Left Behind

After falling asleep drunk again, Tony didn’t think he’d ever see the kid again. So, when he wakes up and finds Peter standing in his kitchen…he rubs his eyes and wonders if he ever woke up. He stares for a while, but Peter doesn’t go. He’s still there.

“Hello?” Peter says, “Sorry for showing up again but-,”

“Jesus Christ,” Tony huffs, walking past him to get to the coffee maker. He puts it on and grabs a mug from the top shelf. “Give me a second. You’re not speaking to me until I at least have one of these, get it?” He smiles when Peter doesn’t reply but nods instead. “Good, you’ve cracked it. Well done.”

Tony drinks the whole mug in ten minutes, deliberately dragging it out. He puts the dirty mug in the sink, before looking over at Peter who was playing with his own shoelaces out of boredom. He looked skinny. Dirty too. It’s like he hadn’t had the chance to shower in ages. Maybe Tony should offer… hm, he’s not sure. That might make the kid stick around and he really doesn’t have the energy for that at the moment.

“Right. Okay. You can speak now,” Tony says, looking down at his watch. “And you’ve got five minutes.”

“What? You could’ve told me that. I would’ve planned a speech,” Peter says, eyes growing wide.

“Four minutes and fifty-nine seconds… four minutes and fifty-eight seconds,” Tony counts down. He moves around, sitting on the sofa as Peter paces back and forth… ranting like his little life depended on it. Maybe it did. Who knows?

“So, right- okay- I came back even though you told me to leave. But I had to return the bag you gave me with all the stuff in as it looked special,” Peter says, putting it on the coffee table in front of the billionaire.

“It wasn’t,” he interrupts.

“Okay, so you owe me five more seconds for butting in,” Peter pouts, returning to his rant. “And I thought that maybe you were just drunk still and that’s why you didn’t want to listen to me. Because, Mr Stark, what harm could it do? Like, uh, we’d be a good team. I think so anyway. I went to Midtown- you know, the science school, and I was the top of my school. I’d say ask my teachers for my grades… but like all of them are dusty now, so they wouldn’t be a reputable source. But what I’m trying to say is, I’m smart! I really am!”

“Okay, you’re smart,” Tony says, as Peter sits beside him. Just a little too close. Tony scoots over. “That’s not enough, Peter. I did listen to you last time, as I hope you did to me. But, apparently, you didn’t. There’s no way we can do this. I’m sorry for how I shouted last time, but I really do mean what I said. I can’t help you, kid. Sorry.”

Peter sighs. “Okay… well, sorry for interrupting you. I’ll just leave the bag here and I’ll be on my way…”

Tony looks at him, sighing. “I’m making breakfast. Stay for that and a shower. Then go, okay?”

Peter grins. “Really? Thank you so much.”

Peter smiles too much for someone in this situation, Tony realises. He packs a pair of clothes he doesn’t mind throwing away, putting them in a washbag for Peter as he directs him towards a bathroom. And he listens to the flowing water as he cooks them breakfast, the sound of someone else in the compound making him feel nostalgic from times that feel so long ago.

He spends a while making it perfect (he’s not sure why he really cares at all). And when the kid walks in with wet hair and his clothes on, he’s shocked that he looks like a completely different person. Only because the dirt on his face and in his hair is long gone. He’s shaved the tiny bit of hair he had growing on his jaw and looks a lot younger… and it dawns on Tony that he’s only a kid- out there all by himself. Maybe he should let the kid stay? Hm, no. He decides against it.

Peter eats a lot, almost as if he was storing the food for a long hibernation. And when he thanks Tony, he leaves, and Tony feels… weird. He waits by the door and wonders if he’ll ever see Peter again. Something inside him says he will. He totally doesn’t want him here though… it’s just the loneliness talking that pulls him back.

Two days later

Peter’s sat on the sofa with a pile of dried clothes in his hands. They look like they’ve been washed. Tony rolls his eyes (does he do affectionately? Even he doesn’t know himself) as he steps in, dressed in the same robes that Peter’s become accustomed to seeing.

“Hello Peter,” Tony says, “What brought you here this time?” he asks, too tired to even bother resisting it. He sits down beside the kid, a tiny bit of a smile reaching his lips… before he catches himself and drops it again.

“I had to bring your clothes back,” Peter says, shrugging. “I went into the only dry-cleaners that’s not smashed to pieces and did a wash. I’m so sorry though- I was washing something red and your white shirt you gave me went pink. I honestly didn’t mean to and-,”

“Kid,” Tony sighs, “It’s fine. I thought we both agreed that you were keeping these anyway.” He looks over at the kid, frowning when he sees a big scar over his cheek. “Wait there,” he mumbles, before walking to the other room to grab a first aid kit. He grabs it, before returning to make sure Peter’s all okay. “How did you get this then?” he asks, gently dabbing at the wound with a cotton bud covered in some alcohol. Peter winces, but he stays mostly still as if he’s used to this.

“It’s nothing,” Peter mumbles, “Just walked down the wrong street.”

Tony bites his lip, after putting a plaster over the scar to make sure it’s all protected. He looks to the side of him, noticing the bag he packed himself the other day… just in case the kid ever came back. There’s food and even more clothes in there, all for Peter to take with him. Clothes that have no sentimental feeling to him, but clothes nonetheless… and food which he thought the kid might like. Some might call it ‘thoughtful’, but Tony thinks it’s just what anyone else would do.

“Take this with you,” Tony says, putting it in the kid’s arms, “And you don’t have to bring it back, okay? It’s all for you.”

“R-Really?” Peter says, holding the bag close to his chest as if it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him. He looks through it all, grinning to himself. “Oh, wow. All of this looks so nice, Mr Stark! Thank you so much! I love it.”

Tony’s not one for showing off his emotions. Especially now that he’s been all by himself. But as Peter talks, there’s a fuzzy feeling in his stomach and he can’t help but smile. The kid’s happiness is just sort of… contagious. Tony smiles softly at the young boy, “So, uh, you could stay for dinner if you’d like… before you go. I brought too much last time anyway and I was worried it might run out of date if I don’t use all of it soon.”

“Oh, yes please!” Peter grins. He reaches forward to hug Tony but catches himself before he does. He tries to style it out, but he knows Tony sees it. Awkwardly, he tries to move the topic on. “So, uh, what are we having for dinner then? I could, uh, help you chop some of the vegetables? If we have them. Because that’s what I used to do with my aunt before… well, yeah, before. I was pretty good at it. I was her little sous chef. That’s what she used to call me.”

Tony smiles, imaging little Peter with his head barely reaching the cabinets. He’d try so, so, hard to impress his aunt, working his hardest to make sure all the food is okay. He laughs at the sight, cutting Peter off mid-rant (which seems to happen a lot between them). “Okay, kid. It’s fine. You can be my sous chef for the evening.”

They walk over to the kitchen. Tony goes to get a glass out of the cabinet for his daily scotch but as he watches Peter go through the fridge to get all the fresh ingredients, he stops and thinks. He doesn’t need to drink, does he? The burn at the back of his throat might be something he yearns for. It might be something he tries his hardest to ignore… but having someone else here is a distraction. It’s a reminder that he can be strong. The kid next to him as been living rough, struggling to even eat on most days… Tony can surely ignore the temptation for an afternoon.

They spend most of the time in silence. But when Peter takes a long time cutting the onion up, Tony decides he should probably help. He walks behind him, gently taking his hand and repositioning it. “We had a butler when I was kid. You’d think I would be a shit cook, but he made sure I knew how to do everything. By the time I was in college, I could make a mean- well, I could make anything if I had a recipe. It’s a bit like science, I guess. Just with less explosions. Maybe.” He talks Peter through how to cut it, laughing a little when the usual burn makes them both tear up.

“I haven’t cried in front of anyone in ages, Mr Stark. This is a little embarrassing,” Peter laughs, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He beams when he hears a slight chuckle coming out of Tony’s mouth, but both move on as it seems like a sore topic for the older man. “Uh, so- could I- uh, ask you something?”

Tony looks over from where he’s putting their dinner in the oven, raising his eyebrow at the boy. “Uh, sure? Unless you’re going to try and get my deepest secrets… then go ahead.”

“Why are you so sure we wouldn’t win?”

Tony sighs. “Okay. Look, buddy, I had a whole team of the world’s ‘mightiest’ heroes at my beck and call. We trained. We really did fight our hardest… but it just wasn’t enough. And I don’t think I can physically go through all of that again. So, even we could… I’m not sure if I want to. I have to force myself to sle- look, actually- I really don’t want to talk about that with you. I just know it would be too much.”

“But what if you help me understand it? Then I could go to the fight by myself, and you’d be okay. Then we get everyone back and everything will be normal again,” Peter tries to get him to understand his point of view, but he’s not sure if it works. Tony just frowns. “I totally understand it’s too much, though, and I’m sorry to bring it all back- but surely… surely it’s worth it? For everyone we lost.”

“Kid’s it’s not ‘we’, here. I lost. My team lost and they paid for their lives, and somehow, I was the only one left. You had nothing to do with it. You didn’t know what it was like. He was too strong. There is nothing we can do to stop him. Now, please… just stop. Eat your dinner, and then just- go to the library for information instead of bothering me,” Tony says, his voice stern. “And there’s no way I’m letting you fight by yourself. You’ll kill yourself, and I don’t want to be the reason behind that.

“If I die, that’s my problem. If anything… it would only be an inconvenience to you.”

He looks at Peter… with no clue what to even say. “I am going to wait in my room. See you in a bit.”

When the timer’s up, and Tony walks back into the room, he’s shocked to see the kid’s left. There’s nothing there but a note on the side of the table. Walking over, he picks it up and sighs as he reads it. ‘I promise I won’t come back again, Mr Stark, unless it’s an emergency. I will do my best to research how we can win… and I will be successful… If not just for me, but for you too. I promise’.

Putting the note down, Tony walks over to the oven. As if he’s not bothered about what just happened, he gets the food out and sets it down. Putting it on his plate, he looks at the empty one on the side… and it all hits him. He wants Peter to stay. He wants the kid around in the house, and maybe there’s a part of him that knows they could find a way to reverse it all. But how is he supposed to find him now? The kid could be anywhere… and he’s just ruined the last chance he had.

Tony bites into the food but finds his appetite has slipped. Leaving it to get cold, he finds his way back into the lab as he creates anything to distract himself from the fact that he’s a failure- that it should’ve been Cap, Nat, or anyone else who was left. Not him.

One fortnight later

It’s so late that Tony can hear carnage, people running around the streets screaming their heads off. It’s become second nature. So much so that Friday’s able to predict the exact time it will start, and the exact time it will fade. Tony walks out of the window, looking at it all for the first time in a while.

The streets are littered in trash. Old, abandoned cars are shells of what they’ve used to be. Nobody dares to go near the group of people who call the roads their homes. They hold weapons they’ve stole from local businesses, mugging anyone in their path. There are no police to stop them as nobody can be bothered. If they stay out of their way, they’re gone by morning to try and steal from people in the neighbouring town. It’s a system, one people have caught up on.

He can’t recognise it. If he looks closely, there might be a shop or two hanging by the strings to stay open… and it’s only because of the little hero who’s kept the streets as clean as they could be at a time like this. He was going to recruit Spidey during the airport battle, but it came up too quickly and- well, the rest was history. He always had wondered who was behind the mask, but not enough to do something behind it.

Tony steps back, coffee (instead of scotch, he can make progress) in hand. He finds himself wondering over to the library, eyeing the phone. Maybe he could call Strange (one the other few of their ‘group’ who survived. Wong, Rocket, and Carol did too… but he hardly knows them, and they haven’t tried to see how he’s doing… so he didn’t bother either), because if anyone would know what to do… he would.

He wonders if Peter made any progress.

But as Tony sleeps, he hears a grunt coming from the door of his bedroom. When he gets up, ready to fight, he opens the door and sees Peter on the floor with his hands covering his legs. When his eyes fall to the point of concern, he’s immediately thrown into panic mode.

The kid has blood all over his hands as he tries to stop the bleeding. It looks as if he’s been shot. Tony would throw up if he had to watch this anywhere else, but he needs to help the kid and panicking isn’t going to do him any good. So, he does what he can. He’s been on this side of a wound before, and he’s not incompetent at it… it’s just… this is a kid. And a kid as innocent and pure as Peter shouldn’t be shot randomly as they walk down the road. It’s just not right.

“I didn’t know what to do, Mr Stark,” Peter whispers as Tony lays him down on his bed. As he gets blood all over the white satin sheets, he winces apologetically. Resisting the urge to fight back and make sure they stay clean he struggles underneath Tony’s hands. But the pain soon subdues him, and he stays still. He’s not happy about it. “I’m sorry,” he adds, making sure the billionaire knows he didn’t mean for this to happen.

“No need to be sorry, kid.”

“There is.”

Tony cleans the wound through, noticing there’s no bullet shell in his leg. He wonders if he was lucky for it to pass through without hitting anything, or if he tried to get it out himself. He goes with the latter. Searching through his first aid kit, he bandages it up and keeps it tight enough that Peter feels it. The kid looks… scared, and it does break Tony’s heart.

“How did this happen?” Tony asks, putting away the equipment he used to clean it all up. He furrows his brow, slowly running his hand over where the bullet would’ve entered. It doesn’t look good at all.

“It’s crazy out there.” Peter looks down to his feet, feeling as if there was an anchor of pain over his back. He needs to fight back, to give people hope, but sometimes it’s just impossible to do so. “I was walking to the library and – bam! The next thing I felt was this searing pain and I knew I had to get to you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“You are?” the young boy questions, tilting his head. “Didn’t think you liked me that much.”

“I don’t,” Tony replies. They both know he’s lying. “Even if I did hate you like I’ve never hated anyone before, I still wouldn’t want to watch you die. That’s not very ‘Avenger’ of me, is it?” he chuckles a little to himself, pushing some hair out of his face that’s got a little too long after he’s forgot to give it a trim. Peter seems to be in the same preindictment. “You need to rest, Pete. Stay here.”

“For how long?”

Tony looks over at the clock on the wall, scanning it. They both know he’s already figured out the time. He didn’t time to check if he was looking at it right. He doesn’t pause because of that. He pauses because he’s scared of what he’s about to say. If he lets the kid in, he admits that getting everyone back is the plan. Peter’s just not going to give up… he knows that.

“Mr Stark?”

“Stay for good… or until we’ve figured this shit out.”

Peter’s face lights up. The physical pain must go because he’s sitting up and smiling in a second. There’s only one wince on his face that shows it hurts… but other than that, he looks okay. And he’s over the moon with the idea that Tony will take him in. “You’re not joking?” he asks, voice breaking as he asks… and it’s heart-breaking. It makes Tony feel like a complete asshole that he didn’t do it sooner.

“I’m not kidding. I think that would be pretty evil of me if I was just joking around,” Tony says. “You can stay in any room you like. There’s plenty to choose from. I could even find one working shop that might sell some stuff if you wanted to change it up a little.”

“Anything will be great!”

Turning around on the bed, Peter jumps off (obviously forgetting about his leg). He goes tumbling to the floor but is stopped by Tony’s arm before he becomes a splat against the hardwood. Peter looks thankful as he fidgets a little to get underneath Tony more comfortably. They stay like that for a while, Tony breathing steadily as he gets over the slight spike of panic seeing Peter fall gave him.

Before taking him to his next room, Tony walks into the kitchen to make sure they get as much blood out of his hands as possible. Slaving away over the sink, Tony scrubs as much soap as possible over his hands. They get most of it out, but there’s still some over him that’s not moving. The billionaire figures this is a far as he goes, so he stops and pops a snack in the kid’s mouth before they get to their next location.

Tony finally walks him over to the other bedrooms, gravitating towards the one that is closest to his own bedroom… not for any reason at all. And when Peter chooses it, he has to awkwardly pretend as if he wasn’t over the moon. Knowing he can keep an eye on the kid… it does make him feel a little at ease.

“Woah, Mr Stark…” Peter says, eyes wide. “This… this is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think this is the biggest room ever. I love it!”

Tony walks him over to the bed, sitting him down on the side. He’s surprised when he realises that he didn’t feel panicky at all having Peter this close to him. Maybe it’s because he’s had a bit of drink that morning and he’s numb to any sensations…or maybe he already feels comfortable with the kid. With a personality like his, it’s impossible to hate him. Who knows? Maybe his cold, cold, heart is already beginning to melt.

“Well, uh, you know where the kitchen is… and the bathroom. Use it whenever you want. Take as much food as you need. I fly out every month or so to stockpile. Uh, so- I can start to get more now. And before you even say it- I don’t need anything from you. No money. No work. You’re here for free. Treat it like an all expenses paid holiday from your boss, and your boss is me,” Tony tells him, playing anxiously with the edge of his blazer. Maybe he does feel a little on edge… but that’s nothing to do with the kid, that’s all on him.

“Wow, I’ve always wanted to hear you say that to me.”

“You have?”

“Yeah. My original plan before everything was to graduate at the top of my class. I was going to attend MIT underneath a scholarship, maybe even the one you give out if I won. I’d graduate with the highest scores anyone has ever seen… and then I’d come work for you. And, eventually, I’d get so good that it would be with you. But it always just a stupid dream… the one where you’d imagine yourself somewhere where you’d never get. But now… I guess I was right. Because I’m here and I could work with you on a project- and-,”

Tony sighs sadly as Peter begins to tear up. He slowly pushes some hair out of his face, wiping away one of the tears as the other slowly falls near his thumb. “I reckon I would’ve hired you. I could see you as one of the best for my team,” he tells the kid. “But now you’ve fast-tracked your whole plan. Because we’re going to be working together for a long time now. If we’re going to be successful with bringing everyone back, of course.”

“…Are we really going to do this?” Peter asks, excitement flowing out of his body. It’s so present that Tony swears he can see it coming out of him. The gunshot and blood are long forgotten, even if Tony will have to change his stained sheets (for good, there’s no way he’s saving those), as they look at each other in the eye. This is it, Peter thinks, he can be the hero Ben always wanted him to be.

“Yeah, kid. We damn well are.”