The world is exploding around him. Peter’s arms shake around the iron gauntlet, the metal red and silver but glowing blue, green, yellow, purple, orange.
(Mr. Stark is looking at him. Peter runs up to him, excited, pumped full of adrenaline.)
He can feel the stones through the hot metal, feel his hands burn with the power of the tiny rocks, feel it singe his hair. When Thanos had worn his own gauntlet, he made it look effortless, but Peter can remember how heavy it was, how hard he had to pull to force it off his arm. He remembers the glow burning the back of his eyes, remembers the brief moment where he held the gauntlet in his arms, alone, by himself.
(I must have passed out or something, Peter exhales, and Mr. Stark just keeps looking at him, wide eyed and blood leaking down the side of his face.)
There is a woman looking at him. He wonders what she sees.
Peter Parker, pathetically clutching the world’s deadliest glove to his chest like a teddy bear, backed up against a pile of rubble and feeling like he can’t breathe. Peter Parker, covered from head to toe in dust and trying, trying, trying not to panic and trying not to feel the sensation that his body is slowly breaking into the ground and the rocks and the dust and the screams in the air. Peter Parker, a teenager, in shock, holding the infinity gauntlet and holding back tears.
I’m Peter Parker, he murmurs. His voice won’t go any louder. He wonders if the woman can even hear him over the screams of the battle around them.
(When I woke up, you weren’t there, Peter says, remembering the hollow horror of looking around and not seeing him, screaming for him and only hearing his own echo. Mr. Stark finally looks away, looks down, face twisting into an expression Peter can’t place.)
The woman is dressed in a red, gold, and blue suit. She glows, not harsh like the stones, but warm and bright and beautiful. She smiles at him.
Hello, Peter Parker, she says, and her voice clears his airways and he breathes out heavily, in through his nose, out, in, out. Safe, his brain sighs. She’s safe.
You got something for me? She asks, and he struggles to peel himself away from the rocks. He’s solid, he can feel his legs bend and his muscles ache as he stands shakily and holds the gauntlet with white knuckles.
(Okay, Mr. Stark says, interrupting him. Then his arms are wrapped tightly around Peter and his face is buried in Peter’s neck and Peter is shocked to feel him trembling.)
The woman takes the gauntlet from him before he can think. The metal leaves his arms cold, leaves him shaking. She smiles at him one last time and her glow warms his bones and then she’s gone, a rocket streaming through the sky. He misses her already.
He can’t take any more time, though. He can’t afford to scream and curl up on the ground and just sit there and wait for the earth to stop shaking.
(Peter hugs back, gripping Mr. Stark with all he has. This is nice, he says, trying to make him laugh. It doesn’t work. Mr. Stark only holds him tighter.)
He fights, he screams, he watches, he falls. The world is still shaking around him. There is always something else to fight. The monsters claw at him, the giants roar and try to crush him, the ships in the air rain bright blue flashes down on him.
He tells Karen to activate instant kill. She does, and his vision tints red.
(He hates the color red, now. Red like his suit, red like the blood that he can still taste in his mouth. Red like horrible gaping burns stretching over worn skin.)
He’s hysterical by the time he notices the woman holding Thanos’s hand back from the gauntlet lying on the hard stone.
He can’t go to help. He’s caught underneath a horde of monsters, all teeth and rippling flesh and high pitched growling that makes his ears ring. There’s a flash of purple, and her glow disappears from view.
(He wonders - if he’d been there. If anyone at all had been there. He wonders if anything would have turned out differently.)
He knows, somehow, when the monsters above him turn to dust and he chokes on it even though none of the particles can get through his mask. He knows what’s happened and it chills him to his core.
He runs, faster than he’s ever, ever run. Past the wizard, past the aliens, past the woman who has stopped glowing. They are all standing still, staring.
(He knows nothing would have changed. Mr. Stark has been fighting for so long - for too long, and there was nothing Peter or anyone could ever do to make him keep going.)
Mr. Stark leans against a sheet of ruined metal, eyes vacant. The gauntlet has burned a path up his arm, over his chest, down his neck and cracking over his face. Peter skids to a halt, falling, begging the empty air even though he knows.
He knows. Mr. Stark won’t look at him, can’t look at him, doesn’t look at him. He gasps and he cries and his whole body aches but nothing hurts worse than the empty pounding of his heart in his ears and Mr. Stark still won’t look at him.
(He doesn’t cry at the funeral. There’s a boy there who does, his car license plate reading Tennessee, a long-faded sticker of the arc reactor peeling off the bumper. Peter wonders who he is.)
I’m sorry, he wails. Sorry for everything. Sorry for making you care, making you leave me, for adding my life to the burden of the rest of the world on your shoulders.
Someone pulls at his arm. He fights for a moment, Mr. Stark unresponsive under his shaking hands, but he gives as he recognizes Pepper’s suit.
(Later, after the funeral, Pepper walks up to him. He did it for you, she mutters into his ear and she hugs him tightly. He loved you, Peter.)
He stumbles back and watches Pepper bend over her husband, her own body shaking as much as Peter’s.
He watches, his heart pushing through his chest, tears falling thick and fast despite his best efforts.
(He looks at Morgan, sometimes. Looks at her eyes while she laughs and memorizes the color because she has her father’s eyes. She has her father’s hair, she has her father’s brain. She smiles with his smile and her laugh makes something in his heart hurt. Sometimes, he looks at Morgan, and wishes that he hadn’t.)
The light leaves Tony’s eyes long before the light on his chest goes dark. Pepper only bends down further, only cries a little louder, only grips her husband’s hand a little tighter.
(Peter doesn’t visit as often as he’d like, but Morgan loves it when he does. He teaches her about quantum physics and frantically tries to untangle his webs from her hair and reads her bedtime stories and tells her all about how someday she’ll be big enough to try on her daddy’s armor.)
Life goes on. Peter goes back to school. He fights in a suit that still smells like ashes, he wakes after every nightmare screaming and screaming and wakes his aunt up at midnight most weekdays and every second Saturday. He keeps a picture on his bedside table, makes it his lockscreen, his home screen, tapes it to the back of his locker. He wants to cry every time he looks at it, but eventually he can stare at it without his vision blurring and think that life - life goes on. Sometimes it goes on too long.
(He’d want you to have it, Pepper says, handing him the frame. The picture inside is of him and Mr. Stark, holding an upside-down certificate and making peace signs at the camera. He’d want you to have it, Pepper swallows, and then they’re both crying over the unwashed dishes piling up in the sink.)
Life goes on. Peter goes on.
(His hands still shake at the sight of blood, his mouth still clogs up with the taste of dust, his body still can’t move fast enough to stop Mr. Stark from dying.)
(He knows, though.)
(It was inevitable.)