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It's been three weeks.
Three weeks since Avengers Compound replaced the dust of the people who had died. Three weeks since he held his trembling kid in his arms after five years of agonizing grief. Three weeks since he heard his voice and cried. Three weeks since Tony looked death in the eyes for not the first time and not for the last, and snapped his fingers.
Three weeks since he was rushed to an emergency hospital on a stretcher carried by the fastest heroes in the universe. Three weeks since he almost lost his life for the second time in a day bleeding out on an operation table while doctors scream around him. Three weeks since he made it.
After the incident first happened, after the surgery, it had taken two full weeks of a medically-induced coma for Tony to heal even the slightest bit. Apparently, it had been very tough-and-go for a long time, and there were debates on whether or not he would make it at all, even after all of this.
But the Starks were stronger than iron, as one would say. (One could argue that Tungsten was a better metal to use this metaphor with, considering the tensile strength is nearly four times as much as that of iron. But iron was for the use of mechanics, and Tony Stark is nothing if not the best mechanic out there. Also, picking apart metaphors is not the point anyways.) Tony kicked death again by sheer force of will. He made it through the surgery, and the coma, and after an extra week of sleeping on-and-off for hours per day, he finally was welcomed with the very mortal feeling of being awake and bored.
Tony hates hospitals. He's always hated being still for too long, whether that be in a meeting or a court room or just sitting in his house. The linoleum lights were harsh on his eyes, they reminded him of a place he hadn't been since 2008 and purposefully never looked back on afterwards.
Hospitals had few exceptions to being good. For example, the birth of his daughter. Pepper had insisted on it being at a hospital the day her water broke, despite them looking into alternatives before hand. Tony drove like a bat out of hell, pale face and wide eyes, and bickered with Pepper the whole way there to try and distract himself from the way she held his hand in a tight grip.
It was all worth it in the end though, to cradle the most intimate part of his soul in his arms as she cried and squirmed in the dawn of a new day. Tony wept and kissed her forehead. Baby Morgan, sweet Morgan, little light of his eyes with her mother's dimples. Hospitals were worth it for her.
So now, his entire side bandaged more than a mummy and his left arm pointedly being a lack-there-of, he sat still. For Morgan, he thought. For Morgan, for Pep, for Rhodes, and for—
...
The kid's first visit to the hospital that Tony was conscious for was three weeks and one day into the ordeal. After so much sleep, pain meds, hallucinations, and fever dreams; seeing the kid he had been missing for five years (FIVE YEARS) standing timidly at the window outside his room nearly had him wiping his eyes to check if the kid was even real at all.
Tony raises his right arm weakly, feeling the pain explode through his chest in a riptide. As much as he would have wanted to bite back the wince, the pain was unbearable, and Peter saw how Tony grimaced from the movement.
Nonetheless, he gestures for Peter to come inside. So Peter, nervous and jittery, opens the door and steps in.
Tony exhales slowly, looking at him in disbelief. The silence between them was thick enough to cut with a knife, as if the air was full with invisible words that filled their heads but didn't know how to say.
It all sort of meshed in Tony's brain, what he wanted to say, what he's wanted to say since he was gone, what he thought he never would be able to say anywhere but in therapy or to voicemails he couldn't bear throw away.
("I'm so sorry I failed you, kid."
"Sometimes I can still feel the dust in my palms."
"I would have teared the world apart to find you."
"You deserved more than to die on a cold planet in a suit that couldn't protect you."
"Morgan would have loved you."
"It was never your fault, Peter. All mine. Always mine. Should've kept you home. Should've made sure you stayed home."
"I'm sorry I didn't support you more. My dad always—"
"I'm sorry I was no better than my father, I have no excuse, my only role model growing up tried to—"
"I'm sorry too.")
The first thing he notices (and there is a lot to notice after not seeing him for what felt like a lifetime,) is that the boy must have been staying with Pepper and Morgan as things have been getting sorted out, because he wore Tony's old MIT sweatshirt and Tony knows that Peter is 16 and not 21. If he were 21, Tony wouldn't be looking at him as if he were a ghost, because he never would have been dusted, because Tony never would have lost him the first time, but he did.
Peter Parker was standing in front of him with mussed curly hair and a sickly-looking raspberry-red nose from crying and eyes that held so much hesitancy, so much uncertainty and disorientation. Exhausted, no doubt, by the way his shoulders were tense but his body moved slow and unsteady as he steps forward.
It was heartbreaking.
The kid is no longer missing, but Tony has never seen him look so lost.
Tony swallows, his throat painfully dry. He tries clearing his throat. "...I think you've... got something on my sweatshirt."
Peter's eyes widen and he looks down at his shirt with surprise.
"Made you look." Tony's lips stretch into a smile. Peter did not smile back. In fact, he looked a little pale. Okay, really pale. His lips were turning white.
"Kid?"
Uh oh. Tony knows that look.
Peter's eyes roll back and he collapses backwards, thudding against the floor with his elbows first.
Tony goes to reach for the kid instinctively, going to catch him, but the sharp movement sends a bright flash of burning white pain searing through his entire body. He hisses, his hand jerking to his side, and then he hits the nurse call button beside him.
"Please don't have hit your head," Tony mutters to himself.
As a nurse comes walking quickly down the hall, Peter slowly sits up, giving the room that dear-in-the-headlights expression that comes from spontaneously passing out.
"Pete, are you okay?"
"Uh," Peter finally speaks, intelligent as ever.
The nurse pokes her head in. "Mr. Stark? Is there anything I can help with?"
"Yes," Tony gestures lovingly to Peter. "My kid just conked out on the floor. Can you be a dear and check if he cracked his skull open, or is he okay and I can leave the heart attack for another day?"
The nurse's eyebrows rise with concern and she crouches next to Peter, checking his head. Peter doesn't seem to be uncomfortable by it, but he also still looks pretty out of it.
"Nothing bleeding or bruised," the nurse confirms. She looks back at Peter. "Let's get you set up on a chair and not the floor. How about I get you some juice and a graham cracker?"
Peter blinks slowly as he's lifted off the ground and gently settled in a chair next to Tony's bed. A second after processing the question, he shrugs. "If you want, I wouldn't want to bother you—"
"He prefers apple juice," Tony cuts in. "Thank you, you're a peach."
The nurse smiles and nods before exiting the room.
"You okay?" Tony asks, softer. He turns his head as much as he can to look at Peter, ignoring the slight twinge of pain it gave him.
"Yeah," Peter murmurs. "I don't know what happened. I guess I was just... nervous, or something. Super embarrassing that I passed out. I swear, I'm fine with hospitals, I even volunteered when I was thirteen when May brought me to work, and I've—"
"Pete."
"Hm?"
Tony puts his right arm up and pats at the pillow. "C'mere."
Peter stares for a long moment but stands up from the chair and sits up on Tony's bed, moving as carefully as he could as to not Tony around. (It only half worked, but to his credit, Tony didn't mind the temporary agony if it meant having the kid next to him, just like old times. Just like before.)
Peter situates himself next to him. "I'm really... I'm really glad you're okay, Mr. Stark."
Tony lifts his hand and placed it through Peter's already messy hair, carding through it and brushing the curls out. He did the same thing with Morgan when she woke up from a nightmare to soothe her, and while he doesn't exactly know how to be calming to a teenager kid that he's known longer and less than his biological kiddo, he hopes this is a good first step.
By the way Peter relaxed into his side, he counts it as a win.
"I'm okay, Peter." Tony doesn't think he'll ever get tired of saying the kid's name, now that it means something more than 'I'm sorry' and 'I miss you' and 'I wish you weren't gone.'
"I'm okay, kiddo," Tony repeats.
The response from Peter comes back like an answer to a prayer, simple and true.
"I'm okay, too."