was a bit too late now-all Tony should be concerned with is getting to know his kid again.
“It is.” Peter took a short breath. “I’m the reason all of this happened. I’m not good enough.” That unlike many of the things Peter had brought up that hurt Tony physically, was said very matter-of-factly. For a second Tony thought he misheard-but no. There it was. Sitting in between them, dressed up as a fact-when in reality it clearly wasn’t true. Sure, Peter could do better, but just because he was doing this didn’t mean Peter wasn’t inherently good-enough. Peter was great-even if somehow he had made a mistake and caused-whatever happened, that didn’t mean he needed to blame himself for it.
Tony’s not going to say any of that though-not yet. He wants Peter to keep talking to him, and he’s figured it out. Every time Tony’s tried to be reassuring, Peter either goes off topic arguing about it with him, or goes quiet. As much as Tony wants to reassure his kid that he’s sure it was a mistake, or that he’s good enough for whatever he needs to do, he wants answers more, and he has a feeling that he’s not going to get them if he gets Peter off on another tirade.
“How come?” Peter finally let EDITH return to her spot on his face before taking her off, and wiping his face with his coat sleeve. He didn’t put her back on.
“I don’t know.”
----------------------------------------------
He doesn’t know why he’s not. There’s no set thing he can push past, or fight through to be good enough, he’s tried-it just makes it worse.
He’s not good enough. He knows that-everyone who’s ever fought him has known it. Not being good enough encapsulates absolutely everything that’s wrong with him. He’s not strong enough-his spider-sense is unreliable-he’s too gullible, and too-he’s too slow. Too slow to realize Beck wasn’t on his side, too slow to realize he was in the presence of the Goblin, and too slow to save anyone close to him. His mom, and dad, Ben, May, Mister Stark, any of them. Too slow to save people from suffering. Always a step behind, and it was a horrible feeling. He can’t rely on anyone else-but half the time he can’t even rely on himself.
He’s not like Mister Stark. Maybe that’s the real problem. He’s not good enough to be Mister Stark-much less better than Mister Stark-he can’t sacrifice enough-he’s tried, but there’s not a chance he can forgo everything. He can fight until his eyes feel like closing, but then they close, and he’s done-he can’t seem to push past where he is to where he should be. He’s not going to get better than this-not unless he figures out a way to force his way into being inhuman, and that’s a long shot. He’s tried shoving one thing away at a time, but it makes something else unbearably worse. One day he’s going to die, and no one’s going to say ‘there’s the kid that fixed everyone’s problems, he’s a true hero’ they’re going to wonder why he died when there was more he could do, and that would be that. He’d just be a disappointing memory of a hero, that died when there was more work to be done. That was terrifying.
The idea that he would die like a nameless civilian-like everyone else he couldn’t save was worse. His backpack started going everywhere with him for a reason.
He really should have been smarter. If he was smarter he would have snapped for Tony.
May would have been upset.
May would have understood him dying to save the universe. Besides, it didn’t kill Tony somehow. He might’ve lived. Maybe retired too-saved her from dying by not being an idiot and fighting Mysterio.
It all did start with Mysterio, didn’t it?
No, he’s been less than what he needs for years before that dome-head was villain-ified. Before everything that happened, and what he had to do to fix it.
What’s the point of a sacrifice like your name if no one’s there to know what it used to be?
Peter knows that keeping people safe was the ‘point’ he had a responsibility. He owed them.
It didn’t make him feel better about it.
“I’m-I can’t. I’m not going to be the hero I’m supposed to be.” Peter’s face was wet again-but his sleeve didn’t seem to help that time. “I-I can’t stop being stupid-I ruined everything by being a trusting idiot.”
He couldn’t really tell if he was referring to not snapping, or Mysterio. It didn’t really matter, it felt the same.
“You’re not stupid Peter.” Yeah, he was good academically-but so far he’s only been smart enough to clean up his own messes. That’s not very inhuman of him. “You know that kid.” He wasn’t saying academically-he was book smart, it just so happened that book smarts only help you when you’re doing chemistry-or saving someone who doesn’t deserve to live if May doesn’t. It doesn’t help him outrun the Prowler, or figure out why and where things are going. It just helps him clean things up when he’d rather have never messed up in the first place.
“I know. I’m just gullible-and slow to act-and naive-and oblivious when I shouldn’t be.” He certainly shouldn’t be any of that when he’s in the middle of fighting someone dangerous-but there it was. He couldn’t get away from it. He wasn’t good enough-and he was an idiot who couldn’t seem to get any better-either as a hero, or when it came to who he should be trusting.
It should be no one. He shouldn’t even be in this car.
“I was dumb enough to trust Mysterio-and what did that get me?! I got my name everywhere for his murder!” Peter did not kill him. He didn’t. Spider-Man doesn’t kill people even when they deserve it. Beck killed himself-he shot the drones right into him.
He might not even be dead. Who uploaded that video?
Not him. He’s seen dead bodies, and he doesn’t need EDITH to tell him he was dead.
“Murder?!” Add ‘keeping-mouth-shut’ to the list of things he can’t do. Now Mister Stark isn’t going to believe him either, is he? He’s going to give him that look that people give people they don’t trust, and then he’s going to go home and never see him again. His pictures are going to be on the news again. The thought alone made him nauseous. “Kid-”
“I didn’t. I-I wouldn’t.” He had to wipe his face on his coat sleeve again. He wasn’t going to cry over this, it was trivial. Heroes didn’t cry. People cry, not heroes. “Spider-Man doesn’t kill people.” He didn’t look up from EDITH when Tony moved. He was busy trying to pretend it wasn’t getting difficult to swallow.
“That’s why it sounds so crazy. You’re not a killer-why would they think that?” That was a loaded question, and it sounded like the kind of question his uncle used to ask him to get him to explain himself more. It made Peter’s chest hurt.
It’s because J. Jonah Jamieson thought it was fine to expose a sixteen year old on the news.
“Mysterio died. Everyone blamed me because his team edited me calling off the drones.” How was he supposed to escape this car when Tony got upset? So far it was looking like they had a window lock-and Tony would be able to stop him from opening the door. He was much smarter than Peter-that’s why it was one of the things he had to work on. He was going to put two and two together and realize it was Stark drones. “It-it was that, and then..then he told everyone my name.” The police weren’t happy.
“Is that after you fought the ‘Elementals’?”
“Yeah. They-they were all Mysterio, and…and the drones.” They slipped into an uncomfortable silence. Peter chose to ignore it by picking at the rough skin on his fingers. He wasn’t thinking about ways out of the care at all.
Okay maybe a little bit.
It was hard not to in the silence Mister Stark created. He wasn’t going to interrupt it. If he did he’d just start rambling, and he’d rather not get himself into trouble for losing the drones, and for rambling.
Mister Stark took a sip from whatever he had brought back with him, setting it back down a few silent seconds later. He cleared his throat, turning to look at Peter.
It’s not Awkward. It’s very very Awkward.
“I don’t see how that’s your fault. I mean-from what you’ve told me, I don’t think it’s your fault he tricked you-I mean yes it sucks-and trust me he sounds like a grade-a dick, but I don’t see how that makes you the bad guy here. I mean, unless I’m missing something, I don’t really see you being any of those things.”
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s like he didn’t listen to anything he just said. That’s not even the beginning of what he’s done wrong!
He really thought someone like Mister Stark would get it. It was Peter who was gullible and dumb-even if you ignored every other stupid move he made in every other fight it didn’t erase the fact that he fell for drones. Stupid whirring drones which he should have bee able to hear, and stupid cgi that wasn’t even real. He fell for it-and it was just because he was stupid.
Stupid and desperate for a new Mister Stark.
He wasn’t going to go there. Just because he lost Mister Stark didn’t mean that he shouldn’t have acted right. Just because he was alone, and no other super-powered adult wanted to talk to him-and that Beck was so…so nice to him-and acted like he believed in him didn’t mean he should have fell for it-it should have been his first warning! Peter wasn’t who-or where he should be. It didn’t make sense for Beck not to treat him like the stupid kid he was.
“I-I gave him EDITH. He-I knew better, and I still gave her to him.” Peter ran his hands into the hair tangling on the sides of his head. “He-he lied to me-and I knew they were lies, and I didn’t care. I-I just listened to him because he told me what I wanted to hear-that-that I could have friends, and family, and a girlfriend too-I know I don’t deserve a normal life-but I listened to him anyway! I-I let him take EDITH-and he tried to kill me-he ran me over with a train! He-He tried to kill hundreds of people-and I opened the door for him. I-I was practically asking for him to expose me to the world!”
“Kid-”
“-and-and then when that was over I was too selfish to ask Doctor Strange to just erase me-so I tried to make him makes my friends, and my Aunt know who I was-and-” Peter’s breathing sped up as he rambled, until he wasn’t sure if he was breathing at all. It didn’t stop him from ranting on. “-and I messed it all up, and I had to fight creeps from another dimension-he killed my aunt because of that-I was stupid-I just wanted to go to MIT-but no she wanted me to help them and I tried-and-and she’s dead-I couldn’t save her because I was stupid enough to trust rando’s from another dimension! I-I tried to kill someone-and-and that’s not what a hero does I-I messed everything up and now I’m alone-I lost everyone I cared about because I was stupid! I-I didn’t I wouldn’t have saved M.J.-I trusted Mysterio, and I paid for it-I tried to make the wizard edit the spell, and I trusted what aunt May said-and now she’s dead-I lost my name because I’m just a stupid kid who brought a spider home and woke up buff-I-I lost you because I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out and snap for you when I had the gauntlet in my arms!” Peter’s eyes were blurry. His eyes were blurry, and his face was wet, and he wasn’t sure if he could breathe at all anymore. “I-I’m not like you Mister Stark-I can’t-I’m not-i-I don’t want to be a hero anymore Mister Stark. I don’t think I’m doing it right.”
“Kid.”