Prologue
The world was a mess.
And then Thanos happened and the world was an even bigger mess.
Half of the world was just...gone.
At first, it had been too terrifying to even comprehend why half of the world’s population had just disappeared. Children lost parents. Parents lost children. There was no rhyme or reason to the killing.
The world was in shambles. Both by all of the lives stolen from Thanos’ snap and then the others caused by the snap. Accidents like planes crashes, cars colliding, trains derailing-- because suddenly, the person in control wasn’t there anymore.
It had taken months, but people had started to move on and accept what happened. Families mourned. Memorials were held. Cities were rebuilt. It was exactly what Thanos wanted. Most of the world had come to terms with the tragedies. They still suffered from the pain of losing so many loved ones, but they understood nothing could be done. They moved on with their lives.
However, there was still a small group of people that believed the other half was coming back. They had to be coming back. Most of the ones that believed this were deemed “insane” by the others and sent to more therapy.
Because life sucks, but you have to keep going.
...Right?
Not to Tony Stark. Tony wasn’t apart of the majority that had accepted Thanos’ win. He wasn’t even the small minority that was searching for a way to undo it all. He was the even smaller percentage that barely got out of bed in the morning. He was barely able to keep breathing day after day.
He wasn’t one of the unlucky souls that lost everyone. In fact, he had been pretty lucky with the amount of family he still had left. He only lost one person in the snap, after all. Rhodey was still kicking, stopping by the lab to make sure he actually ate. Pepper was practically running the entire company now, handling everything for Tony. Happy stuck around and joined Tony on a few of his nights when drinking away the pain had seemed like the best option (Happy lost his mother and his big sister in the snap).
But Peter...the brightest person on the entire planet was gone.
The world continued to spin, time continued to tick...all without Peter Parker in the world. Tony didn’t understand how that was possible. It wasn’t fair. That kid had so much potential to change the world. Tony really thought there’d be a day when Peter’s name was more popular than Tony’s-- he'd take the world by storm with his ideas. But now, that chance was ripped away from him. He was just another name on a wall.
He wasn’t even going to be remembered for how brave he was. How he, at just sixteen-years-old, had faced that monster. No one would ever even know. They wouldn’t know because they’d never met Peter.
On the bad nights, Tony envied them the most...the ones that had never gotten a chance to know Peter. He wished he had never met that kid-- not because he dragged him into this mess in the first place, but because he was selfish and if he had never met him, he’d never know a pain as great as this.
He had admitted this to Rhodey one night when he was sure he was going to die. It was the 1 year anniversary of the snap and Tony was tired of living when Peter wasn’t able to. Rhodey had found him lying on the cold floor, near unconsciousness with tear-stained cheeks. He couldn’t remember much of the night, but he remembered Rhodey holding him close, telling him that he didn’t really believe it-- he would never give up those years of knowing the kid. And Tony realized that it fucking sucked not having that kid here anymore, but every moment he shared with him...he wouldn’t give them up for anything else in the world.
I could have missed the pain, but I’d have to miss the dance.
But now, he mostly just wanted the kid back. He wanted him here by his side, working in the lab, watching movies, ranting about how the Star Wars reboots were ruining everything. He just wanted him here.
But he wasn’t. He was gone and he took every piece of Tony with him.
Which was why he was laying on the couch in the lab with a blanket pulled over his head, trying his best to ignore the world. He heard DUM-E rolling around close by, but other than that, the lab was almost silent. He hadn’t turned on a television to watch since it went back to normal.
All of the different shows continuing on like half of their audience wasn’t missing. Talk show hosts picking fun at celebrities. Stand up comedians telling their jokes. Listening to them laugh like nothing was wrong. Tony couldn’t do it.
“Yes, I’m aware of that--.” Pepper’s voice suddenly disrupted his thoughts as she opened the door into the lab. Tony stuck his head further into the couch. “That is not your place to say.” Her voice was annoyed and stern. She’d been dealing with a lot of shit ever since Tony Stark went MIA.
Tony stayed silent, waiting for her to come over and see him ‘sleeping’ on the couch. Maybe she’d leave him alone.
“He’s been through--yes, I know we’ve all been through a lot, but he’s taking it harder than others. It’s not anyone’s place to rush his grieving.” She was probably talking to a company Stark Industries worked with. She’d been on his back, patiently, telling him that people were tired of waiting. Pepper was making sure the business ran smoothly, but without any new technology or ideas...there would be no business to run.
The blanket was lifted off of his face and carefully laid back to cover the lower part of his body. Pepper sighed softly and brushed a strand of hair behind his ear. She thought he was sleeping. He was going to keep it that way.
“He’s not available. When he’s ready to come back, he will. He has no one to answer to-- especially not you. If you have a problem with this, then you can find another company, but with the rate you were going before our help, I don’t suggest it.” She paused, presumably for the other person to speak. “That’s what I thought. Goodbye. Have a good day.”
Tony held his breath as he heard Pepper kneel by him. She sighed softly as she ran her fingers through his greasy hair. “Oh, Tony,” she whispered, “I wish there was something I could do to make the pain go away.”
He was grateful his eyes were already shut because he felt them burning with the promise of tears. Tears because he remembered when his mother would come to kneel by his bed and whisper to him on the days he was sick.
She pressed a kiss to his forehead and for a moment, Tony pretended he was seven-years-old again and his mother was there kissing all of his worries away. “I love you, Tony.” I love you too, Ma.
Pepper left and Tony fell back into a fitful sleep, the sound of his mother singing to him slowly fading away.
He wasn’t sure when it really started. He probably should have been keeping notes on shit like this, but he had other things to worry about (AKA: he was really too depressed to even care). So, things were moved around his lab and every so often, he’d hear an unexplainable noise. He often assumed it was just one of his bots.
Until, one morning, after Pepper had come down again to try and encourage him to at least leave the tower, and Tony saw the chair across the room roll just a bit closer to him. It was only a few inches, barely noticeable, but it was something.
“Hey, DUM-E, you see that?” He asked, never taking his eyes off of the chair.
DUM-E beeped and whirred as he moved closer to the chair. He wasn’t far away from it to start with. The chair...it belonged to Peter. That had been his chair that stayed by his desk whenever he came to the lab to work. It was the only rolly chair in the entire room because Peter loved to go rolling around the lab floor with the bots. A few times, he had taken the turns too fast and sent himself crashing to the ground which concerned each bot and Tony, but he was always back up on his feet in a moment with a wide grin.
Tony’s heart hurt at the memory. He turned back to the bottle on his desk and brought it up to his lips.
The bottle was empty before long.
It continued on. Only in Peter’s section of the lab, though. Tony didn’t think it was a funny joke of whoever the hell was behind it. But no one besides for Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy had ever been down here in a while. None of them would find a joke like that funny. They knew how hard Tony took Peter’s death.
But, maybe it was him...Maybe it was all in his head and he was missing Peter so much he was imagining a presence at his table. Surely, everyone around him would believe he was crazy enough. He hadn’t even bothered with a therapist. How was he supposed to sit on a couch and listen to someone that had no idea what it was like to hold their kid as he cried and begged before disappearing?
And to be one of the heroes responsible for not stopping it from happening…
There was no fixing him. Not until Peter was by his side again. And if he never did again...then Tony was a lost cause. He didn’t care. The thought made him laugh. Tony Stark: billionaire, superhero, genius, who had all the fame and fortune anyone could ever need really had nothing. Yinsen had pointed it out years ago, but that was before. That was before he got a control on his life and realized all he could have-- Pepper, Rhodey, Happy...and eventually, Peter.
But he lost a quarter of his family. Peter was gone. And so was the entirety of his happiness.
Tony poured another shot of whiskey-- it was the cheap and gross kind because he’d gone through his good stash within the first months after the snap. He held up the small glass to the ceiling...to Peter. “Until I see you again, squirt.” He threw back the shot and swallowed the drink, the burning of his throat welcomed.
This kind of pain was better than the one that had gripped his heart over a year ago on Titan and hadn’t let go since.