Chapter Text
June 2018, Deep Space
Tony Stark hadn’t eaten in days.
Not because there wasn’t food.
(There really wasn’t.)
But because he couldn’t.
Hope will do that to a person—stretch out the impossible just a bit longer. Bend reason until it thins.
And he had hope. That’s what made it worse.
Because Strange had said something before it all...
Happend
Before they lost.
Before Peter—
Tony shut his eyes.
There’d been confusion. Dust. And silence. But Strange had held his ground until the very end, his cloak flying against the wind that wasn’t wind at all, just energy breaking everything apart. He’d looked back once, hand glowing, as Peter began to disappear.
And then—
A portal.
Just a flash of gold, flickering fast. A glimpse of a skyline, or maybe he’d imagined it. Strange had turned his head, locked eyes with Tony
“New York. Sanctum. You’ll know.”
“There’s a chance.”
And then he vanished, too.
Tony had clung to that moment, obsessively rewinding it in his mind for the two and a half weeks he’d been adrift in space, refusing to believe it was a hallucination. That Strange had meant it. That Peter—the kid his kid—was safe. Somehow. Somewhere. That if only he could make it back to Earth, he’d find him.
Every system on the Benatar had gone quiet. Oxygen was nearly gone. Nebula—barely alive herself—had sat across from him, unmoving. She didn’t understand the hope. Or maybe she did, but didn’t say anything.
When the light appeared above them, Tony thought it was death.
Instead, it was a person, pushing them through space back to earth.
And the first thing Tony asked—gasping and half-delirious—wasn’t about the battle. Or the loss. Or the state of the Earth.
It was:
“Sanctum okay?”
“Did he make it?”
“Peter Parker. Queens. Midtown.”
“Did he show up?”
“Did you find him?”
No one answered.
They carried him out of the ship like glass.
Medics. SHIELD. Air Force. People in Stark gear he didn’t recognize.
And still, even as his lungs gave out and his legs refused to work, Tony Stark clung to one thing.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
Peter had made it back.