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He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
Tony is panicking even before he is fully awake, trying to suck in air and only getting sand into his mouth, his throat, his lungs. His arms are trashing around in a desperate attempt to pull himself out of the desert. His mind supplies him with the only viable explanation for the context. This is Afghanistan. He is back. And: They are coming for him. But then the last remaining rational part of his brain notes that something is wrong. The heaviness of the iron suit is missing.
Tony finally frees his head and gulps in sweet, pure air, again, again, and then coughs and spits sand onto the ground until he can breathe freely. He rests his head back, simply enjoying the feeling of not suffocating for the moment. He gets a few seconds of relief before the events finally catch up with him.
He remembers him and the kid, taking a test flight in his new arc reactor-powered plane. Tony letting Peter steer, going to fetch coffee from the back of the jet. Returning to see a tornado racing towards them at breakneck speed. Desperately trying to get away, while Peter next to him, motion sick as ever, is losing his breakfast into a plastic bag. Nearly succeeding in touching to the ground in the middle of the desert when a wing is ripped off with an ugly noise he’ll probably never forget. Then: Nothing.
Peter. The kid. Panic floods Tony’s veins. He pushes himself up on his hands and tries to stand, but a searing pain rips through his leg, strong enough to turn his vision black for a couple of seconds. It’s excruciating. Nausea rises from the pit of his stomach, and he swallows convulsively.
When Tony can see again, he carefully inspects the leg. His left foot is squeezed under a metal bar that was once part of the airplane’s belly and is now covered in blood. Old, dried blood. How long has he been lying here? And, more importantly, what’s wrong with Peter that prevented him from getting to Tony first?
He grits his teeth and starts to pull his leg out from underneath the rod, ever so slowly. Despite his best efforts, the pain increases to a level that almost has him passing out again. He bites his lower lip so hard that it starts to bleed, just to hold on to consciousness, because god, he needs to get going, needs to check on the boy.
A loud moan escapes him when the foot finally comes free with a jerk and the pain dials up another few numbers. Nausea overwhelms him, and it’s all he can do to roll onto his side and throw up a long forgotten breakfast into the desert sand.
Getting up is even worse. Any attempt to put weight onto his ankle results in bright hot agony. It is more than a flesh wound, then, something feels very much broken. Tony tries his best to keep standing. His vision is spotted with grey dots, but he can make out Peter’s motionless form around ten feet away. He can feel his heart rate doubling. The kid can’t be -
The few moments it takes to carry himself to Peter’s side, fall onto his knees and check the kid’s pulse with trembling hands seem like the longest in his life. But there it is, the steady beating, way too fast to be reassuring - but god, the boy is alive. Tony lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He feels shaky.
Peter’s face is showing the worst sunburn Tony has ever seen in his life. He wonders again how long they have been stranded here. It was morning when they left for the test flight, and now the sinking sun is nearly touching the horizon. Which means that they have been lying in bright sunlight for a whole day. And while Tony is badly overheated, his head was at least protected from direct irradation by the sand.
Whereas Peter…Tony feels his forehead, and yes, the kid is sweltering, but not sweating anymore. Heat stroke it is, then. He curses under his breath. The boy needs to be moved into shade as soon as possible. All he wants to do is lie down next to Peter and sink into a well-deserved sleep, but he knows he can’t. Instead, he heaves himself up and inspects his surroundings.
The plane is lying a few hundred yards away. He doubts he can make it until there without passing out, but even if, it would probably be unadvisable to do so. The jet is equipped with a brim-full fuel tank in case the arc reactor fails, and the fact that it hasn’t blown up yet doesn’t mean it won’t do exactly that the moment Tony reaches there. He can’t see any technical equipment in the few wrack parts around him, and both he and the boy were wearing civilian clothes, not suits, so there is no way to contact anyone for help right now. He’s got to make use of whatever debris is at hand.
—
It takes longer than he’d like to admit, but by nightfall Tony has constructed a makeshift shelter from scraps – he is an engineer, after all - and dragged Peter out of the sun. He has also found a single full bottle of water, and, though aware of its preciousness, he is using some of it to wet the kid’s head periodically in order to cool him down.
Peter’s enhanced body skills and the fact that his organs appear to be working gives Tony hope that the kid will pull through. He holds on to this fact as he sits with him throughout the night, trying to ignore the pain in his foot and the growing thirst, and willing the lingering panic away. This is not Afghanistan. This is not Yinsen. Someone will come for them, and they’ll get out just fine.
It is a few hours into the night when Peter stirs for the first time.
“Ow…” The boy’s hands wander clumsily towards his burnt face, on which blisters are beginning to show. Tony stops him in the air.
“Don’t touch, Peter. It’s just gonna hurt more. You’re okay.”
The boy is only half conscious, looking at him with wide, fever-glazed eyes. Tony is not sure whether he recognizes him. He uses the opportunity to bring the water bottle to Peter’s lips and feed him a few sips. The kid swallows mechanically two, three times, then his face contorts, and he retches it back up into Tony’s lap. The older man gives him thirty seconds before he tries again.
“N-Nauseous,” Peter presses out between gritted teeth, refusing to open his mouth.
“Yes, I know, kid. Just try to keep it down, okay? We don’t have that much water left.”
Peter nods without seeming to understand, then his eyes drift close, and he sinks back into the sand. Tony sighs and leans against the broken part of the wing that serves as wall to their tiny shelter. He stretches out his injured leg, trying not to look too closely at the fresh trickle of blood the movement brings with it.
They stay like this for the remainder of the night. Peter gets better with the hour. Unconsciousness turns into sleep turns into episodes in which Tony can push the water bottle between his lips and nudge him to swallow, eyes still closed. The kid is on the way uphill, thank god or the universe or whomever out there for the spider bite and his enhanced healing abilities.
Tony is deteriorating fast.
His crappy heart is slowly bailing out on him. He knows that his blood volume has been lowered dangerously, blood loss from his wound, heat exhaustion and dehydration all contributing their part. He can feel the arrhythmic beats even without having to touch his arteries. Dizziness and nausea are constant companions now, and any movement sends black spots dancing in his field of vision.
Tony is glad that he moved Peter into shade the evening before, because he is not sure whether he’d be capable of doing that now. He watches the sun rise and slowly make its way across the sky, the heat already unbearable even in the early morning, and waits for someone to come for them.
—
Tony isn’t there when Peter wakes up. He is behind their shelter, scraping on his hands and knees, puking his guts out.
“Mr. Stark? What’s - what’s wrong with you?” Tony startles when he hears Peter’s voice, relief and worry mixing in his gut.
“Just…give me a moment, kid.” He swallows hard as not to retch again, then wipes his mouth, trying his best to produce a reassuring smile on his face before he turns.
“Nice to see you up, Pete.”
The kid is still weak and visibly unsteady on his feet. He’s blinking against the sun as if he’s having a bad headache, but he’s definitely lucid, and that’s more than Tony could have hoped for after the kind of heat stroke he experienced.
“Come here.” He motions for Peter to bend down and presses his knuckles below the boy’s chin, the only area that was saved from the sunburn. Peter is still feeling warm, but the fever has come down significantly.
“We – we had a plane crash, right?” He looks around bewilderedly, and Tony can practically see the events replaying in his head. “I was steering and then - oh, shit. A-Are you okay? How long was I out?”
“Around a day. And before you get started on that, the crash wasn’t your fault. A tornado had the courtesy of paying us an unexpected visit.” Tony tries to get up and fails. “Would you give me hand here?”
He fills Peter in on the events while the kid supports him the few steps back to the shelter. Tony feels ready to faint once he sits down. He takes a few minutes to just breathe, to will the nausea and the creeping blackness away. The pain in his foot is pounding up till his ears. He can practically feel Peter’s eyes x-raying him when the kid hands him the water bottle.
“You’re injured pretty badly, right, Mr. Stark?” Tony takes a tiny sip, and it costs him all his willpower not to empty the bottle right on the spot.
“Na, just a scratch,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. You should see your own face, Freddy Krueger.”
He regrets the comment the moment it’s out. Peter’s eyes go wide while his fingers carefully prod the burned skin, his eyes screwing up in pain. It’s clear that he hasn’t yet thought about how it’s making him look.
“It’s gonna be okay, right?” he asks anxiously.
“Yes, kid, don’t worry. Give it a week and you can go back to posting selfies of your handsome face on Instagram.”
“Hey, I don’t do that!” Peter protests.
“Sure you don’t,” Tony smirks.
He pushes the water back at Peter.
“Here, you’ve got to rehydrate. I’ve had enough.” He motions at the half empty bottle, emitting the fact that most of it was spent on cooling the kid’s head during the night.
“They will find us, right?” Peter asks after taking a measured sip. The suppressed fear in his voice is evident.
“Of course, kiddo. The plane should have set off a distress signals, and even if that didn’t go through, Friday would have alarmed Pepper and May when we didn’t return at night. They gotta be searching for us already. It’s just a matter of time.” He pauses. “Consider it an…adventure trip, with unforeseen events. Training for becoming an Avenger.”
He laughs, which turns into a cough. Peter can only muster a weak grin.
“I should go to the plane, try to get more water,” he suggests.
“Yep, no. You’re definitely not doing that.”
“But – “
“No means no. It’s not worth the risk, the thing might blow up the moment you set foot there.”
“You just said that I am on training–"
“Survival training, yes. Not a lesson in how to get yourself killed as fast as possible. You’re staying with me.”
—
“I’m never having holidays at the beach again. I’ll do diving, deep below the ocean. Or I’ll opt for an underground cave,” Tony complains. “Okay, maybe not that, considering my history, but I’ll definitely go somewhere where there’s not a single beam of sunlight. And not a single grain of sand.”
It’s late afternoon, but the heat seems worse than it was at noon. Or maybe this is Tony’s screwed sense of temperature running wild.
He is lying flat on his back. He must have fallen asleep at some point of time during the day, because he doesn’t remember how he got into that position. Things are all a little fuzzy in his head. There’s something soft below his neck, any he pulls on it to reveal a sleeve of Peter’s jacket.
“I still like the beach,” the boy says from above him. He is leaning against the makeshift wall, occupying the same spot Tony was sitting at last night. “Deserts and beaches are different things. But right now, I want to be inside a fridge. You know those huge freezers they have in supermarkets to store pizza and ice-cream? I’d really love to sleep in one of them.”
“Don’t you know that spiders are bad at handling cold?” Suddenly, the idea of freezers and ice-cream seems abhorrent. Tony trembles when a chill wracks his body.
“Mr. Stark? You’re running a fever, right?”
That makes sense. His wound must have gotten infected. He adds it to the list of things that are going very, very wrong this week, just after the fact that his heartbeat is mimicking an AC/DC rhythm.
“I’m okay, boy,” he objects weakly.
“No, you are not. You are, like, radiating heat? I can feel it till here,” Peter states, worry evident in his voice. “I think your foot got infected. Shouldn’t we try to, I don’t know, clean it somehow?”
“Yeah, and how is this supposed to work out? Did I somehow miss the water canisters and disinfectants you store in your jeans pocket? Or the fact that you can conjure a river out of nowhere?”
“Sorry, Mr. Stark. It’s just…I just want to do something, I guess.”
Tony immediately regrets his snap. He knows the kid is only trying to help. “There’s nothing we can do right now, except waiting for them to find us,” he adds in a calmer voice.
Peter doesn’t respond. Tony tries to read his face, but it’s too exhausting. The air around the kid seems to be vibrating. He feels his eyelids drooping.
“Why aren’t they there yet?” Peter’s voice asks after a while. He sounds openly worried this time.
Tony should know this. He’s had the same question in his mind a few hours ago, and he knows for sure that there had been a satisfying answer. But his brain is sluggish, and his thoughts take turns and circles where they shouldn’t, leading him away from where they started off…
“Mr. Stark?”
Right. Come on, you’re a genius. What was the question again?
“They… They must be trying to find us,” he manages. “Maybe the storm carried us away from the location from where the distress signal was set off originally, and this is why they couldn’t locate us immediately.”
Or maybe the signal didn’t get through, and they have no idea where to search. It might take days, then. He doesn’t say it aloud.
“How’s your face, Pete?” he asks, trying to distract both of them. God, he’s cold. He hopes that Peter can’t hear his shattering teeth.
“Itching. Hurting.” He can feel Peter shrugging. “It’s okay, I guess. But…I tried to get up while you were asleep, look at what’s outside. It didn’t work.”
“Didn’t work, as in…?”
“I got really dizzy. Kinda fell down.”
There’s a beat of silence while Tony tries not to freak out.
“Have another sip of water, kid,” he says in the calmest voice possible.
“But it’s your tur-“
“Just do what I say.”
—
By nightfall, it starts to rain. Tony is too weak to sit up, so he just crawls out into the water. He finally understands why it is that people pray to rain gods. He’s never felt so relieved in his life, he thinks, while sticking out his tongue in a childish manner to taste the rich drops of water.
He’s soaking wet within seconds, and it feels like the water is returning his energy bit by bit. A few more minutes, and he’ll be able to get up, wake Peter, ask him to join. He should call Pepper as well, knowing that she likes the smell of rain, even if she probably wouldn’t want to get wet…Something stings in his chest at the thought of her, but he can’t put a finger on what it is.
When he wakes up, it’s to an exasperated Peter trying to push him back from where he rolled out underneath the shelter. It’s night, and the ground around him his bone dry. Disappointment settles like a heavy weight on his chest.
“Do we have water left?” he croaks. His throat is rough like sandpaper, his lips are cracked and bleeding. Just a drop of rain…But this is wrong, he should leave the water for the kid. On the other hand, he will probably traumatize Peter for life if he dies here in front of him. And Tony is pretty sure he won’t make it much longer without liquid. God, he’d kill for a scotch right now.
“No, you forced me to drink the last of it a few hours ago.” The kid’s voice sounds nearly as weak as his own. “Don’t you remember?”
“Course I do, kiddo,“ he lies. “Course I do.”
—
“Mr. Stark?” Peter’s tone is outright scared.
“Yeah?”
“What - what if they don’t come? What if no one ever comes for us?”
“They will, kid. They’re taking a bit too long for my liking, but they’ll find us eventually.”
“What if- “
“Kid. Want some advice from an old, wise man?” he pauses to cough. It hurts. “Ok, that was bullshit.”
“Yeah, you’re not wise.”
“Watch it. I’m not old. But listen: Don’t think about it. I’d never made it here alive if I’d given too much thought about what-ifs.”
Peter’s fingers find his own, squeezing tight. Tony shivers under his touch. His eyes drift close.
“No, Mr. Stark. Please, don’t fall asleep.” He knows what the kid is actually saying. Don’t die, please. Don’t leave me alone.
“I’ll try kid. I’ll try my best.”
—
His parents come to see him, his mother looking small and worried, his father staring at him disapprovingly.
“What, even while I’m dying you’ve got something to complain about?” Tony shouts in desperation, but he never gets a reply.
There’s bouts of Afghanistan, of torture, of an icy cold closing around his chest. Pepper visits for hours, sits at his bedside, crying. He reaches out to comfort her, to tell her he is still there, but her hand turns into desert sand that trickles down through his fingers. Then he falls through the wormhole, again and again, till there is nothing but blackness.
He surfaces again to hear Peter sobbing. Tears are running down his face, and for a moment Tony is weirdly impressed that there’s still enough liquid in Peter for him to be able to cry.
“What ‘appened, kid?” he slurs.
“I - I saw my uncle,” comes the choked reply. “He was there, with May…it felt so real.”
For a moment relief spreads through Tony. Someone has come. Someone has come to save them. Then his slowed-down brain processes the words. Peter’s uncle. His dead uncle.
Great, now the kid is hallucinating as well.
“S’okay, Pete.” he tries to reassure. But it’s not. It’s really, really, not okay.
One of his hands is still wrapped around Peter’s, and he tries to hold on to it as good as he can. The other one finds his own wrist, keeps track of the slow, unsteady beating of his ailing heart. The pulse is random, with increasing gaps in between. He thinks of warning the kid of an impending heart attack, but really, what should he do except worrying more? Tony doubts the boy is in any shape to keep up CPR.
Tony can hear people calling his name, but then there’s silence, and he figures that they were not real, either. That’s good, because no one is supposed to find him. He barely escaped the cave, and he’s really in no mood for another round of water-boarding.
He thinks that Peter keeps on talking to him, and then he feels as if there’s something cool and soothing flooding his veins. But that’s not possible, because the next moment everything is dry and hot and burning again, and how did Peter even get to Afghanistan?
—
He comes to with a jerk, panicking, panting. He tries to sit up, but is pushed back down immediately. Then there’s something at his lips, the rim of a plastic bottle, and then pure, clear liquid trickles down his throat.
This can’t be real. He must be in another fever dream, or in heaven. But then, he’s hurting too much to actually be dreaming, and he figures that even if heaven existed, he’d definitely not make it there.
Reality, then, it is. It’s fine with him, as long as there’s water here. He drinks and gulps till his stomach’s had enough and the liquid comes back up, making him gag and sputter.
“Easy,” a deep voice says. “Not too much at once.”
Someone pats him on the shoulder. He squints. Black skin, dark, concerned eyes.
“Rhodes?” Tony croaks incredulously.
“Seriously, dude. A desert, again? Couldn’t you have picked a different location for a change? Next time, please, fucking crash in an ocean.”
Tony doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. He settles for grabbing the water bottle from Rhodey with uncoordinated fingers and letting the liquid run over his face, his neck.
He loves this. Once he is home, he’ll double the size of the swimming pool. He will turn the whole garden into a water amusement park and give free entry to school kids in the summers. Pepper will probably give him hell for this, but Peter is going to love it.
Peter. Memories stir in his mind.
“The kid?” he asks, making to sit again, just to be stopped by Rhodey.
“Stay down, Tony. Your heart stopped. You were dead for two minutes. And you’re running a temperature of nearly 104. Yes, the kid’s alright.” He motions over behind his shoulder. “You gave him quite a scare, though.”
Tony slowly turns, feeling every inch of his body scream in pain. Through his wavering vision he can see Peter sitting a few steps away, looking gruesome with the burnt skin peeling of his face, scared and tired and absolutely done with the world. There are streaks of tears that left trails on the dust and bruises covering his cheeks. Tony wonders how much time he missed, what the boy went through while he was unconscious. Guilt adds to the nausea in his stomach.
But Peter is alive. A medic is hooking him up to an IV, and Tony glances down to see himself already plugged in. He knows that this is the part where he should black out and only wake up once he’s in a hospital in New York, drugged up and at least halfway healed. But he doesn’t give in to the pull, not yet. Somehow he knows that it’s not over.
And he’s right. When they are supposed to get into the helicopter, panic spreads all over Peter’s face.
“No, no, please don’t.” he mumbles under his breath, resisting the medics that are trying to manhandle him into the vehicle.
And Tony understands. It doesn’t matter how safe the helicopter is, or how improbable it would be to hit another tornado. It doesn’t matter that every cell of his brain tells the boy that he is safe, as long as he doesn’t feel it. Tony would know better than anyone else.
“Hey.” Tony grabs Peter’s hand with as much strength as he can muster. “Spiderman, look at me,” he commands.
Peter is pale under his sunburn, his eyes seem empty.
“Listen to me. It’s over now, okay? It’s over.” He coughs, then spits a bit of bile and water into the sand.
“You’re gonna go back to your home, to your aunt, to your Instagram pics and your Spiderman suit. You’re gonna rest, and heal, and once you are ready, you’ll come to my lab and we will rebuild the plane that brought us here.” Peter stares at him, resistance flaring up in his eyes.
“I don’t want to-" he starts.
Tony ignores him. “And I want you to find a way to make it stable enough to withstand any other storms, any turbulences. Do you understand? You are going to design a tornado-proof jet. Think of it as your special internship project.”
It’s tempting to tell the boy that he’ll never have to sit in a plane again. But it would be just the wrong thing to do. Because there is no use in running. Because doing it better is the only way Tony has escaped the nightmares that lurk behind every corner. Because sometimes you can’t mend the broken things, but you can save those that are still whole from tearing apart.
“O- Okay.” Peter nods and then slowly lets out a breath. There’s the tiniest edge of a smile around his lips when he squeezes Tony’s fingers hard and then pushes himself upright to stand on shaky legs before allowing Rhodey to help him into the helicopter.
They give Peter heavy painkillers and a tranquillizer, and then he finally drifts off in the seat next to Tony’s gurney, his tensed expression slowly giving way to a more peaceful one as sleep embraces him.
It’s only then that Tony gives in to the full-blown panic attack he’s been navigating around for days. He pants and shivers his way through it, trying and failing to ground himself. The desert, Rhodey, the helicopter - it’s all he can do to focus on Peter’s curled up form to convince his feverish brain that he is not back in Afghanistan, because the boy is the one detail that makes all the difference.
When his stomach can’t take it anymore, he throws up over the side of the cot, dry heaving long after he is empty. Rhodey is by his side all the time, talking quietly and shielding him from the medics’ view as good as possible, but the only person Tony really wants to be around right now is Pepper. Just a few more hours, he tells himself.
When he is finally done, he wipes his mouth and eyes with shaky fingers, laying back down and trying to breathe, just breathe.
It’s over, but it’s really not, as are all those fucked up things that ever happened in Tony’s life. His demons are always there, lurking just beneath the surface. And he swears to himself, just before the exhaustion finally pulls him under, that he will do everything in his power to prevent the same from happening to Peter.