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The car ride to Mr. Stark's cabin in the woods (the home, not the horror movie) was a long ways away from the hospital. Despite the doctors clearing him for his release, Peter kept making glances over to him the entire way there to make sure he was still doing okay.
He was having a hard time adjusting, which was as expected from something as heavy as war. May keeps saying to him that she would be more concerned if he wasn't feeling like this, but that doesn't make 'this' any less difficult to deal with. Sometimes—Sometimes he couldn't get the image out of his head. If he squints hard enough, or looked for too long, all he could see was the man half-dead and unresponsive, in the ruins of a place Peter could have called a second home. Every so once in a while, he has to remind himself that he isn't fighting for his life, that he really can't hear the fading of a certain echoing thu-thump rhythm and the light leaving Tony's--
Peter shakes his head. He sees Mr. Stark now; lacking an arm but healing, getting stronger every day, the light in his eyes shone like normal. He was breathing. Peter could hear the gentle continuous thrum of his heart as his most-comforting background noise.
"I can't wait for you to meet her," Tony smiles. There was something so different about this Tony Stark compared to the one Peter knew... before. Something beyond the greying hair and smile lines. Something kinder, from the way he smiles to the way his shoulders relax back in the seat, as if Tony had allowed his soul to patch itself together while Peter had been gone. He supposes it's supposed to be refreshing, but it's more alien. Peter feels like he needs to remind himself every moment that this is still the Mr. Stark who recruited him to fight Captain America, who fished him out of a lake, who held him on Titan, because everything about the man screams the opposite.
"How old is she again?" Peter asks quietly.
"Four. Just nearly five." Tony tilts his head in a so-so motion. "Pretty sure she's a super genius though."
Peter smiles at the recognition of pride written on his mentor's face. "I don't doubt it."
Pepper parks the car in gravel outside of the cabin. "Home sweet home."
Peter opens the passenger door and is assaulted immediately with the deep smell of pine and cedar. It was a beautiful cabin, nothing like Peter would ever expect his mentor to willingly live in. It was humble, discreet and beautiful in its own way-- He sort of hoped Pepper was the one to pick it, because it starkly (hah) contrasted everything that he thought he knew about what Tony liked.
Did he even really know the man at all?
"What're you thinking?" Tony asks from beside him, standing on crutches and leaning to the right side for obvious reasons.
Peter whips his head around. "I'm thinking that I should help you walk up the steps, old man."
"The sass out of you," Tony clicks his tongue. "C'mon, let's go."
Peter does help Tony up the steps of the cabin, and winds around the side when Mr. Stark says that's where to find the front door. He feels his heart jolt once he spots it, as if this was going to be something monumental, something that needed to be documented to his memory.
Tony nudges his shoulder, gently urging him forward.
Peter opens the door and walks in.
Happy, who was sitting on the living room floor, turns his head up at the three of them entering. Peter sees a crayon in his hand, and he's wearing a very small plastic tiara on his curly (also greying) black hair. (And that was another thing. Happy hadn't been 'blipped' as everybody was calling it, but he had lived five long years to see everything Peter had missed, and it apparently softened the guy. He was like an entirely different person. Pleasant, sure, but Peter almost missed the ironic grumpiness about the man's exterior, if for nothing else than to just have something familiar.)
"You're back!" Happy calls from where he sat in front of a pop-up tent made of blankets and pillows.
The interior of the house was very homey at first glance, nice decorative pillows, a fireplace, wooden furniture, framed photographs— It radiated a warmth, a way of life that Peter knew little about when tied to his memories of Tony. He could have sworn that he woke up in an alternate dimension where Tony had always been a family man, that he imagined the whole billionaire-playboy-philanthropist-Iron Man part about Mr. Stark's identity that he grew up watching on the news.
Peter tries not to look around too much, tries not to stare for too long at anything, as if it would disturb the peace that had overwhelmed the home in its entirety. Peter Parker didn't belong in cozy little cabins like this. He's so far out of his element here that he almost couldn't believe it himself. He feels so homesick until he realizes the most home he has to go back to is May's new apartment that was half-empty.
"Where's Little Miss?" Tony asks with a grin. "I wanted Peter to meet her."
A little girl pokes her head out from the tent and her face lights up. She crawls out of her hidey-hole and scrambles over to Tony, hugging his legs tightly.
Peter can't seem to catch his breath.
She's got Mr. Stark's eyes, he notices right away. Dark brown and long eyelashes. She looks nearly identical to him, the resemblance is uncanny. But she's got Pepper's facial expressions, and a specific brand of Stark-Potts sass to her general space that couldn't be denied, even at such a young age.
"Hey, Maguna." Tony leans down carefully and sets the crutches aside. "I've got someone for you to meet."
Peter shifts on his feet anxiously. When a moment ago his mind was blank, now he had a thousand thoughts racing through his head about whether or not Morgan would like him. This was such an important part of this new history he was creating for himself. This was an impressionable kid that he was meeting, even moreso, it was Mr. Stark's kid and this was incredibly meaningful to him that they got along.
Morgan turns to stare directly at Peter, and he really shouldn't be as terrified as he is, she's only four. "Who're you?"
Peter crouches down to meet her level. "Hi, Morgan. I'm Peter Parker."
"This is your pseudo-brother," Tony jokes.
It hit Peter directly in the gut.
How was he supposed to be a role model for a little kid, when he was still trying to cope with the fact that he couldn't be the youthful bright mind he was so used to being? That battle changed him. That planet changed him. Seeing Tony die and be brought back to life, that changed him too. He couldn't be who he was, it hurt too much. That person disappeared on Titan. Having an identity crisis fully come into focus at the exact moment that he was meeting somewhat of a little sister to him decked him harder than any punch he's ever received.
Morgan was the closest thing he was probably ever going to get to someone that would look up to Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. He's never really wanted a younger sibling. It never crossed his mind because the possibility was never open.
But it was here, right in front of him, and Peter doesn't think he would change it for the world.
"What does soo-dough mean?" Morgan asks, tilting her head to the side and scrunching her nose. "Like play-dough?"
"It means kinda," Peter explains carefully, his tone softening. He doesn't know how to be a big brother. He's got the farthest idea from experience about it. He looks up at Tony for something, reassurance, a cringe, anything at all. He doesn't expect to see Tony's eyes full of tears, but it certainly dug the knife even deeper about how much he found himself caring about this four-year old girl. "So I'm your kind-of brother," he says, his voice choking up.
Morgan smiles, her nose scrunching up in a funny way. "Okay! Do you want to draw with me?"
The pressure in Peter's chest doesn't ease up, but there's something about the heaviness this time that feels almost cathartic. He slowly nods, looking at Tony and then back to Morgan. He gives her an affirming smile. "Sure."
Later that night, the fridge gets two new drawings of Iron Man pinned to the side with a magnet. On the bottom right, it's signed "MORGAN" in big crayon letters, and smaller, right under it, "+big bro peter!"
The picture fits in perfectly with everything else on the fridge, as if it were meant to be there.