Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was silence before it all happened. Total and utter silence, aside from the heavy breathing of seven heroes who fought– and failed– to secure the universe's safety. The lonely planet provided no shelter or comfort; the dust floating into the air seemed to speak in time with the strange, black-haired alien’s words. “Something’s happening.” 

It was like an explosion of dread, misery, and fear at the back of Spider-Man’s skull– a wall of emotions too large to put into words slamming into the rapidly weakening teenager’s brain. As the group watched in horror, the woman dissolved into nothing but thin air. It was like a disease, spreading from person to person. First, it was the man with the tattoos, then the one who had been threatening to kill him not even an hour earlier. The heroes were talking in the not-so-far-away distance, uttering their last words to each other as their bodies exploded into particles of ash and drifted away. The explosion in his head became a high-pitched wailing, one of helpless terror, and if he wasn’t paralyzed by fear, he would’ve had the mind to cover his ears. The doctor-sorcerer said something incomprehensible to the man standing next to him, and suddenly it was four people quieter on the planet. 

The silence was deafening, and it took the teen all of his courage just to whisper, calling out to his mentor in a desperate attempt for his comfort. “Mister Stark?” 

The name rang out in his ears louder than any scream could’ve, and suddenly he was falling, falling, falling into the man’s arms. He was begging for help, he knew he was, his body stitching itself together even as everything inside of it eroded in what felt like years to the boy, but was most likely seconds. His powers failed him as his hands scraped for purchase on the iron man suit, realizing how the sensation of slippery surfaces had been alien to him since he was bitten by that spider. 

His hands shook as he collapsed against the man he had wanted to help– to protect– and he wished he had gone silently. The pain hadn’t stopped, it was getting worse now, and all he could think about was how this wasn’t how it was supposed to end. He was supposed to die a hero, courageously sacrificing himself for the greater good like every other hero. He wanted to die in a way that mattered to someone, not pleading for the man he’d looked up to since he knew what heroes were to save him from his fate. He knew he was being set down somewhere– the orange sky seemed so much more tranquil now that he couldn’t muster up the energy to look at anything else.  

“I’m sorry.” 

Distantly, he hoped he had said the words out loud, watching the orange sky roll past as his body finally gave in. The ringing in his ears died down like a sudden loss of signal on a radio to offer Peter a moment of peace before he faded into nothingness, his earlier panic forgotten as he welcomed the calm wave of emotions washing him away.

---

The pain of being ripped apart on an atomic level was nothing compared to the pain of being reassembled on the same level. Particles of dust clumped together like glitter in the swirling water of a second-grade science experiment, slowly but surely building up mass as it all latched onto itself, increasingly large colonies of the powdery stuff merging and conforming to a human silhouette on the barren, decrepit landscape. 

No instruments would detect the anomaly, and, certainly, nothing could sense the agony going on just beyond the realm of the living. It was cruel, despite the miraculousness of it all; a boy was stitching himself back together out of nothing but the last spark of life in a mutated cell, laws of the universe be damned. It was like no pain he’d ever felt before, worse than even that night fighting for his life against Toomes, so trapped and alone under that warehouse, every moment more agonizing than the last as more of the child was able to feel the pain. From the outside world, it took days to see any real results, the first flashes of color– gleaming red and blue– spreading through the gradually quickening spiral of dust taking the shape of one Peter Parker. 

Days more– 4 days of constant torture– and the form began pulsating, a materializing chest heaving impossibly quickly as ‘he’ was reintroduced to the world of the living. First came the hollow bones, ribs growing out from seemingly nowhere to contain and protect the irregular pounding of the heart. In an act of what could be mercy, the nerves were among the last things to branch out through the body, flecks of the grey-brown dust disappearing as slowly as they had appeared inside of the body just days before. 

It was the one-week mark when hazy brown eyes finally opened and his fingers began to twitch, and it was also the same moment the throat repaired itself.

The scream that rang out from his previously silent mouth was animalistic. The pent-up agony released itself in a single shriek that resonated across the planet, no living soul there to comfort the boy as he wailed. His voice broke every few moments to sob, his eyes dry and burning as he tried his best to cry. Maybe it was for the best that he hadn't remembered how to move lest he accidentally hurt himself more, laying immobile on the rocky slope as he cried out for mercy– for death. Anything that would end the unfathomable pain. 

Once the regeneration was complete, he was left with a body still trying to recover. The feeling of dust on his cheeks enough to feel like a scalding iron to every square inch of his body as he tried to make sense of the world, and there was no escaping the sharpness of it all as his fingertips coated in a bright metal dug deep grooves into the ground below.

---

“Every ship that my sister’s crew touches is filthy.” Tony turned around at the sound of the clipped, robotic voice making its way to the cockpit of the strange spaceship. He had already spent so long taking the ship in, the technology different than anything he’d ever seen. The slightly uncomfortable chairs were like something straight out of a movie, and the disabled technology at his fingertips would’ve made him ecstatic only days before. As it was, the ship was cold and lifeless. He knew it had been lived on, which only made it worse. The junk laying around created a homely feeling, and he was just an intruder trying to take it all in. 

Her footsteps were interrupted by something– a can?– being kicked out of the woman’s pathway as she approached, shaking him out of his thoughts again; that was a common occurrence. He could never seem to stop finding something to think about. “And don’t even think of touching the controls. I will do any flying. I doubt you can even read the star maps on this hunk of junk.”

He scoffed lightly and turned back to the view of endless stars that seemed to shrink as they moved closer. Space was... scary. In the back of his mind, he knew that the kid would’ve loved seeing everything on the ship. No matter how hard he tried not to think about the boy that had to suffer because of his failures, brown hair and bright eyes ended up plaguing him. He could hear him now. 

“Mister Stark!” he would’ve whispered, looking around. “This is just like the Millennium Falcon, minus the..." he would’ve gone on about details nobody else cared to remember, and Tony would’ve loved it, no matter how many times he called the series ‘Star Fights’ for a reaction. 

He blinked rapidly as his throat tightened for what seemed to be the millionth time since Titan, jolting himself out of his thoughts as he turned to face the pitch-black eyes of the cyborg; something he would never get used to. They were so freaky. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Siri.” He had half heard whatever she snapped at him in retaliation, waving her off as he cleared his throat to retain some composure despite his already cracking resolve. 

It was true, of course, and he knew it as he glanced over to what could only be a 3D map of the galaxy. It seemed broken with how it flickered and faded out periodically. Nebula had fixed it by punching the console, but using that method was debatable without her metal hand. “How long until we reach Earth anyways? Am I gonna have to call out of work?” 

The mention of work only made him think about the people possibly waiting for him at home. Rhodey, Happy... Pepper. Everyone he loved could be gone and he would have no idea until he was back on Earth. How do you grieve for people who might not even be dead? The sudden weight of it all made him want to vomit, a shaky hand covering his mouth to stifle any sobs trying to claw their way up his parched throat. 

Nebula seemed to pick up on his sudden shift, resting a hand on his shoulder in silent support before walking away, the rhythmic taps of her heels gradually fading as she went who-knows-where. He closed his eyes and tilted his head against the back of the seat, not sure if he was grateful for the lack of sound in the ship. Everything except the core functions had been shut off to preserve fuel and he’d never noticed just how quiet an environment could be before that moment. 

Titan had long since faded into the distance, and, just for a moment, he wished he had died there too. 

Death was merciful in light of everything, he saw that now. After two days of hell trapped with nothing but his thoughts, he knew it was selfish to have been relieved for just a moment to not see dust lifting off his skin like cancer, not when Nebula lost what he suspected was more than ‘nuisances’ and he had lost his prodigy of a mentee and possibly more back home. It would’ve been easier to fade into nothingness and let the world repair itself without heroes getting in the middle of it all. No amount of charity work could heal the damage their mistake cost the whole universe, and god if that didn’t scare the man. It was all over for everyone no matter if they were still living. 

His head dropped into his hands and as he stared at the lone projector with a glowing orange dot moving toward the border of the screen, he wondered if it was too late to turn back to plead with the universe to take him instead of the boy he might have, one day, called his kid. His kid that he left to float away on that cursed planet.

It had already been 8 days. 8 days into their desperate attempt to reach Earth and neither of them had muttered more than a few sentences to the other. The loneliness was eating them both alive, and they both knew it as they studied the damaged fuel cells together. 

“Right. Walk me through it, Alexa. These things are... your engines?” The engineer squinted at the foreign technology, alien-y wrench in one hand and ration bar in the other. It tasted surprisingly good, like granola, which was a welcome surprise. He expected space octopus and Bantha– the kid would love him for that one– ration bars, not the same oats Pepper had always tried to get him to try eating for breakfast. 

“I’m not a horse, Pep. I’ll stick with my usual.” “Your usual is coffee and whatever you can find sitting out.” “Exactly! Efficiency is key!” She had the last laugh now, as he took one more bite and crunched up the wrapper to shove in his pocket.

“Man, I bet this is how old people feel looking at my smartphone tech.” He huffed out a laugh, the perplexed expression never leaving his face. He tilted his head to the side as he leaned in towards the cells, prodding one with the tool gently. “If you weren’t aware, I’m a great engineer. I have a couple of fans back on Earth. And a lot of enemies, but hey– who doesn’t?”

“Stark.” She cut into his chatter with a sigh of irritation. “Why do you keep coming up with those ridiculous names for me? Stop that. I am throwing you overboard at the nearest star if you don’t.” She pushed herself off the wall and made her way across the engine room towards him. “And I don’t care. I’m no mechanic, and you are... Terran.” His back was to her, but he could hear the annoyance radiating off of her as he hummed dismissively. 

“We need to figure something else out before we make it worse and lose power entirely.” 

He knew it was true, but hearing the words from someone else’s mouth was enough to break his faked relaxation, newfound anger surging through him as he turned around to face her and her emotionless expression. “Thank you!” He laughed dryly, throwing the wrench against the wall nearby, the clang resonating through the room. “I didn’t know that, thank you so much for pointing it out.” His newly freed hand came up to his head, and he ran his fingers through his filthy hair to hide the trembling. He opened his mouth again before closing it and clenching his jaw, eyes looking upwards as he took a deep breath. He cleared his throat and nodded once to himself before walking over to the discarded wrench and bending down to grab it, ignoring the way his knees cracked loudly as he stood back up. The kid would’ve laughed and called him old.

No matter how much they avoided it, they knew how dire the situation was for them both. Nebula’s passive expression didn’t hide the way she swallowed irregularly or shifted on her feet like she was holding something back, and he knew his witty responses weren’t hiding anything from the woman. He was no stranger to the feeling of helplessness coming up to replace the anger, and he recognized the weight on his chest all too well. 

All this time he had spent worrying about how he was going to get home, but now that he had time to think, he worried about how he was going to die. He was going to die with no reassurance that his loved ones were okay, away from everything he’d ever cared about. There was a chance that Pepper and Rhodey were okay, he knew there was a chance the Avengers, past fighting be damned, were okay too. Tony Stark was many things, but an optimist was never one of them.

“Not your fault. Sorry.”

If she heard his apology, she didn’t acknowledge it as she spoke. “We have about 13 Terran days to find a solution. Two... months?” Her eyes flicked up to him for confirmation, as if asking him if months was the correct word. How he wished it was.

“Two weeks.” He muttered, beginning to pace as he rambled. He raised his voice a bit as he turned to face her again. “Two weeks of power, which means two weeks of temperature regulation, gravity control, and fuel for the flight, right?”

He stopped walking, the ship suddenly feeling much smaller than it was before. “Well, that’s no good.” He laughed wetly, blinking rapidly to fight back the wall of hot tears. It was a valiant effort, he told himself as he felt a droplet hit his cheek. He watched through blurry vision as she silently looked downwards, ever stoic despite the loudness of her silence– no words were needed as she took the information in and walked over to and then past him.

“I’ll be in the cockpit. I... won’t fight you on the matter if you want to come and join me.” Was all she said with a strain in her voice he had never heard before, once again resting a bionic hand on his shoulder before she was gone. It didn’t take long for the man to drop back to his knees, leaning backward and sitting on the cold floor of the ship to cry over it all. 

All he could do was hope for the day– in just two weeks, his brain reminded him– he becomes desensitized to it all and can die without feeling so damn scared.

---

At some point, he had fallen asleep. In reality, he had probably blacked out from the pain, but sleeping sounded less... pathetic. Besides, the pain had ebbed away and now it only felt like he had been stabbed in all the places he’d been hurt before he got dusty. Which was an improvement, if you ignore the way his body screamed in pain and his head pounded with an oncoming migraine. 

With an embarrassingly large amount of his energy, he managed to roll over onto his less pained side, gasping for air as he tried to escape the orange light from the sky– oh. The dirt is orange, too. He propped himself up onto his good arm as he struggled to take in enough air, coughing and retching as his awareness caught up to him. 

“Kar- Oh, oh no.” He paused to gag again, breathing heavily as he swallowed saliva building up in his mouth. “Okay, I’m good. We’re good– you’re good, Parker.” He muttered to himself as the helmet of his new suit covered him and suddenly the air tasted so much sweeter. 

“Karen, are you okay?” He asked, attempting to push himself into a sitting position before he fell back down, hissing in pain and shutting his eyes. Everything felt so sensitive. He had barely moved, and yet he felt like he could sleep for a month.

Suddenly his suit’s legs– legs! so cool.– were lifting him into a sitting position, supporting his still-weak body with ease. “Hello, Peter.” He winced as Karen’s voice bounced around in the helmet, and a small dial in his peripherals turned down to about 30%. “Apologies.” The audio crackled slightly from damage, but it was still the same cheerful warmth he had grown fond of hearing. 

“Karen! Karen, hey. Oh man, it’s so nice to hear another voice right now. You’ll never guess what happened to me.” 

He rose to his feet shakily, feeling like a baby deer in those nature documentaries he used to watch all the time as the suit’s legs dug into the ground to keep him from falling over. “Okay, whoa. Ouch.” He shook out an arm, pins and needles sending pain up his body. 

“You appear to have 2 cracked ribs and bruising littered all over your body, with one particularly severe bruise concentrated on your right knee. You pulled a muscle in your left shoulder, though it is 87% of the way healed according to scanners. Medical assistance is recommended.” A diagram of his body was pulled up with flashing lights to indicate injuries, and he shook his head– and immediately regretted it when his world spun. “No, not what happened in the battle, I mean everything else. Never mind, where’s Mister Stark? Is he okay? I should’ve asked sooner, sorry.” He wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to, but he still felt guilty as he turned, legs spinning him around slowly as he tried to find the man.

“Scanners indicate no other life forms on the planet, Peter.”

He paused, smile fading. “Like, just around here? Maybe he went to higher ground! Hey, Karen, can you scan ov-” 

“No, Peter. You are the only life form on the planet.” Karen cut him off, sounding as sad as an AI possibly could. “I’m sorry.” 

He retracted the mask as quickly as he could, a fresh wave of nausea washing over him. The metal legs holding him up retracted almost immediately, and his legs collapsed underneath him like they had all those days before, just without his mentor there to catch him and set him down gently. Now he fell with a painful grunt, the pain in his knee surging as it landed on some metal scrap. He stared at the orange dirt below him that was getting way too familiar for his liking and wished he could curse the whole universe. He probably shouldn't; it had been through too much for more to happen because some kid lost his childhood hero who had been stuck on babysitting duty. 

He remained silent for what felt like hours, his throat too tight to take in any breaths, and he was suddenly a 12-year-old kid who needed an inhaler all over again. His hands ran through his hair softly before he yanked on it and screamed hoarsely, his voice cracking and breaking into wheezing sobs. 

If he was being more attentive, he would’ve been impressed by the cloud of dust he kicked up around him as he brought his fists to the ground with another scream. It was all coming to him slowly, just like how he could feel the migraine from earlier creeping back up on him from all this crying and he could not handle one of those at this point. There wasn’t much else he could handle while stranded on a planet so far away from home that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be found. He stood back up with more success than before, blinking to clear his eyes as he took in his surroundings. The towering structures of the Titan’s old home seemed to haunt him, shadows playing tricks on him out of his peripherals.

“Alright, Peter. Time to be an Avenger. Alright. You’re stuck in space all alone with no idea what to do and nobody is coming to save you. What do you do?” He asked himself quietly, spinning as he looked around for anything of use. 

“Wait, that’s an oxymoron. Okay. Saw a YouTube video about getting lost while hiking? That’s gotta count for something.” He muttered, pacing as he talked to himself. “Maybe I should...” He activated his mask again, shivering at the weird feeling of technology crawling up him. “Karen, hey. Sorry about earlier, I’m good now. Well, I’m really not– no time to worry about it! What’s the highest point on this planet?”

“I am here for you, Peter,” Karen replied before a translucent red path lit up in his vision, snaking out of view. “Route calculated. It will take a week on foot to get there, plus resting.” She was dutiful as ever, even putting a smaller, google maps-y route in the corner. 

“Hey, whoa! Wait! I can’t go a week without water, Karen!”

There was a long pause. “There is a small body of water en route. It seems OK to drink, and you will make it there in 36 hours.”

He blinked a couple of times as he processed the information, the iron spider’s eyes doing the same. “Oh. Uh, cool.” He hesitated to take the first step forward, glancing back over his shoulder. “One minute, sorry.” The mask’s interface was gone within seconds, and he walked back over with a solemn expression. It was hard to imagine so many people standing here, which couldn’t have been that long ago. All of them were dead now, except for him and, if he remembered correctly, that blue lady... who was nowhere to be found.

He snapped his head up at the thought, a new hope soaring in his heart. “Karen, hey! Karen!” He yelled as the mask materialized again. Can this drain the suit’s battery? “Karen, scan for any metal other than the scrap metal around here, please?” She did, and once again there was nothing. 

“I’m sorry, Peter. There are only traces of a spacecraft that the ‘Guardians’ had arrived in, but I cannot date when it left. Two sets of footprints are leading up to the place it used to b-”

“Wait!” He cut in, waving his hands around to stop the AI from talking. “Wait, wait. Karen, you said two sets?” “I did.” He tried to stop himself from letting his imagination run wild, but he couldn’t help it as he straightened up, looking at the imprints the ship’s totally awesome landing gear had left behind.

“Karen, Mister Stark might be alive!” He cheered, suddenly very relieved the planet was dead and without weather to blow the dust away. “I suppose you are correct.” She mused after a moment. “I was unaware you thought he had passed.” “Oh. Yeah, it was... complicated. I don’t really wanna get into it, sorry. Maybe later, promise. I gotta do something first. Can, uh- mute, please? If you can. Sorry, I just want to be quiet right now.” He dropped down to the dirt, reaching out for pieces of rock. “Alright, let’s see.” 

Half an hour later, he had a sort-of carved-out memorial for the fallen aliens, plus the guy with really bad movie takes, he had met. It was crude, only white lines from the rocks he scraped together, but it was the most he could do for the fallen heroes. 

“Nobody will see it but... you guys deserve a proper grave.” He smiled at the little rock, clearing his throat as he blinked away tears. This was so surreal. Maybe he didn’t want to be an Avenger anymore if this was a part of the job. “Okay, Karen.” He tried to ignore the stuffiness of his nose, a shaky smile on his face. Ever the optimist. 

“Oh, shoot. Unmute, sorry. I totally forgot.” “‘Mute’ is simply one of my functions, Peter.”

“Well, still... I didn’t mean to tell you to shut up like that. It’s the principle of it all. If there’s ever a robo-takeover, I wanna be in your good books. Whatever, let’s just... get on the road? Maybe someone else accidentally left a spaceship lying around.” He marched off, weaving through rubble as he chatted with the AI. “The odds of that happening are less than-” “Never tell me the odds! ...I’ve always wanted to say that. Have you seen Star Wars, Karen? You’d love C3PO.”

Chapter Text

“Rook to D4.” The hologram of a chess piece moved itself to the designated tile in the corner of the mask’s interface, knocking a bishop of the opposite color out of frame. “Uh... timeout.” He backed up to take a running jump, clearing 10 feet of air before landing on the base of what must have been a dome of some kind, towering over the rest of the architecture in the surrounding area. He looked around the rubble for a second, wondering with a laugh if this is what spiders felt like when they ended up in his apartment.

“There are no timeouts in chess, Peter.” She cut through his thoughts, pulling him back to their game. “Knight to D4.” 

“Yeah, I know, I know. It’s just that trying to navigate an alien planet and beat a robot in chess is kinda difficult, so I deserve a freebie.” He shrugged, turning his attention back to the hologram as he climbed on all fours up the large rotunda. “Wh-- Karen! I thought we were playing on an easier difficulty! That’s cold. ”

The AI did not respond to his complaints, instead opting to activate the iron spider’s legs and speed up the boy’s climbing. “Yeah, yeah. Get on my good side now , I know how you work.” He scoffed playfully, rolling his eyes under his mask. As he crawled up the building, he yawned and blinked to clear the weariness from his eyes, pushing himself up the wall in one final leap to make it to the top. Once there, he retracted the spider legs to lay flat on his back and sighed with exhaustion. 

“Karen, how far until I get to some water? And uh... bishop to F6.” He was silent for a moment more before scrambling to sit up. “No, no! Wait! C5, I meant C5!” Despite his pleas, he watched the bishop move to the spot and set him up for yet another loss. 

“Sorry, Peter.” The AI moved her other bishop into place and the game vanished from his sight and was replaced with the usual minimap. He groaned and fell back against the structure, closing his eyes and laying an arm over his face. “If it is any consolation, you will reach the water in under 2 hours at your current pace.”

He jumped up to his feet at that, rolling out a shoulder. The iron spider’s eyes narrowed as he zoomed in on the horizon, glancing around the barren landscape. “I don’t see it.” A circle appeared around a distant pond, flashing a light, arc reactor-colored blue against the harsh landscape. “Huh. Okay, I can see why I never got very far in my cub scouts troop, that was really obvious in hindsight.” He laughed to himself as he slid down the other side of the dome, the definitely-expensive metal of his suit grating against the exoskeleton of the rusted building. He winced– that wouldn’t leave a mark, right?

Kicking up dust as he landed, he tried his best to brush it off his new suit. “Karen, make a note to invent a nanotech little tree air freshener.” He sniffled, already missing the new car smell the suit used to carry. “And can I... machine wash this?” “May I ask why, Peter?” His face broke out into a grin, and he straightened up like he was about to deliver the most important message of his admittedly short life. 

“I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.” He nodded sagely once he finished, pausing to brush some dirt out of his web shooters before moving on.

“Peter, I get the sense that was another reference of some kind– would you like to inform me of what its origins are?” He sighed and put a hand over his heart, shaking his head at her words. If an AI could be embarrassed, she sure sounded the part. “I apologize, but not being able to connect to internet databases greatly diminishes my range of functions.” 

“‘o for two on the Star Wars stuff! We gotta get you caught up.” He kicked a rock into the sky, grinning as it fell far, far ahead of him. The gravity here was so much fun to mess with– even if the super strength was doing the heavy lifting. “I think this is like... the one scenario that these jokes are appropriate.” 

After walking for an hour or so in silence, the landscape dropped off rather suddenly, the carved-out cliff that held what must have been a waterfall once now jagged and crumbling. The superhero transitioned onto the new terrain seamlessly, dropping to all fours and crawling down the side of it with unnatural grace and lightness as metal arms helped him detect loose earth– is it still “earth”? He started to debate with himself as he climbed down, alien-y scraps of building supports sticking out like a wall of spikes that he dodged without thinking as he muttered about what makes dirt dirt . 

Before he really knew it, he was on the ground and moving again. The legs retracted without any prompting, and he felt the suit’s heater come to life as a chill ran through him from the shadow cast by the cliffs which were much bigger from down here, wow.

He shrugged the feeling of smallness off as he kept going, the lights of his suit emitting a small glow in the shade. “Hey, Karen? Doesn’t this thing need to charge?” “Backup charging has been enabled, Peter. Solar panels are built into your suit to supply energy when away from a charging port for long periods.” 

His eyes widened and he looked down at his suit. It didn’t look like there were solar panels, but Mister Stark seemed to have thought of every possible scenario. “This suit is like... way too nice for me. It’s like a museum.” 

“Nonsense, Peter. He designed it for you.” “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

---

Nights in space were cold. He learned that very quickly as he huddled in a crevice between two support beams that had fallen over who knows how long ago. His suit was glowing dimly, as it always did, and it was probably the only thing keeping him sane in the near-pitch darkness.

Good thing this planet doesn’t have an ocean anymore, the tides would be fucked . He snickered out loud at the thought, trying very hard to forget the moment he watched Thanos blow up a moon to fight them with. It was a losing battle from the beginning, really.

Another tremor ran through him when he shifted against the ice-cold wall, nearly knocking him to the ground as his grip slipped. It had been doing that a lot recently– it was concerning. He understood that it was just a result of his malnourishment, but it was unnerving nonetheless. Spider webs stretched out across him in a safety net of some sort, fanning out to catch his fall just in case. 

His head drooped and he shook himself awake, eyes scanning over what might be the horizon– or maybe he just couldn’t see the stars below a certain point.

“Karen?” He hated the way his voice trembled as he choked out the AI’s name. “Can you turn up the heater?” He retreated further into the corner as cold air floated into the artificial cavern, missing the above-average warmth of the planet in the daytime. Climate change is so real . 

“Of course, Peter. I will divert all excess power to heaters until the morning. I will be shutting down as well, I suggest you sleep to preserve energy. The suit will recharge once the sun rises.”

And just like that, she was gone. He blinked and all of his mask’s visuals were gone. The eerie blue glow of his eyes went out, leaving only the smaller lights on his suit to keep him company; at least he could feel his suit warming up around him like a warm hug from Aunt May.

He smiled at the memories– back before the bite, when everything was close to normal. When Ben would get out candles during power outages and they’d all drink instant hot cocoa and cuddle until the heating came back on to save them from the brutal New England weather.

Now, though, he was alone with his thoughts in space. It was weird to be in his suit without the technology all over his eyes– was he becoming a superhero iPad kid? He closed his eyes and listened to the whirring of something in his suit, missing nothing more than the sounds of the busy city as he fell asleep.

--- 

He knew, realistically, there was a chance he would never find a way off the planet. A scarily large chance. Karen had told him he had been on the move for four days– which was odd. Time felt like it was moving so fast but also taking its time. Had he really been alone for four days already? How had it only been two days since he’d reached the pond– if you could call it that– and moved on?

“Karen, are you sure I can drink this?” He eyed the cloudy water suspiciously and leaned in closer. “Of course, Peter. The water here does not contain any parasites or contamination due to there being no life to sustain them.” So, it was just dirty. Which wasn’t ideal– he’d grown up in Queens, though. He was absolutely no stranger to poor water quality. “Bottoms up!” He remembered saying as he retracted the mask, drinking out of cupped hands with a grimace. Even so, he kept drinking like it was liquid gold, his cracked lips and bone-dry throat crying out with joy as he took sips of water.

He remembered falling asleep under the shade of another fallen building, its exoskeletion identical to all the others. His mask crept back up his face as he lay there, air filters working to keep dust out of his system as he drifted off to sleep. The last thing that crossed his mind before he fell unconscious was how May was doing without him.

He wasn’t sure where he was or which direction he’d come from. The red line disappeared under his feet with each step, and if he wasn’t so preoccupied by his nerves, he would’ve been amazed by the navigation systems the suit had. Instead, he was thinking about how far from the original clearing he’d come and how nobody would find him if they came looking. What if the others come back like he did? He hoped it wasn’t true. He hoped, in a guilty sort of way, they stayed dead just so they wouldn’t have to experience the pain of being put back into existence the way he had. 

“Hey, Karen?” He called out, tightening his web shooters on his wrists. They had gotten... bigger on his arms. Looser. “Yes, Peter?” “Can we still run through those training courses? The ones from the old suits and all that.” He waved a hand around, trying to come up with the words for what he was talking about. “The things from that bunker in D.C!”

She paused, a small loading bar popping up in the corner of his left eye as they downloaded. “I do have them. Along with twelve more web combinations added by Mister Stark.” His eyes widened at that. Mister Stark had not only made him this suit but spent the time to think of twelve more options for him.

“Oh, man. Wow. These are... Let’s run the test, Karen! Not like I have much else to do while I’m out here, y’know?” “Of course. I must remind you; your web cartridges are at 60% capacity, and your undersuit has no refilled capsules on its person.”

He shrugged the AI’s warning off like a child who got a new toy for Christmas, eyes glued to the many new or improved-upon gadgets in the suit. He spent what felt like hours exploring the suit and its 'really unnecessarily complicated, Karen' functions, time ticking by slowly as he jumped from structure to structure and laughed in a way he hadn’t since before his trip to the MoMA. It was freeing to be able to shake off the weight of guilt that had been pushing at the back of his mind since he woke up, and even more freeing to not have his loved ones crossing his mind every moment of silence that he wasn’t filling with chatter. 

Of course, once he started thinking about how not-bad he felt, the guilt came back with a vengeance. It had happened a few times now; he’d catch himself delaying or slowing down and have to push down the rush of emotions and countless memories that he used to look back on fondly just to keep being able to see through the tears. 

His fingers twitched as he thought about May, and how much he would be willing to do just to feel one of her bone-crushing hugs at that moment. The smells of her burnt dinner attempts were like one of those overpriced candles, smelling just as nice as the ones Mister Stark had brought out after Dum-E accidentally hit the fuse box and knocked out all the power in the labs, and he couldn’t help but swallow and press a hand to his stomach at the thought of a meal. 

My stomach hurts . It was said like an afterthought, but once he focused on it he couldn’t seem to forget it. Like that breathing thing, he hates– aw , dammit .

It was like claws digging into his midsection, yanking him back to the real world every time he slowed down to think. The human body can go three weeks without food , he remembered some kid from fourth grade telling him that like it was amazing news. Looking back on it, he wondered how long they could go without succumbing to the pain. He can’t really curse his powers, since they’re the reason he’s here , but he wished he could make it that three weeks like anyone else could. It was like a grandfather paradox; he would survive longer without his powers, but he wouldn’t be here without them in the first place.

He walked on, feet dragging more than they had been days prior as a mountain-like structure appeared through the fog. He had to zoom in with the suit to make out more than an outline, but the path there seemed... easy. No climbing over boulders ten times the size of a semi-truck or walking across death pits full of spikes and certain doom. The last one had taken an hour to maneuver through because he had run out of web fluid to swing across– in hindsight, he should have listened to Karen .

---

Another rock slipped out from underneath him and the mechanical legs clung to the side of the mountain for dear life as he struggled. He could barely pull his weight up the side of the steep incline. He felt like he was in a gym class before the bite, struggling to do more than two pull ups. The altitude marker in his mask ticked up at a snail’s pace, and he glanced at it with every movement like he would magically be lifted to the top.

His arms shook as he raised them and his legs slipped and struggled to find purchase on the rocks. He put both of his hands on a rock and pulled, trying to drag himself upwards without having to move side to side as well. He felt the rock slip out of place, his spider senses screaming bloody murder as the rock broke off completely. He felt his body flying backward and off the side of the cliff, reaching for the rock but missing, the air rushing past as he closed his eyes and braced himself for the feeling of falling to his death. Instead, he found himself rocking back and forth. The spider legs slowly, gently, pulled him back to the cliffside, and he flattened himself against the rock as he gasped for air.

“Ka- Oh my god. Wow, that’s a long way down. Karen, how much farther?” He glanced down over his shoulder and swallowed, the buzzing in his neck dying down the more breaths he took. 

“You are almost to the top. Keep going.” Karen sounded cheerful about the statistics, but he wanted to cry. This whole trip, he had wanted to cry. Not the type of crying he had been doing; he wanted nothing more than to find someone waiting for him. Someone who could save him and comfort him and tell him it’ll be okay– childish for an Avenger to want that, but he suspected he was only given the status to shut him up. He missed his patrols, he missed greeting all the people on his routes, he missed the thrill of swinging through the city without a care. He wondered how many of his childhood superheroes didn’t actually want to be heroes.

He shrugged the thought away and began climbing again, much more cautious as he pulled on rocks to test them. The adrenaline was rushing through him, and he felt sort of like his old self again. Not skin and bone, with weak arms and dampened powers and no energy left to keep himself positive in his situation. 

He hadn’t spoken with Karen outside of asking for updates in a day, at least. It felt bad to ignore his friend, but he couldn’t muster up the effort to even open his mouth most of the time. Every building looked the same– dead– and every time he looked up he saw nothing besides orange emptiness. 

This was where he was going to die, he knew that much. Karen had ways of storing information in the suit even after years , and his last hope was that maybe he could give a proper goodbye to everyone back on Earth. He just hoped nobody he knew would have to find his body. 

“Incoming projectile at your 5 o’clock.” Warning signs filled his vision as he flipped over his shoulder, pressing his back against the cliffside and planting his hands at his sides. He looked around frantically, scanning the ground below him for any signs of life. Despite his spider senses beginning to go from a tingling sensation to a buzzing, he couldn’t see anything. 

This is how I die. Killed on an alien planet. “Karen? I don’t see anything down there. Is it coming towards me? Oh, shit. This is bad.” He muttered, shimmying up the wall as the warnings only got worse, beginning to partially block his view as they appeared and disappeared too fast to read.

“Peter, look up!” And he did; just in time to be blinded by an impossibly bright light slicing through the atmosphere and slamming into the ground. Oh. It was a meteorite. His ears rung from the sound of it entering the atmosphere and he watched cracks split out from the impact site. If he weren’t struggling just to climb up a mountain, he would’ve gone over in an instant. A real shooting star– he’d wanted to see one since he was a kid!

It was childish to wish on shooting stars. He found himself doing it anyways, trying to peer through the thick cloud of debris that the crash had stirred up. Please save me . He whispered to it, possibly out loud, unable to hear his own voice as the ringing finally started dying down. He scoffed after he said it, shaking his head. There’s no time for that kind of thing– he has to go.

He turned back over his shoulder and began to climb again. “I’ve always wanted to see a meteorite. Maybe not like that , though.” The flashing alerts in his suit finally faded away, leaving his lenses their normal blueish tint. 

“Congratulations, Peter. We have reached the summit.”

The iron legs retracted without a word– how did they know to do that? – and he scrambled to drag himself over the edge. With a small “ oof! ” he was standing shakily, looking out over the massive planet. Massive seemed like an understatement. The landscape stretched on for what felt like ever and the architecture finally looked somewhat whole. It was weird knowing he had walked through old roads and alleys that had been walked through millions of times before he had.

“Karen... can you take pictures? Actually– no, don’t do that. I don’t think I can take any memories of this place.” He laughed, slowly sitting himself down. It felt like all the energy was sapped out of him and he closed his eyes for a moment; the world felt like it was growing dimmer as he sat there.

“Karen.” “Yes, Peter?” She sounded... sad. “When I– um... When I sleep, can you power off? Or go into some kind of sleep mode? I don’t want you to be lonely.” 

She paused.

“Of course.”

He nodded and opened his eyes again. He wanted to see the shooting star again before he took a break. He was so tired; it felt like he was swimming–and drowning– in a pool of tv static. The dust had cleared from the impact site, and he craned his neck to see the clump of rock. He zoomed in with the lenses and still, nothing but an empty crater. “Where’d it... go?” 

His spider senses flared up and he jolted upwards, struggling to stand as he spun around. He saw another flash of light fly past the mountain, way too close to the ground to be space debris. Am I hallucinating? He drew in a sharp breath as he stumbled backward, looking over his shoulder. He had heard something behind him, he knew he had, but it was gone sooner than he could look. Had his reaction time taken that much of a hit?

He looked back to the crater, resigned to his fate. Whatever that thing was, it was not a shooting star. And he didn’t have much to offer; he wasn’t sure his suit would react to someone else using it, and he wasn’t much more than skin and bone by now. He felt the way his suit had continuously shrunk to fit him and how his web shooters couldn’t get small enough to fit on his wrists. He could feel the ground with every step, and it felt like walking on frozen ground while barefoot. It rattled his brain and made his knees scream in pain.

“Peter, look up.”

Déjà vu. He looked up at Karen’s request, biting back a yell of surprise as his eyes were blinded again. He tried to hold his arm up as a shield, but it didn’t do much against whatever this was. Is this what death is? Freaky.  

His lenses dilated frantically as they tried to adjust and he blinked away the large spots in his vision.

“Sorry, kid. My bad.”

...Had he imagined a voice? His head snapped back up to the light and found it wasn’t a bright light anymore. There was a woman in its place, floating just above the ground in some sort of uniform. Her hair was flying all around her and he found himself wondering if she was here to put him out of his misery.

He remembered he was supposed to be speaking after a few moments of stunned silence, yet no sound came out when he opened his mouth.

“Kid. Can you hear me?”

He nodded weakly as he sunk back to his knees, sitting back on his heels while keeping his eyes trained on her. If he looked away, she’d be gone and he’d be alone again. His mask retracted from his face and he was suddenly aware of the fact he was crying– hard. His face felt wet, and his hair was completely flattened from being trapped in the mask.

The woman stepped forward and bent down on a knee to be at his level. She waved a hand in front of his face, relaxing visibly when he shook out of his trance and really looked at her. She looked human, deceptively so. She actually looked like a lady Aunt May used to work with– she had made killer blueberry muffins when he was little.

“Hi.” He said dumbly. His tongue felt so heavy. “I’m Peter Parker.”

She smiled down at the boy, offering him a hand. “Hey, Peter Parker.”

He looked at the hand for a moment, frozen by the sound of someone not-robotic saying his name, and began crying all over again. It felt like his chest was trying to cave in on him, and he really did try his best to hide his reddened face from the space lady. 

He reached out blindly, missing her hand at first and freezing up at the feeling of warmth against his skin when he grabbed it. It was enough to bring him all the way to the ground, and the world went black when he felt a surge of something running through his very body from where she was holding his hand. 

At least he’ll be dying at the hands of someone who knew his name.

Chapter Text

When he woke up, he was decidedly not dead. The same orange sky he had been staring at for a week was above him and he could feel the dirt rubbing him from under his suit– he still had no idea how so much had even gotten inside of it– as he blinked rapidly against the light beating down on him. His face felt hot and sweaty, and his head felt like May’s infamous scrambled eggs.

Though he had just been roasting hot, he shivered violently. It felt like he had just sat out in the cold for too long. His brain felt fuzzy and all his limbs were moving twice as slowly as he wanted to as he tried to keep up with his body’s shifts and when he tried to speak all that came out was a groan. He tried to look to his side, feeling like his head was being dragged by his eyes as he collided with the ground. The dust stuck to his cheek and it irritated him, but his arms were still shooting pins and needles up his body.

He shut his eyes and tried to search his memory for what had happened, but all he could remember was a bright light, followed by... space lady!  

Everything began rushing back to him and he scrambled to his feet. The quickness of his movement didn’t even cross his mind until he was standing on wobbly legs, and he prepared for inevitable nausea and another spike in his constant headache; they never came. He stood a little straighter when he was sure he wasn’t going to fall back over and looked down at himself in confusion. He didn’t look any healthier– still a twig, hooray. – but he felt like he could... well, be himself. His senses felt sharp and weren’t as painful as they were before, and his legs weren’t screaming at the thought of walking. Huh. 

He spent a minute looking around before his mask rematerialized, and Karen was back to chirping in his ear. “Peter! Your vitals have improved drastically.” “Oh– um... how? Y’know– don’t answer that yet. I’m not here to... uh. How long has it been? Since I passed out.” He felt like his brain wasn’t processing anything as he tried to voice his thoughts to the A.I. She patiently waited for him to finish and pulled up a timer that was stopped at about 17 hours.

He blinked at the number as his brain caught up to speed, and began to whisper-shout at himself. “Seventeen hours. Seventeen... Oh, man. That space lady is gone by now and she’s abandoning me and now I’ll die alone and knowing I fucked up my chance at getting back home!” He didn’t bother with pulling the mask away to cry as he sat back down in the dirt with his legs crossed and head hanging low, shaking his head as he mumbled. “Karen, mute.” You could’ve gotten home and saved everyone.  

A flashing warning light in the corner of his vision went unnoticed. Everything was blurring together and his eyes stung; he was struggling to breathe with how tight his throat was becoming. He couldn’t be having a panic attack now– he needed a new plan. Even if it was waiting until he starved.

His senses flared up as a hand rested itself on his shoulder, and he grabbed it on instinct as he spun around to confront a possible murder alien. But, instead, he made eye contact– is this technically eye-mask contact? – with the space lady from before. Her hair was resting on her shoulders like hair should be, and she looked just like a normal person without mysterious glowing powers.

“Hey, Parker. Sorry that took so long, hope ya weren’t waiting around.” She smiled at him again, and he blinked away the tears while he tried to find the right words. She gently peeled the teen’s hand off him and it dropped to his side. “Uh– um. Hey, Space Lady.” He squinted for a moment before deeming his eyes dry enough. He had forgotten all about the mask before she hummed and leaned in. “Freaky eyes, kid. Cool.” 

She patted him on the shoulder and removed her hand, unfazed as the mask melted away into nothing to reveal the red-eyed and runny-nosed Peter Parker. She cleared her throat after a few more moments of awkward staring. “You gonna say somethin’?”

He shook his head slightly and suddenly felt like he was getting called out for spacing out in class again. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, long... week?” He was suddenly very aware of how little grip he had on time out here. “What’s– uh, do you have a name? Sorry if you already told me, I was pretty tired.”

“You were on the brink of death, Peter. That’s not ‘tired’.” She made air quotes and suddenly he felt like he was getting a lecture. He found a particularly interesting patch of dirt to stare at and hoped his ears weren’t red. “And I’m Carol Danvers, nice to meet you. I go by Captain Marvel sometimes, but that’s a title.”

He nodded, glancing back to her. “I’m Spider-Man. There’s a hyphen. In case you needed to write it down on some paper or... whatever. You don’t care, never mind, not important. Nice to uh– meet you?” He paused. “How exactly are you here?”

“That’s a long story, but basically? I can fly very fast through space.” “And glow?” He added. “And glow.” She nodded, parroting his question back to him. 

They fell back into silence, with Danvers looking out over the horizon for... something and Peter kicking dust around with his foot. He needed to know, the question was gnawing at his gut. It had been ever since she had entered the atmosphere.

“Miss Danvers, ma’am?” She opened her mouth like she was going to correct him. “How are you... here ? How would anyone know to look for survivors here? I’m kinda alone, and just an intern...” 

She crossed her arms and frowned at him. She had ignored the rest of it, thankfully. He did not mean to say that. “You’re alone?” He nodded. “Not everyone died, if you weren’t aware. On the planets I’ve been to, anywhere from 30% to 60% of life was just gone .” She watched the boy carefully and decided she wasn’t quite sure if he was relieved or not. “The only ship I found was too broken to use, and if you’re alone... Stark didn’t make it. We need t–” 

He lifted his head up at that, waving his hands around wildly to cut her off.

“He’s alive! He’s alive! I think. There was a second ship, Karen picked up the imprints from its landing gear stuff? He and this blue robot girl from the fight probably got in and left, so they’re not dead.” He knew there were a million other factors, he knew they could very well be dead from other causes but... he was trying really hard to look composed in front of Captain Marvel– what a name! – so he couldn’t let his thoughts wander.

She smiled approvingly and patted him on the shoulder once more. “Nice job, kid!” 

He laughed to himself at the words, like he did every time Mister Stark had said that to him. It wasn’t funny from anyone else’s point of view, especially a therapist’s– he’d made that mistake before– but the fact that nobody knew about or remembered it besides Peter? That made it comedy gold, along with it being a bit of a fond memory ever since the stuff at the expo happened. He really had meant to say something, but he wasn’t sure his mentor’s heart could take it seeing as most of their interactions were after a stabbing gone wrong or something. His ego sure could, though. If he knew that was the reason his formerly prized Captain America posters were ripped off the walls to make way for Iron Man, Tony would never let him– no, anyone – hear the end of it. 

“Alright, Spider-Man. We need to get you off this planet and back home as soon as we can. Is that suit airtight?” He nodded and she smiled and began to glow again. Oh no.

--- 

“You, my blue friend,” he pointed an accusatory finger at the woman across from him, who was staring unblinkingly, “are a tough nut to crack.” She didn’t move a finger. He paused.

“You do know what a nut is, right? They’re like fruits bu–” “I know what a fruit is.”

She rolled her eyes at the man as she stood up from the table, leaving behind some crumbs and a wrapper from her daily ration. Why a robot needed to eat, he’d never know. 

“Hey, Blue Man Group! We gotta work on this engine. Space tech, remember ?” She stopped to look over her shoulder, fists clenching and unclenching with a soft whir. He smiled tightly and shrugged from his spot at the table, leaning forwards against the metal. 

“Fine.” She walked back over and past him, grabbing the toolkit from the end of the table as she went. “And there we go! See, teamwork makes the dream work.” He pushed himself back from the table with his hands and winced at the scraping noise the metal stool made against the floor. 

He took a moment to look around as he stood up, still trying to convince himself that this was real, not some nightmare. The rattling of a nearby pipe and stale air circulating through the whole vessel worked well to bring him back, as much as he hated it all.

He followed after Nebula, rubbing at his side with a hiss. She had said it was healing, but he wasn’t sure he trusted the judgment of an alien with space metal skin. Super healing would have been a hell of a superpower , he thought to himself as the tingle from touching it dissipated. Who let me be a superhero with no superpowers? He knew the answer to that one; he did.

Space, he couldn’t do. This? This was a walk in the park for him. He’s sitting crisscross, surrounded by pipes and wires with an array of tools spread around him, just like he had done for years back in his lab. All he was missing was his music, but Nebula refused to let him play whatever music was in the cassette player. Called it obnoxious . His working theory is that she misses whoever owned it.

“So, Nebs!” He shouted over the sound of her welding above him. The noise stopped and the ship instantly dimmed with the loss of light. She said nothing, so he took that as his cue to speak. He climbed back up from his spot, resting his feet on a pipe and leaning over the ledge to rest his arms on the ground. “Do you wanna learn how to play chess?” 

She set down her tools with a frown. “I don’t play games, Stark.” She tilted her head though, and he’s been around her enough to know that was a sign she was intrigued. 

“Oh, no biggie. I’d kick your sorry ass anyways, I won a trophy for it once. Was just bored and signed up for some championship.” He laughed and went to drop back down. 

“Wait.” 

He looked back up at her, already descended a small amount. “That was a challenge. I accept.” She removed the goggles from her head and threw them onto a nearby desk– hopefully, they can find those again– and kicked the pipe she was supposedly working on away as Tony heaved himself up from the gap. 

His side stretched painfully as he pulled himself all the way up. He sucked in sharply as the pain flared, hiding it with a sniffle when Nebula looked his way. “Righty then!” He clapped his hands and moved over to a table. “We don’t have pieces but I’m sure we can scrounge somethin’ up.” He grinned at her. She did not grin back. 

“Grumpypants. Just find a bunch of small things that look sorta similar.” He waved a hand and turned to do some scavenger hunting of his own, trusting that she had left to do the same.

It had only been about 20 minutes before a pile of screws, knick-knacks, and junk was set in front of them on the table. It was a crude setup. “Alright, Stark. Now what? How do I win?” Nebula leaned forward in her chair and narrowed her eyes at him. 

“Well... now I explain the rules. Get comfortable, that'll take a while.”

And take a while it did. It felt like he had spent hours just trying to explain how a knight worked. Admittedly, it’s easier with a proper board to play on , he had admitted to her after she almost broke a glass by throwing the makeshift piece past Tony’s head. Good thing she probably wasn’t trying to hit him.

He exhaled sharply, rubbing his eyes with a hand. Even trying to play a game didn’t work. All he wanted was a sense of normalcy, maybe even the feeling of companionship. As he focused his gaze on the board made of carvings in the metal they had set up, he found himself struggling to hold himself upright.

“Pete, the kid. He used to do this thing on patrols.” He wasn’t really speaking to Nebula, but he took her silence as a green light. “He, uh–” He laughed wetly and rolled a piece meant to be a bishop under the palm of his hand. “He would play chess. Chess! He’d play it with his AI friend, and I thought it was so funny... especially because I never installed that in her.” 

He swallowed, and suddenly was throat was even drier than before. “And I was like ‘wow, this kid programmed one of my AIs to play a game with him!’ I expected myself to feel... mad? Offended at the kid for tampering? But I couldn’t help but feel happy for him. I added tic tac toe with the hopes of maybe getting some War Games jokes out of it, Pac-Man but with a spider-man eating mini-Avenger ghosts... you get the gist.” 

He bit the inside of his cheek. He had been waiting for the day the kid mentioned being bored, he had programmed Karen to make it a surprise and send him a recording... just to tease the boy later. 

“Did he like it?”

He wasn’t expecting her to speak. He glanced up and caught her eye, and it was the nicest she’d looked the whole trip. She wasn’t quite smiling, but gone was her seemingly-permanent grimace. She looked almost human like this.

“No, he’s...” He stopped to clear his throat. “I put it in about a month ago. To surprise him, all that jazz. Then aliens showed up and it went to hell.” She didn’t respond to that and wordlessly moved a piece forward two notches. His eyes widened almost unnoticeably, but his hands were shaking as he moved a piece in the same pattern. 

“Was he good at chess?” Nebula glanced up at him as she moved a piece forward. Rookie mistake , he wanted to tease. But his throat burned with unshed tears.

“The best. I wanted to see if he’d beat me. The only person who managed to was my dad, but I think he was just trying to get it over with.” He didn’t laugh like he usually did when his father was brought up and moved his bishop to pin the king. 

He won in the end, because of course he did. He had won from the first move; Nebula could figure that much out as she watched him sigh in obviously fake relief when he won. In truth, Tony had had at least three chances to win, but he dragged the game on so she could get the hang of it. 

“Alright, Siri. Back down into the depths we go.” His chest felt lighter. His side was getting steadily more and more uncomfortable, and his head felt warmer than it had the day before, but he felt decent for the first time since his walk with Pepper; like a human being.

As he climbed back into the guts of the spaceship, he listened for Nebula. Eventually, she started working on repairing the piping again, and he began to work. The sound of welding was no Belford, but as long as it was loud he wasn’t going to be very picky.

He was working on some sort of wiring when he heard the loud bang, followed by a frustrated shout. He scrambled to climb back up to the ship, tool still held in his mouth as he looked around for Nebula. He found her and wanted to be sick immediately. 

Her arm was bent at a multitude of different angles, twitching and writhing while she took her anger out on a fallen crate. That must be the culprit. He snapped himself out of it and climbed the rest of the way up.

“Nebula! Dear god, that’s disgusting. ” He muttered the second part under his breath as he approached. “We, uh– don’t have medical supplies but hang tight and I’ll get you some kind of spl–” he was cut off by the grossest sound he had ever heard and suddenly he was watching her arm rotate and snap back into place. 

He stared at her with an expression of what could only be terror, to which she only blinked. “Stark, I’m made of metal and wiring.” She titled her head in her version of amusement. “Did you really think my father would not think of self-repairing limbs?”

That knocked all the wind out of his sails. Huh? He must’ve heard her wrong. “Bluey, come again? Because if I heard you right, your old man did a Victor Stone on you and turned you into a robot.”

She stayed silent for a moment and snapped a finger back into place. He had to fight to keep his ration bar in his stomach. “My father trained me from birth. I was not as good a fighter as my sister, and every time I lost a challenge he would replace a part of me with what you see now.”

She said it so monotone that Tony had a hard time reading her emotions. He saw rage, mostly. Which he liked more than defeat– that was what he had expected to find– because that meant she had fight left. 

“And I thought my dad was bad.” “They can both be pretty bad.” 

She said it so bluntly as she went back to work that it stunned him. He blinked at her, jaw clenched as he tried to figure out a comeback. After a few seconds, he decided to just drop back down into his cave of wires and think about it all later.

--- 

Energy traveled across him, and he wondered if this was how water felt when oil touched it. The suit repelled it and left a warm, tingly sensation in his bones followed by a feeling of invigoration. The brightness of Carol’s eyes faded and she set him down gently, hands still on his biceps to support him in case he fell. 

“All good, kid?”

He gave her a thumbs up. “All good!”

She grinned and smacked him lightly on the back, the suit comfortably warm to the touch. “Okay, so we know my energy won’t blow you up or cook you alive. That’s good.” “That could’ve what!?” He tried to interject, but she ignored him. 

“Now we gotta test your durability. Entering and exiting atmospheres is tough and if your suit fails we’re goners.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’ve already done that! Left Earth’s atmosphere in this suit already!” He was grinning under his mask as he pressed a hand to his chest. “Mister Stark designed this suit to be, like, indestructible. Nothin’ is getting past the Iron Spider.”

“Thank gods for that, that would’ve gotten complicated fast . No–” “Oh, and it has a built-in oxygen system. I’ll be fine breathing, I think.” 

She blinked, and then laughed a bit. “I totally forgot about that!” She cleared her throat and was back to business as she put her hands on her hips. “No, I meant how are we going to do this in general? I don’t exactly want to carry you the entire time.”

She looked him up and down with an analytic frown. He was pretty scrawny for a superhero, so at least there was that.

“I’m sticky, ma’am.” He held up a hand. “I can just latch onto you and probably be fine. Unless you like... fling me off with your super speed. Please don’t.” He added the last part with a nervous smile, arms crossed tightly with his hands folded under his arms to hide the way they trembled.

She slowly nodded, eyebrows furrowing as she processed. So he was going to... stick to her? Hopefully, it wasn’t uncomfortable. “Right. I’m doing one more lap around the planet and then we’ll go, so brace yourself–– okay?”

He mock-saluted her and she rolled her eyes lightheartedly before she rose off the ground and was off like a shot. “Wow, that’s impressive.” He whispered. “Hey, Karen! Karen, did you hear? We’re going to space !”

There was silence for a moment, and he swallowed nervously. “Uh– Karen?”

“Sorry, Peter. I was running calculations–– you will need to stop in 2 days to let the suit recharge with maximum energy sent to the oxygen filtration and heating systems.”

“Okay...?” He tried to signal for the robot to continue. 

“I will be shut down for your journey to improve the suit’s battery life.” She ignored Peter’s protests. “My reactivation code will only be valid in a life-threatening emergency or when your suit has reached 70% battery while charging. Goodbye, Peter. See you soon.”

And just like that, she was gone. His mask was dark, all the floating data vanishing in a blink. “Oh. Um, bye.” He said it quietly and too late; she was already deactivated. Now he needed to make it through this trip, or else he’d be leaving Karen waiting.

All that was left was to wait for Carol, and even that didn’t take long. He had finished his third cat drawing in the dirt when she descended to land by him, glancing at the drawings. She laughed under her breath. “Cute. Reminds me of Goose.” He looked up at her. “You have a cat? My aunt’s super allergic so I’m not allowed to get one. I was drawing Murph.” She raised an eyebrow. “He lived at a sandwich shop.” He felt his ears burning red when she patted him on the shoulder and stepped into the center of the clearing. 

“Climb on, Parker. Try to mind the hair.”

He nodded and inched over to the woman, hands sweaty under the suit. If this doesn’t work... He pushed the thought out of his mind as he gently pressed his hands to her shoulder blades and lifted his feet one at a time to touch her calves. 

“Jesus, kid! You weigh nothing, even to me. How much do you weigh?” “I have hollow bones.” He muttered and she shook her head in disbelief. This kid was insane.

“Well, hopefully, you don’t float away, Spider-Man.” He felt it happen. The power ran across him again, and he felt like he had just stuck his fingers into the stream of water on the curb during a storm, but instead, it was his whole body. He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut, head pressed against her shoulder like a lifeline as he felt his stomach plummet. 

He was going to hurl. He resisted the urge to pull his mask off and gag as the air whistled past them and the heat began to surround him like an oven. The suit, thankfully, noticed and the cooling system kicked in to counteract the overwhelming heat. As soon as it started, it was over.

He slowly cracked an eye open once they had stilled. Something was... different. He felt weightless in a way he hadn’t before. Like he was floating, even inside the skin-tight suit. Once he got over the strange feeling of zero gravity, he had to courage to look up. It was beautiful. Seeing a single star in Queens was a rare thing. Let alone this .

He had gone camping with Ben once, to see the stars. He had an astronomy phase in fourth grade and Ben took him out to upstate New York to see the sky without light pollution in the way. It took his breath away to see so many stars then. If only he knew he'd be floating in space with a galactic superhero...

He exhaled shakily as he looked around. The stars were in every direction. There was no up, no down... only space. It was beautiful– and terrifying. He leaned away from Carol, oblivious to the way she was watching over her shoulders with a smile.

“Pretty cool, right?”

Holy shit . He tried to say to her, frowning when his words never reached his ears. Of course. Space. But how had...

“Part of the powers, kid.”

He nodded dazedly at that. Now that he had heard a sound, it was impossible to ignore how quiet everything was out here. It was more than silent. His super hearing always picked up on something but now... now it was still, save for his own breathing. His heartbeat was the only sound out here. 

“Brace yourself, we have a long way to go.”

He nodded slowly and pressed himself against her back as she began moving again. His poor stomach turned and tied itself into knots as they went, stars flying past at a dizzying speed. He could handle it. He could handle anything at this point if it meant saving Mister Stark.