Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It’s fine. It’ll heal.”

Pepper Potts has never heard such bullshit in her life but she isn’t about to say so. Technically, Peter isn’t lying. If you were to wipe the blood and dirt off his face, something he has refused to do since taking his place on this hospital hallway floor across from her, he’d either be good as new or well on his way to it.

Peter may be physically fine, which is a miracle considering he’d been dead a few hours ago, but he’s far from fine. Pepper is far from fine. No one is anywhere near fine right now. The universe has been saved from complete obliteration thanks to one man and that one man is the farthest from fine of them all.

Pepper grits her teeth, subtly, and swallows the sob, the scream, that she hasn’t let herself unleash. Not yet. That will be later. When she’s alone and none her of babies, friends, comrades at arms, or anyone else will see or hear her do it. No one sees Pepper Potts break.

Except Tony.

Oh, Tony…

She’d meant it when she’d told him that they’d be okay. She still meant that, knew that one day they would be, but that day may as well be centuries from now.

“It’s fine. It’ll heal.”

The truth, but also a lie. They all know better than that.

“You really should wash your face off, kid.” Rhodey, Pepper recognizes distantly. That’s who’s been talking to Peter. That means Peter is actually sitting across from her for real and isn’t just a hallucination. She’d known that. She’d seen him on the battlefield, pulled him off of Tony so Tony wouldn’t have to see him break, but it’s actually hitting her now. Peter is really there across from her. He’s sitting next to the doorway that holds the body of her husband and his face is covered with dried tears, dirt, and blood. Pepper has never seen him look quite like this before. That really should have clued her in earlier.

”Before you go in there,” Rhodey clarifies, eyes barely flicking toward the door. His face is dry but his eyes all full of everything he’s valiantly trying not to let go of. When he breaks it will also be in private. “You should clean up before you go see him.”

Peter shakes his head. Makes no move to wipe off his face. It’s been five years since Pepper has seen his face, she marvels. Five years and her lost boy hasn’t aged a day.

It’s not something she can put a fixed point on, the moment where Peter became hers. At some point that just happened. It had been the same way for Tony. Peter had (has, she almost joyfully corrects) a way of creeping into your heart and living there without you realizing it’s happened. Just like one day she’d heard Tony pound on Peter’s bedroom door at the compound shouting “Oh yeah? And I’m Iron Dad! Now get your spider ass out of bed!” one day she’d found herself saying to Peter “I may not be your mother but I’m close enough so please for the love of god get off the ceiling before I go find a broom.”Peter had not refuted either of those statements; in her case Peter had practically beamed sunshine at her before he’d nearly scared the skin off her back by back flipping off the ceiling and landing gracefully into one of the overstuffed armchairs.

Pepper doesn’t know when it started but she knows that it was before her heart shattered when Tony came back from space without him. She’d screamed that night, outside the compound and alone, where Tony and the others couldn’t hear. After she’d heard that the stones were gone and with it their last hope of fixing things. Or so she’d thought at the time.

Seeing Peter with blood and dirt on his face reminds her that he’s here. That he isn’t a ghost, a hallucination, a trick, or anything else. He’s a flesh and blood boy who’s come back home after so long away without realizing how long it really has been.

For Peter, Pepper realizes, this has all been just one day. One horrifyingly awful, devastating day.

“I’m not going in.”

Rhodey sighs. “You should.” Firm but gentle. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Peter hasn’t aged a day. He is sixteen years old, just like he was then, but he sounds so much older when he says. “I really won’t.” And he does know, Pepper realizes again. This isn’t the first time he’s sat this kind of vigil and that voice is nothing but the voice of experience.

Even without knowing that, Pepper completely understands. She said her goodbyes to Tony when he was still alive to hear them. Peter did as best as he could. They both watched him die; they don’t need to see a cleaned up and sanitized version of him in a sterile room. She wants her last memory to be of him, of Tony, of that last smile and that last whisper of her name, and not of his lifeless body.

Steve had gone in when they’d first sat down here and then had joined them on the floor in silence for a bit after. Bruce had gone in afterwards, then Clint after him. Thor, Strange, and Wanda had gone in fairly close after one another and had had a special kind of defeat in their eyes when they’d each walked out. She appreciates the thoughts and efforts they must have made or thought about making but she’d felt Tony stop breathing, felt his hand leave hers. As much as this hurt her, hurt everyone, this was a fair exchange. One man for the whole universe.

One man for his family, as Tony would see it.

She doesn’t back Rhodey up when he suggests it again to Peter. Instead she peels herself up off the floor and moves to sit by her boy, draping an arm around him. His head lolls onto her shoulder on reflex. It fits there the same way it had before, like no time had passed at all. “You go on,” Pepper says to her old friend. “We’ll be okay.” She even manages to not flinch after saying that.

Rhodey nods, tightly. “He should still get cleaned up,” he mutters as he gathers himself and every ounce of military bearing he has. Then he walks into the room as if walking to his own execution, the door barely clicking closed behind him.“Thank you, Ms. Potts,” Peter whimpers. “Pepper,” she corrects automatically, as if hasn’t been years since she last had to remind him. “It’s just Pepper, Peter.”

“Pepper.” He sniffs and turns his face into her shoulder and she can feel him tense up to keep the tears back. She holds him tighter and death glares anyone who looks at them with pity.

“We’re going to be okay,” she tells him and herself as she gathers Peter into her arms properly. She can feel Peter holding back his strength as he hugs her and she wishes for a moment that she was still wearing the armour. “It’s going to be horrible for a long, long time but we’re going to be okay.”

“It should have been me,” Peter argues, near apologizing and near frantic, as if his words would come true as he spoke them. Pepper can’t handle that sound. “I was gone anyway. It should have been me, I - “

Pepper pushes Peter away but keeps a tight hold on his shoulders. Anyone else would have flinched by how tight her fingers were, armour or no. “No.” She holds his gaze as firmly as she holds his shoulders. She lets the weight of that word settle into Peter and reverberate into his bones. She wants Peter to know she means this and that she’s more than certainly speaking for another person too. “It couldn’t have been you.”

We would have lost Tony anyway if it had been you,she doesn’t say.

Later she’ll explain everything. Tell him exactly how and why he’s sitting here with her today while Tony is dead in the room next to them. Later, when he’s ready to hear it, she’ll explain and she’ll hug him tight like she does now, rubbing his back and encouraging him to cry.

He does cry, quietly, and Pepper lets herself cry too. She feels the howl that she will let out later tonight retreat further into her.

Then, when Peter has stopped crying and is wiping tears and dirt and blood around his face, trying to pull himself as close to together as he can, he asks for a phone. “I should probably call May.”

Any calm Pepper had is gone and she fights to not let it reach her face. She could kick herself. How could she have been so stupid? She allows herself to acknowledge the fact that it’s not like there has been a good time for the subject of May Parker to come up. They’ve been more than a little bit distracted, but she still feels utterly unmoored and taken aback by Peter’s question. Not that that he has any reason to know any better.

Pepper had also thought Tony would be the one to have this conversation with Peter. Or at the very least they’d be having it together, the three of them. She had never imagined, ever entertained, she’d be doing this alone.

“Peter.” She pauses, takes a breath and tries again. Tries to scrape the words out of her throat. “Peter…”

This is not Peter’s first rodeo with devastating, life altering news. He knows halfway through Pepper saying his name the second time. His eyes go from confused, to shock, to disbelief, and then to a horrible sense of resignation. He’s aged ten decades in ten seconds and but he still finds it in him to hope that he’s misunderstood. “But we all came back,” Peter argues, haltingly. “If she was gone before she’s back now right?”

Now is not the time to explain that people died as a result of the Snap but not because of it. Pepper just shakes her head. “She can’t come back.”

Peter shakes his head hard and fast. “No, no. No.” He rubs his face again, blood and dirt and dried tears streaking across his nose and cheeks. He runs a hand through his hair and Pepper’s heart cries for this gesture she’s seen Tony perform frantically too many times. Her heart cries for the fact that she is stamping the shattered pieces of Peter’s already broken heart into dust with this news. “This is a bad joke,” Peter says with almost a dash of hope. “She’s not gone. Not her, too. Not May. Not her too. I can't-I've already-"

I’ve already lost enough. He doesn’t say it but Pepper hears it and the pieces of her own broken heart turn to dust too.

For the third time today, Pepper pulls Peter to her and this time he can’t hold back his strength fully. This hug hurts her. She will have bruises on top of bruises later and she will never admit to Peter that he caused them.

And then Peter wails. People stop and stare at both the sound and intensity of the boy’s grief. Rhodey comes out of Tony’s room. Pepper shoos them all away. Peter wails louder and the hallway magically empties but for the two of them on the floor and the sound of Peter’s cries. Pepper has never heard anyone make any noise like this before. No one should ever make this kind of sound.

He’s sixteen years old. He should be twenty one but he’s sixteen and he’s lost so much. They all have lost so much but Pepper is watching the death of Peter’s innocence in real time and it’s just as hard to watch as the life leaving Tony’s eyes had been.

“What’ll happen to me now?” Peter somehow manages to not shout this question at an uncaring universe. He sobs it into Pepper’s chest as she runs a hand through his hair, a gesture as familiar to her as breathing. “What am I gonna do now?”

Pepper squeezes him tight. If he thinks she’s letting go of him now he has another thing coming.

“You’re coming home with me. You’re coming home with me, Peter.”

Chapter Text

Before the Time Heist

Tony paces around the work table, the one that Pepper had insisted be in the house even though he had been perfectly prepared to leave all tinkering in the garage. Pepper had uncharacteristically brushed that aside, reminding them how they both worked. “Sometimes you or I need to get something down right that second and geography is just something in the way. Need I remind you that you’re still banned from using my office?”

Tony’s glad it’s here now even though it’s been a long time since he’s needed the immediacy of a workspace like he does right now. Usually a notebook or a StarkPad is good enough if he’s hit with sudden inspiration. For something like this, though, he needs something bigger. If he’d had to hike out to the garage he’d bet his fortune he’d have wasted valuable time trying to back track his thought processes by the time he’d sat down there. Or muttering “inverted, inverted, inverted” all the way there and then forgetting what he wanted to invert.

He sips his drink. Chews on whatever snack he’d hidden in here the last time. Almonds, he distantly notes. Weirdly seasoned and definitely stale. If Tony had been in the kitchen he would have spat them out but his eyes and attention are firmly on the model in front of him.

“And don’t worry if it doesn’t pan out,” he continues with FRIDAY. “I’m just kinda...” he trails off. Tony really doesn’t know what he’s doing here at all. They’ve been through this before after all. He’s been through this so many times before. He waits for the error message.

“Model rendered.” FRIDAY informs him.

Tony clears his throat and braces himself. As much as he knows it's coming, he knows this is going to hurt. He could almost kill Steve and the others for bringing all this back up again. He makes a mental note to call Max for a session in the morning.

The red text appears as expected but instead of an error message what it reads is ‘Model Successful.’

There have been a very tiny handful of occasions where Tony’s brain has turned off. This moment is not among them. His brain has derailed entirely with no sign of the track in sight.

Holy shit.

He reads it again. Model Successful.

Model. Fucking. Successful.

He falls back into his chair, stares up at it like the wonder that it is. The display assures him that the model is still successful.

I can fix this whole thing.

Tony rubs his hand across his mouth, takes a breath, and the thought he hasn’t let himself entertain since cleaning off their photograph sears through his still-getting-back-online brain.

I’ve got you, Pete.

A stunned “shit!” is what actually leaves his mouth, because holy shit. Tony’s brain is back online and is all over the place. He’s shocked, he’s terrified, he’s a bunch of things and one of those things apparently is now the inventor of god damned time travel.

A much younger and very familiar voice pipes up with an agreeing ‘shit!’ and Tony pivots to his smiling daughter. Morgan is in her pyjamas; she probably got bored with waiting for Tony to come tuck her into bed or else just got curious with what he was doing down here.

And she just cursed. Again. If Pepper is within earshot, she is going to use him as fertilizer for the plants he keeps killing.

Tony does what he does best in these situations, which is enter Damage Control Dad Mode. This essentially entails shifting the blame from him to Pepper as much as possible. Tony’s pretty sure he can produce statistics showing that Pepper uses ‘shit’ far more often than he does. She is the one with the composting fetish at the moment.

Then Morgan, budding little CEO that she is, flat out extorts him and he lets her. She’ll keep quiet for as long as she can. She is a four year old, and a four year old that is half Stark, after all. She means well but she’ll spill around breakfast, Tony figures.

After he’s tucked his little girl into bed, with the usual threat of selling all of her toys and Morgan winning the numbers game for today about how much she loves him (he really is impressed, he’d been in the low 900s yesterday), he finds himself with Pepper on the couch back downstairs listening to her talk about composting. He usually tunes this out but is far better, he thinks, at faking it than he is now. His mind is back online and going a mile a minute now. It has been working hard and running probabilities ever since he’d shut Morgan’s door.

There is so much that could go wrong. So much that could go right, too. There’s got to be a cost somewhere, though. It can’t be this easy. Nothing this big is ever this easy. Or free. There has to be a cost and Tony’s weighing costs and benefits and the survivability of this crazy idea frantically even as his heart threatens to beat out of his chest with a kind of hope that he hasn’t felt in five long years.

Tony has a good life here in spite of everything. Better than anything he’d thought he’d ever deserve. He’s married to Pepper Potts, is a father to Morgan Stark, and he’s reached a point where that’s all that matters to him. Stark Industries is doing more than fantastically under Pepper and he only engages with the company as much as he wants to. Tony is still a tinkerer at the end of the day and his designs have found their way out into the world even if his name isn’t exactly on them, and Iron Man had died with half the universe five years ago.

It’s a good life and Tony is truly quite fond of it. He’d never thought he could have who he has and what he has and seeing living proof of it everyday has been nothing short of miraculous.

Except it’s not everyone. Everyone had never been possible until now.

Tony thinks back to the photo in his kitchen. Of him and Peter messing around with what was supposed to be an official press release photo, mainly so there’d be some record of Peter somewhere when the press started wondering why Tony was spending so much time with him. Peter’s wearing his uncle’s old blazer while Tony is wearing the stupid but funny duck/rabbit shirt Peter had bought him for Christmas. They’d eventually gotten something suitable but they each, separately, had asked for a copy of the one with the damn certificate upside down and them giving each other bunny ears. At the time he’d told Peter that he’d planned to use his copy as a dartboard and, even though he remembers Peter laughing and telling him May was ahead of him on that, Tony wishes he hadn’t gone in for a joke.

May had been there that day as well. She’d been in stitches laughing at them but she’d actually been the one to wrangle the shoot into something that the PR team could handle after the department lacky of the day had left the shoot in despair.

It had been one of the proudest days of his life, Tony can admit now, on the day that May had become totally fine with spending time in a room with him without Pepper or Peter there as a buffer. It had been a long time since he had had to work for someone’s trust like that and he treasured that trust more than he’d ever admit at the time. It had meant the world to Peter and Pepper, too.

He thinks about Peter’s smile. He thinks about May’s laugh. He thinks about the bedtime stories he tells to Morgan about her brother. Her brother would have been over the moon to be a brother. Her brother who is ‘lost’ because Tony doesn’t have the heart to tell Morgan that her brother can’t come home. Tony has never gone against the story even though he’s pretty sure Morgan knows what Tony isn’t saying. She’s got Pepper’s brains after all.

Knowing that, she still asks every now and again if Peter will ever come back home. It still takes him days to recover each time she asks, though he secretly fears the day she stops asking.

Tony wants Thanos to have not happened and for everything to be set right but time travel comes with its own set of complications and he does not, can not, and most definitely will not lose who he has and what he has as a result of that.

Part of him wants to ignore the whole thing. Drop into the lake and never think about it again and he tells Pepper so. Pepper has been very neutral and factual during this whole conversation. There would have been a time, years before Thanos, where Pepper would have told him that if he was going to do this insanity she was walking out the door. Things have changed a lot since then, the Snap only part of it.

It is his decision in the end but Pepper asks the question of the hour anyway: would he be able to rest if he put this in a box and forgot about it. They both know the answer. Somewhere deep inside them both, they’ve been waiting for something like this. For someone to knock on their door with a chance.

How often as Tony hoped, dreamed, begged, and pleaded for this? How often has Pepper? The whole world for that matter?

It’s a chance, nothing more. A hope and arguably a fool’s one at that.

This life has many things in it, but hope has been very absent.

Tony nods tightly. “Right.” He looks at Pepper, trusts her to know the risks without him saying them. “Last chance to tell me to shut it down and go to bed.”

Pepper laughs and there actually isn’t any fear in it. Oh, how Tony envies her. “I’ll get some coffee going.” She arches an eyebrow at him when Tony stares, stunned, at her as she stands. “What? We’re not sleeping tonight, are we?”

Tony blinks at her. “I’m not, no, but I didn’t think you-”

“This could be our last night together, Tony.” Her bluntness should shake him to his core but it doesn’t for some reason. “I’m not spending it asleep while you stress and plan- and yes I know most of it I’m not going to get to see. I’ve got my own plans to make so I’m going to be around and up. Then we’re going to have breakfast with Morgan before you hit the road.”

“It’s time travel,” Tony finds himself saying almost on autopilot. “When I show up is essentially irrelevant.”

Pepper doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t roll her eyes. Doesn’t do anything but rest a hand on his shoulder and bend over to kiss his forehead. “Whatever you need. Whatever it takes.”

=================================

Tony disappears into the garage and doesn’t come out until nearly four in the morning. By that point he has four cups of coffee in him and has earned a surprisingly minimal amount of scrapes and cuts. He also has barely yelled at DUM-E or U and they’ve been nothing but good little workers, as if they can sense the importance of what Tony’s working on as well.

The whole thing had actually been pretty straightforward once he’d found his groove and that alone was pretty wild. Even despite the stakes and everything else there was still that vibrant engineer’s glee in him that was over the moon to see something come out of his brain and into the world working exactly as it should. Yeah, it hadn’t been properly tested but he didn’t need to test it to know it would work.

With that done there was now the matter of The Rest. The Rest meaning contingency plans. Plans he didn’t want to make or even think about but had to account for. He had a family to take care of whether he was here to do it himself or not and, while he is still not sold on the survivability of this whole thing, he can’t let it go now. Not when there’s a chance to fix it all.

He tweaks protocols, adds protocols, takes protocols apart and makes hybrid ones. Then, with a heavy sigh and a horrible sense of foreboding, Tony gets the Iron Man helmet out and sets it on his workbench.

He stares at in silence for a long time. The last time he’d stared at the helmet like this he’d been half dead and a million miles from Earth. He’d been defeated, in pain, and completely okay with going to sleep and never waking up. It was more than he’d deserved for what he’d failed to prevent.

I don’t want to go I don’t want to go I don’t want to go.

It’s amazing, terrifyingly so, how clear Tony can still hear that plea. Both inside and outside of his nightmares. How he can still feel his kid’s fingers digging into him. He’d had bruises for weeks after and sometimes he thinks he can still see them whenever he catches a look at his back in the mirror. Five years had maybe provided some distance to the pain but it was still very much there and always would be.

No parent should outlive their child and the pain of that was something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. It wasn’t a natural grief and the wrongness of it was almost as bad as the grief itself. He isn’t Peter’s father by blood but he’s secure enough in himself to know he’s close enough. He knows deep in the marrow of his bones that if he ever lost Morgan he would feel this exact same pain. The same gaping hole in his heart, in his very being, that could never be filled.

And he would do what he’s doing now for Morgan, too. That really should tell him all he needs to know. That and the fact that Pepper isn’t trying to stop him. She wants her boy back and whole and with her in the same way Tony does but is oh so much better at keeping it together. She always has been. There’s only ever been room for one, true, hot mess in this family.

And you call yourself a genius. You’ve had this ‘epiphany’ more than once, you know.

Tony nods and allows himself to picture the best case scenario. Of bringing Peter home, of introducing him to Morgan and watching Pepper hold both her kids. Maybe they’d even get a chance to barbeque once the weather got a bit warmer.

He thinks of his kids together, safe and happy. Of having everyone within his sight and reach for the first time ever.

Tony gets the helmet recording, takes a breath, and starts talking.

==================================

Tony hadn’t noticed that he’d added an extra bedroom upstairs when he’d been designing this house. When the builders had brought this to his attention, he’d refused to take it out. He’d also refused to assign an actual function to the room and the argument that had resulted from that had almost tanked the whole project.

“I don’t want you to do jack shit with it, okay?” He had snapped at them as Pepper had held him back, one hand tightly grasping his wrist. “Treat this room like the garage; it’s off limits and I’ll handle it. Just fucking build it.”

There are two guest rooms on the main floor. Upstairs there’s his and Pepper’s room, a full bathroom, and a room for Morgan. Then there was the third bedroom. None of the bedrooms had locks on their doors but this third bedroom did. Pepper had arranged for it and had presented Tony with the key on their first night. “Teenagers need their privacy.”

Of course, Pepper had understood. Her voice had managed to stay mostly steady and Tony had almost smiled and almost not cried.

“I’ll never go in unless you invite me in,” was the other thing she’d said that night and his heart had sunk at that part. He’d told Pepper that this wasn’t like that. He’s told her more than once where the key is but he’s still pretty sure that she’s never gone in on her own.

When Pepper wants to talk to Peter or May she does it outside, at the dock. “They would have loved it here,” is her explanation and Tony agrees. Peter would have climbed the trees, probably webslung himself a hammock and hung out there until May and Tony would have had to drag him inside. Tony would probably have ended up in the suit, literally hauling him back down to Earth.

May would have loved the boats, would have spent as much time out on the water as Rhodey and Happy do on their visits. Tony and May, with Pepper and without, had often met for lunch by the water for their little ‘coparenting dates’ as she’d called them.

“In another life,” May had told him at one of these lunches. “We’d move out by the water. Somewhere a little quieter but still with access to the city. Somewhere where Peter I could both be still for a minute or five, you know?” Not for the first time, Tony wonders if that bit of insight had factored into his and Pepper’s design and location for this house.

Tony walks into the kitchen with his helmet and his empty coffee mug. Pepper still has a pot going so he fills up his mug again and then goes for the tacky (and broken) Iron Man egg coddler that Rhodey had given him as a gag gift eons ago. It has never held anything but the key to the third bedroom. He shakes out the key and exchanges a nod and a head tilt with Pepper as he sees her typing away at her laptop at the dining room table. She’s making her own plans, he knows. Her own set of contingencies and directives that he does his best not to think about. He still has a few more to do. He’d built what he could and planned where he could when it came to the tech. That was good to go - and he’d have time at the compound to go over things another two hundred times.

Tony climbs the stairs and stares down the hallway. His and Pepper’s bedroom is right at the end. Morgan’s is next to it on the left with the bathroom a bit further down. Across from Morgan’s room but further down the hallway toward where Tony is standing the still new looking door to a room that Morgan has only ever been in twice. Once as a baby and once last year when Tony thought he could explain things a bit better to her. He had been very wrong and Morgan has not asked to go in again. Morgan talks to Peter in her own room. “Petey’s room is for Daddy,” she says. Explaining to her that that’s not what it’s for had been pointless.

Tony expertly tucks the helmet under his arm so he has a hand free to unlock the door. He then closes the door as quietly as possible but makes sure it doesn’t lock behind him. Tony has never done much with this room. He couldn’t bear to dig Peter’s things out of storage and move them here. He couldn’t look at that stuff every day knowing that Peter would never come back for it. No matter what Tony did in here it would never look right anyway because Peter wasn’t here to make it his.

So, the furniture was nondescript and still looked brand new. There’s a double bed. A bedside table. A desk and chair. A chest of drawers. Empty hangers in the closet. The only hint of proper life in the room is the corkboard over the desk, which is covered with photos that Tony had either pulled from FRIDAY’s image library or from Peter’s social media pages before all of the Decimated’s profiles were locked down and turned into memorials. They couldn’t give Peter a tombstone and Tony couldn’t bear to go the memorials so there was this. Tony likes to think that most of these were pictures Peter would have chosen himself.

There had been a point where Tony had spent more nights in this room than in his own. On the floor though, never on the bed. The bed has sheets on it and a plush blue duvet but no one has ever used them. Whether it was penance, a feeling of unworthiness, or something else entirely was something Tony had never bothered figuring out.

He settles on the floor now, rests against the side of the bed and gets the helmet into position. He sips his coffee as he stares at it. Already in the helmet are farewells from him for everyone - for Morgan, for Pepper, for Rhodey, and for Happy. He’s gone a bit further and has a birthday message for Morgan each year until she turns eighteen. It feels awful but he thinks that he’d managed to keep that out of the messages. He can’t imagine not living to see Morgan grow up but it’s definitely a possibility.

Like all of his worst case planning, he feels like he’s tempting fate by even entertaining this outcome. But if it’s going to play out that way, he knows he won’t know what his last moments will be and Morgan will need help to understand. She’ll have Peter, because she’s getting Peter no matter how this ends, and she’ll have Pepper but he does not want to be just a photograph or a hazy memory in his daughter’s life. He knows that’s what Richard and Mary Parker were to Peter, who had been a smidge younger than Morgan when they’d died.

Tony drains his coffee and gets the helmet ready. Peter’s messages are next. He could have done these in the garage with everyone else’s but he’s always come here to talk to Peter and he can’t kill the habit. He's just about to start when there comes a knock at the door. He almost tells Pepper to come back later but she already is opening the door. Odd. Normally she waits before coming in here despite Tony's insistence that she doesn't need to. He flags that and waits.

Pepper has her own cup of coffee in hand and a file folder under her arm. She settles down next to him, rolling her eyes as Tony tucks the helmet away and under the bed for now. She knows what he’s doing, she definitely wouldn't have knocked if she'd heard him talking, and he isn’t really making a secret about it.

They still aren’t going to discuss it. They sit there silently for a moment before Pepper takes stock of the room and says simply “In the morning I’ll get Happy to watch Morgan and I’ll go get some of his stuff out of storage.” She tugs on the duvet. “I'll air out the bedclothes too.” She smiles as best as she can at him in this room. “He’ll love it.”

Tony knows he will. Peter would have been stoked that he had his own bedroom at all, but would have asked why he had one at all. All even though he should know better. Now though, if all goes well, Tony will be able to tell him why he does and why he always will. Peter Parker is existing in the present tense as of now, Tony decides. This will only be a victory if Peter is standing next to him at the end of this thing.

Speaking of bedrooms. “We should get some of May’s stuff, too,” he adds. “Should we get one of the guest rooms ready or do you think she’d rather bunk with Peter up here?” Maybe he’s jumping the gun a bit, Tony thinks. Maybe they both would rather go back to the apartment in light of the chaos that is sure to unfold. They still have the apartment but it’s been empty for years now. That’s another thing to organize.

Pepper is barely listening to him. “Pep?”

Pepper drinks her coffee and moves the file folder she’s been holding onto her lap. Tony waits. The air in this room has always been heavy but Pepper’s silence and whatever has her bothered so much has brought it to Thor’s hammer level of unmoving.

“What is it?” he asks, even though he has to admit being afraid of the answer. He hasn’t seen Pepper look like this in a long time. “Did I miss something?”

Pepper sighs and slowly nods. “Yes, but that’s not your fault. I should have told you this years ago.” She pauses, then finally fills him in.

“I don’t think May’s coming back.”

Chapter Text

Pepper used the word ‘think’ but Tony knows she’s completely convinced that she’s stated a fact. Considering their topics of conversation tonight, and what Tony is going to be heading into, this is also the most defeated and sad he has seen her so far. “Mind running that past me again?” Tony asks. If what Steve and the others suggested works, then everyone they lost comes back. Last time he checked, May Parker was included under the term ‘everyone.’

“We had a funeral for May,” Pepper says by way of explanation. “It was a small one. You...you weren’t back yet.”

Now there was a loaded statement. ‘You weren’t back yet’ can cover anything from when Tony was stranded in space immediately after the Snap to Morgan’s first six months of life. Tony figures this can probably be narrowed down to between him and Nebula reaching Earth and being essentially chained to a hospital bed in the compound after Steve and the others had come back with the news that the stones had been destroyed

Saying there was a funeral pings around in his brain. “Funeral?” he repeats, eyebrow raised. “You mean a memorial right?” There had been a lot of those, far too many of those, and there are permanent ones everywhere. Tony has never been able to make himself go and stare at the names of the people he’d failed but they are hard to miss whenever he’s in the city.

“Funeral,” Pepper confirms. “We had a body.”

The funeral industry had been almost crippled with the demand for their services in the aftermath of the Snap. Some people had their loved ones’ remains easily on hand, some did not - Tony didn’t know if it would have been better or worse to have been able to bring those pieces of Peter home instead of watching them blow away on another planet’s wind - but there had been one firm line from them: they would host no funerals without bodies. You couldn’t even get a tombstone or a plaque in a cemetery without a body.

Because, as Tony suddenly remembers, not everyone who died that day had died because of the Snap. Half the population had turned to dust, but still others had died because of what the Decimated had left behind when they’d vanished.

“May took an extra shift,” Pepper begins. “She was off that day but someone called in sick and of course she jumped right in to help.” Pepper smiles, watery but fond. “Peter had plans with Ned after school and had plans to patrol after, so as far as I can piece together she never knew Peter had left the planet.” Tony doesn’t know if that was meant as reassurance but he can tell that things are about to get worse.

Pepper takes a fortifying breath and pushes through. “She was on the bus when the Snap happened. She didn’t vanish but her bus driver did.” Pepper tries to continue but gives up after one unsuccessful attempt to clear her throat. Tony doesn’t need her to finish. He doesn’t need to ask whether the bus drove into traffic on its own, or if something else ran into it, or anything else. May had survived the Snap but had not survived the aftermath.

When Tony had been well enough, he’d visited the Parker apartment. His calls weren’t being answered, nor his texts and emails, which he had thought was either May intentionally ignoring him or one of the many infrastructure problems at the time. Tony was ready to face whatever judgement and punishment May saw fit to deliver that day but when he’d arrived to find the apartment several weeks empty, he’d drawn the inevitable conclusion and lost it all over again in the Parkers’ living room. Of course May was gone too, he remembers thinking. Of course he had to fail May and Peter both and neither of them could hold him to task for it.

Pepper had had to have known that’s where he was going that day, had to have known the truth well before that. He looks to her with the word ‘why’ on his lips but doesn’t voice it. It wasn’t like there had been a good opening to tell him when he’d come home, shattered once again, and broken down in her arms for the umpteenth time. Or when he’d locked himself in the lab for days trying, again, to find a way to undo it all. At what point would the knowledge that May was dead in a different way than Peter was dead have helped him in any way? Dead was dead.

Until now.

Pepper is waiting for an explosion but Tony instead asks “Did we pay for it?” She stares at him, confused, he sighs and takes her hand. “I get why you didn’t tell me. Just tell me that it was nice and that we paid for it.”

“It was nice,” she recites. “We paid for it.”

Tony squeezes Peppers hand and slings his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. She puts her head on his shoulder and sighs in relief, letting out five years of tension. “I would have told you one day,” she assures him, even though he really doesn’t need to hear it and knows that she probably never would have despite her best intentions.

“I completely understand why you didn’t,” he assures her. “I wouldn’t have told me either. Thank you for protecting what little mental health we have.” Tony waits for her to smile and laugh at that but Pepper remains still. “Am I missing something else here?”

Pepper nods and pushes herself up. She moves to sit directly across from Tony on the carpet, the magenta file folder still clutched in her hand like it’s her only hold on reality.

Magenta. Tony pauses. He hasn’t seen a magenta file folder in years.

Pepper has a colour coded filing system and it is legendary throughout the company and the circles she moves in. Tony’s pretty sure they stock and create certain colours of file folders just to account for this system. Magenta had been May’s colour.

She doesn't hand it to him even though she knows that she could. She waits for him to take it out of her hands, open it, and then tells him it's May's will and the assorted paperwork that went with carrying it out. The date of the last revision is about four months before the Snap. Pepper’s name pops out in bold as the executor of the will. May had left everything to Peter, of course, and Tony’s heart gives that same painful clench it does whenever he sees Peter's name in the same sentence as the word ‘deceased.’ Pepper had made sure that the charitable donations, and the gifts to a few friends that had survived, had been carried out and then she’d sequestered all of May’s remaining funds into a separate account that was still collecting interest. Any outstanding bills or loans Pepper had settled herself, including the purchase of the apartment. That part, Tony had been aware of.

May had no other family; she had no siblings and her parents were long dead. No cousins or aunts and uncles of her own to contest it. Not that anyone would have. Tony can only imagine how things must have been with all of these wills. Pepper must have had their best lawyers working on this considering the speed. There’s one thing that hasn’t been addressed yet, though, and he thinks he suspects what Pepper hasn’t told him yet. And then he reads it.

I appoint as the guardians of my minor nephew (Peter Benjamin Parker) Anthony Edward Stark and Virginia Isobel Potts.

For the second time tonight, Tony’s thoughts derail entirely. When May had added Tony as a secondary emergency contact with Peter’s school that had been a whole state of the union discussion. Pepper had managed to escape that talk and had just been appended as an alternate for Tony with minimal fanfare. He doesn’t remember anything like this even being on the table. They’d come a long way - May had been livid when she’d walked in on Peter in the Spiderman suit and had almost barred Peter from seeing him ever again right then and there - but, even with them all calling themselves coparents, he’d never expected this.

“May had talked to me about it,” Pepper begins to explain. “She told me the revisions had been made and she was going to tell you herself in her own way later. She stressed that it had to be us and it had to be both of us.” Pepper drags her arm across her eyes and then reaches for Tony’s outstretched hand. “If anything were to happen to her we were the only ones who knew about Spiderman and also were crazy about Peter. She didn’t pretend to fully understand what you and him have with the whole hero complex thing but she trusted it. She knew we’d be there for him and knew we already loved him like our own.”

Tony squeezes Pepper’s hand and covers his eyes with his free one in an effort to pull himself together. It doesn’t work. He rubs his eyes fiercely before he puts the will aside to find the actual guardianship paperwork, printed and dated for today and already bearing Pepper’s signature. “CPS has never recovered from it all,” Pepper continues. “If what you do works it’s going to be even worse. I thought that if we get paperwork in now so that it’s flagged in the system somewhere he won’t have trouble later. He’s going to be confused. He’s going to come back to a world without his aunt and he’s going to feel so alone and -” Pepper’s voice gives out again.

“Got a pen?” Tony asks, hoarsely. Of course she does. Tony takes it and signs on his line so hard he almost rips the thing. Never, he vows. Never for one second will he allow Peter to think that he’s alone. Not one damn millisecond. Pepper chuckles at him as Tony reverently closes the file and hands it back to Pepper. “When would you have said?” he finds himself asking. He can’t think of there ever being a good time to bring this up either.

Pepper is trying to hold back tears and failing. “I don’t know,” she admits. “It wouldn’t have helped you then and I don’t know at what point it ever would have.” She wipes her eyes. “It feels wrong still, like we’re profiting off May’s loss and trying to step in where we aren’t wanted. We aren’t his real parents -”

Tony comes forward and hugs her. He hugs her tights and buries his face in her shoulder to stop his own tears. He understands it. He gets it. His heart is pounding and breaking at the same time. None of it is fair but May has asked them to do her a favour and he owed her that no matter the circumstances. Owed them both.

Now that Tony thinks about it, he and May had already made this agreement in so many words without actually discussing it. She’d never talked this over with him officially because she already knew the answer. May also had learned early on that it was better to log these important, legal things with Pepper anyway.

“He’s your kid too,” he remembers May telling him one day while holding out a hand to stifle Tony’s protests before they could be spoken. “Don’t pretend he isn’t. You’d do anything for him and you couldn’t hide it if you tried. He’s yours and you and Pepper are his. He knows it, I know it, and you two know it.” May had smiled bright then, bright and knowing. “Don’t worry, I can share. There’s more than enough love to go around here.”

The dam finally breaks and both him and Pepper are crying. For May. For Peter. For everything.

Everything is going to be shit. No matter which way this turns out, everything is going to be shit for a long time before it gets better. Tony knows two things though: that Peter will be back in this world by this time next week and that he will know beyond a doubt that he is loved and has a home here forever.

Tony pulls back and wipes the tears off of Pepper’s cheeks, Pepper returns the favour. “Think we’re decent enough to call Mitch?” Pepper asks, voice stronger now.

Tony snorts. Mitch Randall, Michaela to her mother and only ever to her mother as Tony had found out the hard way, was one of their top lawyers and would likely be awake right now anyway. She's probably at the gym at the moment, which buys them some time to get themselves together.

“I think we'll close enough by the time she's at work," Pepper agrees. "But…" she gestures at the forgotten helmet under the bed. "Do what you were going to do first."

Knowing what he knows now, knowing what kind of world that Peter would be living in if he’s having to listen to what Tony plans to leave him, Tony doesn't even know where to start.

==============================

If Mitch is confused about being asked to file guardianship paperwork for a dead teenager, she handles it well. “It’s not the weirdest thing you’ve asked me to do,” she admits with a resigned sigh. “This shouldn’t be too much of a problem. May Parker’s will should still stand and given everything I can’t see the court challenging the guardianship. Putting both of you down was smart on her part.” There’s an eyebrow raise at Tony and he can’t even be offended. May was smart and that was all there was to it.

What is currently offending him is the betrayal being orchestrated by his own daughter.

“Morgan H. Stark, it is not nice to hoard all the maple syrup.”

“‘M not hoarding,” Morgan insists as she continues to hold onto the bottle of syrup like it’s the most valuable treasure in the world. “‘M making sure you don’t use it all.”

Herein lies the offence. “I would never use all the syrup and not give you any!”

“Yeah you would.” To be absolutely fair, there is a precedent for that, and Tony has to give her points for remembering it. He’d thought she’d been too hyped up on whatever sugary breakfast cereal Rhodey had fed her to remember much of anything.

“Well,” Tony sighs dramatically as he gets up from the table and wanders into the kitchen. “It just so happens that,” he opens a cupboard and produces another bottle of syrup. “I’ve got my own.”

Morgan’s look of shocked betrayal is hilarious to behold and Tony laughs heartily at the sight as she stands up on her chair and puts her hands on her hips. “Daddy!” she scolds. “There’s still some left in this one!” she waves at the near empty bottle of syrup lying abandoned on the table.

“So you use that and then we’ll open this one. Then we all get syrup. Not a bad plan, kiddo, but you’ll do better at this game when you’re taller.”

“Hmmph!” Morgan’s annoyance lasts approximately ten seconds before she’s cackling after Tony drowns his pancakes in way too much syrup. The nozzle has fallen off and he thinks he knows who is to blame for that. “You’ve gotta eat it!” the culprit reminds him, victoriously.

“I will,” he says with determined resignation. “But I won’t enjoy it.” It’s not half bad he decides after he manages to get some on the fork and into his mouth. Extremely soupy perhaps but he knows he’s done worse.

“Tony, are you drowning your pancakes? Are you sure you don’t need a nap before you head off?”

Pepper is being light hearted but it sounds like she needs the nap more than Tony does, and she won’t get it until way later. He’d apologize but he knows there’s no point. “No can do,” he answers instead. “Destiny waits for no one and all that.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go to work,” Morgan good naturedly grumbles as she manages to not destroy her breakfast with syrup. “Can’t you do the work here?”

He shakes his head. “Not this time, Morguna. Daddy has to go show some people how to do things and make sure it’s done right.” They’ve probably done something stupid by now. Like talk Bruce into trying this.

Morgan beams at him, “And then you’ll come right back.” It’s a statement but it’s not really a statement. Pepper does not jump into save him, instead she helps herself to some of the pancakes and also manages to successfully not drown them. Tony’s the only one failing at being a functional human today it seems. He must need more coffee. Or to get this show on the road.

“Then I’ll come right back.” And I’ll have your brother with me. He almost says it but he doesn’t. As much as Tony has set his mind into refusing any other possible outcome he can’t bring himself to set Morgan up for disappointment. It’s enough to know that he very well could be lying right now without any promises of bringing Peter home.

Morgan hops of her seat and into his arms. Tony holds her close, peppering her with kisses until she screeches for him to stop. “You’re all sticky!”

“I am not!”

“You are so! You have syrup in your beard!”

“I do not!”

He definitely does. It’s sticky and gross and somehow he wouldn’t change it for the world.

Pepper throws a roll of paper towel at him. “Clean up,” she orders. “You’re not leaving the house like that.”

Tony wipes the guck off of his face and then tries to wipe it off onto Morgan. Her laughter echoes through the house and Tony just wants to bottle it up and take it with him. He can’t lose her. He won’t lose her.

Pepper eventually eats her pancakes. Morgan helps Tony load up the car, almost faceplanting with Steve’s shield in her arms. Morgan says "shit!" after she falls and then promptly rats him out to her mother. Pepper is unimpressed but also unsurprised and Tony promises Morgan that he’ll make her something cooler to sled on for the winter. He hugs his little girl tight and spins her around, covering her rosy cheeks with even more kisses before passing her to Pepper. “I’m gonna eat all the maple syrup,” she promises with a whispered deviousness that should probably alarm him as he hands her off. Really, it’s as endearing as the threat is ill advised.

Tony replies in kind. “You go right ahead and enjoy your stomach ache, then. I love you lots, kiddo.”

“3000?”

“3000.”

For Pepper he has no words but ‘thank you’ and ‘take care’ and ‘I love you.’ She knows what to do now. He hugs her, Morgan happily squished between them, and kisses her like it’s the last time he’s going to be able to do this. Pepper matches him and he notes that her eyes are clearer and steadier than his must be as he pulls back. Tony knows he needs to leave but it’s Pepper telling him that yes it is possible to be late to save the world even when time travel is involved that gets him moving toward the car. He waves at them one final time, bites back the promise of ‘see you soon’, and drives away.

It takes a lot more in him than he expected to not look at them through the rearview mirror but his mind is already aimed to the mission ahead. Of making his peace with Steve and the others, because there’s no time or space in this life for resentments and all that shit. Not with what they’re facing and what could happen. He’s doing this, there’s no going back, but this is going to end his way. Bring everyone back that can be brought back and not lose what he has. His purpose is as iron as anything he’s ever been called and his determination is even harder.

Tony is both selfish and brilliant and he will have his wife and both of his children at the end of this.

Whatever it takes.

Chapter Text

After the Battle of Earth

Peter is sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, staring at his hands, waiting to turn back into dust.

On Titan, he’d seen the others go first. The weird insect lady had gone first, then everyone else. It had only been after Star Lord had gone with a whispered oh man when Peter had noticed the sick feeling in his stomach.

Insect lady could feel emotions so she knew something was wrong right away. Peter thinks he knows that a part of him had known unconsciously at the same time she had. It had to have been his healing factor starting to give out. He didn’t usually notice too much when minor things healed up but his body working to pull itself back together over and over again had only managed to go on without him noticing up until a point.

He’d been fighting without knowing up until that moment. Then he felt that sick feeling in his stomach spread throughout his whole body. He’d rallied against it, then. That had bought him time but also more pain.

Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good.

Everything had hurt.. He’d been ripped apart and put back together millions of times in the space of a few moments and then finally his healing factor had tapped out, unable to keep up with what was happening. It had hurt in ways he doesn’t think he’ll ever find the words to describe and in a way that he’d never wish on anyone. Very much like he does right now.

Peter has been staring at his hand, waiting for it to start flaking away, for what he thinks is a long time but who really knows anymore. Time left him behind a while ago, it seems, and of course it’s when he wants to go away that he doesn’t.

It hasn’t been all that long really, he knows. His face is still wet with tears after his last round of crying, right after Pepper had already gone to the trouble of wiping his face of the dirt and the blood. His ears had started bleeding too and she’d managed to stop that. Apparently he’d been crying so hard, or holding so much back, that the pressure had been too much for his own ears.

Tony would have lost his mind over that. Jesus, only you could pull this kind of dumbassery off, kid.

May would have fussed and rolled her eyes because he’s always been accident prone even before the spider bite. Peter, are you trying to make me grey before my time? You’re really giving it your A game.

May would never go grey now. Tony would never know about this latest injury. He’ll never see either of them again.

It’s been five years and he still can’t believe it despite the evidence. He’d seen the grey in Tony’s hair that had not been there when they’d been on Titan. He’d seen the years in Pepper’s eyes and in Rhodey’s face. He knows, somewhere, there’s a little girl named Morgan Stark. It’s been five years but to him it’s only been a few hours. Earlier this morning he had been on a field trip, then fighting aliens, then in space, then in space fighting aliens, and then he’d passed out.

Not passed out, Peter corrects. He’d died. He’d died in Mr. Stark’s arms and then when he’d woken up he hadn’t even questioned why Mr. Stark and the blue lady had been missing from the group.

Doctor Strange had also told him, told all of them there, that it had been five years. Peter hadn’t really listened to him at the time. He just focused on the whole massive battle part of the briefing. Then it had been portals, and noise, and fighting, and more aliens, and the fate of the world and…

And the end of his world.

Peter has lost five years of his life. It’s time he has lost but it’s also time he’s lost with his family, and he’s lost two of them today.

Peter can’t take it anymore. He covers his mouth, and screams. Pepper had told him before she’d left to just let it out. It’s just Peter, a few staff, a few Avengers, and Tony’s corpse in this wing. Except Tony’s gone from here, too. He’d heard them roll him away. Rhodey had stuck his head in and asked him one more time, almost ordered him actually, to come stare at Tony’s body before it was released to SHIELD.

Peter had said no, again. Near screamed it. Seeing Tony die was enough. Seeing him now, still and silent and dead, he’d seen that clear enough on the battlefield and he doesn’t have the courage to stare down at what his resurrection has cost.

He’s lost five years. Five years he could have had with Tony. Five years he could have had with May. Five years he could have had with everyone. Five years that were his. He wants them back. He wants Tony back and he wants May back and he wants to disappear because that’s the only thing that would be fair and make sense right now.

His world and everything he knows about it is gone. He should go with it.

Tears start coursing down his face again and he can feel blood slowly trickling out of his right ear again. His hearing is fine, the healing has already taken care of everything, but every time he seems to feel the need to ‘let it out’ he ends up bleeding more. He grabs the already bloody towel lying next to him from the last go around and presses it against his ear. It stings but he barely registers it.

He wants to be alone but he also doesn’t. He wants May. He wants Tony. He wants Pepper.

Pepper will be back, he knows that. She’d promised him and Pepper always keeps her promises. She has to talk to Morgan. Has to tell Morgan that her dad isn’t coming home. No one has actually told him who Morgan is but he’s not an idiot.

Peter covers his face and presses the towel harder to his head, sniffs back more tears. He doesn’t remember much about his parents but he remembers May and Ben telling him that they’d died. You couldn’t take that memory away from him if you tried. Now Morgan, another thing he’s missed in the five years he’s lost, is being told that and it’s all because of him. It’s because of him that this little girl is going to grow up without a father and her father isn’t going to get to see her grow up.

please just let me turn to dust please just let me turn to dust please just let me turn to dust pl-

A hard knock followed by a soft knock on the door, as if the person knocking has to remind himself to be gentle. “Kid? You still in there?”

Rhodey. Peter nods, frantically, and starts rubbing his eyes and tries to control his breathing. “Yeah.” He manages to keep his voice steady and Rhodey takes that as permission to enter. Rhodey is out of the armour, just in jeans and a t-shirt and the braces Tony had built him. He settles next to Peter on the bed. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, for what feels like an age before he places a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“I won’t ask how you’re feeling,” he starts, going for a conversational tone instead of a lecture. “I know you don’t want to tell me right now. I just want you to know that I’m here. So is Pepper. So is Happy. So are all the rest of the Avengers, the ones you’ve met and the ones you haven’t. We’re here in your corner and always will be.”

Peter nods, takes a breath, and then nods again. He knows that. Had things been different he’d be overwhelmed with the very idea of the Avengers knowing he existed at all. The context is very different now, though, and he knows he doesn’t deserve it.

Rhodey’s fingers tighten as Peter thinks that last part and he shakes him a little, just enough to get his attention. Peter looks at him and there’s something in Rhodey’s face that makes him not want to look away.

“I know you feel like you don’t deserve it. You’re wrong and that’s that. You deserve it. You earned a place in my family the second Tony made you part of his. You deserve us and you deserve him. Yes, this is a sad day and we’ve lost a lot but we’re all so, so thankful that we have you back.”

Peter thinks his eyes are wider than they’ve ever been. He doesn’t think he has any tears left in his body to cry but he does anyway and Rhodey hugs him. It’s not the first time Rhodey has hugged him but it’s the first one of comfort. “I’m sorry,” he manages to get out in between the sobs. “I’m sorry. You’ve lost your best friend and Pepper’s lost her husband and Morgan’s lost her dad and I’m - “

“This isn’t a competition,” Rhodey switches tone to command here. There is no room for argument. “Grief isn’t a competition. No one has more rights to be more or less upset than anyone else, okay?” Rhodey lets Peter straighten up after he agrees and then waits for his attention as he wipes his face yet again with his sleeve. Rhodey rolls his eyes and grabs a pillow. “Better this than the bloody towel you’ve got there. Pepper will never leave me alone with you again.”

Peter almost laughs as he pulls the pillowcase off and then swipes it across his face. He almost doesn’t feel guilty about it. “It’s not just him,” Peter says. “It’s...May...and everything too.”

“I know, Pete. We all do.” Rhodey gets off the bed. “There’s someone else who’d like to see you if you think you can handle a visitor.”

As if on cue, the door opens and there stands Happy Hogan looking older than Peter has ever seen him. While he’s kicking himself for thinking like that because of course Happy looks older, he notices that there’s a wonder and awe in Happy’s eyes along with the grief and sadness that everyone has. “Jesus Christ,” Happy mumbles. “The crazy son of a bitch did it.”

“Technically, Bruce did it.” Rhodey reminds him.

Happy rolls his eyes and huffs at the other man. “You know what I meant.” Rhodey nods and that same look is in his eyes, too, for a moment.

“Yeah,” Rhodey agrees. “The crazy son of a bitch did it.” It’s not sad. It’s so very fond and unsurprised, and Rhodey actually smiles at Peter before he steps out. “I won’t be long,” he promises.

As soon as the door closes Peter learns that Happy can move alarmingly fast when he wants to. Happy was by the door a second ago and now he’s standing in front of him, staring at him like he’s a ghost. “Christ,” he mutters again as he holds out a hand awardkly between him.

For the first time, really, Peter thinks about the five years for everyone else. Of the people who cared about him having five years without him. He takes Happy’s wrist and presses his hand to his chest, lets him feel his breath and his heartbeat. “No, I’m Peter.”

Happy continues to stare at him in stunned silence before he suddenly bursts out laughing. It’s manic and goes on a bit longer than Peter would have deemed appropriate even under normal circumstances, but Peter is very aware that he has no context for this world or the people in it anymore.

Or, he has to allow given his conversation with Rhodey earlier, that may not be true. Though Happy hugging him may fill his hug quota for the day. He’s very gentle but also very firm. “Peter is more than enough,” Happy tells him as he pulls away, keeping his hands on his shoulders. “Tell me one thing, though. Did Tony see you...before? Cause he would've given everything to-”

“He did,” Peter quickly gets out before Happy can say anything else. Before the feeling of Tony’s arms around him morphs into the sight of him burnt, dazed, and dying. “He did.”

Happy almost looks...happy. “That’s all he could have asked for, kid.”

Maybe it’s because of the conversation he’s just had with Rhodey. Maybe because it’s Happy of all people saying this to him, Maybe because it’s been a day (or five years) and he’s just tired an he wants his people back damn it but he brushes Happy’s hands off his shoulders and pulls his knees up under his chin so he can bury his face in them and wrap his arms around them. “Please, don’t,” he begs. “I can’t - I can’t process that right now. I just can’t…. “

He feels Happy sit next to him, heavily. He sighs. “I’m sorry, Peter. I’m just...glad to see you and sad that I wasn’t there to see him go. I feel like I owed him that.”

Peter peeks out at Happy from under his arm. Happy isn’t usually this way with him. Happy doesn’t take the words back, just looks right back at him and Peter knows he knew the exact moment he moved. “I wasn’t there but you three were. That’s good enough for me and I know it was good enough for him.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispers.

“I’m sorry, too. For May as well.”

Peter unfolds himself and sighs. “Thanks.”

The two of them sit in silence, which is not something they have ever done now that Peter thinks about it. Peter has always talked in Happy’s presence. It’s never happened that the two of them have just sat together. Had things been different, this would almost be weird. Or nice. Or maybe both.

Happy is the one to break it. “We’ll be happy you’re back for you until you’re happy you’re back.”

Peter starts and Happy hums knowingly. “I know that face. I've never seen it on you before and I can’t say that I like it, but I understand it. It’ll be there as long as it needs to be but not one second longer - and I think I know who will be the one who will actually get rid of it. She managed it the last time I saw that look on someone’s face.”

“Pepper?”“Same family, different lady.” Happy’s phone chirps. He pulls it out. “Hey, is everything okay?” Happy mouths Pepper at him. “Yeah, he’s still here...as fine as any of us are. How’s Morgan doing?”

Peter shuts his eyes and folds himself up again, forehead on his knees. He tunes out the conversation. Pepper has told Morgan and she’ll probably have to tell her a couple of more times. Peter knows he hadn’t understood the first time either and he can only imagine the pain May and Ben had had to go through each time he’d asked for his parents or wondered when they were coming home.

He sucks in a breath and tries to find that part of him that had pushed a building off himself, that had thrown himself into space even though he hadn’t thought a second of it through, that had rushed into battle first thing after being dead.

It’s there. It’s shaky but it’s there. He digs his fingers into his knees. “You can do it, Spiderman. You too, Peter.”

“Hey, kiddo.”

It’s Pepper’s voice and it’s not on speakerphone. Happy has left - Peter is really going to have to ask Happy how he manages this - and in his place is a much more tired and anxious Pepper and holding her hand can only be Morgan Stark.

Chapter Text

Morgan has clearly been crying. Her eyes are red rimmed and watery but those eyes are Tony’s eyes. Her face is chubby and angelic in the way only little kids can be but that face is such a perfect mix of both Tony and Pepper that Peter finds himself squinting to try and pick out the details. Her hair is long, brown, and a little bit messy and he’s never wanted to hug a little kid more. He knows exactly what she’s been told and he knows exactly what it feels like.

He also remembers wondering later, when he was older and knew more kids with siblings, if it would have been easier if he’d had a brother or a sister to feel it all with him.

Morgan is staring at him but she’s the first person whose staring he hasn’t found uncomfortable since coming off the battlefield. Morgan lets go of Pepper’s hand, swats at her eyes, and steps closer to Peter’s dangling legs. “Petey?” she asks.

He’s at first surprised that she knows his name, but he supposes Pepper must have said who they were seeing before they came in. But then Pepper says in a voice so soft that he wants to fall into it, “yes, that’s Petey” and he knows that Morgan had come up with his name on her own.

You earned a place in my family the second Tony made you part of his.

Peter remembers Tony and Pepper and May half joking about co-parenting him. He remembers half jokingly calling Tony and Pepper Dad and Mom or collectively his parents in their earshots or to their faces. He can remember every single time Tony or Pepper had referred to themselves in the same way or, more importantly, the countless number of times they’d referred to him as theirs (my kid, our kid, our friendly neighbourhood spiderkid).

He is living with the overwhelming weight, and he thinks there is far more than what little he knows or can guess, that Tony had never forgotten about him, That Pepper hadn’t. That they’d grieved for him. That they’d missed him. That him being gone had hurt them the same way he hurt right now. Knowing that, he understands that of course, of course, they would tell Morgan about him. The same way May and him had still kept Ben alive in their conversations and in the house after he’d gone. The same way Ben and May had told him about Richard and Mary Parker. They weren’t here but they would have loved him and they wanted to make them as much a part of Peter’s life as they could.

Tony and Pepper had Morgan. A real, biological child, and they included him in Morgan's life the only way they could. And now here they are.

He’s snapped back to reality by Morgan trying to climb up on the bed. Pepper picks her up and sits her by Peter but she doesn’t stay there. As soon as Pepper steps back, Morgan immediately climbs into Peter’s lap and throws her arms around him. “I missed you, Petey,” she mumbles into his neck. “I missed you so much! Will you come home with Mommy and me? Daddy missed you so much and Mommy says Daddy is resting forever now but if we miss him together maybe he’ll come back just like you did!”

Peter hugs her tight and careful and shuts his eyes. He finds himself asking, again, how he can keep crying and if he’ll ever properly stop. The tears trace down his face and he can feel Pepper wiping them away as she perches beside them on the bed. “She wanted to see you,” she explains. “And I want - no, I need - you both home with me tonight. Is that okay with you, Peter?”

“Is it?” Morgan asks, not registering her mother’s obvious stress at the idea of it not being okay. “You’ll like our house. Your room is close to mine. Daddy and Mommy made it for you before I was born but it’s weird in there without you.”

Peter doesn’t even know where to start with that but he nods. “I’ll come home with Mommy and you,” he agrees. I have nowhere else to go is the end of that thought and he wonders if everyone has developed mind reading abilities over the past five years because the glare Pepper gives him is truly horrifying. He knows it’s because she knows what he’s thinking. The same glare also says I’ll allow it but we’re talking later.

Morgan pushes off his chest and claps her hands. She squeals and grins in that adorable way only little kids can and kisses him right on the nose. “Welcome home, Petey!”

Peter thinks he understands who and what Happy had meant as Morgan wraps herself around him again.

=====================

Travelling by portal remains weird and he hopes he doesn’t have to do it again for awhile. Before they step through, Rhodey promises to be back over as soon as he can and Happy says he’ll be over ‘the normal way’ once he dips back home to pick up some things. Pepper is telling them both guest rooms are available for them but to forgive her for not having them ready. “You two still have keys, right?” Both men assure her that they do. Happy even reminds her that he still has the keys to the tower.

Peter cocks his head. “I thought you sold the tower?”

Pepper smiles. “He thought he did. Tony. I mean Tony thought he did. I may have bought it back. I had a feeling we might want it again someday.”

Tony’s name drives a knife into Peter’s heart but he understands why she’s using it. He remembers May powering through using Ben’s name instead of using “him,” “my husband”, or “your uncle” whenever she had to talk about him. “He’s dead but he has a name,” had been May’s reasoning. “And no one is forgetting it or treating it like a bad word on my watch.” Peter smirks as he remembers the time where she’d basically tortured one of his teachers into saying it when she’d realised that it was only being avoided because he didn’t want to offend May.

“Offend me, my ass. Has anyone ever considered that maybe I like hearing his name? It’s not like I get to use it very often anymore. Ben. Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin Parker. ”

“May, he hated being called Benjamin.”

“Hush, Peter, I’m soliciting a haunting.”

He turns away from Morgan and Pepper’s goodbyes and hugs and condolences with Happy and Rhodey as the absence of his aunt hits him again.

The last thing he said to her had been “I love you, too!” and the last thing he’d heard from her was “Love ya, Pete!” so there was that bit of comfort there. He’d said he loved her and she knew he’d loved her.

May Parker has been dead for five years and, again, to him he’d seen May this morning at breakfast. They’d had waffles. Undercooked, Eggo waffles, but they had been delicious. Peter had almost spilled her coffee. May had thrown him his lunch because of course he’d almost forgotten it. She’d also tossed his webshooters at him even though she didn’t like him wearing them to school.

“Love ya, Pete!”

“I love you too!”

And then he’d shut the door and gone on his way. He should have hung back longer. Should have said it again. Should have texted her to let her know he was safe when he’d been on that flying donut. It would have been a lie but she wouldn’t have known better. Would never have had a chance to be told otherwise.

“Peter?”

Pepper and Morgan are waiting for him by a portal. Doctor Strange is holding it open. Peter nods at him as he follows Morgan and Pepper into nightfall in front of what was definitely a rich person’s idea of a cabin in the woods.

He’s been to the Avengers compound. He’s been to the tower (on a field trip, long before the spider bite), he’s been to the penthouse that Tony and Pepper preferred when they had business in the city. While each of those places had their own bit of Tony and Pepper in them, and a feeling of comfort and home to Peter, this was different. This was cozier. This was removed. This was private. He checked behind him once he heard the portal close and almost fell over to see the lake so close. Even in the dark and with his eyesight, Peter could barely make out the city in the distance.

Close enough to get to but far enough away. Just perfect for raising a family and staying out of the limelight.

Morgan and Pepper seem hesitant to walk toward the house. They just stand and stare at it. Peter takes it all in from the massive porch, the lights that are on, and the feel of the sensors that Tony has no doubt perched on the trees that are relaying to FRIDAY that all is well. The protocol would probably have a ridiculous name like Get Off My Lawn and, if things were different, Tony would be walking out of that door, FRIDAY having told him that they’d arrived. Or maybe he’d be on the porch, tapping on his StarkPad or flipping through a notebook while he waited for them.

He doesn’t need to wonder if Pepper and Morgan are thinking those kind of things. If he is, he knows they are too. “Maybe Daddy will be inside?” Morgan whispers hopefully. “He missed Petey, too.”

“He’d be here if he could, honey.” Pepper says with a barely detectable waver in her voice. “And he is here in his own way.”

Morgan doesn’t ask for an explanation but takes the first step forward. Peter takes Pepper’s hand, who squeezes back appreciatively, and they follow Morgan up to the house.

Once Pepper unlocks the door Morgan says hello to FRIDAY, who greets her in return as Little Miss. “Hello, Ms. Potts. Welcome back, Mr. Parker.” Mercifully FRIDAY doesn’t say anything about “Boss.”

Pepper shows him around the first floor. The kitchen, the dining room, the two guest rooms, the living room, her office. She points out a window to a detached garage and tells him “that’s Tony’s. I’m sure he left permissions for you before he left. I have access, Rhodey has access, and this one,” she indicates Morgan, who has been keeping to Peter like a little shadow even with her hand tightly in his, “isn’t supposed to be in there alone but she’s figured that out. We’ve caught her in there more than once.”

“It’s a game,” Morgan explains, defensive. “Daddy makes a pro-to-col, I beat it, then he does a new one, then I beat that too.”

Pepper laughs, fond. “I think it’s a different protocol now.” Peter bets it is too. Pepper turns her attention back to Peter. “You can go in there whenever you feel ready.”

Peter doesn’t think he ever will be, even as he looks down at the suit and web shooters he is still wearing. He looks down at it like it’s the first time since he can see the original suit Tony had given him through the tears and gashes in this Iron Spider one that the nanites can’t seem to fix.

Tony had literally thrown this on him earlier. He’d been about to fall his death and Tony had saved him. Again. Then had tried to send him home. And Peter hadn’t listened. Again. How different would things have been if he’d listened?

You would have been dusted anyway and nothing would have changed. You just would have been even more scared.

Pepper notices what he’s wearing and brings a hand to her forehead in a slow motion facepalm. “Shit,” she gasps. “God, sorry Peter. I should have thought about a change of clothes earlier.”

“It’s okay, Ms. Pot-sorry, Pepper. It’s okay, Pepper” he is quick to assure her. “Really, it’s fine. I didn’t notice until just now and there’s been other stuff going on. Much more important stuff than my clothes.”

Pepper nods distractedly, even ignoring Morgan yanking Peter’s arm and unintentionally stage whispering to him. “Daddy says shit is Mommy’s word but he says it too. I heard him.”

“There’s some clothes in your room,” Pepper promises. “Happy and I got some stuff out of storage, most of it should be aired out by now but I’m sorry if it’s a bit musty.”

Peter blinks. “You have my clothes? From the apartment?”

Pepper opens her mouth in the precursor to an “of course we do” but she stops. “I’ll explain later, I promise, but yes.” She brings everyone back to the kitchen and then pulls out a sad looking Iron Man egg coddler. Holding it out to Peter, he sees a single key. Same idea as a house key but a little bit smaller. He takes it and Pepper wordlessly leads the trio of them up the stairs, Morgan yawning with enough force to bring the building down.

He doesn’t know whether it’s the yawn that prompts him to ask but next thing Peter knows he’s asking FRIDAY for the date and time.

FRIDAY answers like it’s just any other question. “It is 8:47pm on May 26, 2023.”

Peter halts on the stairs, slaps the hand that isn’t holding the key onto the railing, and sticks firmly to it. He’s not asked for a date yet. No one has told him. It’s been five years and he knows that but hearing FRIDAY just lay it out with no warning or sugar coating is almost like having a building dropped on him again.

Pepper’s hand is on his stuck hand, rubbing it and easing him into unsticking. “It’s time for Morgan to go to bed,” she says softly to him. “I’m going to get her changed and settled and then I’m meeting you in your room, okay” Please stay there until I get there.” Peter wishes he could pull himself together enough to assure her he isn’t going anywhere but he can’t make himself do it. Pepper being anxious is a weird thing to see and he bets it’s probably better he doesn’t draw attention to it. He just nods instead.

Morgan, however, protests about bedtime. She wants to hang out with Peter. Pepper tells her there will be time in the morning and ushers Peter ahead of them. “Goodnight kiss, first!” Morga demands. Peter gets down to her level and lets her squeeze him as tight as she wants. He pecks her on the nose to pay her back for the one she gave him at the hospital and she giggles. Peter never wants to not hear that sound. She kisses him on the nose back again. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” she warns him. “See you in the morning!”

“Night, Morgan.” Pepper and Morgan keep going down the hall while Peter takes the opportunity to slip the key into the lock of the newest looking door and lets it click closed behind him.

Tony and Pepper have only had this house while he’s been gone and they’d made a room for him anyway. It’s sparse. The furniture is new, to him at least, but the clothes are his. There’s a pair of pyjama pants, a worn white t shirt, and the old blue hoodie with the missing drawstring that he last remembered seeing at the penthouse lying on the bed waiting for him. The closet is full of his stuff and so are the drawers and nothing smells musty.

He gets the nanotech suit into its casing, then peels off the other Spiderman suit. He leaves the casing on his desk and hangs up the other suit in his closet for now. He pulls on the pyjamas next and it’s then that he notices the corkboard. Nothing in the room aside from the clothes had screamed “this room belongs to Peter Parker” but the photos decorating the corkboard more than announced that. There were photos he himself had taken, as Spiderman and not, of the New York skyline and other random things but then there were photos that had to have been taken off his phone or computer or even his Instagram in some cases.

There was him and Ned proudly showing off their completed Death Star. One of MJ glaring from behind a massive looking book with the title cut off (The Collected Works of something or other). The last Academic Decathalon team photo. The three of them together on a school trip. In front of the local movie theatre.

There’s the photo of Peter and Tony with the upside down internship certificate, giving each other bunny ears. Peter and Tony in the lab working on each other’s suits. Tony and May cooking together in the apartment kitchen. Pepper and Tony mugging in front of a giant Spiderman plushie. Pepper and May triumphant, posing in victory after defeating the Avengers escape room.

And there’s May and Ben with Peter. And May, Peter, Pepper, and Tony doing their best job at a family portrait except everyone is trying not to laugh. Even a photo of his parents along with tons of other captured moments with all of his family, blood and otherwise.

“Tony spent a lot of time here.” Peter had heard Pepper come in but had been waiting for her to announce herself as he takes in a photo of himself posing smugly by a really pissed off looking Tony, who is covered head to toe in exploded webbing. “He gave the builders grief when they wanted to know what this room was supposed to be for. It hurt him too much to make it more yours but he really worked on that corkboard.”

“It’s great,” Peter rasps. He clears his throat. “All my favourite people in one spot.” He wraps his arms around himself and tries to warm himself, to soothe himself. “I can’t believe you kept all my stuff. You can’t have known -”

“We didn’t, no.” Pepper is behind him now and wraps her arms around him. Peter leans back into her and sighs, soaking up the comfort she’s offering and hopefully giving her some in return. “Tony, I think, always had hope. He never looked at it too long, never poked at it, but I think he was always waiting for a chance. We both were.” She presses her forehead into his hair and gently presses a kiss on top of his head before straightening up again. “We bought the apartment and put everything in storage. That’s where your stuff has been. We can get more of it later, I just worried about your clothes for now.”

“You bought the apartment?”

“Like I said, we had hopes. We didn’t want you and May to be out of your home.”

Peter sighs. “I don’t think I want to live there right now.” He couldn’t face being alone in that apartment. Not now or ever, he thinks.

Pepper tenses for a minute and then steps back. Peter turns to face her. “You don’t have to live there ever if you don’t want to,” Pepper explains, slowly, like he’s missed something. “We can talk about what to do with it another day but I want to show you something important right now.”

Pepper reaches for a magenta folder that has been sitting on the dresser. Peter cocks his head. Magenta was Pepper’s colour for May in her colour coded system.

Pepper gestures for Peter to sit on the bed. He does, and Pepper does eventually after an odd pause. They’re each cross legged and facing each other, Peter at the head and Pepper at the foot. “There are a few things we should talk about but I want to show you this now.”

Peter takes the folder out of her outstretched hands is greeted with May’s last will and testament when he opens that. “Don’t worry about it now,” Pepper preempts as Peter’s entire body tenses with a renewed wave of grief. “Skip down to the red circled part.

Red. Red had been his colour. Peter skips down and nearly gasps at what he reads there.

I appoint as the guardians of my minor nephew (Peter Benjamin Parker) Anthony Edward Stark and Virginia Isobel Potts.

Peter stares at the page. Reads it again. Checks the date. It had been before this whole mess. A good few months, he thinks. He looks up at Pepper, who reaches under the will to put a different set of paperwork on top. Guardianship paperwork, the very legal and fancy sounding title and opening paragraphs tell him.

He doesn’t read them. He just skips down to the bottom where he sees two signatures. Pepper’s is strong, neat, and firm. And is dated last week. Tony’s is there too. Strong and decisive, so much so that it looks like he nearly ripped a hole in it. It is also dated last week. When he tries to run his fingers over the creases where Tony’s pen almost tore through it, he finds that it doesn’t feel right. Then he clues in that these are copies. That these have already been filed.

He’d been gone then. They hadn’t known for sure that he’d be back. They hadn’t known what was going to happen.

“Your aunt and I had talked about it but everything went wrong before I could talk to Tony. Then I really couldn’t talk to Tony about it,” Pepper continues talking but her voice fades into the background as Peter stares at the names. Virginia Isobel Potts. Anthony Edward Stark. He remembers his aunt mentioning it, kind of, sort of, in passing as a joke once. (“How are you going to make sure I finish high school if I've already killed you by whatever I did to give you a heart attack?" "If I go you're Tony and Pepper's problem and look how worried I am about you dropping out on their watch.")

He hadn’t thought much of it because why would he? And why would Pepper want him now after all this?

“Peter. Look at me.”

Peter does. Pepper takes the folder away, lets it drop to the floor, and then cups his face in her hands. “You’re our kid,” she tells him, leaving no room for argument. Like this is a universal truth. “You’re mine, May’s, and Tony’s kid. You’re Ben’s kid. You’re Richard and Mary’s kid. You can love us all, hate us all, but know that we all love you. Will always love you. You’re Morgan’s brother and she’s loved you since she was born and she’ll never stop either.” Pepper draws a breath and gathers herself. Peter doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look so forceful but also so loving and gentle at the same time. She moves her hands to his shoulders.

“You may have been Tony’s kid first but you’re my kid too. Don’t you ever doubt it. You never stopped being part of us. Not for one second. Just like Tony will never stop being part of us.That’s a fact even without that piece of paper but I wanted to show you officially, because I think you might need that right now, that you always have a place here because this is your home. I’ll frame it and hang it somewhere for you to look at every day if you need me to. No one is coming to take you away. No one is going to make you leave and no one wants you to. This is your home. We are your home and we always will be.”

Peter barely lets Pepper finish before he throws his arms around her. He has no words. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t cover it. ‘I love you’ doesn’t even seem like enough either. He hears the door open and in comes Morgan in a cartoon character nightgown. She burrows herself in between Pepper and Peter and snuggles in as if she’d been waiting for her cue.

His heart is in pieces. Like Pepper had said earlier, everything was going to be horrible for a long time before they were okay again but for the first time since watching Tony’s body be carried away off the battlefield he can almost believe it.

He doesn’t want to turn to dust anymore, though. He wants to stay right here in Morgan and Pepper’s arms and neither of them show any signs of letting him go anytime soon.

=========================

What in the hell is going on?

I couldn't say.

You'd best say something or you won't like what I'm gonna say next.

I don't know, sir! Something is happening, has been happening but we don’t-

Don't know how much or how long or how dangerous, right?

Right.

Then we wait.

Wait? The-

We wait. End of discussion.

Chapter Text

Four days have never felt so long and so surreal. The world hadn't really been great five years ago, but it was chaos now. Peter can’t help but be grateful for the distance he has from it. The world had moved on from the Snap and now the Decimated were all back and very confused; the world is, of course, confused along with them. Peter does wish that they’d gone with a better name than the Decimated but it’s better and more accurate than trying to rename everything into the Blip. Peter, if anyone were to ask him, very much considers himself someone who was Snapped and not Blipped. Pepper agrees, as does Rhodey, and Peter knows without being told that Tony would think the name sucked too.

Happy, for one, deeply resents the murder and ressurection of half of the universe being treated like a technical glitch. “If my phone lost signal for five years and then suddenly came back online, I’d be furious if someone called that a blip.”

Peter would also highly doubt Happy would hold on to a dead phone for five years but, then again, Pepper had given him his old phone along with a new one to transfer everything to. Peter also knows for a fact that Tony’s phone is sitting on the dresser in Pepper’s bedroom, right where Pepper had put it down when Rhodey had brought it back from the ruins of the compound. It was somehow, miraculously, unscathed.

Of course it was. Tony had designed the StarkPhones himself and Peter had provided quality control where he could for later models. Sometimes that was even intentional. Service would never blip with a StarkPhone. Peter had once spent three hours on a call with Tony while he’d lurked in a sewer waiting on some potential bank robbers while Tony had dipped in and out of office buildings, his lab, a bank vault, and the sky, and not a single blip in service was experienced. Tony had lamented that they couldn’t use the call as an advertisement but had managed a way to get the call stats into the board report that month.

There are a lot of actual blips happening right now, however, regardless of whether Stark Industries made your phone or not. Internet, phones, and everything are constantly crashing with the sudden influx of users all trying to reach out and find one another. The lake house, of course, has its own network so Peter is able to get results quicker than most. Most importantly he finds out that Ned and MJ had been Snapped too. Ned's whole family went with him while MJ's hadn't. They all agree to touch base properly later. Things are crazy and everyone has their own level of it to deal with and not much bandwidth for each others at the moment. Neither of them even blink when he mentions that he's living with Pepper and Morgan now. The shock of May being gone superseded everything else he’d said after.

It's hard but, as promised, he is never alone for an instant of it. Space has been given when he needs it, but Pepper is always there waiting for him when he comes back. Morgan is always waiting for him too, delighted to actually be able to play with her brother instead of imagining it. Apparently 'pretending to play with Peter’ had been a whole game she’d invented, one that Pepper and Tony had never played with her despite her constant invitations. Peter doesn’t blame them - he doesn’t know what he’ll do if and when Morgan introduces ‘pretending to play with Daddy.’ Maybe hide up on the roof like he had that one time. It’s the only time Pepper had freaked out when he’d gone off on his own but he supposes that’s more than fair. Balancing his need for space and Pepper’s need to know where everyone is at all times is a bit of a juggling act but mostly seems to be workable. Peter prefers knowing Pepper is within earshot if not sight more often that not anyway. Their sleeping habits have more than proved that.

The first night together had involved very little sleep. The three of them had collapsed into an exhausted pile on Peter's bed and they'd gotten little bits of sleep before Peter had shot awake from dreams of Tony and May turning to dust over and over again. Pepper was already awake thanks to her own nightmares and Morgan had needed to be woken up out of her own about a minute after Peter.

Pepper had moved the slumber party to the living room then and all three of them have consistently ended up there every single night since. They already have a playlist of preapproved movies and TV shows and a stack of games and books on the coffee table. Pepper even went and grabbed all the extra duvets and pillows from the linen closet and they all just live there now. "If we live here for awhile then we are going to be comfortable."

They always start in their own beds but Morgan typically ends up in Peter's room, or Peter in Pepper’s, and then Pepper gets anxious and isn't calm until she sees and hugs them both. Each of them has screamed for Tony at least twice in the night so far. It never stops being devastating when they remember. Peter almost wishes he could forget overhearing Pepper outside on night two just screaming and crying in a way that Peter could never imagine her sounding. He'd gone outside to see her and ended up holding Pepper as she sobbed into his shoulder ("I told him he could rest and then he went and listened to me!"). It reminds him too much of holding May while she cried about Ben but he is glad, for lack of a better word, that he can return the endless love and support that Pepper has given him both before everything and now.

Then Tony's birthday drops on them like a ton of bricks and it's like it's just happened again. Rhodey and Happy are here and Peter doesn't know whether to be thankful or sad that Morgan doesn't seem to remember what day it is, though she’s as sad and miserable as everyone else is even if she doesn’t quite understand why they’re especially so today. The day itself isn't even acknowledged until Morgan has gone to bed and Pepper knocks on Peter’s door. "Come out to the dock,” she directs. She has a wristwatch on that looks like Tony's as well as an earpiece in her ear. Likely for FRIDAY and mostly for when Morgan wakes up and starts looking for them.

At the dock are Rhodey, Happy, and Bruce Banner. Peter should be fanboying right now about finally, properly, meeting the Hulk outside of a battle or hospital hallway situation but they just mutually nod in greeting as Peter waves at Rhodey and Happy. They are standing in a circle around a beat up blue cooler. "Didn't remember seeing Pete's name on the guest list." Rhodey quips with a raised eyebrow at Pepper.

Pepper shrugs without shrugging. "This part of the will is older; he'd want him here." She is not challenged. Bruce even seconds it.

Peter never wants to see or hear of a will ever again. He has put Pepper off on walking him through anything May or Tony has put in about him but he knows parts of both are already in action. This little gathering seems to be one of them.

Rhodey takes a deep breath. "Let's get this show on the road, then." He opens the cooler and pulls out a tall can of something and starts passing one to everyone. Peter is about to remind everyone that he really shouldn't be drinking yet when he actually reads the label and realises it isn't beer.

"Infinite Awareness 8000" Peter reads with some difficulty. The font is terrible and the violent purple text against a highlighter orange background does not help.

"Great Grape flavour." It almost sounds like a curse coming from Happy. Like when Tony would ask him to "take the scenic route" when he sent him on an errand.

Bruce, unsurprisingly to everyone else, is reading the ingredients. "This is an...insane amount of caffeine.” He looks to Peter in concern. “ Can your metabolism handle this alright?"

Peter nods after a quick scan of the list. "I’ll be up all night, but I would have been up all night anyway." Pepper's hand lands on his shoulder and Peter is grateful for the weight.

"This is his parting gift to me," Happy grumbles, turning his eyes to the night sky in resignation. "An over caffeinated spider."

Rhodey snorts. "We'll be fine,” he assures Happy. “This is part of how Tony quit drinking, remember? Every time he wanted a drink he grabbed one of these."

"And then was up all night, overstimulated, and angry about it. Conditioning at its finest and it was way worse the second time,” Pepper adds dryly. She sniffs in distaste at the can in her hand. "This doesn't exactly taste good,”

Peter considers the can; he could have figured out that this didn’t taste good just based on the can alone. "Why would he want us having a drink of something that tastes bad?"He knows the answer but he likes hearing the snorts and giggling and seeing the eye rolling anyway.

"Because it's funny," Rhodey reminds him, also needlessly, with an attempt at a laugh. "It's his birthday and he's literally put it in his will that he'd like us to do this and he knows we can't say no. He's pissing himself laughing wherever he is right now."

Everyone nods. Pepper taps something on the wristwatch she's wearing and a small, flyspeck of a drone pops out and circles the group."Filming for posterity and as requested. Hopefully we can all laugh at this later. "

Rhodey opens his can and raises it up toward the centre of the circle. Everyone else follows suit. "To Tony," he intones. "Happy birthday, you complete and utter jackass." The delivery is as serious as...well, a eulogy.

"To Tony," Bruce echoes.

"To Tony." Happy now.

"To Tony." Pepper.

Peter takes a deep breath. "To Tony."

They clink their cans together and take their drinks. At first Peter thinks it's not so bad; just a mediocre grape soda. Then it gets worse. He swallows to try and clear it. Then coughs, first as an attempt to clear it, then as a reaction to the drink itself. It just keeps getting worse and he is more aware of it with every passing second.

Bruce growls and throws the can away from the group toward the house. It lands in the middle of the driveway. "That is vile."Pepper is making a face with both eyes shut, pounding her chest while doing so. Rhodey is hacking and making retching noises, which set Peter off into making his own. He takes another drink out of reflex, forgetting his past mistakes, and it just gets even worse. He has to actively try to keep his breathing regular. "What is this?" he gasps.

"Worse than I remember." Pepper is sitting on the dock now. "No wonder this company went out of business."

"Then how did we get it?" Peter groans as he flops down next to her. This is definitely the nastiest thing he’s ever had and him and Ned blended nearly all the McDonald’s dollar menu into a smoothie once. Ben had not been impressed.

"Tony bought the supply before they went out of business. Incentive, he said." It's the first time Happy has spoken since they drank. And he is still drinking it. He even seems to be enjoying it. Peter gapes at him and he knows the others are too.

Happy shrugs at them. "What? Who do you think had to try it first?"

"Dear God." Pepper breathes. This is apparently news to Rhodey and Bruce as well. Happy gives that a moment to sink in and then just downs the rest of the can in one gulp.

Rhodey almost falls off the dock. "Dude. What the hell!"

"You're a hero, Happy Hogan." Bruce declares before turning to Peter. "Don't finish it,” he asks. “I really don't want to have to pump your stomach."

Peter downs half of it before he just can't anymore. Then the can gets stuck to his hand and it takes both Pepper and Bruce to pry it out. Bruce tosses his can away to land too with the promise to pick them up when they’re done here. Rhodey makes some comment about littering and then they all just hang out for a bit on the dock, people still intermittently hacking and trying to get the taste out of their mouths. "Water?" Bruce asks, eventually.

Pepper shakes her head, amused. "Specifically says not to."

"Monster. And I can't even yell at him."

Silence falls across the group as their loss hits them again. Peter brain catches to a comment that was made earlier. "When did Mr. Stark stop drinking?" he asks Pepper, quiet enough that only she hears. "He'd already stopped before."

Pepper sighs. "It was bad after he got back from space.” She’s told as much before but hasn’t gone into detail. Peter isn’t sure he wants to know details. “There were...some very bad nights, and days. But he stopped again just before we got married."

"Was your wedding nice?" Peter wants to take back the question but it's too late now. He’d been so excited for them and had been eagerly anticipating the invitation that Tony had promised him.

Pepper nods but then surprises Peter by telling him that they’d just gone and got married at city hall with Rhodey and Happy as witnesses instead of a traditional wedding. Apparently, she also says, lots of people had done that just after the Snap. Peter deflates at this news but Pepper smiles warmly at him and wraps an arm around his shoulders in a side hug. “It was nice,” she promises. “We just didn’t want to have to look at a crowd full of missing faces.”

"Hey!" Happy points at them. "No depressing talk at the birthday party."

Pepper releases Peter and holds up her hands in defeat. "My mistake," she drawls as she picks herself off the ground and hauls Peter up with her. "It was nice," she mouths, knowing Peter will hear her just fine. "No fuss. No muss. Even got a nice dinner out of it."

"Did you get to pick?"

"Yes I did! We went to that vegetarian place where you caught that arsonist. He didn't even complain once."

"Care to share with the class?" Rhodey asks."Or are you going to gape at each other like fish all night?”

Peter contorts his face into what Great Grape infused him seems to think is a fish face and everyone nearly passes out laughing. It's nice, the sane part of Peter notes. Nice that they have this moment now before the funeral in a few days and he sends his thanks toward the brightest looking star in the sky for making them do this. Later, when the others have it them to tease him about it, he'll blame the caffeine.

Morgan eventually wanders out of the house looking for them and they all head inside, Bruce picking up the trash as promised. The night is long and everyone is very awake and uncomfortable with it, and they all end up in the living room playing Monopoly while Morgan dozes across Rhodey’s lap. They all slowly crash one at a time. Only Happy had managed to drink the whole thing and he wanders off, overstimulated and annoyed, to get some work done in his room sometime before Rhodey passes out.

Peter is the last man standing, he knew he'd be up all night, and crawls up onto the ceiling to look down at the mess of people below him. Rhodey is still sitting up with his head almost off the back of the couch with Morgan still asleep in his lap. Bruce is passed out face down across one of the sofas, which by some miracle is not buckling under him. Pepper is on the third couch looking so sad still but also so peaceful while curled up under three of the duvets. There is still Peter's spot on the other half of the couch waiting for him next to her.

"FRIDAY," he whispers. "Save image, please."

"Already done, Peter."

It's only been four days. It's too good to be true that they ended this day laughing and almost happy, except for the aftertaste and the heart palpitations that would have had Tony checking in no matter what he was doing (I could both feel and hear you vibrating from across town and I deeply resent that). He knows Pepper had got the alarm in her earpiece even if she thinks he didn't catch on.

Morgan stirs and flips onto her back. Her eyes open and a moment of panic comes across her before she turns her head, naming people off as she sees them quietly. Peter is about to say something when he remembers that he is on the ceiling and Morgan has definitely never seen that before.

When Morgan eventually sees him she seems completely unphased, even comforted at the sight. She smiles instead of screams, which makes her the first person to ever do so the first time they find him on the ceiling. "There you are," she mumbles with relief. She gives him a drowsy wave, which Peter returns with a full heart, and then conks out again.

The funeral is in four days. They will survive it together.

Chapter Text

On the morning of the funeral Peter feels like he is on the edge of a nervous breakdown and no one is even here yet. It’s still just Pepper, Morgan, Rhodey, and Happy here and all they’ve done so far is eat breakfast together like they have several times before now. Breakfast has been a somber affair every morning but this one is especially heavy. Morgan barely eats her cereal and no one even glares at Peter as he only eats toast and a banana. It’s a far cry from pre-Snap normal and is still less than he’s been eating since that last breakfast of undercooked waffles with May. They’d finished that maybe half an hour ago and they’d all broken ranks to get suited up. Not suited up in the sense that they were all used to but suited up for something else entirely but just as daunting.

The suit that Peter will be wearing today is one that Tony had bought for him. Peter has never seen it or worn it before but of course it fits perfectly. Apparently it had been intended for him to wear at Tony and Pepper’s wedding but Tony had never gotten the chance to tell him about it before the Snap. Then Tony had packed it away along with traditional wedding plans as if he’d known that Peter would need it one day. Peter highly doubted that Tony would have seen this coming, however.

Peter had stared at it in a combination of fear and hatred at first and then had grudgingly put it on. He’s been having trouble with the tie for the past few minutes but that makes no sense. He’d already learned how to tie a tie. May and him had learned thanks to YouTube for Homecoming and then Tony had shown him some other knots for a Stark Industries charity event he’d brought him to. He could do all this blindfolded but his fingers refused to move properly, like they were on strike and refusing to take part in yet another funeral.

May had had a funeral. A small one, Pepper had said, but she’d had one and Peter hadn’t been alive to go. Peter himself hadn’t had one; Pepper had explained they only would allow funerals if there was a body. It’s good, he knows, that there isn’t a tombstone with his name and dates somewhere but there’s a part of him that wishes there was. At least all the Parkers would have been together in that little cemetery in Queens for a little while.

Peter digs his nails into his palms and swallows. He can’t lose it now. He is going to lose it several times today but he is not starting now, in his room, trying to tie his tie while wishing he could go to another funeral too.

He doesn’t know how to balance the grief for them both. If it’s not one, it’s the other, and the sense of family he feels here feels both stolen and unfair to both of them. He knows that’s wrong and he’ll talk himself out of it eventually but the feeling still stings.

There’s a knock on his door. “Peter?” It’s Happy. “The longer you draw it out the harder it’s going to be.”

Peter pulls himself together. “I’ll be right down.” It’s just the five of them until the afternoon and Pepper says there are goodbye messages. One for them to watch together, and then each of them have their own. Another thing that makes this real. If Tony had lived, he’d have had all of these destroyed before letting anyone see them.

Peter takes a deep breath. Holds it. Slowly lets it out. “You can do this,” he whispers to himself. “You can watch this. You’ve seen worse.”

He rolls his shoulders back so hard that they crack, finally gets his tie under control, and then heads downstairs to join everyone else in the living room. Once Peter has had a moment to settle on Pepper’s other side, Morgan already bundled close to her, she clicks something on the side of the Iron Man helmet on the table in front of her.

And there Tony is. Alive and healthy and clearly anxious. Anxious with anticipation of what he’s about to do, Peter knows, but also about what could happen as a result. Both good and bad things.

Peter honestly doesn’t hear what he says at first. He’s just so entranced by this holographic but so real image of Tony pacing along the living room, sitting in a chair, and talking about uniting families, the size of the universe, and the forces of darkness. He has to keep reminding himself that this isn’t really Tony, and preparing himself for the moment he vanishes again.

He can hear Morgan squirming next to Pepper. Pepper holds her close and doesn’t tell her not to be scared. Morgan is slowly understanding that Tony isn’t coming home but seeing this was maybe a bit much. This isn’t her first hologram, Peter is sure of that, but this is the first hologram of her Dad. Her Dad that she isn’t going to see again in any other way but tinged in blue and saying exactly the same thing every time she sees him.

She’s lucky in a way. There’s a part of Peter that would have loved to have that from his parents. In another way, it almost feels like a curse.

Tony’s image gets up. “What am I even trippin’ for?” he asks, rhetorically, after he’s just said that part of the journey is the end. “Everything’s gonna work out exactly the way it’s supposed to.” Then he bends down a little and looks right at Morgan, as if he knew they’d be in the living room and knew exactly where Morgan would be sitting. Morgan curls up a little more but she meets her father’s eyes without fear.

What Tony says next is a variant of something he’s heard Pepper say to Morgan as part of the good night rituals: I love you and then a number. Pepper usually opens with “love you lots” and then Morgan will say “I love you 2000” or “I love you 5000” or something like that back.

It shouldn’t break Peter the way it does to hear Tony say “I love you 3000” right to Morgan, smile, and then vanish but it does. It suddenly strikes Peter that he has never heard either of them say 3000 as the number. Tears start as soon as Tony is gone and Peter can’t help but lean against Pepper’s shoulder to cry even as he hears Pepper’s quiet, tearful, gasp. As if she wasn’t expecting her husband to vanish. Peter doesn’t need to look at Happy or Rhodey to know that they’re crying too and he reaches an arm behind Pepper and across to Morgan in an attempt to hug the both of them as much as to let Morgan know he’s still here too. If Morgan cries, Peter can’t hear it.

They sit there together in their grief for a few minutes in silence before Pepper takes in a deep breath. “FRIDAY has all of your personal messages loaded,” she exhales. “All you have to do is ask for it.” She grabs a handful of tissues from Happy, who has appeared with one of many boxes from the first floor bathroom, and Peter takes some as well as Pepper wipes off Morgan’s face before taking care of her own. “You can listen to them whenever you want but Morgan and I are going to go listen to hers now.”

“Do we have to?” Morgan whispers.

Pepper nods. “It’ll be nicer than that one, I promise.”

Morgan still looks skeptical but nods. “Did you get one too?”

Pepper nods again. “I’ve listened to mine already.” Peter thinks of the night he'd found her outside as she glances at her watch and then back to the rest of the room. “Meet back here in an hour or so?”

Everyone nods. Peter gives Pepper and Morgan a head start up the stairs before heading that way himself. Rhodey stops him before he starts up. “You’re going to listen to yours too?”

Peter nods with about as much eagerness as he’s sure Morgan feels. “You?”

Rhodey nods back. “Might as well. We’ll probably end up playing that one again for Steve, Bruce, and the others when they get here. I think Pepper mentioned that was meant for them too.”

“Except that last bit.”

Rhodey nods, eyes shining with yet more tears. “Well, yeah, I don’t think Tony would ever say I love you 3000 to Steve. Maybe to Thor or Bruce, though.”

Peter lets out a startled laugh and Rhodey grins at him like he’s won a prize. “Head on up,” he lightly orders. “Take a listen to your old man and you can come down here and cry with your uncle Rhodey if you need to.”

“I will,” he promises. He and Rhodey exchange a quick hug before he heads up the stairs and into his room. He locks the door. “FRIDAY, play Tony’s last message for me, please.”

Tony materializes sitting on his bedroom floor, leaning against the side of the bed. Peter thinks nothing of sitting down across from him, leaning against the closed door, to face him. Like this was just another conversation.

“Heya, Pete,” Tony starts. He pauses for a minute and then says it again. Then, like a locomotive going down a hill with no brakes, fires off every name for Peter that he can think of. “Pete, Peter, Peter Parker, Parker, Spider-Man, Spidey, kid, kiddo, Underoos, Spiderbaby, Spiderling, Spiderkid.” Tony is almost breathless when he finishes and he is almost smiling. Like he hasn’t said any of those words in a long time.

“I talk to you a lot here,” he continues once he catches his breath. “I would give anything to know you've heard anything I've ever said here but I really hope you aren't listening now." Tony sighs, long and resigned. "If you are watching this, though, that means I’m not there to talk to you myself, which sucks the big one for both of us. Just our luck, too.”

Peter snorts, or sobs, or both. It doesn’t matter because it does suck and it is just their luck.

Tony sighs, shuts his eyes for a moment, then continues much more seriously. “I’m really sorry I’m not there,” the pain in his voice matches the pain that Peter has felt every day since Tony died. “God, I wish I was. I wish I was with you right now and I wish for it every goddamn day. But I’m obviously not.” His face changes, and flash of frustrated anger crosses it for a heartbeat. “And if you are watching this and I'm still kicking, I'm going to need you turn this off and just go punch me in the face. I'll know why.” He rolls his eyes and mutters something that sounds like emotionally constipated dumbass and then gets back on track. “I also need you to understand that however it happened it wasn’t your fault.”

Peter isn’t able to finish the thought before Tony’s image is pointing a finger and staring right at him as if he knew where Peter would be, just like with Morgan downstairs. “Ah, ah, no! Nope! Don’t even start. No. You don’t get to feel guilty. Whatever happened was my choice and I went into this knowing this could happen. You have enough right now without blaming yourself for my antics. There’s a really long line for that by the way and you definitely don’t get a front of the line pass for it.”

Tony puts his arm back down and softens his voice. He leans forward a little and Peter does the same. “It’s been five long years without you, kid, and a lot has happened. Most of it isn’t important and the rest is nothing you can’t catch up on but I can only imagine what you must be thinking and feeling right now. Coming back five years from where you were when it probably feels like five seconds must be a real trip. I wish I was there to help you through it. I wish for a lot of things but you have Pepper and Rhodey and Happy and Morgan. If you haven’t met Morgan yet pause this and go meet her, I’ll just sit here and wait.” Tony folds his arms behind his head and starts whistling the Jeopardy theme tune. Peter might need that as his ringtone for forever.

After a few seconds he starts talking again. “She’s something isn’t she? I’ve indoctrinated her with bedtime stories about her big brother Spider-Man so she already adores you. You might be her favourite superhero and I can’t even be offended about it because you’re mine, too.” He winks at him. Then sadness washes across his face again and his voice gets quieter and fills up with regret. “I wish I told you that more often, or at all really.”

He pauses, sighs deeply and straightens back up again. “You probably know about May by now and god I am so sorry. You shouldn’t have to do this again and not with everything else too. It’s not fair and I wish I could fix it for you.” He sits there and Peter wants to shake him. Here he is, a man who had helped to bring back so many people, and here he is disappointed that he couldn’t save everyone. Hypocrite until the end.

Tony keeps talking. “I’m pretty sure May wouldn’t mind if I say this on behalf of both of us: you should not feel guilty that you’re here and we aren't. You and I both know she’d consider that fair trade. And I do too, for the record. I’m sorry that it’s both of us at pretty much the same time for you. Everything is going to suck but you will get through it. I know you will. You’re stronger and better than all of us and even though you shouldn’t have to do this, I know you can and you aren’t alone. You never will be. Seriously, good luck getting out of Morgan sight for the rest of your extremely long life. It ain’t happening.” Peter snorts at that and Tony chuckles to himself too. They lock eyes and Peter really wants to know what Tony had done to make the hologram so responsive as to where everyone was in the room. It’s almost enough to forget that Tony isn’t real but whenever Peter’s mind registers the blue hue it feels like swinging into a brick wall.

”Also seriously,” Tony resumes, “everyone I just mentioned before, including me, we’re your family. We always will be.” Tony shuts his eyes and raises his hand toward his face, as if he was about to rub his face with it. He lets the hand drop before it makes contact and opens his eyes instead. They are shining with unshed tears that he is choosing to let Peter see. Peter pauses the recording, takes a moment to get his breathing under control and hold back the hysterics, before continuing.

“I never said it when you were here because I was chickenshit but I’m saying it now: I love you, Peter. I didn’t think knocking on your door would lead us to this but here we are and I’d like to think we’re both better for it, even with the current circumstances. Losing you was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and I’ve been literally tortured. And even though every day without you is a pain I can’t describe, I wouldn’t take back anything or wish away us ever meeting.” He stares levelly into Peter’s eyes and Peter holds his gaze. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t risk for a shot at bringing you home. Never forget that, Pete. Not one damn thing."

The weight of what that means starts to crush him. Tony did this for him. Tony invented time travel and then died because of him. How will he ever-

The hologram actually shushes him, like a pissed off librarian, and glares at him. He doesn’t say anything further but his eyes say just stop, Pete. Don’t you deny me agency in this.

“I won’t ask a lot from you,” Tony goes on. “Just be happy, live your life, make it a long one, and be sad as long as you need to but please not forever. Don’t use me as an example; Pepper can caution you about that later. And keep an eye on her and Morgan for me. Look after each other. Hell, keep tabs on Rhodey and Happy, too. Do what you can to keep them on their toes. We can’t have them getting complacent.”

Tony wipes his eyes and smiles ruefully. “You’re a great kid. You’re my great kid, and I'm proud of you. My being here or not here doesn’t change that. " He pauses and considers his next choice of words. Then he looks at Peter the same way he had at Morgan, smiles bright and loving, and says "I love you 3000.”

And then Tony vanishes just like he had downstairs. Peter sits in stunned silence with the weight of these words and feelings, none of which were new to him at this point, crushing onto him. He wants to hug Tony. He wants to thank him. He wants to scream at him. He wants to punch a hole in the wall. He wants to tear this room apart.

He doesn’t want to hear Morgan and Pepper crying down the hall. He wants to give them Tony back. He wants May to hug him and come stand with him today because he doesn’t know how to do funerals without her and because he didn’t get to say goodbye. He wants so much that he can't ever have again so he leans his head back against his bedroom door and lets the sobs out before he buries his face in his sleeves and tries to clean off his face and stifle them. You'd think he'd be good at it by now.

Footsteps pace out front and then walk away. Then again. He can hear Pepper whisper to Morgan “let’s give Peter a minute” and then the footsteps go back to Morgan’s room. Peter hiccups into silence and then collapses onto his floor. He lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, counting his breaths, and hoping maybe he’s finally cried out the last of his tears.

Fat. Fucking. Chance. He’ll be bawling again in an hour or two and he knows it. He rubs his face again, grunts in annoyance at the mucus that is now on his sleeve. Now he actually needs to leave to find some tissues.

"I'm gonna ruin this suit," he mumbles as he gets up off the ground and rubs his eyes again. Morgan and Pepper know he’s been crying but he doesn’t need to look like it. He catches his reflection in the mirror on the back of his closet door and huffs in anger at himself. “I’m never wearing this suit again,” he declares to the empty room or whatever is out there that cares to listen.

The footsteps are back, adult ones. A soft knock. Pepper is not May but her hugs are good enough. “I’m never wearing this suit again,” he tells her.

Pepper tells him she’ll help him burn it.

==========

The house is crawling with Avengers, SHIELD agents, Guardians, and so many others. He can already hear the condolences and feel the comforting hands and he wishes he could just be invisible for the whole thing. He can’t even remember how he’d managed Ben’s funeral and he, thankfully, has very few memories of his parents’ funeral. All he remembers is Ben and May staying with him and keeping him safe from the other mourners.

He looks out his window and takes in the people milling around outside. Peter is so glad that Pepper had made the funeral an invitation only affair and refused all calls for a public one. Absolutely no drop ins allowed and Peter had nearly passed out laughing earlier at the sight of three reporters running off in the distance after FRIDAY’s proximity alert sensors had gone off and a few suits came out of the trees.

The protocol was actually called Get Off My Lawn and Peter wishes he could tease Tony about just how predictable he is.

Pepper had already confirmed Tony’s death to the world earlier in the week via video conference. She’d even said memorial services had already happened to throw them off the scent, which seems to have worked since only three reporters have tried to get access so far. Part of Peter wants to web them up and hang them up as examples to the others but knows that’s far from practical.

He’s reminded every day that Tony is dead. It’s all over the internet, all over the news, the absence in the house is like an enormous black hole that everyone is slowly learning to live with, but the funeral has an air of permanence to it that Peter is not prepared for. Not even after the last messages from this morning. Having this gathering today is making it official and unchangeable. There hasn’t been any room for denial but Peter doesn’t know how he’s going to get through this.

A knock on his door. “Petey?” Morgan doesn’t wait for an answer and lets herself in. She's avoiding watching the farewell downstairs for the second time, he knows. He's doing the same. He’s also avoiding the floods of flowers and cards and food that have been appearing over the past few days. Dr. Strange had promised to help Pepper with finding ways to get through them faster.

Peter helps Morgan up onto the bed next to him and she promptly crawls over to look out the window. “It’s a lot of people,” she declares.

Peter hums in agreement, wondering if Morgan has ever seen this many people at her house before. “Your Daddy had a lot of friends.”

Morgan nods. “A lot of friends,” she whispers. “I don’t know them.”

“We’ll meet them all, and I’ll be right there with you.” Keeping an eye on Morgan and making sure she’s okay will be a good distraction.

“And Mommy,” Morgan reminds him. “We’re all gonna walk out together. Mommy said so.”

That was the plan. After Steve, Bruce, and Thor go out and get everyone settled the five of them are going to leave together and walk with Pepper as she sends the wreath of flowers with Tony's first ever arc reactor down the lake. When he'd stupidly asked if he should be outside with the others, Happy had almost cuffed him and Rhodey had really’d him so hard that he thinks he’ll be hearing that in his dreams for the next decade. Pepper had just looked at him, exasperated but calm, and reminded him that she was more than happy to frame and hang the now court approved guardianship paperwork if she needed him to. "You belong with us. Not outside."

He’d told her was good and thanked her. Again. Because he’ll be thanking her for the rest of his life and that still won’t be enough.

"Mommy says you've done this before." Morgan’s voice brings him back to reality and he meets her sad, scared, doe eyes. They remind him of Tony’s sad ones from the recording and Peter can’t help but pull her away from the window.

"Yeah," he confirms. "A few times." And it doesn't get easier, he doesn't tell her.

"And you don't have a mommy and a daddy, right?”

Peter shakes his head. "I lost them when I was a little bit younger than you." He wonders when Pepper had told her. Or maybe something in Tony's message had looped her in.

Morgan crawls into his lap and puts her hands on his shoulders like she's about to tell him something important. She easily could have picked that up from either Tony or Pepper. "Mommy is my mommy and she and Daddy both say Daddy is still my daddy even if he isn't here anymore. You can share with me. They said you could and I don't mind."

Peter doesn't know what he did to deserve this but in this moment he doesn't care. He hugs his baby sister tight; he thinks she knows its a thank you. She kisses him on the nose when Peter lets her go and Peter returns the favour.

After a few minutes like this, Peter can hear Steve and the others rounding up the guests. Peter wipes his eyes with one of the tissues packages he has stashed on his person and wipes Morgan’s face with another one. His sleeves have been through enough; and he’s got his webshooters on. After he lets Morgan try to straighten his tie, he hears Happy’s distinctive knock. He fixes his tie properly and then asks Morgan the question of the hour: "Ready?"

"No." Honest but knows she doesn’t have a choice.

Peter nods. "Me neither,” he agrees. “But we'll all be together." He holds out his hand, she takes it, and he makes his hand stick to hers for just long enough to make her laugh before holding her hand normally.

It's hard, walking out of the house in front of everyone, but they manage it as a united front. As a family. Morgan is holding Pepper's left hand, Peter's own left arm is linked with Pepper's right while that hand holds the wreath, and Happy and Rhodey are right behind them as silent sentinels. As they watch the wreath float away until even Peter can't see it he feels lucky. Lucky to be here and lucky he has all this, all these people to help and for him to help too. Who trust him to help.

Somewhere, he thinks May and Tony would be happy too.

================================

When can we tell them?

Not now, we've been through this.

They'd want to know there was a chance-

He'd want to be sure.

So when will you say something?

When I'm sure he'd want us to. Now stop asking.

Chapter Text

Peter doesn’t remember if Ned had always had the strength to sweep him off his feet and spin him around in the biggest bear hug he’s ever been sucked into by a non-enhanced person, but he hugs back with everything he has without crushing him. MJ is not usually a hugger at all but she attacks him with what Peter feels is at least twice his own strength once Ned lets him go. Then they just clump together into a group hug right in the middle of this incredibly, but not obviously, expensive looking lobby. No one even blinks.

Peter has missed the city for many reasons. Right now he’s grateful for its tendency to not pay attention to much of anything unless it’s an alien invasion, but he has a feeling that these kind of scenes have been the norm for the past month. Even in stupidly expensive condo towers.

This is the first time that they’ve seen each other since Peter asked Ned to cover to him on the bus that day and MJ had lectured him again about Spider-Man interfering with decathlon practice the afternoon before. Once they detach from each other they pass their phones amongst themselves, confirming their phone numbers and messaging handles and seeing who else they may have heard from. Most of their year seems to have been Snapped away, which Ned points out doesn’t seem very random. “Targeted, clearly. Only like sixteen of us escaped.”

Peter makes a face. “I don’t really think escaped is the right word.”

“Spared?” Ned suggests. “Anti-Snapped? Un-Blipped?” He ducks Peter’s annoyed swat and laughs at him.

MJ rolls her eyes. Hard. “Does it really matter? We have an intact decathlon team and the important people are here.”

Ned nods and then Peter finds himself hugged again with both arms and apologies before the grief can hit him properly again. HIs phone may be new and updated but both May and Tony’s contact information are still there. He doesn’t think he’ll be deleting them any time soon.

He’s thoroughly distracted once they walk out of the building and head to their favourite diner. The owner has changed, so have the seats and colour scheme, but it’s still comfortable and welcoming. The milkshakes and curly fries still taste the same too, though Ned feels personally attacked by the price changes. “They’ve had a fifty percent decrease in customers for the past five years. You think they could have figured this shit out differently.”

“Eat your damn fries, Ned.”

Ned launches a fry at MJ. MJ catapults one back. Peter takes the fry basket and starts eating it while at the same time ordering another one. “Food’s on Pepper,” he explains with a mouthful.

He feels weird saying it because he feels like he’s flaunting the fact that money isn’t really going to be an issue for the foreseeable future for him but Ned and MJ don’t pay the comment any mind. MJ does make a point later to ask him to tell Pepper thanks, and to apologize for Ned being a neanderthal.

“So,” Peter decides after the owner gives them the stink eye for the third time. “How are you all doing? How have things been? Where did you - “

“Where did we wake up?” MJ fills in. “The school library. I came back with the book I vanished with, too, right in front of the desk to check it out. Scared Miss Lewis half to death.” She is so proud of herself and Peter finds himself weirdly proud as well.

“I showed up at MoMa with the rest of our class,” Ned answers. “People were less scared there. I wasn’t the first person to reappear so I got a few high fives.”

“Where did you reappear?” MJ asks. “In space?” She’d found him out long ago and Peter has never regretted it. MJ was a good person to have on your side, especially when you were especially terrible at keeping your own secret identity secret.

“Actually, yeah,” Peter confirms, meekly. “In space. On a deserted planet with a red cloak smacking me in the face.”

Ned’s eyes look ready to pop out of his head. “Doctor Strange’s Cloak of Levitation?!” Ned practically shrieks in delight.

Peter really shouldn’t be surprised. He knows there have been press conferences and the like and he knows Ned would have been watching all of them. MJ just sighs in familiar exasperation. “What other cloak would be smacking Peter in the face, Ned?”

“Lucky.”

Peter shrugs. “I was the last to wake up of the group of us.” He doesn’t even bother lowering his voice, no one seems to care and since they’ve stopped throwing fries at each other the owner has decided to go back to the kitchen. “I guess I was taking too long. We took maybe five minutes for Doctor Strange to explain what happened and then - “

“Right into the battle!”

“Yep.”

Ned looks thrilled and star struck but MJ is quiet and thoughtful. “That’s shitty,” she declares after a moment. “Sorry it had to happen like that.”

Peter snorts. He wholeheartedly agrees. At the time he hadn’t thought of it, hadn’t had time to register what the words “it’s been five years” meant. Neither had any of the others, he assumes. He wonders about Quill and the Guardians. If Earth was so far ahead of him now he wonders how the galaxy must look. They’d seemed okayish at the funeral. As okay as possible for a family missing a piece of it that was.

“It is very shitty,” Peter agrees. “And everything just kept being shitty.”

It’s silent for a minute, the weight of the conversation getting the better of them before Ned speaks up again, “You know what’s really shitty?”

“What?”

“Flash Thompson was in the bathroom when he was Snapped. But they re-did the bathrooms a bit from five years ago. So he un-Dusted right in the toilet. With his fancy shoes and pretentious outfit and all. And whoever had last used it didn't flush.”

Peter chokes. MJ howls. Ned assures him that’s it’s true because he’d seen Flash run out of the bathroom himself. “It was the most beautifully humiliating thing I’ve ever seen. These un-Dusted eyes were truly blessed."

MJ is still laughing when she reminds them that this is probably a highly traumatic incident for Flash even without the whole un-Dusting part. They laugh a bit quieter. “I mean, though, couldn’t Flash have stayed behind?” MJ says anyway. “Then we wouldn’t have to deal with him this year.”

This year would be their senior year, they knew that much. The Snap and the Reversal had happened around the same time of year and for the sake of simplicity for those who had come back, everyone had been passed through their last academic year and were considered registered for the next one, not that Peter or MJ or Ned had anything to fear on that front. Peter would be staying at Midtown, Pepper had assured him right away once the discussion about the school year had come up. “I’m not uprooting you from your school on top of everything,” she’d promised.

Peter doesn’t know what he would have done if Pepper had wanted him to go to a private school or something but Pepper hadn’t entertained any other option. “Morgan will be starting kindergarten just a few blocks from you, too.” Morgan would be going to private school but only to continue to protect her privacy as much as possible. This school was very familiar with celebrity students and the challenges that came with that.

That’s why they were back at the penthouse. Or really Happy and Pepper, with Morgan in tow, were at the penthouse looking at ways to turn it from a place where Tony, Pepper and occasionally Peter would crash to a place where Pepper, Morgan, and Peter could live during the week while they were at school. Or the majority of the time. This would require some very minor renovations, changes, and a few more trips to the city to make sure things were going well.

Happy had told him to call whenever he wanted for a ride back to the lake house. Peter also had a feeling that the three of them would find things to do until Peter was ready to come home. It was getting less and less weird to think of the lake house as home, but home was and always would be Queens at the end of the day. Nothing would change that and Peter didn’t want it to. Queens was where he grew up, where he’d met Ned, where he’d lived with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, where Spider-Man patrolled.

He knew Spider-Man was needed and he missed being Spider-Man. He’d heard Rhodey talking to the remaining Avengers and other heroes still in the area and they were all working to help as best as they could in the aftermath of everything. No one would ever say anything to him about waiting for him to decide if and when he was ready but Peter still feels a bit guilty for sitting out. He hasn’t looked at either suit since he’d first come home and they both still need to be fixed. That was a whole other thing he wasn’t sure he was quite ready for yet.

Peter’s spider sense warns him just in time to dodge MJ’s foot connecting with his shin. “Hey!” she snaps. “Stay with us, okay? Nothing else matters right now.”

MJ’s family had survived the Snap and things were hard on a whole other level for her. MJ had materialized in the library, in a familiar environment, but had ended up stuck at the school until her parents could be contacted. That had taken some time since they’d moved away to California in the meantime. She was staying with her older cousin right now and likely would be until she finished school. Her mom was okay with everything but her dad was really not and Peter thinks he knows why MJ’s parents haven’t dropped everything and come back for their daughter. She’s working on getting emancipated along with a few other teens in her position. MJ’s cousin’s girlfriend happens to be a lawyer.

Ned, they mutually decided, had been the luckiest of the three of them. All of his family had vanished along with him and the house had just sat empty for five years like so many other homes. The worst they’ve had to deal with is getting the house up and running and fixed and Ned’s entire family would be muddling through the same five year gap together. Peter and MJ have a completely different sense of loss to navigate through on their own and apart from one another. They’ve got their own separate chat thread to talk it through and Peter has been very grateful for MJ’s insomnia matching his.

“Peter!”

“I’m here,” he assures her. “I’m here.” The waiter comes by, they order more food and drinks, and get back to getting caught up, cracking jokes, and reacquainting themselves with being normal teenagers doing normal teenager things.

The real world could wait.

=============

It’s the most fun that Peter has had since coming back from the dead. They take over the neighbourhood in their own harmless way. They explore everything, noting the changes, sighing in relief at what has stayed the same, and saying hi to people that they recognize on the street. They almost leave Ned chatting with Betty on a street corner but he runs after them, practically walking on air that he’s finally seen her. They think about seeing a movie but end up hanging out at a local coffee shop’s patio and continuing their conversations and making plans. Ned invites them to his place for a sleepover before school starts, once they get the leaks in the basement sorted out, and Peter invites them to one of his homes whenever he gets around to sorting it with Pepper. “No, I’m serious,” he tells them. “She says it’s fine. And you guys will love, Morgan.”

“Do I need to sign a non disclosure agreement to meet Morgan?” MJ quips.

“We probably would have had to sign one to see Peter if we didn't know him before,” Ned teases. “Oh, wait, we took selfies with him. Better lock those down.”

Peter doesn’t get the joke until Ned takes his phone and queues up a YouTube video for him. It’s of one of Pepper’s recent press conferences, specifically the one where she announced Peter’s relationship to her to the world. Peter had known this had happened but he hadn’t watched it, deciding he very much preferred playing with Morgan outside instead.

Tony and Pepper have been very protective of Morgan’s privacy. Anyone who was found to have taken and sold pictures of the youngest Stark had very quickly found such a scoop wasn’t worth the cost. The bit that Ned was showing him reminded the crowded room about that fact and also included Peter in that same level of protection. “Please respect mine and Tony’s wishes with regards to our son as you have our daughter.” Pepper’s tone is perfectly polite and perfectly threatening.

It’s a warm and fuzzy feeling, even if he has to explain to Ned that he technically hasn’t been adopted. He’ll be eighteen in a year, he reminds him. Seventeen next month, actually. World governments are still working out how best to identify the Decimated and how to account for the five year gaps in their ages but everyone has collectively decided that everyone who Returned is the same age they were when they vanished.

“You can be adopted as an adult, you know,” MJ informs him as she bumps against him. “If you give Pepper Potts adoption papers for her birthday or something you need to film that shit. I need some wholesome goodness in my life.”

It’s an uncharacteristic ask and admission from MJ and Peter hasn’t given adoption a second of thought one way or another. MJ changes the subject before it gets a stronger hold on him. They migrate to an arcade and hang out there until Ned has to go home and MJ’s cousin gets off work. MJ has already left but Ned stops before he goes to catch his bus. “Are you sure you want to go alone?”

Peter blinks. He should have known better to think he could hide his plans from Ned. He still plays stupid. “Go where?”

Ned huffs but what Peter hears is ‘how dumb do you think I am, Parker?’ Ned nods his head in understanding anyway. “You call me if you need me, okay? If you need somewhere to hang until they’re done at the penthouse. Mom and Dad would love to see you.”

Peter nods. “I know. I’ll keep you posted.” Ned gives him one last hug before he leaves and Peter starts walking. He doesn’t need to think about where to go and doesn’t register how long it takes to reach the cemetery where all the Parkers but one can now be found.

He’d visited his parents’ graves a lot when he was a little kid and could remember them better. He gives them a nod as he passes them. Uncle Ben had been dead for two and a half years when he’d been Snapped and he and May had a routine of visiting Ben on his birthday and the anniversary by that point. Peter had sometimes gone on his own after patrols. One particularly memorable mugging had him in front of Ben’s grave sobbing like it had happened yesterday to the point where Tony had shown up and taken him back to the penthouse for a curative dose of pizza, hot chocolate, and Clue. The movie, not the board game.

Ben’s tombstone had always had space for May’s name, he realises now. Her name and her dates are neatly next to her husband’s and she is in the ground with Ben now, under Peter’s feet.

“Hi, May,” he whispers. It’s weird, saying her name here. It’s been Ben he’s spoken to, or his parents, but it’s weird and it hurts way more than he’d expected it to, and his expectations had been basically subterranean.

“Sorry it’s taken me so long,” he starts. “I haven’t been avoiding you it’s just been busy. And...yeah okay I’ve been afraid to come here. If I never see the cemetery, it never happened right?” He couldn’t deny Tony, he’d watched Tony die. He had never seen May die and as long as he didn’t visit and didn’t think about it he could almost trick himself into thinking May was on a trip or at work or anywhere at all. Anywhere but dead.

“But I’m here now. I didn’t forget about you.”

He can almost hear May’s objection. I know you didn’t, honey. You’re going through a lot and I wish I could help. Need me to haunt anyone? I’ll haunt anyone you need me to; I have backup!

The sight of May handing out haunting marching orders to Ben, his parents, and an inappropriately excited Tony (I call haunting that Flash kid!) brings a big smile to his face. If only.

“You must have been so scared and I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Being Snapped had been terrifying. Watching other people get Snapped had been terrifying, too. Not knowing if you were next, not knowing what was happening. And then add a bus crash on top of that. “I hope it was fast. I hope you didn’t have time to think about anything. That it just happened and it was all over.” He wishes it had been that way for him.

“Tell Uncle Ben hi for me, when you have time. I know you’ve missed him a lot.” I miss you both, too. He goes back and forth about the next bit. “Pepper and Morgan, that’s Mr. Stark and Pepper’s daughter, are taking good care of me. I’ve seen Ned and MJ and they’re okay. I’m not alone. Try not to worry about me. I’ve done this before.”

The true weight of that statement sits leaden in his stomach for a bit. He has done this before. He did it just last month. Peter is practiced in the art of losing people, mourning them, and then getting on with things. Because that’s just who Peter Parker is. He can feel the side eye from here.

I’m always going to worry about you but I’m glad you have people there who love you.

That had been May’s concern in the beginning, aside from the whole safety thing, once she’d found out about Spider-Man. She didn’t trust Tony, or even Pepper, because she didn’t think they actually cared about him aside from what they could use him for. “You can throw cars, Peter. Do you understand how valuable that is?” Peter had made some joke about college applications which had resulted in even more yelling. Truth be told, he hadn’t been sure about Tony’s motives either in the beginning but he’d been okay with it since whatever Tony was doing was helping him do what he needed to do. If he managed to keep Tony’s attention and get on the Avengers’ radar that was all the better.

Then everything had changed and somewhere in the middle of being screamed at by a furious, and he now knows scared, Tony, their relationship had taken a hard right turn into something else. Tony could have walked after May and him had met that first time after the Spider-Man reveal but he hadn’t. He could have encouraged Peter to keep working with him in secret but he hadn’t (I have a heart condition; I can’t get yelled at like that on the regular). Peter had declined the spot on the Avengers, he knew he wasn’t ready then, and Tony could have cut ties with him then. But he hadn’t. Pepper and him had worked with May, respected boundaries, and kept everyone informed and involved. May had loosened up and then some as time went on. The dynamic between everyone shifted and changed and she saw that this wasn’t asset management for Stark Industries. This was so far from that.

They’d all become a family and hadn’t even noticed, and when they had none of them had announced it. It just was a fact of the universe. Peter thinks of that family portrait of sorts on the corkboard in his bedroom. The portrait itself is a mess. May is in mid eyeroll, Pepper’s face is in her hands, Tony is somewhere between righteous indignation and hysterical laughter, and Peter had decided to show up dressed in one of Tony’s old suits and sunglasses that Rhodey had found for him. He’s front and centre in the photo, hamming it up and pointing finger guns at the camera. If he recalls, that had been part of someone’s Christmas card photo reel that year. “All I wanted was a nice family photo!” May had fake complained.

“It is nice,” Pepper had countered. “It’s everyone in their natural state.”

Peter smiles at the memory. He’d have to show that picture to Morgan. He’s also pretty sure FRIDAY must have the actual live reactions saved too. It’d be nice to laugh at something. Pepper might even get a kick out of it too.

He thinks of what other clips of May there might be there, too. And there were still home videos probably packed up in storage from whenever the apartment had been packed up. That was a project for another day.

“I love you, May.” Peter tells her and manages to keep his voice even. “I love you so much and I miss you so much. It’s a lot right now and it’s gonna be a lot for awhile but I’ll visit more often. We’re moving back to the city for the school year so I’ll be close by.”

This isn’t the first time he’s talked to a gravestone or even the first time he’s talked to a dead person but for some reason the more he talks the dumber and sadder he feels. May can’t hear him. The gravestone doesn’t care. May is still dead no matter how well be behaves or how much he visits. May will never know how much he visits and how much he cares.

“I love you,” he says again, adamantly and loudly. “I hope you knew that.”

Love ya, Pete!

I love you too!

“She did. She does.”

Peter had heard Pepper silently join him earlier but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge her while he was still talking to May. Pepper sits down next to Peter on the grass, Peter hadn’t even realised he’d sat down. “She loves you.” Pepper repeats while staring ahead at May’s name.

“Loved,” Peter corrects. “She’s gone and -”

Pepper turns and locks eyes with him. “Did you stop loving us when you were gone?”

Peter doesn’t remember being dead. It could be because there is actually nothing after you die and it could be because of the Reversal. He knows he’ll never know for sure but he definitely knows the answer to that question like he knows his own name. He holds her gaze. “Of course not.”

Pepper smiles at him takes his hand. “There you go then. Love doesn’t die when the person does, so May loves you and always will. And she's still with you in her own way."

And she is, Peter knows. He knows it like he knows it with Tony and with his parents and Ben before them but that doesn't change how bad he wants both of them back.

They sit quietly for a moment and it dawns on Peter that the grave is quite well maintained. “Did you hire someone to keep everything nice?”

Pepper shakes her head. “Happy and I take care of it. Happy more often, though. Happy actually planted that rosebush there.” She points at the rosebush that is trying desperately to not announce its presence on the left of the tombstone.

There’s another story or two there but Peter will ask another day. “That’s very nice of you,” he says instead.”

“She’s family, Peter.” She bumps his shoulder. “She’d have done the same for us.”

She definitely would have. It also makes him happy that May hadn’t been alone in the five years. She’d had visitors, and someone to help keep everything nice and inviting for visitors. May had always been big about that.

Pepper stands up, smoothing out her skirt as she rises. “We’re done at the penthouse for the day. Happy is in the car physically restraining Morgan from running out here and ambushing you and we can find other things to do if you need more time with May.”

Peter shakes his head and pulls himself up. “No. I’m good for now.”

Pepper nods and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “You can visit whenever you want,” she assures him. “Even if we’re not in the city already. Just say the word. We’ll let you know whenever we’re planning a visit, too.”

Peter would like that a lot. Maybe he could pull up some weeds and replant some flowers once the ones that were already there died. Maybe give the rosebush a trim too. He’d never have the opportunity to take care of May the way she deserved but he could at least do this.

"Bye, May," he whispers as they go. The wind blows through his hair and over his face but in a way he can only describe as kind. It's silly but he lets himself think that it was her.

Chapter Text

Rhodey’s leg braces are sticking. They have been since the funeral but Rhodey either hasn’t noticed or is just putting up with it. It’s been a month and a half since the funeral and Peter would think the lag and the sound of the mechanism catching would be enough to drive the man insane. That being said, Peter’s probably the only one who can actually hear that noise or know what it means.

It’s very humid outside today. It’s the kind of humid that heralds the coming of a thunderstorm so they’ve decided to stay indoors. Right now they’re working on what looks like a five thousand piece puzzle of a safari scene. It’s still very much a group project but everyone has their own side projects on hand in case they need a minute. Pepper has had her fill of Stark Industries work for the day so she has two books parked next to her, Peter has his StarkPad and headphones, Morgan has her Lego set, and Rhodey has his own StarkPad wrapped up in a file with additional paperwork. Happy is in the city today dealing with some permit issues and contractor hiccups for the penthouse. Pepper had originally been going to take care of it but Happy had talked her into sitting this one out. Peter’s grateful for that. Being in the penthouse is weird right now. There’s not much being changed, but it still makes Peter’s skin itch being in there. He can only imagine how bad it must be for Pepper.

“Petey, I need that piece.”

Morgan has been hard at work on a corner, refusing to hook her section up with the main one until she can build a way there. Peter looks at the piece in his hand, the one that Morgan wants, and take a look at the main section to double check before handing it over. Then he hears Peter whisper-hissed at him in a tone that he hasn’t heard in a long time. He nearly falls over thanks to the double take and the fact that he wouldn’t expect that kind of tone to come from a four year old.

Pepper does the double take with her eyes and very nearly scolds Morgan using another name. “Ask nicely,” she orders in a familiar way that makes Peter and Pepper exchange a knowing smile and sad eyes. Morgan grumps in an achingly familiar way but does actually ask nicely this time.

“Not used to her ideas not being trusted automatically,” Rhodey explains as he essentially creaks by. Honestly, how does he not notice? “Her and her old man had a bit of an understanding.”

“Petey and me have a understanding,” Morgan argues with as the pieces lock into place. Her grin of triumph also reminds Peter of Tony. “S’just different.” She turns to him in apology and Peter winks back at her. Morgan’s been in her feelings a lot this week. She’s been a bit harder to keep control of and while Peter has done his best with helping her, she still has her moments. It's like she can sense the tension about the penthouse and that’s the final straw in her change tolerance. One minute she’s upset about moving, even if it’s only half a move. The next she wants her Dad and no one else will do; reminding her that Tony is dead is not an acceptable excuse but euphemisms aren’t acceptable either.

She does know when she's lashing out, though, and doesn't break down too much when Pepper has to actually discipline her. She does also take the support from Pepper and Peter both once she’s calmed down enough. Nothing so far has beaten the meltdown from the day after the funeral, which had been a full collapse into tears and hysterics on the kitchen floor complete with throwing things. Peter can’t say he’d been much better that day. He’d left the house without telling anyone, webbed himself up a tree, and hadn’t come down until he’d heard the crack in Pepper’s voice when she’d called his name. Morgan had also remelted down while he’d been gone thinking that he’d left her. Once again, they'd all slept in the living room.

Despite all this, it also seems like Morgan has grown up a few years in the few weeks he’s known her. He remembers that feeling all too well and it’s not something a little kid should have to go through.

Rhodey moves to sit down and Peter waves his hand out to stop him. “Please don’t bend your knees like that,” he begs. “I need to fix them.

Deafening silence in the room as all three of them stare at him like he’s said cursed at them. “Seriously,” Peter repeats. “You’ve had problems since you last stayed over. Please let me fix it.” Peter knows Tony taught Rhodey a few basic repairs but other than that Tony and his guilt complex had made it his personal mission to personally make sure everything with the braces was running at peak efficiency. Only Tony and Peter were allowed to touch them.

Peter is beginning to understand that it isn’t a question of Rhodey not noticing the lag. Normally, Peter would get his kit from upstairs and have the whole problem dealt with in five minutes but in five years passing who knows what may have been added or updated. The braces look different to him now and they even sound different than they had last time he’d handled them. He needs schematics and that means he needs Tony’s lab. Peter has been avoiding it since Pepper had pointed it out to him that first night. It’s the reason his suits haven’t been fixed, it’s the reason he hasn’t fixed some of the more delicate toys that Morgan has broken in either enthusiasm or anger this week. The suits and the toys, however, can be postponed but this can’t.

And he may as well do it now, he decides. “We have to go to the lab,” he acknowledges as he gets to his feet. “Come on.”

“Peter.” It’s Pepper, looking up at him with the question of the century in her eyes. She actually asks it anyway. “Are you sure?”

He’s not even a little bit sure but he won’t be alone and there’s a specific goal here: fix the problem and then get out. “I’m sure,” he promises. “I’ve got Rhodey. I’ll be fine.”

Pepper flicks her gaze over to Rhodey, who nods. Peter almost apologizes. He hadn’t thought that his might be as hard for Rhodey too but Rhodey hushes him before he can even draw breath. “I’ve got you. I’ll be fine.”

Peter is waiting for Morgan to want to come with them but she seems to sense this isn’t the time to ask. That or she’s too hell bent on the puzzle to wonder about the garage.

“Don’t blow anything up.” Pepper is aiming for levity and she almost makes it. “I know Bruce has been in there to take some stuff out but other than that it’s as he left it. So...who knows what’s been left lying around.”

Bruce must have taken the time travel stuff out, Peter thinks. They’d used it to put the stones back where they came from, Captain Rogers had come back an old man, and then Bruce had probably buried all the information somewhere no one could find it. Or destroyed it. It was dangerous to have that lying around and the world is perhaps lucky that Peter hasn’t wanted to go within six feet of the garage until now. Or maybe the world is poorer.

“You coming?”

Peter hurries out after Rhodey, then has to double back to get the key from Pepper. His key. His key that Tony had had cut when they’d first moved in years ago. While Peter had been dead.

This kind of stuff keeps popping up and Peter doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it. One day, he’ll get the nerve to ask Pepper how that first year or so had been. He knows it had been bad but it's one thing to hear about it, and hear Tony's message to him and remember how he had looked, and another to hear it from people who were there.

When Peter opens the garage it looks like just that at first. There’s an Audi parked in there but there's also some boxes of stuff, some household tools, a normal workbench with more junk on it and not much else. Not if you didn't know Tony. Peter doesn't need to ask. He heads to the very back of the garage, moves a snow shovel out of the way, and presses his hand against the handprint scanner. The indicator light turns green and then a portion of the floor flips over. Peter and Rhodey both move to stand on it. "Welcome to my underground lair," he mumbles quietly as the descent starts. Rhodey snorts.

The lights flicker on automatically as they descend and once they hit the ground the opening above them closes. "Welcome, Peter," says FRIDAY, almost kindly. "Do you require the orientation package?"

He almost says yes but “not today, FRIDAY” is what he says instead as he takes in the room. It’s different but very familiar at the same time. The layout is similar to what he remembered with maybe one or two differences and additions. Tony’s main workspace is still covered with tools and notes and bits and pieces of things. There are very obvious gaps, though, where things used to be until Bruce took them away. There’s also bits and pieces of things on the floor and they definitely ended up there by being thrown.

Behind them there’s a smaller glassed in area with what looks to be Morgan sized tools and mini projects along with some books and toys, likely duplicates of what’s in the house or things that Pepper deemed too volatile for the house. It’s everything a little girl would want or need to amuse herself while her Dad worked.

Turning his attention back to the main work area, Peter spies the second station, which also looks very familiar. He moves closer and finds that he’s right, that this is his actual workstation from before. It’s been polished and cleaned up a bit but nothing Tony could do would ever take out the scorch marks from the ill fated experiment with electrified web fluid. Or that time Tony had over calibrated the Iron Man repulsors. For a second he can hear classic rock and the sound of Tony breathing.

"You okay?" Rhodey asks from very near him and Peter is surprised to find that he is. That this isn't as hard as he thought. It's weird being here on his own and knowing Tony wouldn't be waltzing in later but it's a pain and a feeling he is getting used to. He wishes it wasn’t this way but he also recognizes that it’s good.

"Yeah," he eventually replies. "You?"

Rhodey nods. "Surprisingly okay so far. It’s just a room without him here, you know?" Peter does know and he knows that Rhodey may be a little bit full of shit right now. He doesn’t call him out on it. Rhodey nods toward the couch on the right side wall, a bar fridge is next to it. "I'll get these guys off and hang out over there. DUM-E and U are here somewhere if you want to wake them up.”

Peter perks up a bit at the news that Tony had brought his bots here too but doesn’t wake them up once he spots them. He’s not up to explaining to them why Tony won’t be back right now. He instead approaches Tony’s station and pulls out the schematics for the braces. He finds all of the tools he needs exactly in the places he’d expect them to be. If this is a mirror image of the other lab, Peter wonders, what was the point of the orientation package?

When he asks, FRIDAY’s starts listing. "Laboratory Layouts. Supply Inventory. Suit Schematics. Safety Modules. Morgan Mode. Open Project Folders. A-”

“What kind of Open Projects?

“Admin Access 101, Pyrotechnics, Try These When You Invent That Other Thing, Spider Stuff, Assorted Bullshit, Failure Compilation Mix, Definitely No-"

Peter stops her and says they’ll go through this another time. Rhodey pipes up and mentions that the safety modules are worth a look. "I almost burned my fingers off the last time I was here,” he tells him. “Like had to go to the hospital and get actual medical help level of almost burned my fingers off. Tony had to drive me and when I came back a bit later he’d locked me out and did something to the safety protocols. Try and touch a blowtorch and see what happens."

Peter spots it, walks over, and cautiously touches it. Nothing happens. He picks it up and carries it over to the work station with no issue even though he doesn’t need it. Rhodey's expression darkens. "You asshole," he grumbles but Peter knows that he isn’t talking to him. Rhodey gestures for Peter to bring it over to him. The second Rhodey touches it an alarm shrieks and FRIDAY sternly but respectfully tells Rhodey that he is not permitted to handle the tools until completely recertified in his assigned safety modules.

Peter quirks an eyebrow. "FRIDAY, overrule all protocols limiting access for Colonel Rhodes."

"I’m sorry, Peter, but you do not have permission to override this protocol."

“But I have admin access!”

“Boss level access is required to override this protocol.” FRIDAY pauses for a moment. “I’ve been directed to say ‘sorry, honeybear’ to Colonel Rhodes at this time.”

Rhodey barks out a laugh. "Asshole," he reiterates and Peter doesn’t think he’s ever heard the word as both a curse and endearment in quite this way. "I'll do my damn homework another day, Pete. Just work your magic, okay?"

Fifteen minutes later, Rhodey is laying on the couch doing some work on his phone and Peter is the most relaxed he's been in what feels like forever. Rhodey's braces are familiar and it looks like what advances have happened aren’t anything Peter can’t figure out. He does see an opportunity to fine tune the sensors a little better from what he’d last been able to do. There'd be practically no lag at all by the time he's done and he smirks knowingly when he realises why Tony hadn’t done it himself. "Smaller hands make smarter work,” he quips under his breath and then ducks a spectral, joking, swipe at the back of his head before continuing with his work.

It takes a lot longer than what Peter would say is usual to catch on to the fact that Rhodey has stopped working. He stops and looks over to his right to find Rhodey just staring at him with a strange look on his face. He acknowledges Peter right away. "Sorry if I'm distracting you," he apologizes. He shakes his head and clears his throat. "You just...God, you look like him sitting there and tinkering away. Do you know that?"

He does, actually. Pepper has said before. As has Happy and Rhodey himself, too, before now. Peter has also thought it himself whenever he sees the picture on his corkboard of the two of them in the lab working. Peter nods. "It's been said before, yeah."

Rhodey shakes his head and rubs his eyes. "It's good to see you back here," he declares after a moment. “He’d be...I know you’re sick of hearing this but he’d be over the moon if he could see this.”

Peter nods. What else can he say to that after all? It’s the truth.

”The only thing missing is some tunes,” Rhodey continues quickly, before the moment gets to be too much. “Didn't you usually like music while you work?"

He does. The quiet would usually bother him and make it hard to concentrate but he’s been so hyper aware of what he’s doing and where he is that he hasn’t even thought about it until now. "Yeah, but I wasn't sure you would." It’s a half truth; he knows Rhodey doesn’t care if it’s quiet or not.

The man rolls his eyes and looks up. "Hey FRIDAY? Play whatever Tony listened to the last time he was here."

Both of them slap their hands over their ears as a fuzzy keyboard riff blasts through the lab. Peter asks for the volume to lower seventy-five percent before the first lyrics start.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog

Was a good friend of mine

Rhodey looks stunned. "FRIDAY, pause track,” he orders. “Am I hearing this right?"

"I need more information, Colonel Rhodes."

"Is this seriously Joy to the World? By Three Dog Night?"

"Yes, this is seriously Joy to the World by Three Dog Night."

Rhodey doesn’t acknowledge the sassy response, it probably didn’t even register. Frankly, if Rhodey wasn't already sitting down on the couch Peter thinks he may have fallen down on it. "God damn," he mutters. "Wasn't this on the banned list?"

"It was," FRIDAY agrees. "Boss lifted the ban immediately before requesting that this song be played."

Rhodey shakes his head. "God damn." He remembers Peter is in the room. "He hated this song,” he explains.

Peter cocks his head. "No he didn't?" Peter has heard it plenty of times. Has sung it with Tony more than once or twice. It wasn’t in high rotation on their lab days or at any other time but it was a favourite of sorts.

"He did once he got back from space how can...right, you wouldn’t know. Sorry." Rhodey starts again. "You’ve met Nebula right?"

She’s hard to miss. She’d kept close to the rest of the Guardians at the funeral but at the same time made sure Peter was always in her sight. It was nowhere near as creepy as he’d have expected and his spider sense didn’t go off once. “Yeah, I have.”

"When him and Nebula got back on the ship, after you all had...gone, she decided to try and do what Peter Quill did whenever anyone was sad. Which was put on one of his retro cassette tapes in case you couldn’t guess."

Peter can see it all too easily. A shattered and silent Tony, a Nebula who just wants to try and help. "Oh no," he groans.

"Oh yes," Rhodey groans back. "First tape she picks and this is what comes blasting out." Rhodey laughs, sort of, and sighs. "Remind me to have Nebula send me the footage of that reaction. It's almost funny how mortified he is if you completely ignore the context."

It is hilariously tone deaf just on the title alone but it's not like Nebula could have known. Knowing what he knows about Quill's taste, Tony probably would have reacted poorly no matter what had played first.

"It came on the radio months later when were driving somewhere. He almost pulled the radio out of my car with his bare hands and I almost drove us off the road. Then he banned it from the house, set a protocol that made it impossible to be played in his earshot. I haven't heard this song in years." Rhodey looks up at the ceiling, suddenly suspicious. "This has to be a joke. FRIDAY, did Tony put you up to this? He didn’t actually ask you to play this, right?"

Instead of answering, the schematics of Rhodey's leg braces are minimized in favour of video footage of Tony working away on something, foot tapping along to the music, and obviously, albeit quietly, singing along.

Peter hasn't seen a moving image of Tony since the funeral and he drinks in the sight of Tony in casual clothes, downing coffee during instrument breaks, rolling around the lab in the chair Peter is currently sitting in, and singing along with growing enthusiasm as the song goes on. At one point he is singing defiantly at Peter's vacant station, leaving pauses where Peter would normally join in, and shouting “don’t hold on me, kid!” as if he could conjure Peter out of the ether by the force of his terrible singing.

A part of him wants to get out of there, but he steels himself and lets himself smile as the clip plays out. This was Tony excited and optimistic as he worked to fix the world. It was a moment of private joy for himself as he imagined the best case scenario and let himself believe it. Peter rubs his eyes and they are both quiet for a few moments when the clip ends.

Then Peter asks FRIDAY to restart the song and he and Rhodey have their own sing-a-long as Peter finishes up. When Rhodey gets the braces back on and takes an experimental stroll around the lab, Peter can't help but be proud when Rhodey tells him that this is the best that they've ever worked. "Well,” he mumbles. “I learned from the best."

"And the best would say you didn't need all that much help." Peter ducks away to hide his blush.

When they're back in the house they end up having another sing-a-long, this time with Pepper and Morgan when the heavens open and the sound of thunder erupts outside. FRIDAY informs them that Thunderstruck Protocol is in effect and is not able to be overridden without Boss level access. Pepper snorts and rolls her eyes but does not complain and is far from surprised.

Apparently in the Potts/Stark household, thunderstorms meant Thunderstruck by AC/DC had to be blasted through the house. "Part of the suite of Resting Not So Much in Peace protocols." FRIDAY explains when Peter asks. He doesn't bother asking further. He knows FRIDAY won’t tell him anything unless one is actually tripped.

He's not ready to go back fully to Spider-Man just yet. But he thinks he needs to remind everyone, including himself, that Spider-Man is still here and is mostly fine, too.

=============================

The next day, after he’s had breakfast, Peter grabs both suits and heads back to the lab. Morgan follows close behind, promising not to touch anything. Pepper does not stop her. If Morgan feels weird about being in the lab without her Dad, she doesn’t let on but does keep quietly to her area while Peter gets set up at Tony’s station. Only because it’s bigger and closer to Morgan, not because he feels like he has any right to be there.

He doesn’t open any of the open projects or other files except for Morgan Mode, which basically turns his station to a one better meant for a little kid to use. There are some pretty impressive games and projects, some of it looks like Morgan had a hand in herself. He files that away for another time but does let loose some of the kid friendly holograms for Morgan to play with. As she runs off after a surprisingly well rendered unicorn at the back of the lab, where there is a huge amount of open space, Peter finds himself shocked that there’s anything even remotely kid friendly down here at all. That being said, he remembers that the couch had only become a fixture in the lab because Peter had a habit of falling asleep on the spot when overtired and that the bar fridge had appeared to be sure that Peter had enough food and drink on hand to keep his metabolism happy. Tony typically had no use for either thing when he was working.

The Iron Spider suit is cool and Peter really hasn’t spent more than a day with it technically but he leaves it in its casing and focuses his efforts on the first suit Tony had made him. Karen is as helpful as she always is and he thinks nothing of the offer to sync up to FRIDAY. Both AIs are too helpful, though. When he’s told that all emergency contact protocols have been changed from Tony and May to Pepper and Happy he almost flies apart.

He doesn’t snap but it does break him enough that he goes and plays with Morgan for awhile after in her area now that the hologram has bored her. Morgan doesn’t ask him what’s wrong, she just hugs him and lets him decide what colours to use to build the K’nex ferris wheel. As a thank you back, he pulls up the other station’s chair and lets her watch him finish up when he’s ready to go again.

Peter should have expected the question before Morgan asks it. She has just watched him test out his web shooters. He aims at every smear on the wall that has to be the result of Tony blasting something to bits. He’s especially violent toward a giant purple scorched smear that looks newer than the others. Peter even does a quick swing around the lab, just to test his weight. Come to think about it, he should have seen it coming right there.

“Can I go for a ride?”

Peter doesn’t see any harm in letting her go for a swing around the lab. When she catches on to his plans she pouts and says that’s not what she meant. Peter doesn’t know what to do. When he takes too long she sighs in almost disappointment and says she’s going to ask their Mom. “They said you would let me, though.” Peter isn’t wholly confident that either word choice is a mistake but he stands there in stupefied confusion for a minute before he reboots his brain and heads up to the garage proper to see if Morgan has a bike helmet or something.

He’s found some broken knee pads and what might have once been a bike helmet when he hears Morgan’s delighted shriek of “SHE SAYS YES PETER” as she careens out of the house and Pepper’s footsteps follow at a normal speed behind her. When Morgan reaches him she’s holding a violet hockey helmet. “I wear this when I go sledding,” she explains. She also produces a pair of matching faux-leather violet goggles that look like what you saw people driving cars wear back when cars were new. They were definitely handmade and Peter learns that apparently Tony must have known how to sew when Pepper quickly informs him that she didn’t make those.

He runs his fingers over the stitching. Smiles at the memory of the purple smear in the lab. “Are you sure?” he asks Pepper.

“Not really,” she admits. “But I know she’s in good hands and I think I need to see this. You’re just keeping to the forest behind us. I’ve asked FRIDAY to keep an extra eye out for anyone trying to peek in and to warn you if you get too close to the perimeter. The whole area is a surveillance dead zone, anyway but we can’t be too careful.”

That’s a surprisingly wide bit of geography to work with. He pops back down to change into his suit and his shooters, then he takes a moment to look at himself in the reflection of Morgan’s glassed in area before he heads back up. “Just like old times,” he tells himself. “You’re just going for a test run with a four year old on your back. No pressure at all.”

Peter is especially thankful he stuck with the originally designed Spider-Man suit when he comes up. He can see happy memories in Pepper’s eyes instead whatever horrible ones the other suit would have brought up. When he steps away from the lab’s entrance and a bit more into the light, Morgan claps and hugs his legs. He picks her up and slings her onto his back like he was going to give her a piggyback ride. Morgan hooks her legs into position and Peter slides off a web shooter after giving a few directions to Karen. He hands it to Pepper once they are outside. “As tight as you want,” he encourages her. “Just point and shoot. Karen will take care of the rest.” He pulls on the mask.

He has to remind her to leave his arms free but Pepper is surprisingly good at this. Morgan is cocooned tight onto his back but not as tightly as Peter had expected. She also straps Morgan’s goggles and helmet on for her. “Now you behave,” Pepper instructs, half teasing as Morgan nods enthusiastically. “Listen to Peter and do what he says.”

It feels like having a breathing school backpack on his back, who is also hugging him tight around the neck. Not tight enough that he has to worry about breathing but tight enough to tell Peter that she is as nervous as much as she is excited. Happy is outside waiting for them. “Not too high, Spider-Man.” It’s an order and Peter salutes accordingly. Peter looks at Pepper again hoping she can read the ‘are you sure?’ in his mask’s expression. Pepper nods, echoing Happy’s order of not going too high.

Peter adjusts his web shooters and then breaks off into a jog. Morgan screams as they leave the ground but there’s no fear in it. He does one quick swing from one tree to land on a branch about midway up the next tree. They’re about as high up as the house is tall. “How’s this, Mo?” he asks.

Morgan is quiet for two heartbeats before she asks to go a little bit higher and then to start the ride. Peter reminds her to hold on tight and then does what she asks.

He goes slow. He takes his time swinging from tree to tree, going about the speed of a playground swing. Morgan laughs with glee as they travel along, pausing on a branch every now and again since the last thing Peter wants is anyone throwing up on him. He keeps them on a small loop and doesn't go out of Pepper and Happy's sight. He climbs up a tree with her at one point and asks her how she feels about hanging upside down while Pepper and Happy try and catch up with them. Morgan catches on right away and delights in 'scaring' Pepper as they hang upside down behind her and Morgan shouts “BOO!” Happy even pretends to almost fall over in fright before he snaps a picture of them. Morgan and Peter are hanging upside down on a web, Morgan facing Pepper and giggling. Pepper is shaking her head and chuckling.

They do one more slow lap and then Happy takes another photo once Peter is back on the ground. Peter has just taken his mask off, and he’s turned his head back to smile at Morgan's joy as she gives toothy grin for Happy and squeezes Peter tight. "That's going to the family group chat,” Happy tells him and he can hear the ping from Karen telling him he has a new text pretty much immediately.

Pepper and Peter help Morgan out of her webbing and off Peter's back and then she's off making thwip thwip noises as she runs through the trees with Happy tagging along behind.

"Do you want to do that for real today?" Pepper is asking it as a question but it’s also not.

Peter nods. "Or tomorrow," he offers instead. "Just a swing through the city. A little reminder that Spider-Man is still out there." He pauses and considers how to phrase the next bit. "And I just want to do something fun and for me. Like I used to." He’d used to love patrolling on quiet nights. Sometimes, after a bad day or a particularly rough patrol, he’d test his curfew a little bit and just do an additional lap around Queens for the sole purpose of flying through the city on a web. Of leaping off a tall building and catching himself at the last second.

Pepper opens her arms and Peter happily walks into them. She thanks him for telling her and tells him that she understands. "Happy has penthouse business in the city tomorrow. I think we can work something out."

================

The next afternoon, Peter is perched outside his old bedroom window whispering "hey, same side, itsy bitsy override" to the hidden spider shaped security drones that reside along the windows and doors. Tony, he had been warned, had these guys basically set to fry anyone who so much as thought about breaking in. He slips into his empty old bedroom and changes into the suit, leaving his civilian clothes in a backpack for Happy to pick up later.

He'd started at May's grave. Told her what he was about to do and that he promised to blow her a kiss as he swings by. He almost swore he could hear her enthusiastic cheers. As he takes a walk around the empty apartment, a sight he has never seen, he takes a pause in each room.

In the kitchen there is warmth and laughter as much as there are tears and desolation. Both regarding the people and the food. The living room brings memories of movie nights, blanket forts, game nights, and late night study sessions as much as it does the memory of crying with May after Ben and the night May and Ben had told him his parents were never picking him up.

May’s bedroom was where he’d run to when he had nightmares. Where they’d camped out with the flu together. Where Peter had stayed when May had trouble relearning how to sleep alone.

Peter’s own room was full of memories of Ned and him playing legos. Of Ben and him tinkering with computer parts. Of webbing Tony to the door. Of finding out that he could stick to things and living through the worst fever and flu of his life after the bite.

He takes a seat on his bedroom floor, shuts his eyes, and just listens. Whether it’s wishful thinking or especially enhanced hearing he can hear Ben and May’s voices here. He can feel the love in these walls and the life he had lived here. He doesn’t remember the home he’d had with Richard and Mary Parker but he will never forget this one.

He doesn’t have to say goodbye, Peter reminds himself. Pepper owns it in trust for Peter and she says there’s no rush to make a decision. It has already sat here for five years awaiting its fate after all.

Peter stands up and looks toward where his mirror would have been on reflex. He assumes he looks fine. Karen tells him all systems go when he asks. She also reminds Peter that Pepper and Morgan are watching live at home, both a term of agreement for him and an appeasement for Morgan.

This is it. Once they see you, they know you're still out there.

Peter thinks about what that could mean for someone to see. The Avengers have been out and about but no one is really worrying about the little guy. Yes, there’s an economy, and displaced persons, and a lot of major problems that didn’t mean little ones didn’t matter in the face of them. Little problems and little decisions could make all the difference. Peter is a living, breathing example of that.

The thought of Pepper at home, curled up on the couch with Morgan and a bowl of popcorn, makes him think about what it will mean to them to see this. Morgan has only ever seen the same YouTube videos, and maybe a few things from the Iron Man suit’s recorder. This is new and real for her in a totally different way. For Pepper this has to be both something she’s desperately needed to see, she has said as much before, as well as a sign that she is never going to free of someone she cares about doing stupid things in an expensive, high tech suit.

He thinks about what this would mean to Tony if he was here. Peter thinks the sight of Spider-Man swinging through Queens is something Tony never let himself imagine even at his most hopeful.

Peter smiles knowingly as he needlessly adjusts his web shooters. Good thing we like to test the impossible, don't we Mr. Stark?

Damn straight, kid. Go catch some air.

Peter opens the window, shoots out a web, and takes off. Queens has changed but not so much that his body doesn’t remember exactly where to shoot, where to swing, where he can glide, and where he needs to really watch himself. He doesn't register the first shout of Dude it's Spider-Man! He just lets himself go. He whoops as he swings past a group of tourists and relishes the gasps when he flips a few times in midair before swinging around a church spire and carrying on. He swings from building to building, to skyscraper, to billboard. He even high fives a mural of Iron Man he sees painted on the side of a building. Peter didn’t mean to, but you can definitely see the imprint of his hand in the glow of the mural’s gauntlet. He does in fact blow a kiss toward Aunt May's tombstone as he swings over the cemetery.

He waves at everyone. He does a little bit of flipping as he does a lap of the neighborhood and then heads outside of it. Amazingly no one has said anything or tried to stop him. He isn't sure what state the Accords were left in, if they even existed at all, but he doesn't care. He is Spider-Man. Spider-Man and Happy Hogan have a plan and that's all that matters right now.

Peter stops right on top of a building’s antenna, a very tall office building that would have made him very queasy before the whole Washington Monument thing, and looks down. He waits for Pepper to catch on to what he’s about to do next and grins when no panicked call comes through. With a crow of challenge and happiness, he leaps off it.

It’s moments like this when Peter wants to yank the mask off and feel the wind whip through his hair. Free falling should be terrifying but Peter is far from it. As much as it looks like he’s out of control, he never feels more in control than he does in moments like this. When he’s choosing to put his life at risk but knowing that he controls exactly what happens to him.

Karen doesn’t scream about his vitals. His heart rate is elevated but nothing alarming. He smiles as the city gets bigger and bigger and then, right at the last second, he shoots out a web and swings away to safety. “Ah, HA!” He cheers, “What’s UP, DANGER?!” His enhanced hearing picks up the cheers and applause from the small crowd below as he swings away, waving cheerfully in midair.

“Message from Pepper Potts coming in,” Karen tells him.

Peter doesn’t let it get to him. “Go ahead.”

“Text reads: Morgan wants to dive off a building with you. You get to tell her why not.”

Peter chuckles. “Karen, tell Pepper I’m looking forward to it.” He has an idea of how to do it on a lower scale anyway.

“No problem, Peter.”

Peter cheers one more time on the final lap before he flips the suit to stealth mode, a feature he has never really used but wasn’t about to admit to Happy or Pepper before he left. It works no problem because of course it works no problem. It was the last update him and Tony had ever worked on and it had just passed beta testing. No one notices him as he swings into one warehouse window, leaps into another via the window, and then actually walks to a third one. He doesn’t turn off stealth mode until he sees Happy waiting for him with his backpack. He pulls off the mask and high fives Happy way too hard but any apologies are waved off. Peter wonders if he even felt it.

"Did you have fun?" Happy asks as he massages his wrist and looks away. “It sure looks like you did from down here.”

Peter nods as he hits the spider emblem on his chest. The suit deflates and leaves him standing in his boxers. "I really needed that more than I thought." He tugs on the jeans and then fixes his shirt when he puts it on backwards.

"Almost as much as we needed to see it." Happy squeezes his shoulder fondly when Peter says he can look. He gestures to Peter’s phone, which is ready to fall out of his pocket. "Check that. And Twitter."

When Peter scrolls through the #WelcomeBackSpidey hashtag he almost chokes up. YouTube is already full of clips and the compilation videos won't be far behind. He has text messages from so many people. He doesn’t think his inbox has ever been this full, and that’s even accounting for the fact that his contact list had gotten a lot bigger after the funeral.

Ned: Awesome Peter!!!!! Glad to see you out again. Let me know when you need your Guy in the Chair!

Strange: #WelcomeBackSpidey indeed. Wish you told me; I would have organized a parade.

MJ: Welcome back, loser. May would be so proud. You know it so don't try and deny it.

Pepper: HI PETE ITSMORGAN THTWASAWESOMEDOIT AGAIN

Bruce Banner: Tony would have loved this. He would be so proud and would have more than high fived you back if he could.

Clint: May and Tony definitely out cheered you. Do better next time.

Steve Rogers: This is what we all needed to see. Good to see you out there, Queens. Swing by Brooklyn next time.

Rhodey: You're going to give Pepper a heart attack. Good to know someone is still up to the task.

Ant Man: I may have cried and I'm not even ashamed to admit it.

Sam: The world is healing and so are you. We are all so happy and we'll be saving a spot for you on the team when you're ready for that. Welcome home, Peter.

At that last one from Sam Wilson, whom he has only said maybe ten sentences to, he does burst into tears. Happy steps over in under a second and hugs him as he cries out his joy for what he has, what this has meant, and the terrible sense of wrongness that the two people who would have most wanted to see weren't here.

"They see you." Happy whispers, firm and unwavering in his ear. The voice of a universal truth. "They see you and they know."

================

Boss. He's waking up.

Bullshit. He's got enough sedative in his system to keep him out for weeks.

I know that. Maybe he's sick of your bullshit.

...I'm amazingly going to allow that. How much time do we have?

Not a lot. He’ll be up in a few hours.

Get Potts and Rhodes.

Chapter Text

Tony wakes up with a shout. A startled one instead of a shriek and for that he considers himself lucky. His fists clench into something even as his nails dig painfully into his palms. He tries to regulate his breathing, shuts his eyes against the white nothingness. He still sees white nothingness even so. His chest tells him that his breathing is out of whack and his heart is pounding but he can’t hear it himself.

He tries to pull his thoughts together, tries to think this out rationally but all his brain tells him is the impossible: that he had been dead not too long ago. Not unconscious, not asleep. Dead. There is a distinct difference between all three of those states and he is very aware of the difference between all of them now.

He opens his eyes. Sees white still. Shuts them. Still white. Something has gone wrong. He’d died therefore he shouldn’t, couldn’t, be awake right now. If he’s awake something has gone terribly wrong. Either that or the afterlife is terribly dull.

Then his ears start working.

You can rest now

You did it, sir. You did it.

We’re gonna be okay.

We won, Mr. Stark.

Hey. Tony. Look at me.

Can you hear me? It’s Peter.

Pepper. Peter. This has already happened, though. He remembers this.

The white turns dark as something comes into focus. A grey sky, blurred but familiar figures in the background, and a blurred figure right in front of him that quickly turns into Pepper. Pepper as he last remembers seeing her before he’d checked out. She looks composed, dignified, and is smiling a smile that does anything but fool him. She is screaming on the inside, but she won’t let him see that. Not now. Not as he’s going. She’s prepared as much as she can for this inevitable moment and she’ll lie down and die next to him before he sees a sliver of anguish from her.

Pepper is spectacular and he will tell it to anyone who will listen. He would have preferred a different ending to their story but he is eternally grateful that the last thing he gets to see is her.

His brain smacks him upside the head. He’s already done this before too. His lips move, he manages to get out, “Hey, Pep,” again and the whole thing plays out in reverse even as he remembers it in the proper order. He stands up, stumbles again, un snaps his fingers, watches the bad guys rematerialize, and then everything comes back to this moment. Of him kneeling in front of a stunned Thanos, who has just realized that he is well and truly fucked.

Tony, again, feels the same sense of righteous victory and vengeance along with the indescribable pain of what he imagines being thrown into electrified lava while also being on fire must feel like. He knows even more exactly how this ends for him than he did before and he makes the same choice enthusiastically. He sneers at his enemy. At this nightmare of his made flesh.

“And I...am...Iron Man.”

He snaps his fingers, blinking as he does so. No sight of dusted aliens, just back to white light. Still dull, still predictable, but he can hear himself breathe so that’s something. That and nothing hurts.

When he blinks next the white light starts to darken up again. After another he can make out a doorway and a chair. Another tells him there’s someone in the chair. Tony squeezes his eyes shut this time and experimentally clenches his fists again. Bedsheets. He wiggles his toes. Shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. Everything movies and nothing hurts. He turns his head to the right and cracks an eye open to look at his arm.

He’s wearing long sleeved, faded black or navy blue pyjamas with thin white stripes that are definitely not his, but his right hand looks undamaged. The usual scars and calluses are still there but there’s absolutely no charred skin. The fact that he is even seeing a hand at all is really the real cause for celebration since that means he still has an arm. Last time he’d seen it, it had felt exactly like the rest of him had.

Tony shuts his eyes again as he moves that hand over his face and then around to the back of his head. Nothing raised, nothing torn open, nothing exposed. Nothing feels any different than he’s used to. His hair is a bit greasy but he’ll take it.

Tony breathes in. Holds it. Breathes out. He’s alive and the universe is still here. That’s enough to start with, he decides with some difficulty. He opens his eyes, knowing everything will be focused this time around.

Nick Fury is sitting in the chair at the foot of his bed.

He slams his eyes shut. “Oh fuck no,” he mutters. Maybe he’s seeing things.

“Glad to see you too, Stark.” It’s Fury. He knows that voice. He wishes he didn’t know that voice as well as he does.

“No. Nope. Uh-uh. Noooooope,” he argues. “I don’t know what’s going on but I definitely didn’t come back from the dead to reform the Avengers or do whatever shit you’ve got on tap. Not interested.” He is alive and he really shouldn’t be complaining about that but if he’s back only to have Fury hold it over his head for the rest of his second life it’s very much not worth it.

An amused snort. “What makes you think you’re alive?”

It’s the singular dumbest question Tony has ever heard. He can feel his pulse hammering through him, getting faster the more pissed off he gets. He knows what dying is like. He knows what being dead feels like. He can’t quite recall it or describe it but he knows that this isn’t it. He opens his eyes and glares at Fury. He is rewarded with the microreaction of a lip twitching at the force of it. Still got it.

“Because,” Tony lectures, without breaking eye contact, “there’s no way my afterlife consists of being in my grandfather’s pyjamas and being locked in a room with you. I’d assume the universe has to treat the guy who saved it from oblivion a hair better than that.”

Fury looks almost pleased and more amused that he has any right to be. Tony raises an eyebrow. “What?” he snaps. He’s about to continue listing the reasons that he knows beyond a doubt that he’s alive when he realises that there are no windows here. That they’re definitely in a SHIELD bunker somewhere off grid. Tony barely holds back a growl. “If you brought me back and ripped a hole in the multiverse or some dumb shit doing it, I am going to lose it.”

Fury cocks his head at him and stares at him incredulously. “If I ripped a hole in the multiverse? What do you think you did when you Snapped?”

Tony gapes at him and frantically starts flipping through what exactly he had told the Stones to do when he snapped. He’d asked them to take out Thanos’ army, he’s damn sure of that. Had he thought anything else? Did he make it worse?

Fury bursts out laughing, which really is a low and hearty chuckle more than uproarious laughter, and Tony really wishes he had something to throw at him. “You bought that, Stark?” Fury chides. “Really?”

“Forgive me for thinking you wouldn’t screw with me right out the gate!” Tony snaps again. “Seriously, what the hell did you do? I probably shouldn’t be here. Or it’s probably not a good thing that I’m here.” The minute the words are out of his mouth he knows everything must be fine. Fury really isn’t the joking type and if the world was ending again he’d already have been dragged off to work by now. Or Fury would never have let him wake up in the first place.

“I did nothing!” Fury shouts back, leaning forward in the chair in what Tony assumes he is meant to see as threatening. “Not one damn thing. You came back on your own.” At Tony’s renewed glare he doubles back. “Okay,” he agrees, “not totally on your own but I had nothing to do with it. You’ve got four other people to thank for that. Or blame, if you prefer.” Fury stands up, approaches the bed and looms over him. The word Fury would use is definitely ‘blame,’ Tony knows. “You, Mr. Stark, are a goddamn cockroach.”

The door opens before Tony can answer that and Agent Maria Hill steps in. Tony is actually happy to see her. “I see you’re shouting at each other already,” she says almost cheerfully. “I take it we’ve done all the identity confirmations then?”

Fury rolls his eyes. Yes, eyes. Tony is convinced even the eyepatch is capable of eye rolling. “We don’t need to. We’ve already got Strange’s okay on this.”

He should have known. “What the hell did Strange do?” Tony demands. It must be fine-ish if Strange had had a hand in this. The good doctor had been perfectly ready to sacrifice him for both the Time Stone and the universe so there was no way he would be bringing him back on a whim.

Hill partly dodges it. “He did part of something but he didn’t realise it worked until yesterday. We haven’t told anyone else. No one knows you’re here and no one knows you’re back.”

Tony forces himself to let that information digest. He’s alive. Has been for a bit, he assumes, but sedated for a good chunk of it. That would explain the slight headache. He braces himself, he knows he can’t rely on how Hill and Fury look to give him any sense of time passing and he doesn’t see a mirror in here. “How long?”

“Two months.” The answer could be so much worse but it still feels like an age of the earth has passed.

Two months, the part of his brain that understands loss reminds him, is a long time to grieve.

Pepper. Morgan. Rhodey. Happy.

And Peter.

“Is May Parker still dead?” he asks. Neither agent seems shocked by the question.

Hill nods, sadly. “Anyone who died after or as a result of the Snap is still dead.”

Tony sighs. He’s not surprised but he’s still grieved to hear it. God, I’m sorry kid. “And no one knows about me? My family, the Avengers, my grocery delivery guy? No one has a clue?” he asks again, making no effort to disguise his anger.

Fury sits on the edge of his bed and it takes a force of willpower that Tony didn’t think he possessed before parenthood to not kick Fury off. “No.” Fury states without apology or regret. “I had no intention of giving them hope and then snatching it away from them if things went wrong.”

“So you let them grieve.” Tony thinks of how he’d been when his parents had died, of how he’d reacted in the wake of Peter’s death. He thinks of Morgan’s confusion, of Pepper and Peter’s devastation and heartbreak. “You let them go through that for no reason at all?”

It’s like he never said the last bit. “Pepper and Rhodes are on their way,” Fury informs him. “They think we’ve called them over on SHIELD business but they’ll be brought right here.”

Tony arches an eyebrow, suspicious even hearing what would normally be good news. “I can see how you got Rhodey but how in the hell did you get Pepper?” Pepper probably hasn’t even set foot at SI yet. She’s certainly working hard and keeping the world and the company together but she’d be doing this work from home. There’s no way she’d leave Peter and Morgan alone this soon. Or subject herself to an in-person board meeting until she was fully up for it.

Hill sighs heavily. “Fury may have heavily implied that if she didn’t come in, he’d have Peter brought in to deal with ‘the issue’ instead.”

That would do it and his reaction he knows likely mirrors Pepper’s in spirit if not in action. Tony throws the sheet off and gets to his feet. It’s surprisingly easy, which seems to surprise Fury, and grabs a fist full of Fury’s shirt. “No.” He whispers, harsh and firm. “You don’t talk to Peter.”

“I will eventually.” Now is not the time to punch Fury in the face, Tony coaches himself. And as much as standing seems to be easy, he knows he’s not ready to fall on his face after he throws his first punch in two months.

“When he wants to, assuming he ever wants to, I’m definitely going to give him a big list of reasons why he shouldn’t.” Tony warns him and right after he says he realises that that’s a conversation he can actually have with Peter. He’s going to see him again.

Tony’s grip on Fury’s shirt loosens as that thought actually settles and takes root in him. He’s going to see Peter again. He’s going to see Morgan and Peter both grow up. He’s going to grow old with Pepper. He maybe, really, will actually get the kind of rest and life he was hoping for after they defeated Thanos. He will have his wife and his children together under one roof and all within his reach for the first time ever.

He is not crying. He is decidedly not crying in front of Nick Fury and Maria Hill in a SHIELD bunker. It’s just not happening and thankfully his tear ducts seem to agree and promptly clam up.

Pepper and Rhodey are coming. Pepper and Rhodey are going to kick his ass and Tony thinks he might just be looking forward to it.

He lets Fury go and sits back down on the bed. He takes a breath, holds it, then lets it go. Takes a breath. Holds it. Lets it go again.

He gets to see them all again.

Tony smiles, across from him Maria Hill smiles back. He tilts his head at Fury and he almost, almost, smiles back. “Welcome back, Stark,” Hill says. “And thank you.”

Fury had been dusted, Tony remembers. Hill too. “Thank Bruce,” he tells them on reflex. “He did the undusting.”

“We have,” Hill assures him. “Now we’re thanking you.”

Tony nods his acceptance but can’t say much else. He knows they get it just like he knows that Fury isn’t actually going to thank him himself. That would be one thing too much for the day. “And who do I get to thank? I’m assuming Strange based on what you said earlier.”

“For one, yes.” Fury agrees as he stands up from the bed. “I think it’s easier to show than tell at this point, don’t you think?”

Hill lets the pause fill all corners of the room. “Now?” she asks cautiously. “Shouldn’t we give him a minute? Or wait until Potts and Rhodes arrive?”

“Or ask him since he’s sitting right here?” Tony not so subtly suggests. Hill has the decency to look a little sheepish. She freezes midway into checking her watch when Tony speaks again. “By show instead of tell what do you mean?”

“We have footage,” Hill explains. “It’s all from the hospital after the battle and people are...upset.”

Tony can fill in the blanks from there. “Do I have to see that?”

“It’s relevant,” Hill sighs, almost wincing with regret. “Otherwise we would just tell you. You won’t see yourself fully, but you will see the others.”

Great. Getting spared from seeing his own corpse is a small mercy he guesses. “I should probably see those without Pep and Rhodey,” he decides. “I’m assuming they’re there and I don’t want to put them through seeing that again.”

Fury nods. “Wise choi-”

“How are they? Morgan, Pepper, Peter, specifically.” Tony suddenly demands, furious at himself that he hadn’t asked earlier.

Fury has the audacity to shrug. “As well as you can expect, I think.”

“You ‘think’?”

“Hey - I last saw them at your funeral so excuse me if I’m not going to take that as a reliable sample for how they are doing in the grieving process overall. I still have never even met Peter so I don’t have a baseline at all. Or Morgan for that matter.”

Tony grins knowingly. “No one let you talk to them, huh?” He is so proud of them all.

“No!” Fury snaps. “And I take it that was an unholy combination of your wishes and Pepper’s protectiveness. Anytime I thought I saw them they conveniently weren’t there anymore or I’d have someone else wanting to talk to me. Nebula always seemed to step into my eye line whenever I caught sight of either of them too.”

“You forgot to mention that you definitely were walking past the same bits of grass and groups of people for about twenty minutes until Quill nearly passed out laughing at you.” Hill leans over to Tony. “My money is on Strange or Maximoff but neither was ready to own up to it.”

Tony’s longest interaction with Peter Quill had involved a lot of wishing he was anywhere else but he takes great joy at the idea of Quill causing that reaction in someone else, especially if that someone else was Nick Fury. He smirks at him. Fury still looks indignant.

“Going back to your question,” Fury goes on, with a pointed glare at an unabashed Hill, “Pepper is out being the force of good in the world that we both know her to be. I couldn’t tell you what goes on in the house and Rhodes blasted static at me the one time I asked. Morgan I have nothing on but Peter had an eventful morning today.” He motions to the bedside table that Tony has failed to notice before now. On it is a tablet. Hill grabs it, makes a few taps, and then waits for him to take it.

It’s a video, a compilation video to be precise, and it starts out dark with a bunch of voices as the person making it gets a drone fitted and launches it out. The voices become one guy yelling holy shit it’s Spider-Man! followed by more pointing and screaming from different people. Tony’s eyes immediately focus on the red and blue figure webslinging through Queens. For a moment, a few heartstopping and painful moments, he thinks he’s seen this before. That it’s just archive footage until he remembers that Fury had said “this morning” and notes that the drone being used only came out last year.

Peter was swinging through the city, among still abandoned buildings and billboards for products and events he has no context for. He’s flipping, falling, twirling, swinging, and generally looking like he’s having a grand old time. Tony knows that this has to be his first run out since coming back and it shows in all the best ways. He wishes for FRIDAY in his ear so he could hear him. Tony doesn’t miss the kiss blown toward where he knows the cemetery where May is buried is and he can’t help but feel his heart tighten with grief for Peter as he high fives a mural of Iron Man so hard he leaves a handprint in it.

The piece de resistance though is the swan dive. He isn’t even worried as he watches Peter freefall, imagining how big he must be smiling underneath the mask. He barely holds back a cheer of victory as Peter catches himself at the last moment and swings away, much to the delight of the crowd below him. As the video ends, and Spider-Man disappears off screen, he hears a female voice shout that was badass, man!

And it was. Badass and completely uplifting. Tony had never in his wildest dreams ever let himself imagine anything quite this specific. He tracks the video back and watches the dive again. He is bursting with pride; it would have taken a lot for Peter to get out there and he hasn’t failed to notice he’s wearing the more familiar first suit. The one that has happier memories associated with it.

“Stark.”

Tony looks up. Fury almost looks apologetic.

“We’re gonna have to wait on the explanations. Your wife just touched down.”

Chapter Text

Tony asks for a change of clothes but is denied. “You have to have something lying around better than this!” he complains, yanking his pyjama top with emphasis. He knows damn well that Pepper won’t notice what he’s wearing but Tony’s never really gone in for the matched set PJ look.

Fury suggests the bed sheet as an alternative. Tony flips him off and sticks with the pyjamas.

He strongly suspects this is all payback for whatever Fury has had to deal with over the past two months. He does get a chance to look at himself in a mirror which is greatly appreciated. It’s one thing to feel that nothing is wrong and quite another to actually see the evidence with his own two eyes.

Not too bad for a dead guy.

Despite the levity, he does find it a bit disturbing to see no physical evidence of the most traumatic experience of his life. Not that disturbed though; he knows he’ll have nightmare fuel for decades to come.

He’s been alone for maybe fifteen minutes tops when he hears the sound of Pepper’s high heels clicking furiously down the hallway. Furious is just the word, too. Pepper has three very distinct levels of angry walk and Tony’s ear is excellent; she’s at a three for sure and is very close to creating a fourth category. She also isn’t giving Fury any sort of indication that she’s listening to a word of the bullshit he’s telling her.

Tony does not feel sorry for him. Not one damn bit. It may be a ruse to get her here but he is the one who suggested dragging Peter into this and he is also the one who insisted on her actual presence in spite of everything. Somewhere, Tony know, Fury is seriously reevaluating how he went about arranging this reunion.

“You are unbelievable,” are the first words he hears Pepper say and it’s a novelty to hear that descriptor leveled at someone who is not him as much as it is a joy to hear her at all. “This had better be good, Fury” she warns in a tone of voice that has caused at least six world leaders to almost piss themselves. Tony can actually confirm two, not that Pepper would ever want to actually know that.

“It is,” is all Fury says. The footsteps stop and then Fury leaves with only a “I’ll check back with you in a minute” as his footsteps resume, walking away. At least they’re getting a moment alone. He’s grateful for it as much as Pepper is pissed.

“Are you kidding me right now?!” Pepper shouts after him. A moment of silence and then a muttered “unbelievable” follows. The only reason Tony hears it as well as he does is because the door is swinging open as she’s saying it. He opens his mouth to say something witty but hearing Pepper and seeing Pepper are two different things and the last time he’d seen her had been under less than ideal circumstances for either of them.

She’s in her “don’t fuck with me” black pumps, her “I will buy you out with the change I find in my couch cushions” black skirt, and her “look me in the eye, coward” red silk blouse. The last time he saw this combination was in court about a year ago during a lawsuit against a now ex-partner company that had refused to pay out life insurance benefits. It is every bit as arresting as it was then and it takes his breath away.

Pepper’s also got her game face on, which means she is essentially expressionless. Her eyes are laser focused on him and it doesn’t break when she registers who is sitting in the bed in front of her. Tony has seen this face stand up to the worst case scenario and its softer, kinder cousin had been what he’d thought had been the last thing he would ever see. It waivers for less than a heartbeat but then comes back stronger and harder. The fury that was in her feet is now in her eyes.

She thinks this is a trick, Tony realises. What else could it be from her perspective but a trick or a despicable ploy for her cooperation. He’d think the same thing if their positions were reversed. Pepper had watched him die and watching someone you love die does something to you that isn’t fixable. You saw it happen, you felt it happen, and if there was a way to undo it you’d tear down the fabric of reality to do it.

Tony should know. He’s been there. And if in another universe he’d walked into a room two months after the Snap and found Peter sitting there? He’d have assumed deception as well but if it had been the real Peter? He’d do anything asked of him to keep him.

Knowing all this, knowing that Pepper is two months into widowhood, into single motherhood, all while holding herself and the world together as best as she can. Knowing that she has made it this far by not accepting anything at face value all he can say to her is. “Hey, Pep.”

Pepper doesn’t react. She doesn’t move anything except her eyes, which flick to the side. “FRIDAY?”

Her hair’s down, Tony clues in. This outfit usually was topped off with a Professional Bun. Her hair being down means she’s hiding an earpiece and of course she didn’t leave the house without it since she didn’t have Tony at home as a back up.

“Pep, it’s me.” He says it anyway, after what he thinks is enough time for FRIDAY to tell her the same thing but in more words. “I promise it’s me.”

“Compare against the last readouts from the suit, please.” No one else would ever know but Tony catches the waver in her voice. She almost believes it and Tony wants so badly to get up and go to her but he knows that’s the worst thing he can do right now.

“I’ll answer anything you want,” Tony promises. “I’ll prove it to you however you want me to.” He scrambles for something, anything, easy to confirm. “Um...the last thing I said to you was your name. The last thing you said to me what that I could rest, and I know this is probably the billionth time I haven’t listened to you but I’m not even a little bit sorry-”

“Our daughter’s name.”

Tony arches an eyebrow. That’s a matter of public record but he answers anyway. “Morgan H. Stark. Wait, shit. Hannah. Morgan Hannah Stark. The H stands for Hannah.”

Pepper doesn’t give him any indication that he’s right or wrong and he almost wonders if he’s actually managed to get his own daughter’s name wrong before she follows up with “Why did we pick Hannah?”

There is is. Something only they would know. Tony remembers this conversation well even though they never spoke about it again after filing the paperwork. “You’d suggested giving her my Mom’s name or May’s name as a middle name.” Tony’s heart gives the familiar clench at that thought. “But I couldn’t do it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to ever say it.” He holds Pepper’s eyes during the next bit, the way he hadn’t been able to during the actual conversation. “We liked the way Hannah sounded, and we liked even better that we had never known anyone named Hannah.”

Pepper stares at him and he sighs past the hurt that still curls in him whenever he thinks of it. “Hannah is a palindrome,” he explains. “Peter’s initials are a palindrome. That’s the other reason I suggested it.” It had been a way to make them part of each other, his two children who would never meet, and he hopes Pepper does make him say that part out loud. When he had the first time it had been the last time he’d ever actually called Morgan by her middle name. She’s always been, and always would be, Morgan H. Stark to him.

”How did you meet Peter Parker?”

That’s a trick and Tony sees it a mile away. “Stark Internship, most impressive application I’ve ever seen.” he answers prompt with a smirk. “Nice try,” he adds softly. They weren’t at home so Peter’s cover story was in full effect. It’s been a rule for as long as Tony can remember. “Won me over by gluing me to a door on purpose. Somehow scored the job anyway.” Tony smirks at the memory as much as at Pepper.

It takes a minute but Pepper finally smirks back, her game face falling away. Her expression instantly warms and her eyes start to sparkle again. She allows a small, helplessly happy, giggle to escape her as she shuts her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again they are shining with unshed tears. “Tony?” she breathes, a question even though she knows this is real. And Pepper’s faith as been all Tony has ever really needed.

Tony lets out a sigh of relief that he didn’t realise he’d been waiting to let out. “Yes, oh my god, finally!!” He shouts with relief, throwing his hands in the air in victory and then holding them out to her. “And there you are, too! Do you know how scary being on the other end of that face is? No won-”

He’s never been in another person’s arms so fast and that includes the time Morgan had wrapped herself around his head during a particularly bad night of sleep training. Pepper’s hug is superhuman, and there’s a moment where he worries if the shock has destabilized the Extremis in her, but Tony hugs her back just as fiercely. He can feel her and hold her again and that is more than he ever could have hoped when his vision had gone dark two months ago. He pushes his head up out of Pepper’s chest, kisses what parts of her face and neck he can reach, and just starts shamelessly babbling nonsense at her as she silently cries. “I’m sorry, god I am so sorry, Pepper. I love you and I am so sorry. I had to, there was no one else to do it, but -”

The rest of whatever he was going to say is cut short by Pepper grabbing his face and kissing him like she can sustain his life by the force of it. Tony kisses back as best as he can to match her. After an eternity she pulls back, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks now. She is radiating joy and he can feel it her hands, which are still cupping his face. “You are unbelievable,” she declares with all the love in the world.

Tony laughs and lets her pull him to her again. “I really am, aren’t I?” he whispers into her hair.

“How did you do this?” her voice is getting steadier by the moment and Tony has missed the way her voice sounds when he pulls off something truly extraordinary. “FRIDAY said you were critical, there was no-”

“Your guess is as good as mine." He's almost offended by Pepper's glare; he can’t see it but he knows it's there. "What? I’ve only been awake for like an hour or two. Fury hasn’t given me the details yet.” Pepper’s fingernails dig into him at the mention of Fury and, as if on cue the man himself appears. Tony feels his own fingers tighten into Pepper’s back. "May want to hold onto whatever you were gonna say, babe"

Pepper whirls around to face Fury, releasing Tony only to take his hand firmly in hers as she completes the turn. If she never lets go of him ever again, Tony finds himself complain about it. "You've kept him here this whole time while we all mourned." She took a deep breath. "You went to the funeral and watched all of us mourn. Needlessly so."

"I did."

A silence passes between them, each understanding that no justification on Fury's end will be accepted and that Fury himself has no intention of apologizing.

“So,” Pepper says after a long minute. “As much as I am not complaining, do we get an explanation at all?”

Fury nods and moves toward the door. “Follow me, please.”

============================

They end up meeting Rhodey nearly five minutes later in the hallway.

Tony, again being told his wardrobe options are the stupid pyjamas or a sheet, is following Fury to wherever. Pepper’s hand is a vice around his and it gets even tighter when Rhodey and Agent Hill appear right in front of them. It takes Hill a moment to realize that Rhodey is not at her side anymore as Rhodey stops dead mid-step. Tony can’t help but notice that his braces actually anticipate the sudden halt and anchor him in place even as he gapes at his friend gaping at him.

Rhodey had found him first after the battle had been won. Had realised what was happening and that nothing could be done. They’d said their goodbyes and thanks without words and then Rhodey had let Peter and Pepper by.

”You’re alive?” Is the first thing that Rhodey manages to get out that Tony actually hears.

”And you got someone else to improve your legs there? Honeybear, I’m hurt!” He doesn’t let himself be offended by Rhodey locking eyes with Pepper for confirmation. He’d do the same thing.

Rhodey gets what he needs from Pepper but not before he huffs in offense Tony’s earlier comment. “Not like FRIDAY will let me do it myself anyway,” he answers with absolutely no venom. “And you know who fixed these up, you controlling son of a bitch.” Before Tony can give that much thought, he finds himself in danger of having his ribs cracked and lungs punctured by the force of his hug. Rhodey hadn’t said anything when he’d gone but his expression and his hand on his head had told him enough. The same can be said about this embrace. Tony can understand all too well the level of responsibility he must have felt. Of the guilt as well but Rhodey hugs him tighter to shut him up when Tony starts his apologies. “You don’t get to apologize for anything ever again,” he orders.

Tony is definitely going to take advantage of that later but for now he has something more important to say to his best and oldest friend. “Thank you for taking care of them,” Tony whispers vehemently in his ear. He doesn’t need to ask to know that Rhodey would have done this. “Thank you for making sure they weren’t alone.”

Rhodey squeezes him tighter and then pounds him on the back. “You jackass,” he curses fondly as he pulls back, hands on Tony’s shoulders, to look at him. “You utter waste of a human being. Why in the hell am I so glad to see you again and why am I so fucking surprised?”

Tony chokes on a laugh and doesn’t have the heart to tell Rhodey that the back blows were a bit much. When they pull apart Rhodey hugs Pepper next, even spins her for good measure. His braces don’t even tense up like they normally would. “What happened?” he asks after he puts her down and Tony has her hand back in his. “Has SHIELD been hiding you all this time?”

“Yes,” Pepper’s curtness has definitely drawn blood somewhere on Fury’s body wherever he is, Tony’s prepared to swear to it. “Tony has only been awake for a few hours but I suspect he’s been alive for longer.”

“And Fury just let us go on like that?” Rhodey growls. “He just watched?”

“He sat on our porch and watched us all knowing full well there was no reason for it, yes.”

Rhodey looks murderous, Pepper is still furious, and he can only imagine what Happy’s reaction will be. Or his kids. Tony has tried to keep his mind out of that for the time being. He knows exactly what they’ve gone through and no amount of wishing things were different would take that away. “He didn’t want to give you hope in case things went wrong.” It sounds so, so lame even as he’s trying to make it sound like a kindness. As if he’d had a say in the decision.

Rhodey scoffs. “Some hope would have been better than none,” he gripes. “It would have done a lot of us a world of good. Nothing sucks more than seeing the world having a party while you’re mourning.”

“If you’d all move your collective asses, you can end everyone’s suffering yourselves!” Fury appears suddenly from wherever, almost startling Agent Hill, who ends up holding both the door to another room open and keeping Fury from breaking up the reunion. Eventually, Fury swoops out of sight into the room with a sense of drama even Tony finds excessive. Hill follows and the three of them bring up the rear. It’s just a standard conference room and Tony keeps his wife and best friend close as Hill and Fury dim the lights and bring up security footage to float over top of the conference table.

“If I had my way, Strange would be here to explain this to you,” Fury starts. “But once we told Strange, and had him confirm that Stark was Stark, he left me holding the bag.”

”What he said before he left,” Hill clarifies, paying no mind to Fury’s glare, “is that he'd keep quiet but that he shouldn’t have been the first to know." Tony bumps the wizard further up his list of people to call on once he feels the need to leave his house. And adds him to the Christmas card list.

Hill clears her throat. Fury rolls his eye and lets out a sigh that should go down in the history of aggressive sighs. “I should warn you that the footage I’m about to show you is primarily from the hospital. You won’t see a-”

“Get on with it,” Pepper interrupts. She sits down. Everyone else follows suit.

As if Pepper’s order had been what the system was waiting for, the holographic screen shifts to cue up a four screen split, three thinner cells on top and a wider one at the bottom.

Four people, Tony remembers. Fury said he had four people to thank for this.

The six infinity stones, still nestled in Tony’s own gauntlet, and likely still on his very dead hand, fills up the bottom panel. In the three above appear Thor, Strange, and Wanda Maximoff respectively. Thor’s eyes are glowing and his right hand is hovering over Tony’s chest, lightening striking from his fingers. Strange’s hands are up, working at a green version of the gold shield things Tony had seen him use in battle like it’s some kind of combination lock, and Wanda’s hands are raised with soft red tendrils reaching his way. She looks equal parts grieved, angry, and terrified.

Five of the six stones, all but the Soul Stone Tony notes, are very barely lit up. No way anyone would notice it unless they were looking for it.

“Thor got the Space stone to light up,” Fury recaps. “Strange got Time and Reality. Wanda got Mind and Power. None of them got lit up at once, though. That’s a composite we’ve put together there.”

Thor. Strange. Wanda. He can’t help but be a bit touched that they’d tried at all. He’d been burned to a crisp after all and he can’t be sure he would have thanked them had it worked right there. Fury catches him looking at his hand, Pepper is on his left so his right hand is free. He opens it, closes it, poises as if to snap…

“You took awhile to heal up,” Fury tells him. “We didn’t catch on that you were getting better until we got you here, where you managed to set off an alarm the second you crossed the morgue’s threshold. Specifically a biometrics alert to detect unauthorized personnel. That only works for not dead people, by the way.” Fury glares at him like he’d set off a security incident on purpose. Tony wishes he had. Fury goes on as if he knows that, judging by his tone. “Once we did catch on that you the one setting the damn thing off, we noticed that you were looking a little better than you had before. And that you were breathing. Everything took its sweet time, though. Losing your arm entirely was still on the table until about last week.”

Tony rolls his eyes, almost disappointed at Fury’s subpar tactic. “Don’t bullshit me and say you held off because you wanted to make sure I had all my parts intact. You could have given me no arm or a crappy arm and I would have just built a better one.” He also somehow very much doubted anyone would care if he’d come home minus an arm.

“Peter would have built you a better one,” Rhodey corrects. “And then you’d have built one anyway and then there would have been a literal arms war and none of us would ever sleep at night again.” No one laughs.

“We didn’t want to shock you,” Fury justifies, lamely gesturing to Pepper and Rhodey. Both of them are less than impressed. Tony can feel the air around Rhodey go cold just as quick as he can feel the fire from Pepper.

Pepper laughs heartily and waves her hand at Tony indignantly. “You were going to shock us anyway no matter when you told us, and it’s not like this is a terrible shock to get. You could have ju-”

Hill bangs her hand on the table. Everyone, even Fury, looks over at her. “Could we get back to the matter at hand - no pun intended - please.”

“Right,” Tony agrees. “Thor, Strange, and Wanda work some voodoo. It doesn’t work, or at least they think it doesn’t work. Whatever they did must have done something, though. I remember looking and feeling much crispier.” Pepper and Rhodey do not laugh and Tony sighs an apology. He’s going to need some time to reckon with the whole thing himself but he isn’t doing it now.

“They each did part of something,” Fury continues, now standing up to pace the room. “You notice the Soul stone isn’t reacting to any of them. All six stones killed you, so all six were needed to bring you back. Or so Strange tells me. The three of them left discouraged and unsurprised but the stones that did perk up were still sort of awake. Waiting for marching orders or another kick in the ass, I suppose. And then our fourth musketeer wakes up the Soul Stone, who completes the circuit and gets the others going.”

Fury hits something on the table and there’s a long silence that’s not really silence. It reminds Tony of those hearing tests where they keep playing a tone to tell you how old your ears are and this is the part where his have stopped registering. He also notices a few pens rattle and shake off to the side somewhere, Rhodey’s braces make a bit of a hiccuping noise. “What was that?”

“Something so high that none of us can hear it.”

“No shit,” Rhodes snaps, with actual anger along with impatience. “If I was an Infinity Stone I could hear this, right?” He doesn’t let Fury finish forming the affirmative answer. “So if I was an Infinity Stone, what would I be hearing?”

Fury actually looks regretful now, Tony notes, and it is not a good look on him. He pauses the recording. Hill isn't looking at them either. “I can’t play you the exact sound at that frequency without deafening us all.”

”Paint me a picture then!” Rhodey snaps. “We’re obviously not going to like the answer anyway so just spit it out.”

”The sound of an enhanced teenager’s grief,” Hill’s the one that says it in the end. Fury sighs and nods, resigned.

The room is silent for a moment as that sinks in. There’s only one possible meaning to that but Tony can’t stop the question from leaving him. “What did you just say?” He doesn’t want to think about what that means. He’s barely dealing with mentions of Peter in the present tense as it is, the video clip of Peter swinging through Queens notwithstanding. He knows himself well enough to know that he’s not going to truly believe Peter is alive and well until he sees him but the implication that a sound like that had left Peter and that the reason for it was grief can’t go unnoted.

Tony looks to Pepper as if she can explain it all away but Pepper doesn’t. Her game face is back on but Tony can see the distress in her eyes anyway.

Fury looks at Pepper and Rhodey instead of answering Tony. “He made that sound twice that night. Once with Pepper when she told him his aunt was dead and once on his own after he’d made his ears bleed from doing it the first time.”

“After he’d made his ears what?,” Tony demands. “He made a noise that made his ears fucking do what, Fury?”

“We’re not going to play it,” Hill cuts in as Fury reaches for the table again. “We don’t need-”

Of course Fury plays it anyway and Tony is greeted with a new split screen of his kid’s suffering. As if the last time he’d seen Peter hadn't been shitty enough.

On one screen Peter's mouth is open with no sound, or what seems to be no sound, leaving him. That is until the most heart wrenching wail Tony has ever heard echoes through the room. He’s never heard anyone make that kind of noise and he knows that this has to be the moment that he’s realised that both him and May are gone. That is the sound of a grieving child who has lost too much and who feels alone in the universe even though Pepper is holding him tight to her and ferociously glaring everyone else away.

On the other screen, Peter’s ears have dried blood in them, and he's staring at his outstretched hand as if he's expecting it to do something. Then he suddenly slams his hand over his mouth and, though his scream was muffled this time, it is no less powerful. There’s a moment, too, before the hand covers his mouth, where Peter’s mouth is open and seems to me making no sound.

“And from what we can tell he’s holding back in both cases, hence the ear bleeding.” Fury needlessly adds as he pauses the video. Hill looks at him with disappointment but Tony barely registers and the video loops back, this time with the sound off.

Tony wants to crawl through the video and hold Peter along with Pepper. He wants to slap his corpse awake and get himself up and comforting his kid. That doesn’t happen of course and Peter continues crying and Tony turns his eyes to other screen only to watch Peter stare at his hand before using it to stifle more screams and crying when he’s alone.

“Why’s he looking at his hand like that?” Rhodey’s question is only heard barely, despite the silence in the room.

“He’s waiting.” Pepper murmurs. She gets it. Of course she does. She's probably seen Peter do this before now.

“For what?”

It takes everything Tony has to keep his voice steady. “To turn to dust. He’s waiting to turn back to dust.” Because that’s what would make sense to him in that moment. Because that’s how Tony had felt when he’d been in Peter’s shoes.

Peter, I am so sorry.

There’s silence around the table once Hill slaps the controls again. The video mercifully disappears and the lights turn on again. Pepper pulls Tony close in a tight side hug; he doesn’t fight it. “So that’s what it takes to wake up a Soul stone?” he asks, voice wrecked and angry both as he stares at Fury like he can somehow erase what he just heard. “The enhanced screams of a grieving kid?” Most spiders couldn’t vocalise, Tony knows, but some species did make vibrations. It was on a master list of spider traits that he’d drafted up shortly after he’d met Peter but he’d never noticed any sign of anything like this before.

“Not just that.” Fury is trying to be gentle but it’s long past that. “Forgive the insensitivity of the question but how long did Peter last before he was Dusted?”

Tony shuts his eyes and tries to block out Peter’s last moments with the soundtrack of that question being asked as if it was routine. He shakes his head. “Longer than the others,” is all he can say. “I think it was his healing factor, but -”

“But he was also fighting it,” Fury agrees. “Did well for himself, too. According to Strange he was the last person that the Snap took.”

I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go

Tony doesn’t even want to contemplate how much that must have hurt. To have your body remake itself over and over again while also fighting it yourself. How he had not been screaming in agony then? Then again, now knowing what he knows now, maybe he had been and Tony just couldn’t hear him. Or, like here, he was holding back. And Peter had been so scared...

“I can give you Strange’s debriefing,” Fury continues, snapping Tony out of his reverie. “If you feel like feeling your brain fold in half, that is. The simplest way he put it is that your boy was communicating loud and clear to the Soul stone that he was in pain when he left and that he was still in pain once he was back.” Fury locks eyes with Tony, looking almost heartbroken. “He’s last thoughts were that he didn’t want to go and that he wanted you and his aunt-”

”May,” Tony sharply corrects. “Her name was May.”

”May,” the other man repeats. “He wanted you and he wanted May. His wants were the same when he came back. The stones fixed what was nearest and easiest. You don’t need me to say this but you got real lucky, Stark.”

“And why would it care about what Peter wanted, exactly?” Rhodey asks, confused on behalf of everyone.

“Because he could have won.” Tony doesn’t even realise he’d spoken until he feels Pepper nudge him. “He fought being Dusted and actually won for a little bit. Beat the rest of the universe by a good minute.” Drax had fought, Tony remembers, and he’d vanished just as fast as the others had. “Maybe it had some respect for that.” He doesn’t know he knows that, doesn’t know how to articulate exactly how he knows that, but he remembers feeling something from the stones just before he’d snapped his own fingers. Respect, he thinks. Also gratitude with a good helping of sorrow. They’d known he was a dead man as well as he had.

He hadn’t really let go when Pepper had told him he could either, he remembers now. It was more like he’d lost his grip on life instead of actively letting go of it. Maybe the Soul Stone had seem some similarities there, too. And both Peter and Tony had been together at their ends. Maybe that had meant something too?

Part of him wants the mechanics, wants to get Strange in here to explain it to him or make Fury do his best. On the other the whole thing is so crazy and ridiculous that it’s really down to dumb luck and a few powerful people who didn’t take no for an answer and one kid who basically charmed everyone he met, including magic rocks apparently.

He doesn’t care right now, he decides. If there was a world ending consequence or some consequence he wouldn’t have been allowed to wake up. He's here. He's alive. And that is more than enough for him right now.

He just wants to go home.

A thump on the table and Tony sees that Hill has tossed a few weird looking coins on the table. They are gold and look a lot like something Captain Jack Sparrow would be snatching out of their hands. “Personal portals, one time use” she explains. “Will go wherever you want to go. Strange also says if you want to talk to him about setting up some travel arrangements between your homes or places where you don’t want to be seen he’s available whenever you feel like it.”

“Strange can make us portkeys?” Tony gasps, thoroughly distracted. “Like actual Harry Potter tech here?” They’re definitely donating money to the Sanctum.

Hill laughs. “He had a feeling you’d say that and he says he draws the line right here. He’s not conjuring you anything even remotely Harry Potter adjacent again. Or on a regular basis at all.”

Tony smirks and reaches for a coin. Pepper grabs his wrist. “May I suggest thinking of the airport and not the house?” she suggests. “You need to give yourself some time before showing up in the middle of the living room.”

To his perspective, it hasn’t been all that long since he’s seen Pepper’s mind reading abilities at work, but he also has missed it. He doesn’t snark at her like he would normally but leans over to kiss her instead. She’s right, they all know it, and Tony desperately wants out of these damn pyjamas.

“I’m going home.” It’s a declarative statement, he’s getting out of here with or without Fury’s okay and with or without Strange’s interdimensional doubloons. If he has to walk barefoot home he’s going to do it, even though he knows Rhodey would fly him there first.

Pepper glances at her watch, another piece of tech he’s built for her that he’s never seen her wear before. “Happy should be just pulling up now.”

Even Fury seems to be confused. “When on Earth did you call him?”

“I didn’t,” she informs him, crisply. “We have a prearranged time for him to be waiting and that time is coming up. That we will be showing up earlier than he thinks is an added bonus.”

“So you would have just walked out of here if we weren’t done?”

Pepper doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes.” Declarative statement. No apologies.

God, I love her, Tony thinks. What he says is “stop making heart eyes at her, Rhodey. She’s not a widow anymore.”

While Rhodey sputters joyful indignation, Pepper squeezes Tony’s hand. “I think we just said we’re going home. If you need anything from us it can wait. You have my number but know that I will be prioritizing my calls.”

Neither Fury nor Hill argue as Pepper sweeps up all three doubloons and leads her husband and friend out of the conference room. “I’ll send you back your pyjamas, Fury!” Tony calls as he’s nearly dragged out of the room. No one stops them, not that either of them would dare right now, Tony grins as Pepper’s hand in his tightens possessively and Rhodey closes in on his other side.

They’re going home and Tony is never leaving again.

Chapter Text

Peter has seen more than his share of strange days. He’s definitely faced stranger ones than this one but the highs and lows of today were not at all what he expected when he’d woken up bright and early this morning for breakfast with Pepper and Happy.

One moment he’s having french toast and orange juice, the next he’s sitting next to Happy in Happy’s Audi. It’s a first, being in the front seat with Happy, but it feels strangely natural. Things seemed to have settled down once he was in the city but going from the highest of highs, literally and figuratively, as he’d swung through the city as Spider-Man, to the lowest of lows once he was back on solid ground again had been the hardest snap of whiplash since waking up on Titan.

He and Happy had talked it out, and he’d been mostly settled down to as normal as normal gets for him these days by the time they got back. He’d barely had time to return Pepper’s hug when Pepper got a call from Nick Fury of all people, and then ended up actually agreeing to go see him. She’d started with very firmly declining the invitation with the suggestion that he come see her, to much more firmly declining, then angrily accepting.

”Do you have to?” Happy had asked, saving Peter from asking the question himself. He hopes Happy had been able to read the thanks on his face. Pepper’s response had been an irritated, infuriated grunt followed by the promise of further explanation in the car.

The next minute he finds himself and Morgan hugging Pepper and Happy good-bye, something that Peter would never normally bother with in his life before. He promises Pepper that they’ll be fine and Pepper promises they’ll be back before supper. “He’s getting his time and I’m walking out once it’s up.” The promise is as good as gold and while Peter has never met Nick Fury or had any direct dealings with SHIELD, Tony had very much been not okay with him having any interaction with them that wasn’t brokered through him, he knows that nothing will keep Pepper from home once his time is up.

Being left alone, with Morgan or without, shouldn’t be that big of a deal but it is. Pepper has never left them alone before now. Any work she’s had to do she’s done from home or via videoconference. The one time where she absolutely couldn’t do something from home, Rhodey had been here. Whatever is going on, there isn’t time for Pepper to call Rhodey and, also Peter doesn’t think he’d survived the embarrassment if Pepper had offered to call him. Or asked Happy to stay behind.

Once Pepper and Happy have driven off, Peter decides he can handle this. Nothing is going to happen to them and he and Morgan will be just fine for a few hours. No big deal at all.

That being said, the day has been weird and this is still new territory for him and Morgan both. It is a big deal. It’s probably a big deal for Pepper and Happy, too.

Morgan is a mess when Pepper leaves. Within ten minutes she’s screaming and crying and demanding that Peter produce Pepper. This isn’t new to him, he’s babysat before and he’s seen his share of tantrums, but he’s never babysat a grieving child let alone while he’s grieving himself.

A big part of him is jealous that Morgan is young enough to get away with behaving like this. He lets her cry it out, lets her squeeze him and hug him and sob her big heart out until she’s flopped on the floor exhausted. While Morgan leaves to go find her teddy bear, Peter takes his frustration out on the living room wall. He lands one punch and manages to break his knuckles but not the wall. In all fairness to FRIDAY, she had tried to warn him that the walls were reinforced, but he’d been too quick for her. He feels terrible and apologizes after he curses out his pain and frustration. Tony and Pepper had had this house custom built so of course it was prepared for everything.

Morgan comes back, bear in hand, and once she sees his hand she seems to know exactly what he’s done. Just like her parents would have known. She puts the bear gently on the couch and then gives him a hug. “It’s okay, Petey,” she soothes. “I’m afraid Mommy won’t come back, too.” She sniffs. “What happens if Mommy doesn’t come back? Daddy promised he’d be back, too.”

Peter Parker is sixteen years old. He’s fought aliens. He’s come back from the dead. He has no answers for her and no promises except the ones that he’s been given. Pepper’s promises are promises but Pepper doesn’t know the future and can’t account for the amount of terrible things that can happen to a person that aren’t their fault. Plane crashes, bus crashes, and the bad guys don’t care about promises.

Just because a promise isn’t necessarily a promise, doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Promises are all Peter has, too. So he returns those promises to Morgan. That she’ll never be alone. That if Mommy doesn’t come home she’ll have him and Uncle Happy and Uncle Rhodey. Not to mention she’ll have all of Daddy’s super friends, too.

Morgan doesn’t care about Daddy’s super friends. She almost doesn’t care about Happy or Rhodey either. Not in this moment anyway. “You can’t leave again,” she stresses, little hands wrapped around his wrists and Peter can’t imagine a situation where he would willingly pull away. “You’re not allowed. No getting lost again.”

“I won’t get lost again,” he promises. “I’ll never get lost again.”

Just because a promise isn’t necessarily a promise, it doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be allowed to try his best to never leave his sister alone.

He does what he can to distract her. He lets her ice his knuckles with a little ‘boo boo bunny’ someone had made out of a washcloth and a tiny, cubed icepack. He lets her peek at them as they heal up over the course of the afternoon and tries not to get lost in the past as he watches Tony’s eyes in Morgan’s face widen in awe again. He lets her ride around on his back while he makes them a snack.

They’re in round ‘who even knows’ of Mario Kart but Morgan still keeps pausing the game to go look out the window, or to step outside to look for Happy’s car. Every time she does and sees nothing her mood gets worse and worse until she has another meltdown right there in the living room. Peter doesn’t know if Pepper had been wise or wrong in just promising to back before dinner and not stating an exact time.

Peter remembers this kind of grief induced stress. He remembers waiting for his parents to come home even though he knew they wouldn’t be. Ben had had to pry him away from the apartment window one time; it had been years before they’d gotten a fresh coat of paint to cover up his little fingernail marks in the woodwork. He’d melted down more than once when Ben and May had gone back to work and had actually gone missing in the complex for a brief period while he’d gone looking for May when she’d made the mistake of not calling ahead to say she was running late.

There’s still a part of him even now that is waiting for Tony to waltz in like nothing was wrong. Or for him to appear with May in tow, shouting about somebody getting lost on the way. That same part of him still expects a text from either of them. Some form of I’m doing my best here but holy shit this is a giant fucking mess and I’m so sorry I scared you but I’m on my way home, I promise. He isn’t even sure which one of them would send which variation anymore.

As he moves to soothe Morgan again, Peter remembers that sometimes the best you can do is to cry yourself to sleep next to someone who understands. Today is looking like one of those days.

Peter manages to coax Morgan off the floor and onto his back with the promise of a web hammock. He’s only done this once for them so far and Pepper had for some reason found this more terrifying than swinging with Morgan through the trees. He picks up his webshooters and StarkPad from his room and then gets the hammock set up right above Morgan’s bed. Once they’re snuggled up tight, he webs Morgan’s duvet and teddy bear up to join them.

Morgan has her head on his chest and her hands buried in both teddy bear and brother. She is trying desperately to keep it all in.

“It’s okay to cry,” he tells her and not for the first time. “You can be sad and not okay. Cry as much as you need to. I’m not going anywhere.” Peter has stopped keeping count of how often he’s cried and doesn’t care how the stages of grief work. It doesn’t matter and it’s different for everyone. He’s just grateful that he isn’t as alone as he could be and is glad that Morgan has someone who understands what it’s like to lose not just a parent but Tony specifically.

”Does Daddy miss us?”

As much as the question blindsides Peter, he doesn’t hesitate when he answers. “He does.” He whispers the answer in her ear and kisses the top of her head after. If there is a heaven, or some part of Tony that still exists out there somewhere, he knows that Tony wouldn’t consider any paradise as such without Pepper or Morgan. Or him, he has to allow as well. “He misses us lots.”

The follow up question blindsides him even more. “Did you miss us?”

He holds her closer. “Every day,” he breathes. Because it’s true regardless of what he believes or remembers.

Morgan cries softly into his hoodie and Peter wipes both of their tears with his free hand. Morgan yawns after a point and Peter realises that she probably is overdue for a nap. “Can you sing me a lullaby, Petey?”

Peter gulps. He can’t remember the last time he sang anything let alone anything lullaby like for an audience. He thinks back to anything Ben or May might have sung to him when he was little and he’s two lines into a Billy Joel song when Morgan harshly shushes him. “That’s Daddy’s song. Sing something else.”

And Peter had thought hearing that song the other night being sung with Tony’s voice had been a dream. He hopes he never accidentally activates that protocol, whatever it is. He tries going through his rolodex of appropriate Disney songs and wonders if he’ll fall into a landmine of something Pepper usually sings or something else Tony would have sung to her. His pop culture references are five years out of date.

Then it hits him. In the first few months after his parents had died, Ben had come back from a shopping trip with a bargain bin animated movie that he’d thought they could all try. It wasn’t a Disney movie, and there had definitely been parts of the movie that had scared little four year old him, but he remembered liking it in spite of the rat with the glowing eyes and the creepy owl. May and Ben had expected nightmares after that but he’d never had any. He’d learned more about strength from that movie than anything else, and he did relate with the fatherless family of mice. The major thing that had come out of it was what had become a cherished lullaby in the Parker household.

The movie is old enough, Peter thinks. Tony and Pepper both would have been too old to know or care about it when it came out, he thinks, so Peter takes a deep and starts to sing.

“Dream by night, wish by day

Love begins this way…”

He hasn’t thought of this song in years but it all comes back as if he’d last heard Ben sing it yesterday. As much as he hopes he never accidentally triggers whatever protocol Tony left in place to have him able to sing Morgan a lullaby forever, he really wishes they’d thought to record it. Or that he had something like this for May. May’s rendition of “Wagon Wheel” was particularly awful but wonderful.

Nah, he’s not forgetting that any time soon as an off key “hey mama rock meeeeee” cuts through his brain as if May had started singing right in his ear. There’s no way he could bleach that off key mess out of his brain if he tried.

He’s pretty sure had Morgan passed out before he’d finished but he sighs in relief to hear her soft snoring when he does. He pulls out the StarkPad from where he’d crammed it on his other side, finds The Secret of N.I.M.H online, and turns the volume way down so as not to wake Morgan. He hasn’t seen this movie in years but it’s something comforting enough for him to get through and something that Morgan could jump in on if she wakes up. Maybe he’ll show it to her properly one day. He thinks she’d like it. Creepy looking owls and rats have nothing on what she’s had to deal with so far.

He’s just getting through the end credits when he hears a car approaching. He smiles in relief. Pepper’s home, and so are Happy and Rhodey, he notes with surprise as he goes through his mental heartbeat headcount.

Peter has already nudged Morgan awake and carefully helped her down from the hammock to her bed when he actually realises that he had counted four heartbeats and not three. “Peter, come on!” Morgan yells as she runs down the hall and apparently hurls herself down the stairs by the sound of it.

Peter doesn’t move. He can’t even speak.

One of the first things he’d noticed once he’d come out of his post-spider bite fever had been that he could hear heartbeats. At first he’d just thought it was part of the epic migraine he’d had to get through as part of that, but once the migraine had passed he’d figured out what was going on pretty quick.

Once he’d caught on to the whole enhanced hearing thing it had been relatively easy to learn to tune out once he’d figured out that he could. Or else it was necessity that had driven him, he has to allow. Peter still had days where everything was too much for his senses to handle but Peter would have never been able to be in any large group of people ever again if he hadn’t had figured out how to dial the volume down a little.

What had probably been the winning strategy had been turning it into a game, to count the heartbeats and see if the number matched the number of people in the room. It had come in really handy once he was Spider-Man since sometimes he’d hear the extra heartbeat before his spider sense would kick in that something was wrong.

With people he knew well he also had fun with picking out their heartbeats out of a crowd, which was easier said than done but exposure certainly helped. Morgan, for example, had a fast and energetic heartbeat that reminded him of a hummingbird’s wings. Pepper’s heartbeat was regular and almost unshakable like a clock. He might notice a slight flutter or stutter now and again if she was taken especially by surprise but it barely registered. It made him feel strong and protected, knowing that that force of nature was on his side.

Happy's was strong and steady like a metronome. Rhodey's was much the same but was still so light and fun like an improvised bass line on a song, which was just an interesting secret to know about someone who tried to be so serious.

May's had been loud and all encompassing and Peter is still reeling with the knowledge that he'll never hear her rock concert of a heartbeat again. Hers and Tony's had both been rock concerts to him.

If May’s heartbeat had been a traditional rock band’s beat, Tony’s version had been erratic and frantic like when you hear something new and exciting and wholly unique for the first time. It had been bursting with energy and working too hard every single day. His heart condition also meant it wasn’t a traditionally healthy heartbeat, which made it stand out all the more. Even when the man slept it had barely slowed down. It hadn't even slowed down when he'd died. It had been there and then gone with no transition, like someone had cut the power to the band's amps.

But he was hearing that experimental rock concert of a heartbeat now, live from the driveway. Frantic, hopeful, and peaceful all at once in all its erratic glory.

There is no way he should be hearing it now. Peter is wondering if he has finally lost his mind when he hears Morgan’s joyful shout.

“DADDY!!”

Chapter Text

They’ve just stepped out onto the tarmac, the portal closing almost politely behind them, when Tony hears the cock of a gun. “We really have to start warning people.”

Pepper nods. “We really do,” she agrees as she waves her hands at Happy, who is standing in front of one of the older Audis and pointing his gun right at Tony. “Stand down, Happy!” she shouts. “We’re all fine here!”

Tony really can’t blame him for this reception and he figures he’ll be seeing a lot more of it. He knows enough super armed, super powered, or super skilled people who would happily wipe him off the face of the earth if they suspect so much as a millisecond of trickery. And what else could they expect? None of them have come back from the dead before.

”Happy!” Pepper is still yelling. “Put the gun down!”

Rhodey is standing with her, effectively shielding Tony from his friend. “It’s Tony!” Rhodey promises. “Do you think we’d be standing here with him if he wasn’t actually him?”

Tony pushes past his bodyguards and walks up to Happy, one hand raised in caution as much as in invitation. He doesn’t want his final epitaph to read ‘shot on the tarmac by a friend’ and he doesn’t want Happy to have that on his conscience. “I said you could pick any car you like and you pick this one?” Tony had left Happy his pick of the cars in his will and this older one was not the one he thought he’d go for. Then again, it is the closest one to the first car that Happy had ever chauffeured him around in.

”Stay where you are!”

Tony stops. Happy holsters his gun and walks up to him like a man on a mission. He doesn’t move when Happy pulls his fist back and doesn’t react when Pepper yells out a warning. Happy lets his fist fly and Tony doesn’t even blink as it comes right at him before stopping just in front of his nose. Just like Tony had trusted him to.

After a solemn moment or five, Tony reaches out and lowers Happy’s hand himself. “Didn’t miss me that much, did you?” Happy doesn’t groan, roll his eyes, or do anything. Tony sighs. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “That was bad, I know. Also sorry for dying on you in the first place. Do I get any slack for not dying on your watch at least?”

That makes Happy huff in almost amusement. “Barely,” he allows. “If I had been there I would have Snapped for you, though.”

That blindsides him and Tony stands there in speechless, stupefied wonder until Happy seems to accept that reaction as his final proof. His face softens, finally, eyes shining bright in a way that Tony hasn’t seen since Morgan’s birth. He gets no warning before he’s wrapped up in a bear hug and hauled up off the ground in Happy’s enthusiasm, arms pinned to his sides so he can’t even hug back. “Ow, okay,” he says, half terrified and half laughing. “Okay, down Happy, please!”

Happy finally puts him down but doesn’t let him hug him back, instead he stabs a finger at him. “Don’t ever pull this kind of shit again,” he threatens. “Seriously, Tony. You’re done. The next time the freaking universe needs saving, they can call someone else.” Tony’s about to agree with him until he notices the appraising look that Happy is giving him now. “What the hell are these duds?”

Tony acts like he’s just noticed the pyjamas. “In the after life everyone wears grandpa pyjamas,” he shrugs. “Consider yourself warned.”

Happy rolls his eyes. Rhodey groans. Pepper swats him.

Tony grins. He beckons his original three closer, impatiently waving his hands . “Come on, bring it in team.” He pulls them all close and they group hug it out right there on the tarmac. It starts as a group hug anyway but it ends with Tony in the middle being surrounded by the others. No one says a word, everyone just settles back into the feeling of pieces of a puzzle being slotted back together. The picture is almost complete.

Happy is the first to pull back, stabbing a finger at him yet again. “I am not taking you home to your children looking like that.” He heads back to the car and produces the spare pair of jeans and a now very faded long sleeved Black Sabbath t-shirt that Happy has always kept on hand for any wardrobe related emergencies. No one draws attention to the fact that Happy has them at all.

Tony swaps clothes easily, without shame and with Pepper’s help, in the back of the car with Rhodey and Happy standing guard. Pepper can’t keep her eyes off him and Tony wishes it was for a better reason than sheer shock at not seeing a mark on him from using the most powerful thing in the universe. “There should be something,” she murmurs, her hand running across his face before running down his right arm to his right hand.

”There is,” he whispers. “Just not on me.” He palms Pepper’s face in his hands. He knows the pain behind her eyes may never truly go away, but he’s going to put his best effort into making it fade as much as he can. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m so sorry.” He leans forward to kiss her, and then kisses the tears off her cheeks.

”I know Rhodey said you don’t have to apologize for anything but I’m fine if you keep going.” She smiles her bright smile and she kisses him back. Then Rhodey ruins the moment by banging on the window and loudly reminding them that people need to sit back there. Namely him. Tony fake complains but doesn’t even suggest that he ride up front with Happy; he is perfectly fine being sandwiched between the two greatest loves of his life and he tells them so. No one says anything against it.

It’s about an hour drive to the house and while Happy has plenty of questions, he lets Pepper and Rhodey take the lead on answering them. Tony has more than a few of his own but instead of bombarding everyone he shuts his eyes and takes a moment. He answers a few direct questions when pressed but otherwise his only reaction to the outside world is squeezing Pepper’s hand back whenever she squeezes his.

He’s going to need more time than the hour, he knows. They all are going to need more time and everything's happening so fast for everyone. He’d been ready to go even if he hadn’t wanted to, the others have already started patching their lives together, and he is sitting here because of three people who hadn’t been ready to let him go when they had the power to fix things. One person’s pain, however, had been what tipped the balance in the end.

Tony plans to thank each and every one of them personally but one of them especially needs him now, and Tony needs Peter too. A stolen moment on a battlefield followed almost immediately by a blurred figure and broken voice while dying was not enough.

He hears the terrain change under the tires and his eyes fly open with the knowledge that he’s finally home. His lake house comes into view and he almost breaks right then and there at the sight of it. It looks exactly the same as it had the day he’d left even though he knows that it is far from unchanged. Happy pulls them up as close as he can, parks, and then kills the engine. For a minute, no one moves.

”What now?” Happy asks.

”What do you mean?” Rhodey asks back.

Happy gestures as the housel. “Do I go in and warn them? Should we bring them out?”

Any decision they were going to make is wiped away when the front door flies open to reveal a little girl with sleep mussed brown hair in her favourite pink leggings and aggressively red and yellow floral t-shirt. The pink cardigan that goes with the leggings is definitely is hanging off a doorknob somewhere, Tony just knows it, and he is shoving Rhodey out of the car so he can get out before anyone else can react. “Move it, sourpatch!” he orders.

Rhodey and Pepper both get out, Tony spilling out after Rhodey. Morgan is about to run to her mother when she catches sight of Tony and freezes. She opens and shuts her eyes almost comically, then rubs them. Tony swears his heart skips a beat as he watches his daughter pinch herself on top of everything. She quietly mouths ‘ow’ as the reality as what is in front of her slowly dawns on her.

This is the part where he should run to her, he knows, but his feet just will not move. Instead he squats down and throws his arms open wide just as she shouts DADDY!! in a voice so loud that he wonders if Pepper will count that as the eventual, official ‘surprise, I’m not dead’ announcement.

Morgan hits him like a tiny missile that he is certainly not prepared for. Tony topples onto his back as he pulls his little girl close, cradling the back of her head and hoping he doesn’t break her. “Hi Morgan,” he breathes, voice breaking with happiness. “Morgan H. Stark, I missed you so much and you better not have used all the maple syrup.”

Morgan giggles and kisses him on the cheek as he gets up and standing again, all with Morgan still attached to him. He’s about to blow a raspberry on her cheek when she palms his face with her tiny hands. “You came back!” she shrieks in his face and Tony doesn’t care if his ears never stop ringing. “I knew if we missed you hard enough, you’d come back and we missed you five million!” She kisses his other cheek and then lays her head on his shoulder, arms wrapped loosely around his neck. “I love you.”

Tony kisses his daughter’s forehead and somehow manages holds her even tighter. It’s a wonder she’s not just part of him now. “I love you, too. Sorry I’m late, kiddo.”

Morgan shakes her head. “You came as fast as you could. Happy says traffic is always a nightmare.”

Happy barks out a laugh and Tony feels more than sees Pepper come to them. “Traffic is always a nightmare and we had a long way to go,” she agrees as she rubs her daughter’s back and her arm wraps around Tony. As soon as Pepper’s arm settles, Morgan’s head shoots up so fast Tony barely has time to escape it smashing into his chin. “Put me down!” she orders. “We have to get Petey! He came home too!” Tony’s barely released her when she’s off like a shot back up toward the house. “PETER!” she shouts loud enough to bring the house down. “DADDY’S NOT DEAD ANYMORE! COME SAY HI!"

“So much for breaking it to him gently.” Rhodey snorts as he moves to follow. He stops when he realises no one else is moving. “Guys,” he urges. “Let’s get a hustle on before Peter thinks he’s in a Walking Dead episode or something.”

Happy follows after Rhodey but Tony grabs Pepper’s wrist before she can take a step. Tony still can’t move and he badly wants to. Pepper looks back at him and then moves fully into his line of sight, blocking the house and the others from view and putting her hands on his shoulders. “Tony,” she orders. “Look at me.” This order is firmer than the last time she’d said it but he obeys just as quickly. As if he could look anywhere else.

“Peter is alive,” she says with an unbreakable promise in her voice and her eyes. He can feel the truth in his bones. “He’s just inside. He lives here now, with us, and you have all the time in the world with him.”

This time when Pepper starts to move he moves with her. Morgan comes running out back again before any of the adults make it to the door. She looks stricken. “I can’t find him,” she reports, panicked. “He was in my room, promise!”

Tony’s heart clenches but Pepper’s hand remains firm in his. “I’m sure he’s here somewhere, Morgan,” she promises. They get into the house and Pepper starts moving around the living room in a practiced route. “Peter?” she calls as she rounds the corner into the kitchen.

Rhodey heads out to check the garage. Happy volunteers to go out to check the back property and the dock. “I’ve found him in the trees before,” he explains as he follows Rhodey out. There’s a part of Tony that shouldn’t be surprised by that but he is just the same. Pepper heads upstairs while still calling for Peter. Morgan tugs at his hand and he picks her up as she starts to tear up. “I didn’t want Peter to go away,” she sniffs. “Can I only have one of you at a time?”

“No, Morguna, no,” he soothes. “You can have us both. This isn’t like taking toys in the car.” He hears a familiar, careful, creaking noise just as Morgan asks to be put back down. She goes running up the stairs again, shouting for Pepper to check on her ceiling. Apparently, Peter and her had been in a web hammock before they’d showed up. He hears Pepper knock on a door. “Peter? Are you in there?”

That creaking again. Then the sound of what either is a very careful breeze or very cautious breathing.

Pepper comes back down the stairs. “He’s not here, Tony,” she’s not panicking but she is definitely concerned. “His window is open but-”

“Shh,” he hushes her, holding up a finger as he listens intently to a sound that he spent most of the first weeks of living here hallucinating.

Peter has only managed to sneak up on him exactly once. It was early days, when Tony thought Peter could only climb walls when he was in the suit. He maintains it was a credit to the kid’s genius that he thought Peter had engineered his stickiness but of course what Peter took away from that was the admittedly impressive, albeit humiliating, shriek Tony had let out when he’d seen Peter Parker hanging from the ceiling, grinning like a fiend. After that he knew what to listen for and Peter has never been able to get the jump on him since. On the ground or on the ceiling.

When they’d first moved here, Tony had spent a good part of his time whirling around after hearing what he could have sworn was Peter trying to sneak up on him only to find nothing there. There was a point where he’d seriously considered believing in ghosts it happened so frequently. Then Happy had noticed the trees scraping against the side of the house and once those had been trimmed back the noises had stopped. It had been yet another heartbreak and a crushing reminder of what he’d lost.

Tony shuts his eyes and holds his breath. The creaking stops in mid creak. When he opens his eyes again and lets out the breath he must look a wreck because the only thing that is stopping Pepper from reaching out for him is her holding Morgan back. Morgan is waving up at the ceiling and sighing in relief that Tony can almost taste. "It's okay, Peter!" She says in her best imitation of Pepper's soothing voice. "You can come down now."

He’s sure Pepper nods but what he actually sees is Pepper’s eyes flick up and to her left, clearly looking at the ceiling with a soft, encouraging smile. She leads Morgan back up the stairs a bit. "Tony. Turn around."

It’s so simple, he knows. Just turn around. He’s not hallucinating, he knows what he’s going to see, he’s had the proof of his lost boy in his arms already before now, but in this moment he doubts all the same. “Pete,” he starts after what must be an age, not caring how strangled his voice sounds. “You’d better behind me or I’ll....” he doesn’t finish. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he turns and finds no one there again.

A hand gingerly lands on his shoulder and Tony’s hand flies up to cover it with his own on reflex. It’s warm and alive and is trying to wrap his fingers around his. Tony has to be squeezing too hard but the hand doesn’t so much as flinch.

“Please turn around, sir.”

Tony doesn't need to be asked twice.

He comes face to face with Peter Parker’s upside down brown eyes. For a heartbeat neither of them move, they just stare at each other and breathe each others air while counting the others’ breaths. Then, finally, Tony takes a cautious step back and Peter effortlessly disengages from his webbing and flips back to the ground.

His hair is sticking up a bit, curls untempered by the gel he usually puts in on school days or dinners out in restaurants with tablecloths. He’s wearing the t-shirt that Rhodey had given him for his sixteenth birthday that says “screw your lab safety, I want superpowers” underneath his favourite black hoodie, webshooters just visible up his sleeves. His jeans are the ones that have flecks of acid stains and grease from that one disastrous upgrade experiment and he is currently barefoot. His head tilts as if he’s listening to something only he can hear.

Heartbeats, Tony remembers. The kid hears heartbeats. Probably heard him coming up the drive and freaked the fuck out. Probably crawled out the window and stayed out of sight, thinking the worst while hoping for the best and wondering if he’d lost his mind. No suit, no plan, but ready to jump in the second he’s needed. Some things never change.

What does he say to Peter Parker after all this time? Now that he has all the time he wants?

"Mr. Stark?" Peter breathes. His voice is so full of hope but he's so afraid at the same time. Tony nods, fails to make noise when he opens his mouth, which scares Peter more. “Are you okay? Is it really - I mean, I know it is - but are..” Peter gives up on words himself and just reaches for him.

Tony lunges for him and pulls him into a hug before Peter can even think about taking a step. Where Peter’s hug during the battle had been confused and tentative, this one is desperate and ferocious. Tony welcomes the bruises because that means that Peter is alive and moving through the physical world again. He squeezes tight enough that he feels like their fingers might just disappear into each other's backs.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers fiercely into Peter's ear. “For Titan, for the five years, for dying, for May, for-”

Peter squeezes him so hard his breath catches. Tears start to soak Tony's shirt and shoulder both. "Don’t,” he whimpers. “Don’t apologize. Just don’t leave again.”

Tony is pretty sure his heart can’t take any of this but he’s not going to tell anyone that. “I won’t,” he vows, not caring that it’s an insane promise in spite of everything. “I could ask you the same thing, too.” Tony lets his tears fall as he pulls back to look at his kid, who looks about as much of a hot mess as he feels. “I’m not leaving,” he reinforces. “This is real. I missed you so much, kid.” He shakes Peter’s gently for emphasis. He wants to feel this as much as he wants Peter to. “ I love you so much. So goddamn much. You have no idea how much I’ve wished for this.”

Peter laughs a brittle laugh as he frees one arm to wipe both his and Tony's tears. Tony can't even feel embarrassed for the wet spot he's made on Peter's shoulder. “I think I might,” Peter reminds him and Tony about kicks himself. Before he can say anything Peter squeezes Tony's shoulders carefully, as if he’ll vanish. "I love you too, sir and I'm not leaving either, Mr. Stark, I promise."

“Tony,” Tony gently corrects. “Not 'sir.' Not 'Mr. Stark.' Sir and Mr. Stark territory are so far behind us even your freaky spider eyes can't see it.”

“Tony,” Peter repeats. “Tony.” He folds himself back into Tony's arms and keeps repeating his name over and over as if to convince himself that everything that’s happening is actually happening.

“I'm right here, Peter.” He hushes as he rubs Peter's back. He kisses Peter's temple this time while he allows his right hand to bury itself in Peter’s hair and relishes in the feel of his kid in his arms without one of them dying or worrying about dying. "I'm not going anywhere and neither are you."

Footsteps. Two sets of. Pepper’s arms wrap around the two of them while Morgan winds her arms tightly around all of their legs as best as she can. Pepper gives Morgan an arm up and then she's gathered up with Peter in Tony's arms. Tony thinks he hears Rhodey and Happy talking quietly in the background somewhere. Thinks he hears someone snap a photo.

He’s back home. He has his wife and his kids in his arms. His friends are near.

Now, Tony thinks, now he can rest.

Chapter Text

Peter knows that everything that is happening is real. That being said, a part of him still whispers to him that all that’s really happened is that he swung into a billboard this morning, or fell out of the web hammock he’d made in Morgan’s room, and hit his head. That’s he’s really dreaming, lying on the ground somewhere, waiting for someone to come and wake him up.

Then he’ll feel Tony’s hand on his wrist, or his arm around his shoulders. He’ll hear Tony’s heartbeat and hear him breathe and then he’ll remember. This is real and he doesn’t care what he or anyone else did or didn’t do to deserve itl.

Morgan is at least dividing her attention and sharing her joy at having her dad home with everyone. She’ll be plastered to Tony’s other side one moment, then hanging out in the kitchen with Rhodey and Happy the next, then crawling all over Pepper on the other couch five seconds after that. Sometimes she will drape herself across his and Tony’s laps, grinning gleefully at them both before running off again.

Peter has tried to leave Tony’s side twice. Not because he wants to but because he feels like he should be helping out somewhere, or be letting someone else monopolize Tony. Both times he’s tried to move though, Tony’s grip has tightened just enough to alert Peter that he would very much prefer Peter stay where he is. Peter is not about to complain about it. The second time he’d tried he’d sighed in mock defeat and leaned theatrically on Tony, using his shoulder as a pillow. This had earned Peter an affectionate side hug as Tony tried to pull him even closer and an equally affectionate kiss on the top of his head. Both were actions Tony would only do in private if at all before all this.

It also doesn’t escape Peter’s notice that Tony’s grip on his wrist will double as a pulse check. Or that Tony is counting his breaths and not letting him out of his sight for more than a second or two. Peter knows he’s doing it too. There is so much to unpack here but Peter shoves it aside for the feeling that his family is back together. All but one person.

The other reason that Peter knows this has to be real is because May is still dead. There’s a bittersweet tinge to this that Peter is also trying to mitigate, to put in a box to reckon with later along with the rest, but he can’t help but focus on the fact that Tony Stark is literally sitting right next to him and seems to have no intention of moving from the couch let alone dying anytime soon.

"Could you get your elbow out of my workspace?" Happy demands from the kitchen where he is trying to make something somewhat healthy to balance out the multiple pizzas Rhodey is making.

Rhodey, shoves right back. "How about you get your salad shit out out of my kitchen."

"Um,” Pepper butts in on her way back to the couches. She’s got a cup of coffee in each hand and a ginger ale and a juice box are squashed under one armpit. “It's my kitchen last I checked."

"Our kitchen, Pepper." Tony chimes in.

"Not until I legally resurrect you it isn’t. According to the terms of your own will, I own everything.” Pepper smirks in reminder as she puts her coffee down and then moves as if to throw the juice box at Tony’s head. Morgan launches herself from her father’s side to snatch the juice box out of her mother’s grip and collapses on the other couch in victory.

"Yeah, we're holding off on that right?" Tony grabs his coffee from her just as fast as she walks by and somehow doesn’t spill it. Peter waits until his ginger ale is handed to him and thanks Pepper when he gets it.

"I'm in no rush. And thank you, Peter for being civil.” She ruffles his hair fondly. “I’m glad someone taught you manners.”

“I am right here, you know.” Tony gripes. “Morgan, say thank you to your mother.”

“Thank you!”

“See? Nailing it.”

Pepper sighs and rolls her eyes but her smile takes away any bite. “Yup. Nailing it. Totally nailing it.” She heads back to her couch, idly lifting Morgan’s legs so she has a spot to sit down. She raises her mug in cheers and Tony salutes her back then takes a sip.

“Oh my god, hello coffee,” he breathes. “The swill they were keeping at the compound has nothing on you, my love.”

“Seriously though,” Rhodey insists from the kitchen. “How long can we keep this a secret?”

”As long as we want,” Pepper shrugs. “Within reason,” she pointedly clarifies. “I am not pretending about this indefinitely.”

”Have you met me?” Tony chortles. There’s a lot of murmured agreement to that. Even from Morgan. “We’ll have to tell everyone eventually,” he acknowledges, serious now. “And we will; I’d just prefer not to be attacked by the press, the shareholders, and anyone I’d prefer not to talk to under normal circumstances for as long as I can avoid it when I’d rather spend some uninterrupted quality time with you guys before the shitstorm starts.” Tony’s grip on Peter tightens again, even though Peter hasn’t moved. “We can swing a few weeks, right Pep?”

Pepper nods. “Again, we can swing whatever,” she agrees even as everyone knows she’s already flipping mentally through timelines and schedules. Peter remembers Pepper telling him that she expects to have to make actual proper appearance at SI by September, but by then they’d have moved to the penthouse for the school year. It would be a pretty good time for a transition and Peter guesses Pepper sees no major changes needing to be made if Tony prefers to keep himself a secret a little while longer.

“Okay fine, but what do we do if someone drops by?” Rhodey presses. “Hide you in the garage? Have Peter web you to the ceiling?”

“The first one idealy. No offence, Peter,” Tony looks over at Morgan, who is still very much engaged with her juice box. “Morgan’s got a sweet space to hang out in, don’t ya?”

Morgan grins and nods vigorously. “You can play K’Nex with me instead.”

“That sounds like a ball-”

“You did say you’d build her a ball pit down there,” Pepper reminds him even as her hands cover Morgan’s ears.

Tony blinks, and elbows Peter in the side when he snorts. “Um...no I didn’t?”

“I want a ball pit,” Peter deadpans.

“No one is getting a ball pit before I’m getting a ball pit and, no. No ball pits.”

”I could hide you in the ball pit!” Morgan suggests, having pushed Pepper’s hands away. “No one would find you there! Petey could use his webs to keep the door shut too.”

Peter nods, half seriously thinking it over. “I could make that happen. I could probably web you into the ball pit too.”

Tony groans as Morgan celebrates. “I hope you know you are building that ball pit now. Totally on you. No help from me whatsoever.”

“That’s fine,” Peter decides. “It’s probably better that I hide down there with you anyway. I don’t think I could lie all that well if someone dropped in.”

“Nope,” Happy agrees almost too quickly for Peter’s taste. “You’d cave in two seconds if someone asked you.” He smirks. “Not that anyone would need to ask you anything, I’d have known Tony was back just by looking at you. You haven’t looked like this since...well, a long ass time ago.”

Peter can feel himself blush, feels that nagging reminder that he really doesn’t have any right to be this happy, but then he feels Tony’s arm tighten around his shoulders again and he can’t help but relish leaning into it. “Glow all you want, kid,” Tony whispers to him, bumping his forehead against Peter’s temple. “I’ve missed it.”

“We’ve got time,” Pepper reminds the room at large. “We’ll loop in who we want to know when Tony wants to do it. If anyone does show up unannounced, we’ll handle it then.” Pepper thinks it over, one hand snatching Morgan’s empty juice box away while the other rubs Morgan’s feet. “That really would only be Bruce,” she decides. “I’ll try and get ahold of him tomorrow, just in case. Do you mind, Tony?” Tony shakes his head and Pepper continues. “Clint isn’t leaving his family any time soon, though he has invited us all to visit when we feel up to it -”

“That’s one way to bring him up to speed,” Rhodey laughs. “Accept the invitation, and let Tony get out of the car first.”

“Thor’s off world,” Pepper continues as if she was never interrupted. “Steve’s not exactly travelling much nowadays-”

Tony cocks an eyebrow, genuinely confused and worried. “What’s that mean? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Peter assures him. “He’s just...well he took the stones back. He went back in time and put them all back where they came from and then he just…” This would be the part for one of the others to jump in but it seems everyone else is just as stumped as he is.

Tony takes a moment to process that and try and catch up to Peter. “Okay…” he thinks out loud. “Good, that’s good, No horrible alternate realities are a good thing…” then Peter can almost see a lightbulb click on over his head and Tony gapes at him. Apparently, Steve’s decision was a much a surprise to him as it was to everyone else. “Son of a bitch, he stayed in the past!?”

“Found Peggy,” Pepper winks at him as she continues. “Said he took a leaf out of your book since you’d always said he needed to get a life.”

Tony is somehow even more shocked. “Huh. Who’d have thunk?”

“Sonofabitch,” Morgan says carefully but decisively.

Silence for a second or two. Tony sighs, face already in his hand. “So, not nailing it so much?”

Pepper turns to her daughter with practiced speed and precision. “That’s Daddy’s word,” she recites. “He owns it, it belongs to him, we don’t say it.”

Morgan’s face says ‘bullshit’ but what she actually says makes Peter suddenly empathize with every sibling story Ned has ever told him. “Peter said it today.”

Peter holds out his hand as if that could save him from the multiple sets of shocked and appalled eyeballs pointed his way. “Okay, hang on. Not my fault. Not my fault all. Okay? Anything you say after you’ve punched a wall isn’t intentional.”

Peter doesn’t even get a chance to regret that last bit when Pepper holds out her own hand. “Hold up,” she orders. “When did you punch a wall?”

Tony studies him. “Yeah, kid, when?” he echoes, sternly. “And more importantly where because-”

“You had the house built with reinforced walls, I know,” Peter groans. “FRIDAY warned me about a second too late.” He rushes through Tony’s wince. “On the bright side, your builders did a really good job, Mr. St-Tony, sorry, I mean Tony. You can’t even tell I hit anything.”

Tony studies him silently and holds out his hand. Peter rolls his eyes and presents his right hand for inspection. “Did you break all of these?” Tony is focused on his now slightly bruised knuckles.

“I gave him boo boo bunny!” Morgan offers like a lifeline to them both. “He got better really fast too! Just like in your stories!"

Peter waggles each finger, wraps his hand around Tony’s, squeezes, and then lets go. “I’m totally fine. Morgan’s a great doctor.”

Morgan beams at him from across the room and Tony definitely doesn’t believe him. “We’re going to revisit this later,” he promises. “Just nod and agree with me when I say ‘yes, Tony, I broke my knuckles when I punched the wall at full strength and I’m lucky I have super healing, boo boo bunny, and a little sister.’”

Peter nods “I am lucky,” he agrees and Tony leaves it as promised.

I am so lucky, Peter thinks as Happy summons them all into the dining room so everyone can at least appreciate the salad he’s made before Rhodey ruins them with the amount of pizza he’s made.

“Why not cheeseburgers?” Morgan asks Tony as she launches herself into his lap.

“Uncle Platypus made pizza so it’s rude not to eat what someone’s made for you,” Tony answers once he gets his breath back. He sweeps her into his arm one handed. Peter almost falls over as he’s yanked to his feet at the same time, Tony’s hand firmly around Peter’s wrist. “Also, I love pizza. You love pizza. Mommy and Peter love pizza. It’s a win for everyone.”

“We also like cheeseburgers,” Morgan argues.

It’s funny, Peter realises as they all sit down and start, how much he feels like a ghost right now as he watches what a normal family dinner must have looked like while he was gone. Or what a dinner would look like if he was back in Queens with his aunt right now.

Peter gasps in surprise when Pepper kicks him gently but sharply under the table. “I’ve got a spot in the living room all picked out” she reminds him with her kind smile but and ‘don’t test me’ eyes.

Peter feels himself flush again and nods his head quickly. “Nope, I’m good,” he promises her. “I get it. Thanks, Pepper.”

“Hang what?” Tony asks.

“Give it a minute and it will come to you,” Pepper promises. Tony scowls at her and then just as realization is breaking across his face, he lets out a shouts and reaches under the table to massage his shin. Peter laughs, knowing Pepper has struck again. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.”

While Tony recovers from the unexpected assault, the subject changes to the merits of a salad without dressing. (“It’s healthier”, “It’s disappointing is what it is”) It devolves from there and there’s a bit of Peter that reminds him joyfully that this has to be real because a fake argument about salad in the wake of Tony Stark being back from the dead is too weird to be conjured up by his sleeping brain.

He looks around. Rhodey is at the head of one end of the table, Happy at the other. Tony is next to him, with Pepper and Morgan sitting across from them. This is the first time all of the seats at this table have been full. This is not his first dinner at this table but it is his first dinner at this table with Tony here, too. He smiles to himself as he attacks his salad without dressing only because he finds that he’s too hungry to wait for it, which makes Happy pleased as anything until Peter attacks his pizza with the same level of abandon. He hasn’t really felt like eating what he’d normally need to eat until now and he thanks his lucky stars that no one comments on it.

Rhodey is just pleased he’d made enough to feed everyone. “No, Peter, keep eating kid, please. And Tony? What the heck was the last thing you ate?”

“Technically the Chinese takeout we had before we started the heist so...some chicken chow mein and the fortune cookie I stole from Rocket?”

“You didn’t grab anything even when you were in the 70s? Or when we got back?"

“I was a little bit busy, Rhodey-”

“Christ, no wonder you did such a stupid thing. You’ve always been useless on an empty stomach.” Tony’s outraged retort is cut off before it starts with Morgan asking what the fortune cookie said.

“I’ll tell you, come here,” Tony pauses, leans over to Morgan, who leans as close as she can without climbing on the table, and intones as if he’s telling her the meaning of life: “It tastes sweet.”

Morgan blinks at him, then giggles. “That is a terrible fortune.”

Pepper is waiting for Tony to say he’s joking but eventually believes him. “It tastes sweet? Really?”

“Tell me about it,” Tony grumbles. “I was hoping at the very least for a “you are about to start an incredible journey” but no. I get part of a recipe instead.”

“Could have been worse,” Happy shrugs. “You could have opened it and there could have been no fortune in it at all.”

Peter almost chokes on his pizza. Rhodey looks up with a whispered dude, what the hell? Pepper bites her lip.

Tony takes a second, tries to come up with something suitably scathing, finds it, but decides to keep it to himself. “Nice one,” he allows with a threatening wave of his fork. “I’ll get you for that.”

“Go right ahead, Tony. I’ll be waiting.” It is far from threatening or unwelcome.

As the meal continues and as they move back to the living room, Peter settles back in, he gets more comfortable in yet another new normal. They fill Tony in with what little he has missed, including showing the video of everyone drinking the Great Grape monstrocity on Tony’s birthday (“You owe us a redo, Tony.” “Wouldn’t that mean you owe me a redo?” “Nope, you owe us. Invalid birthday celebration, please try again.”)

Another bit of amazing, Peter thinks, of how two months can feel like two centuries but at the same time, now that he’s back, it doesn’t seem like he’s missed all that much.

Tony, Peter knows quite well, has an entirely different opinion. And knows very well that they're skipping things and glossing over others. Peter wishes he knew exactly what to say or do about that since, he realises, he’s the only person in the room who understands what he’s going through. He'd been gone five years, so everyone’s grief wasn’t as fresh as this is and Peter still hasn’t really figured out whether it was appropriate to ask someone to share with you how your death affected them.

As best as he’s figured out, he hasn't ever really needed to ask. Tony is likely going to come to the same realization but where Peter had come back to scars, Tony has come back to open wounds.

May would know what to do, Peter knows. May would have solved everything.

Yup. Definitely too messy to not be real.

======================

In news surprising no one, least of all himself, Tony can’t sleep.

It’s not his usual insomnia, or rather the variant of insomnia he’s endured since the Snap (the first Snap now?) and the move out here, and it’s definitely not the insomnia when he’s working. At first he thinks it’s fear of not waking up at all but figures it’s closer to fear that he’ll wake back up in a world with half the universe still gone. With Peter still gone.

Pepper shifts in his arms and Tony pulls her closer. He remembers sleeping alone while Pepper and him had been on their break and how painful that at been. At least Pepper had been alive and out in the world somewhere. He can’t imagine sleeping in his bed alone and knowing he’d never ever have Pepper on the other side again. There really is no comparison.

He doesn’t know if it’s a strange sort of hope that had made Pepper keep his sleep clothes (ratty black tee, well worn grey sweatpants) under his pillow despite it all, or if it was a habit she wasn’t ready to break with. He hadn’t asked her much about that mechanics at the time. All Pepper had said was that she’d kicked herself later for washing them after he’d left that day since they smelled like laundry and not like him. “Not that I remembered I’d done that until way later,” she’d clarified. “The three of us either slept downstairs or not at all for awhile. We still have ended up downstairs depending on the night.”

Tony had noticed the tucked away blankets and pillows, board games, and other distractions in the living room. They weren’t hidden so much as part of the decor. A new normal that had come to pass and it both broke and warmed his heart in equal amounts. The circumstances were shit but knowing that the three of them would have each other had eased his passing. He hoped it had made things easier for them too.

As Tony is trying to rein his brain in to the idea that yes there are definitely four people in this house and not three, and of course all of them are asleep, Pepper rolls ever so slightly out of Tony’s arms. Like always, she knows what he needs before he does.

He kisses Pepper’s temple, she doesn’t even flinch. “FRIDAY, let her know where I’ve gone when she wakes up.” The ‘yes, Boss’ he gets in reply almost sounds like ‘welcome home’ to him.

Tony slides out of bed and gets a good look at himself in Pepper’s vanity mirror. He moves quickly away. He looks too good. From the sweats and shirt, to the lack of any kind of evidence that he’d been roasted alive by a piece of his own tech and six space rocks. That he’d spent a few hours dead and a few weeks sleeping while the people he cared about most suffered in his wake. It’s not his fault, not entirely, but he can’t help but feel like he’s failed everyone in some irreparable way.

He quietly makes his way to Morgan’s room and carefully opens the door. Miss Morguna is out cold. Doesn’t react just like she normally doesn’t. She’d been far from an easy sleeper as a baby or when she was learning to sleep in her own bed but she’s been making up for lost time. Tony would have to shove her or shout at her to get her to wake up at this point.

Tony had put her to bed tonight, had read her three stories and sang her that Billy Joel song that now made his chest uncomfortably right, and kissed her goodnight. He said he loved her 3000. If she wakes up tomorrow and this is all a dream, she at least has that.

As he shuts Morgan’s door again, Tony turns his attention to Peter’s room. Peter had stayed downstairs with Rhodey and Happy before they’d left for the night, with promises to call or visit in the morning. Frankly, Peter had been slowly fading into the background as the night had gone on and Tony wishes he’d stopped by Peter’s room before he’d gone to bed with Pepper.

He’s not used to this. Just like he’s not used to Peter’s door being ajar like it is now. Peter’s door has never, ever been ajar in its entire existence.

Tony gently pushes it open, like he’s opening something incredibly valuable, and tears up at the sight before him. He bats the tears away as he smiles fondly at what he sees. At least at first.

The room looks lived in, the bed has been used and used well. It’s rumpled and disheveled now, like Peter had tried to get to sleep and had given up. There's clothes in the open closet and on the desk chair. The corkboard is still covered in photos with what looks like some new additions. There’s a combination of teenaged boy and little girl stuff all over the floor and the actual desk holds the StarkPad and laptop along with a few tentative lego sets. It’s still tidier than Tony remembers Peter’s old room at the compound or at the penthouse being, like Peter is just now starting to consider the room his own.

The photo from the kitchen, that had started this whole thing, is perched on the bedside table. Next to it is a photo of May hugging Peter tight in front of their apartment, Peter looks far from impressed but his eyes give him away. As Tony sees the keys in Peter's hand, Tony remembers he took this picture right after Peter had passed his driving test.

He then actually reckons with the fact that Peter’s bed is empty. He looks around the room, and up on the ceiling, just to be sure but the room is definitely empty.

There’s a new normal, he reminds himself in an effort to stop the panic. In this house, when we can’t sleep, we meet in the living room.

Tony heads downstairs but he finds no trace of Peter until he sees the porch light on. He doesn’t find Peter on the porch but he can see the outline of him on the dock, back leaning against one post with his feet touching the other, nursing a cup of what is probably hot chocolate and watching the water. Maybe even waiting for the sun to rise considering dawn must be two or three hours away at this point.

For several seconds Tony can’t move. He’s definitely conjured something like this before in a moment of weakness. He turns away just long enough to swap out the used hot chocolate pod for a new one and takes another few seconds to let the relief wash over him when he sees that Peter hasn’t moved once the cup is made.

Tony grabs one of the larger duvets on his way out because yes it’s damn near August but it’s dark and Peter can’t thermoregulate to save his life . He shuts the door quietly out of respect for the two people who are sleeping but otherwise makes no attempt to hide his approach. Not that he could sneak up on Peter anymore than Peter could on him.

Tony knows all of Peter’s tells, and knows that Peter can hide them when he wants to, so it fills him with a feeling he’s not quite sure how to describe as he sees the moment Peter hears him, the second where he doubts, and then the relief on Peter’s face as he scoots over a bit so Tony can park himself across from Peter, leaning against the post that Peter is also using as footrest. Tony puts his mug at a safe distance and Peter holds his up over his head as Tony spreads the duvet over them. At least Peter is wearing a hoodie, Tony allows. The old MIT one Tony had given him eons ago after Peter had gotten caught in an unexpected rainstorm on the way to the penthouse and nearly froze to death.

Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good…

“So,” Tony starts, fingers drumming across his mug once he picks it up again. “What brings you out here when we have perfectly comfortable couches inside?”

Peter shrugs and takes a sip of his own drink. He’s not been out here long, Tony thinks with relief. He’s not making the face he makes when he has to drink hot things when they go cold. “It’s nice out here.”

“It’s a bit nicer in daylight but sunrise is definitely up there too so I’ll give you that “ He pauses, then pokes Peter’s side with his foot, unrepentant under Peter's glare. He knows that the mug is stuck to his kid’s hand. “By the way, if you’re hiding out here as an extended part of the trick you were doing after dinner, you can stop.”

“Huh?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “If you’re out here tonight instead of in the living room because you’ve got some weird idea that you need to give the three of us ‘a moment’’ or some crap, I’m gonna need you to cut it out. You’re one of us and we’re one of you. You belong inside with us and not out here.”

Peter blinks at him like he’s said something particularly weird. “Pepper said that,” Peter eventually explains. “At your…” Peter waves his hand toward the lake. Pepper hadn’t talked much about it tonight but Tony can figure out the highlights.

“My funeral,” Tony finishes, rubbing Peter’s leg on top of the duvet in what he hopes is a soothing manner “It’s okay, you can say it. And Pepper’s right, no shock there.” He waits until Peter looks at him again before continuing. “Pepper is also a lot nicer than me so please know that I will happily hang those guardianship papers in the living room with bonus flashing lights once we get back inside. I bet you breakfast that Pepper’s already got them framed.”

Peter flushes bright red and Tony can’t help but grin at him. Then, just because he can say it to Peter's face now, he goes on: “You’re family with or without that paperwork,” Tony tells him and he’s so pleased to see Peter knows it too. “You always have been. And if May's will hadn’t been around or if something had gone wrong we would have fought for you and won, both and either of us." He smiles ruefully. “There’s no way Pepper or me are letting you out of our sight again.” Tony almost makes a joke about following him around for the rest of his extremely long life but thinks better of it.

Peter shrugs it off, not knowing how to react. "Sounds like you need an update to Get Off My Lawn protocol.”

Tony chuckles. “Liked that one, huh?"

"I've never seen reporters run so fast," Peter laughs. "I thought the Iron Legion was done."

"It is. Holograms don't count."

“Right, of course they don’t.” Peter stares at him, eyes a little bit watery and looking at him like he’s waiting for him to vanish. Tony can relate. It’s going to take time, for both of them, to not second guess. “Why are you still up?”

Tony gives him the honest answer instead of the joke, even if it takes him longer to get the words out. “You aren’t the only one that’s worried about waking up and finding someone missing tomorrow.”

Peter’s eyes widen almost comically and he shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “You’re not either.” He lifts a hand and aims a webshooter at him. Of course, Tony laughs as he holds up his hands in surrender. Peter had always hated being without his webshooters. It’s amazing no one had figured him out.

Peter’s tone is still joking but his eyes are serious as he lowers his arm. “No more saving the world, Tony.”

Tony nods. He’d retired when he’d lost Peter, only coming out of it when there was a chance to bring him home. Now he was here and he was done. He can’t wait to go back to the adventures of Tony Stark, father of two and stay at home dad.

Father of two living children this time. Two children who had been through enough. “No more saving the world,” he agrees. “I’ve already saved my world, and my world even saved me back.” He flashes a knowing smile at Peter.

Peter cocks an eyebrow. “What?”

Tony cocks a matching an eyebrow before he realises that ‘what?’ was more than a fair reaction. Tony gapes at him. “Jesus, you didn’t ask? You seriously didn’t ask the whole night and were totally okay with me not explaining a damn thing?”

Peter squirms and shrugs, embarrassed. “The rest of you already seemed to know, and I already knew you were you... I didn’t want to ask in front of Morgan.” And, Tony knows Peter doesn’t say, Peter didn’t give a flying fuck how Tony had pulled it off. He was here and he was real. Everything else was window dressing.

This kid, Tony thinks. He sends up a prayer of strength to wherever May Parker is right now and straightens up. “Do you want me to tell you now? And yes, I’m fine talking about it. I promise nothing terrifying happened, except waking up to Nick Fury staring at me.” Tony waves his right arm at him and then gestures at his face. “I literally woke up like this.”

WIth Peter’s consent, he lays it out as best as he can. He starts with waking up with Fury at the foot of his bed, about seeing Peter’s joy-swinging through the city and how damn proud and happy he was to see it. Peter lights up and Tony watches a weight leave him as he does so. He glosses over Pepper and Rhodey arriving, and then breaks down the whole stone mess as best as he can. Thor, Wanda, and Strange are easy to talk about, and Peter reconfirms that he had seen them go in and out and how sad they had looked when they’d walked out. “I mean everyone who went in there looked sad to be fair.”

“You didn’t go in, right?” Tony doesn’t know why he needs to know that. Doesn’t know why he wants to bring it up but he is perhaps a bit inappropriately relieved when Peter tells him he hadn’t.

“Rhodey wanted me to,” Peter offers. “But I didn’t want...I couldn’t see you like that again. I’m sor-”

Tony hushes him and sits up a bit so he can reach over for Peter’s free hand; both of their mugs are empty and at a safe distance away from them. “Don’t apologize,” he murmurs as he runs his thumb across Peter’s now fully healed knuckles. “I’m glad I got to see you one more time before the end there, bud, but there was a reason I was off to the side and away from everyone.”

Peter nods in furious agreement, squeezing his hand a little too hard in his vehemence and Tony continues with bit more difficulty as he explains the screaming, and whatever noise/vibration combination that Peter made to actually wake everything up. Peter’s hand leaves his to cover his mouth as if to silence himself while the other probes at his ear. Whatever damage there was is long healed by now but Peter still massages his head and ear like he’ll find something to explain it.

“Ever had anything happen like that before?” Tony asks, knowing full well that Peter won’t have an explanation. “The ear bleeding thing, not the accessory to a resurrection thing.”

Peter shakes his head. “No,” he promises. “Never. I don’t think I’ve ever made a noise like that before either. I didn’t even scream when I was turning to dust and-”

I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go I don’t-

It feels like his eyes have barely shut and he swears he hadn’t made a sound but the next thing he knows he has an armful of Peter and the duvet is now around them both, wrapping them up like a burrito. Tony hugs his kid with relief and hushes Peter both to calm the kid’s apologies and to calm himself down. Peter is here, in his arms, in real life and not in his dreams.

“It’s okay.” He repeats it like a mantra. “You don’t need to be sorry. It wasn’t your fault. It’s okay. You can talk about it. I want you to talk about it. The more we talk about it, the less it will hurt us. Okay? We’re both right here and no one is going anywhere. The stones are gone. No one can do anything like what killed either of us again. It’s all okay now.”

“It’s okay,” Peter echoes into Tony’s chest. “It’s all okay.” He’s silence for a moment before something in the air changes and the next thing Tony knows Peter is staring right at him, hands on Tony’s shoulders, and looking years older and wiser. “You don’t need to be sorry either. It wasn’t your fault. The person whose fault it was is dead. You killed him.”

Tony doesn’t have the words in the face of these words that he’s needed to hear for five long years from the person he knew he needed to hear it from. Instead he brings Peter back to him, breaking a thank you into his hair. The person whose fault it was is dead. It’s not enough to kill all of the guilt, but it’s a damn good start.

“I forget sometimes.” Peter’s muffled voice says after a moment. Tony lets him up if only to hear him better. “That I was gone, I mean. I forget all the time that it’s been five years for everyone else and two seconds for me. Everyone had moved on, gotten better, but never forgot me either…”

“We never could have forgotten you if we tried,” Tony whispers with furious vehemence of his own.

“And we never would have forgotten you,” Peter agrees, almost soothing. “And, we’re a lot less okay than everyone else was when I came back but...I just...want you to know that you can talk about it. WIth me. If you want. About how weird it is. That for you this was two seconds and…”

“Two unbelievably hard months for you,” Tony finishes. Again, he finds himself wondering what he did to deserve Peter in his life and he hopes the universe never catches on. “And don’t think that Pepper and Rhodey and the others didn’t miss you with every fibre of their beings, Peter. Don’t think that I didn’t. The pain got more manageable but it didn’t just up and vanish; it never would have. You know that better than most.”

Peter nods. He sniffs and pulls Tony so they’re sitting next to each other, still wrapped up in the duvet, with their feet hanging off the dock and looking out at the water. Tony supports himself against the post while Peter leans into this shoulder. “I forget a lot,” Peter repeats. “It was two seconds for me too, right? One minute I’m being ripped apart and the next I’m getting slapped awake by Doctor Strange’s cape.”

Tony actually laughs at that. “Last one up, were you?” Typical.

“Yeah,” Peter gripes. “You’d think we’d get a break, ya know? At least you didn’t get woken up to ‘it’s been five years, now get out there and fight Thanos some more!’ and then it’s battle, and noise and chaos and aliens and holy crap there are a lot of super people and then we won but then we really, really didn’t.” Peter’s voice has been getting progressively more manic as he’s gone on. Tony wraps an arm around him and waits to see if Peter needs a full hug, then decides that screw it he needs one, and pulls him in.

“And then you were gone,” Peter continues when he finds his voice again, speaking to Tony’s chest yet again. “And then May was gone. For me I’d just seen her that morning, Tony, and I’d seen you like fifteen minutes earlier. Then you were gone too. At least I got to tell May that I loved her, but...five years is a long time and I think I’m just getting it now.”

They sit together again in this hug until Peter gets twitchy and they go back to leaning against one another. Tony rests his head on top of Peter’s as they look out at the lake. The moon is still big and glowing over the water. He can’t see it yet but he knows dawn is coming for them soon.

“I heard you.”

“What?”

“At the end, before I...left,” Tony clarifies. He doesn’t bother adding that he actually hadn’t seen him all that well. There were some details no one needed to know. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it more obvious but I heard every word. I knew we won, I knew you were back and safe, and I knew you...well, that you loved me even though you didn't say it. That was all I needed to know before I went.” He hides his face in Peter’s hair and takes a deep, fortifying breath before going on. “The last time May saw you, you were safe and she knew you loved her. That’s all she would have wanted to know, too.” Peter pushes back and searches him for a lie and Tony knows he won’t find one. It’s true. In this case, what May didn’t know at the time, didn’t hurt her, and Tony likes to think that somewhere out there she knows both those things still.

“We’re going to get through it,” Tony promises, squeezing Peter against him again for emphasis. He’d get Peter in touch with Max, the therapist who he hadn’t driven to distraction, He’d talk about whatever Peter needed him to whenever he needed to. He’d go to therapy again with him if he wanted. Hell, the whole family could go. That actually wasn’t a bad idea, he makes a note to suggest it to Pepper later.

“We have each other this time, and I promise I’ll talk to you about any moments of temporal jetlag I have.” Tony assures him as he reaches out and thumbs a tear away off Peter’s cheek. “And thank you, kid.”

“For?”

“For bringing me back, the other three warmed things up but it was all you as far as I’m concerned.” He hushes Peter, finger across his lips included, when he starts to object. “Doesn’t matter whether you knew it or not. I wouldn’t be here without you and now you’re stuck with me.”

Peter ducks his face into Tony’s chest again. Tony wraps him up in his arms again, keeping himself propped up against the post and rubbing Peter’s back. “Thanks for inventing time travel for me,” Peter returns, carefully enunciated so not a word is lost. “You’re stuck with me too.”

Tony will swear it’s sleep deprivation later but he honest to god giggles like a demented schoolkid when he feels Peter stick himself to him. “No complaints from me, Peter.”

They watch the sunrise together and it is every bit as spectacular as it always is but, Tony thinks, this might be the best one he’s ever seen. Eventually he can feel Peter jerking in and out of sleep and Tony finds himself yawning. When they pick themselves and their empty mugs up and head back to the house they find Pepper sitting on the porch with a sleeping Morgan in her arms, the two of them wrapped in their own duvet. A StarkPad and book are sitting next to her. “Go crash for a bit,” Pepper urges them. “Some of us got the best night of sleep we’ve had in weeks. I’ll handle breakfast.”Tony takes Morgan from Pepper. Pepper takes the mugs and gives Tony a kiss. "Thank you for still being here."

"You know there's nowhere else I'd rather be." The sincerity would have made a younger version of him cringe but he makes a note to say it as often as he can to anyone who will listen.

Pepper smiles at him and beckons Peter closer so she can hug him and kiss his cheek. "And thank you, Peter."

Peter immediately starts trying to shrug her off. "It really isn't worth thanking me, Pep-"

Pepper hushes him. She stares at him in a way that Tony doesn't think he's seen before until Peter nods. "Don't mention it," he finally says and Pepper seems fine with that.

When they get inside Tony beelines for the biggest couch, the one that can comfortably fit Bruce, and stretches out on it with Morgan curled up on his chest and Peter bundled into his open side. Pepper throws both duvets over them and the last thing Tony hears before falling asleep is Pepper’s voice saying “FRIDAY, save image" as he pulls his kids in closer.

It's the best sleep that Tony has ever had.

Chapter Text

Two months is not five years but it’s enough time for new normals.

In this house, when we can’t sleep, we meet in the living room. Tony totally gets the appeal: everyone is in one spot and everyone is very easy to find. It’s excellent for getting immediate, living proof that everyone is safe and sound when one wakes up in a cold sweat. Whether it’s the battle itself, Peter and Tony’s deaths, or whatever craziness everyone’s brains can think up, at least one person waking up terrified is still normal more nights than not. Pepper tells him that things have gotten better and Tony knows it will continue to get better, but it’s a good routine and no one has any desire to change it.

In this house we wash our hands before we climb on the ceiling and take a dust cloth up with us to clean up after, even though Tony does find it charming to once again see the odd bit of Dorito dust on the ceiling. In this house we leave notes about our comings and goings if there’s no one around for you to actually tell. In this house we have juice pops and ice cream sandwiches as well as snacks hidden in odd spots. Morgan squeals with delight when she finds a stash of blueberries in the hideous vase in the living room and when Tony finds a way to hide snacks on the ceiling he refuses to tell anyone how he’s managing it. “If we get ants up there, that’s on you,” Pepper warns him and Tony is totally fine with that.

In this house, no one can be too clingy. Everyone is constantly in and out of each others’ orbits. There have been days where Morgan lives on Peter’s back, or at Pepper’s heels, or glued to Tony’s side with no pattern or rhyme or reason. Peter and Tony both have a marked preference of being close to each other but Tony always makes sure he’s the one to move or pull Peter to him. The kid is so afraid of monopolizing him when he’s anything but. Pepper, Tony has noticed, never completely relaxes until they are all in the same room for a decent period of time and has mastered the art of making it happen without anyone noticing. All of these behaviours will lessen with time but no one faults hugs or touches or headcounts even if they seem to be out of nowhere. Whatever everyone needs and whatever it takes for everyone to understand that everyone is here and here to stay.

If people need time alone that is also fine but when the person comes back, even if someone comes back covered in pine sap, they’re hugged back into the fold. In this house sometimes people literally stick to people and that’s fine. Sometimes it’s even intentional.

In this house there was always love and sadness but now there’s a different kind of love and sadness. And there is also laughter. Laughter in different combinations and in different ways than there was before. In this house we understand that time and grief is different for everyone and that it’s okay to not be okay. In this house we acknowledge how lucky we are and we don’t take each other for granted. Morgan, thank god, won’t remember much about this as she gets older but the rest of them have a longer way to go. Tony and Peter being back doesn’t erase the grief and the time lost for those that were left behind but they all know they’ll make it to where they all need to be together.

In this house we ask for what we need and we accept what is given. We also accept what is given even if we needed it and didn’t ask for it.

The only thing Tony changes is that he removes some of the protocols he’d put in as insurance before he’d left for the compound. He pulls all the messages he’d left for birthdays and graduations because he fully intends to be there for every single one.

He leaves Thunderstruck Protocol in place, because the video of the one time that had been triggered was awesome and deserved to be archived. He compliments FRIDAY on her choice of highlights when he asks for any nice things he’s missed. This performance of Peter and Rhodey’s for Morgan and Pepper is his second favourite, right behind Morgan and Spider-Man’s swing through the trees.

FRIDAY also finds him the footage of Fury wandering around at his funeral like an idiot, missing both Peter and Morgan at every turn. The look on his face when Quill clues in and practically dies laughing almost makes Tony forget the context for this gathering; he nearly cries laughing himself.

One protocol he does add, just for himself and visible to no one, is Three Reasons Why Not. Tony knows himself, knows the world, and knows he’ll be tempted to put on the suit on again. He asks FRIDAY for a ‘worst hits’ selection of his time away that he’ll be required to watch before he can even start working on a suit again. She is hesitant to comply but Tony pushes and if Tony didn't know better he'd almost say she took a bit too long to pull the footage.

FRIDAY does not spare his feelings; what she puts together is a horrorshow of his family grieving. It’s Morgan having a tantrum after his funeral, throwing things and screaming for him to come home. It’s Pepper breaking down as quietly as she can in their bedroom, shoving her head under her pillow and reaching for a man who isn’t there on the other side of the bed. It’s Peter sobbing and hiccuping and struggling to breathe against his locked bedroom door as Tony’s goodbye message sits paused in the background.

He doesn’t think the impact of that clip show will ever not reduce him to sitting frozen on the ground until someone comes looking for him. Fortunately it's Pepper who finds him after he sees it and she sits there with him in supportive silence until the smoke detector goes off and they have to rescue the kitchen from Morgan and Peter again.

There’s conversations to be had with Peter about Spider-Man, too. Only when Peter’s ready to go back out there again for more than a quick swing. Tony and Pepper are both going to have meet him halfway and Tony knows there’s a spot on the Avengers reserved for him the second he wants it. Tony knows better than anyone that there’s no point in stopping him.

At the end of the day though, in this house, no one goes on suicide missions and no one, absolutely no one, is going to space ever again. Peter, he knows, is more than fine with that.

===============================

They get in touch with Doctor Strange first, who brings four of them over by portal even though Peter is very, very uneasy about it. “Every time I go through one of these it's something bad.”

Morgan makes a noise of disagreement. “You came home with me in one, Peter!” Peter admits that perhaps he’s been too quick to judge. Strange wins Peter over almost immediately with an endlessly refilling glass of water, Tony’s almost jealous in how wide Peter’s eyes get, and the Cloak hangs out around him in an oddly apologetic way until Peter pets it reassuringly. “It’s okay. I know I’m a pain to wake up.”

Tony remembers what Peter had told him about how he’d come back and snorts. The Cloak smacks him back. Before Tony can do anything about that Morgan starts tugging on it and it quickly flies off with her. Peter chases after them, which gives Tony and Pepper some time alone with Strange. Thanks are expressed and brushed off, words are had about the appropriate use of the term Portkey as Strange sets up getting to and from the penthouse from the lake house, and Strange gives assurances that neither of them had wanted to admit to needing that everything is fine and that Tony isn’t going to drop dead or vanish the minute their backs are turned. “The stones are gone,” Strange reminds them.

“Did you know?” Tony asks him. “That one in 14 million outcome? Did it cover this?”

Strange shakes his head but there’s something about it that can’t help but feel familiar. “Not quite,” is what he eventually says. “I only saw up to the moment you snapped and Thanos’ army vanished. Everything after was beyond my sight.”

“Bit of sentimentality trying to bring me back then?” Tony teases, pressing a hunch.

Strange bites back a huff. “I knew it was likely that the act would kill you but I didn’t see you actually die. It was worth a shot.” Less compassion, more arrogance.

Pepper nods, wearing a look that Tony very much remembers and hasn’t seen in this form in a very long time. “Right…”

When Pepper had reacted like this with him, before Afghanistan, usually there was more eye rolling and walking out. Tony resists the urge to roll his own. He thanks Strange anyway and asks if he can hook them up with the others so he can thank them properly too. Strange can’t find Wanda, the best he can do is assure Tony that she is alive and well but he does magic up a way to talk to Thor.

Thor is still rocking the Lebowski look but is so much happier and looks ready to burst with even more happiness when he sees him. Tony wishes he was physically there to receive the bear hug that Thor tries to give him, forgetting in his joy that Tony is only standing in front of him as a projection. He means it when he says he can’t wait to get it properly when Thor is next on Earth.

When Tony thanks him for his role in his return Thor smiles even more, if that’s possible, and simply tells him “To try was the least I could do, my friend.”

Tony tells him to visit soon. Pepper echoes it. WIth their permission Thor calls the rest of the Guardians in, Thor must be in his quarters. Rocket cackles with glee when he sees him. Quill, Drax, Groot, and Mantis are all are various degrees of stunned and happy and thrilled to see him alive. Quill congratulates him on outliving all six infinity stones while Nebula almost smiles and promises a rematch on their paper football game. “Once again, I will be victorious,” she vows.

Tony doesn’t doubt it. He points at her arm, which looks like it’s made out of some of his old armour. “Getting good use out of that?” He wonders when Rhodey had managed to salvage that for her.

Nebula nods. “It is good work and you were not using it.” Rocket laughs harder. Groot says something that makes Drax and Quill shout at him about showing Tony some dang respect. Tony waves at everyone and reminds them again to come visit when they’re next in the area. Tony, for one, is never going to space again.

Before they step through the portal back home Tony thanks Strange for his work at the funeral. “Thanks for keeping Fury away from them,” he says, pointing toward his currently airborne daughter and head-on-verge-of-exploding son, who is throwing questions at Wong with blinding speed. Wong looks very much like he wants to launch himself into space.

There’s actual warmth in Strange’s eyes for the first time and the smirk on his face is also very recognizable. “Believe me, Stark, it was my pleasure and Miss Maximoff would say the same.”

Tony thinks the two of them might just get along fine after all.

=============================

Bruce finds out by accident two days after they talk to Strange when he drops by unannounced. Tony is just in the kitchen making lunch with Peter like the new normal that it is when Pepper gasps when Bruce’s car shows up in the driveway. She’d been trying to get ahold of Bruce but hadn’t had any luck, just finding out that he was doing some debriefing for SHIELD. Even Rhodey hasn’t even managed to get hold of him or to get him pulled out.

Peter manages to stop Bruce from leaving the house, leading him over the couch and then taking full control of Operation: Lunch Time while Tony goes over and talks to him. He tells him the story and manages to not break in half when Bruce hugs him. He doesn’t have the breath to object to being hoisted off his feet, not that he thinks it would have mattered one bit. They manage to talk Bruce into staying for lunch but he heads back home before dinner.

They Skype Steve the next day, which means they end up telling Bucky and Sam first. They are happy and pleased as much as they are both kind of pissed off at him. Tony kind of understands it when he finally gets to see Steve. Seeing Captain America as an old man is eight kinds of bizarre and Tony argues until he’s blue in the face with Steve about which of them is seeing something weirder. “I think seeing your friend way more than two months older than the last time you saw them is weirder than seeing a dead man walking and talking.”

Steve laughs in happy defeat with a simple “you’re right” and that twinkle in his eye is still the same despite how long this man has lived and lived without everyone, least of all him. “It’s good to hear your voice again, Stark.”

“Likewise, Spangles.”

They promise to visit as soon as they can - which basically means as soon as they go public. Steve understands Tony’s need to keep it quiet for now and to stay close to home. “I can keep a secret.” Tony never doubted it.

Clint echoes the same sentiment when they tell him. This is after he takes a second to reset his hearing aid to make sure he’s hearing the voice on the phone correctly. His internet connection is having trouble keeping up with the video but the audio isn’t all that much better. “No one comes up here, I promise.” There is no resentment in it and Tony assures him that they’ll take him up on it. It would be good to introduce Morgan to some other kids, kids close to her age and kids who would understand what having an ex-superhero dad is like.

Peter is better but he is still processing May’s death and reconciling that with his own survival and circumstances. Tony gives him space when he needs it but it doesn’t shy away from talking about May, which makes Peter very happy. He gets FRIDAY to pull all of any video of her that he has on file and presents it to him on thumb drive and Peter can’t even speak his gratitude.

Tony doesn’t really understand why Morgan, or Pepper for that matter, hadn’t said something earlier but he thinks the healing really starts when Peter realises that Morgan knows exactly who May is and refers to her as her aunt too. “Both Pepper and I are only kids,” Tony explains. “And she’s family just as much as you are.” Or at least Tony thinks that’s what he says before him and Morgan both are squished into one very moved spiderkid’s arms.

It’s after this that Happy suggests bring Ned and MJ into the secret. “They’re know something’s up; and they’re already curious about why Peter suddenly doesn’t want to leave the property.” He also mentions that change in Peter’s overall demeanor is really quite noticeable even though Peter is trying his best to act like nothing has changed. “The kid’s brilliant at many things but he’s a shitty liar.”

Tony loops them in by walking behind Peter while he’s FaceTiming them in the living room, which Happy tells him later was not exactly what he’d been thinking of. MJ, bless her speed, slams her hand over Ned’s mouth and simply says “message received and understood” but otherwise doesn’t given any visible sign of shock aside from a slight widening of her eyes. Tony salutes her and keeps walking. Peter mutters something about dramatics and Tony yells something back in an outrageously terrible accent about lizard people and the Illuminati which apparently makes Ned fanboy all the more.

Everyone else will find out when he tells the world, which is more than happy to put off for as long as they can. He has, however, agreed to letting the world know before Peter and Morgan start school. Both Peter and Morgan have a marked preference of getting the dramatics and press storm over before they have to deal with school.

As July turns into August, Pepper gets a notice from both Peter’s and Morgan’s schools that they’re delaying the start of the school year until October in consideration of everything. The schools need a bit more time to get organized and everyone in general could use a bit of an extended summer break. Morgan is almost disappointed where Peter is ecstatic about putting off a return to the real world for a little while longer. Tony can’t say he disagrees and he knows Pepper is delighted as well.

On an evening where Peter is spending the night with MJ and Ned at Ned’s place, and texting them a little less than Tony was expecting considering how uncertain he was about leaving, Tony thinks to the comment about his birthday celebration sucking this year. Tony isn’t so sure he agrees: if you remove the context everyone’s reactions to the Great Grape flavoured crap is the gift that keeps on giving. He also realises Peter’s birthday is coming up soon and this year he can actually celebrate it with Peter instead of mourning another year Peter didn’t get to see.

“Didn’t we promise him a trip to the beach?” Pepper reminds him when he brings it up. Tony likes the idea and flags it to ask Peter when he gets back. Things have changed in more ways than one and maybe Peter has a different idea for this special birthday. When Pepper prods him again about his own missed birthday, Tony reminds her that he has everything he could want, including a few impossible things.

Then he remembers there was one thing he’d thought of before he’d left for the compound that day that hasn’t happened yet.

“Hey FRIDAY? Does Saturday look like good barbeque weather?”

===================================

The Tony Stark from fifteen odd years ago had enjoyed barbeques. He had especially enjoyed ones involving pools, half naked women, and enough alcohol to black out for the next decade. Cheeseburgers were of course a must as well.

If that Tony had wandered into this Tony, who is manning the grill and more than competently if he does say so himself, he’d probably think he’d wandered off into a different universe. Or that he’d had way too much to drink the night before. He’d definitely have something to say about the wife and kids too.

“CANNONBALL!” Morgan yells from not too far away as her and Peter go flying off a tree branch, and splash into the water. Bruce reappears from where he’d been holding the branches back and asks them how that had been. “Can we dive too?” Morgan asks.

“Well, Peter just did a flip so I don’t see why not?”

“WHAT?! PETEY DO IT AGAIN!” Tony’s ears are ringing from here so he can only imagine what Peter’s are doing.

“Ouch!” Peter grumbles, keeping the pain to himself as usual. “Super hearing, Mo!”

Morgan whisper-shouts her apologies and then hugs Peter as he climbs out of the water. She kisses him right on the nose when he gets down to her level and Peter kisses her on the nose back before doing the flip again. When Tony had asked Pepper about that and she’d simply said that was how Morgan had met him. “A big ‘Welcome Home’ and a smack on the nose.” Pepper had smiled sadly. “Both of them were in worlds they didn’t understand or recognize but they reached for each other, even though they’d just met.”

Seeing the two of them together is a sight he will never stop being thankful for. Peter is a natural big brother, Tony remembers how well he’d interact with kids as Spider-Man and May mentioning he used to be the building’s favourite babysitter before Spider-Man had happened, and Morgan has embraced the role of little sister with open arms. To be fair, for Morgan, Peter has always been her big brother.

“You’re going to burn that.”

Tony is far too used to Happy appearing out of nowhere to be startled but gives him a token twitch of his shoulders to make him feel better. “Am not.”

“You are so.” Happy leans over the grill and inspects the cramped quarters of various meat. “You’ve got chicken, hot dogs, and burgers to worry about and I think you might have taken on too much there. I don’t even see any grill.”

“That’s me, Earth’s Mightiest Overachiever.” Tony grabs a slice of pickle and flicks it at Happy, who scowls in disapproval even as he eats it. “Do you mind? I’m trying to provide for the troops here.” Troops is probably an understatement. Peter’s appetite alone was a force to be reckoned with, though Tony welcomes its return, and Bruce wasn’t a slouch either. Morgan also could put away a deceptive amount of food considering her size.

It’s then he realises that he’s never had the three of them for dinner at the same time. He may have underestimated what that meant to the grocery list. “We’re gonna need more over everything,” Tony realizes out loud as he mentally computes everyone’s appetites in relation to how much he has cooking, “Like actually everything.” He isn’t even sure he has enough damn condiments if Peter’s intake is the same as he remembers.

“On top of it, Boss,” Happy smirks knowingly. He’s about to walk away, presumably to wherever he’s stashed the supplies that he’s had the entire time, but rests a hand on his shoulder. He opens his mouth, closes it, then manages to get out “Christ, Tony…”

Tony gets it and brings Happy in for a hug, burger flipper comically being held away as he does so. He says nothing, he can’t say anything ever in response to what Happy had said on the tarmac. After the moment passes Happy nods, pounds his back affectionately, and then quickly vanishes for the food. Pepper clears her throat behind him. “This is never going to get old,” she tells him.

It will, Tony knows. It may take longer than he thinks but it will be a different kind of settling in then any of them have ever faced before. “I’m in no rush,” he grins at her at the same time as reaches for her.

Pepper lets him wrap his arm around her waist and pull her to his side. She wordlessly reaches for plates as Tony keeps working at the grill. “This was what I hoped for,” he says to her just loud enough that only she can hear. “That last night. All of this, this was my best case scenario. Or most of it.” May absence can’t be overlooked even in this happy environment.

“And how long did you let yourself think it was possible?” Pepper’s eyes are at the dock, imagining May standing out there with the others, Tony knows.

“About as long as a Three Dog Night song.”

Pepper snorts out a laugh and wraps an arm around him in kind. Tony rests his head on her shoulder and Pepper plants a kiss on the top of his head. “It’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” she promises him. “None of this and none of us.”

Bruce has Morgan on his shoulders, both of them are laughing and smiling, as Morgan tries to reach Peter, who is hanging upside down from a tree branch and waving a juice pop at her. Rhodey is filming the proceedings and Happy is muttering something about appetites being spoiled as he hauls bags full of food toward Tony and the grill.

He squeezes Pepper and steals a kiss from her. “I never expected to live to see anything like this,” he admits and they both know he doesn’t just mean the obvious.

Pepper doesn’t miss a beat. “But you have. You have this and you have us. Don’t...don’t waste it.” She almost doesn’t say that last bit but Tony gives her a squeeze to tell her it’s okay and that he definitely doesn’t plan on wasting anything.

He shouts that round one of food is ready and is immediately beset by a crowd of hungry people looking for grub that could rival a mob of paparazzi. Happy shoves him off to eat his own food while he takes care of the next round. “We’ll spell off,” Happy promises while Tony is shoved into a seat. Then he finds himself holding a can of Great Grape flavoured Infinite Awareness that he definitely didn’t remember seeing out as an option at the drink table.

“Okay,” he groans. “Why is this crap in my hand?”

Rhodey smirks across from him. “Remember how we said you owed us a better birthday celebration?”

Tony sighs. He really should have seen this coming. “This is what you had in mind? Watching me chug one of these?”

Then he realises all of them have a can too, all except Morgan who is brandishing a little grape juice box instead. “To Daddy!” she shouts.

“To Daddy,” Pepper agrees. “Peter, don’t finish yours.” Peter mumbles something incoherent in protest as everyone laughs and raises their cans in a toast.

The drink still tastes like garbage. He coughs and sputters and tries to keep his curses PG. Even in spite of the fact that this drink is quite frankly the worst drink in creation, it still tastes like victory in this moment. He makes a note to remember that when he can’t sleep tonight.

At least he’ll have plenty of company, he notes as Peter definitely takes another sip of his can. “Kid, I swear, I can hear your vibrate from here. Cut it out.” For some reason Peter finds that statement the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Rhodey pries the drink out of his hand and tells him he’s had enough. Peter doesn’t fight him on it.

Food is had, laughs are had, Happy almost burns the second round of food, and Rhodey and Morgan engage in a staring contest of epic proportions while Peter and Pepper talk quietly a bit away from the group. Tony ends up losing ten bucks to Bruce when Rhodey crumples under his niece’s gaze. “Sour patch, I expected so much better from you. You’ve had decades to hone that glare!”

Tony loses another twenty bucks when he loses his own contest against him. Bruce and Rhodey both have no right to be so smug.

On his way out of the house after finding the cash to pay everyone out he’s distracted by the calendar in Pepper’s office. It’s something he’s seen every day in many forms since he’d first met Pepper, but it’s rare he gives it more than a passing glance unless Pepper is dragging him in front of it and pointing at every meeting or event he has to go to in his assigned vivid blue. The calendar is set up on his phone anyway so he doesn’t need to check the master arrivals and departures board (as he calls it) and, frankly, it’s not like it’s been super active these past few years.

It’s not so quiet now, there’s gold everywhere (Pepper’s colour), noting due dates and video conferences for both Stark Industries and the move, but the streak of red indicating Peter’s upcoming birthday brings a wave of emotion he didn’t think Pepper’s system ever could create. Peter’s birthday has not been a ‘live’ event in the calendar in five years. Usually it is coloured with both Tony and Pepper’s colours as observance. This year it is a celebration and it belongs to Peter again.

He doesn’t need to call up the colour code legend to see the list of active colours but seeing Red - Peter listed alongside himself, Pepper, and Morgan. Red, Blue, Gold, and Violet.

“Welcome back to the system, Pete,” he whispers as he steps away. He moves behind Pepper’s desk to grab a tissue when he notices another change. This time it’s the photos Pepper keeps on her desk.

The last time he’d been in here there had been a photo of him, Pepper and Morgan sitting on the dock on one side of Pepper’s monitor while on the other was a group photo of May, Peter, Tony, and Pepper at the Thai place May had always loved for May’s birthday. Tony had usually made a concentrated effort to not look at that photo on the rare occasions he’d had to grab something off her desk. He’s long been banned from working at her computer.

The photo at the Thai place still there but there are two photos on the other side instead of one. The first one is of Morgan and Peter together. Morgan is wearing her purple goggles and helmet and is grinning, all teeth and unbridled joy, at the camera. She’s on Peter’s back and Peter himself is looking back at her with tousled hair and a quiet, proud smile. The photo is cropped close but Tony knows that the red shirt visible at Peter’s neck is really the Spider-Man suit and Tony can do the math from there. He’s going to need a copy of that.

The second photo takes his breath away. He remembers noticing distantly that someone had been taking photos but he hadn’t thought anyone had got that close or in front of them like that. It’s of that first group hug in the hallway when he’d come home. Morgan and Peter’s faces aren’t visible since they’re both wrapped up in Tony’s arms. He sees Morgan’s arms wrapped around him and remembers the little fingernail marks when he’d changed his shirt before bed. He sees the tension in Peter’s arms and thinks of the bruises on his back that have only just started to fade. No one would have succeeded to get them away if someone had been heartless enough to try.

Tony and Pepper’s faces are visible but both of their eyes are closed. Their faces both, however, show nothing but relief and love and a sense of we’re all finally home.

He runs his fingers across the photo and looks over at the other photo. He looks at May, who has one arm wrapped around Peter while her other arm is reaching up above Tony’s head. Tony doesn’t know how he’d not noticed before but May is giving him bunny ears here too. Like nephew, like aunt.

She should have been here today too.

“Tony!” Rhodey, trying to sound as normal. “Did you get lost in your piles of money?”

Tony shakes himself back to the moment. “No, just paying you in pennies. Give me a sec!” He should know better. Everyone was still working on the whole Tony-permanence thing.

He looks at May again, making a silent promise with her, and goes back out.

==========================

The party takes a little bit to wind down. Bruce and Rhodey had left about half an hour ago while Happy had taken them up on the offer to spend the night. They’d all pitched in to clean up and everyone was back in the house now except him. He’d told Happy he’d follow up in a minute and instead headed down to the dock for an overdue chat.

He’d talked to Peter in his room all the time. For May, like Pepper, he’d come out to the dock more often than not.

“Hi May,” he starts once he’s seated on the dock. “It’s been awhile.”

Talking to May had always been harder than talking to Peter, even though he knew that May wouldn’t have hated him forever if she’d lived. Even so, the guilt and the responsibility would always be there. Even as Peter lived and breathed beside him.

“I wish you were here,” he starts. “I thought you would be if we ever found a way to undo it all...and I’m sorry about that. You should be here with him too.”

No argument to that. No counterpoint. He knows there wouldn’t have been even if she had been sitting right next to him. You know as well as I do that life isn’t fair. Tell me something I don’t know, Stark.

“I’ll take care of him,” he promises. “I’ll do everything and anything to make sure he’s safe and happy. I’ll die again if I have to.”

He swears he can hear her laugh. See her knowing smile. I said tell me something I don’t know. Thank you anyway, though.

Tony shuts his eyes. Breathes in. Breathes out. He hears the water beneath him, the trees swaying in the breeze, the tell tale footsteps behind him. “Hi, Peter.”

“Did you have to add that last bit?”

“Dramatic emphasis,” he explains. “Not my first plan or my two hundreth plan, I promise.”

Accepting that, Peter settles down beside him heavily. He says nothing as he scoots closer to Tony. Tony takes the hint and wraps an arm around him. “How are we doing today?” he asks even though he’s already done this check a few times today.

“Pretty good,” he answers, which has been the answer every other time he’s asked today. “I’ve had worse days and I know there’s better ones ahead.”

Tony squeezes. “Damn right,” he promises. There’s bad days ahead too, they both know that well enough, but Tony’s mission in life will be to make sure the good days blast the bad ones to smithereens.

Peter squeezes back. “I just feel guilty, you know? I’ve been so lucky, so lucky, and I still wish she was here.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Tony assures him. “I wish she was here too.” He thinks of Natasha, too, and hopes that somewhere she knows how everything ended and that her own sacrifice hadn’t been for nothing.

He, like Peter, feels guilty for wanting more in spite of how lucky he has been. He allows himself to conjure up May all the same. Of May and Peter’s reunion, of May and Morgan meeting for the first time. Of May and Pepper swapping toddler stories and Peter screaming for them all to stop embarrassing him.

”She should be here,” Tony repeats. “May should be here and I’m so sorry she’s not.”

Peter is silent, just like May would be if positions were reversed. “But I have you guys,” he finally says. “And she thought you were pretty okay.”

”She did?”

”Of course she did,” Peter assures him earnestly.

”Pretty sure she wanted to kill me once the spider was out of the bag, kiddo.”

Peter chuckles. “She did,” he acknowledges. “I don’t think she knew whether you or me had to go first.” Peter sighs, “But she really did love you both. I mean...she wouldn’t have done what she did in her will if she didn’t.”

Tony nods. “And we wouldn’t have signed it if we didn’t feel we couldn’t live up to her crazy high standards. We can’t replace her, we never will and never want to, but you have us in whatever way you want or need us. Always.” Nothing new there but Peter hugs him in appreciation anyway.

It’s all quiet for a moment until Happy’s shouts at them from the porch. “Tony? Peter? Come inside!”

Tony groans and picks himself up. “Come on,” he takes Peter’s hand and helps him up. “I hope it’s a board game or a puzzle and not Frozen 3 for the two billion-"

Peter’s hand is over Tony’s mouth with inhuman speed. “Shhh! She might hear you!” They both laugh once Peter takes his hand away.

Today was a good day and that’s all there is to it. There would be hard days, sad days, and bad days ahead but today had been a good one. And, at the end of the day, any day that ended with his family safe and warm and at home really was a good day anyway.

May we have many more like this, Tony hopes. It’s been awhile for that. The weird but welcome feeling beats in his chest in time with his and Peter’s footsteps as he wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulders and they guide each other home.