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Chapter Text

Tony 

Morgan Stark was born on an unseasonably cold August afternoon nine months after the splintering of the universe- or the decimation, as the world had taken to calling it. Helen Cho, who had been the only person entrusted to deliver the baby Stark, swaddled Morgan extra tight to make up for the chill in the air.

Perhaps it was the ash finally settling, perhaps the levy was finally breaking, or, more likely, not even the planet itself could conceive of warmth, not yet at least, not with such shocked mourning invading the lands, making even the oceans wail with the masses.

In any case, on that August day, Tony and Pepper were probably the only happy pair in the world.

Neither were Christians despite being half-heartedly raised as such, but they’d allocated Morgan godparents regardless, knowing all too well how quickly life could be snatched away. The universe was far too uncaring to leave their daughter to happenstance, Thanos had seen to that.

There was Rhodey, who accepted the responsibility stoically, though the wetness prickling at his eyes gave him away. And then Natasha, who initially balked at the duty, and Tony could understand why; ever since that wretched day in Germany, the resentment between them had piled so high they could hardly see each other, but if there was ever a time to mend fences it was now.

Though there seemed to be more to it than that, Nat seemed protective, fierce, like she’d mow down any man who so much as touched the girl. Tony and Nat had shared shaky smiles and the usually impenetrable woman surreptitiously swiped a tear away.

However, even Tony’s joy at welcoming Morgan was tinged, corrupted.

Sitting with his newborn in his arms, Pepper sleeping by his side in the bedroom of their newly purchased lake house, he couldn’t help but grieve, thinking of another child born in August who would never celebrate a birthday again.

It was the monkey on his back, Peter Parker, his son in all but words- never words, Tony would forever kick himself for that. But he hoped Peter knew, that it had been unspoken yet tangible, with every over-eager ‘Mr. Stark’ and fondly ruffled hair a prayer of devotion. One that would, now and forever, remain unanswered.

Peter’s ashen remains dirtied his hands no matter how many times he washed them.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Pepper would awake to find Tony’s side of the bed cold, rumpled, and empty. She would stumble half-dreaming to their bathroom, where she’d find him mumbling over a running sink, unable to scrub away the cloying stain of death that covered him.

His raw and blistering hands would be carefully extracted and smoothed dry with a towel; sometimes Pepper would bring them to her lips and hold them there for a moment. Her breath was warm and there, and Tony wondered whether she was trying to revive him, whether it was possible to. Then she’d guide him back to bed, where he would finally break, useless apologies lurching and spilling and blubbering from him unbidden, so hauntingly reminiscent of Peter’s final words that Tony could hardly stand to hear himself.

I don’t want to go.

I’m sorry.

Occasionally, Tony pondered May Parker, and namely, what she’d say to him had she survived. They’d formed a tentative bond in the aftermath of the Vulture, or as May had screeched at him, a homecoming worse than Carrie’s. If only she’d known what was coming for them just eighteen months later.

But he wouldn’t, couldn’t, linger, clamping down on the thoughts as though afraid her ghost would materialise from his self-hatred and condemn him to hell. Not that he needed the help in that respect.

Steve had formed a grief counselling group, a baton passed silently, and dutifully, from Sam’s own ashes- Tony wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with the stain on his hands, after all. It seemed to help the super solider; Steve had always been the self-sacrificing sort, ready to push his own grief to the wayside if it meant even one person was saved.

Tony also wondered (he did a lot of thinking in the after) what Steve wouldn’t do to reverse the snap, whether he’d burn himself from the inside out like he’d done in 1940, stepping out of Howard Stark’s antechamber a new man, ready to single handedly defeat the Nazi regime.

Looking down at Morgan, at her soft pink skin and tiny limbs, Tony vowed to put that life behind him.  

5 years on, as he rinsed the splattered suds from the only picture he and Peter had ever taken together, it wasn’t just water that swirled down the drain, but his promise.

And a few weeks later, lying burned and broken on the battlefield, with Peter Parker’s weathered, but so beautifully alive, face towering and blurring above him, Tony breathed for the first time in half a decade. He wished it was a picture he could keep.  

You can rest now.

Peter- Present Day

Peter yawned- an all-encompassing, teeth barring, ear drum thrumming yawn, one that required a quick head shake to recover from.

Then he resumed his methodical product rotating, pushing Delmar’s newest shipment of questionable falafel to the back of the dusty shelves, and the older, slightly more questionable falafel to the front (and definitely not scrubbing away and re-writing over the expired sell-by dates).

Murph appeared to give him a knowing meow and a reproachful quiver of his white and grey tail, to which Peter jabbed his finger at the judgemental cat in response.

“Don’t be like that, Murph, I’m not in charge, take it up with Del. Plus, everyone knows sell-by dates are a government conspiracy to crank up consumption.”  As he often did, Peter was momentarily caught on thoughts of MJ like an unruly woollen snag, so he powered on, “at least I’m writing close-ish, plausible dates. Or paw-sible dates, I guess.”

Murph didn’t seem to appreciate the olive branch and simply stalked away, paws tapping an out of tune jaunt against the off-white tiles.

“Well okay then.” Peter turned back to the shelves, picked up a can of ravioli, thumbed away 11/25 and scribbled 12/1 in its stead. The door jingled open and he shoved his sharpie into the pocket of his apron casually. Delmar walked in.

“Just me, kid. Try not to look so jumpy, people’ll think you’re stuck here,” the shop owner half-admonished.

“I’m not?” Peter patted himself down like he was just realising his freedom and Delmar rolled his eyes, hooking his apron over his head and making his way behind the counter.

“Don’t be a shit, Parker. But I’ll give it to you, not many kids your age would be jumping up and down for an opening shift- when were you up this morning, 3am? 4?” Delmar queried. No one would ever guess it, but the man was terribly, almost audaciously, nosy. Peter tried not to indulge it, over-sharing was a relic of much more innocent, and forgotten, past.

“Guess I’m an old soul,” Peter shrugged.

He’d also not slept a single wink, caught up in a bank robbery turned hostage situation/good old-fashioned siege, and really didn’t want Delmar to cut his hours in some misguided sense of duty of care. Best to stay aloof if he wanted to make rent this month.

“Hm,” Delmar groused, likely seeing straight through Peter’s act, but also seemingly recognising a healthy employer/employee level of prying. “Now go on, get. I’ve got enough to do today without you breathing down my neck.”

Peter grinned, shelving the last tin. “You know I’m not a dog, right?”

“Then quit whining like one,” Delamar dismissed.

And because Peter couldn’t conjure up a retort, he left. But not before scooping up the sandwich he’d prepared earlier- Delmar always insisted on sending him away with food, likely because (in his words) Peter looked like a bag of bones held together with googly eyes. Which stung given his brief tenure as an Avenger, one of Earth’s mightiest and most formidable heroes, but Peter wasn’t proud enough to argue.

Or maybe he just didn’t have the energy. Internally, because he was without a shadow of a doubt chronically depressed, not that he spent much time dwelling on that particular nugget of information, considering the bullet train of trauma (part of which consisted of an actual train, thank you Beck) that would pick him up and speed him into a black hole if he tried, or more likely an early grave.

But mainly functionally: his metabolism needed more fuel than an industrial revolution powerhouse, if the number of times he’d passed out in the weeks following his departure from the Statue of Liberty said anything.

Between Delmar’s handouts, Spider-Man freebies, his two jobs, and repairing tech on the side, Peter just about managed to pass for a slightly anaemic looking individual. And he’d take it.

Narrowly avoiding being shoulder checked by a suit clad tech bro, Peter checked his watch. It’d been given to him by Mr. Stark for his sixteenth birthday, and, contrary to the man’s over-zealous personality, it was simple enough that he didn’t look too flashy wearing it on the daily.

It was coming up to nine o’clock, meaning he had about fifteen minutes to make it to Sacred Heart- his primary job/source of income/hail mary.

Two years ago, Peter had dutifully studied for his GED and received a perfect mark, one that served to somewhat soothe the wound of his erased near perfect gpa. But his celebration hadn’t lasted long- the semantics of college were way over his head, he’d deluded himself.

At the time, he’d been illegally subletting in a house share comprising of over twenty people, most of whom were criminals, or like him had no other option, typically due to a lack of a green card. It cost him twenty bucks a week, the horrific back pain from sleeping on a wooden floor, and his silence over the arrangement.

So technically, he didn’t have a valid address, which in turn meant he couldn’t get a bank account, and in turn, meant he had nowhere to deposit any scholarship money he received. A catch 22. A sad little snake eating itself.

And the social security number Peter had hacked into existence for himself was another kettle of fish entirely- he had no idea how much scrutiny it’d hold up to, and frankly, he didn’t want to try.

So, barring one dreadful night spent by May’s grave contemplating a revolver he’d confiscated from a mugger, he merrily disregarded college as a pipe dream and went onto a new plan. He was nothing if not adaptable.

Which is how he’d become Nurse Parker, just like his aunt. If he had nothing, then he had her legacy, and he hoped she’d be proud of him following in her footsteps- that is, if universe-wide memory wiping spells didn’t also include the afterlife.

Sometimes he dreamed of making his way to the pearly gates, guided by aliens, or God, or whoever was in charge of his shit show of a life, and tracking down May, Ben, and Tony. Only for the three of them to turn to him in unison with blank, unrecognising expressions on their eternal faces. Which was when he’d typically wake up screaming.

Anyway, it was fine (except for the noise complaints), he’d picked up his feet and enrolled in a training scheme as a Licensed Practitioner at a free clinic in Jamaica, Queens. The turnover rate was higher than the clientele, but Peter, in a weird way, enjoyed it. It was nice to help again. That had been the first year post-Strange’s mind wipe, and Peter really felt like things could be okay again.

But then the reason for his easily obtained employment reared its head in a miserably predictable turn of luck. His boss, Doctor Smith, notorious for sleeping through shifts and misdiagnosing patients, was busted for fraud. Which was a nice way of saying he’d changed his first name to Doctor and managed to fool everyone into believing he’d earned his doctorate. Peter could hardly believe it when the news broke, it felt so slapstick.

And then he was markedly less amused when the clinic had been shut down and he was back to square one, this time sitting by Tony Stark’s public memorial with enough stolen pills on his person to kill an elephant.

But once again, he refused to be beaten down, he thought he was like a cockroach in that respect. If there was Thanos part two, this time hellbent on just snapping everyone out of existence and calling it a day, Peter was sure he’d still manage to survive it.

In some ways, though, he was glad he’d stuck around, because if he hadn’t, then the event that led to his current employment never would have occurred. There was a lot to be said about the failures of Peter Parker, but that day had been a good one.

A year ago

Peter was drowning. It’d been two months since the clinic had shut down, and apart from one drunken evening where he’d stolen a bottle of vodka and heckled Doctor Doctor Smith’s prison block, he’d achieved absolutely no catharsis over the situation.

The next morning, after he’d guilty paid back the shopkeeper he’d stolen from, he realised he was well and truly broke.

He’d done everything he could. Delmar couldn’t feasibly give him more work, and he couldn’t expect the already struggling man to, he’d done enough for Peter already. His tech repair business was slowing down as the students, the bulk of his customer base, had gone off for Christmas.

A few months ago, he’d made a killing making and selling Tamagotchi’s, but he couldn’t afford the right materials right now, nor did his dumpster diving turn anything up. People had seemingly cottoned on to the stupidity of throwing away perfectly reusable/resalable technology.

He lay despondently on a rooftop, where he was currently living, now unable to afford even the twenty bucks for the house share. Pebbles dug into his back, and he rubbed his literal last cent between his fingers like a genie would appear.

Instead, a scream echoed through the streets below him.

Spidey sense blaring, he tumbled over the rooftop, without the suit, there wasn’t time for vanity, and landed neatly besides a fire hydrant. No one paid any heed to the super-human act, however, as the street’s occupants were solely focussed on a young girl braced on all fours on the ground.

“She’s choking!” One passerby declared.

“Someone call 911,” another ordered, making no move to retrieve their own phone.

The girl was no more than fifteen and was blue in the face, with wide beseeching eyes watery and blood shot as she clawed at her throat frantically. Peter didn’t waste any time, he batted away the inept bystanders, hauled the girl up, and started the Heimlich.

Tense seconds passed, it was like the entirety of New York had stopped to stare in dread. Peter kept at it, trying not to let desperation seep into his movements, especially as the body in his grip became limp. He lifted the girl off her feet with his administrations, and a rib broke under his hands.

And then a wet chunk of food arced from her mouth like a projectile and landed on the dirty, gum coated pavement, looking entirely too innocuous for something that had just almost killed a girl.

Peter released the teenager and gently lowered her to the ground as she came back into consciousness heaving and sobbing.

“It’s okay, you’re alright, deep breaths, nice and slow,” he comforted, rubbing a soothing hand against her back, trying to coax some calmness into her.

When she failed to get the memo, Peter crouched down by her side and performed a few exaggerated inhales and exhales, which the girl shakily imitated.

“You’re a pro, couldn’t have breathed better myself,” Peter joked, and the girl smiled wetly at him.

It was then that the ambulance arrived, and Peter briefed the EMTs. “She’s okay, slight cyanosis but it’s receding already. The obstruction is cleared but she has a broken rib- the left stern chondral joint.”

Then he squeezed the girl’s hand as she was lifted into the ambulance, and he thought that was that. But he was instead confronted with the slightly awkward predicament wherein she wouldn’t actually let go.

“You’re alright, kid, but can I have my hand back? I only have two.” Peter tried to channel Tony in situations like these, and it usually worked. Except for now, apparently, as the girl belligerently clamped down on him more tightly, giving his fingers the sensation of being tightly bound sausages.

One of the EMTs looked on a bit helplessly, “are you family? You could just ride with us?”

Peter shook his head. “What, no? I’m just a nurse, well an ex-nur-”

But that was good enough for the EMTs and he was being ushered into the back of the ambulance bemoaning the rest of his afternoon.

And then the girl said the words that would change Peter’s life, more than he realised, even in the present day.

“Can you take me to Sacred Heart? My mom’s a board member there.”

And so it was that a week later, with nepotism and a positive attitude by his side, Peter clocked in for his first ever shift at Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital.

To the start of a new beginning.

“Parker? You switched on today? The kid in room three needs his bed pan changing.”

Peter balked. “Again? He pisses more than a snake trying to mind its manners.”

Rachel, Peter’s boss, started at him blankly.

“You know,” Peter tried to explain the weak joke, “pl-isss”

“I can’t do this today,” Rachel walked away, and to be fair, Peter couldn’t blame her. He could definitely come up with better. But in his defence, a three-way pun was difficult to execute even on the best of days.

Peter muttered please, piss, and hiss under his breath as he made his way to Billy’s room before shaking his head and abandoning the task as a lost cause.

“Hey, Bill,” Peter greeted.

Said boy lay propped up against zoo patterned pillows, his ginger hair matching the lions’ manes almost perfectly. Peter decided to point this out to him, at which point the five-year old began to cry.

“Woah, woah, I take it back,” Peter rushed to redeem the situation, “lion’s suck, your hair is way better.”

Billy continued to blubber and Peter was once again reminded of how badly young children and heavy duty pain killers gelled. The boy was in for a torn acl, an injury Peter could empathise heartily with.

Perhaps five months ago, he’d been kidnapped for an evening by a Bronx drug lord he’d been investigating and ruthlessly tortured until he’d promised not to get the cops involved. Funnily, Peter hadn’t been persuaded, and as a reward for his upstanding morality, gifted a crowbar to the knee.

He’d escaped, webbing up the entire operation including, a little insanely, the crowbar. But it had taken Peter an entire week before he could drag himself out of bed, totalling not only his poor bones, but his paid vacation days too.

Back in the days of living with a comprehensive meal plan funded by Tony’s billions, Peter’s healing time would likely have taken a quarter that; but like with everything else he’d lost, he refused to dwell.

Besides, considering he was a pediatric nurse, Peter had to deal with enough crying and moaning as it was, why add himself to the list? Which brought him back to his current conundrum.

He checked Billy’s vitals and saw that everything was all within the correct parameters, so he let the boy play with his stethoscope for a bit, which was usually the golden ticket to calming hysterical children down.

Billie placed it against Peter’s chest and listened intently, tear tracks staining his freckled cheeks.

“Am I gonna live, doc?” Peter asked.

“No!” Billy declared. And then burst out laughing.

“Dang, just missed out on the weekend.” And then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue to Billy’s continued amusement, and the boy tried to poke some life back into him.

Peter gasped and took in a deep breath. “You fixed me!”

Billy squealed with delight.

Peter stayed for a little longer and actually changed the bed pan- no one could say he was a slacker. The next hour went in about the same fashion, though he’d had to deal with an enraged father threatening to get him fired because Peter refused to expedite his daughter’s blood test above a cancer patient’s. Like Peter had that much power anyway.

Sacred Heart was a nice place to work, but it was, first and foremost, private care- it catered to the richest of the rich (in fact, it was one of the most prestigious in the state, Peter would never had gotten a job here had golden fingers not orchestrated it) meaning he often had to deal with a barrage of entitled parents who’d never been told no. But it was fine, the kids weren’t to blame. Usually.

About halfway through his shift, he knocked on the door of room 10 before entering slowly, nodding respectfully in greeting to the family huddled around the bed in the centre of the room, before smiling softly at the patient herself.  

Marcy Kilner was sixteen years old and had terminal cancer. The doctors expected her to pass anway any day now, her short life drawing to a tragic close.

Peter tried not to show it, but attending her oftentimes ruined his day, as brutal as it sounded.

It wasn’t so much that she was dying, he’d seen enough of that in this job (and elsewhere) to not be too shaken at this point down the line. But it was more that Marcy refused to believe it.

“I’m not going anywhere, Nurse Parker, I have midterms,” she’d say, her skin yellowed and the whites of her eyes grey.

“Nurse Parker, I don’t know why everyone looks at me like I’m roadkill, I’m auditioning for Macbeth next month,” she’d insist, drowning in about a hundred tubes and wires.

Peter liked the teenager a lot, she was clever, in a bitter, monotone way that reminded him a little jarringly of MJ. Which may have been partly why he tried to see her as little as possible.

“How is everyone today?” Peter whispered, interrupting the gloomy, reverential silence that hung over the room like a dusty set of drapes. He felt like he was breaking a covenant.

Marcy didn’t seem to care though, her eyes twinkling and lips quirking in a smile. “What did the nurse say when he had sex in a parking lot?”

Marcy’s mother coloured fuchsia and frantically tried to apologise, and soon Peter was glowing a similar shade.

“Park-her,” Marcy finished, coughing slightly.

Peter rolled his eyes and produced some ice chips, plopping one into Marcy’s mouth. “Was it worth it?” He asked the teenager.

Marcy nodded as enthusiastically as she could manage, not making the mistake of speaking again.

“Hm,” Peter acquiesced, going from machine to machine, jotting down his readings. “You’re running a little hot, nothing to worry about,” he reassured Marcy’s mother, who’d sprung up slightly in her chair, “just a simple case of Mar-son.”

Crickets.

“…You know, Marcy, arson, Marson,” Peter explained uselessly.

“Not as good,” Marcy croaked.

Peter readjusted a tube that had fallen out of place, attempting to avoid the scathing looks of the etire Kilner family combined, while Marcy herself seemed to delight in his suffering.

Apart from that horrendous display, the rest of the day didn’t go too slowly, and soon Peter was clocking off for the night, shoving a hoodie wearily over his scrubs and slacking his backpack loosely over his shoulder.

It’d been a twelve-hour shift, so the full moon was at its zenith in the winter sky, obscured slightly by a wavering cloud. Peter contemplated whether to go home and get some rest, or put in an hour or so as Spider-Man.

A shout answered his question for him, and he darted into an alleyway to change.

Five hours later, he’d stopped five muggings, an assault, evacuated a house fire, and untangled a pigeon from a spool of wire. So, all in all, a regular patrol.

In a quiet moment, Peter dangled upside down from a rooftop by hooking his legs over the ledge. He took in the New York skyline and imagined it was falling into the grey smogged night, which sat like an ocean below him.

Peter’s DNA was actually 0.001% spider (“a medical marvel,” Cho had whispered to herself reverently) and, of many, many side-effects, it meant that he didn’t feel the effects of gravity like everyone else.

He was weightless, untethered.

Dangling above the universe, obeying the laws of gravity with no real need to, Peter suddenly felt very alone, like he was an astronaut attached to a spaceship, one that would probably never take him home.

Peter contemplated Ned and MJ- it was close to December now, so they’d probably be getting ready to come back, but not before hunkering down and getting through the last spell of exams. It was their final year at MIT and the pressure was likely high, so he sent them a mental ‘good luck’ across the pond of space he’d created.

He wondered if MJ would go back to Pans. He wondered if he’d visit.

A month after the disaster that had been Peter’s letter, when he’d seen MJ’s chipped black dahlia necklace and busted forehead, a reminder of his continued failures, he’d decided to go back. One last visit before she left for college.

And he’d made himself a new promise by that point, one that overrode the one he’d made to MJ and Ned: that he would always protect them, no matter what. And, unfortunately, that meant no more Peter Parker.

Peter had walked in silently, only speaking to order a black coffee, his voice hoarse with disuse. He noted that the mark on MJ’s forehead was now just a small white scar and he’d almost cried with relief; that it hadn’t traversed the width of her frame like it had May’s, tearing the blood from her body like Hades’ waters.

Then MJ had haltingly recognised him, and it’d been his turn to feel gutted, cut open.

“Parker?” She’d asked shyly, smoothing away a dark ringlet that had dropped into her eyeline.

From that day on, as though written in the blood MJ would never shed for him, Peter went by Parker. Because he realised that the ‘Parker Curse’ had never been for the Parkers to claim, it belonged solely to Peter himself- the everlasting cockroach. And he’d never inflict it on anybody again.

But he couldn’t dwell on it, he reminded himself.

Peter swung himself off the rooftop and decided to keep patrolling, the streets were largely empty, considering it was around 2am on a Thursday (or Friday now). But there was always action around the more touristy spots, so he headed closer to the centre of the city.

However, before he could make much progress, he halted in his tracks. The hairs on his arms stood on end and the back of his neck pulsed. Something was happening.

He touched down on the sidewalk just in time for two women to appear, almost miraculously, from the shadow of a nearby streetlamp. They wore dark cloaks and shuffled towards him in tandem.

One had light hair, lighter than Peter had ever seen, which was no small feat considering he’d once spent a month working as a cleaner for an upper east side hair salon. In a polar opposite image, the other woman had dark hair, it slid like oil down her back, blending with the fabric of the cloak.

“Evening ladies,” Peter waved, trying not to look too unsettled, “did I see that right or did that lamp just give birth to you?”

He received no verbal response, and the two simply put their hoods up in unison.

“A bit rude, but considering this could be your first day on Earth, I’ll give it to you,” he tried again. Often, goading was the best method to get a response, not that there was anything typical about these two.

Predictably, they continued to remain silent.

“Plus it is pretty cold, I wish I had a cloak, are yours fur lined?” Peter tapped his foot.

And then he was thrown across the street, where he landed windingly against a brick wall. He plopped to the ground on his bum and briefly imagined little cartoon birds flying around his head.

“Note to self: don’t talk about the weather- perhaps cloaked shadow babies don’t enjoy a British conversation style?” Peter sprung up and launched his webs out, hoping to pin the two down. His plan immediately failed as the strings burnt into ash mid-air.

He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the pair as though looking at a child on the ward who’d stolen an extra pudding cup. “That stuff is expensive, you know. But I guess once again I’ll forgive you because, no offence, neither of you strike me as the type to understand earthly currency.”

And then, finally, he received a response, as the woman on the left, the one with the dark hair, spoke, her voice misting frostily in the cold night air. “We are not to be trifled with, Spider-Man.”

So, they knew who he was, Peter thought. At least someone did.

Seamlessly, the other woman jumped in to continue the sinister warning. “We are death, we are vengeance-”

“Is this where one of you can only lie and the other can only tell the truth?” Peter interrupted. “So, let me get this straight, either you’re life, and…what’s the opposite of vengeance….hangry?” He questioned to himself.

They hissed at him, prompting Peter to continue his spiel. “Or, you are death and vengeance. Yikes. But then that also means you can be trifled with? I don’t know, I was never great at riddles.”

“Just ask one of ‘em what one plus one is,” a tinny, modulated voice cut in, and the three of them snapped their attention upwards, to where a dark metal suit hovered above them with crossed arms, one neon red and one neon blue, back lit by the vibrant full moon like some sort of techno batman.

Peter shielded his masked eyes with a hand and called up, “this isn’t a rave, glowstick dude, Brooklyn’s that way,” Peter jabbed a finger nonsensically behind him, keen to keep any casualties to the minimum. That is, just to himself.

The suited man shrugged, not seeming to pick up what Peter was putting down. “A good a name as any, I guess, and I’ve definitely been called worse. Though, I was aiming for more of a lightsaber effect, which I ask that you respect considering I’m not a 20-year-old glue sniffing raver.”

Peter was almost impressed, despite the jab at his age group, he had instant respect for any Star Wars fan. But then the man continued to speak, shooting their rapport to dust.

“I’m new on the block, Spidey, so I thought for my first day I’d hustle over and help you dispatch the weird sisters over here.”

Peter almost groaned, May’s fervid installation of manners the only thing preventing him from outwardly shooing the man away- new heroes were popping up faster than anyone, usually Ross, could knock them down, like overzealous, well-intentioned wack-a-moles.

Just last month, he’d had a run in with a girl calling herself ‘long-legs’- on account of, well, her ability to grow long legs. Only, she clearly hadn’t logged any training hours before attempting to foist a bank robbery, for she’d ended up uncontrollably filling the room with her limbs before Peter managed to stuff her through the exit into open air. He’d then proceeded to spend the next hour coaching the statue of liberty sized teenager down from both her enormous stature and her panic attack.

It was hypocritical considering he was fourteen when he’d started out, and split an entire ferry in half, but if anything that made him more determined to keep new heroes humble. Which is why he said the following.

“Buddy, if you want weird sisters then go watch Sister Act. Or go sell your arms on the black market, some nerd would kill for them.”

Peter would kill for them, it was him.

In almost painful obedience, the metal figure plucked his red arm from his body like he was a human lego and swooshed it outwards, moving in front of Peter just in time to deflect the pure white beam that the cloaked figures shot outwards.

Then the man inclined his head at Peter almost smugly, “I think I’ll park myself right here, thanks Spider-Man.”

Peter breathed. “You just tore your arm off.”

Then Peter kicked out against the women, who had stepped forward to attack once more. The blow met and they thundered and skidded across the street, tearing their cloaks to shreds and causing Peter to wince.

He yelled out, “friction burns are a bitch, but really, I recommend astral cream, it’s like nectar.”

“Huh,” the tinned voice replied, “I’m more of an aloe vera kind of guy, works for burns, bruises, and big-ass gunshot wounds. I can admit I lost the alliteration there.”

“I thought it was your first day being a vigilante?” Peter countered.

The man put his hands up, having returned his arm to its socket. “Haven’t you lived, kid?”

Peter swivelled around at the man in confusion. That was a little personal.

But before he could retort rudely (Peter liked to beat attempted connection off with a stick), a glowing orange circle appeared before them.

And this time, Peter actually did groan.

Spider-Man had suffered a few run ins with Strange over the years, with each one hurting less and less and annoying him more and more. He’d helped him catch a busker who used the mystic arts to coerce donations, a squid monster that had hunkered down in New York’s sewer pipes, and a multiversal traveller who insisted that he needed to eat all of his counterparts to gain true cosmic enlightenment- that one had been a bit more gnarly.

And Strange wondered why no one took wizards seriously.

But today, Peter really didn’t have it in him. So, he watched, almost with the air of a cinema showing, as Strange coiled the two women up into a golden cocoon and threw them back through the still open portal.

“Spider-Man,” Strange greeted, steadfastly ignoring the neon man besides him, very much in line with his patented hatred of gimmicks.

“Doc,” Peter nodded, not giving an inch.

This was usually how warmly their interactions went. Peter harboured no small amount of resentment towards the wizard, despite the fact that 99% of what had gone down two years ago had been his own fault.

Perhaps it was more what the man represented: the loss of everything Peter knew and loved. Or maybe he hated goatees. Either way, Peter really didn’t like to talk to him.

And Strange, whether it was some remaining dregs of memory or what, seemed to pick up on the animosity like a dog sniffing by a buried corpse, he loved to pry around Peter, as though digging for the clues of a mystery he didn’t even know existed.

“I apologise for Nessa and Gladyth, they-” the man started.

“Witchy names, did they escape their Traitors episode,” neon guy interjected, causing Strange’s eye to twitch.

“I’m sorry,” Strange said, not sounding sorry at all, “what are you supposed to be? A firework?”

“They’re lightsabers!” The neon man defended, but the modulation made his voice whirr jarringly, taking away from the dramatic effect entirely.

“Spider-Man,” Strange prodded, “I was under the impression you were more of a solo act, I didn’t know you were recruiting easily offended blenders.”

“Real classy coming from the guy dressed like the Devil, you ought to be in the window of a Halloween pop up shop,” neon man scoffed.

And then silence ensued, and Peter guessed he was expected to fill it, if the two heads inclining at him were any indication, but he really couldn’t be bothered. So he settled for crossing his arms instead.

Neon man whistled. “Frostier reception in here than Steve Rogers making a call in the 60s,” he paused, ignoring the simultaneous indignant looks fired his way, and continued, sounding uncertain even under the voice synthesizer, “I thought you two were…space chums or something.”

Peter decided he had to say something if he hoped to duck out of here with his sanity, “I’m not justifying myself to a glow stick-”

“Lightsabers!” The neon man once again insisted, but Peter ploughed on.

“And Strange, I assume these two broke out of some magical prison over something that definitely wasn’t my fault,” at that, he adopted Steven’s deeper, Californian intonation, “and you’re here to play warden? Tell me how far off I am.”

The edge of Cloaky tugged for a moment like it wanted to give Peter a high five, just as Stephen replied, “they were actually on parole.”

Neon man stifled a laugh and Peter couldn’t help but join in himself, if only for a second, before he was resituating his crossed arms over his chest with a vindicated nod.

“Never change, Doc,” Peter said.

“Definitely change,” neon man butted in.

Peter conceded the point, liking the guy incrementally more. “Okay fine, change a lot, I’m still cleaning goo off my suit from last time.” He swivelled around to show the pair the hole in the back of his suit tinged with a murky green colour. “Washing machines don’t work on this crap.”

The neon man perked up. “Why don’t you swing by-” he cut himself off with an abrupt shake of the head.

“Your blender broke,” Strange said with faux sympathy.

Peter looked at the new vigilante in confusion, before deciding that he once again really couldn’t be bothered.

Instead he clapped his hands together. “Well this has been fun,” he spotted a nearby church clock, its little hand on the three, “and hey look, it’s actually the witching hour- creepy and topical. Anyway, I’ll probably see you soon Doc, but keep it lighter next time, a daytime ghoul maybe? And, uh, new guy? Thanks for the save.”

Maybe the neon man had broken, for he didn’t offer Peter any sign of life except for a weak wave of his blue arm, a similarly blue hue trailing behind it like a radioactive shadow (it was mesmerising if Peter was being honest).

“Until next time, Spider-Man,” Strange nodded, not looking at all like the day’s events had phased him.

And with that, Peter webbed away, trying to shake away his unease at the neon man’s sudden silence.

Fifteen minutes later, Peter arrived at the housing complex he’d lived in for the past year, ever since his brief stint of homelessness after the clinic shut down. It wasn’t much, the area was unkept, covered top-to-toe in graffiti, with every property separated with ugly barbed fences. And the streets stunk of weed 24/7, aggravating Peter’s senses to no end- but it was the closest he’d come to having a home in a long, long while.

He lived on the top floor of a grey bricked, two-storey house in a sort of apartment. His stairway had its own entryway that only he had the keys to, so the arrangement suited him just fine in terms of privacy. And he and the couple living below him had formed a rather healthy neighbourly relationship, if Peter said so himself, so he likely wouldn’t have minded the close quarters anyway.

His suit had been shucked off a few blocks back; Peter didn’t like to enter his apartment (even covertly through the back window) as his alter-ego and stoutly refused to unless he was mortally injured, which unfortunately happened more often than he’d care to admit. But he’d already had his identity leaked once and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience, not that he had much else left to lose.

Exhaustion overtook him, and he collapsed onto the mattress that also doubled as a couch and a surgery table, evidenced by the spots of blood that permanently stained it. He’d been unable to afford an actual bed frame, so it was supported by some wooden slates he’d found (and sterilised) from an alley.

He set his alarm before not even his fingers would cooperate with him, weariness rendering them dead weight, but he was thankful he managed it. Delmar despised tardiness, as much as he liked Peter, and he already had a couple of marks against his name for legitimate, civilian saving reasons (not that he could explain that), so he really didn’t want to push his luck.

Shutting his eyes, he was lulled into a half-conscious, delirious state by visions of lightsaber arms and weird sisters and lab days. They circled his mind like counting sheep; and like a nightlight, trails of blue shadow guided him into the fastest sleep he’d slipped into in years.

He snapped awake an hour later, his alarm blaring mockingly besides him.

…….

As a nurse, Peter was all too aware of the dangers of sleep deprivation. However, considering the extremely multifaceted life he chose to live, sleep often fell more into the optional category of his priorities, with food, money, and Spider-Man constantly warring for the top spot.

Luckily, however, today he was working a later shift at Sacred Heart, the dreaded overnighter. However, considering how the place was almost grotesquely over-funded, it didn’t suffer from the average caveats of limited doctors and over-worked staff, meaning more energy was divested into maximising patient satisfaction (or don’t let the rich kids report back to daddy that their stay at casa de hospitale wasn't five star).

This typically resulted in evenings of Peter dressed as a clown or corralling together patients for movie nights, trying to simultaneously pick a film that appeased both sugared up four year olds and the moodiest of teenagers.

The answer was Shark Tale- it was always Shark Tale.

Regardless, he had a blessed nine hours after finishing up at Delmar’s to indulge in his favourite recreational activity: sleep debt reclamation. But first, he was due some life admin.

Firstly, he sat down on a park bench to devour his free sandwich. He should have saved it for later, but he often had to cede control to the starving, rumbling beast that perpetually lived in his stomach like an unwelcome house guest- lest he become feral.

Food insecurity plagued him even when he did have extra change to spare, and weirdly, the knowledge of this actually served to comfort him- why stress about something if he was inevitably going to be stressed out about it anyway?

He paused mid bite, wondering whether that made sense before deciding, as was his daily (and morning, and afternoon, and evening, and nightly) motto: that he wouldn’t dwell on it.

Then, he brushed crumbs off this lap and made his way to the pharmacy, where he collected enough pills to open up his own clinic (beat that, Doctor Doctor Smith). He shoved the bags of little bottles into his backpack, and boarded the subway, thinking fleetingly that a mugger would get the bounty of a lifetime if they approached him- and also the most fleeting, considering Peter was a vigilante and could absolutely hold his own.

Soon, he was standing outside his house/apartment. But before he could take a step closer, Buster, next door’s Doberman, was on him, leaping and sniffing around his bag like it was filled with bones.

“Hey, Big B,” Peter tried to pet the excitable dog, but his attempts were brushed off, giving Peter legitimate concerns that the dog would rip his bag open. Which would be fine if he could afford the replacement, but unfortunately that didn’t gel with his current bank overdraft.

Katy, the dog’s owner, didn’t seem particularly moved by his plight, continuing to smoke her cigarette, throwing out an absent explanatory, “Buster used to be a sniffer dog.”

“Oh,” Peter hummed conversationally, and then, “oh! No, it’s not what it looks like, I have drugs, yes. But like medication drugs- for Lottie and Al,” he gestured uselessly at the house before him. “I don’t do drugs…not that I’m anti-drug! I love drugs!”

“Dude,” Katy said, “I don’t care,” then she whistled once and Buster was immediately at her side obediently waiting for her next command, leaving Peter to speculate whether she’d sicced her dog on him.

Either way, before Peter knew it, the pair were striding causally away from him.

Peter sighed, mumbling, “Jesus I suck.”

Then he shook his head and rapped on the door situated next to his own, only turning the handle when he heard a mumbled, “come in!”

“Parker!” Lottie greeted, standing shakily from her chair and giving him a kiss on the cheek, “did I see you having a flirt with young Katy over there? How nice,” she answered for him, “do you remember when you used to flirt with me Al? You were positively naughty.” Then she giggled to herself, guiding Peter into the chair she’d just vacated and forcing a mug of tea into his hands.

Sitting opposite was Al, who rolled his eyes affectionately, “I flirt with you all the time, Lots, you just don’t remember, you daft woman.”

Lottie and Al were a funny pairing- the two had been together since they were teenagers and were the real-life embodiment of an old married couple. They bickered constantly, which wasn’t actually too surprising considering the cabin-fever inducing close quarters they shared.

Al’s body, to put it nicely, had been failing him for the better part of three decades. He’d had a below the knee amputation for his diabetes in his sixties and had since added an entire roster of ailments to his record, eventually rendering him entirely house bound. He had arthritis, bronchitis, osteoporosis (most of the itises really), hypertension, and, in his words, was as deaf as a bat.

Peter tried to insist that the saying was ‘blind as a bat’ and that, in fact, neither statements were grounded in reality, but Al refused to listen. Not out of any real confusion, the man was nothing if not a wind-up, sharp as a tack, even at ninety years old.

And then there was Lottie, whose body was perfectly able (minus some normal age-related slowness), but was addled with dementia. She’d been Al’s primary caretaker for most of their senior lives, however she was unable to get her head around the bulk of it these days, hence Peter’s self-appointed role as drug dispenser.

One night, when the police had brought Lottie home after she’d been found wandering in a local park, Al confided to Peter that it was his life’s biggest failure, not just as a man but as a husband, that he couldn’t care for Lottie in the same way she’d always cared for him.

Peter hadn’t really known how to reply to that.

It made him think of how May and Ben would have been as an elderly couple. Ben definitely would have been like Al, sharp tongued and with it till the end, clinging stubbornly onto a body that had long abandoned him.

And Peter saw a lot of May in Lottie too, because even as the lady got increasingly more confused, her spirit never wavered, an innate goodness shining through no matter what. Just as May had used her final breaths to make sure Peter was on the right path, that he had a responsibility to do good.

Not that he was projecting.

Today, though, the couple seemed to be in better spirits, with Lottie seeming relatively cognizant and Al not as doped up on medication as usual.

The elderly man leaned forward, the oxygen tank besides him clanking at the movement. “So Parker, forgive my saying, son, but you look like one good breeze could knock you down.”

“Oh doesn’t he just,” Lottie chimed in, bringing her hands together nervously, “did you eat the cake I sent home with you yesterday?”

Peter and Al made eye contact. The cake incident had actually been over a month ago, and it hadn’t been so much a cake as mishmash of every kitchen ingredient the couple had owned since the nineties stamped into a vaguely circular shape.

“Uh,” Peter stammered, before recovering himself, “it was delicious, Lots, really. Thank you very much for making it.”

Lottie smiled, delighted, “you’re a good boy, Parker, a good boy.” She squeezed his cheek and Peter had to actively stop himself from leaning into the motion- he was slightly touch starved, he could admit, and the familiar sign of affection reminded him of his aunt all too savagely.

Peter took a sip of his tea instead, “and I’m good, really, it may look like a breeze could knock me down, but that’s just because I’m easy breezy.”

Al groaned and Peter took that as his cue to divvy up their various medications. And all too soon, Al and Lottie were having their afternoon, partly drug-fuelled, naps, while Peter pondered his own bed so tantalisingly near but so far.

His eyes fluttered closed and he leaned against the comfortable head rest of the armchair that had apparently belonged to Al’s mother. She’d had great taste, Peter thought. The mug in his hand teetered to the side, the half-filled liquid sloshing around tempestuously, unbeknownst to him, as he slipped away.

And then he was in a graveyard, Beck looming above him, an uncaring puppet master to Peter’s grief. There was something wrong with the image, though, where was Tony? His deceased mentor had crawled in his disintegrating suit towards Peter, the metal rusted and maggot filled, a harrowing spectre.

But this time, the graveyard was empty, almost peaceful. 

And then he spotted him- or them. The trio stood with their backs to him by a still pond and Peter staggered forwards, Beck watching silently, omnisciently. Peter reached out a shaking hand, green mist coalescing beneath his feet, and touched Ben’s shoulder. And then May’s, and then Tony’s.

Just as he was about to shake them into responsiveness, they turned of their own volition. A smile broke out over Peter’s face, he wanted to sing, he wanted to cry.

And then Tony walked away, barely giving him a second glance. Ben followed, holding out a hand to May, whose eyes roved uncomprehendingly over Peter’s face, before taking it, and the three disappeared into the green.

Drawn like an anchor to rock bottom, Peter stepped towards the pond and caught a glimpse of his reflection. Only, he didn’t have one, he leaned forward in panic.

And then he saw it. His face was featureless, it was just smooth, suffocating flesh- he was nothing, nobody. He frantically clawed at himself, he tried to scream but he had no mouth.

The mug dropped to the ground and cold tea soaked into Lottie and Al’s worn carpet.

Peter’s heart thudded in his chest and he checked to make sure the two were still sleeping, that his little performance hadn’t awoken them. Then he brought a slow and shaking hand to his face, childishly relieved to find his features still in place.

He noticed he’d only been slumbering for half an hour.

He didn’t care.

Half an hour later, he was soaring through the city, not a care in the world.

………

Upon arriving at the ward, Peter was promptly swept into Rachel’s office before he could even put his belongings away. Nervousness clenched at his guts and he toyed with the loose string of his backpack strap. Since becoming a nurse, he’d had to ditch his chronic nail-biting habit, which often resulted in him taking out his anxieties on whichever hapless object fell into his warpath.

Rachel sat opposite him at her desk, her hair neatly circled into a tight bun and a sheen of red lipstick making her mouth pop. However, it’d clearly been a while since she’d last applied it because it was slightly smudged around the edges, with a small fleck marring her cheek.

Peter considered pointing it out.

“Parker, listen.”

Forgetting the lipstick entirely, Peter’s heart sunk to the bottom of his crumbling shoes, and without thinking about pride or pretences, he staggered to redeem the situation.

“Please don’t fire me,” he rose to his feet, his wooden chair scraping behind him. “I’ll take on more shifts, I’ll clean out the bed pans non-stop, I’ll stop stealing toilet paper. Or, or- I’ll even take on janitorial shifts on top of my training, at the same time even, stethoscope in one hand, a mop in the other, phantom of the opera style. Obviously I’d wash my hands, and I definitely wouldn’t sing, but-”

“Parker stop, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” Rachel put her hands out as though taming a rabid dog. The silence rung out in his ears and Peter briefly considered whether he was actually foaming at the mouth.

“Sorry.” He plonked himself back down.

Rachel breathed, visibly collecting herself. “What I was attempting to say was that you’re doing well. Really well.”

“Oh.” Peter clammed up, the unexpected praise panging at him in a hollow, nostalgic sort of sensation. He slapped a grateful, slightly abashed smile onto his face.

Rachel smiled back, the red lipstick stain briefly disappearing into the dimple of her cheek. “We think you have real potential here. You’re a quick study, conscientious, and have a real knack for the social aspect too- the kids love you, and so do the parents. You’ve got a balance a lot of nurses take years to perfect. Now, I know you’re training as a licensed practical nurse, and not a registered nurse, which I won’t pry about. And perhaps furthering your studies here can be a future conversation. But for now, I’d like to discuss a particularly high-profile patient of ours, one we’d like you to work with.”

Peter leaned forward curiously. He generally didn’t subscribe to celebrity gossip, but he’d amassed some juicy stories during his time at Sacred Heart.

“Please say it’s Banjo, teeny, no knee again?” He queried, eyes twinkling, adopting their cockney rhyming slang adjacent coding system for referencing their more famous guests.

Not that Peter had anything against Angelina Jolie, or wished ill on her offspring, it was just that her kid had come in for a routine appendectomy a few weeks back and it had been a genuinely amusing experience. The actress had wowed the children with her Maleficent performance, so much so that some of the more full-time patients still talked about her. In pediatrics world, it had been invaluable.

Peter quickly scribbled his signature onto the proffered NDA, barely looking at it. Though he did notice that it was about ten times larger than average and boasted an almost obscene amount of threatening legal buzz words if he spilled the beans. His interest piqued.

He put the pen down. “So, whose kid is it? Atom Handler?”

“Think bigger.” Rachel’s eyes twinkled.

“Lake so knively?”

Rachel sung her next response. “Bigger!”

He thought for a second. “Meal on tusk?”

Rachel finally cracked, “Pony Lark.”

Peter mused for a moment, prompting Rachel to lean forward and drop her voice to a whisper, “Tony Stark. His kid has diabetes.”

And before Peter could come to terms with that blow, Rachel continued, barely audible even with Peter’s advanced hearing. Perhaps it was the ringing in his ears.

“But the best part?" Rachel grinned. "They’ve been lying to us this whole time- he’s still alive.”

He’s still alive.

In lieu of a response, Peter’s vision fizzed like a shaken soda, and the next thing he knew, he was hitting the ground with a resounding thud.

........

Chapter Text

Despite the crippling embarrassment of fainting at his place of employment, Peter recovered fairly quickly from his brief siesta.

Which naturally gave him more time to go utterly insane.

Rachel had left him alone in her office with a biodegradable cup of water (rich people loved sustainability), a few cookies, and a Gatorade. She’d squeezed him sympathetically on the shoulder and told him to take all the time he needed. But she’d adopted this sickly, pitying tone  that reeked of believing Peter was some traumatised snap victim.

Not that she was far off. But he’d like to see her have a loved one resurrected via pun by her boss. That would show her.

Peter put his head in his hands.

He’d watched Tony die, how could this be happening?

They’d hugged on the battlefield, a moment Peter later realised had been far more momentous for Tony than for him, the stolen years a vacuum between them. But perhaps it hadn’t been? Considering how his mentor hadn’t even thought to loop Peter in on the whole surviving thing.

Then Peter re-entered the denial stage of the revelation and madly flicked through the NDA for what seemed like the hundredth time, hoping to glean some further insight. Was it definitely the Tony Stark? Or was there another billionaire with the same name.

Morgan’s patient record once again proved him wrong, her slightly older face staring up at him toothily. She had Tony’s sharp almond eyes and the firm set of Pepper’s plump lips.

And that ended the denial phase. For now.

Peter stood up abruptly. A small mirror hung on Rachel’s notice board, half buried by sticky notes and general clutter. Through the debris, he made intense, almost manic eye contact with his reflection.

“Don’t dwell on it,” he muttered, his pale skin and purple eyes belying his attempted nonchalance.

He began to pace furiously around the tiny office space. And then stopped roughly in front of the mirror again, gripping his head with his hands in desperation. His breaths came in shortly.

Then he smiled hysterically at himself.

“This is good news,” he tried to convince himself.

And it was. Tony hadn’t died to save the universe, to save Peter the cockroach. He was living the domestic retirement he’d always strived for and was facing normal civilian issues like caring for a diabetic child.

Plus, the ward was almost disgustingly high calibre, it’s not like they’d ever have to struggle with medical bills, or shoddy doctors with fake names. 

And that wasn’t even factoring in the heart attack inducing severity of Tony’s old problems- like throwing missiles through wormholes and inventing time travel.

This was good. Tony was free.

But why hadn’t he told Peter? Had he completely misread their relationship?

Hot betrayal stung at Peter’s eyes and he batted away the encroaching tears furiously. He hadn’t broken down in years and absolutely wasn’t about to start now.

Maybe Peter had simply deluded himself.

Sure, he and Tony had spent the almost two years after homecoming practically stapled to each other, and Peter had looked up to the man in a way he hadn’t thought possible since Uncle Ben’s untimely death. 

But nothing had ever actually been said. Was Peter just a time filler? A stand in until Tony had his actual child? Someone he could actually love? Was Peter an idiot?

Peter continued to hyperventilate, gripping the top of the chair white knucklingly. It took everything he had not to snap it in half.

Then he stopped. He gathered all of his messy emotions and stuffed them back into himself like a reverse Pandora’s box. It didn’t matter, Tony didn’t remember him anyway. Why would he question the actions of a man who couldn’t even remember doing them?

Peter puffed out a breath and made eye contact with himself once more.

“Don’t dwell on it,” he reminded himself.

A knock came at the door and he replied evenly, numbly. “Come in.”

Rachel swept inside and cast a clinical look over him, assessing him for duty. What she saw, she clearly deemed acceptable because she gave him an encouraging smile, which he returned as genuinely as he could muster.

“Rach, you’ve got lipstick on your cheek,” Peter said.

The woman tutted and checked herself in the mirror, thumbing the offending mark away easily and without spiralling. Without wondering whether everyone around her had actively been keeping it from her like a grand conspiracy- sabotaging her even, ripping away her last chance at happiness.

Rachel caught his intense stare and laughed. “Honestly, you can’t take me anywhere.”

…………..

An hour later, Peter couldn’t avoid it any longer. He had to go to room 4.

He’d spent twenty minutes with Billy, who was behaving far less erratically today, thankfully.

Though, the boy had sourced a harmonica from some unknown depths of the ward to blow discordantly into Peter’s ear every ten seconds. But the grating action had actually served to screech over and block out Peter’s screaming inner dialogue nicely. So who was winning really?

Then he’d spent five minutes mopping up sick, which answered that question. And then another five minutes re-mopping the same spot when the patient had returned for round two.

After changing into fresh scrubs, he went from room to room with desserts, which comprised of particularly enticing looking portions of jelly that wobbled salaciously as Peter wheeled the trolley down the hallways.

He went from room 1-3, skipped 4, and dilly dallied in the ensuing fifteen rooms so much so that Rachel came to chew him out.

“You’re the only nurse on shift I’m allowing in room 4, Parker, don’t leave them hanging please.”

And then she breezed away, leaving Peter to refortify himself.

Shaking out his shoulders as though trying to buck away the knife in his back, Peter rapped on the door solidly.

“Password?” A voice rumbled through the door and Peter froze, memories of lab days and movie nights and covert outings to New York pizza joints bombarding him.

“Password?” The voice snapped him out of it, speaking slightly louder this time.

Right.

He summoned the secret knock he was meant to have performed initially, and the door was opened as though by an invisible hand.

“I hear we have a Princess Morgana visiting us today?” Peter entered the hospital room grandly, overcompensatingly, rolling the dessert trolley ahead of him like a human battering ram, making a beeline for the dark-haired seven-year-old propped up against a pile of frog themed pillows.

He spared the bearded figure behind him barely a cursory glance, not quite ready to face the newly resurrected ghost of his ex-mentor just yet.

“My name is Morgan, not Morgana, silly. Though Daddy sometimes calls me Mongoose,” the girl corrected, pink lips pursed in disapproval, an expression plucked straight from Pepper’s handbook.

Peter swept the chart seamlessly from the end of her bed and pretended to scrutinise it, not really taking the information in as he’d already been debriefed.

Oh, and also the distracting presence of a corpse looming politely behind him.

Peter plastered a smile onto his face. “Hm, yes, I see now. I guess since the princess is staying in another room, I’ll have to deliver this jelly elsewhere. Sorry for the mix up.” He turned to leave.

“Wait!” A squeal threatened to peel a layer off his ear drums, which twitched compulsively in response.

Tony offered a hasty apology, one that made it impossible to ignore the man any further.

“Sorry, sorry. Mo’s a bit of a kraken for anything strawberry flavoured. Good nurse intuition, actually- sorry I didn’t catch your name?”

Peter tried not to let a blanch coat his face and succeeded (he thought) in not turning to face Tony with the air of someone dying early in a horror film.

His eyes roved eagerly over the man, and despite his initial reluctance to look at him, Peter now didn’t think anyone could pay him to tear his gaze away.

Tony didn’t look too far removed from the man he remembered, perhaps a bit older, a bit thinner, and a bit more tired looking. He definitely had a few more greys peppered into his hair.

Peter didn’t know how to feel about that. And then he realised he hadn’t replied yet.

“Parker. Nurse Parker,” Peter quickly introduced. “And I didn’t choose the dessert menu, Mr. Stark.”

Tony looked momentarily amused, before reaching a hand forward and clasping Peter’s, who only belatedly remembered that handshakes weren’t meant to feel like wrangling a dead fish and offered the man perhaps a too firm of a shake in an over-correction.

“Huh. Solid.” Tony reflected, not calling Peter out. “Any shakes, call me Tony. You’re treating my kid, I think that puts us on a first name basis. Is Parker your first name or your last?”

The use of kid rankled something sour and bitter in Peter, and he chafed.

“Last, but I don’t use my first name, Mr. Stark,” Peter explained bluntly, powering on as Tony opened his mouth bemusedly, “and I’m not treating Morgan, I’m an LN, so I act more in a caring capacity. I’m your man if you want pillows plumped, vitals taken, or extra desserts smuggled in.”

At that, Morgan tuned back into the conversation, attention having drifted in favour of watching Barbie and the 12 Dancing Ballerinas on the room’s corner tv.

Peter plopped the last portion of jelly onto the girl’s bedside table and it jiggled in response. He could just about make out the room’s pink reflection warbling gelatinously, distorting his and Tony’s bodies like an edible hall of mirrors.

“Okay, so here’s the deal, Morgan. The doctors explained to you about your blood sugars?”

The girl nodded. “My immune system is attacking the insulin-producing cells in my pancreas, depriving my body of insulin, which is why I passed out, I was hyperglycaemic.”

Peter was momentarily taken aback before he remembered who he was talking to. “Exactly, Ms Stark, have a bite,” he offered her a spoon, which the girl seized only slightly less ferociously than a rabid wolf.

“So at the moment,” Peter needlessly elaborated, “your levels are on the lower side, so until your medicine starts kicking in we have to control your sugar levels pretty strictly. Which is why I’m here to keep an eye. Think of me as your personal Willy Wonka, minus the broken child endangerment laws.”

Tony interjected, looking concerned, “this is doctor sanctioned?”

The man had a hand out as though ready to slap the confectionary away- or even blast the bowl to smithereens with repulsors the man only just seemed to have remembered didn’t currently reside on his person, patting his chest uselessly.

It was then that Peter noticed Tony’s right arm was different. It was sturdier, not as flexible as its counterpart. Peter strained his ears and listened intently.

It was whirring.

A prosthetic?

Peter watched his mind float to the top of the room as yet another puzzle piece presented itself, one he wasn’t allowed to see the picture of.

He spoke detachedly in response. “Orders from above, don’t worry Mr. Stark, I’m not a renegade nurse.”

Tony put his hands up “I didn’t-”

“Lovely to meet you, madam,” he nodded as kindly as he could at Morgan. “Consider me at your disposal and I’ll be back after you eat to check your sugars.”

Peter seized the trolley and zoomed out of the room before either of them could reply. And when the door clicked shut, he bashed his head against the wall next to it.

And then half an hour and another vomit clean-up later, Peter was back where he started, feeling like he’d entered a twisted rendition of groundhog day- or purgatory.

Or just hell.

This time, though, he remembered to rap the correct sequence, so at least he was learning. He nodded at Tony, who once again opened the door, roleplaying as the richest bouncer in the world.

Peter took Morgans bloods with little incident, the girl clearly wasn’t squeamish, and the three waited in silence as the result came in, prompting Peter to whip out a game young diabetics usually loved.

“Put your bets in now- high, low, or medium?”

“High!” Morgan immediately guessed.

“I’m hedging low,” Peter opposed, paused for a beat, and added, “guess the gardener took a little too much off the top.”

Morgan giggled, while Tony looked on utterly unamused.

The man levelled Peter with a scathing look. “Guess that leaves me with medium? Which as a nurse should be your goal, no, Nurse Parker? A little unprofessional, I’ve gotta say.”

“Dad,” Morgan groaned, sounding like a sullen pre-teen.

“Yikes wrong crowd,” Peter whistled lowly, entirely aware that he was acting completely unprofessionally. His typical response to that kind of remark would have been to back down immediately and apologise, but he was fried and betrayed, he wanted a fight.

Peter beckoned the man into the corner of the room, who followed with fiery eyes, leaving Morgan peering curiously over at them.

He spoke at a whisper, Tony standing a breath away. The proximity only served to fuel his anger.

“You have a problem with the way I work, Mr. Stark, then that can be a conversation between the two of us. Or between yourself and my manager, if you’re really jonesing for a power kick. I guess being away from the limelight for so long has starved you for attention. Either way, I tend not to argue in front of patients. Don’t make me break my rule.”

Youch, Peter needed to reign himself in, he did still want a job after this, after all. He re-adjusted his stethoscope awkwardly. But before he could do damage control, Tony replied.

“You’re right, you’re right. Not a lot of people call me out, kid- sorry, Nurse Parker. I’m glad you had the guts, I think today killed me off. I found her, you know? This morning.” Tony breathed shakily, “she was unresponsive, it was like I was losing y-”

Tony shook his head as though he’d lost his train of thought, just as it was dawning on Peter that he was probably the worst person in the entire world.

Tony was very understandably spinning out about the diabetes, and an antagonistic nurse likely wasn’t helping matters.

But perhaps this was exactly what it would take for Rachel to remove him from Morgan’s care team. A quick complaint, maybe an informal reprimand, or even just a mention that Peter perhaps wasn’t the best fit for the family.

And then he could pretend none of this had ever happened. Goodbye Tony Stark, hello Nurse no first name Parker.

But then Tony continued.

“There’s something familiar about you, Parker,” Tony surveyed him causally, as though he hadn’t just thrown a grenade into Peter’s carefully cultivated life and was returning to dance through the wreckage.

“We haven’t met,” Peter said sharply, and Tony flinched.

Peter resisted the urge to comb a frustrated hand through his hair and responded a bit more calmly this time, “I was out of line before, Mr. Stark, I understand it’s been a rough day, and I’d also understand if you don’t want me on Morgan’s care team anymore. I’ve signed the NDA already, don’t worry.”

And for some inconceivable reason, a lightning bolt of panic shuttered over Tony’s face. “No!” The man clamoured, and then looked confused at himself, “I mean, I think we’ll get on. And you’ve pleased the jelly kraken, which is the most important thing here, right?”

Peter spared a glance at said kraken and sighed. “Yeah. It is.”

Tony perked up. “So let’s write this off as a practice introduction and try again. Good evening, I’m Tony Stark, Morgan’s doting, but slightly misguided, father. And you are?”

Peter sighed again as he decided to play along, a small (read: gaping) part of him silently dying at re-meeting his mentor for the third time in his life (the fourth, if he counted the Stark Expo in 2008.)

“Nurse Parker, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stark.”

And then he realised that he wasn’t lying, he’d mourned Tony for three years. And as surreal as today had been, and how angry Peter still was, Tony Stark was alive. Did anything else really matter?

Peter tried to convey this to the man.

“And I’m glad you’re still, uh, alive and kicking. Really.” Despite attempting to project the causal relief of a normally invested citizen who’d followed Iron Man in the news, Peter’s voice came out somewhat raspy.

But Tony didn’t look too perturbed, luckily, and seemed oddly sucked in by Peter’s emotional whirlwind. Why was that?

Peter shouldn’t dwell on it.

Morgan chose that moment to interject, her voice loud and impatient. “So, who won?”

Blinking, Peter reoriented himself and glanced down at her blood glucose result. “Nice and normal, just where we want it. I guess your dad was right,” he offered, an olive branch.

“But,” Morgan looked confused, “Mommy said Daddy is never right.”

Peter spluttered out a surprised laugh while Tony attempted to look insulted-but mainly succeeded in looking unduly haggard.

Peter checked the time. “Right, it’s nine o’clock, a good a time as any to call it a night?” He threw Tony a bone.

One the man didn’t even seem to hear, let alone take advantage of, his direct attention taken up entirely by Peter’s watch. The tunnel vision reminded Peter of when Tony would get hung up in the lab, when he’d say goodbye to his mentor one evening, only to return the next day to the man in the exact same position, squinting deliriously at Mark one billion.

“Daddy?” Morgan pressed.

No reply.

“Mr. Stark?”

Peter stepped forwards, and only as he placed a hesitant hand on Tony’s shoulder did he realise he’d grown taller than the man. They’d always joked about it, and now that it had happened, slipping by without either of them realising.

The thought made him tremendously, irredeemably sad.

Tony jerked in response to Peter’s touch. “Right. Sorry Maguna,” he rushed to reassure his daughter, who was instantly placated by the revival. “Guess these long days aren’t good for my old bones. Do you think Dum-ee’s motor oil will fix me?”

Morgan laughed, looking indisputably adorable with at least three missing teeth and wearing pink satin pyjamas. “Daddy, you’re like the Tin Man,”

Tony smiled like his heart was melting. “Then I guess that makes you Dorothy, right kiddo?”

Then Tony leaned forward and gave Morgan a kiss on her forehead, and Peter tried his best not to seethe. He felt like an ugly broken smudge ruining their blissful family photo. No wonder Tony hadn’t told him he was alive, who had he been kidding?

Morgan’s tiny hand on his snapped him out of self-flagellation, “Nurse Parker?”

He looked down at the girl, all his previous rage evaporating on the spot, leaving him feeling silly and cut open. “Yes, Morgan?”

“Can you be Toto?” The girl sounded unsure of herself, her big eyes gleaming up at him.

Peter wanted to sob. “Well,” he drew out his response, “I’m not sure I’ll fit in a basket. But if you’ll have me then I’ll do my best.”

Then he realised he was at his tether, that he had to leave right now before he started bawling and never stopped. Because Peter would never be Toto, he’d never be remembered, and he’d never be saved.

He rubbed his face, trying to appear casual, and not like he was pushing his ugly emotions back down his gullet, “Right-o, lights out. I’m off to do rounds, call button’s on the right if you need anything, and extra bedding lives in the closet.”

“Goodnight, Nurse Parker,” Morgan sung.

“I appreciate it,” Tony nodded gratefully, drawing Morgan into his arms, not looking remotely like he’d be using the extra bed provided.

Peter gulped, finding himself unable to conjure up any more words, feeling like he was about to turn into ash again. And this time, Tony wouldn’t try to make him stay. So, he simply nodded in return and fled the room.

An indeterminate period of time later, he came back to himself staring at his blank expression in the staff bathroom. Peter inclined his head to the left, and then slowly to the right, feeling unnerved at how little he felt connected to the image before him. Was this how it felt to look at Spider-Man? At the soulless eyes and blank mask?

He was suddenly grateful that he’d not been wearing the mask when May had spluttered out her final breath in his arms. But was what she saw any better? Peter stared at his brown, bloodshot eyes and imagined dying under them.

And then Peter was reminded of his nightmare, of May and Ben and Tony turning towards him with no recognition and no love left to give. Of a Peter with no face whatsoever.

Peter thought that would be better than this.

He huffed out a breath, clouding and obscuring the empty reflection. Then he reached out a shaking finger and drew a big cross over it.

……

If an armed gunman had entered the ward that night, Peter probably wouldn’t have remembered it.

In fact, he wasn’t really sure what had happened during the rest of his shift, only that he’d gotten through it. He checked the notes he’d made along the way and nothing seemed untoward, particularly as Morgan hadn’t required any more attention.

He usually liked to say goodbye to the kids before he clocked out, but there was no chance of that today. He’d make it up to them later, he still had his clown costume, after all. Or perhaps he’d do something Christmas themed, with December just around the corner.

Peter strolled along the frost covered streets, weaving through the morning commuters like a pro ice-skater. The morning dew and biting cold served to pump some life back into him, and he was thankful for it.

He thought maybe he’d dress up as Rudolph, that way he could still use his clown nose.

Peter slapped himself across the forehead. He’d left his backpack at the hospital, something he’d never done once.

Oh well, he’d be back later. And the Spider-Man suit lying at the bottom of it gave him an excuse to simply go home and sleep. That’s what he needed, sleep. That would fix everything.

Sleep.

He nodded and boarded the subway, trying not to give into the childish urge to bring his knees up to his chest and rock.

Perhaps he could devise a twelve days of Christmas themed treasure hunt. Though, he’d need to be careful to make it accesible for the bed bound kids.

The doors wooshed open and cold air mussed his hair slightly. He wished he had his hat, he was just wearing his short-sleeved scrubs and had begun to attract some sympathetic looks from the more appropriately bundled up civilians.

Peter wondered if any of the patients were secretly British aristocracy, that way he could source 10 lords a-leaping.

He smiled at an elderly woman who made concerned eye contact, giving her a polite nod. Or at least he tried to; he realised his head was so cold he could hardly move it. As a result, he more emulated a failed attempt at knocking down a bowling pin. The woman rushed by, looking disturbed.

Buster’s nearby barks signalled that he was just about approaching his apartment, but he couldn’t be certain, considering his attention only covered the pavement, as heavy as his head had become. There was grass leaking through the cracks of the sidewalk, as well as flattened pieces of gum, cigarette butts, Lottie’s slippers…

Peter’s head whipped up, just as he almost crashed into the woman herself.

“Lots?” Peter said gently.

Lottie, who was only wearing a nightie, not even a dressing gown, looked at him like he’d grown two heads.

“Parker?” She almost accused, “why are you here?”

“I’m just getting off work, Lottie, we’re standing outside the house,” Peter reminded her.

Lottie just stared at him. And then she burst into tears, rushing into his arms like she was a young girl, wrapping her frail arms around his equally as frail waist.

“It’s alright, everything’s okay,” Peter soothed, his own eyes becoming suspiciously wet, “let’s get you inside.”

Al was waiting for them in his chair, thumbing frantically through his phone. He looked up hysterically as Peter guided Lottie through the living room, and unadulterated relief coloured his wrinkled features.

“Oh, Lots, where did you go?” Al reached out for his wife, who crumpled into the chair besides him, Peter’s hand the only thing keeping her upright. He could feel every ridge of her spine.

The pair grabbed each other’s hands as though clamping down on a lifeline and Lottie continued to sob, her bottom lip wobbling and eyes scrunching. “I want to go home,” she blubbered.

Al looked despairingly at Peter, who once again felt like the odd one out in the family photo. Though he could admit that this one wasn’t quite as wholesome, the insertion of his jagged pieces far less of an intrusion. He considered his bed, and maybe his first cry in years.

“I’ll make some tea,” he said instead.

………

“Mr. Stark!” Peter bounded into the lab.

Tony was stood with both arms wrapped in a blue shining hologram, making minor tweaks to the specifications of Rhodey’s legs.

“Kiddo!” He greeted, swiping away the design and facing Peter, giving the teenager his full attention, “how was school? Did you tackle your abc’s today or did you finally graduate to nursery rhymes?”

“I don’t think you understand high school, Mr Stark,” Peter said, refusing to rise to the bait.

Tony hummed. “Go on then, wow me, what did you learn today?”

Peter flexed his hands out in front of him. “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“What sort of cock and bull question is that, Pete, you’re meant to be a scientist. No one heard the big bang, but I’m pretty certain that happened. Though looking at the state of our future generations, I’m thinking it probably shouldn’t have,” Tony huffed.

“Ouch, did Miss. Potts dump you again?” Peter whistled.

“What? No,” Tony scoffed, “or at least I think she didn’t? Wait is our relationship the tree?” Tony stared at his calloused hands like the answer would spring forth and punch him in the face.

Not wanting to touch that, Peter moved the conversation along. “I’m taking Philosophy 101.”

Tony scoffed again, sounding a bit like a horse. “God, you private school kids are pretentious. Save the big questions for college- or a midlife crisis. Trust your old man,” he advised.

Peter preened slightly but tried not to show it.

“Hang on, this stinks,” Tony spoke again, “you’re trying to impress someone. JM right?”

“It’s MJ,” Peter corrected exasperatedly.

“Gotcha! You admit it then? Stalker!” Tony did triumphant jazz hands and Peter felt momentarily punked, before trying to get the man off the scent.

“You think I’m that shallow? Or creepy even? Philosophy is fundamental to human existence, Mr. Stark,” Peter banged his hand against the table for emphasis, making Dum-ee chirp out a small warble. “It’s the cornerstone to any humane society. If we can’t understand ourselves, then how can we ever hope to understand anything?”

“MJ?” Tony tried again, this time more sympathetically.

“Yeah, MJ,” Peter agreed sadly, “I just don’t get any of it. And I made a fool of myself in class today. I just want her to think I’m like cool and enlightened and want to date me, is that too much to ask?”

“What’s that you were saying about not being creepy?” Tony grinned, poking Peter with a wrench like he was figuring out how to troubleshoot him.

“I’m being serious, Mr. Stark,” Peter insisted, resolutely not whining. Not one bit.

“Fine, fine, let me at it. I can be enlightened. I’ll be so enlightened Buddha will be out a job,” Tony made grabby hands at Peter’s backpack.

“You can’t say that, it’s offensive,” Peter mumbled, but retrieved the offending classwork anyway.

Tony plopped his reading glasses onto the bridge of his nose and Peter clamped his mouth shut, refusing to laugh. He wanted the man to help him, after all.

“Hemmingway?” Tony scoffed, “well that’s where you’re going wrong, kid. He wasn’t even a philosopher.”

“How would you know?” Peter folded his arms.

“Literature 101,” Tony grinned slyly, and Peter was granted a very unwelcome image of what Tony had looked like as a bachelor.

“Gross, vetoing this conversation, give it back,” Peter went to yank the paper from Tony’s grip, but the man pulled back, wafting the page mockingly above Peter’s head.

“No, no, come on kid, I’m so wise, give me a chance. This looks good, very philosophical.”

“Fine,” Peter relented, trying not to smile, especially as Tony cleared his throat dramatically, launching into a dramatic reading.

“Explain what Hemmingway meant by the following quote,” Tony cleared his throat once more, and Peter rolled his eyes.

“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.”

The lab went silent briefly as the pair pondered the excerpt, the mood shifting somewhat to something more serious, something contemplative.

And then Tony ruined it. “Well I guess I can add that to my list of achievements: genius, billionaire, philanthropist, immortal.”

“Sounds kinda metal, Mr. Stark,” Peter laughed, and then without thinking added, “and what about me?"

He regretted the question the moment it slid from his mouth, but he didn’t retract it, letting the insecurity sit between them, trusting Tony to handle it with care.

And his mentor did, his eyes becoming sincere and determined behind his dad glasses.

“As far as I’m concerned, the day anyone stops talking about Peter Parker is the day the world has ended.”

“Really?” Peter couldn’t help but press, genuinely taken aback by the compliment.

“Yeah just throw the whole thing out, back to the drawing board- you’re the best of us, kiddo.” Tony nodded seriously- and then fluffed up Peter’s hair roughly.

“No! I just gelled this down!” Peter protested.

Then he decided to prolong the moment, if only for a second. “And if it’s worth anything, I think you’re a tough act to follow, Mr. Stark,” he paused for a beat, “like a bad comedian who won’t get off the stage, or May that time she burned our kitchen down.”

“You’re a shit, Pete. You’ll be begging for mortality after I finish with you,” Tony said ominously, picking up his phone.

“Wait, what are you doing? What do you mean?” Peter panicked.

“MJ stands for Michelle Jones, right?” Tonny grinned wickedly.

Peter put his hands out. “Mr. Stark whatever it is, we can talk about it-”

His mentor simply hummed in response.

…..

There was a leak in Peter’s ceiling.

It was a big ugly damp spot that had appeared seemingly overnight, greeting Peter when he’d finally trudged up the stairs after leaving Al and Lottie.

He hadn’t bothered bringing up the idea of a care home, it was a well-worn discussion that never seemed to end productively. Al refused to leave the house he and Lottie had spent their lives in.

Peter supposed the man thought that if he gave it up, then it would just be the first in a long line of concessions that would ultimately lead to a complete loss of control, of autonomy.

Peter understood the feeling as someone who’d been displaced so thoroughly, so far removed from society- he wouldn’t wish that dark, lonely, and untethered feeling on anybody.

So for now he’d just keep an extra eye on the two, be ready to jump up at a moment’s notice and become a one-man search and rescue team/pharmacist. He could handle it.

And he could handle the leak too. But later.

For now, he stripped off his soaked sheets, because of course the leak was above his bed. He overzealously taped a bowl under the crack, ensuring it would stay in place, and conked out on the bare mattress.

Only to be awoken mere hours later to the obnoxious chiming of his phone. Midday light streamed through his blinds and cast daggers into his retinas, only serving to compound the headache that had been mounting over the last day or so.

It also illuminated the layer of dust that covered most of his surfaces and made every one of his unwashed dishes gleam. He groaned, propping himself up on one elbow to squint at his new text message.

It was Rachel, predictably, considering the only texts he received came from either her, Delmar, or his sporadic tech repair clients.

Hi Parker, I know you’re not on top form and I really wouldn’t ask if I had another choice, but could you come in? Simon’s called off sick.

Peter rubbed a hand wearily over his face, as though the action could scrub away the exhaustion imprinted under his eyes.

“Fucking Simon,” he muttered.

Hate was perhaps too strong of a word to use against Simon, but God that man rubbed Peter up the wrong way. He was perhaps twenty years Peter’s senior and lorded it over him relentlessly,  despite the fact that they were both on exactly the same level of their careers.

Simon fancied himself the smartest person in any room he entered and acted like a human thesaurus, spitting out words like ‘magnanimous’, ‘zany’, and ‘meritocratic’ on the daily. Then he’d pause whatever it was he was saying and check that the poor sucker stuck in a conversation with him had clocked on to his supreme intelligence, before continuing on with a smug, punchable expression on his face.

The character quirk could have been forgiven if the guy wasn’t also genuinely malicious. Once Peter had been no more than five minutes late to work, out of breath and lamenting unreliable New York transit. He’d arrived at the nurses’ station to find Simon already drafting a formal letter of complaint over Peter’s “perpetual proclivity towards tardiness.”

Peter disliked him heartily. He wondered if the guy was actually sick or whether this entire thing was just an attention grab.

Peter reacted to the message with a thumbs up and heaved himself out of bed, cursing Simon all the while.

He quickly showered, brushed his teeth with the last centimetre of toothpaste he owned, tried to tame his curly hair (he couldn’t afford hair products anymore), and managed to find a fresh pair of scrubs.

“There, presentable,” Peter nodded at the raccoon boy staring back at him in the mirror.

Poking his head into Lottie and Al’s, he was encouraged to see that the two were wrapped around one another, deep in sleep. They seemed peaceful, like a burden had been lifted. He left them a note saying he’d been called in to work and would be back later that night if they needed him.

Then he readied himself for round two.

In terms of an action plan, Peter had settled on forgetting any prior relationship to Tony Stark, as hard as that sounded.

Yes, he could drive himself insane wondering how the man had respawned back into existence; questioning himself, their relationship, and every sin that Peter had marked against his name.

But frankly it didn’t matter what had happened, all roads led to the same destination- Peter sat in the wreckage of his life, the last person to remember his name.

“As far as I’m concerned, the day anyone stops talking about Peter Parker is the day the world has ended.”

That Mr. Stark was still a ghost. He’d never be Mr. Stark ever again, at least not to Peter, not to this hollowed version.

So he would start again, he’d gotten good at that, after all. He’d get through Morgan’s admission and go back to mourning the Mr. Stark only he remembered. A blank slate.

But as Tony Stark was prone to doing, he threw a spanner in the works. Almost immediately.

“Did you know a May Parker,” Peter froze by the door as Tony ploughed on obliviously, “it’s just she was a nurse too, brilliant woman, and I was wondering if there was a relation there.”

“Yeah sure,” Peter began casually, refusing to be phased so quickly off the bat, “you ever heard of Parker Pens?”

As Tony’s face lit up, Peter belatedly remembered that they were the man’s writing implement of choice, to an almost fanatic extreme. Peter had never quite been sure whether Tony was winding him up, having them strewn all over his lab, offices, penthouse, and even Peter’s appointed bedroom.

Tony had never admitted it, but he loved word play almost as much as Peter did. He’d even invested in the pens under Peter’s name, presenting the boy with hefty shares with great pleasure.

“It’s all about merging your sources of production,” the man had stressed, “so when I’m dead and buried and SI is in your sticky fingers, you’ll be the first tech CEO to provide all office equipment internally.”

Peter had wanted to ask if the man was being serious, or whether he’d just not slept for a week. Again. But Pepper had arrived to shout at Tony over missing paperwork, and he’d lost his window.

Now, Peter realised he’d absolutely been joking. And once again felt like a colossal idiot.

He wondered if the couple were baffled at the sheer amount of money they’d pumped into a stationery company. It was one of the more pedantic queries he had about the nature of Strange’s spell.

Another minor one was about decathlon- how did Flash justify being an alternate if, without Peter, there hadn’t been enough members to qualify as a team?

Or how did MJ and Ned think they’d made such a close friendship because, not to toot his own horn, but Peter had been the driving instrument in bringing the two together.

Or even now. How did Tony think he’d met May in the first place, the two never would have crossed paths in a million years. Peter wondered what would happen if he asked. Whether Tony’s mind would burst open like a dam and break the spell, swallowing the universe whole.

Peter didn’t risk it, instead saying, “well there’s no relation. Just how I’m sure your Nurse Parker was great, but there’s millions of us out there, and not just as pens and nurses.”

Tony visibly deflated and Morgan grinned at the joke, or maybe her insulin injections had created a twitch- he should probably watch that. Either way, Peter would readily take the presented segue from discussing his dead aunt with his dead mentor.

“You seem in high spirits, Morgs,” Peter smiled at the girl, “how are you feeling today?”

“The doctors say I can leave tomorrow!” She said proudly, continuing on even as Peter’s heart sunk, “and I don’t feel sick anymore, though Daddy did snore in my ear all night.”

“That’s classified, Parker,” Tony warned, jabbing a finger in Peter’s direction, “imagine what a snoring scandal would do to my image.”

Instead of pointing out that Tony no longer had a living image to wreck and that he hated him for it, Peter leaned over and whispered something to Morgan, who eagerly repeated it verbatim.

“Snoring? More like boring,” the seven-year-old giggled hysterically.

“I’m not taking that,” Tony reprimanded, and then reached over the tickle his daughter mercilessly, messing up the bedding and revealing her little body wearing Spider-Man themed pyjamas.

Peter walked to the window and adjusted the curtains while he collected himself. Unfortunately, however, it was too late, the centre of his attention had been clocked, switching the conversation precisely where he didn’t want it to go.

“Do you like Spider-Man, Nurse Parker?” Morgan blinked up at him, “he’s my most favourite superhero out of all of them.”

“Just favourite, Morgs,” Tony corrected the girl’s grammar a little too strictly if you asked Peter, “most favourite is redundant.”

Morgan nodded seriously, and Peter wondered how the hell she’d fallen short there, but still knew the word redundant. And then the girl refocused, pinpointing Peter’s eyes like a laser. “So?”

“I’m not, uh,” Peter struggled to respond, not feeling very eager to give his opinion on himself, as low as it was. “I like Thor?”

“But what about Spider-Man,” Morgan insisted, not seeing how uncomfortable Peter had become, “Daddy always used to tell me all about Spider-Man when I was really, really little. About how he was my big brother and he’d come back one day to let me swing with him around New York.”

Peter went cold, like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over him and was now trickling spine chillingly down his back. He didn’t think he could take much more of this.

Similarly, Tony also looked surprised, but recovered faster than Peter managed to, jumping in to save the speechless nurse. “Maguna, I think Nurse Parker is a busy bee. He may not have time to talk about Spider-Man,” and then more quietly to Morgan, “and we’ll also be having a conversation about lying to strangers.”

“But I wasn’t!” Morgan protested, looking five seconds away from a meltdown, “you said Spider-Man was my brother and then when you came back you acted like it never happened, it’s not fair!”

Tony looked shell-shocked, so this time Peter came to his rescue, “I’m sure Spider-Man would love to be your brother, Morgan,” he said honestly, “he told me so…when I met him on the web.”

Morgan’s tantrum immediately wooshed from her body and she laughed, a bit hysterically and exhaustedly, but at least they were out of the danger zone. Peter then set her up with a game of jenga and beckoned Tony to the corner of the room- this time not to chew him out.

“Sorry about that,” Tony immediately apologised, dropping his voice to a whisper.

Peter shrugged, like this whole turn of events had been water off a duck’s back. “You think I can be phased? I’ve got a kid in the next room who won’t stop blowing a harmonica in my ears. To be honest, I barely heard Morgan.”

Some of the latent stress seeped from Tony’s body and the man worked some of the tension from his arm, rotating what Peter assumed was his prosthetic. “Pep, my wife, she was on a plane to Japan when Morgan…you know,” Tony glanced up at Peter who nodded, “she’s on her way back now, thank God, but I’m not great as a solo act, at rolling with this side of things- you know, ‘gentle parenting’,” the man brought his fingers up to encapsulate the phrase in quotation marks, “which I know sounds shitty and pig-headed and you probably thing I’m an ass-“

“You’re doing fine,” Peter interrupted, well-versed in recognising Tony’s textbook doom spirals. And this one seemed very much influenced by Howard Stark’s ghost, so needed to be handled with extra care.

“Mr. Stark, seriously, she’s over tired. That’s it. And you probably are too. If I had a quarter for every time I had to get that jenga set out to prevent world war three, then I’d probably be rich enough to fund world war three. You’re fine,” Peter repeated again.

“Right,” Tony agreed, “right. Sorry, kid- I mean, Nurse Parker,” Peter waved a hand in dismissal and Tony gave a shaky laugh. “You probably didn’t have ‘coach Iron Man down from a cliff’s edge’ on your bingo card for this week, huh?”

Peter couldn’t resist, he patted Tony on the shoulder, needing to feel his mentor’s solid, somehow alive, presence beneath his fingertips. “The universe gives and the universe takes away,” he said sagely, “but seriously can you repeat all that? I think I have harmonica ears.”

At the end of his shift, Peter went back and forth for a while. He wasn’t working tomorrow, so he’d miss Morgan and Tony’s departures. He was trying to figure out whether he should leave their final interaction as the quick check in he’d done half an hour before- Tony nodding politely in overcompensation for Morgan, who had entirely ignored Peter, eyes glued to yet another Barbie film.

It made a nice picture, but Peter spontaneously decided that he needed more. That he selfishly refused to waste the last meeting with his mentor he’d ever get.

He rapped their secret knock on the door for the final time.

“Hey guys,” he greeted, trying not to sound like he was leading a funeral procession. “I’m heading off for the night and I’m not in tomorrow, so thought I’d pop my head in before I lose you guys forever.”

Peter thought he managed to play that one off jovially enough.

“Ducking out of the Stark family party so soon, Nurse Parker?” Tony joked, “and here I was thinking we’d be getting an exclusive late night reenactment of Barbie 500, if the other doctors weren’t lying about you, that is.”

Peter laughed sincerely, “I’ve only got a clown costume, Mr. Stark.”

“Probably for the best then,” Tony shuddered, “those things give me the heebie-jeebies.”

And then the man reached out hand.

I’m just getting the door.

Peter shook it politely as Tony thanked him for the past couple of days.

Morgan hesitated for a second before leaping out of bed and scrabbling towards him, wrapping her tiny arms around his legs. “Thank you, Toto.”

Peter ruffled her hair fondly. “Get well soon, Dorothy.”

And then he made his way towards the door, turning his back on the two Starks, ready to move on with his life, ready to-

“Wait!” Tony called, sounding desperate.

Peter jolted, surprised, and even Morgan looked taken aback. The man raked his hand uncomfortably over his beard, stalling, looking like he had everything and nothing to say all at once. He seemed confused, lost in a way Peter had never seen him before.

His ex-mentor eventually spluttered out, “you’re a good nurse, kid.”

you’re the best of us, kiddo.

This time around, though, Peter accepted the compliment without preamble, he didn’t shy away or joke it out of existence, but accepted it for what it was: a goodbye.

Peter smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Stark,” he swallowed. “And I think you’re a really good dad.”

Withering under the weight of Tony’s suspiciously red eyes, Peter nodded jerkily and left.

He shouldn’t dwell.

…..

To make up for his dreadful lack of Spider-Manning the previous day, Peter spent a couple of hours after work patrolling, which predictably didn’t succeed in lifting his bruised spirits. Not one bit.

“So, what the fuck happened?” He asked Daredevil, who stood beside him a resigned air of nonchalance that did not befit their current situation at all.

Daredevil and Spider-Man teamed up every now and again. It typically occurred when Peter strayed too far into Hell’s Kitchen or Daredevil into Queens. Or, on one special occasion, Daredevil had actually sought Peter out himself, recruiting him to bust open one of Wilson Fisk’s many, many operations.

Peter had been stabbed with a pitchfork. It was awesome.

The two had a good amount of trust in each other, but Peter knew Daredevil was cripplingly aware of the age difference, it was like the man had sniffed it out on day one. But he didn’t pry; he’d even given Peter some top tips on fighting techniques when he’d painstakingly realised Peter threw punches with his thumbs over his fingers.

But now, however, the vigilante inclined his head at Peter like he thought he was simple.

“They killed each other,” Daredevil stated, crossing his arms in a way that made the rubber of his suit squeak slightly.

“With what?” Peter gaped, “a combine harvester?”

Just as he said it, a big wet glob of what looked like intestines fell from the ceiling, splashing back at the pair. Peter jumped away in alarm, but Daredevil remained as still as a statue, allowing the body part to splatter over the legs of his suit.

Peter tried not to gag, “Dude, come on, have some self-respect. Or at least respect your washing machine.”

“I get the suit dry cleaned,” Daredevil quirked a smile.

“Well that’s not very secret identity conscious,” Peter muttered.

And then he took in the scene before him a bit more analytically. They currently stood in the decimated remains of what looked like an underground poker room. Weaponry was strewn about haphazardly, along with at least five bloody and gutted bodies.

“I think they’re all men?” Peter speculated, trying to picture how badly an interaction could go wrong to end up like this.

And then almost childishly, perhaps he’d spent too much time at the ward recently. Or perhaps it had been a taxing day. Either way, Peter added, “do you think they were good people?”

Daredevil didn’t immediately point and laugh, which Peter thought was gracious of him, and instead turned the question back on Peter.

“Have you met any of those?” The Devil asked seriously.

Peter pondered the question. Had he? What was it that made someone good, he wasn’t sure. Everything seemed so messy and contorted and confused these days, Peter could hardly even look himself in the mirror anymore, let alone think about morality.

In a show of cowardice, he piled a question on top of a question of a question. “Have you?”

Daredevil scoffed out a bitter laugh and, thankfully, answered with a statement. “Well I’m Catholic, so technically I have to think so, otherwise what’s the point?” The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing under his stubbled throat. “But I lost someone recently, someone who didn’t deserve to be lost,” did Peter deserve to be lost? “And I suppose that makes someone’s priorities change. Makes you cynical.”

I turned bloody and I turned mean, Peter 2 had confessed.

Peter thought about an orange sky and the universe coalescing into one. The day the world had almost ended. The day his had. When he’d positioned a blade above Norman Osborn’s throat and prepared to murder a man in cold blood.

Peter had always thought he was a good person. But look how he’d turned out.

“I don’t think people can be good,” he answered his own question, realising he was the only one who could, “I think the world doesn’t allow for it.”

I think you’re a really good dad.

“Spider-Man-” Daredevil started.

Blue light and police sirens filled the room, and the two were forced to separate; somewhat luckily considering Peter really didn’t fancy getting the mental health talk from a man who dressed up like the devil, beat New York’s criminal population half to death, and spent about a quarter of his nights passed out in dumpsters.

However later, Peter almost wished he’d stuck around.

As was his ritual, he changed out of his suit in a random alley he selected a few blocks from his complex. But the closer he got to the grey bricked house, the more a sensation of utter unease wormed its way into his body. He picked up the pace.

By the time he was on his street, he was almost hyperventilating. He ran the last stint of his journey.

Coming to Al and Lottie’s door, he noticed a piece of paper pinned to the front of it but disregarded it in favour of trying the handle. It was locked. Without a second’s hesitation, Peter threw himself against the door, which immediately buckled and splintered under his weight, hitting the interior wall roughly as it thundered open.

“Lottie? Al?” Peter called, before breaking out into a painful series of coughs.

Finding himself in the living room before he could even blink, Peter ran to the figures lying slumped on the couch. He picked up the first wrist he could see and checked the pulse.

Nothing.

Coughs a non-stop litany now, Peter repeated the check again. Nothing. He needed to get them out.

Not caring about any pretences of being a normal human, he grabbed Lottie and hauled her over one shoulder and then Al over the other. His lungs burned and he almost fell to his knees but quickly managed to reorient himself.

A pair of batteries sat innocently on the coffee table, removed from the carbon monoxide alarm.

And then Peter was outside, dropping the couple roughly to the dirty sidewalk before collapsing besides them. But he didn’t allow himself much time to recover and immediately crawled brokenly towards Lottie. He patted her face gently.

“May?” He whispered.

Then he shook his head.

Rolling up the sleeves of his hoodie, he began CPR.

He put everything he had into the steady compressions, calling every piece of training he’d ever received to his mind’s eye. He wouldn’t let her die again.

Peter kept up a monotonous, unrelenting rhythm as sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer and closer with every second that passed. Time hung in the air like a war criminal facing the gallows. Peter refused to stop.

“You’re a good person,” he told May, “you can’t go, I don’t want you to go.”

Peter didn’t really know where he was anymore, it was like every moment of his life was merging into one, into a hellscape, into a ride he couldn’t flee.

And then gentle hands were trying to take May away. Peter screamed at them to leave him alone. That she could be saved, that he could be saved.

They didn’t listen.

A blink later, and Peter was sat on a slightly damp park bench, his ears filled with the trill of the morning birds playing their daily tune, the heavens above him letting out a light dewy drizzle. A weep.

No one was awake yet, except for him and the birdsong. The sky was still dark, but it was getting lighter by the minute as the sun rose higher and higher, hidden by a haze of murky clouds.

Peter shut his eyes. They felt gummy and sore.

Then he felt the letter in his hands. The one that had been gently hung on Al and Lottie’s dark brown door like an unwitting accomplice. Peter peeled open his eyelids and began to read, dragging his tired eyes over every word.

Dear Parker,

Lottie and I got married in June of 1960, she’d just turned 16 and I’d just turned 17. All the boys in the district were horribly jealous, and who could blame them? Everyone loved Lots, she just had something about her. Something out of this world. I still don’t understand why she chose me, but I thank God every day that she did.

I’m currently sitting with my beautiful bride sleeping in my lap, she’s had a long night so I think I’ll let her rest.

I heard you come in earlier, but I’d already made my decision and didn’t want you to notice anything was afoot. I hope you don’t think that makes me a coward.

You’re kind, Parker, well and truly kind. There’s not many like you in the world. But sometimes looking at you makes me feel scared, and I hope you take that with the love it was meant with. You seem so worn down, with this big sad look in your eyes that I remember from the lads coming home from Vietnam. That thousand yard stare.

I’ve pinned this note to the door of the home Lottie and I spent our lives in with the hope that you won’t be the one to find us. But if you have, then I’m sorry. More than you know.

I don’t know if I ever told you, and I suppose I didn’t, Lottie and I never really liked to talk about it. But we had a son of our own, once upon a time. He didn’t last long, he was born so early, too early. He spent most of his short life hooked up to machinery, it just about broke our hearts to see it.

We called him Peter, and we hope you can remember him for us.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time making this decision, so don’t you go around thinking I was being slapdash. Lottie and I lived a good life. And now we’re going home, wherever that may be.

And I hope that one day, and I’m sure Lottie would agree, that you’ll find a home of your own.

With all the love I can give,

Al

....

The sun finally peeked its way through the clouds, but Peter couldn’t feel its warmth.

We called him Peter, and we hope you can remember him for us.

He put his head in his hands.

...........

Chapter Text

The day Tony Stark learned about life on other planets was the day his two-dimensional world view shattered into smithereens.

If he told his younger self that aliens would shape the better part of his adult life, the younger Stark probably would have dismissed him entirely, educatedly assuming he’d taken one too many bong rips and lost his head.

Sometimes, Tony wasn’t sure he hadn’t.

Regardless, he’d been an ardent subscriber of the Black Forest theory; he’d even used it as a sleezy, drunken pick-up line when Pepper was merely his poor, hard done by assistant, and not his equally hard done by wife.

“Look at the sky, Miss Potts,” he’d said.

“Tony get inside,” Pepper hissed, “you’re meant to be making a speech right now, the ambassador is waiting.”

“Does it matter?” Tony raised his champagne flute challengingly to the cosmos. “Look at all those stars,” he insisted again, “14 billion years old and here we are, the sole champions of the universe. Do you think the ambassador knows how little he is?”

“Right, you’ve had too much,” Pepper sighed, “let’s just get you home.”

Tony had steadfastly ignored her. “You ever hear of the Black Forest theory?”

“No.” Pepper bit out.

“It’s an explanation. To why we’re all alone in this big empty roomba, this vacuum of space,” Tony snorted at his own joke, swaying slightly on the spot, before adopting a more bitter tone, “why none of the of the other kids want to play with us.”

“Go on then, what is it?” Pepper prodded, trying to get the conversation over and done with.

“Everyone’s hiding,” Tony sung, “they’re scared. We’re not good enough for them, with our bombs and our wars and our intrepid, intrinsic, ingratiated evil. Not good enough,” he hiccupped.

For context, that morning Obidiah had presented him with his cut of a weapons deal that had just gone through, and in a few short weeks, Tony would be jetting off to Afghanistan for a demonstration.

Tony shook his head and the world spun on its axis, the stars and the red of Pepper’s dress drenching his vision.

“I’d come out of hiding for you, Miss Potts,” Tony slurred.

Tony didn’t really remember much of the night after that, but according to page one, he’d vomited on the ambassador’s shoes.

He could admit now that, even before Loki’s attack on New York, space had intimidated him. Perhaps it chafed with his ego, the man who knew it all reduced to a speck under 14 billion years of infinity.

Or maybe it was because he’d grown up with Howard Stark, who’d loved to watch and rewatch old videos of the moon landing. One of Tony’s first ever memories consisted of being sat cross legged on the floor, his father on the couch above him smoking a cigar and sipping his third whiskey that evening as Neil Armstrong took his first step for man.

Howard had levelled him with a dead stare, one that said ‘I know everything you’ll ever be’, and told his son, “I bet his father was proud.”

Tony’s fear of space, of its unknown horrors, only got worse with every snowballing panic attack and every sweat inducing nightmare. Of floating above New York as a pinprick, a dwarf star in the blackness, thinking that was where he’d be laid to rest, doomed to orbit nothingness for eternity.

And then he’d done the impossible. He’d survived. And then he’d learned to coexist with wormhole, rather than allowing it to engulf him.

But still, space, aliens, and all it entailed was the looming monster at the end of a story book Tony would never be reading to Morgan, one he’d vowed never to confront. For her.

So why had he?

He’d died in his worst nightmare. He’d left behind his wife and his daughter. It was grotesque, it was unfair, it was the sacrifice-play born of a life he’d promised to leave behind.

So why did he do it? Why did he invent time travel? Why did he decimate his happy ending? Why had he looked at Strange’s shaking finger and ran to snap like an obedient lap dog.

And why had he died relieved?

“I was happy,” he muttered to himself, time and time again, “why was I happy?”

Death hadn’t stuck.

That had been his first thought as he woke up in Wakanda, Shuri’s young face grinning madly above him like a veritable Doctor Frankenstein, down to her long white lab coat and the electricity that still sparked and thrummed and exploded behind her.

It hadn’t helped matters that the princess had actually then proclaimed, “I did it! He’s alive!”

Less sinisterly, Shuri explained that Tony had never actually died, only hung over the precipice. The stone’s latent energy had kept him on ice, on standby. But not in any meaningful way.

Not enough that Shuri had let anyone else in on the ruse. The princess had decided it would be too cruel, and Tony understood (not that he condoned what she’d done). She’d lied to Pepper, to anyone who asked, saying his body was too radioactive to be released, too volatile. Which they’d accepted with knowing ease, all too understanding of Tony’s destiny to be a martyr. That the curse would follow him even in death.

Until the princess had developed a theory. And proceeded to chop off his arm.

“Oh,” Tony had muttered faintly, “more of a reverse Doctor Frankenstein, then.”

Without the rot of lingering energy that had been stored in Tony’s snapping appendage, his vitals had declined rapidly. But Shuri, thinking on the spot, replaced the loss with the full force of Wakanda’s power grid, effectively using her country as a jumper cable.

Letting Shuri’s tale wash over him, Tony took his first deep breath in the obliterated lab feeling incredulous, untouchable.

Maybe he really was immortal.

And then Tony immediately questioned where the hell that thought had come from.

Over the next two years, the questions kept on coming. And they didn’t stop. They painted dirty brushstrokes over his happy reunions, they followed him no matter where he went, they didn’t let him sleep.

‘Why was I happy?’ Tony asked himself as he scooped Morgan into his arms, a year older and a little wiser, but still his daughter.

‘Why do I keep looking above the sink?’ He washed the mixing bowl that he’d made Pepper’s birthday cake in.

‘Why do I feel like I’ve lost something?’ He wracked his brains, watching Clint correct Cooper’s posture, steadying his son’s shoulder with one hand, and tilting his arm up with the other.

That one hurt.

‘Why does Spider-Man keep showing up in my nightmares like a bad penny?’ He paced quietly at 3am, Pepper and Morgan sleeping peacefully upstairs.

Why do my hands never feel clean?

So, one day, after Tony had woken up heaving with yet another silent apology on his lips for Spider-Man, who he’d barely known from Adam, the inventor decided to investigate. Once and for all.

And if that meant he broke his vow once again, then so be it. Because he couldn’t rest, not until he knew.

“I lost the kid,” Dream Tony wailed, louder and louder with every night that passed, pleading for someone to listen.

Almost three years after the ‘death’ of Tony Stark, he took his life back.

…………

Tony wasn’t really sure where to start, he could admit. He’d become too domestic, lost his edge. His lab in the lake house generally remained untouched in his middle-age, his inventing days now solely at the mercy of Morgan’s every whim.

He often found himself struggling to say no to Morgan, he'd do anything for her. But entering the lab made him feel so inconceivably sad- yet another of the persistent questions that followed him around like a gremlin stalked midnight.

The last time he’d entered the basement had been to make his daughter a rainbow gun, and the time before that, in Morgan’s words, ‘a clock that that turns into a horse so I can go riding as soon as my alarm goes off.’

The latter had been a little harder to execute, so Tony contented himself with sticking a My Little Pony picture on a watch and enrolling Morgan in riding lessons. Who said parents had to be miracle workers?

Anyway, Morgan hadn’t found keeping his revival a secret as difficult as he and Pepper had initially been concerned she would. The two had debated the subject until their lips had gone blue, weighing up the psychological burden of pretending to have a deceased father against the blanket of safety it would ensure.

They’d no longer be marked, they could sink into the background, live as normal lives as possible. No more Justin Hammers, fake Mandarins, or Extremis.

And children were fickle, forgettable- Morgan generally had to deal with difficult questions concerning Tony for all of about ten seconds before the conversation was moving towards the latest Paw Patrol episode. Admittedly, it’d likely get harder as she got older, but he and Pepper promised to cross that bridge as they came to it.

But for now, they were happy.

Or at least Pepper and Morgan were.

Tony stood in his dusty lab, eyeing the table in the corner that still remained wrapped in plastic, almost like it was waiting for someone to join him, and got to work.

Tony couldn’t be Iron Man again, that was for certain, he ‘d pondered posing as a copy, but quickly scrapped the idea. Not even particularly because of the chaos it would cause, but more due to its untouchable legacy. Iron Man had risen leagues beyond what Tony had ever stood for, the superhero had become coated in gold, the standard for morality. He was heralded, prayed to.

And it made Tony cringe.

He wondered how Steve had tolerated it and felt a new wave of solidarity towards the man, who Tony still couldn’t conceive was old now.

But he had to get close to Spider-Man, and he really didn’t fancy playing the role of a hysterical civilian. Tony briefly side-tracked, imagining himself dressed as a grandma, wailing over a stolen purse before swooning into Spider-Man’s arms. Then he shook his head.

Instead, he spent the next few hours workshopping the blueprints he’d found buried deep in his files for lightsaber arms. He didn’t know why.

Tony did a lot of things these days without knowing the reason. Like investing monthly in Parker pens. Or having gummy worms stashed in his secret snack draw. Or having not one, but two guest rooms- even though he never had people stay round.

At around midnight, he let out a relieved exhale, stepping away from the masterpiece of a suit he’d created.

A small whine snapped his attention downwards to his golden labrador, who snuffled his wet nose gently into Tony’s hand, which shook with anticipation. Pepper would assert the pet was Tony’s mental health dog, but Tony opposed he was simply a new member of the family,

“Hey there, Churro,” Tony scratched the dog’s head, “let’s go find ourselves a creepy crawly.”

Which had then gone terribly, as did most of Tony’s attempts at subtle reconnaissance. His meeting with Howard Stark in the ‘60s shone in his mind’s eye.

But at least Tony knew he was on the right track. Watching Spider-Man on the news had been one thing, but actually speaking to him in the flesh (or cheap spandex) confirmed to Tony that something was amiss. Without a shadow of a doubt.

And it was always nice to get an opportunity to wind up Doctor Strange.

At first.

And then Tony’s head had pounded with dejavu, and he’d been torn between hugging the vigilante and scooping his own brain out of his ears with whatever implement was nearest. He would have settled for a matchstick. Or a machete.

Instead, he landed on becoming mute, standing stock still until Spider-Man had awkwardly departed, wrecking Tony’s chances of getting answers like a world-class detective getting mowed down by a butterfly.

But then Strange had peered at him, seconds after Spider-Man had swung off into the night, and said knowingly, “I knew you were blacklisted from Vegas, but don’t you think getting booted from the afterlife is taking it a bit far, Stark?”

“I actually got turned away at the door,” Tony grinned, revealing his face to the wizard, who actually smiled.

And more insanely, in a turn of events Tony never would have imagined possible, the two were then hugging. Briefly, and capped off with an awkward shoulder pat, but it happened.

“Let’s talk.” Strange gestured to the still open glowing portal before them.

………..

In the almost two years since Tony had woken up, he’d had a lot of time to ponder Stephen Strange. Namely, the kind of weight that fell on the man’s shoulders. If Tony thought his own responsibility to Earth was stressful, then Strange, by all logic, should be in a state of constant conniption.

Despite having been made a literal lamb to the slaughter by the man’s puppeteering, he couldn’t really fault the man for what he’d done, coldly setting up the chess pieces of Tony’s life, orchestrating it so he could die only at the appropriate, preordained moment.

It was Tony’s life weighed up against 14 billion years. Even a younger, ego-maniacal Tony Stark couldn’t dispute that one.

But that didn’t mean Tony had to particularly like the guy. Begrudgingly respect him? Sure. But like him? Never. Especially when he’d decreed so callously that if it came to protecting the time stone, he wouldn’t hesitate to throw him and Spider-Man under the bus, the kid was too youn-

His mind fritzed out. As it often did.

“Why was Spider-Man acting like you pissed in his cornflakes?” Tony launched straight into his questioning, after debriefing the man on Shuri’s brief foray into the world of Mary Shelley.

He sat in the big squishy armchair of the sanctum’s library, Strange opposite him, having needed to lift a heavy tomb away to accommodate himself.

Tony felt somewhat ludicrous sat there in his Star Wars suit, but found the thought of ‘making himself comfortable’ in front of the wizard even more off-putting. He settled for powering down the arms, so at least they would no longer be attracting New York’s entire moth population.

But even though he’d only created the arms a few hours prior, Tony completely forgot he’d installed a power down noise.

Shyoooom.

“Please take the Vader suit off, I can’t look at you,” Strange complained, half-avoiding Tony’s interrogation and half looking genuinely judgemental.

Tony put his black booted feet on Strange’s coffee table. “Vader couldn’t wield a blue lightsaber, numb nuts, I’m more of a Jar'Kai than anything.”

“You’re a middle-aged father,” Strange reminded him, “and not a sixteen-year-old boy.”

 “I-”

And then Tony had one of his spells, one that washed him with grief, doused him with mourning, and made him feel sick to his core.

“What’s wrong?” Strange demanded, sweeping a clinical eye over him. The wizard leaned slightly forward in his seat, causing a yellow tinged scroll to drop to the ground next to him.

“Spider-Man,” Tony stuttered, his brain stuck in the mud. He realised painfully that he made no sense, so he tried again, attempting to string himself together a touch more coherently this time.

 “I think I’m wrong. I think I came back with a screw loose, or some wire missing. Or someone missing. It’s like I survived my little swan song only to have my brain put back in upside down. I don’t know anything anymore,” Tony considered padding out the slightly pitiful statement with a ‘but I probably still know more than you,’ but found he didn’t have it in him.

He realised he didn’t care about sounding desperate in front of the man, not in the face of this. He just needed answers.

Without asking for consent, or any sort of confirmation, Strange was suddenly jutting his perpetually trembling hand out in front of him and Tony’s eyes rolled back in his head so thoroughly he could almost see his own spinal cord.

And then he was back in the room, the wizard smacking imaginary dust off his hands and diagnosing him with a cold, detached demeanour. “Slight sleep deprivation, plus your blood pressure is a little high- I’d watch that. And of course, you’re missing an arm, but I take it you’d already realised that yourself.”

“What the hell?” Tony launched away from his chair, feeling violated, like Wanda Maximoff was in his head all over again.

“Calm down, Stark,” Strange dismissed, “it was a harmless diagnostic, they use it in schools- in other universes, at least.”

“Well lucky me.” Tony sat down again gingerly, trying to temper his thudding heart.

“And what I should have led with,” Strange admitted, “is that you’re fine. You’re the same Tony Stark the world knows and loves, or loved, if that’s of any comfort to you.”

Tony waited for the man to add something scathing, something along the lines of ‘but it wouldn’t be to me.’

But the barb never came. Instead, Strange watched him silently, apologetically, seemingly waiting for forgiveness.

It only served to highlight the gaping years between them all the more keenly.

“You’re fine,” Tony waved off the breach, “I just need clarity. If there’s nothing up, then why am I losing it? Why does Spider-Man die in my arms every damn night? I barely even knew him. Why am I missing chunks of memory?”

Strange hummed thoughtfully, “I know this is errs more on the side of my Doctor tendencies, and you may not wish to hear it; but have you spoken to anyone? What happened to you is a recipe for PTSD, Stark, and don’t you think Spider-Man is the common thread? He was there on Titan, it’s only inevitable that you felt a duty of care towards him. And losing him was the first fallen domino in a long line of explosions.”

That settled unsatisfyingly in Tony’s stomach like a failed attempt at skipping a stone. “But I don’t dream about you- or the guardians either,” he added, softening the blow of that one. “There’s something missing here, I can feel it.”

But Strange only looked pitying. “I’m not certain I can help you find it.”

And that was the crux of their reunion. Strange wouldn’t, or couldn’t, help him. So Tony would have to find answers himself.

But then Morgan collapsed into her breakfast.

………….

Cho was abroad. That was Tony’s first panicked thought as he shook Morgan to no avail, his only daughter flopping around in his shaking arms like her strings had been cut.

“FRIDAY?” He shouted, his living room spinning and twirling around him.

“Sacred Heart children’s hospital has a specialised paediatrics ward, the best in the state,” his A.I chimed, not missing a beat, “I have already informed them of your arrival, and you have your lightsaber suit in your lab. I suggest you use it to transport Morgan there.”

And Tony did, breathing against his mask like a man entombed in a burning cave.

Morgan had actually blinked back into consciousness fairly quickly, and even seemed to delight in the journey above New York, which managed to stave off Tony’s near heart attack- somewhat.

And the doctors of Sacred Heart were nothing if not a well-oiled unit, they had a private room ready and waiting for Morgan, and had cleared Tony’s path of people like Jesus parting the red seas.

Morgan was quickly assessed and found to have Type 1 Diabetes, which turned Tony’s panic up several notches. How had he missed the signs? Was he an awful father? His daughter had been despondent, tired, and dehydrated for days. And he’d blown it off as some school yard bug and flown off to play Star Wars.

He promised, at that very second, with Morgan lying in her hospital bed in the pink silk pyjamas Happy had dropped off- that he was done.

No more super-heroing. Whatever was going on with Spider-Man, he’d just have to live with it. He’d pack up all this unknown grief and anger and misery. For Morgan. Because it was bad enough that she’d already lost her father once, and she needed him to be present now more than ever.

But, like with all the vows he seemed to make, Tony broke it.

And this time, his weakness came in the form of Nurse Parker, who barrelled into Tony’s life propelled forward by a food trolley.

……..

Nurse Parker was like no one Tony had ever met.

The boy (because who was he kidding, Tony doubted the nurse was even 21 one yet) barely even spared him a glance.

Which was fortuitous, because it gave Tony the opportunity to pick up his jaw, which had for some inexplicable reason dropped to the floor. His veins thrummed with something immense, something stronger than the infinity stones themselves. It was nothing short of sheer elation.

Why was he happy? The familiar question reared its head.

He’d managed to put himself in check, for all of two minutes, before he was snapping at Parker like a wild dog, his panic of the day finally finding a victim. It’d been somewhat humbling to have someone half his age give him a dressing down, but Tony couldn’t find it in himself to be miffed, he almost admired the kid’s chops.

Morgan usually deplored strangers. Not out of rudeness (she hadn’t inherited that side of Tony, to his inordinate relief), but simply out of shyness. His daughter had barely managed to look at her doctors, or the red-lipsticked head nurse, who had slightly beggingly tried to coax just a one word answer out of her, clearly desperate to impress Tony, if the barrage of self-conscious side glances he received were any indication.

But his daughter had taken to Parker like she already knew him, she’d even asked him to be Toto.

Tony never got to be Toto.

His head pounded like a drummer who didn’t know the concert was over. And Morgan’s tantrum the next day hadn’t helped matters one bit.

And then the fact that Nurse Parker had needed to step in to play mediator.

He’d never felt so thoroughly dressed down by a person in his life. It just wasn’t in Tony’s nature- he was usually the one in control, no one ever got to see past his cocky press tailored smiles and barbed comments (at least not complete strangers, anyway).

But Nurse Parker cut through Tony’s bullshit like it was paper thin, and not the result of years’ worth of pent up ego and repression.

When Parker ducked out of the room, the door clicking shut behind him, Tony spun around to face Morgan, who sat contritely on her bed.

“Is it true?” He attempted to sound casual, “I said Spider-Man is your brother?”

Morgan nodded eagerly, clearly relieved that her own father was no longer calling her a liar. Tony winced at that probable nugget of childhood trauma as Morgan ploughed on, “I told Uncle Happy you’d forgotten all about it, but he made me promise not to tell because you were recupating.”

“Recuperating,” Tony corrected absently, before asking softly, “that was years ago, honey, why didn’t you say anything after that? You know I’m all better now, right?”

“I know,” Morgan said firmly, in a way that seemed rooted into her core, “but then I asked Uncle Happy again if I could tell you and he said no.”

“What?” Tony spluttered, unable to hide his surprise. “Did he say why?”

And then Morgan looked serious, like she’d been bequeathed a secret mission. “Uncle Happy told me Spider-Man is a bad guy,” she whispered, like her words were sacrilegious, “that he hurt someone close to him. And I tried to tell him that Spider-Man is good, because you said so and I know you wouldn’t lie to me,” Morgan frowned, “but he looked really, really sad so I stopped. You aren’t mad, are you Daddy?”

“No, Maguna,” Tony rushed to say, “you could never make me mad, kiddo, that’s part of the deal. And I’m proud of you for being such a good friend to Uncle Happy.”

Tony planted a quick kiss onto Morgan’s cheek and left it at that, aware he’d already pressed a little too hard considering they were currently in a hospital.

Later, when Parker popped his head in, ready to clock off for the evening, for forever, Tony thought he was going to vomit. Dread rolled around in his stomach. His fight or flight kicked in.

Heart in his mouth, Parker’s bony back facing him, Tony panicked, shouting at the boy to wait. Parker had looked taken aback, but there was something looming behind his tired eyes that made Tony realise he’d made the right decision.

You’re a good nurse.

You’re a really good dad.

And then the boy was gone, slipping through Tony’s fingers like he’d done on Tita-

….

Tony settled into his bed, Pepper by his side, having finally returned from her back-to-back flights in a haze of panic, with Morgan sleeping peacefully between them. Neither parents were too eager to let her out of their sights.

Allowing the safety of their little family of three to envelop him, Tony was lulled him into unconsciousness.

And then Spider-Man was turning to dust.

But this time, it was Nurse Parker’s panicked eyes that were boring into his, pleading to stay, pleading for Tony to forgive him.

He looked younger than the person Tony had met, less burdened. And even though he was actively falling apart, melting into the death’s cold hand, the boy fading beneath Tony’s shaking hands had more life in his eyes by a mile.

Jolting into wakefulness only an hour later, the moon casting beams of white light onto the wooden walls of his bedroom, Tony realised something, what he’d been at the tip of understanding earlier, but hadn’t been able to hold onto.

His grief was love. He’d lost a son.

The weight on his shoulders, the monkey on his back, lifted. It was like solving an unsolvable equation, one that had sat in the recesses of his mind mockingly for all these years.

He knew it with more certainty than he knew the sun rose, that bees collected pollen, and the leaves fell in winter. It came naturally to Tony, it was sewn into his fibre, into his constitution. It was an over exercised muscle, one that nobody could ever snatch away from him.

Tony loved Nurse Parker. He loved Spider-Man. And the two were one and the same.

All he needed to do now was get him back.

……

Tony didn’t waste any time, he shook Pepper’s shoulder and gestured for her to follow him. And to her credit, despite her jet-lag, she didn’t protest, likely taking in Tony’s serious, urgent demeanour, his new sense of purpose.

But her easy-acquiescence didn’t last long. And soon he was coaching his wife through a panic attack.

 “I know,” he said, putting himself into this wife’s shoes.

Pepper breathed a shaky exhale. “You know this sounds crazy, right?”

“I know,” he said again.

“We lost so much, Tony,” Pepper was pacing by the lake, her attention on an empty spot just beyond their decking. “We had your funeral here. I had Morgan on my hip and we cast your arc reactor away. We said goodbye.”

Tony blinked, surprised. Of course he’d know they’d held a funeral, even that they’d watched his final goodbye. But in the two long years Tony had been back, Pepper had never spoken about the day in its entirety, not that he blamed her.

He took her freckled hand in his and gently stroked it with the pad of his thumb, trying to place his next words.

“The day everything changed,” he started, “the day I invented time travel. You told me it was so I could rest. And then when I,” he paused, “died, you let me rest for good. And I love you so much for that, I love you 3000.”

At that, Pepper blinked away tears, and Tony continued shakily, “but I’m not resting, Pep, I’m not okay. I need to do this. And I need you to let me.”

His wife brought her hand to Tony’s cheek, unconsciously mirroring her actions on the battlefield. And then she sighed.

“If Spider-Man is evil, I’m going to kick your ass, Tony.”

They laughed wetly, and that was that, Pepper was gifting her husband to the unpredictable hand of fate once more. Tony promised himself that he wouldn’t squander it, that everything would be okay.

He wondered if it was a promise he’d be able to keep this time.

After that, Tony didn’t stand still, he kissed Pepper goodnight and raced to his lab, smiling ecstatically at the empty, clingfilmed table, knowing that it was soon about to be filled.

Tony soared through New York with his lightsaber arms out in front of him, framing the skyline and its twinkling lights, ready to bring his boy home.

“Boss,” FRIDAY spotted the vigilante before Tony did, “Spider-Man is lying on the rooftop below you.”

“Huh,” Tony said, “so he is.”

Tony touched down on the gravelly, unlit rooftop and powered up his arms slightly like he was a human headlight. A group of pigeons in an enclosure hooted in protest at being bathed in red and blue, but Tony didn’t pay them any attention, too occupied with Spider-Man, who hadn’t moved an inch from his completely horizontal position, staring up at the night sky silently, looking almost sculptural.

“Spidey?” Tony called hesitantly, stepping closer to the boy. “You in there?”

Long seconds passed as the blank mask turned its head, Tony snared like a rodent in a trap in its white eyes.

And then the boy sighed and stood to his feet slowly, like he was simultaneously attempting to balance an invisible boulder on his shoulders.

“You missed the fire, neon guy,” Spider-Man greeted with a croak.

“Fire?” Tony questioned, confused. Though that would explain why the red of the wall crawler’s suit was looking a bit crispy- and reeked of smoke fumes.

Spider-Man tilted his head and gestured to the street below them, to where at least three fire engines shone out their blue lights, the fighters ambling in and out of a building’s decrepit husk.

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” Tony dismissed, “I need to tal-”

“Day three of vigilantism and you don’t care?” The boy coughed and brought a gloved hand to his throat, “that’s gotta be a world record, jeez.”

Under Parker’s voice rasp, Tony could hear an actual underlying layer of disgust, one that seemed worryingly uncharacteristic of the boy Tony knew, even if he couldn’t remember why.

“Look Underoos, I didn’t mean it like that,” Tony hastily tried to correct, aware that the conversation had immediately taken a turn in the wrong direction.

“Underoos?” Parker interrupted again, sounding almost manic.

“Right,” Tony remembered, he really should have gone in with a game plan here, done a modicum of research before zooming off into the night. But it was too late to start again, unless he paid Strange a quick visit to borrow the time stone, which he doubted the man would be okay with. So he bouldered on, cringing as Parker’s body language became increasingly defensive.

He stepped out of the suit.

“Surprise?” Tony said, splaying his now free arm out in a jazz hand.

“I don’t know how I missed that,” Parker mumbled to himself.

Tony felt a bit guilty dogpiling on the boy, but he wanted all his cards on the table. “And I know who you are too.”

Spider-Man sucked in a shocked, jerky breath. The boy stepped towards him like a newborn fowl, unsure but determined.

“You do?” The question sounded small, insecure.

“I do,” Tony confirmed and Spider-Man took another step towards him. “You’re Parker.”

The gravel made a harsh noise as Spider-Man dug his feet into the ground. He didn’t reply.

And then. “No, I don’t think you know me at all, Mr. Stark,” Parker coughed again and emitted a strange sort of exhale that Tony later realised had been an attempt at a laugh. “Do you think I can get away with patching up this suit?”

The boy lifted his arms, fully revealing the suit’s singed and smouldering fabric, before continuing. “Or do you think I should just roll with the gimmick and become a limited edition barbeque Spidey, collector’s item only. Though I guess we’re in the wrong season for it.”

“What?” Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Parker began to pace, not acknowledging Tony’s statement of disbelief. It was then Tony picked up on small, panicked mutterings coming from the boy.

“Don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell on it-”

“May Parker used to say that,” Tony realised out loud.

The pacing stopped as quickly as it had started.

“Please stop,” Spider-Man almost moaned.

But Tony refused.

“Why do I know that?” Tony demanded, and because he was on a roll, “and why can’t I remember how I knew her, how I know you?”

“You don’t know me!” Parker shouted, his voice breaking slightly. He stormed closer and closer until he was right in Tony’s face, pointing a trembling finger between Tony’s eyes.

Tony tried to calm down, adopting a more reasonable tone. “If you’re not Nurse Parker, then why aren’t you surprised I’m here? For all intents and purposes, you should be trying to exorcise me right now.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t Nurse Parker,” the boy said numbly.

And then he swooped off his mask in one motion, and Tony was face to face with the boy from his nightmares. But he looked strung out, ill looking, with cracked lips and under eyes with more bags than a check-out clerk.

However, that wasn’t even what startled Tony. It was the look in Parker’s eyes. If he thought they’d seemed sad before, then they were positively agonised now. They were misery reborn. Tony wanted to gouge out the offending things and lob them off the rooftop, just to save the boy from bearing them.

“Kid-” Tony started, reaching out in alarm.

“Tell me,” Parker whispered, “if you know who I am,” the wall-crawler spat the phrase out mockingly, heavily, “then tell me my first name.”

Tony’s mind screeched to a halt, stunned.

How had he not found out Parker’s name? He’d not even thought to ask FRIDAY, so caught up in his silly, human emotions, of taking the leap to find Spider-Man. It hadn’t even occurred to him. It had been enough for Tony just knowing he loved him. Everything else seemed inconsequential.

Love had been enough- Tony wanted to slap himself. Did he think he was living in Disney movie? And now Parker was staring at him, crushed, with those big, mournful eyes.

“I don’t remember,” Tony finally said.

The confession hung in the air between them. It was stifling.

“Please,” Tony’s voice cracked now too, and even though he hadn’t been in the fire, he felt its flames closing in. “What I do know is that I love you. And that I’ve forgotten you and I don’t know why. But I know I need you back, I feel like I’m dead. I feel cut open, you’re my son-”

“No I’m fucking not!” Parker screamed, “you were alive this whole time and you didn’t even tell me! Why are you even here? I hate you, I hate you so much,” the boy took a sharp, hysterical inhale, but didn’t stop there. “And I hate Pepper. And I hate Morgan. And I hate May, and Ben, and MJ, and Ned, and, and-”

Parker’s breaths came in like he was being choked; he hardly took in one gulp of air before it was spewing back out of him. Tony needed him to calm down.

The inventor reached out a hand slowly, afraid of spooking the boy. “You’re okay, you’re alright-”

“Don’t touch me!” Parker hissed, the words garbled and discordant. Two furiously shaking hands came out of nowhere and the boy shoved him away roughly.

Tony hit the ground, hard, and stared up at Spider-Man, who now had his hands planted bracingly onto his thighs as he hyperventilated.

“Don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell on it,” Parker continued to whisper, each strangled word coming out like a message to God.

And then the boy’s attention drifted elsewhere, to a puddle that had formed in a small concave of the roof. He titled his head slowly to the left, and then even more slowly to the right, lost in the depths of his reflection, which was tinged blue and red from Tony’s suit. With his head downcast, every malnourished curve and contour of Parker’s face became shadowed, almost skeletal looking.

Spider-Man grabbed the mask and slammed it back onto his face, seemingly as appalled by what he’d seen as Tony was. With the protection of the covering, Parker’s breathing became more even- by no means level, but out of the danger zone.

Tony eased himself up onto his feet. “What happened to my memories of you?”

He asked the question like he was requesting Morgan explain why there was crayon on the wall, knowing he likely wouldn’t get a straight answer, but needing to try all the same. Tony supposed he was falling back on the well-rehearsed tone because he was simply unable to reconcile with Parker’s almost eerie shift in demeanour.

“Forget it,” Parker ordered, his tone suddenly militant, like ‘no’ wasn’t a word in his dictionary.

“I need to know,” Tony combatted.

Parker shuffled backwards towards the roof’s edge and Tony followed closely, not eager to let the boy stray too far from his reach. Tony quickly glanced towards the boy’s wrists, and then double and triple checked again: his web shooters were secured.

That was one less thing to worry about.

Spider-Man levelled Tony with a dead stare that seemed to traverse his suit’s white googles, it danced out into the night and covered New York in its emptiness. Tony shuddered, unsettled.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Parker whispered, the wind almost carrying the words away, “the day everyone stops talking about Peter Parker is the day the world becomes a better place.”

With that, the boy fell backwards off the roof and away from Tony, who scrambled desperately to follow, his fingertips clawing at Parker’s shadow. He couldn’t let him get away again, he-

As far as I’m concerned, the day anyone stops talking about Peter Parker is the day the world has ended.

Tony fell to his knees.

I’m Peter, by the way.

Memories crashed into Tony like an asteroid meeting the Earth. He buckled under their weight, he screamed, he writhed, he begged for a moment’s respite.

The dam had broken, splintered out into the river. He was sucked under the current. 

It was every moment of his life compiled into one.

He was spitting May’s walnut loaf into Peter’s bedroom bin.

When you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.

He was in Staten Island, Peter standing before him in oversized pyjamas.

I just wanted to be like you.

They were barrelling towards Titan in a one-way ticket to the end of the universe.

You can’t be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man if there’s no neighborhood.

Peter Parker was dying in his arms, and it was all Tony’s fault.

I’m sorry.

……….

Tony blacked out.

………..

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Chapter Text

Peter was nervous, not that it was an uncommon state for him to be in, considering his general disposition. Ever since he could remember, he worried incessantly, every decision he made wrung out relentlessly like an already bone-dry wash cloth.

“Will Flash make fun of these blue glasses, or will he leave me alone if I go for a plain black frame?”

“Is Ben tired because he had a long shift, or has that mole I’ve been watching on his cheek become cancerous?”

“Should I pack a spare, spare, spare pen for my English exam? But what if I lose my bag, the mugging rates in the area have skyrocketed recently, then I’d have no pens left at all…I’ll put one in my pocket just in case.”

Peter would like to say there was a reason for it. For instance, it’d make for a great backstory to say it rooted from the trauma of his parents getting on a plane and never returning, which had obviously stoked the fire somewhat, but the character flaw really just seemed to be something he’d been born with, wired into his DNA as much as the spider-bite now was.

He was currently sat at his dining room/kitchen table scarfing down his third portion of bolognese. Garlic overpowered the dish just a smidge, but Peter thought he’d done okay otherwise.

May sat opposite him and Tony besides him, almost shoulder to shoulder, the fresh candle Peter had lit now half melted down, its wax dripping and hardening over its body.

The night had been a fun one, Peter’s two adult figures getting along famously, just as he knew they would. Initially, Peter had been worried there was too much bad blood between the pair, considering it’d only been six months since he’d let his identity slip to May, since Tony had ‘broken every child endangerment law in the book.’

But his aunt had just recently ceased calling Mr. Stark simply to scream down the phone at him, so Peter had decreed it was time for a group meal.

Which, as it turned out, was going a little too well.

“You know Peter was shitting bricks before you turned up, I think he almost fainted when I didn’t bring home the olives,” May laughed, ignoring the boy himself, who frantically waved at her to stop talking.

Tony snorted, not looking at all surprised. “Really, kid? You could stress pace your way out of a hole in the ground.”

“It wouldn’t work like that,” Peter redirected, “I’d just tunnel myself in deeper.”

“With any luck, you’ll tunnel through the earth completely and end up at a resort, that’ll chill you out. You ever had a mojito, kid?” Tony grinned.

“The antipode of Queens is in the Indian Ocean, I’d drown,” Peter deadpanned.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “And you’re alleging you’re not an overthinker?”

May laughed again, her cheeks pink from the bottle of merlot Tony had brought and shared between them. “When Pete was really, really little, Ben and I made up this mantra for him, for when he got himself really worked up,” May chanced a mischievous glance at Peter, whose face was practically puce with embarrassment.

“Don’t-” Peter warned.

“Don’t dwell on it,” May half-recited to Tony and half-reminded Peter, who could no longer see either of the table’s occupants, sitting with his head in his hands as May dug the knife in further.

“Which, fine, I can imagine looks a bit unhealthy on the outside, but you should’ve seen him, Tony. Pete used to just about burst picking out his school shoes. ‘But Aunt May,” she put on a high-pitched voice, “what if I grow out of them, statistically I’m due a growth spurt any day now.”

“And did he?” Tony asked, seeming to enjoy Peter’s abject suffering, reclining back in his seat for a full view of the show.

May scoffed, “God, no! He was always the smallest in his class, poor Pete, but it made for cheap back to school shopping. We never had to replace anything, Ben and me. The height you’re seeing now? That’s all spider sauce.”

“Please, please, please don’t call it that, May,” Peter groaned. “And besides, I could’ve had a growth spurt eventually, you don’t know that this was all the spider sauc- bite. Give me some credit.”

And then Peter bounced up and smoothly scooped up the dirty dishes into the one-handed waiter’s hold he’d recently learned from a restaurant owner he’d saved from a house fire. He then walked a couple of paces to the sink, resolutely turning his back to the table, attempting to keep the dregs of his image intact.

May hummed. “Okay Pete, since you’ve so kindly volunteered to do the washing up, I’ll let you win this one. What do you say, Tony?”

The man pretended to deliberate, before finally settling on an answer. “Sure, that’s a-okay with me. Just as long as you promise to can it with the growth spurts, spider induced or not. We can’t have you shooting up and outgrowing me, it’d be abnormal.”

Peter spun back round, eyes twinkling. “That depends, Mr. Stark. Are we talking with or without your loafers? Because I could’ve sworn I saw you putting in shoe lifters the other da-”

Tony jumped up from his seat, cupped a suds bubble from the sink, and plopped it over Peter’s mouth.

Gaping, the boy turned to May. “He just, he just-”

Tony pasted a sincere smile onto his face, sliding his hands into his pockets casually. “Don’t dwell on it, Pete.”

The two adults dissolved into raucous laughter.

As his bubble beard fizzled down to nothing, drying a bit tightly over his chin, Peter rinsed off the final dish. Turning off the faucet with a squeak (he should really fix that), he tuned his sensitive ears into May and Tony’s hushed discussion from where they sat on his aunt’s teal coloured couch, the one she’d bartered for so thoroughly that the seller had thrown in a pound of haddock alongside it.

He picked up a dish towel and began to dry the dishes, inconspicuously listening in as he went.

“You’ve been so good with him, Tony, really,” May praised. “Pete is much more himself these days, less world weary. Sometimes I think he feels like he has to carry everything all by himself.”

“I can add Iron Man themed stress ball to my resume,” Tony smiled one of his winning smiles, before clearly thinking better of it. He then brought his hand to rest on top of May’s for a couple of seconds.

“You know, that’s a real good kid you’ve got there,” he said more sincerely, his voice softer than Peter had ever heard it. “And, by my estimates, a big part of that comes from you.”

May’s side profile was covered by her dark hair, but Peter knew exactly the expression his aunt would be wearing. He saw it whenever he looked out at the audience during decathlon competitions or brought home his thousandth A plus exam paper. It never waned and it never diminished, no matter what. If anything, it only ever grew in ferocity.

May Parker’s unrelenting pride for Peter went unmatched. It pulled at her mouth and settled warmly over her features. It lit up her eyes more brightly than the diamond wedding ring she still wore to this day. And now, as Peter knew inherently and without looking that they’d be sparkling for him, he also knew he would never be more grateful for anything in his life.

May replied, shaking her head slightly. “Peter’s one of a kind, he could have been raised by a warlord and turned out the same,” then she dropped her voice even lower, to the lightest of whispers. “Please keep him safe, Tony, he’s all I have left.”

“You won’t lose him, I swear,” Tony spoke solemnly. And as Peter chanced a closer glance towards the intimate moment, he almost dropped the plate he was holding, only saving it inches from the ground with nimble fingers.

Tony’s eyes reflected May Parker’s pride, her devotion, like the sea reflected the moon. It pooled in his eyes and rippled out of him in waves of…love?

Tony kept going, oblivious to the psychological blow he’d wrought.

“I won’t lose him.”

……..

Peter Parker, it was safe to say, was dwelling on it.

He was coming undone. His loosely packed away trauma was unfurling at the seams. It was spilling out of him faster than he could stuff it back in.

But he was still determined to try.

The day after Al and Lottie’s deaths became a massive blur. He’d balled up Al’s letter to him and thrown it loosely into one of the park’s gum coated bins. Peter could’ve sworn the birds twittered out at him in condemnation, and that every jogger who passed him shook their heads. So, he donned the Spider-Man suit, ready to relocate and repress.

And then an hour later he was back at the bin, scrabbling through the morning commuters’ trash like the degenerate he’d become and extracting the crumpled note. He smoothed it down, folded it gently into sixths, making sure every edge of the paper was aligned neatly, and put it in his pocket.

His name was Peter, and we hope you can remember him for us.

Peter had ruined his own life, he deserved to be forgotten. The curse that sniped and growled at his footsteps his entire life had struck down the only two people left in the world who had truly tried to see him. But their Peter had been innocent, untouched. And the least Peter could do was honour that, honour Al and Lottie.

He ignored the small part of himself that cried out that he had been innocent once. It was the Peter he’d left behind at the Statue of Liberty, in May’s final breath. The diminishing piece of his soul that still wanted to be remembered. Could he still be saved?

Peter swung into the rest of the morning, leaving the question behind. He was mastered in losing people by now, he didn’t need to dwell on Al and Lottie, on his own rot. He’d keep their letter and then he would forget.

He wasn’t a lost cause.

He wondered if he could convince anyone of that, especially as he called out sick for both Delmar’s and the hospital, granting himself the small mercy, but feeling guilt-ridden regardless. Spider-Man would make up for it, he had to. The good had to outweigh the bad, because what else was there anymore?

Flames licking at his suit, Peter thought he was doing a rather good job at internalising everything.

He was attending the site of a kitchen fire, probably an oil fire, if he had to guess. The restaurant’s guests had evacuated so quickly that Peter quipped that maybe they’d already been on their way out- to no one’s amusement. His lungs were already slightly fragile from the slight carbon monoxide poisoning he’d sustained earlier, and his voice was now barely a croak with the added smoke, so maybe the joke had been lost in translation.

That was it.

Feeling unfathomably winded all of a sudden, the day’s events threatening to bowl him over by the knees, he decided to scarper from the scene and take refuge on a nearby rooftop, if only for a minute, just to get his breath back.

I just need to catch my breath.

Peter flopped onto his back and watched the night sky, feeling simultaneously bigger and smaller than all the stars combined.

“I’m trying so hard, May,” Peter tried not to sob. “Why isn’t it enough?”

And then the neon man had landed next to him.

Who had been Tony this whole time, if the man tearing his arm off mid-battle hadn’t been enough of a clue. Peter couldn’t take another second of this. He couldn’t stand Tony’s face, looking so close but so far from seeing him.

And then his breath actually did sweep away from him, and the phrase May had uttered before she’d died suddenly made more sense.

I can’t catch my breath, he thought desperately, clawing at nothing, trying to grasp some air, any air, to pull into his body.

“You’re okay, you’re alright,” Tony uttered, in a hollow impersonation of the man Peter had loved, the man who Peter thought had loved him too.

In murky rooftop water, Peter watched his own reflection accuse him. He surveyed himself, weighing himself up. And then he turned to Tony.

This spectre, this walking grave in front of him? He would never be Tony. And Peter would never be Peter.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he whispered, his vision blurred blue and red, “the day anyone stops talking about Peter Parker,” he said goodbye to Mr. Stark, to the one he’d dreamt up, “is the day the world becomes a better place.”

He leapt from the building, refusing to look back.

Feeling laden with renewed grief, he traipsed back to the house, thinking how strange it’d be to live in it without Al and Lottie, without the steadying presence of their increasingly staggered conversations, or the hum of their TV playing at all hours. He stopped at their door first, gracing a fingertip over the nail Al had pinned into it to hang his note. Then he turned to his own door.

Only to find an eviction notice slapped wonkily over it.

“Bad day for doors,” Peter muttered to himself, feeling delirious.

He dialled his landlord’s number, avoiding making eye contact with Buster, who was watching him beadily from Katy’s kitchen window.

The long and short of it was that Peter’s time was up. He was an unreliable tenant, never paid his rent on time, and now Al and Lottie were gone the house could be redeveloped into one larger family home.

“I have rights, jackass,” Peter hissed down the phone.

The landlord sounded smug, like he’d been waiting for Peter to argue. “That crack in your ceiling, the one spewing water into my floors? Well, that should have been reported pronto, son, meaning you violated your renter’s agreement. You don’t have a leg to stand on. I want you out- now.”

Peter hung up.

Then he smashed a brick through the window, even though his key still worked, and collected the single box’s worth of his belongings. The few meagre objects that encapsulated his almost twenty years of life. 

Buster looked on silently.

……

Over the next week, Peter lost himself more and more to every day that passed. But rather than feeling despondent, he felt angry. His rage was apoplectic, mercenary. Tony Stark’s pleading, caring, loving face fritzed in the corners of his mind. Every time he thought of it, it became increasingly twisted. Mocking, even.

The face replaced the uncomprehending ones of his nightmares. It infected even May and Ben’s. Everyone he’d lost swarmed him in his dreams. They grabbed at his arms, pushed down on his shoulders, smothered him with their desperation.

Peter growled like a feral animal, he kicked out. He didn’t want them, he didn’t want to be known, not like this.

So, he simply stopped sleeping. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go anyway. Instead, he took his rage out on every creep that lurked the streets, or every thief that targeted the vulnerable.

Peter still worked, he had to, otherwise every mark of his violence would remain purpled on his knuckles and expose him for what he was. Unclean. He used his paychecks to bounce from meal to meal, providing his body with just enough sustenance to heal him, but not enough to sustain him.

Tony’s face reddened in the din of his anger. Every bite of food tasted like hate.

He repaired a college student’s laptop and almost broke the stupid thing pressing down too hard on the trackpad. And then had to pay out of pocket, sinking his costs, into repairing his own mistake.

At least it was a mistake that could be fixed.

Delmar had sensed something was up, Peter wasn’t exactly subtle, taking out his frustrations on tins of beans and overly flattened sandwiches.

But he refused to be angry at the hospital, the kids didn’t deserve that. So, he reserved his rare, if fake, smiles for them, donning his makeshift Rudolph costume when the first of December rolled around and dancing from room to room. He let the kids ride on his back and asked them what they wanted for Christmas.

He cheered when Billy was discharged, and even stealthily smuggled him the blasted harmonica through Rachel’s final checks, making him promise to be the next piano man in return.

And on Friday evening, after a long week of pretending, of occupying the best of humanity and the absolute worse, he cracked.

Walking home from work, Peter felt the ground bottom out on him. His stomach lurched as he fell. At first, he assumed his body was finally giving out on him and he almost sobbed hysterically in relief. Until he realised what was really happening.

Sparkling gold swallowed him.

He landed on his back with a thump, the sanctum’s high ceilings and ornate carvings filling his vision. With dread, he eased himself upwards.

Tony and Strange stood before him, the former looking as hysterical as Peter felt, and the latter looking contrite. Peter couldn’t stomach either sight, so he looked away.

“Peter,” Tony greeted, his smile watery and relieved.

Peter grimaced upon hearing his name again, he didn’t like the sound of it anymore, especially coming from the source of every miserable piece of rage he’d felt recently. It’d been a moment of weakness, handing Tony his name, but he supposed the man would’ve figured it out eventually, it was still on his documents after all. He just needed to figure out how to leav-

“I remember you now, not this Parker bull, but you- Peter,” Tony cut through Peter’s train of thought like a bleeping land mine on the tracks.

Cold shock pooled in his chest, it was like he’d been slammed backwards with a battering ram.

“No, you don’t,” he tried, refusing to meet Tony’s eyes, not wanting to see the recognition that lay within them, the recognition Peter refused to admit he’d clocked the moment he saw his mentor, his ex-mentor.

Every day had taken more and more from him, and this would surely be the last nail in his coffin.

Tony stepped closer. Peter shuffled backwards.

With a sigh, Tony held out placating hands. “Something happened on the rooftop that night, Pete-”

“Don’t call me that,” Peter interrupted.

Looking confused, Tony stepped forward again, the action intrinsic, like a magnetic pull. Like before, Peter shuffled backwards in tandem.

“Kid, I remember you,” Tony insisted again, looking unsure of himself, fragile even.

Peter wondered what he must look like to the man to illicit such a reaction.

Tony bulldozed on. “It was like I had this moment of clarity-”

“I’m gonna save us the soap opera,” Strange dismissed Tony with a wave of his hand. “I found Stark half-dead on the rooftop of a strip club- no news there, and-”

“Can it, Dr. Seuss,” Tony refused to be derailed. “When you swung away, Pete- kid,” Tony hastily corrected, as Peter’s mouth snapped open, “every moment of, well, us, knocked into me like a wrecking ball. Every memory I’d been chasing, every regret, down to eating May’s atrocious walnut loaf, came back all at once.” Tony suddenly looked remorseful. “And I’m so, so sorry I ever stopped remembering, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, and trust me, that’s a tall order. But I need you to know that I tried every single day to claw my way back to you, even if I didn’t know it.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Stark,” Strange scoffed. “My spell casting was flawless, you’re just determined to break anything you touch.” And then he turned to Peter, looking humbled and small, his show of grandeur crumbling in the face of one of his biggest failures.

The wizard’s voice softened. “And we’re lucky he did, kid. I shouldn’t have done this to you.”

Peter tried to refortify himself, he couldn’t break down. So he went for a laugh, causing the pair to flinch back in alarm. Perhaps he should’ve tried for something more attainable, like a small smile.

“You’re alright, doc,” Peter said casually, determinedly avoiding eye contact, swallowing down his anger. It burnt as it slid back down his throat. “It was a joint decision, no hard feelings,” he inspected his gloved hand. “Just, uh, out of curiosity. How did you get your memories back?”

That wasn’t stray hope in his voice, absolutely not.

Strange looked like he wanted to continue to beg for forgiveness but stopped himself at Peter’s forced tone. “After Stark played sleeping beauty for the better part of a week, I eventually managed to wake him up- only for him to start blathering at me like a mad man until he essentially nagged the Runes of Kof-Kol out of my head, a feat formerly believed to be impossible.”

“What can I say? I’m a people person,” Tony adopted a self-satisfied stance, pinning his shoulders back and attempting to nod at Peter, who pretended not to see.

“Essentially, as the spell’s caster,” Strange continued, “I became its ward, its protector. So whenever I was confronted with you the spell fought me, tried to war with me to stay in place. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be rational around you.”

“I’ll say,” Tony crossed his arms, directing his words to Peter, who continued to fix his gaze pointedly at a scuff mark on the marble floor. “Wiz-kid over here tried to sic therapy on me. Thank God he caved when he did because I would’ve wrung his neck out otherwise.”

“Charming,” Strange dug, looking fractionally embarrassed.

“Charmed,” Tony rebuffed. “And thanks a bunch for the extradition service, but do you think we could have the room?”

Uncharacteristically, Strange obeyed, but not before casting an encouraging smile over at Peter, who suddenly felt like he was being presented to a firing line.

Just the two of them now, Peter didn’t let the silence linger and decided to get in the first word, unwilling to cede control to the man who had lied to him for so long.

He stared at Tony face on, challengingly.

“You may know me now, but who says I want to know you?”

“Did I miss a leap year or something? What did I do?” Tony looked genuinely baffled, fidgeting plaintively on the spot, looking not at all like the world’s saviour, but a kicked dog. It only served to incense Peter further.

“It doesn’t matter,” Peter bit, regretting his words already. But he wasn’t in control anymore, his hard-won repression was slipping through his fingers like it’d never been there in the first place. He needed to clamp down on it.

Determined eyes glinted back at him, and Peter knew he wasn’t about to get away with the omission. Edging forwards, Tony tried to reach out to him, but Peter flinched back, causing the man to run a hand in distress over his messy beard.

Looking agonised, the man spoke imploringly. “Kiddo, I need you to tell me what’s going on here, I thought I had all the puzzle pieces. I thought this would be a happy reunion, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this day.”

Peter snapped, his paper thin control tearing down the middle.

“You didn’t tell me you were alive!” Peter bellowed, raw anger coursing through his veins, hot betrayal commandeering his words. “You died in front of me and couldn’t even be bothered to let me know it was a lie? How could you? I cared about you, I loved-”

Tony cut in, his words precise, careful, with tender brown eyes locked onto Peter’s, allowing him no escape. “Pete, no one knew, only Shuri. She kept it on the down low because I practically was dead, done, bird food. To bring me back, what she tried was a shot in the dark, a hail mary, and it didn’t come without a cost. I’m assuming you noticed the arm, or at least heard it, wunderkind,” Tony flexed his prosthetic, which clanked almost soundlessly in response.

No one knew?

The timeline was beginning to dawn on Peter, but he couldn’t reckon with it, because it meant he’d have to face Tony, a Tony he hadn’t fabricated, one who was real and standing before him.

“Please stop calling me Peter,” he said instead, trying to delay the inevitable revelation.

“Peter, Pete, kid, I love you too,” Tony insisted. “I didn’t ever get a chance to tell you, I was too much of a coward, but you’ve got to believe me.”

“You’ve been back for two years,” Peter whispered.

“Almost,” Tony said gently, spelling it out for him. “And you’ve been gone for almost two.”

Voice strained, Peter let out a, “don’t-”  

Tony didn’t allow it. “Strange performed your spell on December the 17^th. Shuri brought me back on the 18^th.”

Peter’s vision went.

“I missed you by a day?” Peter felt weak, untethered.

“Like ships in the night, kiddo,” Tony tried to joke, but the delivery fell flat.

Peter tried to cling on to the betrayal that had fuelled him, the seething anger. Because he didn’t know what would replace it, and he wasn’t eager to find out. But unfortunately, as Tony’s pleading eyes bored into his exhausted ones, Peter found he had no choice. There was nothing to forgive, there was nothing else to hate.

Except for himself.

“I-” Peter stammered, trying to reconcile with what he’d become, to excuse himself.

“What’s running through that head of yours, Pete?” Tony intercepted his racing thoughts.

He couldn’t breathe. “I’m not-”

“You’re not what?” Tony prodded, and because Peter no longer had the energy to stop him, the man grabbed his shoulder groundingly.

Peter took a moment to stare at the inventor’s hand. It was just as he remembered, if a little older, a few extra wrinkles and age spots. A gold wedding band twisted around Tony’s ring finger, and Peter phased back to the day his mentor and Pepper had gotten married.

The wedding had been a quiet affair, confined to the tower’s roof. The aftermath of the accords had stamped out any need for anything too big, so it’d just been himself, May, Happy, and Rhodey. Tony’s ‘closest and mostest’, according to the man, despite Peter’s begging for him to admit that it just simply wasn’t a phrase.

"I'm Tony Stark," he'd said, "I don't just write the dictionary, the dictionary writes me."

Clichély, May had always loved weddings, she’d pounced on any opportunity to flip through her own album, tucking Peter and Ben to either side of her, making sure they were both giving her presentation an almost forensic level of attention. On the special day, Ben had worn a classic dark suit and May had worn a lilac-coloured dress, promising Peter that it had been very fashionable at the time.

When Tony and Pepper had kissed, his aunt shed a small tear, and maybe Peter had too, but the happy pair looked more at peace than he’d ever seen them. Soppily, it had given him hope for his own future.

Tony Stark had responded to his trauma by throwing a wedding.

Peter Parker had tried to kill a man.

“I wasn’t happy when I found out you were alive,” Peter said, watching with twisted vindication as Tony reeled back.

“Kid-”

“I watched you and Morgan and I hated you both.” Peter swiped at his eyes, which he belatedly realised were weeping.

He was crying.

He hadn’t done that in a while, the motion felt almost foreign.

“And I gave Edith to Quentin Beck,” Tony opened his mouth in shock, but Peter talked over him, his voice getting progressively louder as he blurted out every one of his blood-soaked sins.

“Ben died because I snuck out and he tried to find me. May died because I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. Thanos destroyed the universe because I couldn’t get the gauntlet off him. I let you snap on the battlefield. I broke my promise to MJ and Ned. I couldn’t take care of Al and Lottie.”

Peter couldn’t stop, his guilt was stripping him bare and he couldn’t stop. He’d never be able to stop because he wasn’t-

“I’m not a good person,” he informed Tony hollowly, signing his own death warrant.

Instead, firm hands grabbed Peter and arms were encircling him tightly. Stooping down a fraction, he blubbered nonsensically into Tony’s shoulder as the man ran soothing circles on his back.

“I’m not a good person,” Peter said again, making sure Tony had heard him correctly. Why was he hugging him? He needed to turn around and never look back, be rid of Peter’s curse before it sucked him under, destroyed him too.

But he couldn’t hear Tony’s murmured reply as another sob tore loudly from his lips.

It was like every cry he’d ever shunned was forced out of him like a hand had shoved its way down his throat, roughly extracting each and every tortured sound Peter could ever possibly produce. His chest jerked and heaved with it, his lungs burned.

He couldn’t handle it. As his knees began to cave, he felt himself be lowered onto the ground, Tony following after him, allowing Peter to bury himself into his chest. Their legs were tangled and the pair leaned uncomfortably against the sanctum’s bottom step, the cold stone digging into their backs, not that they noticed.

“I can’t do this anymore, I don’t want to be here anymore,” Peter cried.

Tony rocked him in response, taking a second to find his words.

“Come home with me Pete, we’ll get everything straightened out, scout’s honour. You don’t need to worry about anything anymore. I’m here, and I’m not leaving you again, I promise.”

Though Peter could hear the words, he could hardly decipher them, lost in his grief.

“May’s gone,” Peter bawled.

“I know,” Tony soothed. “I’m so sorry, but you didn’t kill her, Pete, I need you to know that.”

I just need to catch my breath.

With his ear pressed against Tony’s chest, Peter was privy to the ticking proceedings of the inventor’s body. He was warm, despite the colder than usual December they’d entered, and his breaths were steady, bracing. But there was a slight forcefulness to them that Peter could only recognise from years of knowing the man, of studying his baseline.

In conjunction, his heartbeat thundered like a ball thrown down a staircase, and Peter could hear the lingering machinery that still took up residence in the man’s ventricles, despite having had the arc reactor removed years prior. Not all scars could be erased, after all.

Tony Stark was alive, but he wasn’t immortal.

Numbness seeped into Peter’s bones as the realisation tore through his cathartic misery. He pulled himself from Tony’s grip, taking a moment to scrub the tears from his face, but the action likely only made him blotchier.

He started towards the door without a word.

“Where are you going?” Tony leaped after him, blocking his pathway.

Peter tried to get past him, but Tony got in his way once again. Peter sighed, wishing he could just vanish himself on the spot, but knew he owed the man an answer, as much as he’d hate to say it out loud. And what it’d do to admit it.

“I killed May, Mr. Stark,” Peter said steadily, with no waver in his voice. He couldn’t be weak on this, Tony had to believe him, he had to save the man. “Whether you believe it or not, that’s what happened.”

Immediately disregarding the words, Tony shook his head. “No, I read the report, it was-”

“I was there,” Peter watched the words trail out of him. “I held her in my arms. She made it her final words to put me on the right path. Because I’ve been given power that nobody should have, and I think she knew that- knew I didn’t deserve it.”

“I’ve never met anyone more deserving,” Tony countered, looking indignant on his behalf.

“Then you don’t know me as well as you thought. Or at least you don’t know what I’ve become. I’m not a good person, you don’t want me near your family, trust me. I’m cursed,” Peter warned, feeling like he was hardly there. “You don’t need to feel bad, Mr. Stark, we can just pretend like this never happened. You can go back to your life, and I’ll go back to mine.”

Tony’s eye twitched. “Hold the fuck on-”

Peter pushed past a shell-shocked Tony and went for the door handle. But Strange, who had clearly been lurking, beat him to the punch, throwing out a golden lasso to coil around the knob and pull it taut. 

The shining ribbon pulsed warningly, but not threateningly, and Peter stared at it entranced. Then he cast a bone-weary look back at Strange, who had assumed a defensive stance. And then at Tony, who looked like the life had been sucked out of him, though his eyes shone brightly.

Reluctantly, he readied himself for a fight. “Let me leave.”

Something stern shuttered over Strange’s face. “Not like this.”

A loud groan sliced through the tense proceedings and Tony stepped between the two, barring his hands out agitatedly.

“Chill the fuck out, Indiana, this was an escalation we could’ve done without,” Tony hollered.

Looking incredulous, Strange grabbed Tony’s elbow and shepherded him into the corner of the room, leaving Peter to despondently tug at the door’s handle.

The two spoke in hushed tones, Strange starting. “You’re proposing we let him go, are you mad?”

“You know he’s got super hearing, genius?” Tony sighed heavily, sounding pained. “And…yes, I am. We can’t just go all fight club on him, we can’t trap him here.”

Peter was half-heartedly surprised. Tony had once locked Peter in the lab for an entire afternoon because he thought the teenager had stolen his reading glasses, when in fact, he’d left them on his bedside table. The easy surrender didn’t seem in line with Tony’s personality whatsoever.

And Strange seemed to agree, gritting out a sarcastic, “really?”

“Would you judge me if I said if you love something you should let it go and if it comes back you’ll know it was yours?” In a show of flippancy, Tony linked his thumbs together to create a butterfly, though his hand jerked slightly, broadcasting his anxiety plainly to the room.

Wiggling his fingers, the man tried to make eye contact with Peter, probably trying to coax some life out of him.

Peter cast his gaze back to the floor guilty. 

“Yes, I would,” Strange snarked.

“Strange,” Tony threatened.

Rolling his eyes, Strange relented, but he looked extremely displeased. “Okay fine, at your command, great world saviour.”

But before Strange could break the spell, Tony motioned to stall him. He took a few steps towards Peter, dug his hands into his pockets and produced a clip bursting with crisp bills.

“I know you got evicted,” he said simply and grabbed Peter’s hand, forcing him to take the money. “The only way I’m letting you walk out of here is if I know you’ll be inside and safe, preferably wearing a fluffy white bath robe and sipping complimentary hotel prosecco. Don’t fight me on this, I’ll win.”

Needing the interaction to be over, Peter nodded haltingly and clenched his hand around the notes, the voice that trilled at him that he wasn’t worthy playing like a klaxon over his mind.

Strange vanished the lasso, and the monster in Peter’s chest quieted slightly. He jerked the door open and fled the sanctuary, down the steps, and through the streets of Greenwich Village.

Tony had spoken again, but Peter didn’t even pretend to acknowledge him, though the words echoed through him long after they were said. They followed a pace behind Peter as he ran and swirled tauntingly around the staggered, fleeting sleep that captured him that night.

“Pete, I’m here and I’m not leaving. Remember that.”

“That’s not my name anymore,” he replied much, much later, well into the early hours, the morning frost beginning to flake uninvitingly into existence.

He stared up at the stars, not even contemplating using Tony’s money, knowing he was exactly where he deserved to be, perched on a dirty rooftop watching over his city, if he deserved to call it that.

And he wondered how he’d gone so wrong.

……

Settling into work over the next few days, after one of the most angst filled interactions of his entire life, had been a bit of a tough switch. One that Simon, his colleague from hell, seemed to relish in exacerbating even further.

Conversing with his fellow licensed nurse always made Peter feel like he was being pressed through a tunnel and shoved sideways. He’d already been chewed out by the man that afternoon for not adding a comma to one of his case notes, and as the day dragged on, Simon seemed to make it his life's mission to push his buttons more and more.

They currently sat at the nurses station in a rare stint of calm on the ward. Most of the visitors had cleared out after the afternoon rush, and the opportunity to catch up on the backlog of paperwork shone enticingly before them.

Until Peter made the mistake of speaking, which bit him more often that he’d like. But unfortunately, he did sometimes need to talk to Simon, considering they spent an unhealthy chunk of their working lives together.

Peter breathed, flexing his fingers and squinting at the spreadsheet in front of him. “Did you put in an order for new scrubs?”

“Uh-huh,” Simon said, before snapping to attention. “Or rather, indubitably.”

Resolutely, Peter remained staring at the computer, not granting the man any kudos for the word use. He had to learn. Talulah in room eleven had almost cried yesterday because Simon had called them ‘diametrically opposed’ for having differing sandwich preferences, it couldn’t go on like this.

Simon, however, refused to be ignored. “Of course, if you were asking, I can certainly edit the proposal, snag you some extra garb, eh Parker?”

“We’re not court jesters,” Peter muttered, before reigning himself in. “No, it’s all good, Simon. I was just checking. Especially since we’ve got Noro Nora in again next week, that kid must’ve sicked up on half the staff in her time. We should’ve been wearing hazmat suits from day one.” Peter typed in that the order had been completed.

“Well, hindsight is 50/50,” Simon remarked.

“20/20,” Peter corrected absently, attention caught by a piece of tinsel that had dropped from the wreath on the notice board and now lay innocuously on the corridor’s otherwise spotless floor.

Simon rolled his chair away from his computer. “What was that, pisqueak?”

“Hindsight is 20/20 not 50/50.” Peter scrubbed his hand across his face, hoping to dispel some of the exhaustion that stung at his eyes.

Stretching his legs, he snatched up the glimmery tinsel and chucked it in the bin before turning back to look at Simon, who had a delighted twinkle in his eyes.

Simon smiled patronisingly. “Why would it be 20/20, that doesn’t make a lick of sense.”

“It’s referring to perfect eyesight?” Peter couldn’t believe his life had turned out like this.

The man laughed at Peter mockingly, causing the boy’s hackles to raise defensively.

He tried to explain himself without losing his calm. “Because in the present you can look back and see the past clearly, realise what you couldn’t at the time.”

Simon tutted, looking amused. “I think you’ll find that the phrase pertains to how even if you’d known what was going to occur, chance dictates you still might not have been able to circumvent it. Life is a coin flip, hindsight is 50/50.”

That was it, the end of Peter’s tether, he slapped an impatient palm down on the counter in front of Simon. “Look here-”

“Hey, hey, there’s my favourite LN’s,” Rachel stepped in, having rushed from her office, likely spotting the genuine world-ending rage in Peter’s eyes.

She steered Peter away from Simon, who waved cheerily like he’d not almost been punched in the face.

“Parker, Parker,” Rachel rallied, clapping her hands together, the red nail polish she’d painted on as soon as it hit the first of the month now slightly chipped from the week’s work. “Let’s keep it PG here, shall we? Little ears are always listening.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” Peter defended himself, to which Rachel’s eyebrow launched up at.

“So where were you headed with the whole intimidating, macho,” the head nurse adopted a gruff intonation, “look here buster thing?”

“I definitely didn’t say buster,” Peter murmured defeatedly, the nurse having effectively taken the wind from his sails.

“Didn’t you?” Rachel persisted.

“Nope, that’s my neighbour’s dog’s name and he hates me, I try to avoid all mention of him really. So that was a bit of a bust on your end,” he joked weakly, the thought occurring to him that he no longer had neighbours.

The small amount of humour he’d conjured evaporated on the spot, and the storm cloud that had spent the last two weeks following him started to make its gloom known.

Which Rachel noticed immediately, prompting her to speak a touch more delicately. But not before casting a cautious gaze around to ensure no one was listening in. “Parker, don’t think it hasn’t escaped my notice that you’ve been a bit worse for wear recently. When you’re not with patients, it’s like you’re hardly here, you’ve been acting languorously, even,” the nurse hinted.

Peter jolted and snatched a glance at Simon, who was leaning forward in his seat, practically straining his ears until they stretched. Sighing, he faced Rachel again.

“I take it you’ve had complaints from a member of staff who has chosen to stay anonymous,” Peter recited monotonously. It wasn’t the first occassion and likely wouldn’t be the last.

Rachel winced. “Sorry. And he took it a step higher than me this time, so I have to do this by the book. I’m under a bit of pressure here.”

“It’s all right, Rach, do what you have to do,” Peter said resignedly, imagining himself going through yet another Simon induced training course.

However, Rachel suddenly looked awkward. “My boss has suggested you take a small period of leave.”

Vision blurring momentarily, Peter brought a hand up to the wall to steady himself as Rachel pushed on.

“It’d be cited for mental health reasons, but it wouldn’t affect your record, and we’ll still pay you- we’re all on your side here.”

“Sounds like it,” Peter scoffed, mentally wrenching the tinsel from the display board and strangling Simon to death with it.

Rachel reached out and put a steadying hand on his forearm. “Look, I know this seems unfair, and I promise I tried to fight it. But, Parker,” she said hesitantly, “I really don’t mean to pry here, or sound insulting, but you do sort of seem like you might need it? You look done in.”

“I’m fine,” Peter said unconvincingly, gently shaking Rachel’s hand away.

Accepting the dismissal, Rachel assumed an overly professional demeanour- in a somewhat grating overcompensation for the tenseness that stewed between them. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You’ve got what, three hours left of your shift? Is that right?”

Peter nodded mutely.

“Perfect, so why don’t you take a quick break now, and then you can pop in to see Marcy,” in case she dies while you’re away floated unsaid over them, “then you can spend the rest of your time chilling in nicu? We’ve only got one premie in right now but he’s the absolute cutest. And I won’t hold you to the three hours if you don’t want, but I expect you gone for a least a week, Parker. Use this time to put some meat on your bones,” Rachel finished sternly, looking almost matronly.

Self-consciously, Peter crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t think he looked that malnourished. The heavy sense of failure pressed down on him, smothered him like smoke, but it was a familiar feeling by now.

“Yeah-” Peter tried to continue his sentence but found he didn’t have the words.

Rachel gave him that look again, the one that froze him over with its stifling pity. Peter wouldn’t tolerate it from her, she didn’t know what he’d done, so he shook his head and went for an easy expression.

“You’re alright Rachel,” he said, even though his voice was low with repressed emotion. “Besides, you’ll be stuck here all week playing Simon says indubitably, while I’ll be sending you post cards from the grand canyon.”

At that, Peter cast his mind back to trapping Strange over said monument, which allowed a small, almost genuine, smile to brush over his face. Rachel took the way out gratefully, telling him that she’d hold him to it, before sweeping away with the flimsy excuse of hearing a patient calling her name.

Peter didn’t take his break, not wanting to give his bubbling emotions any more airtime. Instead, he braced himself for all of a second before knocking on Marcy’s door. Which turned out to be a mistake.

“So, so, what are we learning today?” Peter slid into the room, noticing that Marcy’s usually well-stationed family were conspicuously absent, and the girl herself was lying half-upright, her tube taped nose practically snorting her textbook.

He didn’t want to look too relieved, but Marcy seemingly caught on as she followed his gaze around the empty room.

“Free house,” the teenager croaked, her voice barely there. “Thought I’d go really wild and catch up on some war poetry.”

“Killer party,” Peter formulated a smile, beginning to sweep the curtains shut. Despite only being around four o’clock, the sky was swathed in darkness and looked frankly dismal. Peter dreaded going back out into it, let alone sleeping under it.

But his action was halted at Marcy’s small protest. “Leave it,” then she tacked on a belated, “please, Nurse Parker. I’m not sure how many of these views I’ll have left.”

Heart dropping like a stone, Peter felt instantly guilty for his inner grumblings. Marcy would never leave this bed, let alone sleep under a night sky- go camping, like other kids her age. Her childhood had been stripped away from her and there was nothing she could do about it except to try and bask in New York’s dirty, smog bitten atmosphere.

“You want me to turn off the overhead?” Peter asked. “I bet the light’s reflection is making it hard to see outside properly, right?”

“Don’t patronise me,” Marcy bit, “I liked that you were one of the more normal doctors, don’t break your streak,” she paused. “But can you? I can’t read this stupid poem for shit anyway, my eyesight is all gritted from the drugs you lot pump into me.”

“I’m not a doctor, I’m a nurse- or pillow plumper, remember?” Peter countered, switching off the light. Darkness bathed the room, only the surrounding machinery’s small display lights chipping into the blackness. “I can read your poem to you if you want?” He offered.

Marcy shifted. “You just turned off the light, dipshit.” But behind her façade, and under New York’s panoramic, the girl suddenly looked small. Like the world had swallowed her.

“I have the eyesight of a bat,” Peter said, thinking back to Al, who’d insisted the winged creatures were deaf, no matter what Peter said to deter him.

The darkness started to swallow him too, even with his enhanced vision.

The girl hummed and held out her poem anthology with trembling hands for him to take. “It’s Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen. He fought in the first world war, but he condemned it across his works,” she inhaled deeply, trying to summon more words from her weakened body.

“He died a week before Armistice; it’s said that his mother received the news of his death just as the bells rung out to announce the war’s end. He just missed it,” Marcy wheezed, having reached the end of her ability to speak.

“I missed you by a day,” Peter muttered almost indecipherably, feeling inexplicably lost.

But Marcy picked up on the small words, correcting him in a gasp of air. “A week.”

“Right,” Peter shook his head, dispelling the memory. “Let’s dive in then. Get ready to hear some symposium style reading more rousing than Shakespeare himself.”

Marcy smiled and settled herself in bed more comfortably. Peter cleared his throat. Poetry had never particularly been where Peter thrived, English was more in MJ’s remit, but he wanted to try his best for Marcy. So, he launched in slowly, making sure every word was pronounced correctly, solidly, “Dulce et decorum est by Wilfred Owen,”

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;”

Marcy’s gaze drifted from Peter to the window, looking far away but somehow still tortuously present, like she too was on the battleground. He supposed she was, in a way.

Peter’s ears began to ring.

“Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.”

Thanos’ ships dropped bombs over the ruins of the compound. He’d been fighting for too long, from Titan to the husked compound in a blink.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—"

The words took Peter hostage. Was Ben’s blood staining the pages? 

“Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”

Beck swept through his nightmares, sent him spiralling through green mist.

“In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”

Tony crawled towards him in the graveyard. The rusted suit screeched, or was that the prosthetic? 

“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;”

Grey faced, Tony cast a final blank look over the battleground.

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,”

May begged him to be okay, her eyes glassy and unseeing.

“Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—”

Norman Osborn looked up at Peter, waiting for a fatal blow.

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

Peter finished the poem, and not a moment too soon. The weary words had reached out and possessed him, ruined him- if there had been anything left to save.

Tiredness came over him in a flurry. Circling his mind like a predator at large, he imagined Al and Lottie choking on gas. May’s frothing and foaming mouth. Ben’s blood drenching the ground, his clothes, and everything it touched. Pepper gently moving him to the side, so she could hold her husband as he died.

Peter wanted to blind himself, make it so he couldn’t see again, not this world. Make it so he couldn’t fail again.

Like a devil’s sick of sin.

“What does it mean? The old lie,” Peter asked Marcy, trying to snap himself out of his spiral, “is it Latin?”

The girl nodded slowly, returning her shadowed eyes to the room, like she too had been stolen away by the words.

Obscene as cancer.

And then she translated the final accolade, her voice cracking around the edges.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori- that it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.”

With great power must also come great responsibility.

Peter almost wished he hadn’t asked, as the visions bowled him over once more. It was Ben trying to convince the mugger that he could be better. It was chasing after the vulture on that flame wrought beach. Attaching a web to Thanos’ ship after Tony sent him hurtling back home through blue sky.

It was Tony writhing with the power of infinity, staring Thanos defiantly in the eyes as he refused to waver. As he sacrificed his happy ending.

To the next Tony Stark, I trust you.

“I didn’t think American schools liked to tout anti-military propaganda,” Peter managed to say, gently shutting the poem anthology and regarding the girl on the bed, hoping she couldn’t see his crisis.

The walls were closing in, they were crumbling at his feet.

Marcy blinked at him, clearly drained by the short reading, but she tried to respond regardless, a quality that Peter always admired about her- even now, as his vision blurred and weaved unfocusedly before him.

“Maybe the world needs to change,” she said sleepily, eyes fluttering shut, but her features remained taught with pain, even with the cocktail of pain medication she was on.

Shakily, he placed the poem by her bedside and reclined the girl’s bed back, readjusting some of the tubes so she’d be more comfortable, allowing the girl’s soft breaths to block out his thoughts as best he could.

“Goodnight, Marcy,” Peter whispered, wondering if it’d be the last time he’d see her, at least in this life.

Though she appeared to be sleeping, Marcy muttered back a quiet, “thank you Nurse Parker, g’night.”

Then Peter locked himself in the bathroom for ten minutes. That’s all he could give himself; he just had to get through this shift and-

And then what?

Get through this rest of his life?

The thought suddenly seemed ominous, dark. Peter had been dragging his depleting body from day to day for so long, to survive, that he’d hardly contemplated a future.

And he refused to now.

The plumbing squawked like an indignant bird as Peter turned on the faucet and splashed water on his face, attempting to spark, or waterboard, some life back into himself.

“Don’t dwell on it,” he told his haggard reflection for the thousandth time, wondering if the words would die on his lips.

The reflection that no longer belonged to him looked at him in disgust.

…..

Nicu was always an easy placement to get through, if a little sad. It required sitting himself on a chair and making sure everything was still ticking. Any change in vitals, any jerky sounding breathing, and he had to be up and summoning a doctor. That was as far as his responsibilities went.

Rachel didn’t trust him today, it seemed.

The baby lying before him, Emilio, had no mother, she’d been taken by death’s cruel hand before they’d even been introduced. And according to the chart, there was no father around either, they were awaiting the arrival of some wealthy far-off relatives to take Emilio into their care.

After applying a copious measure of hand sanitiser, Peter peeked a hand through the incubator’s glass slat and placed his finger in Emilio’s pink palm.

“You’ll be just fine, I can feel it,” he whispered. “I’m an orphan too, so I have a sense about these things.”

He hoped he was right, that little Emilio would be blessed with a family like Ben and May, or even Tony-

Nipping that thought in the bud, Peter cleared his throat and pulled his hand back out from the incubator. Just in time for the door the creak open.

He tried not to groan. “Simon, please, I can’t argue about hindsight anymore. You need-”

The nurse standing before him inclined his head at the diatribe, just as Peter noticed that something was outstandingly wrong with the picture before him. Simon’s face seemed uncanny, like he’d taken it off and been unable to place it back on correctly.

Peter rose and planted himself firmly between the imposter and a now sleeping Emilio. Then he lunged forwards, hauling ‘Simon’ upwards by the collar of his scrubs and slamming him into the wall.

“Who are you, what is this?” He growled.

‘Simon’ brought his hands up appeasingly. “Wait, wait, kid. This was a bad play, I can see that now.”

Then he whipped off the high-tech mask in a single movement and Peter was facing his mentor- ex-mentor. Again.

The adrenaline vanished as quickly as it had come, and Peter released Tony like he’d been burnt.

“What the hell are you playing at?” Peter whispered harshly, “I thought you were backing off?”

Tony did have the grace to look abashed. “I was- I mean, I am,” he corrected, “but I never said I wouldn’t check in. Especially as a certain spider kid didn’t spend the fun money I gave him on a spa day.”

This felt like a fever dream, Peter couldn’t bring himself to be angry, it was too absurd. Maybe that was Tony’s goal, with Simon’s face still crumpled loosely in his hand casting a slightly unhinged air to him.

“This was so much effort,” Peter sat back down. “Why didn’t you just ambush me on the subway or something? The real Simon could have seen you. You could get arrested for this, you know?”

Tony shrugged, pulling out a seat and sitting opposite Peter. “I think I have something wrong with me,” he said casually, “Pepper would back me up. I like to take the hardest possible route in life, makes things more exciting. Plus, you know, kids are cute.”

“You have a kid at home,” Peter grit, but his heart wasn’t committed to the anger, for once, finding himself transported back to lab days, to telling Tony that he could build a coffee machine that sang show tunes, but why on Earth would he?

“I have a kid right here,” Tony corrected.

It landed wrong, Peter could see it in how the man’s face became cautious. As his own face fell. 

Peter sighed. “I can’t argue with you right now, Tony. You realise this is my job? That there’s something at stake here,” he stood, “please don’t make this harder than it has to be, just go-”

“Woah, woah, who said we were arguing?” Tony defended. “I say you’re my kid, you disagree. Fine. I can’t say I’m happy about it, but we can still talk, right? Plus, if neon man is gonna be hitting the streets, then I think he and Spider-Man ought to have a good working relationship.”

“I thought they were lightsabers?” Peter asked before he could stop himself.

“Ha,” Tony jabbed a finger out, “got you to admit it.”

It was ridiculous, but Peter fought with himself not to laugh. Maybe he was delirious, when was the last time he’d eaten? But Tony saw through his facade all too well, looking pleased with himself for garnering the positive reaction.

Peter sat back down, reluctantly acknowledging that he couldn’t get Tony to leave without creating a scene (and not because he yearned to see the man after the day he’d had, to sit with someone who remembered him, someone who loved him).

He looked sadly at Tony, knowing he needed to settle this once and for all, even if it undid him. He opened his mouth, perhaps to ramble endlessly about his crimes again, or maybe to scream furiously at Tony to get away from him before Peter’s rot infected him, or maybe he would have just sobbed, all words abandoning him in his time of need.

In any circumstance, he never found out what his last, on-the-spot appeal would have presented itself as, because Tony was swiftly diving in before he could find the words.

“You ever hear about the guy who invented these things?” Tony rapped a gentle hand against the incubator, looking down at the bundle it encased softly.

Peter shook his head mutely, selfishly delaying the inevitable.

“Martin Couney, he was an obstetrician way back when in the 1900s,” Tony launched in quickly, presumably before Peter could object, “though he never actually held any sort of medical license, frankly he sounded like an SI lawyer’s worst nightmare. But anyway, the long and short of it- he invented incubators and modern medicine wanted nadamente to do with it, wrote him off as a hack. The really premature babies were given up on, it wasn’t so much of a thing to keep them alive back in those days.”

Peter stared at Emilio, at his small frame hooked up to about ten different wires and tubes. Then he looked back at Tony, who was continuing his tale, his gaze locked insistently onto Peter’s.

“So instead of hanging up his hat- I assume Couney wore a hat, everyone did back in those days, maybe we should bring it back,” Tony smirked and Peter wanted the ground to swallow him, the whole interaction felt so familiar it hurt.

Tony continued, speaking over Peter’s broken inner dialogue. “Instead, he kept both his proverbial and literal hats on, and brought his invention down to the circus, calling himself the ‘incubator doctor’, charging 25 cents for a peek at his miraculous ‘living babies’ show. And he never charged the parents themselves a dime. There was a lot of hostility towards his methods, a lot of stone throwing, but Couney saved around 8,000 babies in his day, and by the time he met the pearly gates, incubators were finally being introduced into hospitals.”

“You should be a teacher, Mr. Stark,” Peter spoke around the lump in his throat, feeling oddly evoked at the story, though he could admit his voice leaked with nervousness.

But he didn’t know where Tony was going with this, and it made him feel vulnerable, cautious, so he clammily tacked on. “Makes you glad we live when we do, right?”

“There’s pros and cons,” Tony’s eyes flitted towards his prosthetic hand briefly, and Peter’s shame flared up tenfold, not that it ever tended to stop.

If anyone had been a victim of their time it was Tony Stark.

You can rest now.

Tony’s concerned face filled his vision and Peter snapped back to attention.

“There you are,” Tony nodded, leaning back in his seat and giving Peter his space back. “Where did you go?” The man enquired, though he sounded neutral, like he was simply asking for the time.

But Peter still couldn’t stand it. Without his anger, there was nothing left to defend himself with, Tony was getting closer and closer to gutting him open, and there’d be no way Peter was putting himself back again. It was too much to ask.

“How do you know all that?” Peter evaded, giving Emilio his full attention, only vaguely seeing in his periphery as Tony shuffled in his seat.

Tony sighed. “After the snap,” Peter tensed, instantly knowing he’d asked the wrong question, “there were a lot of kids floating around without parents, it was hard to see. Morgan wasn’t around yet, but I was already a parent- and you don’t have to argue, consider it logged, but I’d lost you, and there was this gaping hole in me. So, in my grief addled brain, volunteering as a baby holder for orphaned kids was the natural answer,” Tony shrugged, “I guess by my reckoning, I’d lost a son and they’d lost a parent, a match made in heaven- literally.”

Peter stilled, feeling ice trickle down his back, he couldn’t bear this. “Martin Couney?” He croaked.

Smiling sadly, more a grimace, Tony accepted the prodding. “The news only really harps on about the big, bold stuff that went on in the aftermath of the snap, but the real killer was the quiet, that’s where the grief lay really, I’m sure you know that better than anyone.”

Peter nodded thoughtlessly like a bobbed apple before quickly aborting the motion as Tony continued. “I had a lot of questions after the snap, namely how I could have lost you, how I let you down, let your aunt down.”

Tony breathed shakily and Peter chanced a glance at the man before refocusing on Emilio, his eyes blurring slightly as Tony went on. “But some questions were easier to ponder, so I started asking them and I didn’t stop. It was a distraction, but one that probably saved my life. And if Morgan knows one too many facts about the origins of juice pops, or every word in the dictionary, then that’s one I’ll put my hands up to.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, though he didn’t even know what he was apologising for anymore. Everything had become so tangled, so corrupted.

“Not your fault,” Tony quickly dismissed. “I thought researching incubators would be one of the more palatable questions, but I guess life is never really that clean cut. Learning about Couney, about the man he was, I remember my first thought was how I could never be that selfless,” Tony shared, looking a little awkward but overarchingly open, almost desperate looking.

“You’re the most selfless person I’ve ever met in my life,” Peter said forcefully, defiantly, unable to allow Tony to think that about himself for even a second, even if it went against his attempts to push the man out the door. “You saved the universe.”

“I saved you,” Tony jumped in, “the universe got lucky.”

The air froze, Peter almost choked on it.

“Tony,” he whispered, aghast.

Holding his hands up, Tony shrugged, “I won’t pretend to be something I’m not. Bringing you back was the greatest achievement of my life.”

And then Tony’s next words sprouted from him like they’d rooted into his very being, into his DNA. They reached out and seized Peter, twirled its vines around his feet and curled around his arms, locking him into place.

Tony bowed his head. “The day I died was the happiest day of my life.”

“You can’t-” Peter wheezed.

Making a breathing motion, Tony over-exaggeratedly snatched in a breath and then slowly released it, waiting for Peter to copy him, which he managed, albeit less smoothly.

Tony explained himself. “I asked myself why that was every single day for the last two years. I couldn’t understand it, it was illogical. But it was an indisputable fact I couldn’t argue with, even if I didn’t know why it was there in the first place. Because for all of Strange’s ridiculous hand waving, he couldn’t take you away from me.” Tony clasped his hands together like he was holding reality in place. “You’re not erasable kid, I need you to know that.”

“I’m not worth it,” Peter murmured brokenly, close to shattering.

“You won’t feel that way forever, kiddo, I promise,” the inventor said so powerfully, so assuredly, that Peter almost believed him.

Almost.

Tony was getting too close.

“I’ll get you killed,” Peter tried again, frustrated tears welling up in his eyes.

“I think I had that handled before you hit double digits, Pete. And anyway, neon man was just for your benefit- I’m retired now, pinky swear,” Tony smiled, but it didn’t quite meet his crinkled eyes.

Wracking his brain, Peter stared out the window. Mentally, he tried to leave the warmth of the room, leave the warmth that was Tony, and think logically, as hard as it had become recently. His eyes darted around wildly as tried to find a solution that didn’t exist. Because try as he might, Tony wasn’t letting him go.

Could Peter let Mr. Stark go?

“Why did you become a nurse?” Tony asked suddenly, jolting Peter out of his desperate thinking. “It took me by surprise even when I didn’t remember you, it just felt weird. And now we’re back in business, I’ve gotta admit I’m scratching my head. I don’t want to say that this is beneath you,” Tony sounded unsure of himself, “but you wanted to go to college, be a biochemist, and I get that wasn’t attainable, but maybe we can change that? Or at least get you back in a lab.”

“You said I was a good nurse,” Peter evaded.

“Are you doing this for May?” Tony refused to be diverted. “Trying to follow in her footsteps? Because, kid, I knew May Parker, and she wouldn’t have wanted you to spend your life in her shadow. In fact, it was probably what scared her the most, she told me once how much she hated watching you carry the world on your back.”

“That’s not me,” Peter shook his head. His eyes felt chafed and bloodshot and he wondered how Tony could possibly still see hope in him. How were his sins not staining his face for the world to see?

He put his head in his hands, wanting so desperately for Tony to hug him. His bones ached with the loneliness of it.

“I’m not a good person,” he said for the hundredth time, his voice muffled. “I’ve gone too far wrong, you won’t like who I am anymore.”

“You still wear the watch I gave you,” Tony observed out loud.

Peter couldn’t answer, his head lay heavy in his palms.

“I spent almost a month making it,” Tony’s voice remained steady, his voice looming above Peter’s head, “and almost a month deciding on it, I wanted your sixteenth birthday present to be something unforgettable, fatherly- even if I didn’t cotton onto that part at the time. I had the idea when you swanned into my lab half an hour late, for the millionth time I might add, launching into this dramatic, mission impossible style story about rescuing a guinea pig from the top of a streetlamp and losing track of time.”

Vaguely, Peter recollected the day, but the pieces were dim, far away.

“You can tell me that you’re not good, but I can’t believe that, I refuse to, it just isn’t in your chemistry,” Tony sounded doubtless, stable, spitting out the opinion like it was an immovable fact.

Peter’s shoulders hitched. The small piece of him that screamed out that he could be saved was now deafening, formidable.

“Don’t dwell on it,” Tony repeated, and Peter finally peered up at him with red rimmed eyes. “Your aunt didn’t say that to torture you, Pete, you know she didn’t. It was meant to set you free, but instead you’ve made it your prison. But you can’t go on like this, you know you can’t.”

And that was the crux of it. Tony knew it, and Peter did too. He felt flayed open, and he couldn’t argue anymore, every dispute he could think of was shot to dust. Everything he could give, Tony had taken, shouldered. And he had nothing else left to offer.

“What do I do?” Peter sobbed helplessly.

His grief, his guilt, his repentance. They held him together like poorly made web fluid, who would he be without them?  

With a squeak of his chair, Tony stood and brought himself to Peter’s side with a kneel, carding a calloused hand through Peter’s curls, before bringing it downwards to cup Peter’s gaunt cheek.

“Let me take the ropes for a bit, come home with me,” Tony said, like it was the only natural option. “And besides, I don’t need you to be good, I just need you.”

Peter swallowed thickly, “I don’t know how to deal with this, Tony, with everything. It’s too much, it’ll drown me.”

His mentor swiped away an errant tear that slid down Peter’s cheek with the pad of his thumb.

“Bring it back to basics then, what do you need right now? Don’t overthink it,” Tony said earnestly, gently, looking ready to summon the stars themselves to do Peter’s bidding.

Emilio stirred marginally from where he lay, his fists clenching and unclenching as he awoke to the evening. He’d likely need feeding soon.

“I’m hungry,” Peter said slowly, trying out the words, deciding he didn’t need to reel them back in.

Instead, he reached in further.

His voice snagged over his words. “And I’m so tired, Mr. Stark.”

Tony nodded, though he looked a little heart broken. “Let’s make it happen then, kiddo. I’ve got your bedroom ready and Grandma Stark’s famous chilli recipe on tap- though I might have to omit the dark chocolate for Morgan, as sacrilegious as it sounds. But I’m sure we’ll adapt.”

We’ll adapt.

The picture sang so nostalgically, almost achingly, of home. It was a candle flickering in a thunderstorm, it was May resting her chin atop Peter’s head in a hug, even when he was a bit too tall to fit. It was Ben reading him the morning newspaper with anchor like diligence, though they both knew Peter was just there for the cartoons. 

It was Tony now, watching Peter with serious, but still impossibly warm, almond eyes. 

“You still want me?” Peter questioned, hardly able to believe it.

Tony laughed wetly, like Peter had already said yes.

“As far as I’m concerned,” the man recited, like it was a well-worn prayer, “the day Tony Stark doesn’t want Peter Parker? Well, that’s the day the world has ended, kid.”

Peter sniffed for a moment before he was swept up in the sheer relief of it all.

He wasn’t alone anymore. And maybe he never had been.

Tony wrapped him in a tight hug. The one his fibre had called out for. Peter sunk into the embrace, it sewed up every weeping wound with meticulous care. Every calm shush and stroke of his back was another stich woven, undoing every night he’d spent turning in his bed, every day he’d walked alone, and every thought he’d had to give up.

Had he been saved?

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? 

Of course it does.

Peter finally answered the age-old question later that evening, facing his reflection in the rippling water of the vast lake that surrounded the Stark’s cabin. 

Their home. And his now too, he supposed.

A tree falling would always make a sound, it would always be heard. Nothing, not even the forest stripped bare, the final seed pod withering from existence, or the last drop of rain drying up could silence it. Because life was life, no matter the form.

Hope always came in the spring, May used to say, watering her blooming orchids with a quiet care. And they only had a few short months to go.

Morgan had been delighted when Tony had shuffled through the door, Peter in tow. She’d grabbed his hand and demanded he play with her, that Toto could meet Churro, the energetic dog himself bolting into the room to greet the pair.

“Churro?” Peter cast a knowing glance at Tony, who shrugged sheepishly.  

“You’re the one who kept mentioning them in your voicemails,” the inventor half-explained, half-grinned.

Pepper had taken him into her arms, still not remembering him but seeing him nonetheless. The heart remembered, after all, and they’d sort the rest out later.

Tony had burned the chilli, but it was still edible, if rather crispy. And Peter had never eaten anything so delicious. 

Laughter streamed from the warm light of the cabin, casting its glow onto Peter’s turned back.

“Like what you see, kid?” Tony appeared from behind Peter, draping a blanket over both their shoulders as he took a seat beside him on the decking.

The solid wood juddered slightly at the intrusion, causing the water it was sunk into to warble and ripple outward.

It made Peter look like he was smiling. 

And then it occurred to him. He was smiling. 

“I’m really glad you’re back, Tony,” Peter answered.

Tony breathed, pulling Peter closer to his side, vowing to keep him there- a promise he’d never break again.

“You too, Pete.”

The End.