it just happened this way
Titan is silent after Thanos leaves. Too silent. Questions buzz on Peter’s tongue, but he doesn’t dare be the first one to speak, the moment feels too solemn for that.
And perhaps that’s why he doesn’t realize the sick feeling in his stomach isn’t just from the fight they’ve just lost.
(That, even more than their sudden space-adventure, feels surreal. The Avengers lost.
They’re the Avengers — they’re not supposed to lose.)
“Mr. Stark,” Peter says urgently, the words sticking to his throat like tar. Peter licks his lips, tensing as everyone tiredly resumes a fighting position. “Mr. Stark, something’s wrong.”
“What is it?” Mr. Stark asks, but Peter doesn’t have the chance to answer before everything gets so horribly worse.
It’s over in an instant and it feels like it lasts forever, but for an instant, Peter could swear that the universe just… shudders.
Peter’s next words — what would they have even been, he wonders — die in his throat as their newfound allies/friends just… crumble into dust and float away on the wind.
Peter almost expects he’ll vanish too, and Mr. Stark’s sudden hold on his arm is so desperate and tight it’s almost painful, but no, he stays.
“What… What just happened?” Peter finally manages to ask, even though the words feel too big for his lips.
“I don’t know, kid,” Mr. Stark replies. He doesn’t let go of Peter’s arm, and his eyes are wild and afraid.
Peter’s never seen him look so afraid — heroes aren’t supposed to be afraid — and that, more than anything that’s happened already, makes Peter afraid.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Stark repeats. he looks about to add something else, but his face contorts in pain and he clutches at his stomach with his free hand.
Abruptly, Peter remembers that Thanos ran him through with a sword and he flails, torn between the reflex to put pressure on the wound — that’s what people are supposed to do on stab wounds, right? — and stepping away so he doesn’t make it worse.
He ends up doing a bit of neither, and Mr. Stark hisses in pain as they stumble into a semi-sitting position.
“Shit,” Peter swears, before he realizes what he’s said and tries to backpedal. “I mean, er, shoot?”
Thankfully, Mr. Stark only chuckles weakly. “Yeah, not gonna lecture you about language right now, kid. In case you haven’t noticed, the situation is pretty fucked up. Also,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, “that’d be pretty hypocritical of me.”
His eyes widen. “Not that, of course, you should swear. Or tell your aunt. She’d probably murder me.”
On any other occasion, Peter would probably find something clever to quip back — he’s really good at those, actually — but it’s all he can do to nod because suddenly he’s thinking about Aunt May, alone back on Earth, and what if she never knows what happened to him?
“Hey, come on, she’ll be fine,” Mr. Stark says, finally letting go of his arm to awkwardly pat his shoulder.
… Right. He’s just said that out loud, hasn’t he?
Peter clears his throat and looks away. Still, though, he can’t resist but ask, “Do you really think so?”
“Well, at the very least I’m sure the news saw you very recklessly get on that ship with me, so she’ll know what happened?”
Peter spins back around to shoot him an incredulous look, only to catch Mr. Stark wincing sheepishly.
“Right, sorry, that sounded more reassuring in my head.” Mr. Stark sighs. He looks older suddenly, and Peter is very suddenly reminded that Mr. Stark just got hit by an actual moon and then got stabbed before whatever it was that made the Guardians crumble up into dust.
Peter may panic a little. Again.
(It’s a good distraction.)
“Should I…” He gestures toward Mr. Stark’s stomach, and then his web-shooters. He’s never tried using his webs on open wounds but he’s pretty sure blood does belong inside the body, and he’s not sure what remains of the Iron Man armor is exercising enough pressure for that.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” Mr. Stark replies dryly, sounding more like himself.
Peter exhales a sigh in relief. “Right. Right. So, erm, what now?” He looks toward the donut-shaped ship they crashed in. “Because I’m pretty sure we can’t use that to go back to Earth.” He frowns, fear tightening its grip around his heart. “We are getting back to Earth, right? Because I don’t think I’d do well on an alien planet, Mr. Stark.”
“We’re getting back to Earth,” Mr. Stark replies, rolling his eyes. “But… it might take a while.”
Peter pauses for a few seconds, before shrugging. “Well, I was promised a field trip.”
His nonchalance is mostly faked, but it does surprise a laugh out of Mr. Stark, which makes Peter laugh too, and for a moment, the atmosphere lightens enough that it’s easier to breathe.
That things don’t seem quite as hopeless.
“If you two are quite done…” The voice startles them out of their laughter, and Peter startles and raises his hands defensively, heart racing, only to find the blue-skinned lady that fought with them earlier.
He perks up, shoulders lowering in relief. “Oh, you’re Nebula, right?”
“Yes,” she replies tensely. “Now come on, we need to go.”
The implicit threat in her voice has Peter jump to his feet before he realizes it — he saw her fight earlier and she was terrifying.
Mr. Stark painstakingly gets to his feet, clutching his stomach. “Where are we going?” he asks suspiciously.
“Quill’s ship.” Nebula nods in what Peter assumes to be the direction of said ship, and starts moving without waiting for them.
Peter shoots a worried look toward Mr. Stark, but the man’s already moving, so Peter follows.
It’s not like they have anything better to do, really.
Or anything to do, at all.
“So, er, what happened exactly? With the, you know...” Peter gestures a poof with his hands, but the gesture falls flat because remembering how they’d looked as the crumbled to dust — when moments ago they had been there, and alive — makes him feel sick.
Nebula doesn’t slow down, or turn back, but her shoulders tense up. “My father won,” she says. “Assembled the stones. Reshaped the universe in the way he saw fit.” She sounds bitter and hateful.
“... He really just, killed half the universe then?” That’s too big to even fully comprehend. Peter’s mind balks at the numbers — half of all life, gone? Surely that can’t be an actual thing.
And yet… Aliens invading New York. A wizard, seeing the future. Peter, going to space. Mr. Stark, losing.
So many impossible things have happened already. What’s one more?
So Peter falls silent, and follows their guide.
If he’s entirely honest with himself, Peter hadn’t thought they’d survive the trip off Titan. The Guardians’ ship is hardly fit to be called that anymore, even now, after repairs, and Peter had spent take-off certain it would fly off at the seams and he would get sucked off into space.
Again.
Maybe that’d be better, his shell-shocked mind had whispered. At least then you’ll never know what happened back on Earth, who might have…
Peter had been unable to finish the thought. Even the mere idea of Ned, or Michelle or Aunt May — god, what would he do without Aunt May? — is enough to make his eyes sting and his knees go weak.
But the ship had held. It's still holding now, even, for all the good that does them when food and oxygen are running out, and there probably isn’t anyone left to build a rescue — if they even knew a rescue was needed.
Peter had only found the courage to ask once, and Mr. Stark had told him, “Of course, we’ll be fine, somebody will find us”, but Peter knows adults well enough to tell when one is lying to him.
He doesn’t ask again.
He doesn’t want to find out if Mr. Stark will lie again if he does.
So since they can’t really do anything but wait, they play games to pass the time. It’s actually kind of fun, if they ignore the heartbreaking implications of Nebula not knowing any game that doesn’t imply sparing to the death, but that just means it’s an even better distraction for Peter to throw himself into.
As long as they’re playing, he can fool himself into not thinking about them losing.
God, Peter can't believe they've lost — he’s an Avenger now. The Avengers aren’t supposed to lose.
"I'm sorry," Peter blurts out on day eleven, when no amount of playing can get his brain to stay quiet.
Nebula quickly averts her eyes and slinks off somewhere else, and Mr. Stark stares at him like Peter has gone insane, which, unfair.
"What for, kid?" he finally asks.
Peter swallows, his fingers twitching anxiously. "I'm sorry," he repeats. "You were right. I shouldn't have come. I should, I should have —” His eyes start to burn and his vision blurs, and suddenly, Peter feels like he can’t breathe.
God, why can’t he breathe?
“—er, Peter, —the —”
Dimly, he’s aware of sliding onto the floor, and then someone grabbing his hand and placing it somewhere — a chest, maybe?
“Come on, kid, breathe with me. In, and out. Come on, you can do it. I know you can.”
The voice seems distant somehow, but Peter does his best to follow, and eventually, the world feels real again.
His cheeks are wet and warm, but he mostly feels cold and shivery. He grimaces. “Sorry.” He blushes when he realizes his hand’s still on Mr. Stark’s chest. “You can let go. I’m fine now.”
“Are you?” Mr. Stark frowns. His eyes are kind but sharp as they scan Peter, and Peter’s breath almost catches in his chest because they look a little like Uncle Ben’s, when Peter woke him up from a nightmare, and Aunt May’s, and the few memories he still had of his fa—
Yeah, Peter’s not going there.
Instead, he exhales slowly.
“I’m fine,” he repeats, and he tugs his hand out of Mr. Stark’s grasp.
Luckily, the man seems to sense he doesn’t want to talk about it, because he just hums and stands up again, before offering Peter a hand.
“Come on,” he says with a grin. “Game’s not over yet.”
As if she was summoned, Nebula returns, and they all take their seats again.
It’s almost like nothing happened. Almost.
The thing is, Peter tries very hard not to lose hope. He’s alive, Mr. Stark is alive — Nebula’s alive too, and Peter feels like he knows her a little better with every passing day — and they’re even aboard a semi-viable spaceship floating toward Earth.
Of course, the current calculations would have them reach it in a few centuries, which is far past the point where food and oxygen would have run out, but space is actually not that empty.
There’s plenty of planets between here and Earth, and plenty of other ships, probably.
The point is, their odds of getting rescued are low, yes, but they’re not zero.
And really, the Avengers are very good at those odds.
Well, they are, usually.
So yes, Peter tries not to lose hope. Keep it alive, as it is.
But the days pass and their supplies dwindle, and no amount of cannibalizing parts of the ship and their suits is enough to repair enough of the ship to truly get it working again, even if it does help filter the air and run that odd food generator thing sometimes.
And Peter doesn’t even realize it, but at some point, he'd just stopped hoping somebody would come for them (they’d sent a message, rigged with the ship’s comms systems, but that had been weeks ago).
There is nothing for them to do but wait to die, really, and it isn’t fair because if they could get off this ship and back to Earth, Peter knows they could be doing something, that they could be helping, but they can’t.
Peter doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want Mr. Stark to die, or Nebula to die, and he wants to see his friends and family again.
He’s tired, though, and cold, and hungry. Maybe if he rests a little, he’ll feel better.
Maybe he’ll…
…
And then, someone does come for them.