Chapter Text
The answer is years. It'll take years to be same same if at all. It'll never be the same earth Peter walked on. Tony doesn't want to be on it without him. If only the kid had listened but that wouldn't have mattered, he would have died anyway. Whether he was with his mentor or not, the teenager was in the fifty-fifty that go the short end of the stick of life. Peter turned to ash in his arms, it seeped through his fingers and some blew away. Peter had stuck to Tony, a last effort to stay alive. He used his powers for the good of himself and his mentor, but it wasn't enough. Peter's efforts weren't enough to stop his inevitabile death and Tony would make sure someone paid for that. With less sanity he expected Peter to be at the tower, waiting for him with a hug and a smile with his red mask in his hand, waiting for a mission report.
When Tony got off the ship this time he knew Peter wouldn’t be there, the ash stuck to his hand reminded him of that whenever he looked at them. It wouldn’t come off not matter how many times he brushed his hands on his palms or washed them the ash wouldn’t recede. People had stared at them but nobody dared to ask about the ash all of them were familiar with. The ash that condescended into his soul, a breaking point that would have nothing but blood.
The words had rung in his head, they wouldn’t stop . There was no prevail between the teenager’s sobs and his last breath, all played like a song to Tony. Constantly, on repeat until there was nothing left but silence and his child’s last breath.
“I’m sorry.”
In that moment, Tony hadn’t ever felt like such heartbreak. He’d have rather lived his life over until he rots than hear those words come from Peter’s mouth. And for those to be his last words, the last thing Tony would ever hear from him made him sick. The words of apology were bitter on his lips as he pressed a kiss to the hands that held the boy. The ones that held the ashes of his hero.
The hands that would fix this. The ones that would have to because this is a break that would kill him. Tony’s been tortured, enslaved, taken for ransom and anything else off the tip of his tongue but this is worse than all of those.
See, when you lose your parents you become an orphan, it’s simple vocabulary. Tony himself is an orphan, Peter was an orphan, but now Tony don’t know what to call himself. He just lost everything that mattered to him . There’s no word for losing a child because it’s already the gist of heartbreak; it’s already a thing. Tony lost a child, one that became like a son to him, one that trusted him and believed in him more than anyone.
The weight of the world was no longer resting on Tony’s shoulders because it was left on the ash of his fingertips. The lands around him crumpled when Peter Parker did and there was no other explanation for the emptiness of the air around him. The atmosphere was vacant of yet another hero, Tony’s hero, and he cried.
He cried and wiped his hands across his face, he cried and smashed them against the marble in front of him. He cried into Rhodey’s shoulder and showed him the remaining pieces of his son. He cried for days, he cried and cursed his fingers because he couldn’t look at them without thinking of the world he let down.
So he worked. Tony worked until the ash glittered orange and flew off his hands in a dust tornado, beautiful and glowing. Hope flared in his chest in hopes of seeing the boy’s ash that it belonged to, the one he couldn’t and would never get out of his head. He hopped into a quinjet with Rhodey and Clint and set the course to Titan.
His hands twitched with excitement when he saw it. The metallic red and blue with a strange hue of orange around his figure. There he was, Peter Parker materializing before his eyes and Tony couldn’t move faster. His knees hit the pavement faster than he would like to admit and he was terrified when the teenager spluttered, coughing up dust and ash particles in horror.
“Pete?” Tony whispered, reaching out to touch him, letting their fingers intertwine.
The kid smiled, that smile Tony knows is worth anything he’d give to see it. He smiles back.
“I’m sorry.”
Tony’s heart clenches and he tightens his grip on the boy’s fingers. “Don’t ever repeat that sentence, kid. I’ve been looking for you for an infinity. Space isn’t your strongest suit.”
Peter scrunches his eyebrows, much to his mentor's amusement. "Like, Buzz Lightyear?"
Tony can't hide the smile, his face betrays him and shows the true happiness he feels in this moment. He only chuckles and shrugs. "To infinity and beyond, kid.”
He looks up at the stars and then back at Peter, but who's to say there's much of a difference.