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The brute is holding Peter by the throat. His lips are getting bluer and bluer, his breath rasping painfully.
“Give me the access code!”
“I—I, please-," He rarely stutters, but now his voice is fractured, lost somewhere in his chest while his eyes are fixed on his struggling child. There aren't many times when an enemy can withstand a repulsor blast to the face, but somehow this man can. This man did.
The man gets impatient and he can see the moment he just snaps. He can see him bash his kid’s head through the window and into the pavement outside in a torturously slow, inevitable motion.
The resulting crack is jarring.
Blood-covered shards clink onto the ground. One of them seems to have found its way to his heart. Unaware of anything else, Tony stumbles to his child, numb to the shards cutting into his knees.
Vacant eyes, so much blood. Tony doesn't know where to put his hands. Peter's face is all bloody, pieces of glass digging grotesquely into his skin. Unseeing eyes. Lifeless limbs. Unmoving chest.
It happened in just a few minutes.
Just a few minutes.
A blink.
There is no pulse under his fingers.
Rough hands rips the Iron Man bracelets from his wrists.
”You’ve been beaten, Stark.”
His hands fall down to his side, defeated, lifeless, purposeless.
Childless.
Behind him, a bullet pierces the man’s heart a moment too late, flaming red hair and a coldly furious gaze behind the barrel of the gun that shoots him.
But it’s all too late.
He’s childless.