Chapter Text
Surprisingly, Peter doesn’t have trouble sleeping after… everything. He crawls into bed every night, or morning, depending—sometimes afternoon—and, snug under the covers, he drifts off to sleep.
It can take a while before he can tune out the noise and the textures and the smells, amplified by his senses, but that isn’t new. He doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night either, but sleeps for hours, uninterrupted.
He doesn’t have nightmares about the battle on Titan or Earth. Not really. Everything is a bit of a blur in his dreams, confused and incomprehensible. But the memories are crystal clear when he’s awake: the monsters teeming over what had once been the Avengers compound, Thanos, the dust and grit of Titan. He remembers seeing himself turn to ash too. And his body remembers—the memory of the pain clinging to every cell.
Peter isn’t sure how they came back, physically. If they were put back together, or out of nothing somehow. He only remembers waking up in one piece again, aching, afraid. Afraid without Mr Stark.
It’s how he wakes up every morning now: without Mr Stark—on the planet, or anywhere else in the universe. And aching, inside, where his enhanced healing is useless. Sometimes he’s afraid too. Other times he’s just numb. But still aching, like when your hands get so cold you can’t feel them, but they still hurt.
Peter hurts.
He goes around as usual, talking, walking, swinging on his webs. But so many parts of him are gone now: his parents, Uncle Ben, Mr Stark—he is full of gaping holes, and only just holding together. Nothing seems to make sense anymore, and all he wants is for everything to just… stop… hurting. He wants to stop hurting.
But he can’t see how, with the gaping hole in his chest where Mr Stark used to be, when he is missing every moment they had, and all the ones they didn’t.
Peter feels alone, and knows he is on his own now too.
Although it doesn’t hit him fully until a few weeks after the battle, when he gets hurt on patrol. A knife slides between his ribs and catches, digs in and burns like fire all along his side, making his vision go black around the edges for a few seconds.
He gets hurt—and he is alone. He had deactivated Karen, and there is no one to contact, he realises in that moment. There is no one on the other end of the suit because Tony Stark is gone.
He manages to get to the apartment where he collapses on the bed, a hand over the bleeding wound. The sharp copper scent takes him back to the battle, although the strongest smell then had been that of the exposed earth, damp and deep, and crackling electricity.
Peter lies for a while, in pain, wondering if he should call anyone, although he is almost one hundred percent sure he will heal on his own.
He drifts off.
And he wakes up.
“Kid. Hey, kid.”
For a split second, Peter thinks it’s Mr Stark, believes it. He sits up, gasping, instictively scanning the room for signs of him. All he sees is the Spider-Man suit draped over the desk chair.
“Whoa, lie back. Where do you think you’re going?” Happy holds him back with a hand spread on his chest, wrinkling the thin material of the worn tee shirt.
Peter doesn’t start crying. He has been empty since Tony died: frequently on the verge of tears, but never spilling over—It hurts, like trying to squeeze juice from a dry lemon.
“What were you thinking, kid?” Happy continues, oblivious. “Gave your aunt a hell of a scare.”
“Where is she?’ Peter asks automatically. “Aunt May?”
“Making you something to eat.” Happy’s tone is neutral, but his left eye twitches.
Peter lies himself back against the pillows, relaxing a little. His nose wrinkles, however: he can still make out a faint smell of blood in the room, even though the sheets have been changed and he’s out of the suit. “What happened?”
“You tell me,” Happy replies testily. “I got a distress signal from your suit, and then a call from your aunt that you were out cold and covered in blood.”
Slipping a hand under his tee shirt, Peter feels out the edges of an adhesive bandage. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“We had to give you a sponge bath.”
Peter isn’t sure if Happy is joking or not. “Thanks?” he says, his voice going high.
“What happened?”
Wincing, Peter rubs his hand absently over the bandage, trying out how sore it is. “I might have got a bit stabbed…” he admits.
Happy gives him a deadpan look. “We figured—”
“But it was fine.” He sits up a bit more and lifts his tee shirt, meaning to peak under the bandage.
Happy bats his hand away. “I decide what’s fine.” Peter only notices in that moment that Happy has his shirt sleeves rolled up and the cuffs are damp. “This was a bloody mess. Not fine.”
Instead of his usual scowl he sports a proper frown, and the lines of his mouth are grim.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do,” Peter whispers, not quite able to meet his eyes. Who to call. He doesn’t say that out loud, but it still hangs between them, the tension palpable.
“Peter!” Abandoning the plate with breakfast on his desk by the door, May rushes over to him. “How are you feeling?” She cups his face with both hands, which feel warm against his cheeks.
Peter leans into the touch, despite the strong scent of soap. “I’m fine,” he says with a shrug.
“What did I just say?” Happy bursts out as he stands up to give May more room.
Peter and May both ignore him.
“You gave me quite a scare, you know? What have I told you about doing that?” May says, her voice rising and falling in that way it has of doing when she’s really upset. “I get a call from Happy to check up on you, and I turn on the light, and I see you—”
Her voice dies out, and Peter reaches up to squeeze her wrist apologetically. “Sorry. I’m sorry, May. I didn’t mean to—”
May drops her hands, shaking her head hard, eyes squeezed shut. When she looks at Peter again, her eyes are wet, but her voice is steady. “We talked about this. You don’t shut me out. Not Peter. Not Spider-Man.”
“You should have called,” Happy grunts from where he stands to a side, rolling down his sleeves again.
“He would have picked up, is what he means,” May translates, her mouth trembling. “I would have picked up. I would drop anything for you, Peter, you know that.”
Overwhelmed, eyes stinging with unshed tears, Peter ducks his head, mumbling another apology.
With a sigh, May tugs at him until his forehead rests on her shoulder, presses a quick kiss to the top of his head, then pushes him back to sit upright. “You’re still clammy,” she pronounces upon feeling his forehead. “I gave you some juice before, but you need to eat something.”
“You gave me juice?” Peter gets out, glad for the change in subject. “I don’t remember that.”
“You were a bit out of it,” May explains vaguely as she takes the plate from Happy. “Here. I didn’t get fancy with it, before you say anything.”
The toast is a little burnt around the edges, but the scrambled eggs look fine, and she had even cut the apple into quarters. “Thanks, May.”
“Don’t think you’re getting out of telling me what happened. You can eat and talk.”
“It’s not much of a story, honestly,” Peter says, wide eyed, around a mouthful of egg and sausage.
“Kid, you got stabbed, there better be a good story.”
Chewing mechanically, Peter forces his lips to twitch, and pushes a slight sound in his throat that can pass as laughter. Peter has fought monsters from outer space and died on an alien planet—what’s a man with a kitchen knife?
May and Happy can never really understand, he knows. How can anyone who hasn’t seen Thanos wielding the Infinity Stones understand?
Peter feels cut off from everyone around him.
“Not really, sorry. Just a regular burglar. He caught me by surprise.”
Happy rolls his eyes. “A word from the wise, kid, don’t underestimate anyone.”
May makes a considering noise. “It’s not like you to be cocky, Pete.”
Peter shoves a whole apple quarter in his mouth. “I wasn’t. I was… distracted. Thinking, you know. About homework. Spanish quiz.”
The look May and Happy share shows they don’t believe a word. His aunt gives his knee a squeeze over the duvet. “You have to be careful,” she says quietly.
“Tony would have a fit if after everything you were taken down by a mugger,” Happy grumbles.
He keeps bringing Tony up in conversation, telling little stories about him, reminiscing. And every single time it makes Peter’s chest seize up and his hands start to shake.
“I’ll be careful, promise,” Peter manages to choke out, fumbling not to drop the fork in his hand.
He holds it together until May and Happy have left the room, once May has extracted a promise that he will finish his breakfast. The moment the door closes behind her, Peter abandons the food and stumbles over to inspect the suit.
The blood can be washed out, but there is a small tear in it he will have to repair. His swallows saliva a few times, feeling sick to his stomach. The thought of losing the suit terrifies him.
After a minute he goes back to his bunk bed, picking the plate up mechanically. The food tastes like ash in his mouth.
—
Peter wonders if it’s selfish of him to be glad the snap had taken Ned and MJ too. He doesn’t like the thought of them disappearing, of them being gone—but otherwise he would have lost them. His best friends. They would have grown up without him, finished school, maybe even moved away for college or work.
It’s difficult enough with Aunt May, figuring out how to bridge five years of memories and loneliness between them. That is something he cannot understand: what it’s like to have mourned someone, moved on, and then have them come back—beyond all hope.
He thinks about it a lot, however. Imagines waking up one day to find Mr Stark back—now, after weeks, or years from now; it wouldn’t matter. But even beyond hope, he knows it will never happen. They buried him. Peter saw him go. He was there when he stopped breathing. The moment his heart stopped. Just like he watched Uncle Ben bleed out in front of him.
They are both gone for good, and Peter is still here.
Wasting an afternoon away building Lego with Ned.
“Unit of measurement for radioactive activity?” Ned shoots the question at him out of nowhere, and Peter answers automatically: “Becqueral.”
MJ has trained them well. Even though she has been driving them harder these last few weeks, neither of them is complaining. It’s a good distraction.
“How many pairs of autosomes do humans have?” Peter quizzes back, as expected.
Even with both of them being dusted, there is still distance between them since they came back. Their conversation limited to quizzing each other, more often than not, and the silences in between strained.
Peter jumped out of a school bus and went to space, and Ned worried—and then he was gone. Ned came back to a changed world, but he was still the same. For Peter everything has changed, including himself. He isn’t the same—can’t be.
‘You’re adjusting,’ MJ had said to him one day during lunch, catching Peter off guard.
‘What?’
‘It takes time. You know that.’ Although her tone was as brusque as ever, her eyes were gentle. And Peter had caught on what she was telling him: it gets better, easier.
It’s something he used to think too, but he isn’t sure of anything anymore. He threw himself into Spider-Man after Uncle Ben, but even that doesn’t seem enough anymore—not to ease the pain, or the guilt.
‘All you need is time’ MJ had repeated in a quiet voice, almost to herself. Peter wonders who she was most trying to convince.
“Twenty two. That’s easy.” Ned gives Peter a thoughtful look. “Do you have twenty two?” he asks curiously.
Peter breathes out a small, weak laugh. “I think so.”
“You’re not sure?” Ned says in a hushed voice, his face alight with the mixture of excitement, awe, and slight fear he usually showed whenever they discussed Spider-Man.
Resting his chin on one knee drawn up to his chest, Peter fiddles with a piece of Lego. “We didn’t get around to running any tests.”
Ned sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, staring at Peter with wide eyes. “You and… Mr Stark, you mean?”
Peter gives a small nod, a lump in his throat.
“Weren’t you curious?” Ned asks incredulously, before his expression shifts to sympathetic. “Although I guess it would have meant a lot of needles, and taking loads of samples…” He gives an exaggerated shudder. “Thinking about it, I probably would have said no too.”
Peter only shrugs in response.
In truth, despite his fear of needles, Peter had wanted to do it. Learning more about his altered DNA had the potential to advance scientific and medical research, so how could he not do it? He had actually kept expecting Mr Stark to ask him. Then when Peter finally brought it up himself, he was surprised to find Mr Stark first evasive, then reluctant, until he finally let slip he was worried about the information falling into the wrong hands and putting Peter in danger. Eventually they had agreed to have another talk about it once Peter turned eighteen.
They remain in tense silence for a couple of minutes, Ned busying himself fitting some pieces onto the Lego set, while Peter can’t bring himself to do anything but fidget with his shoe laces.
Ned breaks the silence. “What’s the first law of Thermodynamics?”
Peter feels breathless all of a sudden in Ned’s overcrowded bedroom, but he forces himself to answer. “The total energy of an isolated system is constant, it can neither be created nor destroyed, but can be transferred from one form to another.” He recites from memory, not really thinking of what the words mean—but then it hits him.
“That is correct!” Ned calls out in a theatrical announcer voice, obviously trying to lighten the mood.
“It’s not, though, is it?” Peter says numbly.
Ned drops the act, his forehead creasing. “What?” He reaches for his phone. “We can Google it, but I’m pretty sure…”
“No. I mean…” Peter looks down at his hands. He had held it: the gauntlet with all six stones. “The Infinity Stones. No laws applied to them.”
Ned’s mouth falls open, and he stares at him, speechless. “Peter…”
Peter shakes his head, and forces his lips to stretch into a small smile. “I’m not having an existential crisis over the laws of physics, Ned. I’m fine—just a bit parched. Have you got any juice?”
Ned lets out a shaky laugh. “You know I do. Apple?”
“You know it.”
“You want anything to eat?” Ned asks as he pushes himself to his feet.
“Nah, I’m good, thanks, man.”
Ned gives him a two fingered salute, and Peter obliges with a chuckle. But the moment Ned walks out, he reaches for his phone and texts Aunt May he isn’t staying the night after all. She texts back immediately, offering to pick him up—or rather tells him she’s picking him up.
“Everything alright?” Ned asks when he comes back with their glasses of juice to find Peter frowning at his phone.
“Um. I can’t sleep over… Aunt May’s got a problem at home. With the… power. She’s in the dark,” he lies.
“Whoa. That sucks.” Ned hands him the glass.
“Thanks, man.” Peter takes a small sip. “Yeah. I’m going to see if I can figure out what’s wrong.”
Ned nods, sucking on his straw. “Yeah, of course.”
“I’m sorry we can’t watch the movie tonight,” Peter says miserably, feeling guilty about lying to his best friend.
For once, Ned doesn’t press for more information, but Peter still stutters out several more apologies before May arrives.
“Don’t worry about it. We can watch it some other time,” Ned tells him at the door before wrapping him in an unusually tight hug. “ I’m not going anywhere.”
“What happened?” May asks as soon as he closes the door. “Is everything OK, sweetie? Are you feeling sick? Let me see—”
“Yeah. No, I’m fine—” Peter tries to reassure her, but he can’t help but lean into the touch when she reaches out to feel his forehead.
May looks him over with a critical eye. “You haven’t called me to pick you up from a sleepover since you were eleven. And never with Ned. What’s going on?”
Peter clutches his overnight bag to his chest, avoiding her eyes. “Nothing, May. I just… wanted to go home,” he answers in a small voice. “Can we go home, please?”
He feels the weight of her gaze on him for a long moment before she moves to face forward and starts the car. “Don’t forget your seat belt.”
It’s late enough they don’t have to deal with the traffic, and a cool night, so May rolls down the windows to let in the fresh air. She drives at a relaxed pace, and for a short while the silence feels almost comfortable between them.
Peter can hear a dog barking in the distance, and an argument a few blocks over—it doesn’t sound serious, and he tunes it out. It had been raining, and the smell of wet asphalt and brick is strong once they leave behind the suburbs. It makes him think of the blasted Avengers compound, and he recoils instinctively, drawing back into the car.
“OK?” May asks without looking at him.
“Mhm.” Peter takes a moment to look at his aunt—really look at her as she drives, focused, both hands on the wheel, long hair coming loose from the bun at the top of her head, and arms bare in a tank top. May doesn’t look much older to him, physically. But she is different, after five years without him. She had another life before he came back, the one she had built in an effort to move on: a pet cat despite her allergies, a new hair color, some new friends—other women who had lost their families in the snap.
Now everyone is back. But things are different for all of them.
“I miss you, you know?” May says in a quiet voice.
“What?”
Their eyes meet for a second when she glances at him before she turns to look back to the road.
“I missed you. So much.” May’s voice wobbles and breaks. “For years. I didn’t think I could miss you more. And now you’re here, but you’re… you’re not really back.”
Peter hugs his overnight bag tighter, his stomach in a painful knot. “Aunt May, I—I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m trying.”
“Oh, no, Peter. I know that. And you don’t have anything to be sorry for, you hear me?” She rubs the tears from her cheeks impatiently. “I just don’t know what to do.” Clearing her throat, she takes one hand off the wheel and reaches for him across the console. “We’ve been… we’ve been through this before, you and I, haven’t we? We’ll get through it again.”
Peter nods, giving her hand a squeeze. “Yeah, of course, of course we will.”
Stopping at an amber light, May turns to look him in the eye. “I just need you to know you’re not alone in this, Pete.”
“I know,” Peter says in a whisper, dropping his eyes. He can feel May staring at him for a long moment, before the light turns green.
“You’re going to be OK,” she says after a minute, not taking her eyes from the road.
Peter wants to believe her—but he isn’t really sure what OK means anymore either.
—
After Uncle Ben died, Peter couldn’t sleep for weeks. He remembers night after night of May sat with him in the living room, stroking his hair while poking fun at the infomercials, trying to make him laugh.
Until Peter had come home from school one afternoon and found her asleep at the kitchen table with a stack of books on grieving from the public library. He had stopped keeping her up after that and started going out at night more to patrol instead. Somehow after a while he had found himself able to sleep again—though he never slept much—and things settling into a new normal.
Like last time, things sort themselves out now, more or less, and he gets on with his life. Some things go back to how they were before, like school and his friends; and some things become a new normal: having Happy around more—and the regular calls from Miss Potts.
“How did you do in that exam you were worried about—it was Tuesday, wasn’t it?” Pepper asks him, sounding a little harried.
Peter can hear noises in the background: voices, a ringing telephone, her quick footsteps—heels clipping on a tiled floor—before it all gets cut out following the sound of a door being opened and shut.
“Not bad, I got an A.”
From where he sits, up on the roof top of an apartment building, he has a clear view of Stark Tower. It doesn’t have the name on it anymore. And it doesn’t have Tony. It’s just a company building now.
“Not bad!” Pepper echoes him, laughter in her voice.
Peter breathes out a small giggle. “Alright, yeah. I… I was the best in class, actually,” he admits shyly.
“That’s fantastic, Peter,” Pepper says warmly. Then, after a pause: “Have you given any more thought to MIT? We might want to start making some moves, if you’re interested.”
Peter’s face drops. “I… I don’t know yet, Miss Potts, sorry. I’ve just been—You know, it’s been… busy.” He draws in a shaky breath. “I know Mr Stark wanted me to go…” he whispers.
“Oh, Peter. Tony wanted you to do whatever makes you happy. He just thought MIT might be good place for you. But it’s covered wherever you decide to go.”
“But—”
“That’s not up for debate.” Pepper’s tone brooks no argument. “He didn’t care which one, but he wanted you to go to university without money being an issue.”
Peter gnaws at the inside of his cheek for a moment. “I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Again. Thinking about the ferry still makes him want to throw up—more now than ever. What if he makes another mistake like that without Iron Man around to fix it and people die because of him?
“You couldn’t.” Pepper’s tone is almost matter of fact.
Peter doesn’t register the pain, but the taste of blood fills his mouth as he bites down too hard.
“He used to tell Morgan about you, you know?” she continues, a quiet smile audible in her voice.
Peter feels his throat tighten, and he gasps, squeezing his eyes shut tight for a second. “I—I have to go, Miss Potts, I’m so sorry. Someone… needs my help—Spider-Man, I mean—” he chokes out.
“Peter, wait. Why don’t you come over? You didn’t really get to meet her. At the… funeral.”
All that Peter really remembers from the funeral is snippets of what Mr Stark’s hologram had said, and the flowers in the water, drifting out into the lake. He hadn’t spoken a word to anyone, though he thinks some people might have spoken to him. People he would have given anything to meet outside the battlefield, once upon a time. But his mind couldn’t seem to process Thor talking to him, when they had just laid Tony Stark to rest.
“I don’t know, Miss Potts. I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re not. I’m asking, aren’t I?” Pepper says, her tone light but sincere. “I’d like to see you too, Peter. It’s been too long.”
She has been calling him once a week, for a quick chat, their conversations much like they used to be before, when they would talk over dinner or breakfast sometimes, when Peter was at the compound: normal conversations about school, and his aunt, and Spider-Man. All the same—except Tony used to be a frequent topic too. And while a part of Peter yearns to talk about him, it still hurts too much. Even seeing Iron Man tributes still sets his heart racing and his hands shaking every time.
“Please, will you come?”
“Yeah.” Peter agrees finally in a small voice. “Thanks, Miss Potts.”
“Thank you. We’ll sort out when, OK? But sometime soon.”
Pocketing his phone, he pulls the mask back down to cover his whole face, his hands trembling. The world is muted with the mask on, his enhanced sense under control. It’s quiet.
He misses Karen, but talking to the AI feels too close to talking to Mr Stark, while at the same time being nothing but a machine. And he isn’t sure how to break the news to her, either, if she would even understand the concept. Does F.R.I.D.A.Y know? he wonders. The idea of everything that Mr Stark created existing, while he is gone is bizarre. It seems incomprehensible to live in a world without Iron Man, without Tony Stark.
Peter blinks back the tears, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, over the mask. “Come on, Spider-Man,” he mutters to himself fiercely. “Come on.”
After a minute he climbs to his feet and swings away.
—
Peter peers through the glass into the oven, wondering if the cupcakes are done. It’s his first time using the oven for anything other than frozen pizza, and he’s nervous and distracted as well. He had only volunteered to check on them out of politeness and to escape the room, the tension suffocating.
“Do you know what you’re doing there, bud?” Rhodey comes into the kitchen after a cursory knock on the door frame.
“Not really, Colonel Rhodey, sir,” Peter admits with only a slight stutter. He hasn’t seen Rhodey in weeks, and only sporadically before that. “Am I supposed to take them out?” He peers into the oven again with a small frown, pulling at the string of his hoodie nervously.
“What do you think, F.R.I?” Rhodey calls out.
“The cupcakes have been in the oven for eleven minutes. Estimated baking time at the current temperature is fifteen to eighteen minutes.”
Rhodey cracks the oven open to take a look. “In a couple of minutes then?” He looks at Peter as though for confirmation, eyebrows quirked questioningly.
“Yeah. That sounds good.” Peter stands awkwardly in place, not wanting to go back to the living room with Pepper and Morgan yet, but feeling shy with Rhodey as well. He thrusts both hands into the front of his hoodie and fidgets with a bit of loose string.
“So how are you doing?” Rhodey asks after a minute.
Peter’s shrug is more of a nervous twitch. “Fine. Yeah. Busy with… school… homework and stuff…” he rambles under Rhodey’s relentless, expectant gaze.
“Still looking after the little guy?” It’s not really a question.
“Yeah, of course. You know, friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.” Peter tries for a winsome smile, but he can tell his grin is lopsided.
Rhodey rubs at his stubbled chin, and Peter is suddenly all too aware of his own smooth face, and is reminded of his wildest, most secret fantasies that one day Tony might have taught him how to shave. He grips the inside of his hoodie, twisting the fabric between his fingers, to hide the trembling in his hands.
“Peter. I know it’s… hard, losing people, losing someone you—” Rhodey begins carefully, the words sounding rehearsed.
Peter lunges toward the oven, grabbing a kitchen cloth from the counter. “These must be done, right?” he interrupts, his voice too loud and high pitched. “Morgan might kill me if I burn her cupcakes—I don’t think she likes me much as it is, you know. And Miss Potts worked so hard on them. And invited me over. And they smell really good, don’t they?”
He opens the oven, struggling to pull out the metal tray with just the one thin cloth. He can feel the heat in his hands, and as he sets it on the counter, the cloth slips and the hot metal comes in contact with his bare hand, making him flinch.
“Did you burn yourself?” Rhodey steps toward him, braces whirring.
“No, well, yes, but it’s fine. Sorry. It’s nothing.” Peter holds his hand out to show him. It really is nothing. An area the size of a dime over a knuckle, but as he looks down at it ringing fills his ears: the skin has gone white from the heat. He remembers looking at his fingers as they turned to ash that quickly blew away. He remembers the searing pain, the tug of war of his advanced healing fighting against the snap. He remembers clinging to Mr Stark, desperate and afraid.
Peter slides down to a crouch without thinking, squeezing his eyes shut as his breathing comes too fast and shallow.
Mr Stark propped up because he couldn’t hold himself up. Unseeing. In pain, his skin burnt and cracked—dead. Twice Peter has watched men he loved die before him, while he knelt at their side, useless.
“Sorry. I’m sorry—” he gasps. And it’s directed at Rhodey, whom he is still conscious of in the periphery of his vision… and at Uncle Ben and Tony. And May and Pepper and Morgan and—he can’t breathe. “I’m so sorry.”
“Colonel Rhodes, Mr Parker is experiencing severe tachycardia and his carbon dioxide saturation levels are low, would you like me to alert medical services?” F.R.I.D.A.Y speaks up.
Peter’s eyes widen in alarm and he shakes his head jerkily, even as he struggles to catch his breath.
Rhodey raises a hand. “Hold it for now, F.R.I.” Standing in front of Peter, he places a tentative hand on his shoulder. Although he can’t bend his legs well with the braces, he bends down to get closer. “Kid, listen to me, you’re alright. You just need to breathe, slowly. Easy.”
Peter looks up at him, eyes burning, while he tries to follow the breathing pattern Rhodey is demonstrating. This has happened a few times, the usual racing heart and trembling progressing into something completely out of control. But never in front of anybody, and even out of breath he is mortified.
First Morgan had glared at him when Pepper tried to introduce them, and refused to let him play with her. And now this. He had been hoping to impress Rhodey and Pepper, not thoroughly embarrass himself.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Rhodey says in a quiet, firm voice, clearly reading his expression. He leans against the counter, but keeps his other hand on Peter’s shoulder, a grounding touch. “Tony used to get them too, you know.”
Peter blinks up at him and gives a small nod. He still doesn’t trust his voice, or his legs to support him if he stands up. Tony had mentioned it a few times, off hand like he did most serious things.
“What made it a bit better was talking about what was on his mind,” Rhodey continues pointedly. “It’s no good keeping things bottled up.”
“I don’t—” Peter looks down at his knees, swallowing thickly. “I—”
“What’s on your mind, Pete?” Rhodey extends a hand, and Peter lets him help him to his feet.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he blurts out, his voice shaking.
Rhodey’s forehead creases. “Here…?”
“In this house, acting like… like he was my—“ Peter wraps his arms around his middle, clutching at the hoodie. “Like I’m—”
“I’m sorry, kid. I’m not following.”
Peter bites his lip hard. “I’m acting like I’m… family. But I’m… just an intern,” he explains in a hushed voice. “I don’t have that right.” His voice breaks and he worries he might throw up. It’s something he’s been holding in for a long time, how guilty he feels at his grief. Because he had loved Tony, and seen him as a dad in his secret heart. But he wasn’t really Tony’s son. He wasn’t really anybody. Yet here he was, with his wife and daughter, acting like he had suffered the same loss.
Rhodey gives him an unreadable look. “Because he wasn’t your real dad,” he says tonelessly.
Sniffling, Peter nods miserably. “I just kept annoying him until he paid attention to me. Ask Happy. And now I’m bothering Miss Potts and Morgan.” He rubs at his injured knuckle, but barely feels the sting. “And you too. I’m so sorry, sir.”
Rhodey scrubs a hand over his face with a sigh. “Kid, Tony built you a suit, didn’t he?”
“For Spider-Man.”
The colonel shakes his head. “For you. That’s what Tony does—did.” His eyes close briefly, a pained expression crossing his face. “He built things for the people he cared about. He cared about you, Pete. A hell of a lot.”
Peter stares a him, wide eyed, chest feeling tight all over again.
“I remember that day I dropped by for a visit, and you were in the lab with him… That’s when I knew.” He reaches out to find Peter’s shoulder again, squeezes. “And Pepper knows too: you’re family.”
Fighting back tears, Peter whimpers out a thank you.
Rhodey gives him a clap on the back and politely turns away. “Why don’t you bring some cupcakes over? Surefire way to get Morgan to like you.”
It doesn’t work. Morgan selects a cupcake and then flounces back to her dolls without a word to him, leaving Peter to perch in a corner of the couch with the adults. Too wired to eat or join in on the conversation, he sits, picking at his own cupcake, until Happy arrives to pick him up.
He doesn’t get more than a mumbled goodbye—prompted by her mother—from the girl, but Peter catches her looking out the window as he gets in the car. She doesn’t wave back, however, when he raises his hand in a tiny wave.
Exhausted, Peter slumps in the back seat, fumbling with the seat belt.
“Have fun?” Happy grunts, terse as usual, as he starts driving.
“We made cupcakes.”
“That sounds like fun,” Happy says, deadpan.
Peter only hums in response. If he had to choose a word for the day it would be stressful, or disastrous.
“Tired?”
As though the word were a switch, exhaustion suddenly hits Peter full force. After being tense and on edge for over five hours and suffering a panic attack, all he wants to do is curl into a ball and sleep. “Yeah,” he admits in a quiet voice. “A bit.”
Happy clears his throat, taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Well, we’ve got a bit of a drive, so, if you want to take a nap…”
That draws a small smile from Peter. “Thanks, Happy.”
“No problem, kid.” He meets Peter’s eyes in the rearview mirror for a second, the habitual line between his eyebrows smoothing out a little. “Just don’t snore.”
—
‘… wanted to tell you what an incredible job your nephew did this weekend…’ Peter pauses the video and swipes on to a picture of them, months later. It all feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago at the same time. And months later, he is still plagued by a sense of unreality about everything: Titan and Thanos… Tony Stark come and gone from his life.
One morning, for a split second after he woke up, he expected to find Uncle Ben making breakfast in the kitchen.
“Hey, sweetie.”
Peter looks up at his aunt at his door, vision blurred with unshed tears. “I thought he might… he might go to my graduation, you know. But he won’t even get to see Morgan on her first day of school.”
Face creased with concern, May goes over to sit next to him on the bed. “Oh baby.”
“It’s not fair,” Peter whimpers.
May gathers him into a hug, holding him tight. “No it’s not.”
She holds him for a long time, Peter slumped against her with his hands limp on his lap.
“How about pizza for dinner, hm? Or Chinese?” May asks in a soft voice after a while, once Peter has pulled himself together.
“Yeah, sounds good,” Peter mumbles. Still in a bit of a stupor, he unlocks his phone, and has to take a deep breath as it opens to the picture of him and Tony he had been looking at before.
May stiffens next to him, then tries to hide it fussing with her glasses. But Peter notices the tightness in the corners of her mouth.
“Did you ever talk to him?” The question passes his lips before he can stop himself, after restraining himself for weeks. “When I was… gone?”
May twists her fingers in her lap, avoiding his eyes. “He came to visit,” she says finally. “Months after you… disappeared—he’d been sick, he told me.”
Bile rises to Peter’s throat, he knows Mr Stark had almost died in space after Titan.
“We talked.” May’s voice is toneless, but he can hear the shakiness right underneath the surface. “So I knew you were gone for good.”
The screen of his phone goes dark, and Peter thinks he might throw up, even as he reaches for her hand, stilling the nervous movement. “I’m here, May.”
She nods, and raises her eyes to him. “He tried to stay in touch,” she confesses. “I didn’t want to see him. Or talk to him. I couldn’t get it out of my head that you… you followed him up there.”
“He wanted me to go back!” Peter cuts in to defend Mr Stark. “I couldn’t leave him, May. And I would have been dusted anyway if I was on Earth when the snap happened.”
“I know, Pete. And I know it wasn’t his fault,” May says. “It wasn’t… rational, baby. I was even jealous that he got to hold you one last time, even though I could see how much it had hurt him. I wasn’t making sense.”
Peter stares at their hands, and remembers the heat, the searing heat as he clung to Mr Stark, in pain and so afraid. He wishes he could have been braver then, for Tony.
“We talked on the phone a few times, but…” May trails off with a sigh.
His eyes prickling again, Peter nods dumbly. It wouldn’t have changed anything, really, but it still hurts, knowing the two people he loved most had been at odds while he was gone, and how May’s rejection must have hurt Mr Stark. He regrets asking, his entire body heavy with the weight of what he just learned.
“I’m sorry, Peter.” May’s voice quavers.
“It’s not your fault,” Peter says quietly, shaking his head, and reaches out to hug her again. He needs to hold on until the wave passes. He just needs to keep his head above water. It will pass.
—
“I’m so sorry, Miss Potts.” Peter jumps down from the swing to greet Pepper as she walks up to him, her boots squelching in the mud. “I’ve never really been around little kids, and I must be doing it all wrong. I totally understand if you don’t want me around anymore, I’m—”
“Peter.” Pepper raises a hand with the palm up to silence him, a slight smile on her face. “You’re not doing anything wrong. Don’t take it personally. She’s been acting out a little lately. And I’m still figuring out how to give her space to let those feelings out without spoiling her rotten.”
“Oh.” Peter’s stomach twists painfully, and he lowers his head, folding his arms across his body, holding onto his elbows. This is what he was talking about to Rhodey: none of them should be spending any time on him when Morgan, who actually lost her dad, is struggling.
Pepper rests a hand on his arm, and waits until he looks up and meets her eyes to speak: “She’s fine, Peter. She’s just… adjusting.”
Peter gives a short nod. “Yeah.” He was younger than Morgan when he lost his parents, and though he doesn’t really remember them, he remembers things changing: moving to another house, with other people… getting used to an absence. While Morgan won’t have to deal with so much change, there is no getting around learning to live with the void where her dad used to be.
“How are… you adjusting?” Pepper asks in a soft voice, startling him from his thoughts.
Peter’s grip on his arms tightens. “OK. I’m… I’m fine. You know.” He shrugs, hunching his shoulders. “It’s fine.”
Pepper tilts her head to the side as she looks at him, her lips twisted thoughtfully.
“What about… you?” Peter asks uncertainly, before she can continue questioning him. He’s not sure if he’s overstepping.
“It’s hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Pepper answers after a moment, with a raw earnestness to her voice Peter had never heard before. “I thought it was hard before—Afghanistan, The Mandarin… But I had hope then—even after the snap, and the last I knew of him was that he was out in space—I had hope that he’d come back. And now I know he won’t. He can’t.”
Peter stares at her, his throat burning.
“It’s hard,” Pepper repeats, and then gives a small shrug of her own, her mouth curving in a tiny, rueful smile. “I’m still adjusting.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter whispers hoarsely. He can’t think of anything else to say.
Shaking her head, Pepper holds out a hand to him, and he takes it automatically, though with some surprise. “It’s hard, and it’s going to take time, but we have to do it,” she says earnestly, squeezing his hand. “It’s what he wanted. Wallow for a while and then move on, were his words… more or less.” There’s humour in her voice, and the mirth reaches her eyes when she gives him a small grin.
Peter tries to smile back, but he can’t hold it. His lip wobbles, and he feels tears filling his eyes—and spilling over.
Pepper breathes out a small sigh. “Oh, sweetheart. We’re still in the wallowing stage, aren’t we?” she says softly as she pulls him carefully into a hug.
Peter chokes out something he hasn’t told anyone since Mr Stark died. He hasn’t even said the words out loud, though every one of his heartbeats seems to echo them. “I miss him so much.”
Pepper draws in a quivering breath, and runs a palm up and down his back in a soothing gesture. “He loved you, Peter. You and Morgan were both his kids, and he was so proud of you.”
He starts crying. He can’t help himself. It feels like he’s been holding tears in for ages, and now the dam has burst and he can’t stop. His mother and father, Uncle Ben, Tony—the gaping hole in his chest aches so much it hurts to breathe. “I don’t know what to do, without him,” Peter confesses between sobs.
Pepper doesn’t let go of him. “I came so close to losing him, so many times, I made plans,” she tells him, only the slightest tremor in her voice. “I made all these plans—for Stark Industries, for the Avengers, and everything of Tony’s, all his inventions and ideas. But I never had a plan for how to deal with him not being here, with me.”
Unable to speak any words of sympathy, all Peter can do is grip the back of her jacket tighter.
“And I… I didn’t have anyone, really, before Tony, you know?” Pepper tells him in a low voice. “He was all I had. And in a way he gave me everything I have.” She takes a measured, deep breath. “But even when you lose everything, it’s possible to start over. And we already have something. You have your aunt and your friends, and I have my daughter. We both have Happy and Rhodey.”
Gently, she moves him so that they can look at each other, keeping her hands on his shoulders. “And we have each other too.”
Peter stares at her with wide, wet eyes. “I won’t be a bother?” he whispers.
Pepper smiles, gives his shoulder a squeeze before letting go of him, fishing in her pocket for a packet of tissues. “I’m only saying this so you’ll babysit Morgan, so no.”
Peter’s laugh is half a sob, even as he wipes at his eyes. “She doesn’t like me.”
“There are times she doesn’t like me much either, believe me. It’ll be fine.”
They share a tremulous smile, and then another quick embrace. Peter is thrown back to meeting Mr Stark on the battlefield, and Tony pulling him into a hug. He hugs Pepper a little tighter, and she hugs him right back.
“We’ll be OK, Peter. All of us. We’ll be OK.”
—
Peter bursts into tears walking home from the subway station the Monday after his talk with Pepper when he sees an Iron Man mural in the street. On Thursday he starts crying over blue berries at the supermarket. He cries when he comes back from patrol on Friday night; spends an hour sat on the floor in his room still in the suit until he hears his aunt come home from her shift at the hospital.
Whereas before his talk with Pepper the tears wouldn’t come at all, now they come at any time. Peter isn’t sure if it’s an improvement, if it means progress.
Aunt May takes it in stride, as she does everything, and only reaches across the table to hold his hand when he tears up over dinner on Sunday. “It’s OK, baby.”
Peter shakes his head, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow before wiping his eyes with the back of his arm. He can feel some people in the tables near them staring at him. “Sorry, May. I—Shit. Sorry.” His voice shakes, and his breath keeps hitching, threatening to break into a sob. “This is so embarrassing, I’m really sorry.”
May makes a face, obviously hoping to make him laugh. “Do you know how many times I’ve cried in public?” she says wryly. Her expression sobers, however, and her voice grows hollow as she carries on: “After Ben. When you were gone.” Her fingers tighten convulsively around his own.
“I’m sorry—” Peter repeats, voice breaking.
“Shush. Let me finish.” May gives his hand another squeeze, comforting this time, rather than anguished. “You don’t know what it was like, after the snap,” she says, her tone matter of fact. “Everyone had lost someone. Some of us had lost everyone…”
Peter bites his trembling lower lip hard as she breathes out a quiet sigh.
“People cried, Peter.” May’s eyes are soft as she looks at him, and her voice holds a familiar combination of gentleness and fierceness. “It’s OK to cry, baby, is what I’m saying. It helps. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Got it?”
A lump in his throat, Peter nods.
May lets go of his hand to push a glass of water toward him. “Should we just take this to finish at home?” she asks. “Crying isn’t embarrassing, but getting a very long hug from your aunt might be. And I don’t think I can hold it for much longer.”
Peter’s breath rushes out in a weak, wet laugh. “Love you, May,” he croaks.
She smiles at him, her eyes glistening. “Love you too, baby.”
—
He still doesn’t talk about Mr Stark with Pepper. But they do start talking about other things outside of school and Spider-Man.
There aren’t a lot of people who can understand—Peter has been to space and fought a creature intent on decimating half the universe. Even though Pepper has never been outside Earth, she had fought in that final battle too. She saw Thanos and his massive army of monsters prepared to raze New York to the ground. She knows the magic and the horror that met in a battle for the universe in upstate New York.
“I can’t believe I have to go to gym class after that,” Peter admits to her once, after Flash had thrown a basketball at his face and Peter had let it hit him. “How does anything matter after that?”
“That’s the reason it mattered, Peter,” Pepper replies after a moment. “He… he died so we could have this. All of us.”
Peter sits on the toilet in the bathroom stall, his face throbbing, bloodied tissue paper in his lap. It doesn’t make sense that Mr Stark died for this—for him. He doesn’t know he can ever do anything to make his sacrifice worth the while. “Here and everywhere in the universe,” he says out loud, reminding himself.
Pepper lets out a quiet, incredulous laugh. “I remember a time when Tony building a suit seemed bigger than life. I thought it was dangerous… I never thought…” Her voice falters for a second. “I never thought it would lead to all of this—”
Peter can taste blood in the back of his throat, and the pain flares as he wipes under his nose roughly.
“—being so deep into composting it’s become a hobby,” she continues after a moment, drawing a small, surprised giggle out of Peter.
“You’ve really changed, Miss Potts.”
Pepper chuckles. “Don’t tell anyone. I’ve got a reputation to maintain,” she jokes. Then adds, serious again: “I’m keeping an eye on your press, by the way.”
“What?” Beyond registering a generally positive response to Spider-Man’s return, he hasn’t given any thought to any of that.
“Just in case. I’m a professional problem-fixer, but it’s always better to avoid the problem altogether. And for that you need to stay on top of it.”
“You don’t have to do this, Miss Potts,” he stammers. “I… I don’t know how I can repay you or anything. And you didn’t sign up for any of this.”
“Peter, I told you: I made plans to look after everything that Tony cared about.”
Tears spring to Peter’s eyes. “Thank you,” he replies in a small voice after a moment’s stunned silence.
He can hear the smile in Pepper’s voice. “I’ve got you, kid.”
—
Morgan takes to him on his fourth visit to the house a couple of weeks later. Peter catches her eyeing him contemplatively when he arrives, and after his quick chat with Pepper over a glass of lemonade, she makes a move. Grabbing his hand, she leads him to the playroom where she has a whole track set up with both cars and plastic ponies, and an audience of dolls.
Peter joins the game as best he can, feeling a bit lost even though he gets a lot of direction from Morgan. When he was little he had played alone for the most part—he had never found it easy to fit in with kids his age, and losing his parents hadn’t helped—until he met Ned, and they had bonded over movies, and video games, and building Lego.
“Poppy Pineapple can’t fly!” Morgan tells him impatiently, when Peter makes to take off with the yellow pony.
“Oh, sorry. I thought—”
“We have to build her wings first,” she interrupts.
Peter blinks. “O…kay. That makes sense. How do we… do that?”
Morgan moves her car back and forth for a few seconds on the rug, a little line between her eyebrows as she thinks, then scrambles to her feet. “Come on,” she orders, giving Peter a tiny shove as she races out of the room.
“Shall I bring her… or?” Peter falters, and then hurries to follow, Poppy Pineapple still in hand.
Morgan takes him out to the garage, stopping right outside the doors, then looks up at Peter, seeming to hesitate.
“Are we allowed in there?” he asks her, looking around, but there’s no one in sight, Pepper in her office.
“I go in,” Morgan replies, which isn’t really an answer.
“Alone?” Peter questions, but Morgan is already slipping inside.
The garage lights up in a quick sequence from the door to the back, and F.R.I.D.A.Y’s voice greets them. “Welcome, miss. Welcome, Mr Parker.”
“Hi…” Peter looks around, an eye on Morgan as she heads over to a large box in a corner, set up with a table at her height. “Um, F.R.I.D.A.Y, is this safe for her?”
It isn’t an ordinary garage, but a lab. Peter’s stomach knots as he stands in place, taking in the space and everything in it. It’s all so very Tony Stark in a way he hasn’t seen in months—and he hadn’t been sure he would ever see again.
He remembers his time at the lab in the compound: sneaking glances at Mr Stark working while doing his homework, or assisting him as he worked something out… just hanging out together, experimenting, playing—Mr Stark encouraging, indulgent even, behind his dry humor.
“While supervision is recommended, level 0 does not offer any immediate safety hazards,” the AI informs him. “Levels 1 and 2 require security clearance.”
Peter nods, and approaches Morgan, who looks up from rummaging in her box, full of scraps and bits of material.
“We can find something to use here, for the wings,” she says.
“Yeah?” Peter crouches down next to her to take a closer look in the box. “What have we got here?”
He sifts through the contents of the box, pulling out a few potential items, until he fishes out a miniature mechanical toy—and drops it the next second. It hits the floor with a clatter. Morgan picks it up.
“Daddy loves spiders,” she says with a hint of distaste, holding out the toy in the palm of her hand. There is no mistaking it as anything but a prototype of his suit’s spider shaped drone.
Peter stares at it, dumbfounded, then lifts his eyes to Morgan as he registers what she said. “He does?”
She nods emphatically, and rolls her eyes. “I like grasshoppers. Like in Mulan.”
Peter manages a smile, but his heart is beating a mile a minute. “F.R.I.D.A.Y?” he calls out in a hoarse voice.
“Yes, Mr Parker?”
“Was… was Mr Stark… was he, like… working on something for… me?” he asks, his voice fading out so that he isn’t sure the AI has even heard him.
But an answer comes immediately: “Mr Stark accessed related files 789 times in the last five years.”
Peter’s breath catches in his chest, and ringing drowns out every other sound for a minute. He startles when Morgan touches his face with a small palm. “Don’t cry,” she says simply, with a small frown on her face.
Peter knuckles at his wet eyes, shaking his head with a faint, unsteady laugh. “I won’t.”
“It’s not crying time, it’s playing time,” Morgan insists, taking the pony from his lax grip.
“You’re right, sorry.” He busies himself searching for a bit of elastic, and pushes back the pressure in his chest. His eyes keep sliding to the spider drone on the table. “Can I… do you mind if I take it?” he asks Morgan at last, his voice cracking.
Morgan shakes her head dismissively. Then gives him a long look when he cradles the drone in both hands like it’s made of glass. “You need a hug from your mommy,” she pronounces, with all the self-assurance of a six year old.
Peter hesitates for a moment, but finally decides on the truth: “My parents died when I was little, a bit younger than you.”
At this, her eyebrows come together in thought, and she combs her fingers through Poppy’s mane in silence as she mulls it over. “You can have on hug from my mommy,” she decides, finally, magnanimously.
Peter finds himself smiling, even as he has to wipe his eyes again. “Could I have a hug from you?” he asks tentatively.
Morgan thinks about it for a second, then nods. She throws her arms around his neck and allows Peter to hold her close for a moment.
“Will you help me build wings for Poppy?” she asks when she pulls back.
Peter pockets the drone and reaches for Poppy with a grin. “Yeah, of course. We’ll build her the best wings. She’ll be a proper pegasus, like the one Valkyrie rides.”
Morgan’s eyes widen with interest. “What’s that?”
While they work, Peter tells her about winged horses and warrior women, and the rainbow bridge, and Thor. And only falters a little bit when he remembers the boom of thunder and lightning at the battle.
Morgan holds onto the winged Poppy throughout dinner, and falls asleep in Pepper’s arms with the pony within reach on a cushion on the floor.
Curled up on the other couch, after a shower and dinner, Peter finds himself dozing off despite the early hour. He feels both content and emotionally drained at the same time, the pressure in his chest manageable but persistent, and he knows he is teetering between a meltdown and deep sleep.
“He coded you in, you know,” Pepper says out of nowhere, startling him. “For the lab. Before he left. Rhodey, Happy, Bruce, Morgan when she turns eighteen… and you. ”
Peter stares at her in the semi darkness, wide awake.
“I don’t understand half of what’s in there, but I think you might,” Pepper goes on. “Even if not right now, some day.”
“What?” Peter breathes.
“I just thought you should know.”
Peter can make out her small smile in the flickering light. He stares at the screen unseeing for a couple of minutes before the words burst out of him. “I don’t want to let him down.”
“You won’t,” Pepper says simply. She looks down at her daughter’s sleeping face, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “You two are both going to make Tony so proud.”
When he gets into bed in the guest room, the pressure in his chest, which had been building up all night, reaches a breaking point. Staring at the spider drone on the bedside table, Peter can’t hold back the tears. The emptiness of the past months has been replaced by constant, overwhelming emotion. And he feels like he might actually drown in it tonight, after being surrounded by Tony Stark in his essence—his genius and his family—holding in his hands something Mr Stark had made for him, and knowing he had never left the man’s thoughts in the years after the snap.
He also can’t stop thinking about the clearance for the labs: Rhodey and Happy and Pepper are not scientists—it’s up to him and Bruce Banner to do anything with all that Mr Stark left behind. The idea that Mr Stark trusted him like that, believed in him like that—and the fear that he doesn’t deserve it at all, and there is no chance he can ever be good enough—has him biting down on his knuckles and turning his face into the pillow to muffle his sobs.
‘I wanted to be like you.’
‘And I wanted you to be better.’
The words exchanged after the incident with the ferry echo in his mind—but alongside the shame he had felt then, is a newfound determination to keep trying. He doesn’t think he could ever fail Mr Stark more than if he didn’t even try. Just like with Uncle Ben. All Peter can do is try.
“I’ve been… thinking…” Peter tells Pepper timidly when she calls the following week. “…about college.”
“Yes?”
He grips the straps of his backpack and takes a deep breath. “I think I’m going to apply… see if it works out.”
“Peter, they are going to be fighting over you,” Pepper replies with a laugh, making Peter blush. “Who am I writing to, then? MIT, Caltech, Harvard, I’m assuming? I’ll forward Tony’s letters of reference, as well,” she continues, back to business even though the warmth never leaves her voice.
His stomach in a knot of nerves and reluctant pride at the praise, Peter can only manage a flustered ‘Miss Potts’ which makes her laugh again.
—
“Hello, Peter. It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah. I’m… I’m sorry, Karen. I needed some time,” Peter says thickly.
“Is something the matter?”
“Mr Stark is…” Peter clears his throat a few times. “He’s gone, Karen.”
Karen is silent for a full minute, and Peter knows she must be browsing through all the information she can access to make sense of his statement. “I am sorry, Peter,” she says at last, simply.
Somehow, it’s enough.
“Thanks, Karen. Me too.” Peter draws in and releases a shuddering breath, steeling himself as he raises himself to a crouch on the edge of the building. “We’ve got work to do. Are you up for it?” he asks with forced cheer.
“I am here for you,” the AI replies steadily. “I will always be here for you, Peter.”
And Peter hears Mr Stark in those words, so clearly it drives the breath out of his lungs. He steadies himself with a hand on the cement floor, and squeezes his eyes shut tight against the sting of tears.
Mr Stark is with him. Every time he puts on the suit. In Pepper, and Happy, and Morgan. Just like Uncle Ben is with him in Aunt May. And his parents are in his blood.
Though nothing can fill the gaping holes left by their absence, he feels in that moment like maybe that can still be OK. He can still be OK.
“Thank you,” Peter whispers.
“It’s what I was created for.”
Peter smiles—bittersweet—but he feels lighter for it. “I know.”
Climbing to his feet, he looks out at the city, right to the edge of the horizon—then up until he can make out the first stars of the evening, far above the lights. Farther out, beyond his sight, are hundreds, thousands of planets. And in everyone one life had been restored, thanks to Tony.
It doesn’t make Peter miss him any less. It doesn’t really make it hurt any less. But Peter has a life to live, and lives to save, too.
“Come on, Spider-Man,” Peter murmurs. “Come on, Peter.”
“Shall we get started?” Karen asks.
Peter nods, resolute, and breaks into a grin. “Let’s do this.”