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It’s 4:37 in the afternoon. Tony knows that for a fact. He can hold onto that. Time is... inevitable. Right now it’s the one thing he seems to be in control of. He’s reconciled with the fact that he can’t fix everything; he can’t PROTECT everyone - but time will go on unchanged. Yet there is one person he needs to protect. He has to. No matter the cost. But it’s the one thing he can’t control, no matter how hard he tries - he can’t slow down the clock. No amount of time or Tony Stark tinkering can solve this.
Peter is falling. And Tony can’t fix it.
* * *
April 10th, 2020
The kid’s excited, to say the least. Ever since Tony Stark called up his protegé this morning and asked him to come over to the compound, his voice has been so squeaky with overwhelming enthusiasm combined with teenage hormones that Tony is half considering adding zone-out hearing aids to Mark 15 just to get a bit of peace and quiet.
That’s a lie. Although he’d never admit it, he loves the kid’s motormouth - the constant babble and witty quips are something they both have in common.
Together they are working in the lab at the compound, Tony at the back fiddling incessantly with his latest machine, Peter claiming the vast workbench. He’s currently combining the dumpster tech that he collects with that of Stark Industries to try and create a fuel magnifier that will boost his mentor’s thrust capacity tenfold. Pete’s got that adorable face that he always gets when he tinkers: the furrowed brow, the serious eyes and the tiny tip of tongue that he pokes out in concentration. Tony can’t help but stare in awe and pride at the kid’s amazing skills, and the hilarious face he’s pulling. Peter yelps and jumps back.
Tony bristles.
“Holy shit! I did it! It’s finished, Mister Stark!”
Tony relaxes.
“Good, you had me worried there, I thought you’d been electrocuted or something.” Tony laughs nervously.
Peter hasn’t caught on to what Tony meant, he’s too immersed in the success of his creation.
“If you attach this to your suit and flick the blue switch, it’ll allow you to suddenly accelerate until your velocity is practically racing time itself,” Peter tells him with childlike glee, giddy with how he managed it on his own using dumpster freaking tech!
Tony smiles at the kid in Peter-induced admiration, and then they take 5 for a lunch break.
“Cheeseburgers?” Peter asks rhetorically.
Tony couldn’t agree more.
* * *
May 23rd, 2020
12:39
Tony has spent the morning at the compound, in the lab, tinkering. He’s going to pay for it later with Pepper’s exasperation at where he’s been all day and why he’s been ghosting her calls. The truth is when he gets to tinkering he just can’t stop. Old habits die hard, he guesses. Pep understands that now - it’s one of the many reasons why he loves her so darn much.
16:28
Being back in the lab brings him flashbacks of when Peter interned for him last month over Spring break. The kid’s infectious enthusiasm for engineering is unparalleled - aside from Tony’s own, of course. Whilst thinking about this, Tony falls into his usual unhealthy habit of checking up on him, making sure he’s not doing any self-sacrificial bullshit (another unfortunate trait he shares with Tony).
“FRIDAY, tap into the kid’s suit system. Check how he’s doing on patrol.”
“No contusions received in the last hour, boss, although his altitude status has shifted considerably in the last 4 minutes.”
“Altitude status? He swings, Friday, of course it’s shifting.”
“No, sir, it is steadily increasing, as though he is scaling a large object or building. He is currently one thousand, two hundred and forty-eight feet above the ground.”
“What the fuck?”
Tony’s panicking now. There’s no obvious reason for the kid being that high. Quelling his nerves, Ironman tells Friday to suit up, and gets Peter’s coordinates in under 30 seconds.
* * *
16:35
Peter’s edging closer to the summit of the Washington Monument where the window is located; he has to get into the elevator and get his friends out. Today is the day of the Academic Decathlon championship, and MJ and Ned are currently in an elevator with a freaking bomb. What’s worse is they don’t even know it, and it’s Peter’s fault; he left Ned with the glowy thing in his rucksack. These thoughts only make Peter climb faster.
He reaches the window and tries to bash it in: first just with his feet, then using his webbing to give him extra momentum. Realising it’s hopeless - he’s barely even dented the glass - Peter hears the whirring of a helicopter behind him. A voice commands him through a megaphone to stand down. Something in Peter’s brain clicks... if he uses the helicopter to maximise his swing, he’ll gain the momentum to break the window and reach his friends.
Peter takes a deep breath, hardly daring to look down, casts his web onto the helicopter and swings. What he didn’t account for is the sharp, whirring blades that snap his web as if it were an elastic band. All at once, he’s lost control and hits the helicopter. His head smashes into the rudder. Everything goes black. He’s in free fall from a thousand feet.
16:37
“Friday, give me some juice.”
Tony is racing towards the building like a madman when he sees Peter’s rapid change in velocity and decrease in altitude bleep across the screen. He careens round the bend to behold a pitifully small speck in the distance accelerating towards the ground.
The kid is falling, falling, falling...
16:37:02
Tony can’t help it, he screams out Peter’s full name in anguish, relinquishing ‘kid’, ‘Pete’ or ‘Parker’ in the severity of the moment. He’s too far away. There’s nothing he can do. Time seems to slow down all around him, but that little speck continues to race towards the ground. Tony can’t fix it.
16:37:05
It’s at this precise second that Tony remembers the kid’s excited, puppy brown eyes that were so thrilled at having invented something that Tony could potentially use when saving the world. The boost magnifier! Peter’s own invention. Ironman flicks the blue switch with an inhuman speed that he hadn’t even realised he was capable of until now.
16:37:06
Abruptly he streaks after the dot, which enlarges like a foetus to sprout the gangly arms and legs that resemble the figure of a teenage boy.
16:37:09
Tony hooks his hands under the unconscious kid’s arms, lifting him out of his fall like a parent lifting their child. He’s struck with a strange sense of dejavu - he’s carried Peter like this before - out of the lake.
‘Silly rascal, why is the kid always getting himself into these impossible situations? Then again, you’re such a hypocrite, Tony; he’s exactly like you,’ he thinks to himself.
Using his boosters, Tony blasts through the upper window and curves his body protectively around the kid’s to avoid the glass shards. Pete stirs and lands shakily on his feet, still half-supported by Tony.
Waking in Tony’s arms wasn’t exactly the heroic hurrah that Peter had expected to come out of today. In embarrassment he recoils backwards, thinking about how much of a screw-up Tony must think of him as right now.
But Tony isn’t thinking that at all. In fact, he’s doing the same self-sabotaging as Peter is:
“The tensile strength of the web Pete created wasn’t strong enough... I should have made it stronger... I’m his mentor... his suit was Stark tech... what’s the point in being a ‘genius billionaire’ if I can’t utilise it to help the kid?.... it’s my fault this happened... my fault that a 15 year old is mixed up in all this deep superhero shit.”
Tony anxiously checks Peter over, asking Friday to bring up his vitals. He’d suffered a severe contusion to his head, a probable concussion was expected.
“Kid, you’ve got to sit down.”
“I’m fine. Totally fine.” Peter fires back, fighting off a wave of nausea as he stalks forwards. He simply blames his dizziness on the adrenaline rush.
16:38:53
The bomb explodes, sending the building into disarray. With the uncanny speed of a lightning bolt, Tony grabs Peter’s arm protectively, but the teenager wrestles away and jumps into the elevator shaft.
“My friends are down there,” he shouts aloud.
Suddenly it all makes sense to Tony - this isn’t typical criminal activity. He can tell by Peter’s behaviour; he’s seen it mirrored in his own countless times before. Peter’s friends were in danger and it was his responsibility to save them. And he would do anything to fix it.
* * *
16:39:06
Spider-Man saves Flash, lifting him up to Ironman.
16:39:17
Spider-Man yells at Ned to quit moving around as the elevator creaks.
16:39:26
Spider-Man saves Ned from the elevator.
16:39:34
It’s only Peter and MJ left in the elevator, and Tony is starting to feel that post-adrenaline relief until he sees Pete start to swoon from the dizziness. His mask eye sockets have gone impossibly small, and the kid pulls the mask up slightly over his mouth in a desperate attempt to breathe and clear his vision of dancing stars.
“Mister Stark, I don’t feel so good.”
16:39:46
The kid keels over backwards.
16:39:47
The elevator rope snaps.
16:39:48
They hurtle down the shaft.
‘The kid - is in - that elevator - unconscious - and there’s nothing - I - can - fucking - do.’ Tony’s thoughts are a blur as he races the elevator down the shaft. It’s hopeless. He’s helpless. The kid is completely out of it because of the concussion. Tony just yells out his name.
* * *
16:39:51
Peter awakes. He’s instantly dragged out of his stupor by the combined screams of Tony and MJ as the elevator hurtles towards the floor. He jerks up, grabs MJ and encircles her waist with his hand as she wraps her arms around his shoulders, clinging to him for dear life.
16:39:52
The realisation that Tony’s about to lose the kid finally hits him. He freaks.
16:39:53
Just when Tony is losing all hope, he hears the kid cry out his name and shoot a web of rope towards him. He grabs it and uses the full force of his feet thrusters to pull the couple out of the elevator. They’re clinging onto each other, hanging mid air from a singular strand to which Tony in turn clings. Crashing down, the elevator rings out a horrific sound and Tony visibly flinches, blanching back. That knell could have been the death of the kid.
16:39:55
The explosion erupts. It’s a race for Tony to lift the teenagers out of the shaft as the debris flies erratically towards them. They eventually emerge from the shaft, blackened and coughing... but alive.
In sudden relief, MJ hugs Spider-Man, then they both shuffle back in their usual teenage awkwardness.
“Er, thanks for - you know - saving my life, Mr Spider-Man,” MJ manages to stutter, before walking over to the other decathlon kids. They are escorted out, leaving only a deafening silence between Peter and Tony. Just as the kid goes into his classic Peter apology mode, Tony grabs him with shaking hands and pulls him into a fatherly hug. Pete looks up in pleasant surprise. They stay that way.
Here is the only place he is in control. The only place he can protect the kid, and no amount of time could ever change that.
“Don’t you dare ever do that to me again, Pete.”
16:41:02
He’s saved the kid in time.