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They’re on a joint mission with the Avengers, when it happens.
The enemy is a group of ninja-esque mercenaries, hired to sabotage a United Nations conference and supplied with the weirdest electrical trinkets, reminiscent of the modified alien weapons Vulture had been dealing.
They – Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Spider-Man – had caught up to them before the ninjas had been able to break into the conference hall in Geneva. But taking them into captivity, that is proving to be much harder.
“Slippery motherfuckers!” Tony curses as one of the ninjas dodges his repulsor blast. Again.
The ninjas have used flash bombs, anti-gravity guns, even stealth cloaks (Peter had been especially excited about those), but the Avengers were still firmly on their tail. From the look of it, the goons were getting quite desperate.
That’s why, when the tallest one brings an extendable fucking bazooka and aims it at Peter, Tony can feel his parent senses blaring to life with a DANGERDANGERDANGER flashing through his mind.
“PETER LOOK OUT!”
The kid’s spidey senses are very good, and he’s even started to twist away before Tony even finishes his warning, but this time there’s nothing that can save him. Everybody else is too far away, and even the Spider-Man with his astounding acrobatic abilities can’t flip away from a literal truck – what the fuck – thrown his way, when he’s just dangling mid-air.
Helplessly, Tony watches as the truck collides with the kid and sends him hurling away, crashing onto the ground with a heart-stopping crunch.
Everything halts.
He stares at the unmoving red-and-blue heap of limbs on the ground, the sight not fully registering (it can’t, it just cannot).
His chest is numb.
(And just as unmoving as the figure on the ground)
His fingers are tingling.
(There’s a compulsive need to feel brown curls sliding beneath his fingers)
The Iron Man suit suddenly feels heavy and cold.
(Closing around him like a casket)
(He needs to get out of it before he suffocates)
(He needs to feel the pulse of his kid)
(RIGHT NOW)
In a blink of an eye, he’s next to Peter. He doesn’t remember steering the suit.
(He still can’t breathe)
There’s someone next to him.
He doesn’t know who it is.
They are talking.
He can’t decipher anything except “he’s alive”.
Who’s alive?
Surely not him. He thinks his heart stopped the moment his kid hit the ground. Actually, he knows it stopped. Otherwise there wouldn’t be this paralyzing stillness all around him. (Inside him.)
He blinks and someone in a white coat is there.
They’re trying to turn Peter over.
His hand shoots out automatically, restraining the doctor.
The other (or is it others?) talks again.
He catches “help”, and lets them pry his hand off.
The doctor takes off the Spider-Man suit and Tony inhales sharply.
Blunt force trauma sounds like such a clinical term. Not that dangerous. It’s blunt, right? Not sharp. Not piercing. Not as damaging.
But it’s deceiving.
It means that even if there’s no blood gathering in crimson puddles around Peter, he’s still dying. It means that his skin is unbroken, but underneath it there is a deadly black-blue area, darkening and swelling. Filling up his chest cavity. Drowning him from the inside.
Tony drops onto his knees like someone suddenly chopped his legs off from underneath him.
Not paying attention to the figures hovering all over them, he brings a shaky hand to the kid’s chest. The suit disassembles from around his hand like it could sense his desperate need to feel. Feel the warmth, the heartbeat, the up-and-down movement. Feel the life that still flowed in his child’s veins.
He can feel warmth, some movement too, but the heartbeat is fluttering, weakening.
“Nonononono, stay with me kid, don’t go, wake up, c’mon kid, wake up.”
It takes him some time to realize that the incoherent babble he’s hearing is his own. An eerie, twisted reflection of the happy babble he’s used to hearing from the kid.
He wants to stop, but the words fall out his mouth like he could bind his son to the mortal plane with just his voice.
He really wishes he could. He wishes he had the power of words. He wishes he could chant an incantation or a prayer. But he can't. And the vitals on the portable BP monitor are steadily dropping.
The movement around him speeds up.
Compared to it he’s like a frozen statue. Immovable. Unfeeling. (Or feeling too much)
“Peter, please.” The words are choked, almost inaudible, and irreversibly broken.
The steady decrease of the blood pressure slows.
Stops.
And he can visibly see how his kid starts fighting back. His healing factor kicking in full-force.
The beeping gets faster. Louder.
The movement of his chest bigger.
For what feels like the first time ever, Tony breathes.