Chapter Text
The first thing Peter does is call May.
He's just sitting amongst the rubble, broken parts of mechanized people mixed with ash and debris. The Chitauri, making their graves on Earth for the second time now, though all the biological waste has been dusted. He remembers the way they split the sky the first time around, cutting through steel towers like butter, killing indiscriminately. Peter remembers being terrified, realizing that at any moment he or his family could die and that no one could do anything about it. He’s terrified now, even after the battle is over, because he’s one of the only ones who can. Peter’s been the city’s main protector long enough for the city to become dependent on him, and he’s been dead for five years.
Peter makes himself comfortable on his throne of robot corpses and pulls his phone from the pocket of his suit, hitting the first number in his contacts list and pressing it to his ear.
Peter’s watched a lot of movies in his life. Older movies with May and Happy when he comes around, sci-fi with Ned, horror movies when MJ comes over and vetoes any choices that have ‘star’ in the title. All of them had death scenes, scenes when actor would mourn their character’s lost sibling/mother/lover/friend, or scenes when they would cry in relief to see that person still standing. None of his favorites could ever have captured the animal emotion in May’s voice when she answers; “Peter?”
“Hey, Aunt May.” His voice was less hoarse when he was stuck crying for help under a building. “I’m back.”
The first thing Aunt May does is curse on god in several different directions, which is such a wholesome and familiar action that it makes Peter’s eyes wet. May chokes on her own tears, barely coherent. “Five fucking years, hon. Five godless fucking years you were dead. We put a stone up next to Ben—“
Peter gasps, hot and wet and loud into the receiver. May quiets. “Contact me every hour on the hour, you hear me? So help me god I’ll track Stark down and pull his eyes out through his asshole, don’t tell me I won’t.”
It’s laughter then, that wracks his chest like a violent cough and leaves his ribs aching. “I love you, May.”
“I love you too, Pete. Come home safe.”
The .90 caliber heroes are still on, talking with arching hand gestures and quick, manly embraces. Captain Marvel slaps her hand on Thor’s far shoulder in a move he’s seen frat boys execute with less platonic finesse. There’s the matter of the unconscious Tony Stark, whose arm is in a makeshift sling and who’s being held by an astonishingly gentle Hulk, along with the matter of returning hundreds of Earth’s heroes to their homes. King T’Challa is talking to his people— some of which who are directing the Hulk to put Mr. Stark into their capable hands— and negotiating with Captain America the methods by which his people will be returned home. Last Peter had checked in, the winning route was by Doctor Strange’s portals, but that had been foiled around the same time that the good doctor fucked off back to New York along with the rest of the magicians, refusing to exert any more of his energy on the other “superpowered assholes.” Peter resigns himself to leaving only when Mrs. Potts does, because at least she is too responsible to keep him stranded.
“It’s Mrs. Stark now, actually,” she explained after the dust had been settled for about an hour and the tear tracks were sticky on her face. “But please, Tony’s been telling my daughter enough stories about you to make Spider-Man her favorite hero after himself, which is saying a lot. It’s about time you called me Pepper.”
Peter doesn’t have any more of an idea of what to do with that now than he did when she said it, and he’s had at least an hour to process. Mr. Stark got married. Mr. Stark remembered him. Mr. Stark has a kid. Mr. Stark cares enough about Peter to make sure his kid knows about him. Pepper is somehow a nickname for Virginia. There’s a lot of information trying to link itself together in his brain, but his synapses have taken the loss and decided not to fire, not that he much blames them. Peter’s pretty focused on having been dead for five years, himself.
Peter picks himself up off of the pile of scrap metal— really, he needs to bring some of it back with him to study. The Chitauri were so modded up with alien tech that there was barely any flesh left in them— and joins the .90 calibers over by the wrecked Avengers base.
King T’Challa stands as regal in his Black Panther suit as he does in a three-piece, even surrounded by the devastated landscape. There’s something to royalty that bends the air no matter the atmosphere. “We have contacted our pilots, and they are well equipped to take home most of our armies, but we cannot in good conscience leave over two-hundred of our own people in a foreign country without arrangements made for their comfort.”
“We own an airline,” Pepper offers, which is news to Peter but not at all surprising. It probably operates entirely on clean energy, nuclear fusion safely harnessed by Stark Industries to become a cleaner alternative to fission or something equally as impressive. “We can provide the means to transport the rest.”
King T’Challa turns to his guard and his sister for conference, eventually deciding that they would be grateful for her help, but they can only accept on the condition that the planes be piloted by the Wakandan soldiers. For all they appreciate the Avengers and the friendly relationships they’ve made over the last five years, they do not want to risk outsiders in their country during such unstable times. This starts a whole other debate, with T’Challa’s sister chiming in that “Stark’s airships might be outdated compared to mine, but I’m sure our soldiers are capable of flying them home and back without trouble.”
Peter kind of wants to be her when he grows up. Unfortunately, she looks like she’s about the same age as him, and he doubts he’ll be half as accomplished in double the time. He joins the group just as T’Challa and the Boss Guard reprimand her. “Shuri, please. This woman is doing us a service, do not insult her and her company out of turn.”
Shuri crosses her arms, pouting up at her brother. “I just want to be on our way already. This can be easy, you know, just give us the planes and we’ll give them back.”
Pepper laughs, more about releasing tension than humor. “Yes, but there’s the matter of the pilots we employ and company policy. We want at least two Stark Industry employees on every plane to make sure nothing is tampered with, and in the case that your pilots are unused to our controls, that everything goes smoothly.”
“We’ll allow one, and instruct our people to treat them with utmost courtesy. Is that acceptable?” T’Challa decides, and after a minute of careful consideration, Pepper nods.
Shuri sighs loudly and with feeling, which Peter echoes in his soul. Finally, the adults are done with the complicated political shit. He takes this opportunity to enter the conversation. “Cool, so how are the rest of us getting home? Some of us are five years late to curfew, you know.”
Pepper flinches. Oops, bad timing. Peter’s going to be feeling guilty about that one for the next year, he knows. “Uh, sorry. I just really, really want to go home.”
“I know, Peter.” Pepper’s face softens, smoothed out by sadness that Peter hopes he didn’t put there but knows he did. “Yours and Tony’s plane is arriving soon, the rest of us are staying a while longer to sort things out.”
Normally, Peter would resent being sat at the kiddie table— or the kids-and-wounded-adults table, as it were— but he doesn’t have the energy to care. He just nods and heads back off to his dead robot pile to wait. A few minutes later, he’s joined by Shuri in all her badass whiz kid glory, grinning spectacularly. “Hey, Spider Boy.”
“Spider-Man.”
“I saw you when you came out of the portal. You had your mask off, remember? You’re not fooling anyone.”
Peter totally forgot about the secret identity thing. He’s going to see one of the wizard people in a bodega and have to walk to another, less quality bodega on the opposite side of the street without making eye contact. He buries his face in his hands.
Shuri continues on. “Spiderling. Baby Spider. Itsy Bitsy. Honey, I Shrunk The—“
He lifts his head just to stop her. “If I wasn’t like, literally just resurrected, I’d say this is hell.”
Shuri laughs and steals his phone to take his number, citing. “Kid table solidarity, yeah?” He knows it’s just to keep making fun of him when he leaves.
When she pulls out her own, unfamiliar device, Peter has to call bullshit. “What the fuck kinda phone is that?”
“It’s not,” Shuri replies, not looking up from the holographic screen what the fuck that’s so cool. She gives his own Stark-Phone back like the pitiful trash it is. “Not as outsiders know it, at least. I get wrong number calls from Asgard. You lot are behind the times, but it’s made so that I can communicate with you even with your prehistoric tech.”
With stars Peter can feel twinkling in his eyes, he asks, “Can I have one?”
Shuri laughs sharply. “If you call your Tony Stark’s own life’s work shit to his face and only come to me for your suits from now on? Maybe.”
He’s still seriously considering it when Pepper comes around to let him know the plane is here, reminding him of his loyalties and most importantly who pays him. “I love and support Stark Industries, thank you so much.”
Pepper blinks. “You’re welcome? Please channel that love and support to the care of my unconscious husband and the father of my child during the flight.”
Completely serious, he nods. “I’ll protect him with my life.”
“Just go.”
The flight is short and mostly unnecessary, the only reason why they don’t take a car is because the traffic induced by the Blipped rushing home to see their families is unprecedented even by NYC standards. Peter whistles low as he watches out the window of the jet, the same one he flew in to Berlin. He wishes he had that camera on him now, but it’s been two-and-five years now since he’s seen it at all.
He texts May to meet him at the airport, and she’s running onto the landing strip before the plane even touches down. Not that he can talk, jumping out the door and missing the stairs just so he can see her a little faster. She wraps her arms around him and sobs, hair just a little more gray and skin just a little more worn out than he remembers, but even when she’s crying she’s still beautiful, still Peter’s mom in all but name.
May’s fingernails dig into his skin hard enough to make him bleed, just enough to make sure he’s real. “You’re never gonna die on me again? You hear me? Never fucking again.”
Peter hugs her back with just enough restraint not to bruise. He remembers when it was all he could do to hold onto her, when he was small and courageous and jumped on her back while she was doing chores, determined to initiate a piggy back ride across the apartment while she was just as determined to pry him off of her. He remembers during the Battle of New York, hugging her tight and it never feeling tight enough that no one could take her from him. Now, if he’s especially careless, he can break May’s ribs more naturally than holding back from doing so. He buries his face in her shoulder and leaves tear stains when they separate, knowing that he’ll die twice before his time no matter what she has to say about it.