Chapter Text
Tony stared at the screen of I-Spy which was showing him—not Peter, as he needed so desperately—Bucky standing with his eyes closed and a small smile on his face.
“Is he on drugs?” Hawkeye asked.
“No,” Steve said dully. “He’s talking to Peter.”
“That’s good,” May said, hand pressed over her heart. “It means Peter isn’t too hurt to talk to him.” She looked at Happy, who had his arm around her shoulders and the shellshocked look he’d borne since Falcon, who had been the only one able to force himself to speak the words aloud, had told him what had happened to Peter.
Happy opened his mouth and then shrugged helplessly and said, “I don’t know, May,” his voice curling around the name with adoration, despite the situation.
“He could be talking at Peter for all we know,” Clint said.
“Either way, it’s good,” Sam said. “It means Peter isn’t alone—he’s got Bucky there to comfort him. It’s better than anything we can do.”
“Yeah, that’s great and all, but if you haven’t noticed, we can’t see Peter!” Tony ended on a roar.
Sam flinched and cast his eyes downward.
“I… I mean it’s…” Iron Man’s voice cracked and he swallowed hard before forcing himself to go on. “It’s designed for interdimensional observation and travel. It followed Peter because that was who I tuned it into from the very beginning. But it’s not designed to find him in this world.”
“Of course it’s not,” Tony growled. “Because that would mean you actually did something helpful for Peter—not for yourselves. You wanted to see Peter, so you cracked open a hole in the Multiverse to spy on him. I mean, it’s all in the name, right? And when spying on him wasn’t enough, you crash landed in our world so you could try to get him away from me, pretending he was going to die just so you could—”
“I pretended nothing!” Iron Man shouted. “We saw him die and came to warn you!”
Tony ignored him and went on. “And then…” His voice became menacing. “You dragged him here to save your world because you were too damn useless to do it yourself.”
“Tony…” War Machine said in a warning tone.
“No!” Tony pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You were all there and none of you saved him which means none of you get to talk until I tell you.”
“Okay, Tone, that’s enough,” Rhodey said.
Tony whirled around and fixed Rhodey with a look so deadly that he actually took a step backwards. “You do not want to start with me today, Rhodes, because you were right there.”
Rhodey flinched as if the words had been physical blows. Tony waited for him to argue, to give him another excuse to vent his rage at him, but he merely cast his eyes downwards and swallowed hard.
“No, that is enough!” Happy bellowed, sounding as angry as he had been the day he punched Tony after May’s murder, when Tony had been keeping him from Peter’s bedside. “I wasn’t there, so you don’t get to blame me, Tony. But I was there before: I was there when Nemesis were throwing all those attacks at Peter, when they killed his aunt, the love of my life, and I know none of us, including you, protected him from any of that, no matter how hard we tried. If you can look at these people, some of them your own family, and tell me any of them don’t already feel like scum for what happened, then you can carry on venting. If not, you will shut up, understand?”
Tony gaped. Happy had never spoken to him like that before. He didn’t think Happy had ever spoken to anyone like that. This was a side of him Tony had never seen, and he wasn’t too much of a man to admit it scared him a little.
The fear quickly turned to shame as the meaning of what Happy had said sank in. He was ashamed of talking to his family that way. Even those that were not his family, this room of doubles, didn’t deserve the venom he had thrown at them.
Tony knew none of them were untouched by what had happened to Peter. Even those from this world who did not know him as well as his family loved him for the person that had been here with them who they’d loved. It was not the same love Tony and his family felt more him—more a mimicry of memory—but it was powerful still. They were all hurting.
“You’re right,” Tony said with a heavy sigh. “Rhodey… I’m sorry. I know you would have protected Peter if you could.”
“No, I should have,” Rhodey said. “It was my failure. I think it was the same for Pete—we saw Bucky. I forgot how dangerous The Winter Soldier is because I have seen how gentle Bucky can be and how much he’s changed. It was my mistake. I shouldn’t have let down my guard, not there, when we knew Hydra could be around every corner.”
“We’d all probably make the same mistake,” Steve said. “I know I would have seen Bucky, too. And I already hate myself for letting Wanda take over my mind like that.”
Natasha nodded stiffly. “Me too. I should have killed her as soon as I saw her. But—”
“But she was faster than us,” Steve said. “She’s not you, Wanda—she’s had all that time to hone her powers, and I’m willing to bet she’s had more exposure to The Mind Stone than you ever had.”
Iron Man shook his head dolefully. “I can’t believe she made me see Peter as…” He flinched. “And what I did…”
“Yeah, what you did,” Tony said, no accusation now, just misery at the knowledge of more of his son’s sufferings.
Happy shot him a narrow look and then nodded and turned his attention back to May, who was crying quietly.
Though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, happier to blame them for their failings, May at least loved Peter as much as he did, it was just that she didn’t love him for himself but instead of the version of him she’d loved and lost. Though that was the case for them all, even Iron Man, who Tony wanted to hate most of all. Peter had come to this world to save them because that was who he was; he would have done it to save any world, even without versions of people he loved there, because he saw them all, all worlds, as his responsibility.
Tony wished more than anything that Peter would be selfish, that he’d prioritize his own safety and well-being more than other worlds’ protection. But if Peter was selfish, nothing that had happened since he put on the gauntlet and snapped his fingers the very first time would have happened, Tony would never have been able to call him son and Morgan call him brother, because he would have died there and then.
The very thing that had blessed them all with time and love, understanding and acceptance, Tony’s literal second chance to see his daughter grow with his son at her side, would never have happened if Peter had been selfish instead of Worthy. Instead, Tony would have walked away from the battlefield a broken man and returned home to perhaps be saved by his daughter all over again.
“We have to find him,” Iron Man said, and Tony bit back the retort that he was stating the obvious. “How do we do that without I-Spy?”
Tony ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Even with I-Spy… All Bucky and I could see was Peter in a room with Ross and The Winter Soldier.”
“Let’s break it down,” Captain America said. “We know Bucky took him.”
“No,” Rhodey said, pointing a finger at him. “The Winter Soldier took him. If you go into this thinking of him as your friend, you’re going to get yourself hurt or someone else. Trust me. You have to remember The Winter Soldier is lethal and under Hydra’s control. He is not your friend.”
Captain America nodded stiffly. “I know that. I just meant… It doesn’t matter. We know he’s with The Winter Soldier which means he’s with Hydra. Which means he can be anywhere. We’ve spent years fighting them. We know where some Hydra bases are because we’ve emptied them, but that’s the point, we’ve emptied them—they’re not going to take Peter there.”
“We need an inside man,” Black Widow said. “Which we don’t have.”
Steve slapped a hand to his forehead. “Yes, we do! We’ve got piles of inside men back at The Fridge with what remains of SHIELD locking them down.”
“No,” Natasha said with a gleam in her eye. “We have better than that. We’ve not gotten Pierce yet.”
Tony’s heart skipped. “Fury sent his people there, right?”
“Coulson and his team,” Natasha said.
Tony pressed a shaking hand to his chest and said, “Stark, get on the phone and find out where Pierce is now.”
Iron Man was already in action, ordering Jarvis to make the call.
Tony took a shaky breath and exhaled again. He felt better now there was a plan.
xXx
With the clamor of voices and plans being made as Iron Man ended his call with the exclamation of, “Pierce is still at the Triskelion. We can be there in thirty minutes in the Quinjet,” Rhodey found it hard to voice what he was thinking, especially when he knew the people that would be listening in weren’t going to be happy about what he had to say.
However, nothing he said, no reaction from them, could be worse than seeing Peter being shot and knowing he had let happened. Because no matter what Happy said, Rhodey had been there in the instant that bullet was fired and he should have done more, been better, to save the nephew he loved.
“We need to split up,” he said, outwardly addressing Tony but drawing the attention of all the Avengers gathered, amassed from two separate worlds.
“We need to what?” Captain America asked, the look in his eyes one of interest as his strategic mind came into play.
Rhodey avoided Tony’s eye, not wanting to see his reaction to the words he was about to speak, unwilling to face the betrayal Tony would feel when he heard Rhodey wanted to more than halve the team of them working on saving Peter. “We need to split up. Right now we have two major problems and two goals. One, we need to get Peter back and into the hospital where he can get the care he’s desperately going to need.”
A shudder seemed to spread around room as Rhodey’s words forced them all to face the truth of Peter’s situation—the desperate need to get him to surgeons and anesthesia, pain relief, actual help.
“What else do we need to do?” Tony asked, fury simmering under the words.
Rhodey took a breath and said, “We need to do what we can to stop Thanos.”
“The hell we do,” Clint growled, and the expressions of Rhodey’s assembled family seemed to bear the same message.
“Not we necessarily,” Rhodey said.
“Not we at all. Ever. Full stop,” Clint said harshly.
“But someone needs to do it,” Captain America said, nodding. “It’s what Queens would want to be happening while he can’t do it himself.”
“Don’t you dare think you can speak for my kid,” Tony growled, the fury coming to the foreground. “You don’t know him.”
“Maybe not,” Hawkeye said. “Maybe we’ve all been mistaken in thinking the kid we loved and lost is the same as the one that jumped into this world with you guys to save our asses; maybe we didn’t watch closely enough through I-Spy to see who he was in your world. But I think you’re bullshitting if you’re saying that any version of Peter, in any world, would want his situation to stop us protecting an entire world—hell, an entire universe, when each and every one of us know he told you this world is his to protect, too.”
Tony rounded on him, anger flushing his cheeks.
Perhaps Rhodey had been naïve for thinking once that he knew Tony inside and out; he’d assumed that, as the person who had known him longest, he was schooled in Tony in each and every way. But he had never seen Tony acting like this, as distraught and broken and enraged to the point that he was seconds away from exploding at them, loved ones and essential strangers, at all times.
“Yeah, he did say that, and he was wrong,” Tony snarled. “The world that matters is the one his little sister lives in and is waiting for him to come home, the world in which me and Pepper are his parents. All those other worlds… this world… is nothing compared to that, and Peter is going to know it once he recovers from that hell this world has dumped on him.”
May drew a shaky breath, and Rhodey glanced at her, expecting the tears that had been close to the surface ever since she heard what had happened to Peter. However, what he saw was fury. She was incensed that Tony was dismissing her place as Peter’s parent, the years she’d raised him, even though it was a different Peter in a different world to the one Tony was really talking about.
He watched her, wondering if she was about to meet Tony’s anger with her own, but she merely bunched her fists and looked down at the floor.
“Even accepting that as true,” War Machine said, his own eyes falling on May and quickly looking away, “we do need to protect this world in Peter’s place. However he feels about us and our world, he came here to do a job and we’re not serving him to abandon it.”
“What are you suggesting?” Natasha asked.
War Machine waved to Rhodey, inviting him to answer, which he did. “There are two teams of Avengers here so I think we should split down the middle. Prime, or whatever we’re going to call ourselves, need to make Peter our priority: finding him wherever Hydra have him, getting him free and back —home to care for, and—”
“Killing everyone that had a part in hurting him.”
Rhodey looked to Tony first, not registering that the venomous words had come from Steve not him. Rhodey was shocked because the person who had the greatest part in hurting Peter was The Winter Soldier, and even at his worst in their world, Steve had tried to protect him, to reach him, to save him from himself. Steve was declaring that he wanted The Winter Soldier dead.
“Agreed,” Tony said, and everyone but Wanda nodded immediately; she alone looked sad.
Rhodey understood it, even knowing that she had essentially given Peter permission to kill Pietro—though was it really giving permission when she knew Peter would never have done it.
“And us?” Iron Man asked. “We’re supposed to forget about Peter and throw ourselves into tracking Thanos?”
“Don’t you want to?” Sam asked. “I get that you love Peter, but that doesn’t absolve you of your duty to this world and your people. Yes, Thanos can’t Snap without Time, but those damn Stones are incredibly powerful and can probably do a whole lot of damage in Thanos’ hands. Hell, you’ve seen what The Mind Stone did to Wanda in our world, and you’ve seen the aftermath of what she’s capable of here. Imagine a whole army of Wandas.” He shot the object of his remark and sad smile and said, “I’m sorry, Wanda, but you and I both know it’s the truth.”
“It is,” she said, heaving a sigh. “Sam is right. Rhodey is right. You have to protect this world because we can’t now. Even if you can’t get Mind, Space, and Reality back, you have to get Soul and Power before Thanos can.”
“And you should try to get the others back and kill Thanos,” Clint said. “Because Thanos is one evil son of a bitch, and he will use them to hurt you and the people you care about.” He looked into the eyes of Hawkeye, whose jaw was tensed and said, “Laura and the kids are vulnerable while he has any of The Stones.”
Hawkeye nodded and said, voice clipped, “Understood.”
Iron Man narrowed his eyes. “Okay, yeah, they have to focus on Thanos, but you can’t expect me and May to leave Peter’s safety in your hands alone.”
Tony looked like he was going to make a cutting remark, the hardness was in his eyes, but then he shook his head and said, “There’s no safer hands than ours when it comes to Pete. We all spent two years fighting to save him, and we’re all going to commit everything to doing it again.”
Rhodey knew, all of his family knew, that they had fought to save Peter but ultimately he had saved himself, but he didn’t think these people did and he wasn’t about to clue them in. He understood Iron Man’s need to be a part of it, and May’s, but they were Avengers are well as parents to one lost Peter and this world needed all the heroes it could get.
“He’s right,” Steve said. “And we’ve talked about this enough. So you need to know where The Stones were in our world.” He looked around at them all and said, “Someone needs to be with them, one of us that lived through the Snap.”
“Not it,” Clint said at once.
There was a chorus of refusals from each and every one of Rhodey’s family, until he was the only one that hadn’t answered. Tony looked to him, his brows raised with surprise, and Rhodey nodded. He was the one that had pointed out the need to separate into teams, so he supposed it was his job to follow through.
Besides, and he didn’t want to voice this in case of agreement, which he didn’t think his heart could take, or denial that he knew wasn’t true, he had already failed Peter once in the worst possible way. He had to put his efforts into protecting this world because, no matter what Tony said, Peter would want them to.
“I’ll do it,” Rhodey said. “It’s where I can be of most use.”
“That’s agreed then,” Black Widow. “You go to the Triskelion, find Pierce and do what you’ve got to do, and we’ll deal with The Stones.”
“If we’re getting information out of Pierce, I’m going to need—” Natasha started.
“My bedroom,” Black Widow said. “In the bottom of the closet is a case with what you’ll need.”
Natasha thanked her and run out of the room.
May spoke up, drawing Rhodey’s attention. “If Rhodey is on the Thanos mission, you’ve got space for one more on your team. I’m it.” She shot a look at Iron Man, who’d opened his mouth to argue, and then looked to Tony. “When Peter and Happy died, I lost everything in the world that made sense to me. I was more lost than you can begin to imagine. I became an Avenger because there was nothing else left to me but to protect others in Peter’s place. Maybe Peter isn’t my son in your world, but he was mine in this world, and because of that I am going to help your save your kid.”
Tony stared into her eyes and then nodded. “Works for me.”
May evidently hadn’t expected him to agree because she looked stunned and then pleased. Rhodey could have told her Tony would have agreed, though, because he understood how she felt. Also, and Rhodey wasn’t sure if the fact even registered with Tony himself, he had lost May, too, and he had loved her as the other parent to his son.
Rhodey was willing to bet Tony would find it difficult to deny May anything now he had mastered his fury.
And Rhodey would not deny Peter his desire, or perhaps it was a need… Whichever it was, Rhodey would do whatever it took to save this world for the sake of the innocents here, for the Avengers, but most of all, he would do it for Peter.
Because he had failed him in the worst possible way and wouldn’t ever let that happen again.