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When Tony finally gets off Titan, the first person he sees is Bruce. He runs up to the man and hugs him, Bruce leaning on him for support, clearly not used to fighting as him. The Iron Hulk suit is in pieces, not that Tony had the energy to care.
Natasha is also there, but he doesn’t see the rest of the team. He sees a lifeless Vision on the ground; a pile of ash next to him that Tony has to assume is Wanda. Thor is comforting a standing raccoon. He takes a deep breath. It’s all his originals, the ones that fought off the attack on New York. He knows the team for the coming battle.
And that’s when he sees Steve.
The way the man has fallen to the ground on his hands and knees combined with the utterly crushed expression on his face reminded Tony of how he had looked just a few hours ago. Losing someone you cared for so deeply, like family, that was the only thing that could make a person look like that.
Which mean the pile of ash on the ground must have been Barnes.
Steve finally notices his presence and looks up. He rises quickly, standing at full attention. The two men regard each other stiffly, standing at odds for a long minute. Steve steps forward first, but the two men hug in understanding. There’s no more time for petty rivalries or ideological battles, not when half the world is dead. And Steve says as much.
Steve has let himself go while on the road. His hair is long, his beard untrimmed. The red around his eyes could be from sleepless nights, Tony’s fault, or the death of his best friend, also Tony’s fault. “Tony,” the man says, “we’re going to need you.”
And that’s when Tony promptly resigns as Iron Man.
Pepper wouldn’t say she’s happy, of course. She’s relieved, yes. She knew sooner or later something would give and Tony would snap out of it. One can only play god for so long. But Peter was just a kid.
May, to Tony’s dismay, had known about Spiderman since after the whole Vulture adventure. Tony should have guessed; any normal aunt would have eventually asked what the internship was about, and Peter isn’t all too good at lying.
Wasn’t. He wasn’t all too good at lying.
He makes his way out to Queens, takes the 7 train instead of a company SUV. He knocks on the door and May, radiant as ever, opens it and smiles. Tony’s chin quivers, and her face drops. “In,” she demands.
May cries when Tony tells her.
It’s not like he’d expected anything different. This was her nephew, she’d raised him. She’d tied his tie on the night of his first high school dance, but him his first lab kit, taught him how to play his first video game. That’s not the shocking part.
The shocking part is when May hugs him.
“Why?” he asks. “It’s my fault he’s gone.”
Even more shocking is when May smiles. The two of them had gotten to know each other well over the past few years, with Peter crashing at the lab some nights when it was too late to go home. Tony would send a picture of the kid slumped over his desk, mouth open, and text it to her to show her he was alright.
She smiles sadly and says, “You lost a kid too, Tony.”
It wasn’t like Natasha really knew the kid. She had met him at the airport battle, and then she had been on the run for two years. But it wasn’t like she hadn’t checked up on Tony every once in a while; the two of them were friends after all. She used to see pictures of him, smiling in the background at science fairs, cheering Peter on at decathlons. And in all honesty? She understood why he couldn’t go on.
He has May with him when he tells Peter’s friends the next day. That at least is a comfort. They’ve gotten used to him too, MJ and Ned.
MJ cries, just like May did. She feels bad, he’d have to assume. He doesn’t really remember what it was like to be a teenager, but he’d known the two of them often teased each other, by which he meant MJ teased Peter and Peter laughed about it. And sometimes, when someone is gone, you wish you’d acted better.
It’s Ned’s silence that stuns him. His best friend singe kindergarten was gone and he’s just… quiet.
Ned had looked up to him too, Tony thinks. It’s the idea of a nerd becoming rich, becoming famous. The same thing that made Peter admire him.
When he asks Ned why, he gets a short response. “He went out the way he wanted to, Mr. Stark,” the boy says, a little biting. “That way you taught him to want to.”
Ned promptly gets up and leaves, slamming the door behind him.
Steve never had a prodigy, he was a prodigy. He was trained and groomed and touted around the country by people who didn’t give a damn about his mental wellbeing. But they were still heartbroken over seeing him leave, even though he was nothing but a wartime prop. There’s an attachment that grows, and he can only imagine it’s harder when there’s a genuine, caring relationship involved. Steve was a prodigy too. And whether it’s Brooklyn or Queens, New York boys are sweet, loyal to a fault, and it hurts like hell when they’re gone.
Tony marries Pepper in December. They’d eloped right after he’d gotten back, too scared to wait any longer. But for the press and the big white dress and the morale, well that wedding was in December.
Rhodey was his best man. Steve and the rest of the team took the weekend off. “There needs to be some celebration,” said Steve, “if there’s no life to be lived, there’s nothing worth fighting for.”
He catches Bruce by the fondue pot, who tells him the truth. They’d gotten closer, much closer, but they’d hit something of a wall recently. The team needed a break.
He sees Steve cry during the ceremony. Even Natasha sheds a few tears. Thor is bawling. Pepper is gorgeous, and everything is beautiful.
But god damn it if when Pepper’s nephew hands them their rings something feels off.
Ned understands why Peter did it of course. He had to be an Avenger, the friendly neighborhood Spiderman could only do so much for so long. But the neighborhood, his neighborhood was starting to feel the absence. So he sneaks into Peter’s room and makes some alterations to the costume, the old one with the hoodie and the goggles. And then there are the reports; The Spider-Man is back, but he’s not as agile, not as fast. When May finds out she hugs him and tells him he better be safe. Not as agile, not as fast, but getting there.
It’s June when he gets the call from Brue.
They’ve found him. They found Thanos and they’re going to take him down. Does he want in?
He looks at Pepper and his eyes give it all away. He doesn’t want to make her angry, he knows she’s tired of handling this from him and he promised it would be over.
She avert her eyes and gives a quick, curt nod.
He runs to the lab and digs through the draws for a key. He uses the key to unlock a dusty safe behind a pile of books and reaches in, grasping what he’s been looking for.
And for the first time in over a year, he slaps the arc reactor onto his chest. As he feels it powering up he knows that this is last mission because if he fails, he’ll probably die.
But if he succeeds, he’ll have the kid back, and that’s all that really matters.