Chapter Text
Peter Parker died on a Thursday.
Which is ironic, since Thursdays were the kid´s least favourite day of the week.
“I know that everyone keeps saying that Mondays are the worst, but think about it Mr. Stark – on Thursdays you´re tired after the first three days of the week, but you still have two days until it´s the weekend and you get a break. There´s just nothing fun about Thursdays!”
Tony couldn´t help but agree. There was absolutely nothing fun about today.
They have been taken while coming out of a diner after lunch. It was Spring break, and Peter had been staying with Tony for the past few days. The kid was chatting along as they moved to the parking lot and Tony´s car when it happened. A van that stood parked a few spots from Tony´s Audi threw its doors open and six masked men came rushing out. Tony heard a yell rip through the kids throat before something hard came down on his own head and everything went dark.
When he woke up, he was in a bare and cold room. The floor was dirty, the ceiling a bit lower than normal, and the only light came from a few florescent lights along the corners of the room.
He moved slowly, a pounding headache making his movements jerky and painful. As soon as he´d dragged himself up to a sitting position his eyes found the body next to him. Peter laid on his side, with his front facing Tony. He hurriedly reached over his cuffed hands towards the kid and felt for a pulse. Slow but steady. He let out a breath of relief. He let his hands travel through the boy´s soft curls in search of a bump that would indicate a hit, but found nothing. So, drugs then. That was good, he thought – not as painful and a quicker recovery. Tony would be suffering through headaches for days.
Peter woke up maybe ten minutes after Tony. With his enhanced metabolism, the drugs worked their way through his system quicker than they would have on a normal person. Tony wasn´t sure whether or not he felt grateful for it. On one hand, his nerves were on edge whenever Peter was unconscious. The fear that the kid might not wake up were a constant companion. Having the kid open his eyes and tell Tony that he wasn´t hurt would sooth his jumpy nerves.
On the other hand, an unconscious Peter was a peaceful Peter. If the kid was unconscious, Tony wouldn´t have to watch as Peter´s eyes grew big and fearful as they opened in a strange place and landed on the metal that held his hands together.
But the kid did wake up, and his eyes darted around the room desperately for a few seconds before they landed on Tony. He could see Peter calm down slightly as he spotted him, but there was still tenseness and fear in him as he sat up and turned fully towards Tony.
“Mr. Stark? Where are we? What happened?”
“Do you remember the van outside the diner?” Tony asked gently, and waited patiently as Peter searched through his hazy memory. The kid´s movements were a bit sluggish, so Tony knew that there were still remnants of the drug in the kid´s system. It wasn´t enough to pull him back under again, but it would still affect him for a while longer.
Peter´s eyes lit up as soon as the memory came back to him, only to dull again as he understood the implications of it all. Tony scooted closer to the kid and ran his finger´s through the kid´s curls again. It was a bit choppy and awkward with his hands locked together, but Peter seemed to relax at the touch, so the awkwardness of Tony´s hands were worth it.
“I´m not sure where we are, kiddo. But I´m certain that the team will be here soon to get us out. We´ll be just fine, alright.”
The door on the wall opposite of where the two of them sat opened before Peter had time to reply. Seven men walked into the room and spread out before them. They were still wearing the masks, which calmed Tony down slightly. Covered faces usually meant that they didn´t want Tony to be able to identify them after they let him go. So, the two of them would probably survive this. That is, if Tony gave them what they wanted.
One of the men walked closer to Tony and Peter. He was average height and through the holes of the mask, Tony could spot a pair of icy blue eyes. They were currently fixed on Peter.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?”
Tony forced a lightness in his voice, but almost balked at the relief that flooded over him when the eyes finally left Peter and turned to settle on Tony. He shifted slightly so that he was partially covering the kid with his body, hoping to hide him from view. He knew realistically that he wouldn´t be able to protect the kid in here, but he´d be damned if he didn´t at least try.
The man smiled sickly at Tony. The action made Tony´s skin crawl.
“I really hope you´re the kind of person who keeps their passwords in their head, Mr. Stark. Otherwise we might have a bit of a problem.”
Tony froze. Passwords. There were multiple passwords that Tony had access to which would be catastrophically if they ended up in the wrong hands. On top of that… he unfortunately wasn´t one of those people. Friday kept track of everything for him, and passwords were one of the things that he had always considered a waste of time to memorize.
“Then I guess we have a problem, because I´m afraid it´s completely empty up here.” He shook his head from side to side to really get the point across.
The man let out a sigh and turned to look at the men behind him for a second before turning back to face Tony again.
“I was afraid you´d do that. They always try to play hard, at first. But trust me when I say this Mr. Stark –“ the man took another step closer and Tony could feel the kid tense behind him. “- everyone breaks in the end. So just make it easier on all of us, and give us what we want now, before things get ugly.”
Tony tried to keep all his emotions out of his voice as he spoke. “I can´t.”
The man studied him for a few seconds before he shrugged. His body language still relaxed and his eyes neutral, almost like he´d expected the exchange to go this way.
“Well… I guess it´s a good thing that you brough the kid with you when you went out today then. He´ll be of great help going forward.”
Tony´s heart stopped. He´d foolishly assumed that whatever torture that would follow would be to him. Peter was innocent in all of this. He was just a kid.
“Don´t!” His voice was desperate as three men walk up to them. His plea went unnoticed as they tore the kid from him. He tried to fight them, but there was nothing he could do with no weapons and tied hands against three strong men.
Peter struggled as they dragged him away from Tony, but the drug in his system were working against him, and his moves were slow and powerless. They stopped a foot or so behind the leader, letting Peter´s knees rest on the dirty floor while they held onto the kid´s hair to force his head up. Anger tore through Tony, and it took everything in him to stay put. Fighting them wasn´t an option right now. He would lose, and his attempt might only hurt the kid even more. No, he had to wait for the kid to regain his full strength and then hope that he could overpower them all. He could, Tony knew that. There weren´t many that could withstand the full strength and power of Spiderman at his best.
So, until he was, Tony had to stall. Buy them time.
“Look, I´m telling you the truth. I can´t help you, alright.” He didn´t even care that he was practically on his knees begging. His pride was insignificant when it came in comparison to the kid. He´d kiss the man´s feet if it meant that Peter would stay unhurt.
Sceptical eyes were the only thing that met his words. Sceptical eyes, a jerk of the head and a strong fist that connected with Peter´s side.
Tony wasn´t able to pull himself back with reason this time, and shot to his feet. He barely made it two steps before he was met by rough hands. They dragged him back, fighting and swearing, to the corner he´d just left. He was forced down on his knees, and landed harshly on the stone floor. A flash of pain shot through his right knee, but he barely felt it. His whole focus on the kid.
Peter had his eyes closed, and Tony could tell that he was trying hard not the let the pain he was feeling show. But Tony could tell. He always could.
“Come on!” Another jerk, and another fist. This time it connected with the kid´s face. The hand in his hair released as the kid´s head snapped to the side. When it was dragged back up again, his entire cheek was red.
“Please! Please, I wish I could, but there´s nothing I ca-“
Another fist connecting with the kid cut of his plea. Tony felt his eyes begin to tear up, and it took all his willpower to not allow them to fall. Peter had given up on trying to appear strong. The pain and fear were written plainly on his face, and his cheeks were wet with tears.
Tony chose to stay silent. His words only seemed to make things worse.
The leader looked over to Peter, and his eyes seemed to light up with glee, before they returned to Tony. The billionaire made a mental promise to himself that he would kill the man before this was over.
His eyes stayed on Tony for a while. There was curiosity there, and Tony met them with as much anger as he could. Begging hadn´t worked. Maybe anger would? Anger that would remind them that Tony wasn´t just like any other businessman out there, he was Iron Man and he could (and would) kill them, given the chance.
The anger didn´t seem the phase the other man. Instead he smiled, another cold and emotionless pull of the lips, before he spoke again.
“Maybe some time apart will do the trick.”
Before Tony had time to react – to try and stop them – the door opened again and they all left. Including Peter. He heard his kid´s whimpers and harsh breaths as he was dragged to his feet and pulled out the door. Tony slumped against the wall in defeat.
No more than five minutes with them in the room, and Tony felt like his world had been tipped off its axis.
The room was silent after they left – too silent. He could hear every creak in the walls, every drop of water that ran through the pipes and every rodent that scratched their way forward under the floor.
An ache in his arm caused him to shift the cuffs around to allow him to grab his own wrist. The pressure would usually help distract him and numb the pain. This time it only remined him on the empty space where his watch should be. His watch that – had it still been on him – would have been able to save them. Not only did he have a gauntlet worked into the accessory, but he also had a panic button and a tracker.
His only hope now was the tracker imbedded in Peter´s arm. They´d put it there after the Toomes fiasco. Tony wanted to be able to find the kid should he ever need to, even if said kid wasn´t in his suit. Peter had agreed after some hesitancy, but right now, Tony was grateful that he´d kept pushing. The team would be able to find them though the tracker… if only they thought to look.
Tony had promised the kid a few hours of shopping (he says shopping but that damn kid would never actually accept Tony buying anything for him, so it would only really include window shopping), so no one would expect them home just yet. That means that there was a chance that no one had even noticed them missing yet.
Regardless, Tony couldn´t help but pray that the sound of repulsors and fighting would meet his ears soon. Tony waited for well over half an hour with nothing but silence meeting his hopeful ears. When his silence finally broke, he almost wished it hadn´t. The door opened up again and the man with icy eyes stalked in. They were currently emotionless.
“The boys got a bit carried away, I´m afraid.”
A seconds later, Tony spotted Peter´s face as he was dragged through the door. The bruises on his cheek had turned a darker purple now, and his hair slicked to his forehead as water dripped from the end of his curls. He also wasn´t breathing.
Tony sat frozen, unable to force his body to move, as they dragged the kid over to him and dumped him unceremoniously in his lap. The kid didn´t even twitch as his body hit the floor roughly. As swiftly as they had entered, the men left again. Leaving Tony alone with his kid. His dead kid.
“Pete?”
His voice broke. Shaking hands reached forward and gently grabbed onto the kid’s shoulders. He half expected the kid to stir and open his eyes. He didn´t. Instead he came without struggle as Tony pulled him closer. His eyes closed and his chest still.
He was already cold.
Tony cupped the kid´s cheek and settled his head gently against Tony´s chest. If he ignored the cuts and bruises, Peter almost looked like he was asleep. He looked like he always did at the end of a movie night when the pull of sleep had won and he´d curled up against Tony, breathing deep and eyes closed.
“Peter, please…”
He didn´t know why he kept begging. The kid was dead. The cold skin under his fingers and his lack of pulse confirmed it. Yet Tony refused to accept it. Peter Parker was meant to live. He was meant to finish high school and head off to college while Tony hid the tears in his eyes. He was supposed to create, and change the world with his brain. He was supposed to get married and have kids and Tony would happily be there to babysit whenever the new parents needed a break.
He was supposed to live!
Tony´s gentle hands turned rough and desperate as he grabbed the lifeless body of his kid. He shook him a few times, and tried to ignore the way that Peter´s head lolled in his arms. All strings were cut, and he was just a dead weight in Tony´s shaking hands.
“No… no… please, you can´t…”
His voice shook as he sobbed out the words. A plea that reality was lying to him. A plea that someone powerful enough to fix this would come and put Tony´s world back together.
No one came.
The kid had felt completely cold in his hands when he´d first touched him, but somehow, he managed to get even colder in the hour that followed. His cheeks seemed to sink in slightly and his skin paled even further, causing the purple bruises to stand out even more against his skin. It looked horrible, yet Tony couldn´t tear his eyes away.
His hands were holding the kid´s head against his chest still and his fingers worked their way through the curls. They were completely dry now, and Tony couldn´t help but feel relieved. The water could only mean one thing – waterboarding. His clothes had been dry, so they had probably held him down while they dunked his head in a tub. Tony still remembered his own experience with water in Afghanistan, and the though that that pain had been the last thing that Peter had experienced in his life made Tony want to scream. But he didn´t. He couldn´t. It was like his voice had stopped working. Nothing above a whisper seemed to be able to leave his lips. Nothing but irregular whispered pleas to the dead kid against his chest.
One and a half hour after Peter had died was when they were rescued.
Tony barely registered the sound of Rhodey’s suit as it came within earshot. There were yells, grunts of pain and the sound of bodies hitting the floor just down the hall, yet Tony didn´t move. He just held his kid as he rocked back and forth. It wasn´t until the door opened that his body react and he looked up. Only Rodney´s face was visible while the suit hid the rest of him in a protective layer. A protective layer that Tony had built. A protective layer that he should have given his kid.
Rhodey´s eyes found his best friend and he froze. Even from a distance, he could see the death on Peter´s face. His eyes flickered between the dead kid and the broken father than held his body. Because that’s what Tony had become. Rhodey knew that the man had yet to admit it to anyone – probably not even to himself – but it was clear to see that he loved Peter like a son.
A son that he now had to bury.
The colonel walked into the room slowly and let the suit disengage and peel of him. He could hear the rest of the team as they followed him into the room. Sharp breaths and rushed curses broke the silence that hung over the room like a suffocating blanket.
Rhodey´s leg braces gave off a soft hum as he kneeled down next to his best friend. Tony´s eyes had left him after only a second of contact. They were empty as they rested on the kid´s face, and Rhodey wondered for how long he´d been like this.
A soft brush over the kid´s stone cold arm told him that it had been way too long.
“Tones –“
“No!”
Tony broke him off before he´d even started. There was so much force in that one words. There was a pause as the man took a shaky breath. When he continued, all power had left him and there was a vulnerability in its place that hit Rhodey like a slap to the face.
“He´s not… I can´t leave him.”
Tears burned in Rhodey´s eyes, but he forced them back. He couldn´t afford to break down now. He had to be strong for Tony. He´d break down later, when he was alone and he didn´t have the weight of his best friend´s grief and pain leaning on him.
The next breath he took was slow and controlled.
“We´re not leaving him, I promise. But we need to get out of here, alright.” He put a hand on Tony´s shoulder. The man didn´t even react to the touch. “Can you carry him, or do you need someone else to do it?”
Finally, Tony tore his gaze away from Peter and looked up to meet Rodney´s waiting eyes. There was determination behind the brokenness.
“I can do it.”
Rhodey almost lost this fight against the tears. He´d known Tony Stark for almost 30 years now – he´d known him through the trauma that his father inflicted on him, the grief of losing his mother, the kidnapping and torture in Afghanistan, the battle and the sacrifice in New York, the Mandarin and the civil war with the team. Nothing had brough the level of fear and brokenness that now looked back at him through Tony´s eyes. Nothing came close to the sob that tore through the man as he looked back down at the pale child in his arms.
Natasha had found the key to Tony´s and Peter´s cuffs on one of the men. She unlocked them both with shaking hands. Rhodey didn´t think he´d ever seen Natasha with shaking hands before.
He chose not to comment.
When Tony collected the kid into his arms, he did so with such tenderness that Rhodey almost felt like he wasn´t supposed to watch. Like he was an intruder in a private moment that didn´t belong to him. Tony lifted the body just as gently.
The trek back to the jet was silent. Tony walked in the middle of the group, his full attention on the kid in his arms.
Somehow, Rhodey managed to convince Tony to lay Peter down on one of the cots once they entered the jet. The man did so, but he sat down with him and placed the kid´s head in his lap.
The ride back to the compound was still. No one moved and no one spoke. What was there to say to a man who´d just lost his child. What could you say to make it better? The answer was simple – nothing. A heart broken like that couldn´t be fixed with words. Rhodey wasn´t even sure that it could be fixed with time. Perhaps you could grow numb to the pain, but the bleeding would never stop.
Convincing the man to leave the body once they entered to compound wasn´t as easy as convincing him to let him go on the jet.
“No! Please, Rhodey I can´t leave him! He shouldn´t be alone. Not now.”
Tony´s voice was desperate, but Rhodey didn´t back down. He couldn´t. Holding onto the kid like this would only hurt him in the end. Hours of cold skin under his hands and a pale and sunken face would only break him further. He needed to give himself the distance, before he broke beyond a level that he couldn´t come back from.
“Tones… you have to let go. I´m so so sorry man, but Pete´s gone. You´re not holding onto him anymore. He´s not there, okay. Don´t replace his face in your mind with this… with death.”
The word landed hard, and Tony couldn´t help but flinch.
Death.
In the end, Tony laid Peter´s body down on one of the tables down in the morgue. It wasn´t officially a morgue, but it was the only place in the building that came close to fitting the description. It took Tony almost 15 minutes to tear himself from the room. He stood frozen next to the kid, and cried silently. In the end, he simply reached over, ran his fingers through the kid´s curls as a sob ripped through him. Then he allowed Rhodey to gently guide him away with a firm hand on his shoulder.
Leaving the corpse of Peter Parker in the dark.