Work Text:
Peter’s shoes crunch gravel as they wind through the forest path. He doesn’t know what they’re doing here, this far outside the city, on a nature trail in some vast forest preserve. Tony hasn’t stopped bitching, as expected. But Steve was adamant that they all needed to come, and he’s still not talking about what any of this is about. Peter would be half-inclined to believe he was taking them all out here to shoot them, but Steve wouldn’t do that. They’ve been talking for awhile now, almost like friends, and Peter has seen enough of this Steve to know he’s a lot more similar to Pop than anyone would like to believe.
Still, why are they here?
All Peter manages to work out after awhile is that they’re headed uphill. And Steve seems to have memorized the way.
He traipses on, and when he finally remembers to check up on Kennedy and make sure she’s doing alright with all the walking, she’s already up on Tony’s shoulders, using his hair like reins. Peter bites back a smile and keeps trekking onward, occasionally counting all the kids to make sure they hadn’t lost someone, though it seems his efforts are for naught. None of the Avengers would let anyone wander off.
Somehow, they have a family again.
Peter thinks it’s a pretty inconvenient time to stop breathing, but luckily, that’s when they come to a stop. Steve turns to look back at them, a kind of nervous hope glinting in his eyes before he nods, and leads them through the brush. Peter never gets a chance to catch his breath.
They’re standing at a grassy cliffside, blanketed by the forest, and the view stretches on for miles with a river down below and the sun shining down near the horizon, not quite sunset but casting long, elegant shadows. It’s the most breathtaking thing Peter’s ever seen, but he hardly glances at it.
Because right there, right by the edge, silhouetted in the sun, stand eleven pure white crosses. Peter forgets entirely about breathing. Claire brings a hand up to cover her mouth. Sammy’s shoulders shake. Kennedy slips down from Tony’s back and steps out in front, hesitant, until her small, nimble fingers rest upon the edge of one of the crosses.
They move as one, then. All the kids, stepping forward and gathering together around the half-circle of crosses as their bewildered not-parents stare in confusion at the crosses and at Steve. Peter almost wants to laugh, because Tony calls himself the smartest man in the world, and yet he can’t quite seem to figure out what possible reason Steve would bring them to a group of eleven crosses standing on a cliffside.
Peter closes his eyes, and recites the names with a careful reverence, like he’s holding candlelight, desperate to keep it sheltered from the wind.
“Nicholas Fury. Loki Laufeyson. Thor Odinson. Jane Foster. Phillip Coulson. Virginia Potts. Natasha Romanoff. Clint Barton. Bruce Banner.” His voice breaks when he reaches the last two names, his eyes coming to rest on the silhouetted grave markers. “Anthony Stark,” he swallows, and then corrects “Dad.”
Kennedy comes up to his side and wraps her arm around behind him as he recites the final name. “Steven Rogers.”
Peter isn’t mad when Kennedy breaks the cardinal rule and adds, in a quiet, sad voice “Papa,” and buries her face into Peter’s side.
They come together in silence, all of them, wrapping arms around each other and staring at the graves of their parents, watching as the sun warms the tops of the trees and the water of the river below. There couldn’t be a more beautiful place for them to be laid to rest. Despite the ruin they were buried under, despite the gruesome world they were left behind in, Peter knows that in the end, his parents rest here now.
Here with them. And safe.