the funeral isn't even over when peter finds himself hugging pepper potts.
his voice is quiet, deadly in a way that he finally understands what people mean when they say, fear of spiders is an evolutionary benefit for survival.
“are you going to help me?” he whispers into her strawberry blonde hair.
she leans back a bit and looks at him with calculated eyes.
“i would kill someone with bare hands to bring him back.”
she looks at morgan and corrects herself.
“i would kill everyone with my bare hands, to bring him back to us.” pauses. “you?”
peter clenches his fist as he looks at their house.
“tony invented time travel for me, the least i can do is defeat death.”
no one had questioned pepper on the whereabouts of tony's body, some might be curious, she thinks as she looks at nick fury, but none are brave enough. she had carried him away, herself. in the suit he had built for her.
rescue armour.
“where is he?” peter asks.
“cryo.” she says and smiles at morgan who's sitting with happy.
“basement of stark tower.”
“do you have an idea?” he's looking at her carefully.
“i have some.” she says and thinks of the burning fire that once engulfed her.
they're in her kitchen, preparing to leave when steve rogers steps inside.
pepper moves in front of peter, non subtly.
he almost wants to remind her he is spider man and then he remembers she is pepper potts. he feels safe.
captain america, steve rogers leans back against their fridge and says.
“pepper.”
pepper doesn't even breathe as she looks at him, but her eyes must have shown something because he smiles.
“how can i help?”
and then she snarls.
“why?”
his eyes darken too and peter thinks he's seeing what narrators on discovery channel would say are two alpha wolves facing each other.
“you are not the only one who loves him.” his body is thrumming with tension.
“you left him to die, once already.” her voice is equally strained. like she's fighting against her rational side.
steve swears. “i would never. i didn't leave him until vision arrived and believe me, pepper, i would face thanos, again, by myself if it brought him back to me.”
pepper looks a second away from breaking.
“you have hurt him so much. you abandoned him, you broke his trust, you left him alone.”
steve nods, accepting each and every single one of those accusations.
then she steels herself. “i have done some of those myself. none of us deserve him. except…” she looks at peter and stares outside the window at morgan.
“fine.” she nods again.
“how can i help?” steve repeats.
they meet at the tower a day after, arrive separately.
pepper's heels make sharp noises on the secret corridor that opens for them on her command.
steve exhales sharply as he sees tony suspended in glacial blue solution.
“you froze him.” he says.
peter corrects him.
“he's in stasis.” then rounds around the container to look at the damaged side of tony's body.
“he had the faintest heartbeat when miss potts placed him in. this is the most advanced kind of cryo, ever made. his body won't be able to change a thing while he's placed inside.”
pepper brings their attention back to her as she says.
“friday, project extremis.”
peter knows what it is. pepper sent him the files yesterday.
“tony had been working on this, his body was already too stressed, he had a failing liver and damage to his heart. we both knew he didn't have many years left with him, even as we had morgan, and that was not acceptable.”
her voice hardens.
“it's compatible with his nano tech and he's coded it to repair all damage but he couldn't stabilize it before you all came knocking into his life again.”
steve looks guilty but he makes his way to the console to study the diagrams. peter knows he's the only certified genius in the room who's awake, but to underestimate the likes of captain america is not a mistake he would make, so he doesn't say anything as steve observes and manipulates the strand of extremis on the screen.
“the super soldier serum is stable.” he says at the end and looks at peter. “can you…?” he leaves the question incomplete.
peter smirks at him, but it feels broken somehow.
“tony can invent time travel for me, i can combine two extremely different formulas and make something that works.”
it's a good thing that peter was better at chemistry and biology than physics and maths, because here was the most perfectly coded virus in existence with the power to grow back organs and integrate with technology and the only part that tony hadn't figured out was how to make the human body compatible with it.
peter cracked his neck. not a problem, he muttered.
“hey, mr captain america, i will need your blood.”
steve was already at his side, nodding with fiercely earnest eyes.
“whatever you need.”
pepper smiled at him, from behind steve.
It took peter two days, to find a mix of extremis and the super soldier serum that wasn't volatile, wasn't a dud and would be accepted by the human body.
morgan had come to visit him yesterday, when pepper and steve forced him to take a much needed break for food.
“mom says, you a'e helpin dad.” she said as she pushed her half of the burrito towards him. peter blinked at her surprised, and looked at steve and pepper who were busy talking, something about the outside world probably.
pepper must have a lot of faith in him, if she told their daughter that, he thought.
“yeah, i'm helping fix dad.” he said as he stuffed the burrito in his mouth and then choked on it.
“i mean, tony, mr stark—
morgan giggled. “he talks a lot about you. says tha' all his kids give him hea't bu'n”
peter's eyes went wide. tony had risked his life, his life with his wife and daughter for him. if that didn't prove to him, that tony stark thought of him as his kid, nothing else could.
also, he's always wanted a sister.
morgan goes back and peter gets back to work.
he has the formula ready by night.
“shouldn't we have mr rhodes here?” he had asked pepper on the first day itself as she smiled at him.
“someone needs to play a grieving widow and he has always been better at acting.”
but he's here now. a silent presence clad in armour, looking at tony. steve is here too, in his sweatshirt but he's clutching his shield desperately. and pepper is at the forefront, holding the vial of the solution.
there are tears in her eyes.
“thankyou, peter.”
here's a kid her husband had adopted and mourned every single day of his life for the past five years, and while she had never wondered why tony loved him so much, she understands now.
then she turns and hands the vial to steve.
“you do it.” she says.
he gapes at her. “what?”
“i know you are not planning to return, if this is the last thing you can do for tony, then bring him back to life.”
“what?”
“from your mission to return the stones.”
steve's eyes go misty.
“I—
that's all he's able to say before james rhodes, interrupts them.
“what do you mean you're not returning?"
“there is, there is nothing for me here.” steve says, stumbling on his words.
“so you are going to take the coward's way out? After all your talk about moving on? About living in the future, not the past. about not giving up on him?”
“I don't want to...but…”
“then don't.” rhodes is firm with his tone.
“look man, there is a part of me who wants to punch you, and i bet there is a part of tony who wants to do that too. but he's loved you with the same intensity as he's loved pepper and that says a lot.”
steve's eyes look panicked. “how is that possible? he couldn't have—”
peter pipes in. “seriously, i know you're all old but polyamory is a thing, you know? if tony loves you both..”
he shrugs.
pepper looks at steve contemplating. steve looks right back.
“you'll have to makeup for a lot.”
something in steve finally settles, he looks less lost, less desperate. more like the person who had sassed peter back in the middle of a fight. his shoulders straighten into a determined stance and his lips lift into a smirk.
“i will.”
rhodes scoffs. “now give me the vial, and go have your stare down in the corner, or do it again in front of tony, he'll probably like it. ”
In the end it is, james rhodes who injects Tony with the modified extremis. “I have known him for longer than all three of you combined." he had said staring at them pointedly, while pepper gave him the vial.
and it is peter parker's face, tony stark comes back alive to, gasping. his eyes are wild with pain as he manages to utter a single word.
“Kid..”
peter hugs him before he can say another. then tony faints again as extremis starts working to repair all the damage to his body.
“it will take at least a week, for him to wake up again.”
peter says, carefully pulling back and lowering tony into the stasis pod again.
peter has to leave, he's stayed for nearly four days with no contact with May.
And so do steve and pepper. steve needs to return the infinity stones and pepper needs to take the helm as stark industries' CEO in a world that suddenly has half its population returned, she also remarks with a smirk that she has an armour named Rescue, which is much better suited to helping than War Machine.
So this time, rhodey stays for the vigil, beside tony's pod.
pepper and steve shake hands, and steve has to hide a grimace because wow, she is strong.
she looks him in the eyes and then points to another vial kept in a glass container.
“Bring natasha back.”
steve nods and tightens his grip at his shield.
“when I come back, I am taking him on a date.”
pepper smirks. “we'll see.”
rhodes groans. “Go, go. I can't take the posturing any more.”
peter grins and looks at the steady rise and fall of tony's chest.
“I can babysit morgan for you.”
when tony wakes up again, he feels twenty years younger, he can breathe easily and his right arm is solid.
The first sight he sees are Steve and Pepper sleeping on uncomfortable looking chairs, holding his hands while Morgan is tucked into his side. Peter is sleeping on a couch, and what the fuck is that Natasha in a stasis pod besides his bed?
he closes his eyes and opens them again. it's real.
it's real.
he's alive. he kisses the top of morgan's head.
although it is slightly uncomfortable that both his hands are gripped so possessively.
What is up with that?