O Brother, Where Art Thou?

He wasn’t sure what first coaxed him to open his eyes—the familiar hand tracing designs on his chest or the warmth of the sun beating down on his uncovered face—but his awareness came with a small groan. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, so the bright light made him wince. He could feel soft grass underneath him and in the distance, the sound of running water gave few hints to where exactly he was. If he strained to listen, there was a soft echo of mechanical beeping in the far distance—it was familiar, but Tony couldn’t place it. 

“You with me now, Mr. Stark?” She teased lightly, leaning closer to his face. His head was in her lap and he hungrily drank in her features. She looked markedly different than she did in all his dreams this past year—her eyes were bright and happy, and her head unbloodied and clean and fucking beautiful. He startled as she tapped his chest—he could feel it reverberate around him. The beeping in the background picked up for a second before settling again. 

“You’re fucking beautiful.” 

She wiped his tears with the back of her hand and smirked knowingly, but also softly, and leaned down to kiss him, “I know.”

Tony closed his eyes and sighed deeply as a breeze whipped around them. They were under a weeping willow, which was poetic he guessed, and a couple of ducks quacked in the background. 

“Why does the afterlife look like Hyde Park?” He kept his eyes closed and leaned into her massage. 

She snorted. “Listen, this is not my circus.” She kissed his head again. “Remember when you took me here for our third anniversary?”

He laughed. “You were the one who said you wanted English muffins for breakfast…” 

He could feel her shake her head above him. “Not from England, you kook. And definitely not with the Queen. Then when you figured that out, you had us sneak out the back like teenagers. It almost caused an international incident, Tony.” 

He opened his eyes and smiled at her fake outrage. “We stole some bicycles and hats and rode into the park—you fed the squirrels that audacious-looking palace pastry and I almost got us arrested at Speaker’s Corner.” 

Her eyes crinkled just the way he remembered. “Rhodey was so mad at you. He said that the next time you chose to insult a whole country to do it without wearing his USAF regulation sweatshirt. Pretty sure some paparazzi retired from those pictures.” 

“Oh, you loved it.” He sighed, “You loved me.”

“Forever and always, Mr. Stark. Now get up, lazy bones”  She smacked his chest, none too gently. The beeping grew louder. He grunted as she ushered him up. “I’m still in charge of keeping you on schedule, apparently. You need to cross that bridge and keep walking. You’ll know when to stop.”

He stilled, shocked. “You’re not coming with me? This isn’t very ‘happily ever after’ of you.”

She leaned in, inviting him to kiss her again. “Hmm. No, it’s more like ‘Harry-meets-Dumbledore-in-King’s-Cross’ of me. At the risk of sounding cliche, ‘it’s not your time yet.’”

The wave of relief hit Tony hard, followed by heavy guilt, which Pepper seemed to sense (because that was Pepper and Pepper was his and he was hers and even in some weird fugue-coma state, the universe stayed constant). Her eyes softened and she touched his cheek. “Hey.” She whispered and leaned in. He felt her lips press on his skin. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here, okay.” She touched his chest and he felt his heart stutter. The beeping grew louder as he breathed in her vanilla scented body spray. “I’m here forever. And I need you with them, got it. Our kids.” She smiled, “You’re such a good fucking dad. I knew you would be and you’re killing it, okay, love, just absolutely hitting it out of the fucking park.”

He laughed through tears. “The afterlife sure did give you a potty mouth.”

She hummed. “Pretty sure that was you. Now go.” She kissed him deep and hard and he was greedy until she gently pushed him away. 

He stepped on the small bridge that would take him over the lake they were standing by. She waved him forward with her hands, and through his tears, he watched her chuckle. She looked peaceful. As he turned, she stopped him. “Oh! Tell Morgan it’s okay. Tell her it’s normal and okay and she’s perfect and wonderful and so damn good.” He stepped towards her to clarify, worry clouding his brain, but fog quickly rolled in and Pepper suddenly disappeared. 

He choked out a sob and breathed through the panic at losing her again, though the hurt he was feeling wasn’t the gaping wound he had been living with the past year, but more like a strained muscle, recovering, sore, but healing. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but eventually he willed himself to move forward. 

The fog dissipated into smoke and the beeping gave way to what sounded like a fire alarm and Tony found himself in front of a wobbly, wooden kitchen table, held together with duct tape, carpenter’s glue, and prayers, watching a figure pull a burned spaghetti casserole out of a smoking oven.

She grimaced as she put it on top of the stove, and turned around, eyeing him. “If you even think about laughing at me, Stark, I will haunt your ass.” 

“Hey May.” 

She punched him softly on the shoulder—the beeping picking up again—before gesturing to the chairs. “Sit down, Tony, your nerves are making me nervous.” She slid him a slip of paper, and watched as he unfolded it to read. 

“Our big deathbed talk is showing me an old McDonald’s receipt? This thing is practically 16 years old. Do they even have taxes after death?” Tony deadpanned. 

“Hush, you. Can I tell you a story? What am I saying? Of course I can tell you a story. Don’t roll your eyes at me, Stark. Just listen. Here, have a juice. When Peter was seven, on Father’s Day, he woke up early in the morning. Ben was sleeping after working the night shift and I had been up late studying for my nursing exam. He grabbed his piggy bank, snuck out of the house, and walked ten blocks to McDonald’s by himself. We woke up an hour later to a knock at our door—it was a police officer and Peter, with a skinned knee, Egg McMuffin, and tear tracks on his face. Ben and I were exhausted and confused and worried, and after talking to the officer, we sent Peter to his room to give us time to calm down. When we finally asked him what he was thinking, he squared his shoulders and said, in the most stubborn and unapologetic voice we had ever heard from him, “Uncle Ben likes eggs. So did dad.” Like that was that. It kind of became shorthand in between Ben and I anytime Peter would do something incredibly selfless and incredibly risky for us—“It’s his Egg McMuffin brain.” Peter’s love is like an atomic bomb. It leaves nothing untouched. And once he considers you family, all you can do is hold on and be there to wipe the tears, fix the knee, and eat the eggs.”

She patted Tony’s hand. “I can’t think of anyone better to take care of that brain than you. He had Richard for such a short time. Ben a little longer. But you, Tony, are the dad the universe gave him for this time in his life. And that wasn’t a mistake—it was a miracle.” 

The beeping grew louder as May began to fade away. She rolled her eyes at his watery eyes. “C’mon, hero-man, you knew I loved you. Give my boy a hug for me.” 

The beeping crescendoed and everything went dark.

Tony woke up abruptly to a tangle of limbs. It took him a moment to realize Morgan was sleeping on his right side. A snore brought his attention to his chest, where Peter’s head was resting. He was sitting in a chair besides Tony’s bed—which looked to be in the New Compound’s med bay. Both looked incredibly young, and Tony was overcome with a profound sense of fondness. 

The clock read 4 AM, and instead of December 26th, like he was expecting, the date said January 2nd. 

A few minutes later, Helen walked up quietly. “Friday let me know you were awake.” She whispered. “How are you feeling?”

Tony took stock of himself and was surprised to find nothing was wrong. The headache and fatigue he was experiencing after rescuing Peter from Ned’s spell was nonexistent. He told Helen so and she smiled.

“Well, you’ve got your kids to thank for that.” What followed was a barebones, professionally told story—in the way only a doctor with no memory of Peter could tell—of a device that could cure cancer retrieved in the nick of time. 

The new scars Tony could feel on Peter’s neck while he slept told him Helen was not the best person to tell this story, so he thanked her and asked her to send in Rhodey. 

“What did you do?” Tony whispered to himself as Helen showed herself out. 

Peter looked up—because of course he was awake—and smiled. “You’re ok.”

Tony tapped the back of Peter’s neck softly. Peter leaned into the touch. “You’re not.” 

“I’m fine, dad.” He knew it was a distraction—a clever one from a clever kid—but he let himself enjoy the title. For a moment. He readjusted himself on the bed, accidentally waking up Morgan. 

“Daddy!!!” 

“Sweetheart.” He held her tightly, but gently pulled her back to look at her face. A large bruise covered her forehead. “Oh my god, baby. What happened?” 

Morgan’s storytelling was a lot more colorful than Helen’s and by the end, Tony was feeling sick. Peter had curled into himself at some point. Tony was about to say something—anything—surely something could be said—when a soft knock at the door pulled his attention away. 

“Friday told me there was a party.” Tony was surprised to see Steve sticking his head in. He wondered when he got there. Peter curled in further and Tony noted that neither met each other’s eyes. Interesting. “Good to see you feeling better, Tony. Hey Morgan, Uncle Bruce needs to talk to your dad and brother for a second. Want to help me make pancakes?”

She bounded off the bed after giving Tony another hug.

“Chocolate chip?”

“Of course.” 

“Awesome!”

He was about to ask Peter what he did to get on the bad side of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, when Bruce walked in with a Starkpad and a grimace. 

“Tony, Pete.” He pulled up a chair. “Helen told me you’re feeling better. I just spoke with Ned—he’s in 100% health as well.” Bruce directed this towards Peter, whose shoulders loosened a bit. 

“I,” Peter cleared his throat and sounded nonchalant, “I better go check on him. I’ll give you guys a minute.”

Bruce held up a hand—green, large, and commanding in that annoyingly gentle way of his—and stopped him. “It’s time to look at them, Pete. I promised to hold this conversation until Tony and Ned woke up, and now they are.”

“What are you talking about, Brucie-Bear?” Tony looked between Bruce who was staring at Peter, and Peter who just looked sullen. 

“We ran some tests to make sure the magic that had affected you and Ned wasn’t impacting Peter the same way.” His voice was gentle but held a wariness that brought a chill down Tony’s spine. 

“And?” Tony prompted him and he watched as Bruce asked Friday to pull up several holograms, supposedly of Peter’s brain.

“The good news is there’s nothing here that looks remotely like what you just experienced. No magical tumors or cancer.” Tony was going to shake him, green giant be damned, if he didn’t move this along. 

“So there’s bad news?” Tony prompted again. Peter was still quiet, looking at the wall instead of the people around him, and for a fleeting moment, Tony wished he was back in Hyde Park. 

“Concerning would be a better adjective. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Helen and I have poured over these—as you can see here, Peter’s amygdala is twice as large in this image, than it is in this one. The second image is from the file we had on him before Titan—remember when you both wanted a full work up to check his enhancements?” Tony nodded sharply; Peter’s jaw was clenched. “But it’s not just the size that has changed since then. The EEG showed abnormal activity in synapse behavior—they’re overactive and, probably the best explanation would be angry.”

Tony felt sick. “What does this mean?”

Bruce sighed. “Both of these things together could cause a lot of different symptoms: affecting decision making, mood, might bring difficulty with impulse control…addiction…” he paused and Tony was beginning to hate that pause, “and hallucinations.” They both turned to Peter, who was dutifully ignoring their stares. Bruce was gentle as he addressed him, “Pete, when did you start noticing this?” Because that was the fucking question, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a question of if Peter was experiencing all of this—not when they had been dealing with his drinking since before Europe, his depression, his suicidal ideation, all of this from even before the Spell that ruined all their lives. He stayed silent and Tony just felt bereft. 

“I don’t understand what could cause this.” Tony stared at Peter’s hands, still bruised and mangled from his fight with Osborn, at his neck, faint scarring visible even in the dimmed recovery room light, and at his leg, sporting a huge bandage because his healing factor was working a million things on his sweet, stupid, sacrificial son, “Why would it be so different? What changed?”

Bruce sighed. “We don’t have much data on how things like the Blip and the Return affected enhanced people—and Peter’s enhancements are unique, as far as we know. Pete,” he urged, “did you feel any different when you came back?”

And Tony could see it, in his body language, in the clenching of his jaw and the tense hunching of his shoulders, that this conversation was about to crash and burn in three…

two…

one…

“Fuck this.”

Peter refused to look at either of them as he stormed out, throwing the glass of water on the nightstand against the opposite wall. With the hiss of the automatic doors, he exited the med bay. 

Bruce rubbed the back of his neck with this hand and Tony stared at the broken glass glittering in the corner. One of the Compound’s cleaner bots had begun sweeping it up at Friday’s request. Tony felt the weight of May’s last words to him heavy in his soul. 

Tony cleared his throat after a few minutes, and hoarsely asked, “So you’re saying if he hadn’t been blipped, he would have been fine?” 

“No. Most likely Peter struggled with depression and anxiety before this—I’m assuming the Blip just made it worse. Unmanageable. Coupled with his unique and unprocessed trauma and his refusal to talk about things, his brain is just amplifying it all. It’s 100% biological and neurological right now—making it somewhat impossible to fight without intervention.”

“That's it, then? No solution?” Tony knew he sounded uncharitable but he couldn’t help the bitterness that was leeching in. 

“I didn’t say that, Tony. Helen and I can synthesize something that works with his metabolism and acts as a mood stabilizer. We can find medication that will calm his body and brain enough to find him good coping mechanisms and give him the chance to use them. Right now it’s impossible because he’s just in survival mode—if we can give his brain what it needs, he’ll be in a better place to work through the trauma. And he’ll need to do that, too.” Bruce leveled him an unreadable look. “Therapy. Possibly EMDR.”

“Why isn’t his healing factor taking care of it?” He knew he sounded like a child—he knew it and couldn’t stop it. 

“His healing factor has adapted to it. His brain made new and different connections, possibly when it returned, and his body doesn’t think there’s anything to heal. I honestly wonder how else his experience differed from the others we’ve examined.” Bruce said the last part to himself but Tony still caught it. 

“So he’s just stuck taking medication the rest of his life?”

“It would be a long-term solution, yes. The long term solution. What’s this really about, Tony? Honestly, it’s the best case.” He softened his voice, “I mean, we found something here. He’s been at his breaking point for a while.” And yes, that was the truth, but all he felt was a profound sense of failure. Howard’s voice sneering at the concept of mental health. His own attempts at taking his life played in stereo res—the shit-storm of therapy that he half-heartedly forced Morgan into just months ago. Who could possibly be a worse person than him to navigate this situation for Peter—for his family. 

Tony’s not sure how long he sat without responding to Bruce, but when he finally surfaced out of his stormy thoughts, Bruce was gone. Rhodey was sitting in his place, texting lazily on his phone. 

“Done moping?” Rhodey searched his face for answers—full of that absolute aggravating mix of concern, understanding, and fond annoyance. 

Tony huffed. “I’m not moping.” He said it mopingly. 

“I talked to Bruce.” 

Tony hummed.

“When Peter called me from Oscorp, I found him with Morgan. He had a first aid kit and was fussing over her bruises. She had a minor concussion and a skinned elbow.” Tony made a pained sound, but Rhodey continued. “Pete’s leg was broken, Tones. He had burns all over his body—and his fingers were so messed up. He looks good now compared to that night. And there he was, telling Morgan jokes to calm her down, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. He handed me the flash drive and dared me to say something and you know who I thought of?” He looked at Tony steadily.

“Me.” “You.” They said it at the same time.

“Men like you, like Peter—big-hearted, genius dumbasses with no self-preservation skills burn brighter than the rest of us combined. He’s not going to change. I don’t think we’d want that. But after Clint and Nat cleaned the site up, they brought me this.” Rhodey handed Tony his phone. A grainy video played—it was hard to see, but it looked like security footage from an office. It was facing a balcony and Tony watched, horrified, at the last confrontation between Norman and Peter. There wasn’t any sound, but the tone of their encounter was clear. Norman finally pushed off the balcony as Peter lunged for him, and the monster fell out of the frame. 

Tony knew how it ended, he did, he saw Peter just a while ago, he knows he did, but as he watched the footage his heart was in his throat. Because in the video, Peter looked down off the balcony, into the snowy night, and not even a wobbly camera angle could hide what he was thinking. 

It was five minutes and it was eternity.

Tony finally looked up. Rhodey looked exhausted. He cleared his throat.

“He walked back to Morgan. There was no Guardian Tree or Ned or Iron Man—just a nineteen-year-old who turned around and chose his sister over something we’ve suspected he’s wanted to do for a long time now.”

And didn’t that put things into perspective? 

“Why make it harder for him?”

“That’s…that’s not what I’m doing.” It sounded weak even to Tony. Rhodey just looked at him. He felt naked. He felt like he was seventeen again, in their dorm, at 2 AM with a bottle of Howard’s scotch and too-sharp scissors. 

Tony sighed heavily and scrubbed his face with his hand. “I…yeah.” He knew he sounded lost but he couldn’t keep it out of his voice. “Just…he stormed out, Jim. How can I make him take them? How is this going to work?”

“Maybe it’s not about making him do anything. Maybe it’s about leading by example.” Rhodey put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. The weight of it grounded him as he was bowled over by the implications.

Friday’s Irish-accent brought him out of his thoughts. 

Boss, it seems like mini-boss is in emotional distress. Junior Boss is requesting your assistance. 

Rhodey helped Tony out of the bed, and as they rushed towards Morgan’s room, May’s voice echoed in his head. 

And that wasn’t a mistake—it was a miracle.

Peter was the miracle.

And there was nothing Tony wouldn’t do to help him understand that.