Chapter Text
Tony thinks surviving the end of the world brings people together.
Well, they came together before that, for the most part, to put the plan into action, to fix what was broken. But once they all came out of it alive in the end, it felt like some kind of unspoken thing. Let’s spend more time together thing. There was a lot of hospital time for him and some of the others after what they went through, a lot of laying around and languishing and healing, but it had all worked.
Everyone was back, as far as they could tell, after more than a year of hell and horror and wishing and nonstop work.
And Tony got the kid back. He got Peter back. And after feeling the pure anguish of that loss for as long as he did, worrying and panicking and breaking down because it could go on longer, go on forever, Tony never wants him out of his sight again.
And everyone started hanging around after everything, the unspoken thing hanging in the air like a new promise. Natasha helped Clint move his family into the city so they’d be closer, and she got a place of her own. Pepper, Happy and Rhodey helped Tony start construction on a new facility, since the original compound was…destroyed, due to the carry-over battle bullshit they had to endure when that purple asshole started chasing them.
But while that facility was being built, Tony started housing Avengers in his place upstate. They turned one of the guest rooms into Peter’s permanent room, for whenever he wanted it, because a year without him allowed Tony to lean into his sentimental side without shame. But the other two guest rooms were a revolving door for whoever wanted to stay until Tony had a permanent central spot for all of them.
He knew they all had homes of their own. But that unspoken thing, it kept drawing them back together. We’re not gonna mess this up again. We’re a family.
Rhodey, of course, was a constant occupant of Hotel Stark, and Tony expected as much, and it was the same with Happy. Steve stayed often, and half the time they’d stay up through the night talking, long after Pepper had gone to bed, and even later sometimes, if Peter was there, too. He loves participating, loves hearing all of their stories. And Tony got through his shit with Bucky after what felt like their own version of therapy with Sam as a moderator, and then those two started coming as a pair and staying for days at a time. Bruce was there a lot, while he worked on figuring out how to get in and out of his new Hulk form, and he and Peter were always coming up with shit in the lab that made Tony realize just how dad-coded his brain was when it came to this kid. He used to love messing around in the lab with Bruce, creating shit that just might blow up, but the idea of Peter doing it made him flutter around and add about thirty new codes to Friday, just in case.
Natasha would show up without warning half the time, and Tony would wake up in the morning to find her in the kitchen already making coffee. Strange even showed up every once in a while, disheveled and moving slow as molasses from whatever the hell he’d recently gotten himself into.
Thor is the one that surprises Tony the most with how often he’s over. He knows New Asgard is a bright, burgeoning community, even though he’s only gotten to visit through one video call with its new king Valkyrie, while Thor provided commentary in the background. But Tony figured Thor would want to be there more than anywhere else while they were building it from the ground up—but instead, he’s filled up two drawers in the corner guest room that Natasha questioned when she was last here.
Does he want you to wash this stuff?
I hope not, because I haven’t.
Some of this is dirty, Tony, like—folded up but actually dirty still—
Listen. I don’t run him.
Tony wouldn’t say he keeps a running tally of how many times each of them have stayed here, except he actually does, and it’s in his notes app, and Peter doesn’t count. Peter is always here, and same goes for May and all the times she’s nearly set the kitchen on fire with her woe begotten banana bread recipes. But not counting them and direct family members like Rhodey and Happy, Thor is the person that’s stayed with Tony and Pepper the most.
And he’s here again this weekend, same as Peter. The two of them have gotten close—not close to the point where Tony has felt like Thor is taking his place or anything—but they’re always training together on the grounds behind the house, coming inside for fruit and lemonade like boys on a baseball team. The kid loves Thor—Peter turns into a ball of excitement whenever he’s so much as on his way to the house—and Peter is excited normally, but his Thor excitement is…extreme. His impressions of him are spot-on, and he always seems very proud of them. He gushes about the time he spends with Thor, and seems to remember every detail. Tony’s heard the long conversations with Ned and MJ, Peter talking a mile a minute.
Tony isn’t jealous. He’s not! He wants the kid to be happy and he totally gets it. Thor’s a fun time. Despite everything he’s dealt with and been through.
Right now Peter is swinging around outside, and Thor is showing off and making thunder and lightning and turning a sunny day a little greyer.
“He’s gonna destroy the sugar maple,” Tony says, his hands on his hips as he watches them through the sliding glass door. “He’s gonna hit it with lightning and it’s gonna split down the middle and then we’re gonna have to get a whole team out—”
Pepper snorts. “We wouldn’t have to get a team out,” she says. “You guys are the team. What are a bunch of strong super powered people good for if they can’t get rid of a dead tree?”
He turns around to face her, the next round of thunder rumbling through the foundations of the house. He hears Peter’s laughter. “So you’re fine with him killing the sugar maple?”
“I didn’t say that,” Pepper says, raising her eyebrows at him.
“Because that’s half the reason you picked this house,” Tony says. “The ability to make maple syrup—the ability, because we’ve never done it, but we’ve always had the option…”
More thunder and lightning.
“That’s right, little spider man!” Thor yells. “That’s excellent! You can be very fast!”
Tony watches and stands there and watches and sucks his teeth and watches. Both of them are flying through the air and they’re laughing and dodging and Thor’s lightning seems like its own thing, like a separate entity involved in their little sparring match.
“He’s very nice and encouraging,” Pepper says, and he hears her tapping her nails on her mug. “Imagine having the God of Thunder as your personal hype man? Your sparring partner?”
Tony clicks his tongue, and hears some more of their back and forth when he turns around to look at her straight-on.
She’s grinning at him, like she knows what she’s doing.
“What about Iron Man?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows. “Isn’t Iron Man—wouldn’t someone be thrilled to have Iron Man as their sparring partner personal hype man mentor—”
Pepper shrugs, and she’s trying not to smile, but she’s still smiling. “I mean, I guess, but the God of Thunder—”
“That’s also like—is he the god of thunder or the god of thunder and lightning? Is he the god of storms? Is he the god of eating three cartons worth of eggs for breakfast and running us out of house and home? I don’t know. How many titles does a king have? And should we be providing a crown for him? Is he still a king? Did he relinquish that entirely or—”
Pepper nearly keels over laughing, which always makes Tony feel good and proud, and then there’s another flash of light outside and another drumroll accompanying it and Tony sighs. He looks at his watch—it’s a little after 11:30, which isn’t too early for lunch, not really, and especially not if he calls it brunch—
Pepper is leaping out of her seat and then Tony hears a loud crash outside that seems louder than the lightning strikes, somehow, and he hears the reverberations of the crash and what caused it and now Thor’s yelling, and Pepper’s saying Tony’s name—
And it feels like every time, when something happens—his hearing goes high-pitched and he gets tunnel vision and his heart feels like it did in Afghanistan, when it was newly connected to that fucking car battery—
And he turns back towards the door and he sees the fucking pandemonium—
The tree is down, smoking, split in half—
And Thor is on the ground and yelling and hovering over—
“Shit,” Tony breathes. He yanks the door open and rushes out into the half-darkness of his panic, and he thought Thor might take out the fucking tree but he didn’t think he’d take out Peter—
“Tony!” Thor yells, looking up at him. He’s got both hands latched onto Peter’s shoulders, and Peter—Peter isn’t moving.
Peter isn’t moving.
“Tony, I—it was an accident, Tony, I swear to you—he was swinging, as he was doing, and I did not—I did not aim properly, and I hit the tree he was attached to, and it traveled down the webbing—”
Thor’s face is streaked with concern and Tony’s only seen him that way a few times but he can’t focus on that right now. He nearly collapses down next to the kid, knocking Thor partially out of the way.
“Jesus Christ, Thor,” Tony says, no nicknames left in him for the moment, “you electrocuted him—you struck—”
“I did not mean to—”
“Peter,” Tony says, shaking him. He’s hot to the touch and his skin is burnt in places, charred spots that send up flares in Tony’s head. “Peter. Pete, hey. Hey. Hey, look at me. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Pete?”
He doesn’t move.
Tony’s heart is beating a mile a minute.
The kid’s not moving. He’s not moving.
Tony finds his pulse—no, he doesn’t, because—because—
“His heart’s not fucking beating,” Tony says, pressing his fingers hard into Peter’s neck, like it’s hiding from him, like he’s not trying hard enough, but the harder he tries he still doesn’t find shit, not in his neck, not in his wrist or his arm, and Tony hovers his hand over Peter’s mouth and looks at his chest and he’s not breathing either his heart isn’t beating and he’s not breathing his heart isn’t beating and he’s not breathing—
“He’s not breathing,” Tony says, his panic clinging to him in an aura so sharp that it sinks into his arms and his shoulders and his neck and his teeth. “He’s not—he’s—”
“Should I shock him again?” Thor says, buzzing with energy beside him. “Should I—to perhaps restart his heart—”
“No no, goddamnit—I’m gonna start CPR, go inside, get the heart thing—ask for the heart thing, Pepper will—”
“Got it,” Pepper’s voice says, and Tony didn’t even realize she was fucking behind him, and she’s running inside and Thor is rushing in after her—
Will the AED even do anything? Is that even the right course of action? His heart isn’t fucking beating but Tony doesn’t know what the fuck to do—
And he tries to close off. Tries to—autopilot. Because he’s more terrified than he’s been in a long time and he starts compressions and tries to remember numbers and he pinches Peter’s nose and he starts delivering breaths and tries to pretend this isn’t fucking happening. Except he knows it’s happening and that’s why he wants to ignore it because things were normal moments ago they were fine they were whatever they were a normal day in the landscape of their lives after the end of the world and Peter was alive and swinging around and having fun with a hero he’s loved and admired since he was a kid, and now every time he pulls back and looks at him—
He’s dead. He’s not breathing his heart is not beating and his face is a dead, dead face—
“No, no, no,” Tony says, shaking his head and patting Peter’s shoulder. “No, no, okay. No. Come back. You’re coming back.”
Dead not breathing heart not beating.
“Peter,” Tony says, still delivering the chest compressions. “Nuh uh. No way. I know you’re still in there and even if you’re not in there you’re hanging around. You’re here still. You’re not dying like this. Not after everything. You’re not letting Thor kill you. Because then I’d have to kill him and I know I wouldn’t be able to do that and he wouldn’t kill me and then I’d just be miserable.” He counts in his head and then he bends down and delivers two more breaths. He doesn’t remember the last time he did CPR. He has to do it right he has to keep track he has to focus he has to—
“Come back,” he whispers, starting more chest compressions, wondering where the hell Pepper and Thor are and Tony hasn’t ever even used the damn AED that they’ve got in the house but they always have it because of shit like this and about a thousand different poison antidotes just in case and sometimes his paranoia comes in handy if it works if it works—
“Pete, dammit—”
“Okay here here here here,” Pepper’s voice says, and Tony doesn’t even look up before they’re skidding down next to him. “It’s just these little sticker pad things—”
“We found the device—”
“I’m afraid to stop doing this,” Tony says, before he even realizes he’s said it out loud.
“It’s okay it’s okay,” Pepper says. “Thor, gently pull Peter’s shirt up, these have to go on his chest, then, Tony, you can keep going, it can work around you until it needs to shock—”
“Alright,” Thor says, and Tony is pissed, and thinking mean shit, and he can’t remind himself that he loves Thor while he’s sitting here in front of Peter whose heart has stopped who still has no pulse who still isn’t breathing, and Tony has to stop doing chest compressions when Thor starts to push up Peter’s shirt.
“Careful,” Tony says, stupidly, like he should have warned him earlier.
“Yes,” Thor says, and he’s white as a sheet, like Tony feels.
And instead of slow motion everything seems to ramp up, and the loudness in his ears is practically screeching, and Tony keeps doing compressions and Pepper walks Thor through the fucking heart shocker and they place the stickers where they’re supposed to be and thank God Peter’s eyes are closed because if they were open and staring Tony would have probably passed out by now—
The AED says no shock advised.
And that feels like a shock in and of itself.
“Fuck, fuck,” Tony says. He glances back at Pepper, breathing hard, panicking worse—
She’s trembling, shaking her head. “I don’t know—maybe because of how—how his heart stopped, I don’t know, I wasn’t sure if it was gonna—”
“Does he need adrenaline? A shot?” Tony asks, nearly yells. He’s shaking and sick, and he’s losing track of his compressions, and the fucking AED is useless so he shoves the pads off and pushes Peter’s shirt back down. “Pete, c’mon, dammit. C’mon.” He keeps counting in his head. His counts are off. He starts over. He keeps counting and delivering breaths and tries not to focus on how the world is falling apart.
Thor is yelling too. “What does this mean? Should I fly him off somewhere? New Asgard—”
“I’m gonna go see if—adrenaline, we might—I’m gonna call Helen—”
Tony doesn’t turn around to see her go, and Thor’s voice turns to mush beside him, some unidentifiable thing, and Tony is in a mode and his arms are aching and he does the compressions and delivers breaths and nothing changes, nothing changes—
And he’s getting winded and tired but he can’t stop this because Thor doesn’t fucking know how to do it—
And he knows it’s not long before the brain starts losing function—
“Peter!” Tony yells. “C’mon, c’mon, you can’t do this kid you can’t do this you can’t—”
His voice hardly sounds like his own, and his eyes are starting to get glassy with tears and his arms are truly on fire with the same fucking motion over and over again, and he’s gasping and starting to deliver breaths improperly—
“Peter,” Tony begs. “Wake up. Now. Wake up—”
and gone, gone again, gone forever, the same nightmare as before but real this time, not a magical disappearance but a death right in front of his eyes—
“Tony, I need to do something, these attempts aren’t—”
Tony shakes his head, gasping, and he’s spiraling and falling the fuck apart, but he keeps delivering chest compressions.
This kid, this kid, he loves him too much, he loves him too much to let him go. “C’mon, Peter. C’mon. C’mon, cut this shit out and wake up, dammit, c’mon—”
“Tony—” Thor is more forceful now—
“Thor you can’t fucking do anything you don’t know CPR—”
“This is not—we must restart—”
Tony tunes him out again before he fucking attacks him, and he’s inches from collapsing himself, and it’s taking too long, he’s continuing CPR but it’s taking too long and the kid is still gone he’s gone and Tony sobs and grasps at him and can’t even form his name anymore, and he delivers two more breaths and then Thor is knocking Tony away.
He falls onto his elbow and before he can even register what the hell happened or what the hell is about to happen, Thor is clasping both of his hands together and slamming them down on Peter’s chest.
Tony feels like he can feel it even though it wasn’t him who took the hit, and he doesn’t know what the fuck Thor was thinking doing that and it’s like he can hear Peter’s ribs crunch and crack—
Tony scrambles to sit up again. “Thor you can’t just fucking—”
But then Peter shoots up, grasping at his chest.
Tony feels like his eyes are gonna pop out of his skull. He’s frozen, for a brief second, but then he comes back to himself, and quickly moves back over to his side. Peter flops back down, grasping at his chest and twisting his shirt in his fist. He’s coughing and sucking in ragged breaths, blinking like he doesn’t remember how to.
“Pete,” Tony croaks.
“Parker!” Thor yells, grasping at his shoulder. “There you are!”
“Holy shit,” Tony breathes. “Holy shit. Peter. Pete.” He leans over him and cups his face, breathing hard and manic. He can’t believe it.
“I thought that might work,” Thor says, and his laugh sounds a little anxious. “With all that work you did, Tony—with the breathing for him and the, uh, compressions, I thought his heart just needed a little—a big jolt—”
Tony just sort of looks at him, briefly, blearily, and Peter coughs again, drawing Tony’s attention back.
“Whoa,” Peter says. “Whoa, whoa.”
“Take it easy,” Tony breathes, feeling desperate and insane.
He feels like he can really see him, now. The moments before were shredded and blurry and strained and Tony still feels out of it but he can really see him now. The burns on his face and his arms and the shock in his gaze and the way he’s shaking—
“Whoa,” Peter says again, his eyes still flicking back and forth between them. He coughs again, trying to breathe properly. “Whoa, uh—am I on fire? Am I laying in fire? You wouldn’t let me lay in fire—”
Tony feels like his brain is glitching, ever so slightly, and he has to focus now and deal with all of that later.
But before he can say anything else, Thor is jumping in.
“I have never seen anything like what just occurred and you know I have seen many things,” he says, leaning into Tony’s space and hovering over Peter right next to him. “When you were dodging, and swinging, I may have struck too closely—”
“May have?” Tony nearly yells.
“Is that not proper grammar?” Thor asks, looking at him, his brows furrowed. “Because I believe—”
Glitching. Stammering. Unabashed anger. “No, you didn’t may have, you did struck too closely—you strike—you struck—you hit my kid with a fucking thunderbolt—lightning—you hit—”
“Is he back?” Pepper yells, running back out. “I’ve got Helen on the phone—”
Tony stops stuttering, glancing up at her. “Yeah he’s—Thor hit him really hard on the chest and I guess jumpstarted his heart like a fucking car—after electrocuting him and trying to deny that he—”
“Okay,” Pepper says, her hand on his shoulder stopping his tirade in its tracks. He isn’t focusing, like he told himself too, and his head is spinning. “Peter, let’s—”
“Okay yeah that makes sense,” Peter says, and he winces a bit, closing his eyes again. “Electrocuted—yeah okay—”
“Are you okay?” Tony asks, zeroing in on him. Thor is nudging into his space and Tony nudges back and takes Peter by the shoulders. “Pete? Just breathe, okay? Breathe deep.”
Peter blinks at him. “Uh, I—”
“Can you feel your heart beating?” Thor asks, running over Peter’s answer. “It’s beating, right? Because we have a few different concoctions we can try in New Asgard, if things start to look bleak again—once, many years ago, I accidentally killed Loki by—”
“Okay, it’s not storytime,” Tony says, his irritation so vast that it could cover the whole state of New York. “Pete. Pete. Let’s get you inside, okay? We gotta—Pep, can you just get Helen on a video call so we can—talk to her properly—the burns look surface level but I wanna make sure we can treat them, especially with him, because you know he’s—different—”
“Of course,” Pepper says, and she pushes off his shoulder and gets to her feet, sprinting back to the house.
“Tony, I’m—I’m okay,” Peter says, grasping Tony’s wrist. “I think. Yeah.”
Tony hums a little bit, hardly able to believe that. He’s seconds away from a heart attack, probably, for sure if things ‘start to look bleak again’, and he shoots another callous look at Thor, who doesn’t seem to be understanding the severity of the situation at all.
Tony tries to focus. Tries to overrule his anger. “Here, can you sit up? Do you wanna sit up?”
“Is the world spinning or like—well I mean, the earth is spinning, obviously, I mean hopefully, right? And like, the earth is the same—it’s a synonym for the world—I guess, I mean, depends on how you’re using it—”
“Okay, alright,” Tony says, because he knows how Peter gets when he’s out of it, and he’s definitely out of it for real, and he was almost permanently out of it just a few moments ago—
Almost? No, he was. He was dead.
His head reminds him of that, along with the chiming of bells. And not pretty happy bells, like a wedding, but like a lone church bell, like a funeral. A cacophony in his head.
He tries to shake that. “Alright,” he says, his voice split down the middle by emotion, like the goddamn sugar maple, entirely destroyed behind them. “Gently sit up, okay? Slow. Slow, I’ve got you—”
“And I also have you!” Thor says, fixating himself on Peter’s other side and taking hold of his shoulder.
“I’ve got him,” Tony says, a little evil, trying not to be, but the evil still taints his tone. “Okay? I’ve got him—”
“The tree’s down,” Peter says, glancing back at it as they get him into a sitting position. “It’s on the ground it’s—and there is a little fire, I knew it—oh, my webs are on fire, that’s what that is—and the—tree—”
Tony sighs. He didn’t even notice any of that. “Thor,” he says, “can you go inside and get the fire extinguisher? It’s in the kitchen on the side of the plate cabinet. Do not rip the entire cabinet off the wall, okay? Use your gentle hands—”
“Alright,” Thor says, and he lets go of Peter and rushes back into the house, too.
“You know he’s older than you by a lot,” Peter says, as Tony wraps an arm around him and tugs him a little closer. “And you’re talking to him like he’s uh. Like he’s a kid.”
Tony bristles. “Pete, do you understand—I know you don’t, because it happened to you—but the situation—”
Peter shakes his head. He shakes his head.
Tony can’t say it out loud. What he’s thinking, what actually happened, the state Peter was in, how he could have easily stayed that way and how Tony would have eventually laid down beside him and asked Thor to electrocute him to death, too—
“Accidents happen a lot,” Peter whispers, and he still looks dazed out of his mind, and his hair is sticking up all on end, and Tony realizes that his skin does feel a little bit—buzzy.
“Yeah but they—you—you’re too—”
“There we are, there we are!” Thor yells, and Tony hears the sound of the extinguisher before he twists a bit and sees Thor attacking the dead tree with it. “There goes the fire, everything’s alright! It’s all alright!”
“Accidents happen a lot,” Peter says again, and he meets Tony’s eyes. “I am constantly—and like, now, and before—like before the end of the world—accidents, like, I hit a pigeon—”
“Peter,” Tony says, and he winces and he’s about to get into it, whatever it is, when he shakes his head. “C’mon. C’mon, bud, we gotta get you inside and look at you—what just happened is not—great, and we gotta—make sure you’re good—”
He starts to help him to his feet, bracing his arm around his waist and trying not to press too hard on the burns and there are probably way more than he thinks there are and he’s trying not to dissolve into panic, even though panic is always one step to the left for him and he can hardly feel safe in a world that was broken the way it was for even five seconds—
“Okay,” Peter says, as they start to hobble around the tree and back towards the house. “But I’m probably fine. I mean like. You’ve seen the stuff that’s happened to me—”
“Yeah, it’s all tattooed in the cervices of my brain—”
“Crevices—bad—”
Thor sees them, and he tosses the extinguisher aside and nearly rushes at them, which makes Tony hold Peter tighter.
“I can help,” Thor says, nodding, like that helps his cause. “Peter, I can carry you inside, alright? I can—”
“I got it, I got it,” Tony says, his heart contracting.
Peter laughs a little bit. “I just—”
“If I carry him he will not have to walk, and we will get there faster,” Thor says, standing in front of them and practically barring their way.
Tony grits his teeth. Eight billion things are happening in his head concerning what the hell is going on here and before he can say no again, Thor is lifting Peter away from him and into his arms—
“Careful, careful, goddamnit,” Tony hisses, still reaching for him and trying to hold onto him.
“Oh wow, like a tiny baby,” Peter says, as Thor cradles him and starts to race him into the house. “I have a lot of muscle mass—don’t—don’t forget that—very strong—can lift the Chrysler Building if I—if I set my mind to it—”
“Oh, the Chrysler, that is my favorite building in New York,” Thor says, rushing through the door.
“Careful, you’re jarring his head,” Tony says, through gritted teeth, and he moves after them.
“Yes, yes,” Thor says, and he weaves around in the living room and heads to the faux-medbay Tony had installed here for shit exactly like this.
He stands there for a second, reaching up and gripping his own hair tight enough that it pulls at his scalp. He grits his teeth and feels broken, feels injured and drunk and bleeding out and grief-stricken all at once. A headache boils in his forehead and his bones creak like he’s aged beyond his years.
“Tony?” Pepper yells. “I’ve got Helen—”
“Stark! Come!” Thor yells, voice booming.
“Hey Tony did I really just got hit by lightning because like what if Thor’s lightning gives me special powers like what if I’m technically an Asgardian prince now or something—”
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose and heads in that direction.
~
They treat his burns with Helen walking them through it via the video call. They make sure his heart rhythm is correct based on his normal readings, they check on possible broken bones and find that his wrist is sprained, which normally heals pretty quickly for Peter. Most of his ribs are broken, from Thor’s life-saving hit, which Tony had already guessed, and they wrap up his middle, too. He has a pretty bad concussion, and lacerations along his ankles and on the bottom of his feet, where the lightning made its exit. Which is pretty fucking terrifying to think about.
Peter is bruised and battered, dead and back again, and they’ll have to tell May. There’s just no avoiding it, whether Peter wants to or not.
“You have gotta be more careful,” Tony says, sitting at the end of Peter’s bed, his vitriol directed at Thor.
“Yes,” Thor says, standing in front of them with his arms crossed. “I will be.” He says it so simply. Like it’s nothing.
“Will you?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows.
“Yes,” Thor declares, and Peter snorts behind Tony.
“No snorting,” Tony says, turning and pointing at him. “No. Peter.”
“It’s fine!” Peter says. “Perfectly fine. It’s actually kind of cool—”
Thor laughs when he says that. “It looked tremendous!” he says. “I wish we could have captured it on video so we could have it forever. You were completely lit up—”
“And it felt like I was on fire—like a big bubble of fire light—”
Tony knows why he’s mad. He doesn’t like to see Peter hurt in any capacity and especially in such a stupid way like this. He wants everything to be sunshine and rainbows after what they went through, but he knows that’s impossible and that tortures him too. He doesn’t want to be mad at Thor because he’s been through a lot of shit and he’s mad at himself for being mad.
But most of all he’s mad—he’s seething—he’s about to fucking explode because—
“Thor, you killed him,” Tony yells. “He was dead. Dead! His heart stopped. He had no pulse. He wasn’t breathing.” He throws his hands up and lets them slap down on his legs. “He was dead. Gone—”
Thor points at the kid. “He is sitting right there, Tony, alive—”
“When you have no heartbeat and you’re not breathing what does that mean?” Tony asks, feeling like his eyeballs are about to pop out of his skull. “Huh? What’s it mean, because I always took it to mean dead. Peter’s cheated death so many times but this time he was absolutely gone, outta here—”
“I mean,” Peter says, gently, “technically, I cheated death again, because I’m here, not dead—”
“Yeah but you were—”
No heartbeat. No breathing. It wasn’t that long ago but Tony remembers it like it’s happening in perpetuity forever and ever all around him. He’s almost died so many times so many different ways and this time around it’s Thor that fucking kills him? Thor? They were able to bring him back, but that’s not—what if they hadn’t? What if they weren’t able to?
“Tony, it’s fine, I’m fine,” Peter says, and then he’s like, gently kicking Tony in the back. Like he’s trying to comfort him with his foot. His lightning-streaked foot. “I’m okay. Not dead. I totally cheated again.”
“You didn’t cheat, technically, because I fixed you, and he fixed you, after he broke you, even though slamming you on the chest real hard and restarting your heart is a total fluke—”
“It is not, I have done it before,” Thor says, nodding in his direction. “My strength is immense, and everything was getting close with your, uh, with the CPR—which I should learn to do, I suppose—but it’s all fine! Everything is well and good!”
“It’s not!” Tony yells. Doesn’t mean to yell but he yells anyway. He feels like he ran a marathon and like his own heart is seconds from stopping. He gets up and starts pacing, not truly looking at either one of them. “Peter being dead—at all, in any capacity, for any amount of time—”
“Technically, it’s a technicality—” Peter starts, but Tony shakes his head.
“Nope. No. Thor kills you by accident and then brings you back somehow in a way that could have easily not worked and yeah I know it did but it might not have, and we could—be standing here trying to figure out how to tell May that you—that you were—” He covers his hand with his mouth.
Dust. Reminds him of dust. Of empty time, of i’m sorry. And all that work to restructure the world and he goes because Thor couldn’t be careful? Because CPR didn’t work? Because hitting him in the chest real hard didn’t help?
It did. He tries to tell himself that they got lucky.
But those moments without a pulse were long. They were stretched thin but holding up and wrapping around him and stifling him.
Tony walks out of the room without saying another word.
~
“Tony, Tony!” Peter calls, pressing his hands to the bed, but Tony just leaves and doesn’t respond. Peter grits his teeth, because everything still feels like ten tons of bad. He can already feel his body healing, but he’s in no way back to normal, and he shifts back against the pillows again and sighs.
Thor walks over and sits on the edge of the bed next to him. “He’s very unhappy,” he says, softly.
“Yeah,” Peter grunts. “Uh, I’m not—surprised, I guess—he, uh—I mean—”
“No, I understand,” Thor says, sucking in a big breath. “But you’re alright now, is that not—is that not the end goal, to have you be alright, which you are—”
Peter pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, but, uh—I wasn’t—”
He doesn’t remember, exactly. The details are hazy. He remembers swinging and then the abrupt shock and then he remembers waking up feeling like a truck hit him. Like a truck was in the process of hitting him. Like he was becoming one with a truck’s tires.
Is that what it’s like to be dead?
Last time they all weren’t ‘dead’, they were just displaced, but this is different, this was—not breathing heart stopped. That’s pretty dead. Even if he’s not dead now, he was, briefly, because they were getting a little too crazy and they didn’t set down ground rules in their little mini superhero powers sparring match or whatever it was, and Peter loves Thor but he needs to remember that Thor is extremely powerful and can easily kill him. Not as easily as he could kill a random person off the street, but pretty damn easily, clearly, considering that—he did.
He killed him.
Peter was—killed.
He sits and stares and lives in that.
“Are you really dead if you’ve come back to life?” Peter asks. “Were you dead if you aren’t dead?”
Thor narrows his eyes at him. “I mean—you were the one—not I—”
“I mean, I’m asking in rhetorical, I guess,” Peter says, cracking his jaw. He’s hung out with Thor a good amount since everything got back to normal, but he’s still super intimidated by him in a lot of ways. He makes his stomach flip and his face go all hot and he still can’t believe he gets to call him a friend and be in the same space as him. And now they spar and stuff? And now Thor’s killed him? It’s weird. It’s cool and definitely weird. What is Ned gonna think? MJ is gonna be angry. And they can’t tell May. Even though Peter knows Tony is gonna want to tell her. They just can’t, he has to convince him of that. They gotta come up with something else.
Peter clears his throat.
“Oh, well—yes, you were dead,” Thor says, clearing his throat too. “But you are no longer dead. You are alive.” He pats his knee.
Peter’s face goes hot. “Yeah that’s, uh, that’s why Tony’s mad,” he says. “Because we allowed me to—be dead. We allowed it to get to that point.”
Thor looks at him then, nodding again. “Yes,” he says. “I suppose that is on me, considering I am—thousands of years older than you.”
“I mean I’m not a baby and I’m sure he’s plenty mad at me too, but I’m also the injured one so I sort of have a little bit of leverage,” Peter says, shrugging.
“But were you having fun?” Thor asks. “Before I—killed you?” He smiles a little bit, sheepishly.
“Oh yeah,” Peter laughs. “Right up until the moment my heart stopped.”
~
An hour goes by before Tony heads back into the med bay. He’s gonna help Peter into his own room, since he’s always more comfortable there, and Tony thinks he’s less likely to flare up and panic again if the kid isn’t in a ‘hospital’ setting. They still haven’t told May, because they’re all terrible people, and Peter’s even spoken to her and so has Pepper and they just talked about normal shit like lunch and how work was going and Tony felt like his ears were on fire with all the lying.
“You know it was an accident,” Peter says, as they walk down the hallway.
Tony holds onto his arm and stares straight ahead. “I know that. Thank you for telling me he wasn’t trying to blatantly murder you.”
“I mean,” Peter says. He bumps their shoulders together. “Kind of—you kind of seem like you think he was trying to murder me.”
Tony sighs. They walk through the living room, and both of their eyes are drawn to the sliding glass door. Thor is outside, tearing the tree apart into smaller pieces. He isn’t making a big production out of it, like he thinks he might be being watched. He’s just doing it because he knows it needs to be done.
Tony sighs, and looks away, holding a little tighter to Peter. A very precious, a very important person walking alongside him. Very very very highly regarded. Tony keeps thinking about just how much he loves him and maybe that’s making him angrier.
“I don’t think you should be mad,” Peter says.
“I’m not mad,” Tony says, as they weave around the couch and towards the back set of bedrooms.
“You are. Your anger is—permeating, it’s everywhere—”
“I’m perfectly normal,” Tony says, not normal at all.
~
Thor is no stranger to death. Not by any means. His mother and father are gone, Loki is gone, Heimdall is gone, half of his friends are gone. Death is something he wears around his neck, something that is never silent, and he feels as if he sinks in it, sometimes. So he strives that much harder to not wallow in it, to not let it follow him, to not let it choke the life out of him from day to day. Because it very well could, and he knows that, and what good would Thor, the God of Thunder be, if all he did was sit around lamenting over his losses.
So it is one of those things he brushes aside, to try and live his life as happily as he can live it. He still has his team, and now little Parker is part of that team, and—
Today he killed him.
He was not paying proper attention and things got too out of hand and he felt like a teenager again, almost, lighting up Asgard’s purple pink skies with streaks of thunder while Loki and the others would dodge around him, and he did not even realize he’d done the wrong thing until the boy hit the ground.
And Tony loves this child. Like he is his own blood, and Thor knows what that is like, too. To adopt one into your own family when they did not start there. When the line becomes so blurred that you forget what it was like before they were part of your family. Thor sees Tony ruffling Peter’s hair and smiling at him and gazing at him like he’s the best thing in the known universe. The boy is eighteen years of age, if Thor is remembering correctly, and Tony still helps make his dinner plate so he gets the best cut and portion of everything that is offered. He and Peter’s Aunt May are the best of friends for Peter’s sake, despite their previous differences.
Thor rips apart another part of the broken tree and truly realizes he should have been more careful. He remembers the way Tony’s tears fogged up his eyes when he thought Peter might not awaken. He remembers how Tony behaved back after Thanos’s attack on the universe, when Peter was no longer there.
Thor knows what loss is, knows the empty space where a loved one once was, and he knows he should not be so flippant with another’s life. Especially not someone so young, someone he admires and enjoys being around, someone Tony cares about so deeply. Thor loves Tony and he loves Peter as well, and his own betrayal is settling all around him.
He sighs with it.
He drops the next two pieces of the tree in the pile he has been making, and when he looks up, he sees two familiar faces inside the house.
Steve and Natasha.
He was not expecting them today, but that is not abnormal, considering they all come and go as they please from Tony’s home. They are already speaking to Tony, and they look concerned, and Thor’s eyebrows furrow. He heads inside to see what’s going on.
“We got the alerts and headed straight here—”
“It took forever, I’m sorry, Tony—”
They look up and see Thor there, and they both smile, a little warily.
“Hey—was it an accident, was it—is Friday screwing up again?” Natasha asks, her hands on her hips. They both look a little worse for wear, like they were on a mission of their own.
“No, it was Peter,” Thor says, before Tony says anything. “Peter Parker, Spider-Man, not—not Quill, who is off following a wild goose chase Rocket came up with—” He shakes his head. “It does not matter, it was Peter Parker—”
Both Steve and Natasha look at Tony.
“Is he alright?” Steve asks. “Was there some sort of attack, some—”
“Did someone follow him?” Natasha asks. “Does he need help, is he—”
Tony clears his throat, but Thor knows he needs to take the responsibility that belongs to him.
“Peter and I were training outside and I may have—I did—I struck the tree with lightning, without meaning to, and it used Peter’s web as a conductor and it struck him as well. And he perished.”
“What?” Steve yells. “He’s—”
Natasha’s face drains of all color. “He—”
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “We were able to bring him back—”
“We were able to bring him back,” Thor repeats, “well, Tony performed CPR very admirably and for a long while and then I hit Peter very hard in the chest, which most likely only worked because it was administered at the end of—the CPR that Tony did. But things could have easily gone in a different direction and that would have been my fault and Tony, I’m very—I’m very sorry, and I am sorry about how I was behaving before—”
“Oh, this is all happening,” Natasha says, almost under her breath.
Thor keeps going. “I was behaving too—flippantly, with a very important life, a very loved—a very loved life, and I should know better, as I have experienced many losses and have many family members and friends moldering in the ground—”
“Mmkay,” Tony says, and he’s massaging his temples now. “Thor—”
“Metaphorically speaking, in some instances—and I know how deeply it would have hurt you if Peter was no more, if he was just a memory, if he never would have taken another breath—”
“Okay, thank you,” Tony says, and he’s breathing hard now. He meets Thor’s eyes and he nods but his own eyes are shining again, and Natasha and Steve are looking around, grimacing.
“I am taking responsibility for taking his life,” Thor says, nodding at him. “His death is on me.”
“But he’s alive,” Natasha says. “He’s alive.”
“Yep,” Tony says, “and I’m gonna—I’m gonna—be right back—”
He heads down the stairs towards the workshop, and Pepper walks into the room at the same time.
“Hey guys—I was on the phone with Helen—when did you—where’s Tony—”
“Hey,” Natasha says, and she quickly hugs Pepper. “I’ll—I’ll go talk to him.” She nods at her and then she heads off in the same direction Tony went, and Thor just stands there, only slightly confused.
Steve laughs, a little awkwardly, and he hugs Pepper too. “Sounds like today was…pretty eventful,” he says.
“It usually is around here,” Pepper says.
Steve walks over to Thor and claps him on the shoulder, too.
“Was it something I said?” he asks. “To Tony? I was trying to apologize.”
“No, buddy, it was good, it sounds like—sometimes you’re just—very descriptive,” Steve says, nodding at him.
Pepper walks over too. “You know how he is about Peter,” she says. “And all of the what if’s. He’s just gotta…land in the reality that…it’s okay now and Peter’s okay now.”
“I’ll go check in on Pete,” Steve says, “see if he wants to—go a round in Mario Kart.”
They both nod at him and watch him walk away. Thor thought he’d feel better after apologizing, and that Tony would feel better too, but somehow, he feels worse.
“Do you think I should leave?” Thor asks Pepper. “I meant to stay the night, possibly—do some of my laundry, but now I’m—”
“No, no, you don’t need to leave,” Pepper says, shaking her head at him. “I didn’t hear what you said, but you said you apologized, it was an accident, Tony’s done…plenty of similar things in his lifetime and I’m sure he will again—like I said, sometimes he’s just gotta—work through things, let them sink in…he’ll be alright, it’ll all be alright. Peter’s fine and that’s the most important thing.”
Thor nods, sighing.
~
“You’re good,” Natasha says, rubbing Tony’s shoulder.
He tries to breathe. He does the breathing exercises. He hasn’t had a post-event panic attack in a bit, and it’s a little—overwhelming.
“I feel like I almost felt better being angry,” Tony says, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “But then he was saying sorry and owning up to his mistake but then he was describing Peter never taking a breath again and my brain just sort of—”
“I know. I know you,” Natasha says. “I know he feels bad, I can tell, it’s just—he does things his own way. His Thor way.” She laughs a little bit.
“I know,” Tony says, blowing out a breath. He looks up at her. “Pete was dead. Dead dead.”
She shakes her head. “His heart stopped and he stopped breathing but he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t gone. And plus, with us…we think dead is dead but it’s not actually dead.”
“I hate the word dead,” Tony says.
She’s got that half smile on. “Especially in regards to that kid, huh?”
“Yep,” Tony says, without hesitating.
“Well, he’s not dead,” Natasha says, “so you can relax. Stop isolating yourself, spend time with him, remind yourself that he’s right there and he’s fine—and forgive—”
There’s a slight knock at the door.
“Friday will not let me in,” Thor’s voice says. “I’m not sure if she—I’m not sure if she is perceiving me as a threat.”
Tony laughs, a little small one, and he still feels wavery. “Fri, you can let him in.”
The door opens, and Thor comes clambering inside. He doesn’t seem to want to be clambering, but he does anyway, and he’s so big in here.
He throws his hands out briefly and puts them on his hips. “I’m sorry, Tony, for being too descriptive in my apology,” he says. He shrugs a little bit. “I just want to say again—I know he is like a son to you and I will be more careful in the future. I promise you. I would not want anything to happen to him permanently, which would also mean I would have to throw myself at the mercy of both you and Mrs. Parker. The heartbreak would be…too much.”
That sort of brings tears to Tony’s eyes again, in a different way, and he doesn’t feel as panicky anymore. “You just have to be so careful with him,” he says.
“I know,” Thor says. “I will be. But he is strong. He’s a very strong little person.”
“He is—I was inside that school bus—” Natasha starts.
“We all know the school bus story,” Tony says, looking at her.
“I’m just saying,” she says. “He carried it for a good ten feet without batting an eye. Barely even wavered.”
“But to me—” Tony says. His voice catches.
“He’s a kid,” Natasha says. She rubs Tony’s shoulder again. “Daddy Stark over here.”
“Don’t start with me,” Tony says, sighing heavily.
“I will protect him,” Thor says, nodding. “I promise. Nothing like this will ever happen again.”
Tony feels stupid, and mean, and nasty, and overbearing, but he nods anyway. “Thank you,” he says. “And now I gotta come up with non-conductive webs. Shit, non-conductive suit. He wasn’t even wearing his suit—fully non-conductive Peter.”
~
They talk for another ten minutes or so before Tony wants to go see him, and he can hear Pepper talking to Helen on the phone in the study when they pass by there.
“He just thinks he’s the big boss and can get through anything,” Tony says, as they start through the living room, “but really he’s—”
He stops.
He looks through the sliding glass door.
Peter and Steve are out there.
Peter and Steve are out there picking up the sugar maple.
Peter. Who died today. Who Tony and Thor jointly brought back to life after he perished. Peter, who is supposed to be on bed rest. Peter is outside doing physical labor.
“Steve…” Natasha trails off.
Tony grits his teeth and half growls and he’s marching over to the door and sliding it open.
And before Tony can say anything, Thor starts yelling.
“Steve!” he yells. “What is going through your brain? This child is precious and you are the adult and you need to keep him where he belongs!”
“Listen, uh, he’s very persuasive,” Steve says, wiping his hands together.
Peter scoffs. He’s still in his pajamas but he’s got Tony’s garden boots on and he’s wearing his webshooters again. “Thor, c’mon, it’s half my fault too and I wanted to help and I’m being careful and I’m not a child—”
Thor walks over and takes Peter’s face in his hands. “We have to be very careful with you. You are precious. You can help in three days’ time like Helen suggested.”
Natasha hits Steve in the arm, and Steve widens his eyes at her.
“C’mon,” Tony says, laughing, wrapping his arm around Peter’s waist and tugging him towards the house. “Tricking Captain America into helping you jailbreak—”
“I didn’t trick him, we were just—listen, it’s not a big deal,” Peter says, with a huge sigh.
“You’d be doing the same thing to me if I was the one whose heart stopped today, yeah?” Tony asks, looking at him.
“Well, you’re a hundred years old,” Peter says.
“Hey.”
“Steve, Natasha, you two can help me continue the work,” Thor says, “and then we will plant another sugar maple. And then another one after that.”
Tony pulls the sliding glass door closed behind them, but not all the way.
Peter sighs. “I feel fine,” he says.
“Your ribs are broken,” Tony says. “All of them. And lightning went through your body. Can you take twenty four hours off? At the minimum? Jesus.”
Peter is practically wilting against him. “You know I hate sitting around.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to do so much of it if you weren’t such a psycho,” Tony says. He ruffles his hair, and looks at him and all his bandages and petulance. “C’mon. Let’s pick some snacks and then I’ll come in there and watch whatever with you.”
“The tortilla chips and the queso from yesterday and I pick that unsolved mystery guy on YouTube,” Peter says, hardly hesitating.
“Okay,” Tony says, and he wheels him in the direction of the fridge and snack cabinet. “Only if you don’t become a full-blown Miss Marple again—”
Peter scoffs at him, opening the cabinet and getting the chips out. “Uh, that was you, you broke Friday out and had her starting to do the real research—”
“Imagine if we could solve these cases,” Tony says, shrugging at him. “We’d be heroes. Even bigger heroes.” He opens the fridge and grabs the queso. “You want it heated up?”
“Mmm…yeah,” Peter says.
They turn towards the microwave as a unit, Tony still holding onto him. He can hear Thor barking orders outside, and he smiles to himself.
“Imagine if we could solve that one at the crocodile place,” Peter says, his bloodshot eyes widening a little bit. “That one was so weird. We should watch that one again.”
“Those things are terrifying,” Tony says, putting the queso in the microwave.
“I like them,” Peter says. “They aren’t the perpetrators. I know it.”
Dead isn’t dead, with us. He knows he’d never let Peter stay dead. What happened with Thanos proves that, and this proves that, and now he knows Thor is on the same page as him, too. The kid is precious and death doesn’t get to have him. He’ll always cheat death, even if he doesn’t. They’ll just roll it back, or snatch him away, or do whatever they can. He belongs here.
Tony ruffles his hair again when the microwave beeps. “Can’t believe you were outside messing with the damn tree—”
“Listen,” Peter says, as they start gathering up the food. “I am strong, I am helpful, I am independent—”
“I am insane,” Tony adds.
“That’s right, you are,” Peter says, grinning.
Tony prods him in the side, gently, not enough to jar the broken ribs or many burns. But Peter swats at him anyway.
“Stop, or I’m gonna tell May the whole thing,” Tony says, “and then this is all gonna start over again and worse than before—”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Peter says, as they move through the living room. “Bed rest time it is for the dead man walking.”
“Peter,” Tony says, glaring at him.
Peter grins. “Just kidding.”