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If there’s anything he’s used to, it’s grief. Of course it is. At this point, he feels like that’s his personality as much as being Spider-Man is. It’s the two things that make him, him. Who would he be without the loss of his entire family, without the suit he puts on every day to try and remind himself that he needs to stay for at least a little while longer.
When he was a kid he didn’t really notice the grief as much. He knew what had happened to his parents, but at the same time, it never really fully clicked. He was only five years old; his parents had just dropped him off at Ben and May’s for the weekend, and then they never came back. When they’d gotten the news a couple of days later and sat down to explain to Peter what had happened, that his parents wouldn’t be coming back, that’s what connected for him. He knew they wouldn’t be coming back, but the concept of death was a bit harder for him to process.
And it wasn’t like he was alone in the aftermath, he had Ben and May, and for a while Peter assumed they were his parents, since they were the ones raising him. He never forgot the stinging feeling in his chest when Ben sat him down and explained that they weren’t, and never would be his parents, that his parents were dead.
But even still, he hadn’t lost , necessarily. Most kids who lose their parents lose everything in the aftermath and Peter immediately had a safety net to fall into. So yeah, his parents were dead, but as the years passed, the idea of Mary and Richard as actual parents faded. Both May and Ben had enough pictures of them around the apartment that Peter could never forget their faces, but the smaller details were fuzzy, and he couldn’t really remember what it felt like to be taken care of by them. They were more just figures in his memory, than something he’d actually lost. He didn’t even focus on them, really. Why would he focus on them when they wouldn’t be coming back when he could focus on the people he had then?
Losing Ben was different. Peter never saw his parents die; no one did. The plane went down without a single witness. The news articles were abundant in the aftermath, but even those didn’t have the details he’d wanted. Deep down, he’d always wished someone had seen them . So that he’d know, one hundred percent, that they were dead, not just gone. But the news articles just said “no survivors,” and obviously that meant they were dead, but that didn’t make it any easier for Peter to believe. But he was sitting right next to Ben when he got shot, close enough that the blood seeped into his jeans, coated his hands, covered every inch of him as he screamed and begged for this to not be happening, for someone to call 911, for him not to die please Ben please stay awake I’m sorry I’m sorry—
He was there when his uncle stopped breathing. His parents were gone, but Ben was dead.
In the aftermath of the plane crash, Peter remembers crying, missing his parents, but Ben and May were actually grieving. Sure, they took care of him - they didn’t have a choice, especially after they got official custody - but Peter could notice the difference. Ben moved around a lot slower, like he was weighed down by something Peter couldn’t see. May wasn’t sleeping, even though she’d smile at him and tell him it wasn’t something he had to worry about, and sometimes she’d just stay locked in their bedroom all day while Ben attempted to distract Peter. He still noticed, though. Even today, he doesn’t think either of them realized how much he noticed.
And it passed, eventually, and then they were finding their footing together, and life was good. It was everything Peter had wanted it to be. And sometimes, even during the good moments, Peter would glance over at his aunt and uncle and remember how they were in the weeks following the crash and think please don’t be sad again. Not like that.
Because sure, they took care of him, but between their grief and his confusion about what his parents being “gone” meant, five year old Peter couldn’t help but feel like he was being abandoned.
In the hours after Ben’s murder, as soon as he walked back into the apartment with a cop guiding him along, Peter knew his aunt was going to abandon him again.
And she didn’t mean to, of course she didn’t; May loved him more than anyone else in the world. But grief does that to you, and only after losing Ben did Peter start to understand, because he felt himself slipping too.
And even though he was the kid, and he’d lost his uncle, his guardian, he had to be the one to keep going. He and May had already lost so much, but she’d lost her husband. Peter knew he couldn’t ask her to be okay and take care of him after Ben died because he knew she couldn’t; she could barely do it after his parents died, and back then she didn’t have to do it on her own. So Peter, despite his own ocean of grief, had to find a way to keep going. He’d keep going, and eventually, May would come back. She would.
Sometimes, in those moments where he had to force himself to cook dinner when May couldn’t get out of bed, he forgot he was still a kid.
But he did it. He did it, and he kept himself alive until May found her way back, and again, they had to find a way to take all of their trauma, all of their broken pieces and turn it into something resembling a family, but they did. They didn’t have another option. For Mary, for Richard, for Ben. They had to find a way.
The bite could’ve broken the fragile sense of stability they both had, which is why Peter kept it hidden from May for as long as he could, but even then, he couldn’t figure out what he was going to do. He couldn’t give up Spider-Man, not for anything, but his aunt was all he had. He couldn’t risk anything hurting her to the point where she would abandon him for good, willingly or not.
Luckily - or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it - that’s when Tony showed up.
Sometimes Peter’s mind wanders, even all these years later. He sits in the darkness and wonders what his life would’ve turned into if he hadn’t come home after school one day to find Tony Stark sitting on his couch like he was an old friend. Sometimes he thinks it wouldn’t have changed a thing, but other times he can’t shake the feeling that at the end of the day, Tony’s existence in his life is what caused all of this.
He can’t focus on the blame, though. Not after everything.
The Spider-Man he is today, for good or bad, at least part of it comes from Tony. And at first it was just Spider-Man that Tony was interested in, only as a pawn against Captain America, but at some point, it changed, and Peter still doesn’t know if Tony only changed because he wouldn’t leave him alone, or if he genuinely started to care about Peter Parker himself. He supposes it doesn’t make a difference anymore.
To this day, he can’t pinpoint when the change happened, but all of a sudden he was spending Friday afternoons in Tony’s lab, doing calculus homework and working on his suit and sharing Chinese food and just existing. And he was doing it with Tony Stark! At the time it was his dream come true, almost impossible for him to wrap his head around even in the moment. He had May, he had Ned and MJ, he had Tony and he still had Spider-Man. Everything, everything was better than he could’ve ever imagined.
He’s not sure if he regrets following Tony to space.
But he supposes it doesn’t matter what he did; the Snap was random, after all. It’s not like Tony was the one who caused it to happen, he just happened to be there. He was the one who held Peter and attempted to calm him down while his body shredded itself into atoms.
He apologized. While he was dying, he apologized. He still doesn’t fully know why.
He came back in a second, but people told him that wasn’t true. Five years. Five years, and for him it was instant. He walked out into that battle, and he remembers nothing.
Tony tells him about it, though. The good parts, at least. He tells him that he got one of the monsters away from him and ran up to him talking about Strange and the portals and other stuff he couldn’t remember because he wasn’t focused on that, he was only focused on Peter himself, being in front of him, being alive.
Tony tells him that he hugged him and wished he never had to let go again.
He did. Of course, he did. They always do.
He knows what happened to Tony that night, but he doesn’t like to remember it. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need Tony’s almost-death to slot in between his parents’ and Ben’s. He’s alive. He doesn’t fit there if he’s alive.
But he remembers the months afterwards, with Tony in a coma and the Avengers scattered around and no one to come to his aid, not even when his face was plastered all over every screen in Queens.
Pepper knew, but she had other stuff to deal with, and Peter understood. Until Tony woke up - when he woke up - he had to be her first priority. Well, him and their daughter. Because Tony had a daughter.
Pepper had offered to introduce them. Peter said he didn’t have time but the truth was he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready for proof of the five years of life he’d lost.
So he didn’t have the support he probably needed in the aftermath of Mysterio, but that was fine. He had May and Ned and MJ who supported him at every turn, and he even got Matt Murdock to drop all the charges against him. And he would’ve been fine with that, except people still knew. And people couldn’t know. There was Peter Parker, and there was Spider-Man. He couldn’t have them both exist at the same time.
So he’d gone to Strange.
And maybe he was dumb to do so. Even today he can remember walking into the Sanctum with Tony’s voice in his head, telling him this was a dumb choice and they could find another way, somehow, but Tony was in a coma in Wakanda and he hadn’t seen him since that moment on the battlefield, the one he wants to scrub from his memory, so he didn’t have another choice.
And sure, the multiversal villains in the aftermath sucked, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to dealing with villains. The multiverse stuff kinda threw him for a loop, but not enough for it to deter him. He’d do what Strange told him to do - get the villains captured and sent back to their worlds, and then they’d finish the spell. Simple. They were nothing more than a minor hinderance.
Until that moment under the Sanctum.
And something in Peter changed, and he hates himself for the decision he made, even now, it makes him want to claw his skin off in rage. Sure, that was what Spider-Man was supposed to do, he was supposed to save everyone, but that Spider-Man didn’t know what was to come.
He remembers every single detail about losing May. The way she’d had to cling to him just to stay upright, the way the building still shook around them, the way she’d looked at him and tried to promise him that she was fine, seriously, it was all fine, even as her breathing got shallower and he felt the blood underneath her, the way he’d kept trying to assure her until it was too late. He was useless, wasn’t the hero he’d prided himself to be, not to her, but he’d stayed. He’d stayed.
It’s just me and you.
Tony woke up from his coma.
The same day as all the multiverse people went back, which was almost comical. Tony might’ve been Iron Man, but his true power was showing up right when Peter needed him, or right when it was too late.
He doesn’t remember anything after that.
The awareness comes back slowly, actually. May’s funeral has already happened, and according to Tony, she’s buried next to his parents and Ben at the same cemetery. His entire family, six feet under. He lives with Tony, Pepper and Morgan - their daughter, their own daughter he’s never met - in a lake house up north. He doesn’t remember the last time he suited up as Spider-Man. He doesn’t remember the last time he spoke, but he knows he must’ve. He wonders if he spoke at May’s funeral. He didn’t speak at his parents’, or at Ben’s. What would he have even said?
But Tony is there, and all of a sudden he’s a parent. May and Ben made sure that Peter knew that they weren’t his parents, but Tony, although he doesn’t use that word, still acts like he is. And Peter guesses that’s only because he has to, he’s still a minor and he’s lost his entire family but it’s still something he’s not used to. Over ten years later, he doesn’t remember anything about his parents just existing, he only knows their faces and their death. Ben and May raised him because they had to, and they loved him, but they never tried to replicate his parents. And when they lost Ben, and it was just him and May, there was this unspoken understanding that they were just Peter and May. They were family, but labels beyond that didn’t really need to exist. Not for them.
But Tony is a parent. At least, he tries to be.
And Peter tries to let him, but he doesn’t even know how to be a real person, much less a son. He hasn’t been a son in a long time. When he thinks of who he is, at his core, he doesn’t consider himself anyone’s son. He’s long since believed that he belongs to anyone, despite the fact that Tony has given him everything. But what he doesn’t understand, and what Peter can’t make him understand, is that he’s already lost everything. He’s lost it three times over, actually.
But Tony, damn him, is actually a parent, even if he’s not Peter’s, and slowly, Peter starts to see him as something in-between. He’s no longer Iron Man - to him or the world - and he’s no longer Mr. Stark, like he had been for those years in the lab, but he’s somewhere. He’s enough for Peter to trust him with little moments, movie nights where they’ve both dozed off on the couch, family dinners where the silence isn’t painful, moments where he’s able to bring himself to spend time with Morgan, moments when he doesn’t cry when she calls him her big brother.
He’s enough that Peter doesn’t want to leave him.
But grief brings him back, back to the truth, and when Tony finds him that night, he’s sitting on his windowsill, legs dangling over the edge, looking out at the forest beyond and trying to pretend that he’s not crying.
“Hey, kiddo,” Tony says softly, like he doesn’t want to startle him, as if Peter hadn’t heard him all the way downstairs whispering to Pepper before he came to find him. “What are you up to?”
As if it’s not obvious. But maybe it isn’t; maybe Tony just doesn’t want to acknowledge what’s right in front of him. Peter’s not sure. So, he shrugs.
It’s been over a year since May’s death, but still he and Tony haven’t spoken about it. Not the way they should. Not the way Tony wants to, even if he’ll never admit it. You have to let him come to you, Pepper had told him one night when they thought Peter was asleep. And he will. I promise.
He wonders if she really believed that.
Tony comes closer, but Peter still doesn’t turn around. “You know, if you’re wanting to stargaze, we have an actual telescope,” he says, trying to be conversational. Trying to stay calm, like Peter’s a wild animal on the verge of attacking. “Downstairs, in the lab. We can go and set it up, get the encyclopedia out and everything. We can see how many constellations we can name.”
Peter’s not a reckless person, despite what people may think, and today it’s a blessing and a curse, because the words make him want to leap forward and down, before Tony could grab him, falling to what he’s been silently aching for for months. But he’s not reckless; he’s a coward. He always has been.
Tony’s something to him now, but May is everything to him, even in death. Which is what leaves him on this ledge, considering.
“It’s not fair,” Peter whispers.
He feels Tony’s breath hitch behind him, and suddenly it feels like they’re standing on glass, thousands of feet above the ground, and the wrong word, the wrong motion could ruin it all.
He knows Tony feels it too, because he takes longer than normal to respond, and when he does, his voice is weak. “What’s not fair?”
Peter still doesn’t turn around to look at him, and thankfully Tony doesn’t try to move into his line of sight. “I—I want to see her again,” he says, and the first crack in the glass appears. They both know what he means, but they’re both too scared and selfish to actually say it out loud. “It’s all I can think about. I—I could make my peace with losing my parents, and losing Ben, because I had her. I was always supposed to have her, and now she’s gone, and I have to, what, just be okay with that? With losing her? It’s not fair , and I would do anything to see her again, but—“
His voice catches. He tries to act like it didn’t.
“But then I’d have to leave you ,” he chokes out, and he can’t even imagine what Tony looks like right now, what he’s thinking, but he can’t focus on that right now. He can’t stop . “I’d have to leave you, to be with her again, and that’s not fair. It’s not, it’s not fair, and I can’t make myself be okay with her not being here, and I know if I just did it —“ he blocks out the choked noise Tony makes— “I’d be with her again, and that’s all I want , but then I’d be losing you, and I can’t lose you, never, I can’t ever lose you, but why do I have to choose between the two of you? Why is she gone? Why couldn’t I have both of you here—why couldn’t I have all of you here?”
And for a split second he lets himself imagine it. If his parents hadn’t gotten on that plane, if Ben hadn’t gone out looking for him, if Peter hadn’t begged Strange to do the spell that brought his worst nightmare to life, if everything was different and still the same. What would it be like, if he could’ve had all of them? His parents, his aunt and uncle, this billionaire superhero he’s ended up with and his family, Ned and MJ. What if he hadn’t lost anyone? What if his name, his life, wasn’t synonymous with grief and loss at every turn?
He scrubs angrily at his eyes only to realize he’s crying and gripping the windowsill as tight as possible, and Tony still hasn’t spoken a word. “I don’t want to have to make that choice,” he says, “and I don’t want to make the wrong one.”
And that’s what does him in. That’s the truth. After everything, everything, that’s what it boils down to. No matter who he chooses, it’s going to be the wrong choice cause he still won’t be complete. He’ll still be missing one of them, two of the most important people in his life. The two people who make him who he is.
Without both of them here, he’ll stay broken and lost.
The world has already doomed him, and he didn’t agree to any of it.
He doesn’t fall forward, towards the ground and into his aunt’s arms, but he doesn’t bring himself back into the room, either. He just sits there, frozen. Broken.
The glass beneath them keeps cracking, groaning under the weight of their conversation, as one sided as it is, and their combined grief they refuse to face, and Peter just holds his breath and waits for it to shatter completely, to make the choice he can’t because he’s too scared—
“The choice doesn’t have to be that extreme,” Tony says.
He doesn’t sound like himself and finally Peter makes himself turn around and face him, and he doesn’t look much better. But Peter can’t blame him—he is having to quite literally talk his son off a ledge, after all. His kinda-son. His fucked-up responsibility. He’s not sure. It doesn’t matter.
“But I want to see her,” Peter argues weakly, and God, why does he have to be like this? Tony took him in because he loves him because he had to and this is how he’s repaying him? He doesn’t know exactly what time it is, but it’s late, and Tony should be asleep, but this is where he is. This is where Peter’s put him.
He wonders if he would’ve been in this same position if the roles were reversed. Peter, back at his apartment in Queens, sitting on the ledge and seeing Tony’s arms below, while May sobbed and begged him to come back inside. To her. Would he still have been so torn? Or would it not even have been a question at all?
If Tony had died that day, Peter would’ve just lost Mr. Stark. Now, sitting here, if he were to go back to May, he’d be losing something close to a parent.
Losing her was what changed him. Changed both of them, together. He walked into that cabin after the funeral and he was looking at a man who had a child of his own, who loved her and raised her and took care of her, who now had this look in his eyes that he would do the same for Peter, technicality be damned. Whether or not he believed it, he knew Tony did.
“Why do you think that’s the only way you can see her?” Tony asks, and he’s eerily still. His eyes are full of emotion, emotion Peter can’t even try to decipher, but his body is as still as Peter’s ever seen him. It’s unnerving, and Peter has to swallow back bile all of a sudden.
“I—“ and Peter suddenly has this rock lodged in his throat, and even if he could speak, he has no idea what he would even say. What does Tony want from him right now? To move away from the ledge? The one thing Peter can’t do right now?
“You’re thinking in extremes,” Tony says, and he doesn’t dare take a step closer, but his eyes stay locked on Peter’s. “That’s what grief does to you. You think there’s no other way besides… that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you that’s not an option,” Tony continues, and Peter’s heart falls into his stomach. Is he giving him permission to leave? “But it’s not the only option. That’s what you don’t understand right now, and I get it, I get why you’re thinking it is. You miss her, you want to see her again, here’s how you do it. Simple.”
Peter trembles on the ledge. He’s not even sure that he’s still breathing. Still, he and Tony don’t move, don’t look away. Despite everything, they’re still standing on the glass. It hasn’t given way beneath them.
“I know why you still haven’t talked to me,” Tony says, and he doesn’t sound hurt, he just sounds… tired. “I get it. Really, I do. It’s why I haven’t pushed. But I think I stayed too far away. I’m supposed to give you space, but all I did was leave you alone.”
“You—you didn’t,” Peter croaks, like his throat is lined with razor blades. “I wouldn’t have let you in anyway.”
“Maybe,” Tony says. He scoffs quietly. “Probably. But that’s not the point. The point is, all this time, I could’ve been doing more. So you didn’t end up here.”
“It’s not your fault I ended up here,” Peter responds automatically. “I… I don’t think you could’ve ever stopped this.”
“Maybe not this ,” Tony agreed, forcefully light, “but hopefully I can stop Morgan from finding a Peter pancake outside her window in the morning.”
The laugh that bursts from Peter shocks him so much he almost loses his balance, and he stares at Tony with his mouth wide open. He can’t decide if he loves him or hates him for making a joke about the situation they’re in.
“Okay, okay, bad joke,” Tony says, and now he’s crying, Peter can see the tear stains on his face. “But I’m being serious about this not being your only option. This is why you have me, right? You’re a grieving teenager, I think you have the right to lose your mind once in a while. But that’s why you have me, to make sure you don’t lose it too much.”
Peter snorts lightly. “Like you haven’t lost your mind already?”
And now Tony’s the one who laughs, loud and sudden in the dark room, and he shakes his head. “Little shit,” he whispers good-naturedly, looking at Peter like he’s everything. Like he’s everything. “I’ve lost my mind in different ways. Between the two of us I think we have enough to make a working one.”
“Nah, not just the two of us. We need Pepper.”
Tony grins. “I’m gonna tell her you said that.”
Peter’s mouth twitches into what could be a smile, and he twists around just slightly to look back out the window. His legs still dangle over the edge. For the first time, he realizes the fall isn’t as bad as he originally thought. Not for Spider-Man.
The thought makes him jolt.
Is he even still Spider-Man?
Behind him, Tony takes a deep breath and takes two heavy steps forward until he’s right next to Peter, their shoulders almost touching. “I think,” he begins softly, “you’ve been ignoring May since it happened, which is why you think this is the only way you can see her again. You’re keeping her in your head, like that’s the only place where she can exist anymore.”
“You know, I knew her too,” he continues. “We liked to joke sometimes that we were coparents trying to keep you alive.” Peter’s head snaps over to him, and Tony just smiles. “Yeah, we talked a lot, kid. How could we not?”
“But—I didn’t think you talked about, you know, stuff that wasn’t… me.”
“Well, that was most of it,” Tony admits. “But that’s how we became a lot closer. May raised you, I was just the mentor. Everything I did with you, for you, I had to talk to her about it first, because she was yours, and God, she loved you.” He sniffs and glances away for a moment. “And I think she loved me, too. She started to trust me with you, and it’s still the highest honor I’ve ever received. I’d like to think that maybe, if she’d had a choice, she would’ve given me her blessing to take you in.”
Peter just watches him, dumbfounded. “Sorry,” Tony murmurs. “But May doesn’t exist just to you; she never did. The reason you think this is your only option is because you don’t think you can find her anywhere else. But you’re looking at someone who had her on speed dial for years. You had a lifetime with her, a lifetime of stories and memories I’ll never know, but I have a few things I could tell you about, if you’re missing her. So you can remember she existed to all of us, and she always will.” He chuckles lightly. “May Parker isn’t someone you can ever forget.”
“No,” Peter whispers. “She’s not.”
“You don’t have to keep her hidden,” Tony says gently, and for the first time, he reaches over and puts his hand on Peter’s cheek, making sure the kid is looking straight at him before he continues. “She will always exist to you, in your head, but she doesn’t have to stay stuck there.”
Peter squeezes his eyes shut and inhales shakily. “What… what did you talk about?” he asks quietly, when he meets Tony’s gaze again.
Tony smiles and quickly leans forward to kiss the top of his head before he takes a step back, away from the window, tugging Peter with him, who comes easily. “Oh, you know. Overthrowing the government. Starting an illegal action figure business. Betting on who could scare the most Avengers. Normal stuff.”
“Mr. Stark —“
“What, none of that’s believable?”
“Only the government one, really.”
Tony laughs. “Come on, we have a few hours before the ladies are awake. Let’s get something to drink, and I’ll tell you everything.”
Peter smiles. “You better.”