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In the aftermath of all that has happened, Peter stumbles through the streets of New York City with a single thought on his mind. He pushes his way through the few straggling survivors that decided it was safe to come out, he climbs over concrete slabs, he ducks through alleys, and he passes by his school, only to stop in front of his address.
The building’s gone.
He tries not to panic, and he looks up to the sky, licking his lips as he tries to figure out a way that she’s still alive, that he hasn’t lost the last family he has left. But even as he tries to convince himself that she’s still alive, he’s prompted forward by some instinct, and in the rubble, he can see her hand.
May’s gone.
Somehow, the pain doesn’t hit him. Somehow, he doesn’t cry. His lips are chapped and he’s covered in dirt, and he turns and heads towards Ned’s place. He walks aimlessly, as if the weight of the world had never settled on his shoulders, as if his head isn’t buzzing with everything that’s happened to him in the past week.
Through his daze, he hears someone shout his name, and he looks in the direction of the sound to see Michelle running towards him, leaping over the concrete and glass and cinder blocks.
“Peter!” She runs into his arms and holds him tight, burying her head in the crook of his neck. “Thank God, thank God you’re okay.”
He holds her in his arms, holds her tightly, noticing that she’s just as grimy as he is. She shivers in his arms, and it’s only a moment later that he realizes that she’s crying.
He doesn’t have to ask who all has died; the school was obliterated. If any bodies are found, it will be a miracle. Even still, he finds himself asking in his scratchy voice, one that has turned raw from screaming, “Ned?”
She doesn’t pull away, but he can feel her shake her head. She doesn’t speak – neither of them have the words.
“You’re such an idiot,” she says, “going out to save the world in nothing but a onesie.”
He manages to smile, just barely. “It’s not a onesie,” he murmurs.
She takes him back to her brother’s apartment. Peter doesn’t think about preserving his identity because the world doesn’t need that right now – he needs to get back on his feet, prepare for when Tony returns. Michelle’s brother gives him a change of clothes and points him to a shower that won’t work.
As they huddle in the living room in the middle of the night, the pressing question of what happened to the other Avengers hangs in the air. Is Tony alive? Is he coming back? Is anyone alive after the devastation that almost destroyed the world?
He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he answers.
It’s enough.
He breaks through time, through logic and space, and he hopes to God he can crawl out of where he is. He sees Steve lying dead on the ground, eyes still open, and he can’t help the pain that spreads to his heart. Rhodey and Sam still stand with him, and the only consolation Tony can offer them is, “The kid got out alive.” The rift in time and space has closed. Peter’s as safe as he can possibly be, which, to be fair, is not very safe at all. Dust coats his tongue, but he’s still alive, still standing.
But he needs to get back to Peter.
Loki lives, as does Thor, and they sit on the ground and while days pass (or, at least, what they believe are days on this planet), they map out how they’re going to get home. But home isn’t home for them, not anymore, not after the destruction that has swept Earth.
He doesn’t think about the dead bodies. He doesn’t look at them. There’s a time for that. A time and a place. Grieving distracts from the mission.
And even when they reach a dead end, even when Loki scrambles away from the Titan looking to complete their contract, Tony doesn’t stop trying to get back, never stops trying to find that one path to get them back to Earth where he can see his son, where he can finally grieve. He wonders, in moments between, how Peter’s taking it, where he is, whether he’s still trying to learn or if he’s too busy trying to rebuild. He wonders if Aunt May is still alive, and Peter’s best friend (“the guy in the chair,” Tony remembers with a smile), and Peter’s crush. He wonders if he has any other adults in his corner, wonders if Happy or Pepper have made it through so that they can help guide him.
Some nights he wants the answers to his questions. Other nights, he knows better.
The answers are painful. He’s not meant to know the answers. So he sits and waits, waits as time passes, as the metaphorical clock ticks, ticks, ticks, and he waits, waits, waits.
In time, the rift between time and space will open again. In time, he’ll be able to pull Rhodey and Sam and hopefully Thor and Loki along with him through it. Hopefully, Thanos won’t be able to follow them through, and Tony’s heart hurts because he needs to get back to the kid, needs to make sure Peter’s okay, but if he does, it could very well lead to the destruction of the world.
And when the rift opens, they only have 60 seconds to get through. They only have time for a few of them to pass through, only enough time for Rhodey, Sam, and Tony to get back home. As the fracture closes, Tony can see Thor and Loki standing side by side, ready to fight against Thanos one more time, and Tony hates himself, hates himself for leaving those two behind.
They don’t come out in New York City. They arrive somewhere in the Midwest, in the middle of nowhere, in a place that never saw civilization even before it was torn down. After a brief argument over which direction is technically east, they set out and crawl out of the endless sea of wheat and corn.
They’re going home.
At night, Peter remembers.
He remembers how gentle May was, how she held him close once his parents had died. He remembers crawling to her bedroom in the middle of the night and shaking her awake. He had expected her to tell him to go back to bed, but she scooted over and made room for him. She let him cry into his shoulder, and he stayed there for the night and the night after that, until he could sleep without having nightmares.
He remembers her cooking, trying to make Thanksgiving dinner, and he remembers Ben putting a finger over his lips, prepared to call a restaurant once May inevitably burned the turkey. In her own defense, the mashed potatoes came out perfectly. He remembers sitting with May and Ben on the couch that night and watching Doctor Who, when Ben said that Nine was his favorite Doctor and May unapologetically believed that Ten was the best.
He remembers dance parties and movie marathons, jokingly gagging whenever May and Ben danced like it was the eighties again.
He remembers getting the spider bite, and he remembers the fear in both May’s and Ben’s eyes. He remembers Ben telling him to stay calm, and he remembers the ambulance ride, he remembers doctors standing around in a confused daze, but he got better, he got better. He remembers that same fear in Ben’s eyes when the bullet tore through flesh, and he remembers that excruciating pain, the pain that never ended. He remembers May holding him again, holding him like she did when his parents died, but it’s tighter this time, and this time, she’s crying as much as he is and she hurts as much as he does.
The pictures in his brain shift, and he’s meeting Ned for the first time. Ned’s talkative and hyper, and Peter’s a shell of a boy, hiding in a t-shirt that’s more than a little large for him. Ned talks about Star Wars and Star Trek, and Peter makes a friend.
Ned sits with him while Peter refuses to talk with anyone else. He helps draw Peter out of his shell, and soon the teachers discover, thanks to Ned, that Peter’s one of the smartest students they’ve ever met. They send home report cards boasting of him, and he awkwardly hands them to May and Ben before ducking into his room to try and decipher Tony Stark’s work.
When Tony announces to the world that he is Iron Man, Ned sits beside him. When Tony flies the nuke into the wormhole, Ned puts a comforting hand on his shoulder and he tells him that Tony’s going to make it out okay.
But Ned’s there for more than that. He sits with Peter when Ben dies, and he doesn’t try and tell him “oh, life gets better.” He sits in silence and lets Peter cry. He draws Peter out of the shell before he can climb back in, and he makes sure he has things to do so that he won’t disappear into the recesses of his own brain.
Ned studies with him, watches movies and tv shows with him, builds LEGO sets with him. They spend more time together than any other person, and they’re brothers in everything but blood.
Ned finds out about Spider-man, and he keeps the secret. He comes up with excuses, and he saves Peter’s life more than once.
But Peter leaves. Peter leaves to go save the world.
And that’s where his memories twist and they toss him around like the waves of the sea.
Tony forced him away from the battle. Forced him to come back to a world of destruction. Forced him into a world with people hellbent on surviving.
But more than that, Peter remembers brief glimpses of Tony. Remembers working with him in the lab, remembers writing equations as quickly as he physically could, remembers offering suggestions that made Tony stop in his tracks, smile, shake his head, and say, “I knew I let you on as an actual intern for a reason.” Remembers abandoning actual work in favor of eating ice cream and talking about school or having movie marathons and trying to invent a fully functional lightsaber (they were partially successful).
More than that, though, he remembers Tony fighting to protect him in Berlin, at the ferry, in space. He remembers being rescued from the Hudson, rescued from the guilt of people dying because of his own mistakes. He remembers it, and he holds it tight to his chest.
In the silence of the night, though, he remembers Tony telling a story. He remembers watching Tony out of the corner of his eye, and he wanted to tell him, wanted to tell him that he knew, he knew Tony was his father. His honest-to-God biological father, but he didn’t. It wasn’t important.
But when he remembers how Tony pushed him through that portal, hoping that he would get to Earth, hoping that he would get back home, he knows that Tony knew. Down deep in the subconscious of his mind, he knew.
But again. Not important.
So in the silence of the night, he covers his ears with both of his hands and he holds close the memories of those who loved him, and he cries, alone, all by himself, in the empty space of the world.
Peter doesn’t know how long it’s been when he sees Tony in the middle of the street one day. Rhodey’s standing with him, and so is Sam, and Peter forgets everything for a moment, forgets himself, and he runs, runs, runs until his legs ache and his lungs burn. He runs into Tony’s arms, and Tony holds him close, reaches up to curl his fingers in Peter’s hair as he whispers, “Kid.”
They go back to the Avengers Tower, which, despite all odds, has remained standing. They try and plan rebuilding efforts, but it’s fruitless, they have nothing, no plan, no ideas on how to make this world safe anymore. Threats are imminent. They won’t stop coming.
They call it a night and retreat to their rooms.
In the middle of the night, Peter gets up to go to the lab, and he hears crying. Hears a man choking on his tears, and he opens the bedroom door to see Tony pressing a hand to his chest, sees how Tony clutches the pillowcase with his other one. He sees Tony crying, crying, and it doesn’t suit him, it isn’t right. Tony Stark is Iron Man. Tony Stark is Peter’s father. Tony Stark doesn’t cry.
Peter nods to himself and walks over to Tony’s bed and sits on the edge. “I miss them too,” he mutters.
Tony tries to smile at him.
He shakes his head a little and curls his hands into fists. “At least I can cry with someone else.”
Tony doesn’t leave him. Not when the tears stop coming, not when Peter has panic attacks, not when he can’t contribute to physical building efforts because of previous trauma. It’s not even a thought that crosses his mind. He’s not going to leave Peter Parker. He’s the only family he has left, and dammit if he’s not going to stand by that family.
And finally, for the first time, the sun rises and the world looks almost okay. Peter leans into Tony’s side. “We’re doing pretty okay,” he whispers.
Tony has to agree.