Chapter Text
Stephen should be focusing on the spell.
After all, his initial lack of focus is exactly what got them into this mess in the first place. But glowing figures are crawling out of purple gashes in the sky, fallen pieces of burning rubble are clanking down beneath him, and Stephen Strange cannot look away from Peter Parker.
What is he, eighteen? So young. Too young. Too young to be so tired. From this distance, Strange cannot make out the details of his expression. He knows he’s crying, though. Awful, congested sobs that are almost audible from where he perches. Peter sheds the horrible tears of a kid forced to speak at his own funeral.
Hasn’t he seen enough of those?
Peter is heartbreakingly small as he swings away from MJ and Ned after he’s choked out his goodbyes. Exhaustion is evident in how far he lets himself fall before firing off another web. Strange is infinitely glad that his little friends have the good sense to grab onto one another only when Peter has cleared the area so the boy doesn’t have to see their knees give out beneath the weight of a grief they will completely forget in only a moment’s time.
Yes. Everyone will forget Peter. He will be alone.
Strange will be responsible.
And the Ancient One was right about Stephen. He is selfish. Because he needs to concentrate. The very fate of reality depends on it. He needs to gesture in just the right way, pull the orange circles beneath his shaking hands completely taut. Time and space are hemorrhaging patients that need to be stitched back together, and Strange is the only doctor capable of the task.
But all he can think about is Stark.
He killed him. He held up a shaking finger. He delivered the prophecy. He witnessed it come to fruition.
It’s all his fault.
His worst nightmares are lit by the dim flickering of an arc reactor before it goes out.
And now, Strange is ruining one of the very few pieces left of Tony Stark. He steals the part of him he was proudest of, washes him away in bitter orange light. All because Strange made a mistake.
Of course, they didn’t get along all that well. Two egotists with Atlas complexes were never going to. But Strange is all too aware of how much Stark meant to the world.
To Peter.
Strange witnessed it firsthand on Titan; the way Peter hung off his every word, pressed himself against Stark’s side like he was a comfort and not an agitator, trusted the man blindly even with Quill’s gun threatening the side of his head. Strange saw it in the vision of Peter sinking into the dust before becoming it — Stark holding him until there was nothing left of him to hold.
And he heard it in Peter’s cracking voice at the very end as he collapsed in front of his mentor, trying to look for a sign of life that was quickly fading into nothingness.
We won, Mr. Stark. We won. You did it, sir. You did it.
And Strange knew better than anyone that Stark did all of it for him.
Now May is dead, buried in some overcrowded graveyard in Queens. Peter’s friends won’t remember his birthday, or least favorite foods, or the fact that he ever existed at all. Happy will forget that, behind the mask, there is a kid that couldn’t get below an A in calculus if he tried.
And Peter won’t have Tony to tell any of this to.
Strange lets out a sob he had been unaware was brewing in the deepest center of his chest. He closes the spell.
He forgets all about Peter Parker, and what exactly he’s doing floating above the Statue of Liberty. Why is his face so wet?
A yellow string of light dances before his eyes. It gives him an odd sense of deja vu. And it looks an awful lot like something he saw not so long ago.
He just can’t remember when.
————————
Tony does not wake peacefully.
“Who the hell are you and how the hell did you get in our house?”
The sharp click of a pistol being cocked has Tony wrenching himself up in bed, one hand instinctively shooting out to wake Pepper.
Only, his fingers don’t feel her. They feel nothing at all.
Right. The whole prosthetic arm business. He hasn’t installed the nerve sensors just yet.
(He’s been busy, alright? A few nights ago, he had this horrifying nightmare that Peter was fried half to death by an electric wire. How the fuck else is he supposed to get back to sleep if he doesn’t alter the Spider-Man suit to make it shock-proof?)
Even still, Tony commands his hand to clench around nothing but bed sheets and a comforter.
Because Pepper is not there. Pepper is standing over him, arms outstretched and shaking where they aim a little black gun directly at his face.
“Whoa, Pep! Easy, eas—“
“Don’t you, ‘Pep’ me!” she snarls, eyebrows twisted in a rage so chilling that Tony’s arm hair stands on end. “Answer the questions. How did you get here? What do you want?”
He blinks at her, pulse thrumming with anticipation but not entirely sure what to do. What is this? Bad dream? Panic attack? Finally, a nervous breakdown after the seven depths of hell that Tony put her through these past few decades?
“Pepper,” he tries again, trying to project as much calm into his voice as he possibly can. It is pitifully little. “Put the gun down, honey. Let’s just talk.”
“Talk?” she spits. “I have nothing to say to the disgusting thing pretending to be my dead husband!”
Huh.
“Wait. Wait, wh—“
“You better start fucking talking. Because Colonel Rhodes and Happy are on their way and—“
“What do you mean, ‘dead husband?’”
“— You’re gonna wish I put a bullet through your brain, you’re gonna—“
“What the hell are you—“
“Rot in the ground or in a jail cell, see if I give a shit—
“—Talking about, Pep? Can you just put the gun down, I can’t—“
“— And if there’s an afterlife, my Tony, the real Tony, is going to kill you a second time, I swear to—“
“Pepper!” he finally shouts, half to hear himself over her yelling and half to hear himself over the roar of his own heartbeat. She stops — clearly startled by the loud, sudden sound. Her perfectly manicured hands are shaking around the pistol’s handle, but her finger isn’t on the trigger.
That’s a good sign. At least, that’s what Tony hopes.
“Pepper. Please, please, just hear me out for a hot second. I’ll be quick, I promise.” He holds both his hands, organic and mechanical, palm-side up in a gesture of peace. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, honey. I’m very much, very observably alive.”
He tilts his chin down at the arc reactor firmly attached to his chest, illuminating the room. Of course, he doesn’t need it to draw shrapnel fragments away from his heart anymore, but it still monitors his vitals. She knows this.
Doubt begins to splinter across her features, perfect lips tilting down in that expression of confusion she does when Morgan comes to her for math homework. Tony is encouraged.
He continues, “I’m in our house because I live here. I’m in our bed because I sleep here, right?”
At this, Pepper shakes her head so hard her bangs fall into her face. “No, no. I have slept in this bed alone since… since…”
Then, her arms begin to tremble in earnest, almost as if a very centralized earthquake has struck in the exact spot she’s standing in the bedroom. At a certain point, the shaking gets so intense that she can no longer keep hold of the gun. When it hits the bed, miracle of all miracles, no loud bang sounds. Tony makes a mad dive for it, unloads the clip, and throws the thing into his nightstand drawer without looking.
Crisis averted. Thank fucking God.
It would probably be wise to exercise caution. To approach slowly, carefully, but Tony is neither of those things. He is quick. He is reckless. He is afraid.
He cradles her face between his fingers, swallows down the lump in his throat when she arches away from his metal hand.
“Since what, Pep?” he whispers, wiping away tears with his one still human hand. “Hey, shh. You’re alright. You’re alright, just breathe. Since what?”
She looks up at him, and he feels ice flood his veins. This is not the Pepper that Tony knows. No, this Pepper has deeper lines etched into her forehead. This Pepper has an unspeakable grief in her eyes, and an even more unspeakable hope.
He feels her hands fiercely grasp the material of his shirt, wrenching him close. He knows what she will say before she even says it. She pitches her head forward.
His heart drops.
She sobs, “Since you died.”
—--------------------------------
It goes like this.
Pepper absolutely loses it. She loses it more than she did on the rooftop after the frankly explosive Stark Expo, after he was nearly entombed by his own Malibu house, after he stumbled off that ramshackle spaceship at the very beginning of The Blip.
And Tony can’t say anything to console her, either. In fact, his voice only seems to make her cry harder.
Despite her previously expressed concern that he is a mere doppelgänger of the real Tony, she is clinging to him like... well.
Like he’ll fade to dust if she doesn’t.
Tony knows that feeling. He lets her hold on.
This is how Happy and Rhodey find them. They go through essentially the same routine. Both men pull their custom-designed guns (how’s that for a thank-you?) on him, screaming out questions of just what the hell he thinks he’s doing here, who the hell he is.
But Pepper just turns them, angles her body so her back faces their barrels, protecting Tony from their aim. Rhodey and Happy lower their guns immediately.
Best bodyguards that Tony’s money could ever buy.
And in Tony’s arms, Pepper just keeps shaking and sobbing. Sobbing and shaking. Tony doesn’t know what else to do but gently rub her back with his knuckles, try to console her without words.
Eventually, she manages to whimper, “It’s you. It’s really you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.” He presses a chaste kiss right where her hairline starts. “I’m right here.”
Once she quiets down a little bit, Tony feels comfortable (and desperate) enough to address the room at large.
“So.” He clears his throat. “I’m getting the feeling I missed a little something. Anyone want to fill me in?”
…………….
As it turns out, Tony has been dead for two years. The snap — which he could swear he survived, he even has the bionic arm to prove it — fried an entire side of his suited body. He was consumed with third-degree burns, and suffered raging internal bleeds. His heart, so long abused, gave out right there on the battlefield. The light of his arc reactor flickered out like a candle.
It was a necessary death, Strange had said at the funeral. It was the beginning of a new world for most people.
It was the end for her.
But life went on. Doesn’t it always? Even when it has been halved. The snap proved that.
Pepper continued her charity work. Rhodey resumed his duties as Iron Patriot. Happy took over much of Stark Industries.
They tell him all this after FRIDAY finishes approximately nine-hundred identity-verifying scans. Additionally, he endures an intensely embarrassing interrogation by both Happy and Rhodey.
Proving things by disclosing what only the real Tony Stark could know turns out to be a decidedly family-unfriendly activity.
But he passed. With flying, horribly vulgar colors. They trust him. They have to.
And Tony does the same.
“What about the kid?” Tony finally musters up the courage to ask. His head is spinning in a concentric circle, the lump in his throat bigger than the circumference of most planets.
How the hell did this happen?
“Morgan is good. She just finished third grade,” Pepper whispers. Her eyes are wide, unblinking — as if Tony is an apparition that can be startled away by a loud noise or a wrong word. “She’s staying the week with my sister right now. The one in California.”
Right. That lines up with his Morgan, too. It was a relief to have something, anything, be the same. A point of agreement. Stability.
“Good, good.” He gets out. Jesus, what the fuck? “But I’m not talking about that kid.”
At this, Happy stirs, grunting out a decidedly gruff, “What kid?”
Tony cocks his head in curiosity. “Peter,” he elaborates, letting the name fall slowly. It should be most obvious to Happy, of all people. Didn’t the lucky bastard do chauffeur duty for well over a year? “Where’s Peter?”
After a long beat of silence, Pepper tugs at his shirt, drawing his increasingly frantic eyes back down to her. But even the familiar, calming blue of her gentle gaze does little to settle him. His heart lurches in his chest.
Why isn’t Happy answering? It’s a simple question. Why is everyone filling in every little gap of time he seems to have missed, but no one talks about the kid? What had happened to this Peter? His Peter is in his sophomore year at MIT. The kid is kicking ass on patrol, busting curves on exams. What is he here? What had happened to him that was too horrible to speak of? What horrific tragedy had Tony missed? What had he let happen in his absence?
Before he can well and truly lose his mind, Pepper is running soothing hands over the tightened muscles of his fist. Not that it works. This feels like the sort of pet you do to keep a racehorse from running from a snake. He should run. He should go. He needs to see the kid. Hold him in his arms. Press him free of dust and back into a whole person. He did it before. He can do it again.
“Tony,” Pepper says. The soft tone makes Tony’s stomach wrench itself into knots. “Who is Peter?”
It is no exaggeration to say that the world caves in.
…………………….
A few hours away in Queens, Peter Parker has his back against the quarter-inch drywall of his new apartment. He doesn’t see the point in getting up.
It’s cold here. He’s tired.
He misses May. He misses Tony.
He is alone.
But not for long.