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These past couple of weeks had been hard on everyone. Steve refused to be within two miles of the Avengers Tower, Thor returned to Asgard and hadn’t come back, Natasha kept herself as busy as possible with training new recruits and anything else she could find, Bruce threw himself into research projects, Pepper took a lot of time off from work, and Peter, well… Peter suffered the most out of everyone. He just wasn’t the same happy kid he had been before Tony died.
Don’t get me wrong, he was still a happy kid, or at least that’s how he acted.
He practically lived at the Avengers Tower now. He went off to school in the morning, went to the Avengers Tower to work in the afternoons, sometimes he would have dinner with Pepper and Morgan in the evenings, and at night… at night was when it would hit him.
He would put on his suit and patrol the streets for a few hours, stopping any robberies or break-ins that popped up, but at around one in the morning, he would go to the top of the Empire State Building and look out over the city for a while. Then he would take off his mask, take out his phone, and look at a picture of him and Tony and he would just talk to him.
He’d tell him about his day; about the new comic he read, about how Ned would tease him about MJ, about how things were going with MJ. Anything and everything that was on his mind, he would talk to Tony about.
And then he would break. When he talked to Tony and thought about what he would be saying in response, when he thought about the jokes he would make or the sound of his laugh, or about the way he would clamp his hand down on his shoulder and tell him he was doing a good job, he would break. But then he would put his phone away, dry his tears, put on his mask and go back to the Avengers Tower where he would work on his suit for a few hours and then do it all over again.
He hardly ever slept anymore. He hated sleeping. When he closed his eyes he could see Tony in those last few moments he had with him. He would see him take his last breath and he would scream into the void, scream that it should have been him, not Mr. Stark. That the world needed Tony and not him. He screamed and he cried and he begged, but no one would listen to him. God, the Universe, whatever. No one heard him and he would wake up drenched in sweat and tears and completely out of breath. He didn’t like feeling like that, so he didn’t sleep if it could be avoided.
That was until the day he ran into Natasha.
“Ohh! I’m so sorry, Miss Romanoff,” Peter exclaimed, fumbling to clean up the mess of coffee he had spilled; none of which had made it onto Natasha’s pants, thankfully.
“It’s alright, Peter,” she smiled, taking some paper towels from him and helping him clean up. “Are you okay? You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” Peter mumbled, smiling when he heard Natasha chuckle. “I’m fine, just haven’t been sleeping much. There’s a lot to do around here.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Natasha said, throwing the wet paper towels away.
Peter hesitated and then asked, “Can I buy you another coffee?”
Natasha smiled. “No, it’s alright. Really.”
Peter blushed, still feeling really embarrassed about everything that had just happened.
“Well, I’ll catch up with you later, kid. I have to go talk to Pepper about letting me crash here for a little while,” she said, motioning towards the general direction of where Pepper’s office was.
“Ohh, is everything okay? Why do you need to stay here? If that’s okay for me to ask,” Peter rushed out, his cheeks turning bright pink again.
“Everything’s fine. I'm remodeling my kitchen so I can’t be there until they’re done.”
“Ohh,” Peter said, “okay then. I’ll get out of your hair now. Umm, I’ll see you around since I’m here a lot. I’ll try not to spill coffee on you again, though.”
Natasha laughed and started walking towards the elevator. “Bye ребенок паук.” {Spider baby}
“Way to go, Parker,” Peter muttered to himself. “You can’t be in the presence of an Avenger without making yourself look like an idiot, can you?”
***
Peter stayed in the lab until pretty late that night. He was trying to modify his web shooters without any luck; they still kept getting stuck.
In the midst of his frustration he threw the screwdriver he was using across the room and yelled, “Dammit!” The tool clashed with a glass cup, causing it to shatter and making Peter let out an exasperated sigh. He put the web shooters down on the table as calmly as he could, getting up from the table and making his way over to his bunk, two floors up from where he currently was. As much as he hated to sleep, he knew he had to try, even if for just a few hours. He was, after all, a science nerd so he was aware of the consequences of going long periods of time without sleeping.
When he made it to his room, he threw himself down on the nearest bed, passing out almost immediately.
His peaceful sleep didn’t last long. His dream started out innocent enough this time. He and Tony were playing with Morgan and Pepper; basketball. Peter and Morgan against Pepper and Tony. Everything was going great. Peter helped Morgan shoot a basket in and the rest of the Avengers, who were watching from the sidelines, cheered them on.
But then the basketball court disappeared and they were back on the battlefield, death and destruction all around them and Peter was watching as Tony took his last breath. And then it started; he was screaming into the void again, begging someone to help him save Tony, offering up his own life in between sobs.
Next thing he knew, someone was shaking him, telling him to wake up.
“Peter!” the voice said semi-softly. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
It was Natasha. Peter opened his eyes, wet with tears and finally realized that what he had seen wasn’t real. It was all a dream.
But it hadn’t just been a dream. It was real. Tony was gone and there was nothing he could do about it.
Peter sighed and tried to calm his heart rate. He was still breathing a little heavy and the tears kept rolling down his cheeks no matter how many times he wiped them away.
Natasha hated seeing him like this. The few times before today when she had seen him he looked terrible. He had lost a lot of weight, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he always seemed to be a little on edge, but whenever someone asked him if he was okay, he would smile and say he was fine.
She placed a hand on his arm and moved her thumb back and forth, telling him that he was okay now. When his breathing went back to normal, she sat on the edge of his bed and looked at him until he met her eyes.
“Are you okay?” She asked, already knowing the answer.
Peter hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head, a couple more tears escaping from his eyes. Natasha reached over and wiped them away, a sort of maternal instinct taking over.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said softly.
Peter sighed and sat up, leaning back against the metal headboard.
“I just miss him,” he said, his voice hoarse from all the screaming and crying. “I can’t close my eyes without seeing him there, dying. I feel terrible knowing that I couldn’t do anything to save him. He was always saving me and the one time it really mattered, I couldn’t do the same for him. I couldn’t help him.”
His voice faltered and his eyes glimmered with fresh tears. Natasha pulled him into a hug and squeezed him as tightly as she could without hurting him.
When she released him she placed a hand on his cheek saying, “Peter, this is not your fault. Tony was a hero; sacrificing himself in order to protect everyone else was what he did best. Nobody could have stopped him. The man was stubborn as hell, once he made up his mind it was virtually impossible to get him to change it.”
Peter smiled a little at Natasha’s words. She was right, and he knew she was right, but he still felt responsible.
“I know,” he sniffed. “I just feel like it was somehow my fault.”
Natasha moved over so she could sit right next to him. Peter moved over slightly, giving her more room.
“I get it,” she stated, the tone of her voice changing. “That’s exactly how I felt after Clint died. Except in my case I felt ten times more responsible because he did it for me. We fought over who should sacrifice themselves in order to get the soul stone, and I was so close to being the one to do it, but Clint grabbed me right before I could and threw me in the opposite direction of the cliff. And then he jumped.”
There was so much pain laced in her words, the memory of her best friend cutting into her heart, making it feel like it was about to burst. Ever since that day, the pain had never subsided, never eased. Every time she thought about it - about him - it hurt just as bad as it did when she saw his lifeless body at the bottom of that cliff.
“He sacrificed himself so that I didn’t have to,” she said softly. “So believe me when I tell you that I know how you feel and that you don’t have to do this alone.”
Peter turned his head and looked at her. He could see the pain in her eyes; the same pain he felt every single day. He never thought that anyone would be able to understand how much it hurt. And he had to say that even though he wished that she didn’t have to feel that way, it was kind of nice to have someone who really understood.
He leaned into her shoulder and she placed an arm around him. He let go of everything, then. All the pain he’d been suppressing, all the anger he felt, all the memories he had been trying so hard to bury; he let it all out and it hit him like a train.
It broke Natasha’s heart to see him so broken, so fragile. He was one of the most resilient people she had ever met. Before this, she didn’t think she had ever seen him so much as frown. So to go from always seeing him smiling and happy and cracking jokes to hearing his broken sobs in the middle of the night because he felt responsible for the death of the person he most admired, well, you can understand how painful it was to see him like this.
But regardless of how much it hurt her to see him cry, she allowed him to let go of all of his emotions. She didn’t try to whisper words of encouragement, or try to reassure him that things would get better with time because, again, she knew what this was like. She had been in this situation and she knew that hearing things like that didn’t help. She knew that all he needed was someone to hold him. So that’s exactly what she did.
After a while, his sobs quieted down and his breathing evened out. Natasha thought he had fallen asleep, but then he spoke. His voice was barely above a whisper, but she heard him.
“Nat?” he said, his voice trembling.
“Hmm?” she hummed.
“Do you think you could sleep here tonight? I don’t want to be alone,” he said timidly, almost as if he were afraid she would laugh at him.
Natasha looked down at him and smiled softly. “Of course.”
Peter laid down on the small bed and Natasha scooted in closer to him so she wouldn’t fall off. At first Peter was turned facing the wall and Natasha was on her back, staring up at the bottom of the mattress above them, but then Peter turned around and cuddled into her side. She was a little surprised at first, but then she smiled contently and wrapped an arm around him, pulling him closer.
Natasha fell asleep almost instantly as she was tired from a long day of helping to train new agents. Peter took a little longer to ease into sleep. He was drained from crying so much, but he fought off the exhaustion that threatened to pull him into an unconscious state out of the fear of having the same nightmare again. But as he laid there, wrapped in Natasha’s arms, he couldn’t help but feel safe. He closed his eyes and listened to her quiet, even breath, no longer fighting his fatigue.
And for the first time in a long time, he slept peacefully.