Archive of Our Own

A cursed song played.

It screeched out from a plastic wand, and, even more cursed, Tony was singing along to the princess toy. Not out loud, of course, just in his head. He knew all the words. Hell, he even knew all the dance moves, all the steps and swings Elsa took as she belted impossible notes while building her ice castle.

He would’ve blamed Morgan, but Tony suspected most of the blame fell on Peter’s shoulders. Just a day earlier, he’d been singing at the top of his lungs, dancing around in the jet, making Morgan giggle and Tony blast the volume on the classic rock pumping through the plane’s speakers.

He smiled at the memory. It was just a day old, but it didn’t make it any less good.

Tony looked down when Morgan started tugging at the bottom of his shirt. She stared up at him, eyes wide, with a face full of fake innocence, the kind that let Tony know she was about to ask for something, or rather, kept asking for something.

“Please dad.”

“Come on, Mr. Stark,” added Peter. His eyes were also wide, and his brown hair stuck up behind a pair of black Micky ears. “Please.”

“No.”

“But – “

“It’s bad enough that I paid fifty dollars for two pairs of glorified headbands,” said Tony. “I don’t need to make myself look like even more of a fool.”

“Aww, dad, you’re ruining the atmosphere,” Morgan chimed in. She continued yanking at the bottom of his shirt.  

Tony resisted the urge to mock the atmosphere. The thousand screaming kids, who carried souvenirs that played even more cursed songs.

“Yeah, Mr. Stark. Have some Disney spirit.”

He looked at the kids. His kids. They were both there, both alive and breathing and well. They both wore ridiculous mistakes of the fashion industry on their heads, and they both were pulling their most convincing puppy dog eyes. He only lasted just a couple seconds longer about caving and handing his credit card to the cashier.

A third pair of Micky ears cost him another twenty-five dollars and a rush of humiliation once he put them on over his head and walked out of the souvenir shop, but the grins on Peter and Morgan’s faces were a memory he’d always have.

“Looks like the weather needs to get in the Disney spirit,” said Tony, looking up and around at the clouds that had rolled in while they were in the shop.

The sky was grey. No trace of sunlight anywhere. A breeze blew through their hair, bring a chill with it, one that made any of the water attractions unthinkable.

The kids didn’t seem to notice, though. If they did, they didn’t care. Morgan was too busy naming all the Disney characters she wanted to meet, and Peter was too busy trying to find their location on the map as she listed them off.

Tony didn’t know if he should be concerned that most of the ones she wanted pictures with were villains. Later, he’d ask Pepper. Some SI emergency had her back in the hotel suit, dulling out her wisdom and orders via Skype.

“Ok, umm,” said Peter, sliding his finger across the map. “If we start here, we should be able to get pictures with all of them.”

“You sure, Pete?” asked Tony. “Meeting them all might take the day. This is your vacation, too.”

“It’s okay,” he said, with a smile. He folded up the map and slid it into his back pocket. “We still have tomorrow to see all the Star Wars stuff and go on rides.”

Morgan gave an excited little jump, and Tony clapped Peter on the shoulder, wondering how he’d gotten lucky enough to have two perfect kids.

They spent the day taking pictures with Disney characters and going on the occasional ride, and ended it with room service in their suite, with Morgan showing off her pictures to Pepper. She painted gold sparkles on Peter’s Micky ears while she told her mom all about how the Evil Queen was really just misunderstood and while Peter texted Michelle.

Or, probably.

He was probably texting Michelle. He had that goofy smile on his face only she could be responsible for.

Tony smiled and put his metal arm around his wife. It didn’t really matter to him he was missing his real arm. After the war, after Thanos was destroyed and the lost were brought back, Tony had never felt so whole, so content.

He should have known it wouldn’t last forever.

*

Their second day at Disney World started the same as their first, right down to Pepper explaining that she’d be spending the day in the suite, once again, trying to put out fires at SI. She pushed him and the kids out the door, assuring him everything was fine and that he should enjoy the day, that there was nothing he could do.

“Alright,” said Tony, after Pepper pulled the door shut behind them. “What’s the plan today?”

“Star Wars,” was Peter’s immediate answer.

“Star Wars it is.”

“Yes!” Morgan leaped and did fighting poses as she glided down the hallway, towards the elevator. “I’m gonna get a lightsaber!”

“Volume, little miss,” Tony told her, looking around at all the closed hotel room doors. “And no hitting anybody with it, once you have it.” 

“We’ll see!” said Morgan, in a sing-song voice. She darted into the elevator as the doors opened.

Peter laughed as he pressed the button to the lobby. “Don’t worry, Mo. We’ll have epic lightsaber battles on the plane ride home.”

“YEAH!”

Tony grunted, hoping to come off like he hated the idea when actually he didn’t mind it. Anything to prevent another sing-along, dance-along, that got yet another Disney song stuck in his head.

*

Peter’s head was buried behind the Disney map, only the Mickey Ears he still insisted on wearing were visible. He was the very definition of nerd then, at the moment, standing on a crowded path at Disney World, wearing a shirt that described various sounds of the weapons in Star Wars.

Tony hoped he never changed.

He could stay like that forever, seventeen and content to spend a week humoring his little sister, but Tony knew he wouldn’t. Time marched on, even now that everything was perfect, even now that Tony was retired and had nothing to look forward to except living in the moment, every moment, as they happened.

Peter closed the map. “It’s over that way… just let me run to the bathroom real fast, Mr. Stark.”

Come to think of it, that could change.

Peter could drop the formality and start calling him by his first name. It was a fool’s errand to even suggest it.

There were only a handful of occasions Peter slipped up and called him Tony, every one of them were he was distressed, like that time he was delirious with the flu, or the last time, after Tony had snapped Thanos and his army away and Peter had been sure Tony was dying.

Peter disappeared into the bathroom, and Tony grabbed Morgan’s hand and guided her towards a nearby bench, preventing her from running after some other kid who’d already gotten a lightsaber.

Five minutes passed. Tony checked the time on his phone, mentally cursing Peter’s questionable food choices.

Ten minutes passed and Tony’s leg started to bounce. He shouldn’t be worry. There was nothing to worry about, and even if Peter was on the floor of a bathroom stall, getting violently ill from something he ate, he wouldn’t appreciate being checked up on in the bathroom.

He pushed down his paranoid parental instinct, his nagging anxiety that something was wrong, or at least, he held it back as long as he could.

Fifteen minutes passed and Tony no longer cared what a seventeen-year-old would find embarrassing. He stood up from the bench, grabbed Morgan’s hand, and marched off towards the bathroom.

“Eww, no dad,” said Morgan, stopping when saw she was being tugged towards the men’s room. “Boys are gross, and they smell. I can’t go in there.”

A point was made, but Tony couldn’t stand the thought of letting go of one child when he was terrified something had happened to the other. He lifted her into his arms, told her put her head down in his shoulder and close her eyes, then walked into the men’s room, noting that Morgan had been right.

It did smell, despite being soul-crushingly empty, besides a kid standing at the sink washing his hands.

“Peter?” asked Tony, looking around.

There wasn’t a response. He didn’t know why he thought there would be. All the stall doors were open and there weren’t any feet visible under any of them.

“Hey,” said Tony, getting the kid’s attention. He turned off the facet and looked at Tony. “Seen a teenager in here? He had on some nerdy Star Wars shirt and Mickey ears?”

The boy shook his head and hurried out of the bathroom, forgetting to dry his dripping wet hands.

Tony’s heartbeat pumped through his ears. His eyes raced around the small bathroom, as his brain tried and failed to come up with explanations to where Peter could have gone. Panic and paranoia, along with the truth that Peter was too polite and considerate to simply run off without telling him, took over and dread twisted a tight knot his belly.

For the second time, Peter Parker had disappeared into thin air, and Tony had done nothing to prevent it.

*

Tony sat in a tiny, hot room, between two sweaty men who hadn’t bothered with deodorant. His legs were shoved under a tiny wooden table, his back was hunched forward, and his eyes were glued to the security monitor.

He watched as Peter left him and Morgan by a bench on a pathway and disappeared into the bathroom. After that, there was nothing. No sign of Peter leaving the bathroom, no sign of Peter at all. Tony sped up the footage, rewound and played it again, only to see it play out in the exact same way.

A low shakily breath escaped Tony and both his hands flew up to grip the table. Not again. This couldn’t be happening again. Not to Peter, not to his kid. Thanos was gone. The world was set right, or had been, up until the very Peter had wandered into the bathroom and didn’t come back out.

Tony’s world would never be okay with Peter Parker in it, even if the rest of the world spun on without a blip. That was the thing about saving the world, he supposed, it always needed saving.

There was always someone out there, waiting and watching and wanting to cause harm in one way or another. Whoever it was this time really messed with the wrong retired Avenger. They took the wrong kid.

He’d get him back. Tony couldn’t imagine a future where he didn’t get Peter back. The world, the universe, would simply cease to be.

Tony left the security guards in their sauna and set out to find Peter’s phone. A quick look at the tracking software on his own led him to the opposite side of the park, where he saw Peter’s cellphone in a patch of grass under a sign.

Carefully, he picked it up and rubbed his thumb over the freshly cracked screen.

“Really, kid? Again?” asked Tony. He examined the third phone Peter had ruined that month. “You’d think someone with sticky fingers would have a better grip.”

Peter laughed and shrugged. “Maybe I just like the aesthetic better that way.”

Tony blinked away the memory and shook his head, looking forward to finding Peter so he could buy him another phone and, probably, many more after that.

“Where are you, Pete?” asked Tony, as if he expected the phone might answer.

It didn’t, of course, and as the day wore on, Tony was beginning to worry he might never get his answer, might never had the chance to berate the boy about cellphone responsibility ever again.

At some point, Disney security notified the police, who arrived to take Tony’s statement and start a search party. It yielded nothing, except panic and chaos and concerned parents leaving the park early with fears that someone dangerous might be lurking about.

Pepper called May and Happy, and Tony put out a distress call to the Avengers, though he refused to go back up to the suite with Pepper and Morgan to sit around and wait.

Instead he wandered around the darkened, abandoned Disney pathways, clutching Peter’s broken phone in a tight fist and wishing the day had ended the way it had been supposed to end, with epic lightsaber duels and laughing.

Now all he had were echoes of what was supposed to be.

*

Disney World was eerie at night.

Tony couldn’t quite pinpoint why, exactly. Most likely it was a combination of things. The silence, the lack of little kids with capes and princess wands running around, screaming, the lack of his own family surrounding him.

It was dark and empty and cold, devoid of any charm or warmth.

It reminded Tony of the way the world looked and felt after he’d made it back from space and witnessed the greater devastation Thanos’ snap had caused. Maybe that was just him, though. Maybe that was just the effect of Peter Parker’s mysterious absence had on his onlook.

That’s what kept him going, kept him searching. Peter had to be out there somewhere. Tony wouldn’t consider any other option.

He shook his head and checked his watch, muttering under his breath about the Avengers being so late. Cap had turned into an old man and suddenly everyone else became slow.

“Mr. Stark.”

Tony startled, and jerked his eyes away from his watch. He looked around but didn’t see anything.

“Mr. Stark! Up h-here!” Peter’s cry was desperate and panicked but filled kindled warmth within Tony’s chest. He found him. He found his boy and he was alive.

He looked up and spotted Peter hanging off the edge of a ride, clinging to its tracks. His legs wiggled around in the air as he struggled to keep his grip.

“Pete,” yelled Tony, frowning. Something was off. “Stop struggling, just stick and climb down.”

“I c-can’t,” said Peter. “Please, Mr. Stark, you have to help me. I don’t know – I don’t know what’s happening, my powers – I lost th – I can’t – “

Tony rushed forward when Peter’s fingers slipped off the metal and he dropped to the ground below. His head smacked against the concrete and blood oozed out from his forehead, matting his hair together

Tony rushed forward, but before he could get there, before he could even think about calling a suit, Peter’s fingers slipped off the metal track and he dropped to the concrete below. Peter’s head smacked against the ground and blood oozed out from his forehead, matting his hair together and stabbing at Tony’s heart.

“Peter, oh god, Pete!” Tony sunk to the ground near Peter’s limp body. He stretched out a hand, needing to provide some sort of comfort, needing to provide his kid with something, but was stopped dead when Peter fixed him with an empty, sad stare.

“Too late, Mr. Stark,” he croaked out. Blood continued to pour out from his head. “Why are you always too late?”

His eyes fluttered close. His chest stopped moving, then, just like that, his lifeless body faded away and nothing was left of Peter Parker. Not ashes, not even his blood. Tony pressed his palm up against the concrete where it had been stained red. His hand came back clean.

He stared at it, flexing his palm, in utter confusion and shock, until the edges of his vision started to blur. The Disney pathways, the rides, all the bright colors, disappeared and it was just Tony, sitting in a sea of blackness.

Slowly and carefully, he stood and looked around at all the nothing, the darkness that stretched as far as he could see.

The sound of Peter screaming broke the silence.

Tony broke into a run. His feet propelled him forward through the black, towards the gut-wrenching sounds of Peter’s pained, desperate cries. Eventually Tony came upon a light, which turned into, once he got closer, a room with a large, glass window.

Inside the room Peter was strapped down on a medical, while men in white coats hovered around him, poking him with needles.

“Hey! Let him go!” Tony yelled. Nobody seemed to hear him. He took a step forward, ready to beat his fist against the glass until it broke, but an eerily familiar voice stopped him.

“Stark.” The man who seemingly appeared out of nowhere sounded like Ross. Though his face was still familiar, Tony couldn’t place it. “No use trying to save him now.”

Tony redirected his attention into the room. Peter had stopped screaming. Whatever they had been injecting him with had killed him.

“Don’t look so shocked,” said the man. “Did you really think you could hide him from me forever?”

He couldn’t take his eyes off Peter’s dead body. He couldn’t make his mouth form words.

“Did you really think this all this would end any other way than his death?”

Tony swung his fist into the glass and it went straight through. The glass dissolved into nothing, into the darkness, at his touch, along with anything else. Gone was Ross-voiced man, gone was the white-coated scientists, gone was Peter’s corpse…

Then, once again, it was just Tony and the black. There was no screaming that time, just silence. No running, now that Tony didn’t have a reason to move.

That didn’t matter, though. The trouble came to him instead.

Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson appeared out of the darkness. In Bucky’s arms, limp and lifeless, was Spider-Man sans mask.

“We’re sorry, man,” Sam told Tony. “There was nothing we could do.”

“That’s bullshit,” the words fell from Tony’s mouth, but it was as if someone else were saying them, as if he were watching from someone else above. “You were supposed to watch out for him! You were supposed to keep him safe!”

“Oh, please, Stark.”

Tony turned and he was in the Parker living room, only dimmer and less inviting. May Parker stood in front of him, glaring at him.

“Like you should talk,” said May. “You killed him the day you walked into his apartment and recruited him for your little war. He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you dragging him into it. I hope you’re proud of yourself, Mr. Stark.”

She grabbed an ern, Peter’s ern Tony realized, and walked towards him. “Take him. You had no problem taking him from me when he was alive.”

May shoved the ern into Tony’s arms, but at contact, it turned to dust and slipped through his fingers, the same way Peter had slipped through his fingers back on Titan.

May and her apartment faded away and Tony was thrown back into the darkness.

It wasn’t all black that time, at least not for very long, as Tony was assaulted with flashes of his worst nightmare over and over again. Peter in a dark alleyway getting stabbed through the stomach. Peter getting crushed by a building. Peter getting electrocuted until his face was blue and foam bubbled from his mouth.

Peter drowning in a cold lake, pounding on the ice that separated them, and staring up at Tony with pleading eyes, begging for his help. Tony didn’t move. He didn’t stomp on the ice or try getting him out. It didn’t matter what Tony did.

The story ended the same each time, with Peter’s death.

Peter went still, sunk away from the ice and disappeared into the water’s depths. His hand was still, too, but it remained outstretched, as if he were still waiting for Tony to grab onto him and lift him to safety.

Tony watched him float away, until he couldn’t see him anymore, until he was staring at s concrete Disney pathway that had once been red with Peter’s blood.

He breathed hard and looked around, wondering what the hell kind of acid trip he’d just lived through. His brained race with just one thought. Peter. Was he alive, or dead? He needed to see him, touch him.

He needed to know he was still breathing. That he was real.

“Daddy?”

Tony turned and saw Morgan standing still behind him, watching him. Her hair was crumpled and caked with dried blood.

“Morgan?” asked Tony. His voice had a shake. “What happened to you? Where’s mom?”

She didn’t have an answer for him. Just a stare, one Tony had always feared he’d receive from Morgan. She looked at him the same way he’d learned to look at his own father as a boy. 

“Why didn’t you save him?” she asked. “Why do you keep letting him die?”

“Morgan – “

“You let Peter die! You killed Peter!” she yelled. She turned, and ran, forcing Tony to run after her.

He followed her off the main pathways and through some grass. She finally stopped her sprint when she got to the edge of a body of water. She turned around and Tony reached out his hand, only for her to turn into dust and blow away with a breeze.

Water from the lake ran over Tony’s shoes, bring with it a pair of Mickey ears he was compelled to pick up. As he examined them and the gold fingernail polish painted onto them, gears turned behind his eyes.

He thought back to the Ross-voiced man with a familiar face, finally realizing how he recognized him. He pulled his phone from his pocket, keeping his eyes on the abandoned building across the lake, and dialed Pepper.

She answered on the first ring.

“Tony – “

“Is Morgan with you?”

“Yeah, of course,” she told him. “Where else would she be?”

Tony felt a warm blanket of relief cover his body. “Tell me what’s going on a SI.”

“Right now?” asked Pepper. She sounded surprised, but went on anyway. “Someone broke in, stole some technology. We’ve been trying to figure out how they breached security and track down what’s missing.”

“What technology?” he asked, though he thought he probably already knew.

“BARF.”

“I’m gonna kill him.”

Tony hang up before Pepper could say anything else. He didn’t have the time to waste. He had a deranged man to bury and a son to rescue.

*

“Come on, Mr. Stark, hurry up,” muttered Peter, twisting his wrist around in the handcuffs that had them locked together. His skin was red and itchy underneath, and that bothered him more than the glass cage he was locked in.

He stretched out his legs and gave the glass a good, strong kick. It didn’t break. Not even a little bit, not even by a tiny crack. Without thinking, he tried, not for the first time, to pull his hands apart, only to growl in frustration and drop his hands into his lap.

This whole thing, this whole being handcuffed and locked away in a dark, damp building, wasn’t how Peter wanted to spend his day. Plus it was dramatic. It was overkill and a little redundant.

Mysterio – as Peter had nicknamed him – had only rolled his eyes and chuckled a little after he’d told himself, after he’d asked him to either let him out of the glass prison or loosen the handcuffs.

He supposed dramatic and overkill were good ways to describe his captor. He wore a costume as if he were an actor on the set of a CGI heavy movie, and he spoke like there was an audience watching.

Regardless, Peter popped his head up when Mysterio strode back into the room.

“Hey, you’re back,” said Peter. He scrambled to his feet, stumbled around a little bit as the task of standing was made difficult with complete use of his hands, and stood at the edge of his cage. “You didn’t bring me any food? That’s rude.” 

A strange, unsettling smirk split Mysterio’s face as he stopped, turned, and slowly approached. “You know, you’re a good kid, Peter. I almost feel bad about this.”

“You know,” said Peter. “I’ve actually heard that one before. It’s a little cliché.”

“It’s just too bad you got mixed up with someone like Tony Stark,” Mysterio told him. His voice squeaked as he struggled to turn an oversized facet. 

“Too bad for you, actually,” Peter frowned, both unimpressed by his complete lack of physical strength and trying to figure out what it was he was attempting to do. Peter had a bad feeling, but he also had Mr. Stark’s words of advice floating around in his head, given in case he ever found himself in a situation like this one.

Keep them talking. Distract and stall.

“I feel sorry for you.”

Mysterio stopped his struggle, looked back at Peter, and snorted. “Why? Because the self-destructing cycle of revenge only leads to the dark side?”

A villain making fun of his shirt. That was a first, but Mysterio wasn’t technically wrong.

His vendetta against Mr. Stark was both insane and self-destructive and couldn’t end well for him. It was embarrassing sometimes, the extremes Mr. Stark would go to when someone was threatening his kids, though Peter was thankful for it during times like these.

“No,” said Peter. “Because Mr. Stark’s going to beat the shit out of you.”

“Maybe,” said Mysterio. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

“You’re pretty confident for a guy who can’t turn… whatever it is you’re trying to turn.”

Mysterio chuckled, his hand still on the oversized facet. “Imagine Peter, seeing your loved die over and over again and not doing anything to stop it. Imagine what it might do to a person and the guilt they’d feel knowing they did nothing to save them… guilt like that, it’d ruin a man, or at least, a man like Tony Stark.”

The facet groaned when Mysterio finally gathered up enough strength to turn it and Peter felt the floor beneath him shake. Water seeped in from the slits on the floor, quickly covering the area of the glass cage and soaking into Peter’s shoes.

A shiver went through him, and Peter was about complain at Mysterio, about to tell him he could’ve at least used room temperature water if he was going to try and drown him, but he was cut off by a deafening boom. Wood shattered on the wall to the left of them, and Mr. Stark stepped into the room.

His regular hand, the one that wasn’t metal, was covered in armor. The gauntlet water, Peter guessed.

“Mr. Stark…” said Peter, his voice both filled with relief and with a tremor. The water was rising fast, so cold that it stabbed at Peter’s legs like knives. “Perfect timing.”

Mr. Stark didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, he stared straight at Mysterio.

“Hi crazy eyes,” greeted Mr. Stark. “Having fun with my tech?”

“It’s – “

Mr. Stark waved a hand at him. “Know what? No. Whatever you have to said isn’t anything we all haven’t heard before. You can cut your villain monologue shit too, just tell me where my kid is so I can blast you into that wall.”

“He’s right there,” said Mysterio. He pointed to the cage, to Peter, but Mr. Stark refused to look.

“Mr. Stark,” said Peter, a second time. It didn’t change anything. Mr. Stark kept his eyes on Mysterio, and for the first time that day, Peter started to worry. His legs were numb, the water had risen to his waist.

“Not falling for it,” said Mr. Stark. “Where’s Peter? Don’t make me ask again. You’ll regret it.” Mr. Stark paused, amended. “Well let’s face you’re going to regret this either way.”

 “It’s m-me,” said Peter, quietly, his teeth chattering. Either of the men in the room heard him, and he doubted it would matter if they did.  

He wracked his brain for something, anything, like some sort of secret passage word Mr. Stark would understand, would have to realize he wasn’t an imposter. It was hard to think, though, with the water knifing him, with his breath coming so fast.

“Mr. Stark!” Peter shouted that time, he ignored the ache in his wrists and brought both hands up against the glass. It didn’t break. “It’s me, it’s Peter, help!”

Finally, at last, Mr. stark spared him a look, but the relief Peter felt was short-lived. It died out when he saw the look in his eyes. Mr. Stark had never looked at him that way before. Not even during the regrettable ferry incident. Like he was scum. Worse than scum. Like he was Mysterio.  

The stare had been colder than the water. Peter went still, went quiet, and Mr. Stark looked back at Mysterio. The water rose up to the bottom of Peter’s neck.

“If that were really Peter,” said Mr. Stark, taking steps closer to Mysterio, who started to back up. “He’d broken that glass to bits.”

“I can’t!” Peter shouted. Mr. Stark ignored him. “I c-can’t! I - I lost my powers!”

“That’s a nice try, Beck. A+ for the dramatics, but word of advice, never try to pull the same trick twice.”

Peter gave the glass a kick as the water hit his chin, kicked it again when his nose went under, and a third time when he was completely submerged.

He opened his eyes under the water. Mr. Stark had a hold of Mysterio’s shirt and punched him across his face with the prosthetic hand. At least Peter had been right about one thing. Mysterio would be very lucky to leave Disney World with all his teeth.

It didn’t seem to matter, though.

Peter was dying, drowning, with Mr. Stark standing just a few feet away, and it didn’t matter how many punches, how badly he beat Mysterio, Peter knew if he died, died this way, it’d be a blow Mr. Stark might never recover from.

He’d be wrecked with guilt, just as Mysterio said, and Peter wasn’t going to let that happen.

He pushed up off the floor, as hard as he could, and thrust his head above the water.

“T-tony!” Peter managed to yell out, water spilling into his mouth as he sunk back down.

Mr. Stark whirled around. His eyes went wide when he looked at him, really looked at him, with warmth and worry. His eyes were completely absent of the previous coldness. He dropped Mysterio, who hit the ground hard, stretched out his arm and pointed his palm at the glass cage.

There was a beam light, then Peter was sliding down to the floor with the water. Shards of glass landed around him and Mr. Stark ran towards him. He immediately pulled Peter up into his arms, covering the side of Peter’s head with his hand and slamming it up against his chest.

Peter relished the warmth he stole from Mr. Stark and the air traveling freely through his lungs.

“God, kid,” said Mr. Stark. He swiped a mop of freezing, wet hair from Peter’s forehead, as he shivered under his arms. “I’m sorry. I – I didn’t think you were real.”

“’t’s ‘kay,” said Peter, still breathing hard as he tried to speak. “You got me, I’m okay.”

He’d hoped his words might comfort him, but Mr. Stark shushed him and told him to focus on getting good breaths. He got a few more breaths in before repeating himself again, attempting to calm Mr. Stark’s heart as it hammered away in his chest.

“It’s alright,” Peter breathed. “I’m real, you got me.”  

*

Tony walked into Peter’s room, carrying a plate full of corndogs and an entire bottle of mustard.

Peter had been standing by the window, but when he turned and saw he was coming, he scurried back to his bed and under the heated blanket, as if he thought doing it quickly would change the fact that Tony saw him at all.

“I had one condition for not taking you straight to the hospital,” Tony told him. “One.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Mr. Stark, I’m fine.”

It was truer than it wasn’t. Peter was fine. His powers were back. He was breathing and warm and real, but it was Tony’s job to make sure it stayed that way. That Peter stayed under his blankets and fully recovered in time to enjoy Star Wars in the morning.

The same couldn’t be said about Quentin Beck. He’d been carted onto the Quinjet after the Avengers decided to show up and was probably, at least Tony hoped, locked away on the raft.

“We really gotta move past this Mr. Stark business,” said Tony. He sat down on the edge of the bed and watched Peter shift around under the covers, trying to get comfortable.

“But then we’d have to think of another password.”

Tony handed him the plate and the bottle of mustard. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be easy enough. Something like ‘corndogs are disgusting.’”

“That’s uncalled for,” said Peter. He squeezed an ungodly amount of mustard all over his food, then had the audacity to lift one up by the stick and put it in Tony’s face. “Wanna try one?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re missing out,” he told him, as he chomped down on the corndog Tony rejected. “It’s tradition. I always have corndogs after I almost die, or a mission goes wrong.”

Almost dying shouldn’t be normal for him, should not in any way have its own traditions, and yet, it was and it did.

That wasn’t Tony’s fault. He may have recruited him into the Avenger’s, but he hadn’t been there when Peter decided to put on his pajamas and fight crime in his backyard.

All it took for him to realize how ridiculous it was to think Peter would ever do anything than try to world the world, or at least his neighborhood, was a series of illusions from a deranged, pretend wizard.

“We need to get you a more sophisticated palate.”

“What like cheeseburgers?”

“Hey,” said Tony. He gave Peter’s shoulder a little push, needing to feel that he was real, that he was really there. “Don’t knock the classics.”

Peter laughed and threw an empty corndog stick at him.  

“I changed my mind,” said Tony. “No Star Wars tomorrow.”

Peter only laughed again in response. He damn well knew Tony would keep his promise and take him to the Star Wars part of the park. That he would take him anywhere if only he asked. He supposed that was his problem now. Two spoiled kids, his two small miracles, and a long retirement with plenty of time to spoil them.

*

When morning came, Peter was as good as new and spent their entire breakfaster together fidgeting around, rushing everyone and playing on his phone.

Tony couldn’t say he blamed him for being angsty. One day in a glass cage, missing out on the Star Wars adventure he’d been promised, would make anyone eager to start the day.

They made up for it, though, eventually.

They saw everything, rode every ride. Tony and Pepper were forced to sit behind the kids on most rides, unless they wanted Morgan to loudly call them out when they were being what she considered gross and exchanging kisses.

Tony liked it better that way. He got to watch his kids, watch Morgan smile, laugh, scream and cling to Peter. He got to watch and listen to Peter console her during the few moments she was afraid.

“Don’t worry, Mo,” he told her, as the cart crawled up the hill. “I’m sticky. I can’t let you go.”

When the cart, dropped, sped down the incline, all Tony saw in front of him was Peter’s curls, thicker and wilder in the Florida humidity, blowing through the air.

It was a good day, a perfect day. One to erase all the panic and chaos and anxiety of the day that had come before, as if it’d never happened. As if it was all one big illusion, like a nightmare they woke up from and forgotten by breakfast.

The day ended with buying Morgan a lightsaber and watching her go through the Jedi Academy. Tony stood off to the side, with Peter, and with the other parents, with his phone ready to record Morgan’s duel with Darth Vader, but that wasn’t how it played out.

Instead of hitting Darth Vader with the lightsaber, Morgan kneeled down and declared her allegiance to the dark side of the force. She was meet with a roar laughing and cheering and clapping from the onlookers.

Tony kept his phone steady and pointed at Morgan, but turned his body towards Pepper and asked, “Should we be worried about her?”

“She’s your daughter,” said Pepper. “We should always be worried about her.”

Peter erupted into laughter and bothered Tony the rest of the day to send the video to his phone, so he could text it to MJ and Ned.

That day was supposed to be where the vacation ended, but like everything else, that hadn’t gone according to plan, either. Peter was to blame. He forced them all to watch Harry Potter in the hotel room, and the next thing Tony knew, he was buying tickets to Universal and standing in a Wizard’s clothing store, pretending to be a sorting hat.

“Peter is without a doubt a Hufflepuff,” he said, yanking a pair of Hufflepuff house robes off a rack, and seeing as how there was no other option for a boy like Peter, he accepted with a smile and a nod.

Tony sorted Pepper into Ravenclaw and himself in Gryffindor, leaving just the youngest. His hand hovered between shelves, then moved towards a set of Slytherin children’s robes.

“You went to the dark side,” Tony told Morgan, dropping the robes into her hands. “You’re getting green.”

“Aw, dad,” said Morgan. “I only went to the dark side so Vader would let his guard down around me and then I could wait until he fell asleep and chop him up with my lightsaber.”

Tony, Pepper and Peter paused, the three of them trading looks.

“…ok,” said Tony, after a beat. He clapped his hands together. “You’re still getting the green.”

Morgan shrugged. “MJ always says you gotta keep your enemies close.”

“That doesn’t say great things about your relationship, kid.” Tony clapped Peter on the shoulder and headed towards the check-out counter.

“Guess what dad?” asked Morgan. She did an excited jump and didn’t wait for him to guess. “Peter and MJ kiss!”

“Morgan!” whined Peter.

“Oh really?” asked Tony, giving Peter a smirk, watching his ears go pink.

“Yeah! I saw them during Aunt May and Uncle Happy’s wedding, behind Gerald’s house. They gave me candy to go away and keep it a secret.”

“Which technically you should give back now!”

“Too late,” said Morgan. “Already gone.”

Peter growled under his breath and Tony put his arm around him. “Relax kid, everyone already knows you two kiss. Even Gerald.”

Tony paid for their robes, which they all put on immediately, before heading out of the shop and into the cobblestoned streets of Diagon Alley. Tony stretched his arm around Peter, while he continued to grumble about lack of privacy and snitches while Morgan mocked him.  

It was another beautiful day, a perfect day to be dressed like a wizard with his family, and the future stretched on with the promise of many more.