TRUCE

The sky looked full of metallic gray clouds and the small spaces free of them were dyed with an icy white that made anyone who looked at them shudder. The wind whistled gloomily shaking the branches of the trees that threatened to break at any moment. To finish defining the atmosphere, a soft but constant and cold rain fell on the man’s thick coat, who finally decided to sit on a bench that remained partially dry thanks to the company of a thick oak.

“It's been a long time, hasn’t it?” He turned his face quickly before shaking off the rain on his shoulder, his gaze fixed on one of the clouds to his left that suddenly seemed to him to have the shape of England, or perhaps that image came to his mind just because, at the time, the atmosphere seemed too London to him.

Sighing, he squeezed his hands before looking briefly to his right.

“I've never spent so much time angry with you... And make no mistake, I'm still furious that you've abandoned me; but we also promised that no matter how angry we were, if something important happened to us, we would tell each other immediately. A truce, remember?” He asked, still without the confidence to speak up front.

Inevitably all his thoughts were concentrated on the memory of that day, years ago, in that first truce to which both had happily agreed. To the many who came after that...

**

He was being intentionally noisy, stomping, loud voice, carelessly throwing the jacket to make it pull in its path a small metal sculpture that caused a good increase in the decibels when it fell. The door, despite everything, remained closed and no one came out to greet him with hugs and dozens of questions.

With a sigh of tiredness, he lay down on the couch and with a look of resignation he looked at his friend.

“I guess he's still angry.” He said with something halfway between smile and grin that did very little to disguise the sadness and fear in his gaze.

“I think it’d be better wait until tomorrow to talk with him.”

“If his grudge has lasted five days, I don't think it will evaporate in one more night.” The man said with a childish pout.

“Nah, as soon as he sees you, he will soften. Refusing to answer a call is not the same as ignoring you while standing in front of him. Just make him some pancakes tomorrow and everything will be forgotten.” Happy patted him on the shoulder as he sat next to him.

“Maybe if I get them extra fluffy and indulge him with extra maple syrup ” Tony tried to joke.

“Well, your little guy is demanding, he's your son after all. Quite a Stark!”

“He is, isn't he?” The proud father smiled sincerely for the first time since his arrival, however, after a long pause, bitterness took the lead in his heart again. “And it was all in vain again” Suddenly his shoes seemed to him the most interesting objects in the world.

“Hey, that boy you told me about… it was very sad what happened to him.” Happy continued, lowering the voice until it became a vaguely audible murmur. “But he is not Peter; he wasn’t your son. Your child is in his room, healthy enough to make a monumental tantrum.

The image of his son, with his huge deer eyes and eyebrows together with that face of anger so inappropriate for his calm and kind personality forced him to laugh. He needed that to dissipate the storms of hopelessness that threatened to bring him down. More than anything he needed to hug his little one and convince himself that, even if only at that moment, everything was fine, his boy was fine.

“Yes, you're right, he's fine. And I know you're also right and I should wait until tomorrow, but I need to be with him. I need my little brat.”

“Go then. Maybe you two need a good hug." His friend agreed before standing up to leave him alone.

“Hap? Could you bring some maple honey tomorrow? If you have breakfast with us, surely Pete will forgive me sooner.”

“I’ll be here. I've always said you're a better cook than an engineer.” Joked the man earned a false look of contempt from his boss and friend.

Tony took a deep breath, trying to get any negative thoughts out of his mind. He knocked on the door a couple of times, but the boy, with the foolishness of his anger, refused to answer. After a new attempt with the same result, he entered with no more introduction and was greeted by the bundle of blankets that his son used as a final defense.

He took a seat on the edge of the bed and caressed the little foot sticking out of the blankets before it was abruptly removed.

“Pete, I understand you're angry, but we had already talked, remember? You won't always be able to accompany me on my trips.”

The child continued hidden and rolled more tightly between the blankets, so the father gave up and remained silent, the simple closeness of the child calmed his anxiety a little.

“Dad?” The little one had moved with so much surreptitiousness that he was not able to feel him until he found him looking at him with concern. “Are you sad?” the kid asked.

“Something like that.” Tony confessed.

“Why?” the child was already sitting next to him, very close, but without making contact.

“Business didn't go very well, you know?” He improvised; he hated lying him; he hated not being able to look at his son’s eyes for fear of betraying himself even more.

“Dad?” He forced himself to look the child in the eye. “You don't have to buy me the new Star Wars Lego you promised me. It will be fun to take one my old ones and put it back together without the instructions. Do you think we can, dad?

“You can do whatever you set your mind to. And don't worry, little monkey, I had some nasty meetings, but we're still sickeningly rich. You will have all the Legos you want, although I think it would be very... interesting to assemble one without instructions.”

Sometimes he did not understand how he had managed to win the affection of a human being as pure and noble as that child. This child, who deserved a long and happy future, full of health. A future that he continued to fail to secure him.

Inevitably his thoughts flew to the painful gestures of those parents when they received the news of their son's death. He was sure that the image would haunt his nightmares for a long time to come.

He had started that trip full of hope. Two months earlier a renowned Polish physician, specializing in Peter's illness had been in the country and of course he had not missed the opportunity to have his son checked. After doing so and assuring him that Pete was relatively stable, he had invited Tony to visit his hospital in the blatant hope of convincing him to finance his research.

The facilities were top quality, the attention and care could not be better. Then he wanted to tell him about some of his success stories, three children who were between the ages of nine and eleven who were stable, led an active life and had found a kind of normalcy. But life, laughing at him as it used to do, and taking advantage of the precise time when hope had risen to his head with more force than his best eighteen-year-old whiskey, decided to anticipate the hangover of reality.

While exploring the hospital the doctor received an urgent message. Tony couldn't remember the rest of the details, his memory was stuck at the very moment when minutes later, a few meters away, he witnessed the physician giving the parents the news that their son had just died. The high-pitched scream of the mother, the way the father aged ten years in just a few seconds...

“Can you do something for me, buddy?” He asked with what he thought was one of his most persuasive looks. He watched Peter bow his head like a puppy waiting for an instruction before nodding not very sure. “I know you're still upset, but can we make a truce? Because I really need a hug.”

“What is a truce?” The kid asked him, wrinkling his nose with curiosity.

Before answering, the adult messed the child’s hair even more, feeling how his son’s anger gradually dissipated. “A truce, it's... as a time out. A parenthesis. It means you can forget for a while that you're angry with me, hug me, tell me what you did these days, and tomorrow you can continue being angry and not talking to me. What do you say? Can you give me a hug, boy?”

“Okay.” Peter said after thinking about it for a few seconds and throwing herself into his arms.

The sigh of relieved that the man started alone, halfway was accompanied by another childish, shorter but just as sincere.

“I love you more than anything in this world, Pete.” Confessed him, giving him a kiss on the head.

“I love you too, Dad. But I don't like when you leave me alone.” The little voice came muffled to his ears from a place near his nape, little fingers playing with his hair mimicking the way he himself used to do it with the child.

“Let's make a promise, little monkey,” Tony suggested to him, imagining that, given his few skills as a father, it wouldn't be the that the only time he would need one of those truces. “We are going to promise, that no matter how angry we may be with each other or why we are angry, if we have something important to tell us or we need a hug because we feel very sad or happy, we will always be able to ask for a truce to tell us anything; that we're always going to be there when we need each other, okay?”

His little genius, without disappointing him, took a long moment to study the proposal, which made Tony once again confident that the whole Stark legacy could not aspire to fall into better hands.

“Okay.” The kid did accept in the end.

They sealed the promise with a little finger squeeze and a new hug, feeling the peace that gave them the assurance of knowing that in times of need they would not feel alone again as long as they had each other.

***

Peter wished he could to see Ned. He wanted to go with Mom for ice-cream, accompany Uncle Happy to the airport or Uncle Rhodey on one of his flight tests and most of all he wanted to watch a movie with Dad; but he had one more week of punishment left, and Dad was still very angry, only staying in his room until he was convinced he had taken the medicine, barely asking him how he felt before the sleepiness Peter felt from the new medicine made him fall asleep until the next day, when he woke up feeling as tired as if he hadn't slept for more than one hour and with an upset stomach. Still, without saying more than two words, Dad would force him to finish breakfast before going to school, or if he felt too tired, go back to bed, because according to the doctors, that was the only way he would be cured of his anemia.

The kid had never seen Dad as angry as when the man discovered that Peter just pretended to take the pills and as soon as he turned around, he threw them into the toilet.

Peter had taken them for a whole week, but after doing so he felt so sleepy and tired that sometimes he couldn't even do his homework, let alone go to soccer practices to try to get a spot on the team or work on the lego design that he and Ned had planned.

The boy looked at the plate with scrambled eggs that his father had just placed in front of him. Unless Dad was traveling, they always had breakfast and dinner together, although they usually talked non-stop and now that was the fourth day in a row in which, other than good morning, they did not say anything else to each other. Peter forced himself to eat while watching his father work on his tablet; the man never had been angry with him for so long, and he was dying to tell him about his science project.

“Dad? I've done all the homework; I even did the one of the days I didn't go, and I still top of my class...” he stopped in silence when he received a look of something to which he could not put another name but disappointment. He sensed how his heart trembled: Dad was disappointed in him.

“Peter,” he told her after putting the tablet aside and sighing deeply, “I don’t give a  -penny” he held back before cursing “if you’re top of your class or if you get the Nobel prize before you turn ten. What I need is to know that you are healthy and that I can trust you to take care of your health.

“But I am already taking the pills every day.” he argued back.

“Because I watch you until you do! I need to trust that you will do it by yourself. It’s the only aspect in which I ask you to be more mature than children your age; when it comes to your health.”

The boy had no choice but to put his head down and nod embarrassed. He had been so excited the day before, when he was able to go to school and the teacher told him that his project had been selected to compete nationally, that he hadn't thought about anything else but to tell his dad. He didn't mind being punished... well, is not exactly that he didn't care, but he could tolerate it. Dad mad at him, on the other hand, it was really hard.

The child wanted to tell his dad how happy he was, but it was obvious that he needed to wait a couple of days to do so.

Except, as he was about to get up from the table, he remembered something.

“Dad?” Peter saw an opportunity to ask what he wanted when his father gave him a kiss before leaving for the office, something that he kept doing no matter how angry or busy he was.

“Yes?

“Can we make a truce?” He shyly asked. “You said that we can have one if -”

For a moment, his father's paralyzed expression seemed like a bad sign, but just before he could go on, he heard him laugh and knew everything was fine.

“Well, we made a promise. With pinky and all, right?” He told him still smiling, Peter nodded and followed his father to the couch. “I am listening, kid.”

And he told him that his project to generate a portable battery that would be charged with electricity that would be generated thanks to shoes with special soles, and in which he had insisted on working without the help of his father, would participate in a couple of months in a contest along with the best projects in the whole country, and some of those projects came to be patented and earn a lot of money.

“I'm so proud of you, Pete. I knew it was an excellent idea; I'm sure you'll win.” Dad congratulated him with no trace of the disappointed look of moments ago.

“The teacher said he could earn a lot of money -”

“I don't doubt it, but you already have more money than necessary.

“But, Dad, we could give that money to Dr. Millet, for those kids who can't buy their drugs! Do you remember? He told us that there were children who got sicker because they couldn't buy them and -”

“You're amazing, son told him with long and tight hug.-I'm so proud of you! You are intelligent, but the most important thing is that you are a wonderful person.” Suddenly Peter’s ears were all hot by the compliment, so he blushed and looked at his shoes. “And that is why the most important thing for me, more than anything else, is that you are happy and healthy. So I’ll tell you what we will do, I will ask that the amount that Stark Industries donates to the medical system will be doubled and additionally we will create a foundation in your name to support all children with medical needs.

“Really? Thank you, dad!” and with a jump he settled again in the arms of his father. “I’d still like to win, though.” The kid confessed after a while, feeling guilty.

“Of course, you want to. And I'm sure you will.” Tony hugged him once more. “Now time to school, buddy.”

“I love you, Dad.”

“And I love you too you, but...”

“I know, I'm still punished...” he murmured with a long sigh and a melodramatic tone that earned him a laugh and a pat on the shoulder from his father.

 ***

“I don't know how many more truces we had or who asked for them more frequently, but you were always there when I needed it. Almost always -until you left me alone and broke our promise.”

The man had to make a pause to swallow and let the flood of feelings pass so that he could think clearly again.

“As I do not intend to go back on my word, I did come to tell you that today for the first time in a long time I felt that I could move on. I know it will never be the same as before, but I'm sure I'll be able to find a way to be happy again. And then I’ll can forgive you. Not yet. But someday... soon.”

The rain remained constant, but the wind raged causing each drop to hit his face harder. He dried his face with his coat’s sleeve sure that not all the wetness in it came from the sky.

The knot in his throat intensified so much that it was painful to even breathe. It still hurt as much as the first day, but the pain had already become a routine; almost a friend. A chronic disease that, now he knew, was not going to kill him, but that would accompany him for the rest of his life.

He imagined that it was the kind of trauma that is suffered when losing a leg or an arm: the certainty that it will not grow again, the clumsiness of the first days, not knowing how to function without being complete; and finally, resignation and the new norm. The presence of the stump that becomes only a sad reminder of what it once was. Life later, when things like laughing and making plans stop provoking guilt.

“I'm almost there. So, I wanted you to know. That you knew that even if I haven’t forgiven you for leaving me, I never stopped loving you. You are still the most important person in my life. You're still the first person I think of when I'm sad or happy, who I trust the most. I miss you, and I know I'll never stop needing you, but I'm going to keep going because I know it's what you would have wanted.”

The rain remained constant, thick raindrops run down from his hair that when they reached her cheeks seemed even more abundant. He squeezed his eyes tightly before standing up and taking the few steps that separated him from the person he was talking to. Finally, he had the courage to look up.

Needlessly, but unable to avoid it, he read the inscription on the gravestone before bowing down to clean the dead, damp leaves that covered it and put in its place the half-dozen white roses he carried in his other hand.

“I love you. I need you; I always going to need you.”