I Don't Have to Leave?

Tony drove them to their usual ice cream place and they took the table in the back like they always did. Peter ordered some sort of bubblegum flavour and Tony shook his head, getting his usual strawberries and cream flavour before sitting down.

“So Arthur mentioned to me that he talked to you about adoption today,” Tony started and Peter took another huge bite of ice cream to avoid answering. “I just want you to know that you can talk to me about it if you want, I don’t want you to go around thinking that it’s some sort of taboo subject and that it’s gonna be really awkward.” Another bite of ice cream made its way into Peter’s mouth. “And I still stand by what I said, I’m gonna wait for you to bring it up if and when you’re ready because I don’t wanna push anything onto you if you don’t want it, but I’m just making sure that you know my stance on it.”

Peter hummed, not really giving Tony anything to work with.

“Because if it’s something that you want to do, then I’m up for it.” Peter’s eyes shot up to him.

“Y-You are?”

Tony nodded slowly. “I am. but I don’t want to force that on you, everything is completely down to you and there’s no pressure. It makes no difference to me because either way, you’re my son, okay?”

Peter nodded his head, taking another spoonful of bubblegum ice cream with a hum.

“I just wanted to make that clear with you. I—I didn’t want you thinking that I hated the idea or that I would resent you for it or anything.”

“Thanks, Tony. I—I really appreciate that.” Peter smiled at him. “I’ve got a lot to think about and I’m not really sure of a lot of things at the minute or about how I feel but I—I’ll let you know, yeah?” Finally, Tony was getting something more than a grunt out of the kid.

“Absolutely. No problem.”

Tony and Peter were eating lunch in the kitchen talking about the Academic Decathlon final when the call to Assemble rang. Tony groaned out of annoyance more than anything.

“Come on, are you kidding me? You won’t even let me finish my pizza?” Tony stared at the ceiling and was about to finish his slice when the elevator opened and Steve jogged out.

“Tony! Come on, we’ve gotta go.”

Tony groaned again and rolled his eyes. “What’s going on now, Spangles? It’s lunch time, I’m hungry!”

“Aliens.” Steve said simply and Tony’s face dropped. “Aliens. In New York. It’s happening again. Same guys, different day.”

“You almost got that Cap, but it’s ‘same shit, different day’.” The comment went straight over Steve’s head and Tony scoffed. “Old people,” he mumbled, getting off the stool. “Can’t we just shut the portal again?”

“That’s the thing, there isn’t one this time. They just appeared. It was like something opened a barrier and let them through and then closed again. We’ve got no way to send them back.” Steve was trying to hurry Tony along but all he was doing was sighing and moaning.

“For the love of all things holy, I can not catch a break.” Tony rubbed at his face and looked at Peter. “Okay, you listen to me right the hell now, and you listen good.” Peter straightened in his seat. “You are staying right here. There’s gonna be no sneaking out in your old suit, there’s gonna be no interfering with anything. These are aliens Peter, things not of this world, they can and will kill you if they get the chance and I’m not prepared to give them that chance. Do you understand?” Peter nodded quickly. “I want you in your room, I’m putting the Tower on lockdown and you are not to leave your room. Got it?”

Peter thought he was being a little extra but with what had happened over the last couple of months with breaking rules and being injured, he wasn’t surprised. He was gonna do whatever the hell Tony told him to do this time, he wasn’t going to jeopardise anything.

Tony gave him a hug and pressed a kiss to his head before shooing him off to his room. He watched from his window as the Quinjet left and Rhodey, Sam, Vision and Tony flew alongside it to fight the aliens.

Peter’s tv turned on as soon as he asked FRIDAY to switch on the news. If he wasn’t allowed to fight, he was damn well going to know what was going on. What he saw looked frighteningly similar to 2012 when the Chitauri appeared the first time. Only this time there was no portal to access their base.

Peter was on edge as he saw the team fight. It was just like the first time, except this time he wasn’t watching from the living room in his apartment in Queens, he was watching from his bedroom in the penthouse of the Tower that was in the middle of the battle.

Everything was going alright and then there was a flash and there was a… purple guy? Some weird dude that was literally purple and was like eight feet tall and had a weird gold glove that he was using to attack the team. Peter’s heart jumped when he went after Tony and it seemed like he was winning. Then Steve jumped on the guy’s head and twisted his legs around his neck, making him turn.

Peter wondered what it was like down there.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Sam asked over comms. “Anyone know who he is? Anyone seen him before?”

“Yeah, these are the faces of people in the know,” Tony said sarcastically.

“Tony, not the time for your sarcasm right now, bud.” Rhodey groaned as he fired off another shot at an alien.

“Sorry, anything goes wrong and sarcasm is my go-to. To answer your question, no, we have no idea who this guy is or what his problem is, but he seems to be angry at something—” Tony was cut off as the purple guy grabbed him by the ankle and smashed him into the concrete Hulk-style.

He now knew how Loki felt, and he wasn’t a fan.

Thanos walked into the reception of Stark Tower. He didn’t want to blow it up just yet, he had a plan first. He turned to the receptionist, who screamed and shook in her seat.

“I’ve spent years watching from the sidelines, y’know.” He started talking to her and her gaze was fixed to him as though she physically couldn’t peel her eyes from him. “Years. I know who Tony Stark is, I know who Iron man is, I know what he does. He’s gone from being a playboy to a very serious man, and that doesn’t happen for no reason. They say it was Pepper Potts. Pepper was the one to change him, but I think there’s something more.

Stark and his clean-energy crap is standing in the way of my vision, and if I want to bring him down for good, I need to hit him where it hurts. This Tower holds so much, and for some reason he bought it back. I want to find out why.”

Being ever the rule-follower, Thanos got into the elevator just in time for Maw to pull through and take over the Tower’s security and tech side. The Black Order were now in control of the Tower.

“Where to first?” The familiar higher-pitched voice of Ebony Maw filled the speakers in the elevator and Thanos smiled sadistically. This was going to be so easy.

He looked at the gauntlet glinting on his left hand. He had almost all the possible power in the universe. All of it. Five stones gleamed in their setting, and Thanos was just waiting for an opportunity to grab the sixth, and then he could finally fulfil his destiny.

For Tony Stark though, he wanted it to be different. He could snap his fingers and make half the population disappear, but something had to be done before that. He wanted Tony Stark to hurt. He wanted him to beg and plead for his life and then Thanos would take it away slowly and painfully and watch him burn.

“The Penthouse. It’s time to see how the other half live.”

Thanos stepped out onto the plush carpet of Tony’s Penthouse, smiling at the muddy footprints he was leaving behind.

Everything was eerily quiet, but he expected that. The whole team was out fighting the Chitauri, just as he’d planned. That gave him time to find out whatever it was that made Tony such a fan of this Tower. And he had a sneaky feeling he knew what it was.

As he said, he’d spent years watching from the sidelines. And you don’t spend years watching from the sidelines without finding out a few things. He had his sources. He knew that there was something Stark was hiding from the world.

Everything was silent, apart from the sound of a tv from down the hall. Thanos smiled, but then the sound stopped.

“I wonder what you’ve been hiding, Stark.” He grasped the door handle and turned it.

“FRI, is Peter still in his room?” Tony grunted, fighting off half a dozen Chitauri that had swarmed him. Part of his nanotech suit had been compromised and the suit was glitching a little, which was worrying to say the least.

I am unable to connect to the Tower, Boss. Something’s blocking my signal.

Tony’s blood ran cold.

“Oh god, I am having such deja vu right now I can’t even,” he shook his head and launched off the pavement, flying in the direction of the Tower. “When are people gonna learn not to mess with my freaking house?” He hoped Peter had followed his orders and stayed in his room. He hoped, he didn’t necessarily expect.

Peter knew something was wrong when FRIDAY didn’t answer him when he asked for her to turn the volume up on the Tv. FRIDAY always answered him, she was literally programmed to do so. He got up to turn the Tv off manually and his hearing picked up someone else in the penthouse.

His heart began to race and he panicked, knowing that his options were very limited. If FRIDAY was down then the windows wouldn’t slide open. He had no suit, he had no way to contact the team, no way to get ahold of Tony. He was on his own.

The options left for him were to a) hide in the bathroom, which was ridiculous, b) hide under the bed, which was equally as bad, or c) jump onto the ceiling and hope whoever was out there didn’t look up, which was so stupid because if they didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man now, they’d definitely figure it out when the saw him hanging upside down from the ceiling. And that would be it, Peter’s identity would be out.

So none of the options were great, and he settled on going under the bed. At least there were a few bags and boxes that he could arrange in a way that maybe he’d be obscured from the view of any attacker.

Basically, in layman’s terms, he was up shit creek without a paddle. Doomed. Stuffed. Royally fucked.

Almost rolling his eyes at himself at his own decision to try and escape whoever had taken over the Tower by hiding under the bed like a child, Peter settled down on his stomach with his head facing the door. Just in time, because then it swung open and Peter could see the boots of the intruder. They were huge, and Peter wondered who the fuck was about to find him in the most embarrassingly obvious hiding place.

“Y’know, I’ve got good hearing, kid. So I know that you’re in here, because I can hear you breathing. I’m gonna give you a chance now, to come out with your dignity intact, or I’ll find you in ten seconds and pull you out of whatever hiding place you’re in.” His low voice rumbled over the room and even though he was speaking generally quiet, it boomed in Peter’s ears like it was coming from all sides.

Peter sighed and weighed up the options before reluctantly moving the boxes and bags aside and shimmying out from under the bed. A rough hand grabbed the back of his t-shirt and ragged him up and Peter gaped at the sight before him.

So he’d seen his fair share of enemies and weirdly biologically… manipulated people, but he’d never actually set his eyes on an alien before, and he just had one thing to say.

Society totally had it wrong. Cause this guy wasn’t luminescent green with three eyes and two antennae. No, he was tall and purple like a grape with a weird chin that looked like saggy nuts.

Totally wrong.

“So this is what Stark’s been keeping from us all,” the weird guy spoke and Peter twitched at his voice. He really was speaking far too loud for him. “Come on, let’s go see Daddy.” He grabbed Peter’s shoulder hard and flung him towards the door.

“FRIDAY, you gotta put more into the thrusters, this is taking way too long.”

Thrusters are at full capacity, Boss. I can’t do any more. Approximate arrival time at the Tower is in two minutes.

Two minutes wasn’t fast enough, not if they’d already found Peter.

“Get working on getting back online, I want control of my Tower back before these guys do any more damage, you got that?” He bit out.

Yes, Boss. System is rebooting, 34% complete. We should get control back in the next twenty minutes or so.

Tony didn’t need to have super good eye sight to see what was happening in his penthouse as he flew towards it. The purple guy, apparently his name was Thanos or something, was stood on the balcony, holding Peter in his grasp. Tony panicked immediately, not knowing really how to proceed. Did he play it cool? Totally freak out? Collapse at Thanos’ feet and beg him to let Peter go?

What he ended up doing was all of the above.

Once he landed on the platform, his suit melted off of him. Tony knew he wouldn’t be able to use that suit again without repairing it, and thought about how he could call another suit if and when he’d need it as he walked through the doors.

“Who the hell are you and why are you in my house?” Tony started off a little cocky, trying to play it cool, but wavered when Thanos dragged Peter and Peter’s legs fell out from under him in surprise.

Thanos smiled. “Well, we finally meet.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“No, but I’ve been a part of your life since 2012.”

Tony’s mind raced for a minute before it finally clicked. “The aliens, they’re the same ones — you brought them the first time?”

“I did. And you all believed that measly God was to blame for everything. Don’t you understand? He was just another pawn in my plan, I controlled everything.”

“Wait, the glow stick of destiny — that was you,” Tony moved his hands around his head, “doing mind shit? Loki was telling the truth the whole time? Damn, I owe Banner 20 bucks.”

Thanos sighed. “My intellect is wasted on humans. Yes, I orchestrated everything, and had you not done the noble thing and changed the course of the missile, I would have succeeded in completing the first part of my mission.”

“Succeeded, huh? What, levelling the city of Manhattan? Killing millions of people? That was your goal?” Tony tried to keep stalling Thanos until he could come up with a plan or until help came.

“To start with, yes. I’m a great believer in achieving one’s destiny, and balance. Take my home planet, for example. Titan was like most planets. It was beautiful, but there were too many mouths, not enough to go around. And when we faced extinction, I offered a solution.”

Tony raised an eyebrow, having a feeling he knew where this was going. “Genocide?”

“But at random, dispassionate, fair to rich and poor alike. They called me a madman, and what I predicted came to pass.”

Tony nodded. “So your plan here is to what, kill half of us? With whatever they do?” He nodded to the gauntlet with the five gems set in it. Thanos lifted it up.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I finally made something that would harness the power of all six infinity stones and allow me to use it to achieve my destiny. Having all six, a snap of my fingers would wipe out half the population of the universe, leaving the other half to thrive.”

“I notice you’re one down. What’re you hassling us for? We don’t have it.”

“No, but you will, in time.” Thanos tightened his grasp on Peter’s shoulder and Tony remembered that the kid was still there.

“So what’s your problem with me? Why come to my Tower and hack it? Why take this out on my kid? What do you get out of this if half of us are gonna die anyway?” Tony tried to keep his voice level, not wanting Thanos to think he was weak.

He smiled sadistically. “Because this isn’t my first attempt. As I said, the Battle of New York was my first try. I thought that I could do this without the use of the stones, and you, Tony Stark, are the reason that mission was a failure. You and you alone are to blame for that failure. And now I’m back, and you’re going to pay for it. Or, your son is.” He wrapped his giant purple hand around Peter’s neck and squeezed tight.

Tony’s mind was racing. He drew blank after blank after blank. He couldn’t put his suit on, it was broken, he couldn’t fight Thanos bare handed, that would be stupid. The team were down on the ground fighting for their lives — and the lives of half the universe, apparently.

And here was Tony, seeing his world fall apart because some giant grape had his hand wrapped around his kid’s neck.

“S-So why not wait? You say you’re going to get the last stone and do this, so there’s a 50/50 chance he’s gonna die, just like there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll die. Don’t you like those odds?”

“While I enjoy the thought of you being in pain as your son crumbles to dust before your eyes, it’s not a certainty. As I said, it’s dispassionate, I have no influence over who the stones will kill and who they will save. But if I kill the child now, your pain will be real, and it will be now.”

By this point, Tony was praying for a miracle. Peter had both of his hands pulling at Thanos’ fist, struggling against him, and it was killing Tony. Tears began to fill his eyes and Tony looked at Peter, his brown eyes staring into his skull like he was on fire.

“Please—I’ll—I’ll do anything.” Tony started to beg.

“It’s too late for that, Stark. You made your mistake almost a decade ago, and now you’ll pay for it.

Suddenly, a glowing orange portal opened in the penthouse and Thanos was momentarily distracted when Thor, Loki and Dr Strange appeared. Tony took his opening, using all the force he could to charge at Thanos. He didn’t know what he expected to happen, he was a weakling compared to Thanos’ 6 feet and 7 inches of pure muscle. But he had to do something, he couldn’t just let Peter die while he stood by and did absolutely nothing to stop it.

Thanos grabbed him with his gauntleted hand, throwing Tony’s body up in the air before bringing him down and launching him through the floor. Peter cringed, hearing Tony’s very human body break through at least two floors of marble.

Everything then seemed to happen so fast. One second Loki and Thor were standing in front of Dr Strange and then suddenly there were 25 Thors and Loki had disappeared and all of them looked the same and all of them had a huge axe with a weird tree trunk handle.

Thanos’ eyes darted around the room, trying to focus on one thing but it was like his mind was playing tricks on him. He tried to focus on the reality stone to filter out the real Thor from the fake ones, but Dr Strange was making circle motions with his hands and it felt like something was tugging on the gauntlet and he couldn’t focus properly. Thanos let out a roar and tightened his grip around Peter’s throat, the kid starting to turn purple.

Peter closed his eyes, his fight to keep them open taking up too much of his energy. This was it, this was how he died. This was how he would be reunited with May. It wasn’t exactly what he’d envisioned, but he had to admit it wasn’t a boring death. He vaguely wondered if he’d end up on that weird skit in Horrible Histories — Stupid Deaths? This was a stupid death. Being strangled by a huge purple alien while he banged on about getting multicoloured stones so he could kill half the universe? The definition of stupid.

He waited for death, but it didn’t come.

What did come was the floor—right into Peter’s face.

“Did it work?”

“He’s on the floor isn’t he? And his head’s over there?” Loki spat at Strange.

“Alright, alright, I was just making sure.”

Thor stepped forward and nudged Thanos’ now disembodied head, making sure that it did in fact work. The gauntlet had hit the floor with a crack, denting the marble floor.

“Someone check the kid.” Strange muttered and Loki dropped down next to Peter.

“Who is he?” Thor asked.

“Don’t know, we’ll have to ask the others when they get here.”

Loki pressed his thumb to Peter’s forehead and suddenly Peter was stuttering in deep breaths, his chest heaving up and down as he trick to take in more and more oxygen. His eyes widened when he realised who was kneeling next to him. He scrambled away as fast as he could.

“Y-You, you’re—you—you killed like so many people.” Peter panted and Loki raised both hands in surrender.

“Relax, child. You need to breathe, you were without oxygen for quite a while.”

Another blinding flash of orange and a portal was being opened, the team walking through.

“Why did they all just vanish like that though?” Peter could hear Sam’s voice. “That was some Game of Thrones shit right there.”

“Shut up, Sam,” Nat said through gritted teeth.

“I”m just saying, as soon as they snapped his head off they all vanished. That’s like super fucked up, they’ve all gotta be linked somehow. Ow!” Sam rubbed the back of his head and Peter smiled, having heard the smack from Bucky’s metal arm.

“Are you okay, son?” Peter’s eyes refocused and he saw Steve crouching next to him, a hand on his knee.

“I—uh, I think so—” coughing cut him off and Peter spluttered, massaging his neck. He didn’t want to think about the bruising that was gonna appear real soon. Cause we all know super healing came with super bruises.

“Wait, where’s Tony?”

Peter’s eyes flew wide. “Dad!” He rushed to his feet and ran to the gaping hole in the floor that Tony’s body had made a few minutes earlier. “FRIDAY! Vitals report now!”

Boss has a pulse, but his life is critical. He is currently trapped in rubble two floors down, and there is a pole from the Tower’s structure impaling his left side.

“Shit!” Peter ran for the elevator and a few of the team followed him.

The doors opened two floors down and Peter immediately wanted to throw up at the sight. And then he did. He felt someone rubbing circles into his back and people running past him to get to Tony.

Tony, who was hanging in the air, a pole in his side.

The worst part was his eyes. They were looking at Peter, lifeless.

Immediately, he was transported back to his nightmare, the visceral images of Tony lying there in the car dead, his eyes burning into his skull. He looked the same. His nightmare—his greatest fear—it was coming to life.

Another parent was dying, and Peter had been the cause of it for the third time running.