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Mysterio throws MJ from the top of the Eiffel Tower, a tendril of green mist wrapped around her neck, and he leaps after her as she screams. He's in his pajama-suit, next to the building that the Vulture had collapsed onto him, and he can feel the cold stone pressing against his back, can feel the phantom heaving of his lungs. Iron Man rises from his grave, lunges at him with half his body encased in his suit and the other half rotting and overrun with spiders, and he scrambles back as Mr Stark's corpse crawls after him (his fault, his fault, his fault). He falls through the void, shatters into broken glass, is beaten up by clones, breaks and is remade over and over again -
Nick Fury shoots Mysterio and asks him who he told, and he answers, tired and relieved and so utterly stupid. Mr Beck laughs at him, golden victory cradled in his hands, and Peter staggers backwards, cold terror freezing in his veins, thinking Ned, MJ, Betty, thinking they're going to die because of me, because what kind of pathetic superhero wannabe would fall for illusion after illusion after illusion? Mr Stark trusted him and he failed, Mr Stark gave him one last gift and he passes it onto someone else because of his goddamn naivety, Mr Stark laughs and hugs him and joked about him to Fury and he crawls out of his grave, a decomposing corpse all that's left of him. Peter wants to scream but there's something lodged in his throat. He stumbles back and back and back as Mysterio laughs. He thinks, my friends are going to die, he thinks, Mysterio's won, and then he doesn't think at all.
Something smashes into his side, and he feels hard metal crushing his chest, his legs, his arms. He knows nothing more.
He wakes up in a cell in the Netherlands. The healing factor had covered most of his injuries, but there's no super-ability to erase the feeling of his chest caving in, wheels rolling over his limbs like they were nothing. A kind man lends him his phone, and Peter almost cries. His friends are going to die because of him, and he'd just gotten run over by a train after watching MJ fall and Mr Stark rise from the grave. He's wearing his suit sans mask, but he feels useless, broken, terrified, and his eyes burn. His fingers shake and tap against his legs. He can't trust what he sees, no matter how real it looks. Peter wonders if he ever will be able to again.
Happy exits the plane, concern lining his face, and Peter just barely stops himself from running into his arms. He thinks Mysterio and illusions and he asks Happy for something only he would know, silently begs Happy to be real. He is, he says something awful and embarrassing that happened in Berlin and Peter chokes down the strangled laugh as he falls into Happy's warm, solid embrace. Mr Stark is gone because he was not strong enough, not good enough, his friends might be dead right now because he was not smart enough, but Happy is here. Happy is here.
Happy is real.
He cries and he hurts and he stumbles into the private jet with the knowledge that he had failed. As a hero, as a friend, as a 16-year-old boy from Queens who had laughed with Tony Stark, who had made LEGO Death Stars with his best friend and who had made this stupid seven-step plan to get with his crush. Failure, dark and heavy with grief, settles in his soul.
He doesn't mean to snap at Happy, but it's like a dam in his heart crumbles and everything comes rushing out, all his anger and grief condensed into one single flood. He rages and he yells and then he apologises, eyes red and raw.
"Everywhere I go, I see his face," he says. Paintings of Iron Man on the wall, candles and pictures littered beneath it. A picture of Iron Man staring at him when he swings away from the reporters ("What's it like to be the next Tony Stark?" and cameras flash and microphones are shoved towards him, there's something heavy pressing against his shoulders and there's ringing in his ears, suddenly the room is not quite big enough and he needs to escape). Drawings of Iron Man at school, presentations of the fallen (dead, gone, never coming back, never - ).
The world mourns and remembers and then moves on. Peter wonders why he can't.
"And I - I just really miss him." His voice is quiet and thick with tears. In his head, Mysterio laughs through the foggy bubble helmet and threads of green wind themselves around his wrists. He watches MJ fall in slow motion, watches Iron Man's repulsor hover above his head and light up, watches drones surround his friends with red lights blinking, and he knows that when he sleeps, these things will be cemented into his nightmares.
Happy says, "Tony second-guessed everything he did, but one thing he didn't second-guess was picking you." Peter can't help but think that he should have.
He says, "I'm going to kick his arse," with a kind of strength he doesn't feel and conviction that falters with every heaving breath. He says that, and he thinks, or die trying. Because death scares him, but not more than the idea of menacing green lasers pinpointing MJ and Ned's hearts. He put them in danger, and for that, he will never forgive himself. If saving them means dying, then he will die over and over again.
For so long after Mr Stark's death, he had been angry, furious that he had used the gauntlet and left them alone. He'd known it was the right thing to do, the hero thing to do, but selfish rage coiled in his heart. The world had lost Iron Man, their best defender, but he had lost Mr Stark.
But now there's something like understanding as he shifts holograms and assembles his suit, music blasting as he works, safe with the knowledge that Happy was watching, that Happy cared. Mr Stark had faced death with open arms, seizing the chance to win while knowing he would die in the process. Peter has no Infinity Gauntlet in his hand, no age-old stones to wield, but he has his webs and his Peter Tingle and the unwavering knowledge that if he failed, his friends would die and the world would be hoodwinked by a man with a thirst for nothing but glory.
Mr Stark died to save the world. Peter mourns and remembers and after all this is over, he will move on, because moving on is not forgetting. He will never forget Tony Stark, he will never live up to Tony Stark, but that's okay. He can just be Peter Parker, Spider-Man, and that's okay.
Peter Parker puts on the suit he had made and clings onto the side of the jet, ready to dismantle Mysterio's illusions, ready to save maybe not the world, but his world.
He dives into the fake Elemental, he finds Quentin Beck, he evades the drone's attacks, he isn't fooled by Mysterio's tricks, and he thinks, Mr Stark would be proud.