Chapter Text
As soon as the words are spoken and the blood hits the dirt, the years are taken. That’s the fucking key, here. Tony repeats it in his head as soon as he hears it, turns and twists it in the depths of his mind until the words lose their shape, lose their meaning and take up another one. You must save Peter Parker.
“Strange, we gotta go,” Tony says, sweeping back inside with Natasha on his heels. “It’s Peter. It was Peter.”
“What?” Happy bellows.
“No, he said—”
Strange clearly just finished explaining this whole fiasco to the group of them, and they’re starting to do that talking over each other thing that’s been happening a lot lately. But Tony shakes his head. He’s gripped in a panic, it’s like there’s a fifty pound anvil living inside his chest. And there’s only turmoil in his head, dread, everything coated in red pain and the amount of fucking time they don’t have. “I don’t know what he told you, but Peter’s about to try and bring his fucking dead family back,” Tony says. “It won’t work, his Uncle’s been dead for four years and his parents for twelve, he’s trying to shave sixteen years off his life—”
“Twenty eight,” Strange says, his face white. “He’d have—you can’t pair them—he’d have to do the spell three times.”
Tony stares at him. They all stop talking. Tony feels amorphous, like he’s fading away into nothing—he doesn’t think he’s seen such abject horror on all of these faces at one time. “Fuck,” he breathes, feeling something like vertigo even though he’s standing on solid ground. “Jesus, I just—fucking—lose all sense of math when I can’t—I’m not thinking straight—” He claws at his own throat, can’t breathe, and he rushes past them all into the kitchen, promptly puking into the sink.
Peter doesn’t know the unwritten rules. He wouldn’t be behaving like this if he did. He doesn’t know that this immense unimaginable sacrifice will be for nothing. For hell, for outrageous pain, for a reckoning that might destroy him. There are so many things Tony has to stop, here. He can’t let the kid see his family like this. Strange described some terrible shit, and he didn’t even describe it all. Tony’s mind provides him with images he doesn’t want, images that send chills up and down his spine and nearly make him puke again. He can’t let Peter go through that, he won’t.
Twenty eight years. Twenty eight goddamn years, it’s beyond what Tony can comprehend. Sixteen was way, way too many and that was his fucking pain-addled brain panicking and getting things wrong, but twenty eight is more than Peter has right now. It’s a massive chunk out of his life, inviting the grim reaper in far too early. It’s almost like he’s killing himself.
It’s—it is goddamn prohibited. It is not allowed. It is the last fucking thing Tony will allow to happen.
He’s gotta help his kid. Now.
“The cemetery?” he hears Clint ask. “Would he really do this shit in broad daylight?”
“He’s desperate,” Natasha says. “He acted like this before, it’s like he’s got blinders on.”
“We gotta go,” Tony says. He quickly washes his mouth out, wipes his face, and walks over toward Strange. “St. Mary’s Cemetery, quarter twenty-one—if he’s not there I’ll use my Peter’s ignoring me tech and track his phone whether it’s on or not. It takes too fucking long to do it right now, we gotta go—we gotta go, right now.”
“Tony, be careful,” Pepper says, grabbing his arm and leaning in, pressing a long kiss to his cheek. “I know he’ll be fine, he has….he has you.”
Tony nods, leaning into her. He knows now, that they’ve all been properly informed, that they’d argue for fate in this situation. Fate, that the timing for him was good, that everything worked out, but he can’t fucking say that to Peter. No one wants to hear anything like that, when you’re contending with death and loss.
He turns towards Strange, nodding. He can’t look at the rest of them because he’s panicking, because he doesn’t want to see the fear of his failure in their eyes. Because he thinks he might break under any more reassurances. Nothing can really reassure him here, not with something like this. One of the most important goddamn tests of his entire life. Either of his lives.
“Let’s go,” he says. He turns his back on the others and watches as Strange cuts a portal out in the middle of his living room. Tony sees the cemetery he’s been to with Peter on more than one occasion, but he can’t take a moment to get his bearings before he’s surging forward, because Peter is there. Peter is there, standing in front of Ben’s grave.
Tony has faced so many things, including the big purple asshole that took Peter away from him in the first place, but the solemn line of Peter’s shoulders from behind terrifies him in a way he hasn’t felt before. Tony can’t see if he’s cut his hand yet. He can’t see if he’s started something he can’t take back. Tony thinks he might throw up again. The mid-afternoon sun beats down on his head and he feels like a raw nerve, exposed, laid bare for his worst fears to consume him. The team isn’t standing behind him now. He has to do this alone, if all of them were here, they’d overwhelm Peter in a goddamn second. He worries he will on his own.
The thick breeze that blows through threatens to bowl him over.
He hears the portal close behind him, and Peter slowly turns around. He’s wearing one of Tony’s hoodies and he looks like he’s about to bolt. Tony looks down, and now he definitely feels like he’s gonna throw up again—Peter’s already started uncovering the grave. There’s a shovel a little behind him, dirt all over his feet, and a small but substantial hole at the base of the headstone. Tony sways a little, his vision dotting with frozen panic, and he can’t think straight—all he can register is the fact that Peter is here, digging up his Uncle’s grave. If that doesn’t scream committed to his cause, nothing does. He thinks he sees the book down there too, but he isn’t sure, his brain isn’t working properly. Nothing seems real.
Tony’s heart drops. Peter is shaking, he’s holding onto his own hand and he’s shaking, and Tony can see the cut, the blood. His eyes quickly scan over the ground in front of the headstone—he doesn’t see any blood there, not yet, he’s freaking out but there’s no blood on the ground or in the hole or in the upraised dirt, not that he can see.
He has to focus. You must save Peter Parker.
He glances back up, swallowing hard, and holds out his hand in Peter’s direction. “Kid,” he breathes. “You can’t do this.”
“I have to,” Peter says, and his face is red, tears already threatening. There’s a family in the distance gathered around their own loved one’s headstone, and they have no idea what’s happening here. What could happen here. But Tony doesn’t focus on them. “Tony,” Peter says, eyes wide and intent on him. “I can’t wait for you to meet them,” he says. “Ben was so great, he was just like you, he was so good with computers and he—he yelled at the TV all the time—he was the only reason why I was at that Expo when I first met you—”
“Peter,” Tony says, taking one tentative step forward. “I wanna meet them so bad, bud, but there’s—this spell, there’s stuff about it that you don’t know—”
“I know I’m gonna give up a lot of time,” Peter says, his voice breaking, and he’s still clutching his hand. Tony can’t stop looking at it, terrified it’s gonna drip. He doesn’t know if he’s said the goddamn words yet. “I know you’re…you don’t want me to do it—”
“Pete, I need to—I need to say something—”
“Tony, please,” Peter says, and a tear races down his cheek. “Please, let me—I can do this, I can finally have—everybody back, I can do it, I can choose that and—God, I barely had my parents like, at all, and Ben—I can give Ben back to May. And now everyone—all of them, you…you too, you’ll all be with me and it’s like—finally my family will be—whole—”
He’s dead set. Tony can see it in his eyes.
“I have to,” Peter says, shaking his head. “I have to—”
“Peter, it won’t work,” Tony says. The trees close to them sway like beacons and the rest of the world around them sounds muted, the traffic from the street and distant conversations. Nothing matters more than making this point. Nothing matters more than this kid, not right now.
“Why?” Peter asks, sniffling. “It worked with you, you’re—”
“It only works in sevens,” Tony says, trying to control his breathing. “Seven days, seven months, seven years—that’s the only reason it worked with me. That’s why this spell is so dangerous, there’s a lot behind it that purposefully isn’t included. You were lucky with me, you were really, really lucky with the timing.”
Peter stares off past him, chewing on his lower lip.
Tony knows he needs to jump back in. “When it’s not seven…the person comes back wrong. Strange was telling me details—”
“No,” Peter says, shaking his head. “No, it can’t be. It has to work.”
Tony’s heart beats a little faster. “Peter—”
“No,” Peter says, shifting his weight, looking down at the grave and the work he’s done so far. “No, it—no, look, I do the thing, and then I wait, and then eventually he’s gonna come up—they’re all gonna, because I’m gonna do it all tonight—Ben first, then my parents—they’re gonna need help, they don’t have a gauntlet or anything like you did, that’s why I wanted to get a head start—”
“Peter—”
“—and I’ll get them out, and we’ll all be together. They’ll get another chance at life, they’ll—they’ll get to start over, do things they didn’t get to do and the years thing doesn’t matter, I mean, it doesn’t, twenty eight years? That’s nothing to have them alive again, it’s worth it because they’ll be back, all three of them will be back, they’ll be here—”
“Peter, they’ll be fucking zombies,” Tony says, probably too loud, but he’s gotta shock him, he’s gotta drag him back, he’s gotta make him believe this. Peter goes quiet. “They won’t be alive. They’ll be half formed, they’ll still be decomposing, they’ll be the walking goddamn dead, it’ll be—it’ll be a nightmare. And this spell, this fucking spell, it’ll still take those twenty eight years from you, and give you nothing for it. Only pain,” Tony says. His eyes are straining now too, especially because of the look on Peter’s face. Such sorrow and guilt there, and fuck, Tony wants to take it all away. He doesn’t wanna say this shit, he doesn’t wanna upset him, but he’s got to make him stop. His hand is still bleeding. He could change the whole world any second, with one small motion.
“And Pete,” Tony says, and he dares to take another step closer. “They would never, ever want you to give up that many years of your life. Ever. For anything. They love you, they wouldn’t want you to give up one moment—one single moment of your precious time. Even if it worked. Seven months for me—Peter, I hate it, I hate that I took that from you. I’m gonna do everything in my power to get it back, I’m gonna trawl through every goddamn corner of the galaxy trying to figure it out, like I did when that prick took you away from us.”
Peter just stares at him, teary-eyed, and he looks like a lost child. Tony’s heart is breaking, and he can’t tell if he’s getting through to him.
“Tony, it would—it would be so worth it,” Peter says, sounding small. “To—to have them back. It’s so worth it, to have you back—I’m so glad I have you back, you don’t even know, you don’t know—”
“Twenty eight years would never be worth it,” Tony says. “Pete, that’s…Jesus, it makes me sick to even think about it,” he says, staring at Peter’s hand. The blood. “You’re too important.”
Peter looks down at his hand now too. “Are you—are you sure it won’t—it won’t work?” he asks. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Tony says. “The way Strange described it, it was like…it’d be like agony, for you and for them. You don’t want to see them like that, Peter, put them through…something like that. You’d always regret it.” It might kill you he doesn’t say. And if it kills you, it’s gonna kill me.
Peter flexes the fingers of his injured hand. The sunlight seems to get brighter before two big, dark clouds move out in front of it, and a stiffer breeze rolls through. Peter is shaking, and Tony doesn’t know if he’s in pain or if he’s cold or if he’s afraid, or all of it at once. He feels like they’re standing on the edge of a building. He’s terrified.
“I just…” Peter whispers. He looks down at Ben’s grave, what he’s done to it, and then up at Tony again. “I just wanted—I thought I could bring them back. When it worked with you it was a miracle, I was so—so happy and I just thought—I thought I could do this. Everyone I love together, finally…”
“I know, Peter,” Tony says, his heart aching. “I know. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He thinks of his scars on Peter’s chest. What the scars from his parents would look like, where they’d be. He’d be torn up, from the street ripping up their bodies. A gunshot wound, for Ben. And twenty eight years off his life. For nothing. For hell. For some kind of cosmic nightmare. “You haven’t—you haven’t started it yet, right? The spell?” Tony asks, his voice wavering. He doesn’t think he has, from the way he’s speaking, but he has to be sure.
“No,” Peter says. “I just—I just cut my hand.”
“Good,” Tony says, wilting a little bit.
Peter’s whole face crumbles, and the tears fall faster. “God, I was—I can’t, I—I—God, I’m sorry—I’m—I’m sorry, I’m so—so sorry—”
“Don’t be,” Tony says, still approaching him cautiously, terrified of spooking him. “Don’t be, kid, I understand, I get wanting—something so bad that you think anything is worth it, and shit, trust me—if we found a way that didn’t have all these crappy, evil rules, I’d jump right on it with you, I’d help you, I’d be all over it. But this—it won’t work, buddy, and I’m sorry…” he looks down, every little hitch in Peter’s breath breaking his heart open wider. “I’m sorry it was…it was me and not them—”
“No, don’t,” Peter gasps, and he’s shaking so hard, gripping his hand tight enough that it turns white and sickly around his fingertips. “Please, I’m—I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t—I don’t want—” He’s gasping, sobbing, and Tony doesn’t know if he’s said the words yet but he can’t let that blood hit the dirt, he can’t, he can’t risk it—
“Pete, c’mere,” Tony whispers, rushing forward now, and Peter rushes at him too, absolutely breaking, sobbing, and Tony has to catch him before he falls. Catch him like Howard never did for him, be there in these moments where nothing seems real, nothing seems possible, and all you need is your dad. Howard never did that for Tony, not when he was around. And Peter can’t have his father, can’t have Ben because of the painfully bad luck he’s been dealt, and now he’s had this hope dashed, too. But if Peter can’t have his father, he’s damn well gonna have Tony. Whenever he needs him. Every single time. “Come here—”
“I’m sorry,” Peter cries.
Tony quickly grabs a handkerchief out of his pocket and wraps it around Peter’s bloody hand when he’s close enough to him, but Peter barely lets him because he’s crashing into him, clutching at him and weeping worse than he was when Tony died in front of him. Tony quickly ties the handkerchief off and wraps his arms around Peter, hauling him away from the grave just in case. Then Peter sags against him, hiccupping and gasping, and the both of them sink down to the ground.
“I’ve got you,” Tony says, holding him tight, brushing Peter’s sweaty curls back from his forehead. “Shh, shh, I’ve got you.”
Peter gasps, turning his face into Tony’s shoulder, holding his injured hand against his chest. He’s trembling, he clings to Tony and Tony clings back, closing his eyes and trying not to think about how close he came to something horrifying. He holds Peter tighter, rubbing his back. He sighs, letting some relief in.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Peter breathes, clutching at Tony’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m—I’m sorry—I just—I just wanted—”
“I know,” Tony says. “I know, I know, it’s okay.” He knows he would have done it too. For his Mom. For Peter. And if it ever happened to Pepper or Rhodey or Happy, he’d do the same shit. Natasha was right, about blinders. Just thinking about it makes Tony’s brain start to malfunction. It’s hard, to get down off that ledge.
“God, I could have—I could have…” Peter shakes his head and Tony can barely understand him through all the crying. “Like zombies, I could have—I could have—”
“It’s okay,” Tony whispers. “You didn’t. You didn’t, you’re alright.” Tony doesn’t know where to go from here. The kid is still trembling, crying desperately, and Tony just holds him, carding his fingers through his hair and wishing he could take all of this pain away. He wishes, more than anything, that he could save Ben, could save Peter’s parents, could solve all his problems. He wants to cure death to help Peter. He wants to do everything he can.
He squeezes Peter’s shoulder, trying to prove to himself that he’s right here, that he did get to him in time. “Jesus, you scared me,” Tony whispers. “God, I was so afraid I wasn’t gonna make it.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter says, quietly, gasping a couple times and trying to catch his breath. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t—I didn’t think—”
“You’re okay,” Tony says. He wants to make promises he can’t keep. Part of him is terrified Strange is gonna find more unwritten rules to this fucking spell, ones that could rip Tony away from Peter too, after all this. But he doesn’t let himself think that way—it’s not gonna happen, it’s not allowed to. There are too many people here that he can’t let go, especially not now when they’ve let their love be known. The full extent of it, hidden in life and revealed when they thought he was gone for good.
He can’t let that kind of shit stay in the dark. Not anymore. Not when he knows what can happen, what’s at stake.
“I love you, Pete,” Tony whispers, pressing his cheek to the top of Peter’s head. “I’m never gonna leave you again, I promise. That shit I said about you being like a son to me, it’s true, it’s always been true, it’s always gonna be true. You’re my kid, you know that. I’d do anything to keep you safe.”
Peter huddles closer, clutching at Tony’s arm with his hurt hand. “I love you too,” he says, even quieter now. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Tony says. He looks over at the gravestone. Ben Parker. Tony knows he was a good person because Peter’s so goddamn great, and he wishes he could have met him. He sees things he didn’t really notice when he first got here, so blinded by fear and the horror of what could have happened. It’s definitely the book is sitting at the base of Ben’s gravestone, under some of the torn up dirt, next to a dozen roses and a plastic bag with what looks like a plaid shirt inside. Richard and Mary Parker’s graves are to the right of Ben’s, and there’s another plastic bag over there, and Tony can’t see its contents. There are flowers there too, a set of daisies and some sunflowers.
He was so close. So close to losing so fucking much.
Tony shifts them a little so Peter is leaning against his chest, and he’s calming down now, still hiccupping and gasping. Tony pulls his phone out of his pocket and texts Pepper one handedly.
I’ve got him. We’re okay. Is May there? Need Strange to come get us, like five minutes.
He puts his phone away and cranes his neck a little to look at Peter. The light above them is trying to peek through the clouds.
“Hey,” Tony says, softly. He ruffles Peter’s hair a little bit. “Buddy, can you come with me? Come back home? May’s gonna be there, we can just relax, settle down, figure things out…alright?”
Peter covers his eyes with his hand. “Does she—does May—”
“No details,” Tony says, rubbing the back of Peter’s neck. “You can tell her what you want to, it’s up to you.”
“She’s gonna know,” Peter whispers, shrinking in on himself. “She’ll know as soon as—as soon as she sees where we’re coming from.”
“Peter,” Tony says, tilting his chin to make him look up at him. “May….will understand. She’ll get it, and you’re here, you’re—you didn’t do it. That’s all that matters. She’ll just be glad to see you, they all will be. You know you’re everybody’s favorite, Pete, as much as Clint wishes it was him.” He tries to smile but he still feels achingly sad, the fear still buzzing through his blood and reminding him what he could have been dealing with, if he’d arrived just a bit later. “C’mon, kid, let’s go home. C’mon.” He braces his arm around Peter’s waist and hauls him up, off the ground and onto his feet. Peter sniffles, his eyes red, and leans on him hard.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” he breathes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“No more apologizing,” Tony says, looking up when he hears the portal opening, signaling Strange’s arrival. “No more, you’re good. You’re alright. C’mon, I got you. Let’s go.” He leads a very unsteady Peter towards the portal, and he nods at Strange, trying to convey I stopped him, it’s okay because he doesn’t wanna say out loud how fucking insane they were all getting when they realized what was about to happen. He doesn’t wanna freak Peter out more.
He feels like he’s run a marathon. And there’s still the stolen seven months to think about. He holds onto the kid tight, and he motions over his shoulder so Strange can see the book and the other things Peter brought with him to do the spell, the hole he dug. Strange nods and sweeps past them, and Tony brings Peter back through the portal into the living room, where May is standing in wait.
She takes a couple steps forward, glancing back and forth between Tony and Peter, and the tears start anew once he gets a good look at her face. Tony eases Peter into her arms, and he collapses against her.
“Sweetheart,” she says, surprised. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Bruce,” Tony says, finding him in the group and beckoning him over. “Need you to take a look at his hand, he’s got a bad cut.”
Bruce just nods, looking a little green around the edges as he approaches.
Tony tries to will his heart to stop beating so fast. But he realizes just then his hand doesn’t hurt anymore. The scars don’t either. He sighs, ruffling Peter’s hair again and moving past him to where Pepper is standing next to Rhodey. She takes his hand, pulling him closer.
“Did you—”
“I stopped him,” he whispers. And even though Peter is still steps away, Tony feels himself breaking now that he’s not right in front of him. Under the weight of all of it. Coming back, being faced with this.
“Tony,” Rhodey says, softly. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Tony says, clearing his throat, and Pepper reaches up, wiping a tear off his cheek. “Yeah, yeah, I just—cut it real close.” He covers his face with his hands. He was dead a couple days ago. He was dead. Peter found a fucking evil devil spell book and brought him back to life with it. Peter gave up seven months of his goddamn life to do it, and then—shit, he can’t even think about it. It’s insane. He’s insane. This is purgatory and he’s lost his goddamn mind.
He hears the portal close and he turns around, seeing Strange standing there with the book in his hands, the other stuff Peter had brought with him sitting on the back of the couch. There’s a knife too, but it’s also in a plastic bag, which leads Tony to believe Peter wanted to make sure his blood didn’t drip until he was ready for it to. “I took care of the grave,” Strange says, softly.
Tony points at the book. “Maybe burn that thing?” he asks. “Or—Thor, can you, like—put it somewhere in deep space? Like a…deep space—prison for books? I don’t know, anything, I need it off the fucking planet.” He’s thinking about the seven year anniversary of Ben’s death. He needs the book gone. He really wants it to be completely incinerated but he’s sure Strange would argue for all the other mystical spells in there that might not be evil or trying to kill Spiderman. Yeah, Tony doesn’t care. The book is public enemy number one right now, even though it did bring him back from the dead.
Maybe it was fate. He’s had his bouts of luck in his life, maybe this is one of them. He doesn’t want to think of anything that takes time off of Peter’s life as luck. But he’s gonna solve that. If it’s the last thing he ever does.
“I’ll get rid of it,” Thor says, walking over to Strange and yanking it out of his hands. Strange lets him, which makes Tony think he’s on board with the decision.
There’s a heavy, solemn feeling of where do we go from here hanging over everything, especially since most of these people have been chatty as hell the past day and a half and now there’s mostly silence, Peter’s hopeless crying and May’s delicate soothing the only sounds in the room. Tony feels like a goddamn bad guy, stealing away Peter’s opportunity to save his family while he got to come back scot-free, but he knows that nobody, not anybody would be okay with Peter giving away that amount of time. Not his parents, not Ben, definitely not May. Not anyone in this room. Not anyone who has ever been affected by Spiderman. Certainly not himself. He’d give away a lot of shit to get those months back for Peter. He probably will.
He forces a panic attack back with one long look at Pepper’s face, a glance at the others, still there, still supporting him. He turns back around and heads towards Peter, Bruce and May, feeling guilt and relief and pain and everything under the sun, pretty much. He puts his hands on Peter’s shoulders, and he looks up at him, face streaked with tears.
“Mr. Stark, I—”
“You’ve been doing real good with Tony, underoos, let’s not swap back here and now,” Tony says. “Uh, May, Bruce, how about you take him down to the med bay.” He leaves out anything about talking about what happened. He told Peter he’d leave that decision up to him.
“Yeah, I need…I need to wrap this up,” Bruce says.
May nods at him, still shell shocked. Tony watches them go down the hallway towards the stairs, and he turns to face the others. Strange is still standing there next to Thor, the book between them, and Tony tries to silence the alarm signals that go off in his head whenever he catches sight of it. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, a wave of dizziness passing over him. He definitely had like one waffle earlier. He probably also puked it up. The gamut of emotions he’s run through feels like it’s catching up with him, and he sucks in a breath.
“Uh,” he says, clearing his throat. “Uh—you guys mind if I, uh—”
His vision goes dark, and he promptly passes the hell out.
~
He wakes up a couple minutes later in Thor’s arms, which he has to admit, is definitely something that’s shown up in his dreams before. They’re close to insisting Bruce come back up and look at him, but Tony assures them that he’s fine. He wants Bruce to stay with the kid. He just lays down, his head in Pepper’s lap, and forces everyone to act normal, even though nothing, absolutely nothing is fucking normal right now.
Tony feels spent. Teetering on the edge of something he never could have anticipated, even in his line of work. They all just sit there for about an hour until Bruce comes back upstairs alone, and says that May and Peter are having a very much needed conversation. He forces Tony to drink way too much water, and Rhodey makes soup. Steve and Bucky watch Tony like a hawk, and Tony isn’t sure what they’re looking for.
Thor leaves, goes with Strange to get rid of the book, and they don’t tell anybody where they’re gonna put it. That’s fine with Tony, fine with pretty much everybody. Tony knows Peter is going to wonder where it went, wonder what could have been in three more years, so Tony doesn’t want it anywhere near him. He almost wishes he could wipe the whole thing from the kid’s mind.
This, weirdly enough, feels like his wake, since basically everyone is gathered around him for most of the day. Right after his parents died, he used to think about shit like that, what his wake would be like, just in case he went and got himself killed, too. He used to want a fifty foot picture of himself to be blown up and draped over the front lawn of their mansion. He wanted there to be one model present for every crying mourner, he wanted free cocaine and fireworks and for his body to be shot into the goddamn Pacific Ocean.
But then he realized he was an asshole, and all of that shit horrified him. He hasn’t asked about any of the services they had for him, but he just hopes it was a room full of the people he loves comforting each other and toasting his memory, like the way a normal grown adult pictures his wake. It sort of hits him, laying there with Pepper stroking his forehead, that he might have actually evolved into a normal, grown adult.
But maybe most normal grown adults don’t picture their wakes. And most of them, if they’re thinking about it, haven’t actually had one already.
Oh well. He’s close.
He keeps wanting to go up to the roof to get air, but he stays in the living room, waiting on Peter’s reappearance. But he never comes back and May doesn’t either, and Tony has to swallow panic down again. He knows he made the med bay comfortable, but they both have perfectly good rooms up here that they can disappear to. He doesn’t know if he should go down there and try to bring them back up, if he should see what the hell is happening, but right at the moment when he’s about to tear his hair out, May comes up on her own. Which may or may not send Tony careening into another panic attack—about if Peter’s alright, if he doesn’t want to see him—and he gets up, approaching her.
There’s a new kind of fear in his heart. One that he knows, logically, is unwarranted, but creeps in all the same. The kind of fear that twists familiar faces in his head and makes them say things they’d never say. But still, he believes it, believes the echoed, distorted voice in his head that sounds like May saying you did this to him, you led him here.
“I’m sorry,” he says, face to face with her. “I’m sorry it got to this, I never meant—”
“Tony,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Listen—nothing I said earlier has changed. You didn’t mean to do anything, you weren’t even here, and you know…you know how he is.”
Tony clears his throat. “Is he…is he alright?”
May nods. “I finally got him to just go to sleep. He’s worried now he’s gonna lose you, that—well, the spell was hiding that stuff from him, so he’s worried it’s hiding more things.”
Tony shakes his head. He knows he should be worried about the same thing, and he did send Strange out with a request to do some more research, see if he can find anything else out. But, for some reason, he feels solid. He isn’t worried about himself. He’s only worried about Peter.
“No, I’m—I’m definitely not going anywhere,” he says. He’d crawl his way back from hell to get to these people. Spell book or not.
“Good,” May says. “Because you’re—Tony, you’re family. I wouldn’t—it’s hard, because I’d give anything for Ben back, anything—but you saved Peter, stopping him. I couldn’t survive anything happening like Strange explained to me. So you—just—thank God you got there.”
Tony nods. He kinda feels like he’s gonna pass out again, and it’s like Bruce senses it because he slowly gets out of his seat, but Tony waves him off. He doesn’t know what to say to May, doesn’t know how to look at this situation without being struck with terror. So he just hugs her, and closes his eyes.
~
Three days later he’s on the roof of the compound with Peter. The sky is darker out here, not so polluted and stained with the city lights, and it’s easier to see the stars. Easier to reach up and trace the constellations with his fingers, to watch the space station go by, to realize that they’re here, they’re where they belong. That maybe, for a moment, there’s peace, even though Tony did put the nano tech housing unit back in so he could make use of the bleeding edge armor. You know. If he had to.
They’re lying on a pair of pink beach chairs Tony bought on a whim a couple years ago, and they have two bottles of orange soda between them. Neo is rolling back and forth around the perimeter of the roof, occasionally making comments, because Tony has been teaching him to talk more and more on his own. Maybe he’s been using him to shock Steve and Rhodey when they least expect it. Maybe he’s pretending Neo is becoming sentient. Maybe, because it makes Peter laugh.
Tony sinks down a little into his chair, sucking in a big breath through his nose. He still has to remind himself every morning that he isn’t dead. But so far, it doesn’t seem like he’s gonna be any time soon. He and Peter are finally having the conversation they were meant to have days ago, and Tony listens intently to everything Peter has to say. Everything about every move he made when Tony wasn’t around—tests he failed, the Spanish quiz he passed by one point, the time some kid streaked in the hallways during his trig class. His attempts to reread the Harry Potter series, which ended when Sirius died and he couldn’t deal with it anymore. The movies he saw, the criminals he stopped, a lot about that Osborn creep who seemed to have affected Peter more than Tony would have anticipated. How he’s recently become obsessed with Gouda cheese, and went to a wine and cheese tasting with Natasha under that shitty fake ID. Tony makes a note to promptly shred that thing.
“The whole second month I didn’t stop cooking,” Peter says, leaning back in the chair. “It was really bad at first—”
“Burning things?” Tony asks.
“I almost served Ned and MJ chicken that was still raw inside,” Peter says, gritting his teeth.
“That’s brutal, kid,” Tony says. “But a valiant effort, I’m sure. I can’t cook chicken. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do that.”
Peter snorts. “I’m sure you could,” he says. “It’d just take you a really long time.”
“I take three hours to make an omelet once and nobody can forget it,” Tony says, rolling his eyes.
“It’s one of Pepper’s favorite stories,” Peter says, grinning.
“I think you should learn sign language like me,” Tony says, leaning on the arm of the chair. “Steve already knows a little, it could be like our secret language. We could talk shit about people right next to them and they’d never know.”
“I started the night you learned it,” Peter says, smiling. “I don’t know how the hell you do things so fast. It’ll take me like…probably two months to get it down.”
“I just can’t turn my damn brain off,” Tony says. “I’m like, a trash bin of information, it’s ridiculous.”
“Do you think you lost anything?” Peter asks, softly. “You know, when you, uh—came back?”
Tony can hardly see him out here in the dark, just his wide eyes and the outline of his face, his hair moving a little with the wind. “No, I think it’s all there,” he says. He tilts his head to the side, tapping on his ear a little bit like he’s trying to get water out, and Peter narrows his eyes at him. Tony grins. “Yeah, all there.”
“You’re gonna be really good when you have a kid,” Peter says. “Iron Man, giant nerd—”
“Wow, Peter, thanks,” Tony says, shaking his head at him. “Well, I guess nerd isn’t exactly an insult these days.”
“It’s not,” Peter says. “Definitely not.”
They’re quiet for a moment and Tony watches a star shoot across the sky, raining in a delicate arc before disappearing in the darkness.
“I, uh…used to come up here,” Peter says, in a tentative voice. “A lot, in the beginning. A lot a lot, because you used to do it, you were always up here and I felt like…I felt…” He trails off, chewing on his lip.
“Sometimes it does feel like you can, uh…be closer to someone if you’re somewhere they used to be a lot,” Tony says. Carefully.
“I would stand on the edge sometimes and scare myself,” Peter says, not looking at him. “That’s how I knew it would scare you.”
“Peter—”
“I didn’t ever like, wanna—I didn’t ever want to die,” Peter says, meeting his eyes now, to drive his point home. “I swear, I just—I don’t know. That was the first time I ever did it without the suit, when you were here. I don’t know why I did it when you were gone, I just…I don’t know. Half the time I just felt so numb and I just…it was hard, the whole thing, what happened to me, you guys getting us back but then…just so, so fast afterwards—”
“Listen,” Tony says. “I get it, I really do—sort of the adrenaline thing, pushing yourself, tuning other things out—I did the same thing after I lost my parents, in different ways, but—yeah, same lines, same emotions. But like I said before, no matter who’s here, who’s not—you are too goddamn important.” Way more important than I ever was. For some strange reason, right then, it’s very clear to him that they’re both orphans. But Peter had Ben and May, thank God. But then Ben was taken too. Tony gets the desperation, the undeniable pain, the anger and need to change the hand he was dealt. It’s fucked up, and Tony hates it.
“I know, I know,” Peter says, reaching down and taking a long swig of his soda, and sounding like he doesn’t believe it. “But May…I could never, ever leave her.”
“Exactly.”
“But I’m glad you’re here,” Peter says, looking at him. “You’ve been such an important part of my life, for so long. You make me better, you really are like—I’m so lucky, because of you. Seven months, Tony, to have you back…that’s nothing.”
Tony’s heart constricts and he shakes his head. That problem has been hanging around his neck like an albatross. Along with worrying about Peter, he’s been searching for any possible way to fix the side effect of the best gift Peter ever gave him. “I’ll be the judge of that, buddy boy,” Tony says, because if he shares his real feelings he’ll start crying again, like he did when Peter showed him the mockups of his final project on Iron Man.
Peter knows, anyway. How he feels about this. But Tony can’t stop thinking about the moment when it happens, the moment when death steals him seven months early.
Tony won’t stop til he finds a solution.
“So you pretty much know everything now,” Peter says, sinking down a little more in his chair and staring up at the bright pock-marked sky. “You know about the Ninja Warrior thing. The incident at Red Lobster—”
Tony snorts, and definitely has to get Pepper’s angle on that too.
“—the Star Wars villain, the funnel cake problem—that adorable dog—”
“You need a dog,” Tony says, pointing at him. “You deserve a dog.”
“I do,” Peter says, beaming. “I really do.”
Tony smiles back. There are a lot of things they haven’t talked about, like what happened when Tony was dead, what he remembers, and he’s seen it on the tip of Peter’s tongue since everything calmed down. Tony doesn’t want to talk about it, not with anyone, because he doesn’t remember, and that scares him, makes him worry—worry so much that the panic always sweeps in to swallow him up. They haven’t talked about the fact that Tony’s looking for his own magic—cautiously—to try and give Peter his family back. He hasn’t found anything yet, but he’s gonna start scheduling trips, taking Strange with him—maybe he’s crazy, but the look in Peter’s eyes in that cemetery is going to haunt him forever, and he wants to give him what he deserves, if he can find a way to do it that isn’t tit for tat. He knows there has to be a way, somehow.
After all, he’s fucking sitting here, isn’t he? There has to be more out there.
But he won’t let himself get hurt. Because they already lost him once. He never, ever wants these people to have to go through something like that again. And he promised Peter. That’s it.
“You wearing the suit, kid?” Tony asks.
Peter side-eyes him.
“Yeah, I could tell because of the giant hoodie, you can’t play me.” Peter scoffs, rolling his eyes. Tony gestures towards the housing unit in his chest. “Wanna go flying?”
Peter’s eyes light up. “What? Really? You—you want to? You wanna be Iron Man? I mean you are, I mean—”
“Yeah I am, and yeah, I do,” Tony says, before the kid starts stammering. “The only kinda jumping off the roof either one of us are allowed to do. Liftoff kind.”
“Yes, definitely,” Peter says. “This is my favorite.”
Tony snorts, both of them getting out of their seats. They suit up, and having the armor on again, for the first time since he came back, fills him with new purpose. He is Iron Man. Now he really feels like he’s home.
“You ready, Spiderman?” he asks, walking over and standing beside him.
“Oh yeah,” Peter says. “Let’s go up, like, almost to space. Because I can go to space in this suit, but yeah—yeah, you know that, you made it.”
“Let’s not go to space,” Tony says. “We don’t have the best track record in space.”
“I said almost,” Peter says.
Tony was almost dead forever. Peter almost gave up twenty eight years of his life for nothing. They’re a pair of almosts but right now they’re here, they’re whole. They’re starting again. Tony does, in fact, have a good record with second chances.
“And just so you know, I kept the spell,” Peter says. He’s wearing the mask, so Tony can’t see his expression.
It seems like it gets a little darker, a chill breezing over the roof. “Uh—what now?” Tony asks.
“I’m not an idiot,” Peter says, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I’m not gonna…I’m not gonna do anything risky, ever, like seven years…I know you’re thinking that. And that’s too much, I’ve learned my lesson with that. But I don’t regret bringing you back. I never will. And if you die, if Ned or May or MJ or Pepper or anyone I love dies or gets killed, I’ll wait a week, and then I’ll do it. I’ll get you back.”
Tony just stares at him, unsure if he’s goddamn hallucinating this conversation or something. “Kid,” he says, after a long moment. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”
“Well, if it kills you, I’ll bring you back.”
“Jesus,” Tony says, feeling a headache coming on. “Okay, let’s go before you make me change my mind. Pause on this conversation, to be continued in our group therapy.”
Tony can’t see his face, but he has a feeling Peter is smiling.
“Okay,” Peter says. “Let’s fly.”
Tony grabs hold of Peter as securely as possible, and takes off into the night, listening to his laughter, joining in with his own.
They sound like they’re full of life. And Tony isn’t gonna let this one go. Not this time.