Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony hated when people asked him about Morgan, and he hated that he hated that. Morgan’s his daughter, so of course he’ll gladly boast on his child and her achievements, but then someone always has to bring up how nice it must be to finally have a child of your own.

Because Tony already did have a child of his own.

Peter was drafted by SHIELD for a mission a few months ago. Tony fought and argued and even went as far as to threaten the Nick Fury, director of SHIELD, without a second thought. Apparently, Spider-Man was needed, or something like that, even if Fury had a lineup of other people willing to head out in Peter’s place. And Peter hadn’t wanted to go, either, which made it ten times worse.

Don’t make me, sir, please, please I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go–

They told a literal teenager to man up and go on a mission. The night he had to leave, Tony and Pepper went over to the Parkers' apartment, and they all curled up together and cried.

The Starks and May didn’t stay too far, always checking up and staying over to the point where some news outlet had started a rumor that Tony’s relationship had opened up into a three-way. Pepper had shut that down immediately with the threat of a very large lawsuit.

One day, while May was at work and Pepper was off doing Stark Industry CEO things, a knock came from the other side of door, and Tony answered it with Morgan in his arms. He tried to act like he didn’t see the cold, hard look in Nick Fury’s eye. Not the normal one he held, but one that seemed like he saw something he never wanted to see.

But Tony knew. He knew by the way Fury looked at Morgan, jaw clenched and pressed into a thin line.

“No.” he’d said softly, almost pleadingly. “Don’t tell me. Please.”

Nick looked at him. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

That night, he put Morgan to bed early, went down into the lab and screamed and wailed, and didn’t come out for three days.

He guesses this is what Jacob felt like when he thought his son Joseph was dead, mauled by animals. Tony hadn’t really understood the significance at the time, because Maria liked going to church and church got Tony away from Howard, and he hadn’t really expected to ever have kids of his own. He thought that maybe Maria would weep for him, but not Howard.

But then came the breakthrough, because Nick had only handed him a handful of letters Peter had written, some papers being journal entries with details of the mission and things that had happened that day, others being letters addressed to Tony or May or both and never being sent (although Tony suspects he thought they had been sent, which only makes him even more sick). Two of the papers had been school assignments and there was an essay shoved in there about something. Drawings of scientific breakthroughs or ideas or simply things he wanted to do when he got home.

If only.

Tony had asked if they’d found anything of his, specifically a body or at least something they could bury for ‘closure’, he’d said at the time. But really, Tony thinks it’s because he thought that he could bring his boy back if he tried hard enough. Nick had simply told him no, apologized again, and left. 

So now Peter was teetering the line between missing persons–of which Tony did file, because May had asked him to–and being dead. Or, presumed, anyway. It was, morbidly enough, easier to pretend that Peter was out there somewhere, gone from the Earth completely and hopefully quickly, the only evidence of him ever having existed being his body out there and his belongings with Tony and May.

But if there was one thing that Tony lived and believed by, it was that if there’s no body, then there’s no proof. There’s no proof that Peter’s gone, only the letters Nick had brought, which meant that there was a sliver of a chance that his boy was still out there. And even if the Avengers tried to talk him out of it, say it was a doomed attempt from the start, to not even go and try because he wouldn’t find anything and it would only make it worse (which Tony thought was ridiculous, because any parent who was deserving of a child would try anything before accepting that their child was gone), they still aided Tony in whatever he needed, even if they were just humoring him.

He was going to find his kid, dead or alive.

Explaining everything to Morgan was the worst.

Morgan didn’t get to meet Peter before he left, her birth being right on the horizon of the mission. That was another reason he begged to stay, to at least have time to meet his little sister before he had to fly off who knows where for who knows how long. And then who knows where stayed ‘where’ and who knows how long turned into ‘forever’.

She finally started asking why Daddy was so sad all the time, why he had some faraway look in his eyes the way the people in the movies did when they’d seen something horrific. Tony didn’t think she would notice things like that at her young age, like how Tony would stare off into space, lost in his thoughts, or spend hours and hours on end working on finding Peter. But, then again, Morgan is half of him and half of Pepper, so he probably should have expected it.

He’s not sure how Pepper explained it to her, but suddenly she wanted to know all about Peter and Spider-Man and all of their shenanigans. So Tony would tell her stories of Peter and his firsthand accounts with Spider-Man. He bought little children’s books to read to her. He bought comic books and used those to teach her how to read, much to Pepper’s dismay. And sometimes they’d just sit and watch the Baby Monitor footage, and Tony would sit there and silently wish he could just reach out and yank Peter back to him through the screen.

But he couldn’t.

And it sucked.

Chapter Text

There’s a soft knock on his lab door. For once in his life, he didn’t have AC/DC- or any other rock music for that matter- blaring from his speakers for once. It was a rare occasion for Tony to work in complete quiet, and usually, after Peter disappeared, he had it louder because it was easier to drown out the noise in his head. The voices telling him he failed, the times he could hear May or himself screaming because they felt like they failed, despite being unable to do anything. Peter screaming because he didn’t want to go, sir, PLEASE–

“Iron Man isn’t needed, I’m afraid. And if you don’t stand down, Stark, I’ll have to take measures.”

Tony wasn’t scared of Nick Fury. He had his own flying suits and his own planes. He should have followed them, told Peter he’d sneak in and rescue him while everyone was asleep.

He’d halfway expected Peter to walk off the plane when the mission was done, despite Nick telling him that the kid was gone, that the letters were all they had left or could find of him. Tony refused to call them ‘remains’. Everybody did, he noticed. Steve, Natasha, Yelena . . . none of them had resorted to saying ‘remains’ yet, though Tony isn’t sure if they’d been doing it because he was, or if they genuinely believed that, maybe, Tony was right.

If anything, or anyone, told him that his son was dead, it would be Wanda. He’d asked her specifically and she’d promised.

“Wanda,” Tony said one day. He was making what had to be his sixth cup of coffee in two days and she was cooking dinner for the team. “can I ask you something?”

Wanda turned to him. They didn’t talk much, and Tony suspected it was a small grudge she still held after Germany. Tony didn’t blame her. “Sure.” she looked surprised but didn’t show it on her face.

“If Peter is really, um, gone . . .” he swallowed bile. because even the thought of his kid being dead makes him sick. Peter was the epitome of the sun, of life itself . He couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible. He wasn’t allowed to die. “you’ll tell me?”

Wanda had frowned. “I thought you would have wanted it to be Pepper. Or May, even,” she admitted, a little  hint of her Sokovian accent slipping through. Tony noticed that it did that when she felt highly about something. Typically anger. “not me.”

Tony had shook his head. “No,” he admitted with reluctance. “you. I know you can do that . . . feeling thing. With your mind or whatever. And I have a feeling you still listen out for him.” he had told her with a raised eyebrow.

Her cheeks flushed and she pressed her lips into a thin line. “I have,” she’d told him. “and, not that they’d tell you, but the others . . . they look whenever they ‘get a chance’. But I think they’re always looking.”

Tony had paused. “Why?” he asked, and Wanda looked at him again. At first he could tell she thought he asked about all of the Avengers, but with the look he gave her she understood it was only about her.

She let out a breath. “When I lost Pietro . . .” she started slowly. They all knew the subject was touchy still, because a death in the family isn’t exactly something you just get over. “it was horrible. I felt it. Every second.” she took another shaky breath. “And, even if you can’t replace siblings, Peter took on a kind of role like that with me, I think. And if he died . . . I think I’d feel that way again, too.” she looked Tony dead in the eye. “I think I would burn the world down.”

Tony swallowed and nodded. “I think . . . I think I would be right next to you.”

Wanda nodded again. “I know you would be.”

The thing is, Tony didn’t want to answer the door. He didn’t want to open it and it be someone else there to tell him Peter was never coming home. Because his brain already told him that enough, even if it also kept telling him to search until there was definite proof of his death. But there wasn’t any proof yet, so Tony kept searching.

“Boss-” FRIDAY’s voice says. 

“Is it Wanda or Pepper?” Tony asks, scanning through analytics yet again.

“No, Boss.”

“Then no,” he tells her. “scan again.”

They must get the hint, because there’s not another knock on his door for a few hours, and he recognizes immediately by the knock, even if he does procrastinate answering it by waiting on FRIDAY to confirm it.

“Tony?” an accented voice says. It’s not the same voice from earlier. Tony doesn’t really know who that was. He wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe he just didn’t care. He’s not sure.

“Boss, Wanda Maximoff is requesting entry.”

Tony’s blood runs ice cold. She was here to do for him exactly what he asked, and he appreciated her for it, but, in a way, he didn’t want to see her again. Because if she didn’t come to tell her then it wasn’t true. That he could still be out there somewhere because she’d connected with Peter in a bond similar to that which she and her brother had had.

He sighs. “Let her in.”

Peter said the doors to the lab sounded like the doors ‘from the Skeld map in Among Us when they open’, whatever that meant. But their opening meant Wanda would step through. And that meant walking over. Walking over to deliver news he didn’t want to hear,

“Are you here to tell me?” Tony asks softly, feeling like he had injected ice into his veins with a syringe.

Wanda sighs, her shoulders heaving with it. “Everyone’s been asking about you.”

“Okay.” he shrugs. “I know someone came down here earlier, but I didn’t answer. Didn’t really care to.”

“You can’t just lock yourself away, Tony.” Wanda says, reaching out a hesitant hand before it meets his shoulder blade and she starts to rub circles in his skin.

“I’m not locking myself away , I’m working.”

“Okay,” she says, removing her hand and sitting down slowly, a little way down the bench from him. “have you found anything?”

“FRIDAY is scanning again.”

“How many times has FRIDAY scanned?”

“I am an artificial intelligence, Miss Maximoff, and I have scanned enough for my files to swap numbers of locations and attempts. I do not know.”

“Shouldn’t have programmed you with a sense of humor, FRI.” Tony rolls his eyes and throws a wadded-up paper at the wall.

Wanda stands back up. “I just came to tell you that Natasha and Yelena think they found something.”

Tony perks up a bit. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“It could be nothing again,” she tells him honestly, and he appreciated how she was being brutally honest with him, as crazy as it sounds. “we just wanted you to know.”

“Do you still check?” Tony blurts out, and Wanda looks at him yet again, nodding with a small grin.

“I do,” she admits. “and I’m . . . sorry . . . that I didn’t do more while we were on the mission.”

“I know you tried,” Tony says, because he does know that. “and I appreciate it. A lot. And I know he does, too, wherever he is.”

“Thank you, Tony.” Wanda says before heading out the door. Oddly enough, Tony’s heart swells a little at her calling him Tony instead of Stark .

Chapter Text

Tony refused to be left behind this time.

“Tony,” Steve had sighed. “I just don’t think–”

“I don’t care what you think,” Tony had spat. “Last time I got left behind and they left him behind.” 

He couldn’t say what he meant, but he had a feeling they knew.

“And if he really is gone?” Steve countered. “You shouldn’t see that, Tony. It’s . . . it’ll only make things worse.”

“I don’t agree,” Natasha had spoken up. “and I don’t regret it this time. I don’t want to take it back. Stark deserves to be the one to find Peter, dead or alive.”

Natasha, blunt as ever. He appreciated that.

“I agree with Natasha,” Wanda had said, and Yelena nodded along. “and it’s not like SHIELD has done anything. And they won’t. It should be us.”

Rhodey walked over and clapped him on the shoulder while they split up the teams. “Let’s go find my nephew.”

Tony flew through the sky, Rhodey by his side as always. Usually, Peter would be swinging with him, albeit a little ways below him, but still swinging nonetheless. Tony just hopes that Peter would be okay enough to continue getting up to his swinging shenanigans. For once. Pepper was right alongside him as well, carrying the rage of two mothers–her and May both. 

Clint, Natasha, and Barton were working together to find a secret way in order to gain the element of surprise. That was the plan. The assassins would observe from the ground (and whatever was deemed ‘necessary’) and Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper would be the ones to rescue Peter. Although Pepper had made Tony and Rhodey promise that Rhodey would go in first and assess the scene before they allowed Tony to see him.

Steve and Sam stayed back to fight with SHIELD, because of course they’d be angry that they were going on any sort of ‘mission’ with no sort of permission, even if they were rescuing one of their team members. 

Wanda was going in headfirst. They tried to talk her out of it, but she had insisted. And, well . . . there’s not really any stopping angry big sisters, is there?

The place they land in is plain, Dark, grey, damp. Typical. 

Yelena’s voice came through the comms. “You’re just like Natasha.” she says, and he can hear the eye-roll in her voice.

“Huh?” Pepper and Tony say at the same time.

“Such posers.”

If it wasn’t for the situation, Tony would’ve laughed. But all it elicits is a chuckle. He’ll laugh later.

Despite the jokes, Tony knows Yelena means well. She wouldn’t be on this mission if Tony didn’t think she cared for the boy.

Tony and Rhodey nodded and the three in the Iron Man (and Iron Man-inspired) suits headed three different ways that they’d planned in advance, because did you really think that they would raid a potentially dangerous building that housed his kid without a plan?

Tony’s hope . . . doesn’t exactly get higher the more he walks through this hallway. Not only were there bodies piled up in the hallway that unfortunately faced the rage of an angry dad (and a pissed off Tony Stark), but there’s evidence of failed experiments and devices Tony didn’t even want to begin to try and understand their uses. The room smelled of torture, pain, and death. Sadness and hopelessness, too. Things Tony didn’t ever think he could smell until he walked in here. Bodies curled up on the floor that had yet to be removed by the twisted people who caused their pain, and that they would never be. 

He hoped his oldest child wouldn’t be one of the casualties of this war.

***

He . . . wasn’t sure what was going on. Noises hurt his ears.

He was . . . something. He had a name, right? What was it? Why couldn’t he–

oh yeah. Peter. Maybe. Someone outside is shouting the name through all of the fighting the boy can hear throughout the building–in and around it. 

He doesn’t know who this Peter guy is, though, if it isn’t him. Which, it’s probably not , because why would anyone come for him? He just woke up here, apparently left behind is what he’d been told, and then it was dark again and the next thing he knew was that there was scheduled consistent pain and loneliness, and no one was coming for him because whoever left him here either thought he was dead, or had another reason to do it.

He fought at first. He remembers that much. He also remembers what type of pain came with the fighting and eventually decided it wasn’t worth it. Hope wasn’t worth it.

He gave up.

“Kid?” the sound was muffled through his hands covering his ears, and he winced every few seconds when there was a particularly loud noise.

Then there was a metal hand on his arm and he flipped over, flinching even more.

“Hey!” the voice said again, though it sounded like it was a little tinny, like it came from behind metal or steel. “Same side. Guess who.” 

He squinted. “‘uh?” he asked, confused at the man hovering above him in a large red suit and a glowing triangle on his chest. He looked like he was about to cry, even if he didn’t look sad. There was something else in his eyes that the boy couldn’t place/

It was loud, and his eye twitched with every loud clang.

“Oh! I brought these.” the man said in an even voice. pulling out a pair of headphones. The boy looked at them reluctantly. He hadn’t liked it the last time he had them, because they always made it too loud or too quiet. The boy watched as the man placed them on his head and over his ears. Nothing changed until he pressed a button on the side and–

it wasn’t excruciatingly loud or endlessly quiet. All it did was dampen everything to a point where he could handle it.

“. . . brought them just in case-” the boy hadn’t even realized the metal man was still talking. “and–oh! Your ears are bleeding.” he stood up and the boy watched him. “Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Chapter Text

Coaxing Peter to come out was horrendous. 

Okay, maybe not horrendous , because Tony’s got a young daughter and he knows how difficult kids can be, but it did take forever. And, yeah, Rhodey was supposed to go in first, but Tony found the room before he did and he wasn’t going to wait when his son was right there . 

So maybe . . . perhaps a task and a half.

The looks Peter’s been giving him do nothing to help his hope either. He looked a little nervous when he pulled out Peter’s sensory overload headphones. Judging from the way he was shaking, even if the kid himself didn’t notice, he’d been stuck in one for quite some time. When Tony touched him, he flinched and flipped over and acted like Tony was going to stab him right there, fighting at first before finally accepting resignation that fighting would do no good.

But eventually he was able to get Peter to slowly take his hand, which Tony noticed was a cold, light grasp, and walked him towards the jet Sam and Steve had brought. Nobody else was back yet because getting Peter out was the number one priority. He assumed Sam and Steve had gone in to do a little bit of revenge-taking all on their own.

Not that he minded.

“Gonna sit you right here, kid.” Tony says, plopping the kid down on one of the comfortable seats on the jet. He couldn’t tell if Peter looked reluctant to let go (and maybe he had , because it seems Tony’s the first kindness he’s seen or known in a while and he’s the one that rescued him) but he did, settling for rubbing his hand across the seat instead.

“I’m gonna clean all this blood off your ears and face and we’ll get you into some better clothes, yeah?”

Peter swallows before nodding.

“That means I have to take these off.” he gestures softly to the headphones. “Okay?”

Peter nods again. Tony also nods his confirmation and carefully removes the headphones and starts gently wiping at the blood in and on the kid’s ears and at the liquid plastered on his face. Some new, some old, dried, and crusty.

Tony thinks he’d feel physically ill if it weren’t for the relief that the kid was in his arms.

Peter reluctantly reaches for the headphones and a wipe and Tony frowns. The kid studies the two before taking the wipe and starts to clean the blood off the device. Tony grins. “You didn’t have to do that. I would have.”

Peter swallows and nods again, and Tony’s frown returns. He squats down to see Peter’s face more clearly, even if the kid is looking down, preoccupied with his task. “Hey,” he starts gently. rubbing a tender hand on his shoulder. “something on your mind?”

Peter presses his lips into a line and shakes his head slightly. 

Tony doesn’t believe him. He raises an eyebrow. “You sure?” he asks. “You can tell me.”

Peter mumbles something, which Tony doesn’t quite get. “Come again?”

“Why are you helping me?” Peter asks, still quiet, but not quiet enough that Tony couldn’t hear him.

Tony stills, frowning. “Hey,” he says softly, reaching to cup Peter’s face and wincing when he pulls back a bit, leaving his hand hanging awkwardly in the air. He presses his lips together and lays his hand back down on the boy’s shoulder. “why wouldn’t I help you, Pete? You know I’ll always come and save you.”

“Why?”

Tony isn’t sure what to say. Had the kid hit his head? Maybe he had a concussion and hadn’t caught up to everything yet. Or maybe Tony’s making excuses. He doesn’t know. And if Tony hates one thing–besides being handed things, bleugh –it’s not knowing things.

Metal Man wasn’t Metal Man anymore. At some point, the suit had disappeared and the boy was sitting on a soft (well, softer than the concrete floor he was accustomed to at this point) chair on the large vehicle (plane?), and the man that had saved him was grabbing wipes to clean his face. While he did so, Peter studied him silently and wordlessly as he talked, telling him he’d get better clothes, warning him about removing his headphones instead of just taking them harshly off of his head, and he was actually, genuinely gentle while picking at both wet and dried blood on his face and ears.

The boy couldn’t help but notice that the man’s eyes were a similar color to his, even if a little darker, and he could see himself in them.

The man continued to talk, but he had to know something. The question came to mind right on time, too, because the man asked him if he had anything on his mind. He mumbled his question, but the man didn’t catch it, so he took a deep breath and asked again.

“Why are you helping me?”

The man seemed taken aback, surprised, even, that he’d asked that, and the boy half expected to be punished for it, but instead he was asked why he thought he wouldn’t come to rescue him, that he’d always come to save him. Apparently, he was supposed to know that.

Still, that didn’t tell him why Metal Man was helping him.

The older man rubbed his hand over his mouth, thinking, before sitting down next to him, leaving a little bit of room between them so he wouldn’t be directly on top of or smothering the boy. 

He appreciated that.

Apparently, Metal Man could tell.

“Yeah, I didn’t like being closed in at first either, when I got back. Well, except for the suit.” he tells him before clearing his throat. “Listen, kid, I, uh . . . I don’t know what you went through in there, and I won’t make you talk about it. But they told me you were dead, and I just . . . I didn’t believe it. There wasn’t a body, so I wouldn’t take word for it until I knew for sure.” he pulls a stack of papers out of his pocket and hands them to him. “Peter . . . I never stopped looking for you. I wasn’t going to stop until I had a solid answer. And I’m . . . so sorry that you’ve had to basically go through what I did. I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy.”

Peter (?) swallows. “We’re . . . not . . .?”

“Not what, kid?”

“Not . . . enemies?”

Metal Man blinks. “No, kid. You’re like a son to me.”

“But they said–”

“They lied.”

“They said I attacked you. They would show me pictures and videos, and if they seemed shiny they’d say it was because of a glare or something. But they said that you hated me, and people like me , and–”

well, that’s the most he’s talked in a while.

“Woah, calm down. You’ve never attacked us. You’re an honorary Avenger. You went on a mission, the team came back without you and we were told you were dead. I didn’t believe it, and I’m glad I was right not to believe them, or I wouldn’t have my kid back.” he tells Peter. “They gave us those letters and things that you wrote. And I’m . . .” Metal Man inhales. “I’m really sorry,” he says through his exhale. “that I couldn’t–no, didn’t do more to keep you from going, to stop them from taking you. I could have . . . I could have followed or something. I . . . I should have done something, especially with as much as you didn’t want to go.”

Peter blinks. “Sounds like it wasn’t your fault,” he says, though he doesn’t know why. “it was whoever made me go in the first place. And, hey, I’m alive.”

Metal Man smiles just a bit and, oddly enough, something lifts off Peter’s shoulders. “Yeah, you are.” he says with a hint of pride.

So maybe, just maybe, the old Peter could crawl his way out of his brain. Metal Man had saved him, so the least he could do was do that for him, even if Peter could tell that he’d stay by his side even if he didn’t. Or couldn’t.

But he’d try.