Chapter Text
He was gone. Tony couldn’t believe it. He had left him. From the moment he heard those awful, terrified words escape Peter’s trembling lips,
Please, Mr. Stark.
he knew. In the back of his mind, in the pit of his stomach, he knew, but he wasn’t going to believe it until the kid’s body was gone; turned to dust in his arms. But now that had happened, and Tony had no idea what to do.
You’re alright.
He wasn’t, and he had known it. Tony regretted his words already. The kid’s last moments, and all he had wanted was comfort,
Save me, Mr. Stark, please.
but Tony didn’t give it to him. His final wish. He was too busy denying the fact that the kid, his kid, was dying in his arms and neither of them could do a single thing about it. He watched numbly as the teen’s pained face crumbled and drifted away. Peter was long gone before the last grain of dust floated from Tony’s arms.
‘M sorry.
—————
Tony’s hand clutched tightly to his chest as he rocked slowly back and forth on the dry Titan dirt. He held the last of Peter in his hands- what he had managed to scrape from the ground and brush off his suit before it was blown away.
He felt like he had been taken by the hot, dry, wind too. Like he was drifting, up and away from this nightmare of a planet and back into the cold atmosphere where they had come from- where Peter would never get to return. He felt disconnected, like his body wasn’t his own. He was floating, save for the hand still held tight to his heart. The ash-filled fist was the only thing still anchoring him and keeping him from floating away from the dry surface of Titan.
But would that really be so bad?
________
“Stark?”
Tony was yanked back to reality when a cold hand was placed on his shaking shoulder, effectively slamming his mind back into place. His head whipped around, dazed brown eyes meeting a pair of cold black ones.
Nebula, he realized. He only vaguely knew the names of those that had been fighting on Titan alongside himself, Peter, and Strange, but he definitely recalled Quill (or Big Pete, as Peter had taken to calling him not long after the mutually exciting realization of their shared name) briefly mentioning something about her being the sister of the girl killed by Thanos. Thanos, who, as he had learned later, was their father.
At any other time, this probably would’ve been a sound reason to distrust her, but 1) they were the only ones left only this hellhole of a planet, and deteriorating as fast as he was, he didn’t have much of a choice, and 2) looking into her eyes and reading her tense body language now, Tony could make out hesitance, grief, and overwhelming, all-consuming anger.
“Get up, we need to go,” Nebula said, monotone.
Tony felt his stomach drop further, somehow. He thought that if it happened even just one more time, it’d be spilling out onto the floor.
He’d known in the back of this mind this was coming since the moment the last of Peter had left his fingertips. He’d have to leave, which, an hour and a half ago, sounded like the best thing in the world. But now, it meant reality. Leaving meant abandoning his friends, abandoning the possibility of their return. If they came back, they would be all alone.
He couldn’t do that to them. To Peter.
Ever since the Vulture incident, Tony and Peter had been growing closer. Close enough, in fact, to notice the kid’s desperate avoidance to being alone. Sometimes when Tony was working in the lab, he’d turn around and the kid would be there, quietly working on homework or his own project. If Tony was in the kitchen snacking, Peter would sit on the couch in the adjoined living room just close enough to keep Tony in sight.
Tony figured it probably had something to do with his parents’ and uncle’s death. The spider-kid liked to keep his eye on his mentor to make sure he wasn’t leaving him too.
Not that it mattered, though. What mattered now that was if- no, when- Pete came back, he would be on this horrid planet alone. And Tony couldn’t leave him like that again.
“Stark? Are you listening to me?”
Tony felt his breath pick up, heart racing in his chest. Just the notion of leaving his kid lonely and afraid made his stomach churn and his throat narrow. The hand on his shoulder shook him roughly, but this time, it didn’t rouse him.
His thoughts filled with images of the boy- Peter drowning in the lake, Peter pinned under a building, Peter crashing into the beach… Peter crying and crumbling to dust on an alien planet. Tony’s vision dimmed and swam, darkening at the edges.
He could vaguely hear someone yelling in front of him, but he figured something must’ve gotten messed up between his ears and his brain because it was fuzzy and nothing made sense. Tony gasped fruitlessly, and the black spots grew larger and the voice grew increasingly quiet.
His watery eyes drifted shut and everything was silent.
___________
Tony’s head pounded and his mouth felt dry. He could hear the humming of machinery around him. The lab? Even in his half conscious state, hope made his heart pound and his senses clear slightly. Maybe, just maybe, he had ignored Pepper’s exasperated lectures again and spent one hour too many working himself to exhaustion in his workshop until he fell into sleep and woke up on the cold lab table. Peter’s death was just one more nightmare to add to his growing collection.
However, as Tony become more aware, his optimism crashed back to floor. He could feel a firm, warm surface underneath him. He definitely didn’t have a bed in the lab, as good as an idea that would be. Listening more carefully, the engineer could hear clanging footsteps, which was odd. Unless Dum-E had suddenly grown legs, Tony didn’t know why someone would be traipsing around his space.
Sighing in resignation, he wrenched his eyes open. They were half glued shut with goop accumulated from his tears. Tony groaned miserably. Yep, probably not a dream then.
When he’d finished blinking the haziness from his vision, he started to take note of his surroundings. The ceiling above him was made of patchy metal, not streamlined sheets and bright fluorescents like he’d hoped. As he glanced around, Tony realized the walls, the floor, and everything else was too. He let his eyes drift shut again, overcome with grief. The machines continued rumbling on.
Eventually, the footsteps came closer and Tony looked up in time to put a face to the voice that stated, “Welcome aboard the Benatar.”
_________
As it turned out, Tony had passed out on Titan. Lack of oxygen and blood loss or something like that. He woke up with swollen eyes, a bandaged chest, and an IV in the med bay on the Guardians’ ship, alone except for a metal lady, who he was pretty sure was half insane, and his thoughts.
At least, it used to be the Guardians’ ship. Now, they were dead. Gone, just like Peter. Tony hoped wherever they were, and as non compos mentis as Quill and his crew had seemed, that they were taking care of Peter.
When he had come back to awareness on the hospital bed, Tony wasn’t completely clean, but all the ash had been dusted from his body. His hand, which had been clutching so tightly onto the last of his kid’s existence, was empty, save for a few dark smudges over his palms.
If Tony hadn’t broken already, that realization sure did the trick. He had managed to keep a handle on it until Nebula left medbay, but the moment she was gone, Tony turned onto his side and let a cascade of tears roll down his cheeks, which were quickly sopped up by the bedsheet beneath him.
When he had run out of tears, his head ached, his mind was numb, and his sheets were soaked, so he slept.
________
Returning to Earth wasn’t quite as lighthearted and jovial an event as Tony’d hoped it would be. It couldn’t be, not when he was sans one bright, bubbly spider-kid at his side. As he stepped down the ramp of the aircraft back onto American soil, his head was reeling with deja vu. Once again, he was returning from foreign soil with another little piece of himself missing. With a gaping hole in his chest. But this time, that piece was not in the shape of a super-powered battery, but a 15 year old boy.
Last time, when he’d stepped off, he’d felt safe again. Rhodey held him, Pepper was by his side every instant, and Happy was a helping hand. He had things to do; a company to run; people to save.
This time, there was no one. No one left to love, care for, or protect. His heart had been turned to dust too.