It was an often occurrence for Tony Stark to find thinking was easier than breathing. It's only been a second week since he's been saved, if you could call it that. His skin was thin on his bones, he needed help to eat, he spent most of his time in a hospital bed in the med bay if he wasn't listening to Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes yapping about possible solutions to the devastation their loss caused.
("I said we'd lose. You said we'd do that together too. We lost, and you weren't there." Tony really couldn't have said it any other way. "No trust. Liar.")
He wasn't for that. He hated the meetings. He hated listening to them pretend to be a team, and he was exhausted pretending that they could fix this. They couldn't fix this. They tried, really gave it their best shot, and they failed, and now they had to live with the consequences.
While he watched old friends (and his thoughts even gritted the words out like he regretted that they ever belonged there) make plans, surrounding them with ideas and thoughts of how they could find Thanos, Tony sat in his hospital bed and thought too.
He thought about a lot of things, because there wasn't much else to do. The thought of tinkering on technology that didn't save the people he cared about that day made him sick to his stomach, but doctors gave him strict orders to stay in bed and they told him to try and keep his food down anyways.
Sleeping was a difficult task. If he actively tried to lay down, to close his eyes and sleep, it only took a handful of seconds for his heart to start racing and his eyes to force open. Because he needs to stay awake. If he sleeps then he'll die, if he dies he won't make it back to Pepper, so if just keeps his eyes open, if he keeps looking at the stars then he'll make it to back Earth, he'll get off this ship and—
—and then he'll be brought back to life by the sound of his heart rate monitor beeping too quickly and Pepper squeezing his hand. It was no secret that most of his hours asleep are thanks to pain medication.
Pepper has gone to sleep. Tony finally convinced her to sleep in an actual bed and not in the chair beside his medical cot. He could see the weariness in her nod, the hesitancy in her eyes—but he's also seen the exhaustion, the dark circles, the hidden yawns.
He kissed her cheek before she left the room, promised he would call if he needed her, and right now?
Right now, he's sitting alone. His breath is still a little wheezy, but his mind is screwed on right enough to keep him awake and thinking.
...He had seen the face last on a hologram with 'Missing' written directly under it. Even though he had looked away so quickly after he had seen it, because he couldn't bear to look the kid in his eyes when the kid couldn't smile back at him—It still followed him till the end of the day and lingered with him now to sit beside him like a ghost.
He's thinking of the missed time, he's thinking of the missed opportunities that sits like a heavy brick on his throat.
("If you died, I feel like that's on me." And it will be—and it was.)
He's thinking about the time they did have, how it was spent so distanced because Tony couldn't stand the chance of the kid getting hurt by hanging out with the big league players for too long.
("I just wanted to be like you!" And he would have been—and he was.)
What would have happened if they had more time? What would have happened if Tony realized back then that he needed the kid, more than the kid needed him? What would have changed?
In the end it never mattered, because it never does, but the memories still plague him and render his vision blurry, his head somewhere else entirely while he sits staring blankly out of a window.
("I'm sorry." But he wasn't on a rooftop anymore, and the tears in his eyes weren't for a suit, and he was dying in Tony's arms and everything was glowing orange and yellow and—)
"Tones, you know you're supposed to be sleeping, right?"
Tony turns to look at Rhodey with a raised eyebrow. "You need a bell on you, platypus. Anyone ever told you that?"
Rhodey walks in and takes a seat in the chair, eyeing his best friend with a knowing expression. "I'm just saying, you're spacing out a lot. Penny for your thoughts?"
"You know what?" Tony says, looking back at the window. "I hate that phrase. 'Spacing out.' It's really inaccurate, all things considered. You don't really think in space, you're just as nothing as the nothing you're staring into. I mean, you've got nada to look at. Just the stuff you're imagining you want to look at instead of staring into an empty void."
There's a palpable silence between them. Rhodey sighs heavily.
Tony expects him to talk about therapy, maybe, how it could really help him. To scold him about his rambling and pointed not-doing or not-resting. Rhodey has always been the responsible thinker between the two of them, the one to notoriously put Tony in his place when he's being particularly unwise.
"What did you try to see?" Rhodey asks instead, his voice quiet. Listening. "In space."
"Pepper," Tony says immediately, because the answer is permanent in the back of his mind and has been since long before all of this. "It's always Pepper."
He sighs, leaning back on his bed. He closes his eyes, letting the darkness fill his vision and the hazy thoughts he had in the spaceship come floating back to him. "My dad, sometimes... Our college days, other times. Afghanistan. Times where I didn't matter, times where I did."
Tony goes quiet, soaking in the darkness for a long second and trying to find the strength in his tired body to keep speaking.
"Peter." He casually shrugs. "The kid. Peter Parker."
His tongue finds solace between his teeth, biting down to keep the lump forming in his throat from growing. It doesn't work. Within a second of the name leaving his mouth, his face crumbles, his eyebrows furrowing deeply as tears fall down his cheeks.
Tony nods despite the tears, as if continuing to agree with the previous statement he made. His voice is shaking a lot more now. "Yeah. Peter."
Tony shudders in his wheezing breath, and then sobs brokenly, a hand coming up to shield his face. His cheeks feel hot, the sobs are building up in his chest and bubbling out just as fast, and suddenly the emptiness hurts a whole lot more than it did before.
Tony hasn't opened his eyes yet, but he can feel Rhodey hug him. It makes him feel like he's twenty one again, and his parents are dead and he's never been more exhausted, but the hug is warm and Tony leans into it with everything he has.
(He promised Tony he'd be there for good last time, too. The only difference is that when Tony had heard it then, he didn't believe it. He does, now, Rhodey is there like he always is. Like he always has been.)
"God," Tony chokes out. "How could I let him die? He was just—Just a kid."
Rhodey pats him on the back, squeezing Tony in the hug a little tighter. "C'mon, Tony..."
Tony sniffles and pulls away from the hug, wiping his tears away from his cheeks. He flashes Rhodey a fake smile. "Yeah. Whatever, honeybear. You don't have to tell me—I need counseling. You know, I forgot how warm and sweet your hugs were."
Rhodey gives him an unimpressed look. "Really? You're gonna start crying over your massive guilt complex and then you're gonna crack a joke about my hugs? Screw you."
Tony shrugs.
"The point is," Rhodey says firmly. "You have people who care about you. Peter wouldn't want you to think it was your fault, Tones. You cared for that kid more than anything. Right?"
"...Right," Tony murmurs.
"Right." Rhodey stands up. "I'm going to go check in on Nat. Are you gonna be alright? Want me to stay?"
Tony shakes his head. "No, you're good. I'll be alright, Platypus. I'll even try to get some shuteye, just for you."
"Thank you."
When Rhodey leaves, Tony is left alone to his thoughts again. He closes his eyes, forcing himself to sleep through the panic that came with it.
He wakes up to do it again the next day.
He starts speaking up at meetings, giving ideas, giving his thoughts... Because he has the technology, and the team—The damage has been done, the people need to be avenged.
("Somebody's got to look out for the little guy, right?")
"You're right, kid," Tony murmurs. "You're right."