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After, there is a funeral for an ex-assassin. After there is a family, young children already missing their Auntie Nat.
After, there is another funeral, and it is this one that Peter remembers even less of than the first. He only remembers the lake, the heart, and the little girl. The last is what sends him running, ignoring his Aunt’s cry and Pepper’s call of his name.
He runs until his lungs finally protest enough to make him stop; he’s far away from the lake house, he knows, and spares a second to feel guilty before he’s hyperventilating, world reducing to a faint tingling sensation and his grip around his legs. He instinctively lowers his head to rest over his knees, forcefully pushing away the memory of why he knew to do it, and hugs his legs.
He must have been rocking, and for quite some time, because when he looks up again it’s dark. For a moment Peter can only stare, struck dumb by the beauty above his head.
He’s never gone camping, never gotten this far out in the woods, so the stars are a bit of a shock in their beauty. Sure, he’s seen stars on other worlds, but there is something soft and comforting about the view from Earth that calms him.
(He will never be calm in space, or on other worlds. Because--)
His Spidey Senses have him turning before his mind even registers his super-hearing is even picking up the sound of barely perceptible footfalls. He’s up and in the defensive stance Rhodey taught him before losing his footing and tumbling backwards in surprise at who comes through the trees.
It’s the blue girl--Nebula, he thinks--who freezes and eyes him cautiously as he scrambles to wipe away the tears he’d somehow cried without realizing it.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she says, tilting her head, “he deserves the honor.”
He. Peter winces as if struck, but stops trying to wipe away the tear stains anyhow.
“He deserved a lot more than me crying.” Peter replies, bitterness evident even to himself. Tony Stark deserved to come home to his little girl, who Peter knows is only vaguely aware of the way life has cheated her, just like he’d been.
One day she’ll realize the entire truth and hate every soul that got to live while she lost half her entire world.
His, in particular.
“Yes,” Nebula says, breaking into his thoughts as she comes to stand at his side, “ he did.” Peter turns his head to look at her. Her profile is still, but her natural eye tells him she’s feeling as much as her voice barely betrays.
“Pepper said you helped him get home.”
“We worked together until he was too weak to stay awake. He was quite remarkable, for a Terran--”
“Yeah, he--”
“He also spoke of you at length.”
His mouth is suddenly too dry to attempt to finish his sentence.
“....really?”
She turns to him, head tilted and even with the cybernetic enhancements dampening most of her ability to emote, it doesn’t take a genius to see she thinks she’s looking at a complete idiot. He turns a bit red as she continues to star, able to recovering some semblance of speech only when she turns her attention back to the stars.
“He said you were as good as his own; That you had great intelligence and a will to do right by your people. He said you were good in a way neither he nor I could be. Losing you destroyed him; Saving you drove him to create a wonder and single-handedly save the entirety of creation. You are lucky, Peter Parker.”
Already breathless from the list of things Tony had said, the last part doesn’t even make him as angry as he’d have been ten minutes before. He’s starting to feel the emptiness war with panic again.
“How?” he chokes out.
How can he be lucky? He’s lost, again, and this time been the reason another child has half a family, if what Nebula says is any indication.
Again, Nebula gives him a look that suggests he’s dumber than she could have imagined.
“Because you had a father who loved you so much he’d give up his happy ending to see you get yours. That is love like I have never known. I only know the word father in the context of pain, fear, grief, and a captive desire for approval that was never to come. I would give anything for a moment of the love Tony Stark had for you.”
The sob that has been crawling up his throat finally escapes, and the next he’s truly aware, he’s kneeling on the ground, head pressed to the soft grass as he ugly cries into the dirt. A few moments pass before an arm is wrapped tentatively around his shoulder as if unsure she’s doing this right.
She probably isn’t sure, he thinks, so he leans into her to show her she’s doing things just right.
How awful must it have been to be a Daughter of Thanos.
That thought has him crying harder, arms wrapping around Nebula in return. She stiffens at first, and Peter kicks himself momentarily, before she’s leaning back into him, the pair of them slumped in the grass. A few moments pass before he’s aware of quiet cries that aren’t his.
It hits Peter then how softly she’d spoken of Tony and his affection. Perhaps she hadn’t been raised with a real dad, but it occurs to him how Tony must have taken to her as he’d taken to Peter himself; another orphan like Tony himself with so much more to give than the world had allowed.
“Let us return….,” Nebula whispers, “for your little sister requires story-time from her elder brother before she will let the rest of us sleep.” This is said in a remarkably dry tone for a woman who’s been crying from at least one eye for the last several minutes, and it makes Peter laugh for the first time since the awe of the battle made him giddy.
“I almost feel bad for Tony the last couple of years. That’s genius level extortion right there.” He rises to his feet along with Nebula, and together they make their way back to the house.
After all, it appears Tony left him a big job to do.