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Peter was almost three when Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars. Tony was thirty-four, smack-dab in the middle of his wildest years, and while he certainly remembers that SI technology featured heavily in the launch and the rovers themselves, he certainly can’t remember any of the details. Some of his technology was on Mars. Great.
What Tony does still remember is that there was a time when the vastness of space called to him, when he wanted to give inspiring names to little robots and send them out exploring places man couldn’t yet reach. Those feelings are long gone, frozen in a dark wormhole, swept away like dust, and obliterated by nightmares that became realities. When CNN interrupted stories of the clean up in New York with breaking news that Curiosity had safely landed on Mars, Tony ordered JARVIS to turn it off. When InSight landed last November, he’d done the same thing, and quickly downed half a bottle of Glenlivet to try and rid himself of the taste of ash in his mouth. If Tony never had to think about anything outside of Earth’s atmosphere again, he’d die content. He’d decided that once and for all when the Thor safely brought the modified Quinjet back to Upstate New York.
But Peter was only three when Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars. He was seven when Spirit got stuck in a pile of sand (Tony was thirty-nine, and palladium had just begun to poison his blood), and eight the last time NASA received a communication. He was almost eleven when Curiosity landed. And he was sixteen-slash-twenty when he finally had enough energy to sit up in his large bed in the compound and drag a StarkPad into his lap. Tony had almost thrown up all over his own tablet when the holographic image of mars.nasa.gov appeared in the air in front of his too pale, too exhausted kid.
“Ohhh, he’s followed Opportunity since he was little-little! My Ben always loved the space missions...I remember Christmas when he was three, he spent the entire afternoon with Ben exploring that website they set up with all the robot parts.” May had actually laughed when Tony asked her in the hallway outside Peter’s bedroom. She’d poked her head back in the door and smiled at her nephew as he flicked around the page, reading whatever updates he expected to see since the last time he’d checked it, which was technically only a few weeks prior. He didn’t mention to either of them that the missions were abandoned before everything was turned back.
Peter was still sixteen-slash-twenty when a historic dust storm covered the red planet, and he’d looked up at Tony over his cereal--his genius creation of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cracklin’ Oat Bran in chocolate milk--and told him that Opportunity was “going to sleep.”
“Sleep?” Tony had tried to school his features so Peter wouldn’t realized he actually didn’t care, or rather he did, just about how he wished they could be talking about anything else than what was above the exosphere.
“Yeah, there’s a dust storm? So I guess it sent a message three days ago, and now it’s going into stand-by mode to save power.”
Tony had to fight not to flinch at the word dust. “When’s it going to wake up?”
“She is going to wake up when the storm is over? I think?” Peter had squinted at the tablet screen (no holograms at the breakfast table) and shoveled cereal into his mouth.
“Well, I hope she sleeps better than all of us in the Compound.”
“Hey, I slept for almost seven whole hours last night!”
“Yes, and we’re all very proud of you--you know, you don’t actually have to drink coffee, Pete.”
Peter had smiled through his grimace as he swallowed hard. “I’m trying to acquire a taste.” He’d set the tablet down. “‘Night, Oppy.”
He continued to check for updates, while they were at the Compound until they hauled back to the city, when school started and through the holidays. And Tony even started to check too; not as often or as loudly to whoever would listen, but he felt like he had to, another responsibility he now willingly carried for his Spider-kid. And even though he still wanted to invest in an impenetrable force-field separating Out There from Down Here, he still felt like he had to watch for any updates from the tiny golf cart on Mars, so at the very least, he could let him know if there was anything new the public wasn’t privy to.
Even if Tony knew, statistically, the odds were not great. Tony examined the specs when he got back to the Tower, and it was frankly a miracle the little robot lasted as long as it did. Her power-supply depended on solar panels that had been covered with dust since June, and the temperatures on Mars could easily destroy the delicate electronics in days if it couldn’t keep itself warm. But Peter had hope, and Tony knows now that sometimes the odds don’t mean anything. He’s proven that himself over and over again.
******
“They’re gonna try and contact Oppy one last time.”
“Hmmm?” Tony looks up from the crib schematics that Pepper insisted were going far too overboard.
“Opportunity,” Peter plops down on the couch under the window, pulling his legs up and under himself. It’s been a rough few days, and Tony feels bad that the kid has spent half his winter break just on this side of miserable, but at least he’s leaving his room without coaxing. “NASA is gonna try and send one last message tonight.”
“Oh,” Tony had seen this coming, of course. He may not be on the best terms with the United States government, but he still has enough pull and authority to get his questions answered. His contact in the Rover program had let him know in early January. But with the hibernation mess and the fact that he couldn’t face a heartbroken Peter, he’d never told him. “Any indication on the site of what they think the chances are?”
“No,” Peter picked at his fleece pajama pants. “But I think they’ve sent over a thousand messages. I know what that means, Mr. Stark.”
“Well, they still gotta send one more, kid,” Tony sets the StarkPad down on the coffee table and smiles at him gently. “You hungry?”
“Can we get pizza?”
“Sure.”
*******
Tony sighs and clasps his hand down on Peter’s shoulder.
“--and I learned, this morning, that we had not heard back, and our beloved Opportunity has remained silent. It is therefore, and I’m standing here, with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude, that I declare the Opportunity Mission as complete, and the Mars Exploration Rover Mission as complete.”
“They called it,” Peter sighs. His shoulder slumps under Tony’s hand.
“Yeah?” Tony knows, even if the press conference on Peter’s laptop hadn’t spelled it out.
“Yeah,” he blinks rapidly and clicks off the sound on the monitor. “She didn’t answer last night. So they sent a song up and that’s it.”
“What song?”
“Something called ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’”
“‘Something called?’” Tony rolls his eyes and heads over to Peter’s workstation. “That’s Billie Holiday. Show some respect.”
“I’ve never heard it.”
“I have,” Tony squeezes the back of his neck and walks around Peter’s workstation to his own desk. “It’s a classic. Fitting.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep,” Tony sits in his chair and swivels around to face Peter. “‘I’ll find you in the morning sun, and when the night is new, I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.’”
“Not the moon. Mars.”
“There’s no song about Mars, Pete.”
“That’s true,” Peter looks back at his laptop screen, but keeps the sound off. “That’s nice, I like it. They sang her to sleep.”
“Yeah, kiddo,” Tony says. He isn’t exactly expecting a reply, and is surprised when he gets one.
“Ben and I used to follow the updates. He loved space and stuff. I used to want to be an astronaut.”
“I think we all did, at one point,” Tony chuckles sadly, remembering how the moon once called to him, too. “There’s something about the places we can’t get to. Human nature, and all that.”
“But...we did get there,” Peter turns to look at him, a hopeful glint suddenly in his eyes. “Can we go get her?”
“Excuse me?”
“Us!” He sits up straighter in his chair. “The suits can go up there! Can we go?”
“Jesus Christ, Peter, no, they can’t. They can do a lot, but SI hasn’t mastered reasonably-timed space travel yet.”
“Oh, yeah,” his shoulders slump again. It makes something ache inside that just like any other kid his age, glimmers of hope can still override his genius. “It’d take years.”
“Also, you’re not leaving the troposphere ever again. At least not until I’m dead.”
“Well, I’m never letting that happen,” Peter mumbles, and cracks his left index finger. “What about Nebula? If we called her, she’d stop.”
“She sure would, but we’re not gonna bother Neb and Carol. We don’t know where they are.”
“Last week she said they were near Xandar.”
Tony rolls his eyes; of course Neb messages Peter. She became quite protective of him rather quickly, picking up Tony’s slack when he’d needed to rest and recover on the re-return trip from Titan.
“You can’t waste a Neb-favor by asking her to make a 2.5 million lightyear pitstop, bud,” Tony knows she’d do it, but they shouldn’t ask. And who knows what would chase them into solar system. “Save it for when you need a date to prom.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Stark,” Peter rolls his eyes.
“Well, she’s wouldn’t be as scary to ask as MJ,” Tony teases, hoping to pull a smile from his Spider-kid. It works, kind of, a small snicker before Peter frowns and turns back to his screen, thankfully not listing off the remaining Avengers who could possibly make it up there. Tony makes a mental note to send a message to Thor and Loki to ignore him.
“It’s the end of an era.”
“Well,” Tony smacks his knees and stands up. “Then let’s do it in style.” Peter’s just started to come out of his funk, his recharge as May called it, and he’s not about to let him fall back in it. “Pour one out for Oppy.”
Peter narrows his eyes as Tony heads towards the glass door of the lab. “‘Pour one out?’ Do you even know what that means?”
“I know more than you,” Tony makes a face. “C’mon, kid. You just can’t tell your aunt.”
******
“I know it’s stupid, Mr. Stark,” Peter sighs and takes a sip of his beer, just barely hiding his grimace. The kid has--thankfully--yet to develop a real taste for alcohol. Save the champagne Happy and May snuck him at the wedding, but this is not a Champagne Situation. “They’re robots. But like,” he waves his hand around, as if he’d be able to catch a way to describe it in the air in front of him. “You know. They said her last message was essentially ‘my battery is low and it’s getting dark.’”
“The robot didn’t actually say that, Pete. It was a series of readings on the power levels and the lightwave readings. That’s just what our human brains translated it to”
“I know. But...it’s still sad. She’s alone on a dark, cold planet. I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t need to. I actually get it,” Tony takes a drink and leans back on the chaise, looking up at the crystal clear night sky. Pouring one out for Oppy meant two beers out on the large patio of the penthouse, under the clear winter sky. He mentally directs FRIDAY to turn up the heat in his suit. “You remember the Mandarin deal?”
“The terrorist that wasn’t a terrorist that blew up your house?”
“That’s the one. DUM-E and U were there. Ended up in the Pacific with the rest of the house,” he sets his beer on the small frost-covered patio table between their chairs and rests his gauntlets on the “stomach” of his suit. “If they’d been on the other side of the garage maybe they wouldn’t have gone in, if they weren’t blown to bits, but no such luck in either direction. So after everything was settled, I went back and got them.” He points at Peter. “But the Pacific coast is not Mars, so don’t even go there.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Peter whines. “Were they the same after you rebuilt them?”
“Yep, because I went back for their circuit boards. New parts, old brains. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them in the ocean.”
“Sad, and alone, and cold.”
“Yeah,” Tony sneaks a glance over at Peter, snug and warm in his own suit. “And they were mine. And I wasn’t going to leave them there. And I think I still needed them. DUM-E does more than dump shit all over the floor.”
“He also puts out ‘fires,’” Peter chuckles. He has plenty of experience with DUM-E’s fire safety prowess. “And they’re your friends…”
“Because I made them so, kid,” Tony reaches over the space between their chairs and pats his forearm. “They made those little robots to go someplace we couldn’t--yet--and they did their jobs a lot longer than they were designed to.”
“I know. And I know they’re robots, but, they gave us so much…” Tony hears the words Peter isn’t saying: they gave him something, in particular, they gave him something with his uncle, the man who’d taken in him and raised him as his own, who’d nurtured his brilliant mind and interest in what could be.
“They did. And we’ll always have what they gave us, and we’ll be able to build off it. It’s just not gonna be me, bud. I have other things to devote my energies to,” he pokes Peter lightly in the side, even though he knows Peter probably can’t feel it through his suit. “More important things.”
“I know,” Peter sighs, and takes a sip from the beer bottle Tony drained half of before handing over.
“Let’s enjoy the memories and let someone else do the heavy lifting on this one.”
“Do you think someone is?” Peter looks back up into the sky, at the pink-tinged spot in the inky blank. “Do you think someone is marking where she is, for when we go there?”
“Oh, I’m positive. One of those nerds has the exact location saved, and Spirit’s location, and Sojourner’s, and they’ll keep track of Curiosity for when she goes down, and as soon as someone else can get up there, they’ll find them”
“You know, I read a book once, it was from an alien’s perspective, about space missions, and how they always wanted a human in the group, because humans won’t leave anything behind.”
“Of course you did,” Tony chuckles. “But they’re right. We’ll bond with anything. Especially if we name it.”
“You didn’t leave me behind.”
“Well, I slipped up and named you.”
“I’m serious, Tony,” Peter looks down at his lap. “You didn’t.”
“Never,” Tony squeezes his wrist. “Even if it took awhile.”
Peter nods, as if trying to convince himself. “They’ll find her.”
“Of course they will. And imagine all the new info she wasn’t able to send back when her battery was low.”
“Yeah…” Peter scratches at something on his shiny knee. “You know, not that I ever want to talk about it, but, I’ve been waiting to get a full interrogation. All my new info.”
“Nobody knows you remember anything. Except Bruce.”
“Yeah, but even so, didn’t everyone else get a full exam?”
“The individual debriefs?” Tony scoffs. “Like I’d ever let those monsters alone in room with you. Especially Pym.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“Because you don’t know him--lots of skeletons in that closet.”
“Still. What if it could help something in the future? You came and got me. I should share the information.”
Tony turns to fully look at Peter, who’s looked back up into the sky. He’s clutching the beer bottle a little too tightly. “Pete,” he says gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly, but like I said--”
“It’s not your job to worry about those kinds of things. Not yet.”
“But if there’s something that could help--” his voice is steadily becoming more shrill, a clear danger sign. And here Tony thought they were just commiserating over a sad little robot on Mars. This is not an analogy he was expecting.
“Then we’ll ask if we need it. Until then, don’t worry about. Stick to being the team mascot.”
“What if I forget?”
“You don’t have that kind of luck, Pete,” Tony snorts. “We’ll get to it when we get to it. Unless you want to talk about it. Otherwise, let that ghoul figure it out on his own.”
“Fine,” Peter sighs and swallows the rest of his beer. “If NASA asks for your help getting Oppy, will you answer?”
“They’re not going to, but if it’ll make you feel better, sure.”
“You’re lying,” Peter sits up, and settles his feet on the cold concrete.
“No,” Tony raises his bottle, then drinks the last of his beer. “But they won’t. They’ll figure it out on their own.”
“Well, that’s just insulting to you,” Peter frowns and looks back up towards the bright, red dot in the sky.
“Peter,” Tony sits up, his suit whirring with the movement. “What are you actually upset about? The robot? The end? Fear of being left and all that jazz? Or that my stuff is up there?”
“Ummmm, all of it? You don’t like space, your stuff shouldn’t be up there alone.”
“You are something else, bud. And there’s lots of it up there alone, Pete,” Tony swings his legs over the side of the chair. “So long as it’s not me, or you or Pepper, I don’t care.”
“Just us three?” Peter smirks.
“Pretty much,” he stands up and holds out a gauntlet. “Now come on, we’ve poured one out in Oppy’s honor--”
“I only got half of one. And stop saying that.”
“--and it’s February and freezing and I’m sure your Aunt already somehow knows we’re being bad. Inside.”
“Can I have another beer?” Peter allows Tony to pull him up and lead him towards the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.
“No,” the door whooshes open to let them into the warm living room. “But we can fuck around in the workshop all night with DUM-E and U and not tell Pepper and your aunt about how you slept all night on that filthy couch.”
“I’m not going to fall asleep,” Peter taps his wrist, and the nanotech covering his body skitters back into the black band. Tony follows suit as he heads into the kitchen.
“It’s ten o’clock...I give you an hour,” he opens the fridge, pulling out a large flat container of leftover pizza. Peter hops onto one of the stools at the island. “Heated, or cold?”
“Heated, please. In the oven.”
“Of course, your majesty,” Tony rolls his eyes and opens the drawer next to the oven for a pan. “FRI, oven at 350. And tell DUM-E to make us some smoothies.” They won’t drink them, of course, but Tony likes giving DUM-E something to do and it’ll make Peter smile. He can anthropomorphize with the best of them.
“Yes, boss.”
“We’re not gonna leave you anyplace, kiddo,” Tony turns back around, and reaches across the island to ruffle Peter’s hair and pat his cheek.
“I know,” he smiles up at him, a little sadly, but for real.