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Chapter Text

This AU is based on the movie Tremors and is a gift for the lovely Blondsak!  If you haven't watched Tremors, you'll probably be able to understand the story regardless, but I think you should watch it because it's a pretty great monster movie.  Enjoy!

Tony glanced over at the boy beside him, lips twitching a little as he watched the kid hum to the radio, foot tapping to the music while he typed on his phone.  Probably a message to MJ, although Tony didn’t ask.  He’d already teased the boy plenty about getting a girlfriend in Europe.  Besides, he didn’t want to think about what had happened to Peter in Europe.  Didn’t want to think about getting the phone call from a crying Peter asking for help or flying out to find the boy covered in gashes and bruises with at least four broken ribs going his best to hold himself together. 

He didn’t want to think about holding the shaking boy in his arms, lips pressed to his hair in the middle of a field of  beautiful flowers.  He didn’t want to remember, and he didn’t think Peter did either.  Judging by the way the kid was barely sleeping, and the fact that May had finally come to Tony, asking if he could help, Tony would say the kid was suffering from some serious PTSD.  But he knew that Peter wasn’t ready to talk about it. 

So he’d suggested a road trip.  To California. 

After getting the call from May, he’d come up with the plan and had immediately double checked with Pepper that it would be okay to take a road trip, then had set off for the Parker’s apartment.  It had been a surprise,  so when he’d knocked on their front door, knowing that Peter had been the only one home.  The boy had answered the door, hair unkempt and eyes wide beige he’d smiled a little, the bags under his eyes nearly purple. 

“Hey...hey Mr. Stark.  What are you doing here?”  As if automatically, the boy’s eyes had flashed down to Tony’s side, obviously searching for Morgan..  

“What, can’t a guy just drop in to see his favorite Spider-Kid?”

Peter had stared at him suspiciously, narrowing his eyes and glancing down the hall as if waiting for some kind of crazy surprise, but Tony had just laughed, moving forward and wrapping Peter in his arms.  Immediately, the kid had relaxed, letting out a breath and putting his arms around Tony’s shoulders.  “How are you feeling, kiddo?”

“Uh...fine.  I’m good.”  Peter had shrugged, but Tony hadn’t released the hug for another moment, giving Peter another squeeze before pulling away, hands on his shoulders as he’d given him a critical once over.  

“You sleep at all last night?”  Peter had flushed a little and given another shrug.  Giving up on that, Tony had just patted his shoulder.  “You want to invite me in?”

“Oh, of course!”  The kid had blinked a few times as if trying to wake himself up, and Tony had felt a stab of empathy.  He remembered plenty of days like that...days with a vague pain in his head and a feeling of exhaustion so thick it had been like moving through a fog.  Lately, he hadn’t been having that problem.  Despite missing Cap and the occasional nightmares about finding his old friend laying on the battlefield, gauntlet in hand, covered in burns with eyes that slowly lost focus, he had started to feel like he could finally relax, if just a little.  Thanos, the threat that had been looming over him for years, was gone. He had both of his kids in his life, both healthy and relatively safe.  He had Pepper and his lakehouse, and his penthouse in the city where they stayed most of the time now that he had a reason to be in the city.  Sam and Bucky were taking care of most of the superhero stuff, so his Iron Man armor mostly stayed in storage in his lab.

He’d never thought he’d get to retire, but, he had thought as he’d stepped into the Parker’s half-unpacked apartment, it suited him.  

Peter had offered him a drink that he’d declined, and then the two had found themselves on the sofa, a new Netflix show playing unnoticed in the background.  The fact that Peter didn’t even bother to pause it clued Tony in a little on what the kid had been doing.  If he hadn’t been sleeping, he’d probably been trying to.  

“So, senior year starts in a few weeks.  How are you feeling?”  Tony had asked, grabbing the remote and pausing the show for him.  Peter hadn’t even seemed to notice.

“Fine.  Uh...just kind of tired, but…”  he’d trailed off with a shrug.

“Yeah?  I’m sorry your vacation was ruined.”

“It wasn’t...I mean, it’s fine.”  

Despite his protests to the contrary, Tony knew that Peter had been at least a little disappointed.  He’d wanted just a few weeks where he could be Peter Parker instead of Spider-Man, and it had all been ruined by Nick Fury.  “Well, I’m still pissed on your behalf.”  That had coaxed a smile from the boy, and Tony had patted him on the shoulder, no hesitation in the gesture.  “Which is kind of why I’m here.”

“So you didn’t just drop in to see your favorite Spider-Kid after all?”  

Tony had chuckled.  “I did.  But I may have had another motive.  I was wondering how you’d feel about taking a trip with me?”  He’d gone on when the boy had cocked his head, interest obviously piqued.  “I was thinking we could take a little cross-country road trip.  Nice hotels, stop and see the sights along the way...I’ve got a vacation house in California right on the beach.  We can spend some time there, play around in the lab, then fly back.  What do you think?”

“But...what about Morgan?  And Pepper?”

“Morguna’s still a little young for a road trip.  She and Pepper are going to spend some time together doing ‘mommy daughter’ things.”  He held up his fingers in air quotes and Peter grinned.  “Maybe they’ll fly out and meet us in California if you want?  We’ll have a little family vacation.”

“I mean...I don’t want to take up all your free time…”

“Pete, I’m retired.  My life is nothing but free time.”  

And so it had been decided.  The next day, they’d set off, both with two suitcases full of clothes and power cords and e-readers.  After a long goodbye with May and Peter and Morgan, they’d started their drive, making their way across the country and stopping along the way whenever they found something interesting to do.  At night, they slept in the nicest hotels Tony could find, the two of them sharing suites and eating fancy room service food.  They went to museums and local attractions and parks, always with ball caps pulled over their faces and sunglasses firmly in place.

There was no talk about superheroes or Thanos or Beck...at least not during the days.  In the evenings, usually after nightmares, Tony had finally gotten Peter to talk.  The boy had told him about the fight with Beck.  About the things Mysterio had made him see.  About his fears, late at night, that all of this was an illusion.  That Mysterio had trapped him in that nightmare place and that he was still in Europe, still on a class trip.  Still seeing things that weren’t real.  And Tony had held him, a hand pressed against the side of his head as Peter had listened to his heartbeat, assuring him over and over that this was real.  That it was all real.  That Peter would be okay.

“How’s she doing?”  Tony asked as they drove down the highway in Nevada, finally giving in to his curiosity. 

“How’s who doing?”  Peter asked, a tiny smile turning the corner of his mouth.  He looked so much better than he had two weeks ago, the bags under his eyes practically gone, his body obviously relaxed as he smiled over at Tony.  

“I figure you’re either talking to your aunt or your girlfriend so…”  Tony trailed off, shrugging as he glanced down at the gas gauge.  They were dangerously close to empty, as it seemed they were basically in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, so they’d have to stop at the next gas station they found.  

“I’m talking to Ned, actually, and Ned is fine,” Peter told him with a smirk.  Reaching out without taking his eyes off the road, Tony ruffled the kid’s hair.  Peter laughed, batting him away without much force.  “He was asking when we’re coming back.  Apparently he got the LEGO Millennium Falcon and he wants to build it before school starts.”

“Tell him not to worry.  We’ll probably be home in another week or so.”  Tony gave a careless shrug, and Peter started typing again.  He was glad that Peter had enjoyed their road trip...was glad to have got to spend so much time with the kid before he went back to school.  Because, more likely than not, this would be the last time they got to spend time like this in a while, with his senior year and colleges and internships coming up.  Then again, Tony thought, maybe he’d accept a Stark Industries internship...a real one, over the summer after high school.  It would certainly look great on his resume to have spent so long working directly with Tony Stark himself.  Deciding to bring that up later, he sat up a little when he spotted a sign for the next town that included a single gas station.  “There we go,” Tony muttered, grinning at the boy who glanced over at him, finally putting his phone down.  “We’ll get gas in…”  He squinted at the sign as they passed, “Perfection, see if the town has anything to offer, and then we’ll be on our way.  What do you think?”

“Sounds good, Mr. Stark.”  

“You getting hungry yet?”  They’d had breakfast less than two hours ago, but Tony was well aware of how often Peter needed to eat, even when he wasn’t swinging around the city and stopping crime.

“I could eat.”  

Tony snorted.  “You could always eat.  Alright, we’ll see if there’s a restaurant in Perfection.” 

As it turned out, getting into Perfection was a little more difficult than Tony had expected, as they first had to follow a pass through what amounted to a mountain.  He had to slow down for a group of three men with jackhammers who seemed to be attempting some sort of road work, making his way gingerly around them.  One of them lifted a hand, and Tony gave a quick wave, driving slowly past.  Peter flinched at the noise, but soon enough they were through and were headed down what seemed to be the main road through fields of grass and emptiness.  As they drove, Tony taking in the emptiness, Peter stared down at his phone with a frown.  “Weird...I lost service.”

“I guess there are still dead spots in this country after all,” Tony told him with a shrug, pulling his own phone out and checking to see if he had any bars.  Sure enough, his phone informed him that he had no reception.  “We’ll get out of here soon so you can keep talking to Ed.”

Peter rolled his eyes, a reluctant grin on his face, and Tony chuckled, turning his attention back to the road as they drove past fields broken up only by huge towers with telephone wires making harsh lines against the bright blue sky.  He was relaxed too, he thought as he stole glances at the boy beside him.  Relaxed and happy, although he missed Morgan and Pepper and would be happy to see them in California.  He’d planned on flying May out too, as a surprise for Peter, and he wondered if he should get Ned and Peter’s scary girlfriend in on it too.  A big vacation at his beach house.  It sounded nice.  The perfect end to a perfect vacation.

And it had been such a good vacation.  

“Tony?”  

Tony turned abruptly at the boy’s voice, eyes widening in surprise.  Getting the kid to call him by his first name on this trip had been something of a personal goal of his.  And it wasn’t that Peter didn’t want to...he knew the kid was just used to the more formal ‘Mr. Stark.’  He’d gotten better over the last week, especially in public so they wouldn’t be hounded by people wanting to ask Iron Man a thousand questions, but it wasn’t so much his name coming from Peter’s mouth as his tone that surprised him.  He hadn’t heard Peter sound like that since...since Titan?  “What?” Tony asked, the word coming out more sharply than he’d meant it to.  Peter turned to him, eyes wide, then pointed.

“Look.”

Although his eyesight wasn’t as good as Peter’s, Tony slowed down and followed Peter’s line of sight, heart stuttering a little when he spotted it.  A body...no, he reminded himself, he didn’t know that.  A man.  A man up in one of those huge telephone towers.  He hit the brakes, pulling off to the side of the road, and before he could speak, Peter was scrambling out of the car.  Swearing under his breath, Tony climbed out as well.  “Wait!  Peter!”

The kid stumbled to a halt, staring back at him incredulously as Tony hurried to his side.  “What if he’s stuck?”

“Kid, we don’t know what’s going on here.  Why don’t we go to the town…”

“That could be miles away!  If I help him down, we can take him to town...see if he needs help!”

Tony stared at him, then up at the man, finally giving a harsh sigh.  “Be careful,” he finally warned.  Peter scoffed a little.

“You know I’ve climbed the Empire State Building?”

“Yeah, and I asked you to stop reminding me.”  He gently cuffed the kid on the side of the head. “Go on.  I’ll see if I can get a signal.”  Peter nodded, then took off toward the telephone tower.  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Tony stared at it, then held it up in the air as if that would get him any more bars.  No luck...not even a single bar.  Opening his texts he tried to send one to Pepper as an experiment, but the little red exclamation point told him that it hadn’t gone through, no matter how many times he tried.  Huffing out a breath, Tony put a hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun and squinted up at Peter.  

“Um...sir!”  Peter called to the man up in the tower as he climbed.  The guy didn’t move, and Tony felt a twinge of something in his chest.  Nerves?  Anxiety?  Why hadn’t they waited until the next city to get gas?  But surely a dangerous person wouldn’t be sitting up in a telephone tower waiting for some random kid to climb up and offer help.  That wasn’t exactly a common villain strategy.  “Sir, are you okay?”

“Pete...be careful!”  Tony called again, unable to help himself as the nerves turned into full blown dread.  He wanted to tell Peter to get back down...he wanted to turn around and take his chances on the expressway.  If they ran out of gas, they would just walk.  At least they’d had cell service outside of this valley.  Stomach clenching, he turned around, scanning the field surrounding them.  Nothing but dirt with the occasional patch of grass and weeds.  Maybe a lizard.  But it was so quiet out there...deathly quiet.

“Sir?  My name’s Peter.  Do you need help…”  Peter’s voice cut out as soon as he reached the man, the boy’s body going just as still as the man’s, and Tony knew.  

The man was dead.

Closing his eyes and pinching his nose, Tony rested a hand on a rung of the metal tower.  One vacation.  That’s all he’d wanted.  One vacation where his kid could just be a kid.  

“Tony?”

“Come down, Pete,”  He called, squinting up at him once more, trying to shield his eyes against the sun.

“He’s...Mr. Stark, he’s…”

“I know, buddy.”

“I need to…”

“Come on down.”  Tony tried to make his voice gentle instead of afraid.  There was nothing to be afraid of.  Besides, Peter was the one with the weird danger sense, not him.

“I need to get him down,” Peter argued in a voice that wobbled.

Tony sighed, ready to give in.  “Okay.  If you can…”

“Um...he has a gun.”

Tony frowned at that, head snapping up as he wished he’d brought his suit...that either of them had.  “What?”

“It’s...I think it’s a shotgun.”

Images of Peter accidentally shooting a hole in himself...of falling limp from the telephone tower mixed with images of him falling from that spaceship mingled in his mind and Tony couldn’t take it.  “Okay, look...we’ll go get help.  We’ll get someone from town to help get him down.  Leave him up there for now.”  When Peter hesitated, Tony made his voice harder.  More stern.  He couldn’t risk his kid.  Not again.  “Peter, come down.”  

After a moment, the boy did, climbing backwards until Tony could reach out, resting a hand on his leg, then his back, then wrapping his arms around him once he was on solid ground once more.  The boy shook a little, and Tony rubbed his back.  “He...his eyes were open a little and…”

“Hey, hey....you’re okay.  It’s okay, Pete.  We’re going to get someone to get him down.”

“Why would he have a gun?  It was like...he wasn’t hurt or anything.  He just...climbed up there with a gun and...and died?”

Tony glanced back up at the body in the telephone tower and shook his head.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know buddy.  Let’s get to town, get some gas and food, and get out of here.  Okay?”  He ruffled Peter’s hair.  “Maybe they know him in town.  Maybe...I don’t know, kiddo.  Maybe he had Alzheimer's or something.  Either way, you need food, the car needs gas, and I could use a drink.”  The last part was said almost as a joke, and Peter gave a shaky smile.

“You don’t drink anymore.”

“Water, Pete.  A drink of water.  What did you think I meant?”  The kid let out a breath and tried to hold the smile, but his eyes shot back up to the man up in the tower.  Tony wrapped an arm around him, steering him away from the tower and back toward the car.  “Come on, buddy.  You look like you could use a drink too.”  

Thank you for reading!!

Chapter Text

Thank you guys so much for all of the support and the comments!  I hope you enjoy chapter 2!

Mr. Stark nearly floored it as they sped toward the city, and Peter kept an eye on the rearview and side mirrors, although he wasn’t really sure what he was looking for.  The anxiety that had been with him from the moment that battle at the Compound had been over until they’d started their road trip was back, but he had no idea why.  Not really.  

A man had climbed up into an old telephone tower with a gun...and he’d died there.  Of what?  Dehydration?  Heat stroke?  Peter had been able to smell the faintest hint of alcohol on him...so had he been drunk?  Would a drunk man climb up a tower and stay there like that for long enough to die of thirst?  Or hunger?  Heat exhaustion?  It just...it didn’t make any sense.

Peter hadn’t seen a dead body since the battle.  Since the twisted, smoking remains of aliens that had all turned to dust and floated away once Captain America had snapped his fingers...and then he’d seen the body of Steve Rogers.  Mr. Stark had knelt at his side, a hand clasping the one not in the gauntlet, and Rhdoey had come up behind Peter, pulling him away, but not before Peter had caught a glimpse of charred skin and blood.  “Hey, kiddo.  Come here,” Rhodey had urged, turning him around and resting a hand on the side of his face.  Peter had met Rhodey several times between starting a real internship with Mr. Stark and leaving Earth for the first time.  The man had been there for the occasional movie night or dinner after a long afternoon spent in the lab.  Still, it had surprised Peter when he had rested that hand on his face, the action almost as startling as the fact that his eyes refused to focus.

“Look at me,” Rhodey had urged, staring into his eyes.  “How does your head feel?”

“Uh…”  Adrenaline had still been coursing through him, but he’d been able to feel the slightest ache.  “Hurts a little.”

“You might have a concussion.”  

When Peter had started to look at Steve Rogers once more, and when, just past him, Clint Barton had dropped to one knee, followed by King T’Challa and Sam and Bucky, Rhodey had just pulled Peter closer, keeping his back to Steve.  “Hey, look at me, Pete.  Eyes on me.”   Feeling the world swim around him, Peter had struggled to do so, and Rhdoey had tightened his grip on his shoulder. 

“Can...can I sit for...for just a minute?” he’d asked then, voice slurring a little, and the man had given a quick nod.

“Yeah.  Here.”  Rhodey had knelt beside him, helping him when his knees had threatened to buckle.  Pepper Potts had rushed past in her blue armor, kneeling beside Tony and gripping his hand, and Peter had let his head drop onto Rhodey’s shoulder, eyes refusing to stay open.  “We’ll get you to a doctor in just a minute...get you looked at.”

“M’okay.”  

That exchange had apparently caught Tony’s attention, because the next thing he knew, Tony had been there, gripping his shoulder.  “Pete?  Hey, what’s wrong?  Rhodey?”

“I think it’s just a concussion,” Rhodey had assured him, and Tony had wrapped an arm around him, easing him upright.  

“Okay.  Let’s get you out of here.”

“M’sorry...Captain America...I know he was...he was your friend.”

Tony had hesitated, then given a quick nod.  “Yeah...he was,” the man had whispered, the words seeming to catch in his throat.  But he’d been steady as he’d pulled Peter to his feet.  

Now Peter stole glances at the man, foot tapping on the floorboard as he tried to forget the old man’s waxy face and half-open, unseeing eyes.  The limp grasp on his gun.  The smell coming off of him...alcohol and something else.  Something rotten.  Tony seemed just as tense as Peter felt, fingers gripping the wheel as he sped down the dirt road.  Peter hadn’t even known there were dirt roads anymore.  Bouncing when they hit a pothole, Peter shifted in his seat, hands clasped tightly in his lap.  That seemed to catch Tony’s attention, and he turned to Peter with a gentle expression.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Peter assured him with a nod, trying to shake off thoughts of both that battle and the dead man.  Still, the anxiety hummed in the background like a refrigerator running in the next room over.  Tony stared at him for a moment, not seeming convinced, so Peter went on.  “I just...I’ll be glad to get out of here.”

Tony nodded.  “Me too, Pete.”

The town they finally came upon was like no town Peter had ever seen in real life.  There was one main street, with a few houses and trailers, with the main structure being what looked like an old-timey general store with ‘Chang’s Market’ painted on the front.  Peter checked his phone again, hoping against hope that the presence of other people might mean cell service, but no luck.  Sighing, he shoved it back into his pocket, turning to glance at Tony who seemed to be steeling himself.  Then, with quick nod to Peter, Tony climbed out of the car.  Peter followed suit, unable to help but notice that the little girl who had been jumping on a pogo stick in the parking lot had paused, one foot resting on the ground, a pair of earbuds dangling from her neck as she stared at them warily.

Peter smiled at her, lifting a hand in a quick wave, and the girl looked wildly around as if looking for help.  So he dropped the hand, hurrying to join Tony who had stepped onto the wood plank sidewalk, dust clinging to his red-bottomed tennis shoes.  Across the street, a boy around Peter’s age, maybe a little older, bounced a basketball against a metal building aimlessly, but was watching them with what Peter felt was skepticism.  

Tony opened the screen door, waiting for Peter to catch up before they both stepped into the general store with tall, wooden shelves stocked with groceries that all seemed to be covered in a thin layer of dust.  Tony placed his hand on Peter’s back, urging him gently toward the front counter where a man and a woman, both dressed mostly in khaki, were talking to an older man who must have worked there. 

“These are hollow points but they’re not hydro-shock hollow points,” the man explained.  The shopkeeper threw up his hands.

“I thought bullets were bullets.”

Beside Peter, Tony snorted a little as the man signed, shaking his head and opening his mouth to explain before catching sight of Peter and Tony.  Suddenly, there seemed to be a hush that had fallen over the store.  

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked, glancing at the couple.

“Yeah, I was wondering if I could use your phone.  We need to call the police.”

“What do you need the police for?” the man with the bullets wanted to know.  Tony turned toward him, removing his sunglasses.

“My son and I were driving on the main road when we found a body on one of the telephone towers.  We need to call for an ambulance.”  The word ‘son’ didn’t quite take Peter by surprise.  They’d used it as a cover more than once, hoping not to attract attention.  But the ease with which it fell off of Tony’s tongue always made his heart jolt a little.

“Now hold on a minute...a body?” the woman demanded, stepping up to stand beside her husband.  

“Who was it?” the shopkeeper wanted to know.

“Older man.  Beard.  He had a shotgun.”

The man and the woman looked at one another while the shopkeeper’s eyes went wide.  “That sounds like Edgar.”

“You think he fell off the wagon again?” the man in the khaki and the hat asked, voice skeptical.

“What was wrong with him?” the shopkeeper demanded.

Peter could feel Tony getting impatient, so he decided to speak up.  “It didn’t look like anything was wrong.  He wasn’t hurt or anything...I climbed up there and he was just…”  Peter swallowed and Tony dropped a hand onto his shoulder.  “He was just dead.  Like he’d died of thirst or heat stroke or something,” he finished softly.  The other adults in the room were quiet for a moment, and then the woman nodded.  

“We can call doc for you.  They’re doing road work up on the pass, so it might be a while for an ambulance to show up.  Doc...Jim’s his name, can get him down.  He and his wife are building  a house not too far from here.  Walter, let me use your phone?  I don’t think Jim has his CB plugged in yet.”

“CB?” Peter couldn’t help asking.

“CB radio,” the man clarified as the woman stepped behind the counter and headed for the corded phone hanging on the wall.  “We use them to communicate around here.  No cell reception in the valley.  I’m Burt,” the man introduced, holding his hand out to Tony who shook it.  “That’s my wife, Heather.”

“Tony.  This is Peter.”

Peter shook the man’s hand next with a quick nod and smile and behind the counter, Heather hung up the phone.  “Alright.  Jim’s on his way over.  You think you could show him where you found the body.”

“Of course.  Is there a restaurant in this town?”

“‘Friaid not,” Heather told them, shaking her head.  “Just Chang’s.”

Tony nodded.  “Right...Pete, I’m going to go fill up the car.”  He dug in his pocket, pulling out his wallet and handing over a $20.  “Get us some snacks for the road?  We’ll stop at the next city for lunch, okay?”

Peter nodded, past all insecurities about taking Tonys’ money.  At least the man had stopped offering him $100 bills and had downsized to $20s.  So as Tony headed for the door, Peter moved over toward the shelves, well aware of the eyes following him.  His stomach was growling, though, and he knew he needed to eat, so he perused the shelves until he found the boxes of protein bars.  Grabbing two, and then picking up a couple of candy cars and a case of soda in actual glass bottles, he carried everything to the counter where the couple still stood.  

“So...where are you and your dad headed?” Heather wondered, crossing her arms.

“Uh...California.  We’re on a road trip.”

“Yeah?  Where you from?”

“New York.”  Peter watched as the man scanned the items, waiting for the inevitable exclamation...that that man had been Tony Stark!  Iron Man.  Instead, they just kept watching him.  

“What brings you to our little town?” Burt asked, sounding almost suspicious.

“We needed gas.”

“You going to drive back to New York from California?”  Heather asked.  She seemed a little less suspicious of his presence that her husband, but both seemed somewhat wary.  Peter handed over the $20 when prompted and shook his head.  

“No, uh...his wife and daughter are going to meet us there, and then we’re going to fly back.”

“His wife and daughter?  I thought he was your father,” Burt pointed out, crossing his arms.

“He’s my step-dad,” Peter told them, hoping he didn’t look frazzled.  The words had just slipped out...he hadn't been paying enough attention.  Something was going on in this valley...he just knew it.  Even in the general store, his senses were going off.   But, he reminded himself, they'd be leaving soon.

As soon as he pocketed the change, he started to open one of the sodas, but the storekeeper waved a hand.  

“There are cold ones in the cooler.  One dollar.”

“Oh...thanks.”  Peter grinned, pulling out an extra dollar and handing it over, then moving over to the cooler to pull a soda out.  Grabbing the bags from the floor, he started to head out when Tony came through the front door.  

“Pete?  The doctor and I are going to drive down to the tower.”

“Oh, okay, I’m…”

Tony held up a hand, shaking his head.  “I want you to stay here.”

Peter’s mouth dropped open, the only thing stopping him from arguing the eyes on them.  “I…”

Tony gave him a look.  One that Peter was very familiar with.  One that said, this is not an argument and if it were, I would win.  So stand down.  Peter sighed, rolling his eyes as a tiny act of rebellion, and Tony grinned, grabbing the bag from his hand and rooting around for a protein bar that he opened and took a bite of.

“Eat something to hold you until lunch.  We’ll go as soon as I’m done.  Okay?”

“Okay,” he muttered, and Tony ruffled his hair.  

“I’ll let you pick the restaurant.  Be good.  Stay out of trouble.”  

Peter grumbled under his breath as Tony left, climbing into the car and pulling out of the parking lot, but he couldn’t help but smile as he tried to decide where they would have lunch.  Maybe IHop.  Then he could eat bottomless pancakes.

Taking a drink of his soda and pulling out a protein bar, Peter took a seat on one of the stools at the far end of the counter, trying to be as invisible as possible.  Once he was done with the protein bar, he went for a candy bar, then another.  The couple standing at the other side of the counter seemed at a loss, and Peter wanted to assure them that he was seventeen and hadn’t been left in their care.  Wanted to tell them that he had super powers and had literally helped save the universe.  But that might blow their cover, so he decided to just stay quiet and hope this didn’t take too long.

Tony returned after about half an hour, during which Burt had continued to argue with Chang about bullets and Heather had occasionally asked him a question about New York and their road trip.  Going straight to Peter’s side, Tony patted his back.  “You ready to go, kiddo?”

“Yeah.”  Peter didn’t ask any questions yet, just waved to Burt and Heather and Mr. Chang, hurrying out behind Tony who climbed back into the car.  “What happened?” he finally asked, blurting the words.  “To the man?  What did the doctor say?”  he clarified, as if Tony wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

Tony sighed as he pulled backwards out of the parking lot, past the boy still throwing a basketball against the wall of a shed.  “Dehydration.”

“He died of thirst?”

“Yes.”  

“But...why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would he just climb up there and...and die?”

“I don’t know, Pete.”  Tony turned to look at him, glancing back at the straight dirt road every so often.  “I don’t want you to dwell on this, kiddo.  Sometimes...sometimes weird things happen.  Sometimes...hell, Pete, I don’t know.  But look...there’s nothing we could have done.  You know that, right?”

Peter nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Alright, buddy.  What did you decide for lunch?”

They had just decided on trying to find an IHop, with Tony giving in and telling Peter he could have pancakes for breakfast if they had something relatively healthy for dinner.  Like sandwiches.  “Or something not covered in sugar.”

“But maple syrup is healthy sugar!”

“There’s no such thing as healthy sugar, Peter.”

“But it’s like...natural!  And pancakes are basically bread, which is a grain, and…” 

Tony snorted, lifting a hand and waving to the men doing roadwork, and Peter checked his phone, glad to be almost out of the valley.  

That’s when Peter got the feeling again.  Stomach clenching, he stopped arguing the merits of pancakes, turning to stare out the window, super senses working in his favor as he squinted across the seemingly dead landscape to the tiny shed in the distance.  There was a pen a few hundred feet from the house was a pen...a pen filled with...with something.  

Something was wrong.  

“Mr. Stark...Tony?”

“Yeah?”  

“Stop.”

Tony hit the breaks, turning to look at him and shaking his head.  “Pete...what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know...but...but something’s wrong.”  He reached for the door handle but Tony grabbed his arm.

“Nuh uh.  This time you wait for me.”

They approached the pen together, Peter wincing at the smell as soon as they got closer.  The mailbox by the street had the name “Fred” in worn letters.  “Hello?” Tony called, keeping a hand on Peter’s arm until Peter spotted what was in the pen and froze.  

“Tony...what...what is that?”

Tony walked over to the pen first and Peter followed right behind, peering over his shoulder and then stopping in his tracks when they close enough to see what was in the pen.

They had been sheep, Peter thought.  Now they were little more than bits of bloody wool, corpses strung throughout the pen as thought they’d been half eaten.  Peter shuddered, taking an involuntary step back as Tony swore.  “What...Tony, what happened to them?” he whispered, his voice sounding too loud in the silence.  Even the wind was still.

Tony shook his head.  “I...I don’t know...but we need to get back in the car.  Let’s go...we’ll call the police on the way.  Come on, kiddo,” Tony urged, tugging Peter back towards the car.  But Peter was frozen, because there was a terrible smell and a few feet away on the ground was a hat.  “Peter?”

“Hold on.”

“Kid, we need to…”

Peter ignored him, pulling away and hurrying over to the hat, then, with a pounding heart, he reached down and picked it up.

He didn’t recognize the scream that tore from his throat as he jumped back, the hat falling from his limp hand as he stared into the milky white eyes of the old man’s severed head.

Chapter Text

Thank you so much to everyone who has read and reviewed!  I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

The sound of Peter's scream cut right through Tony, and he grabbed the boy's arms, pulling him in close and holding him up. Peter's chest heaved as he gasped for air, shaking his head and backing away from the old man's head. Tony could barely get himself to look at the severed head half-buried in the crater in the ground. The eyes were wide in horror, the mouth open and revealing a handful of yellowing teeth. "What...what the...what the fuck?" Peter whispered, shaking in Tony's arms. The word would have surprised Tony more if the boy's voice hadn't been broken.

It reminded Tony of the battlefield. Of seeing Peter in Rhodey's arms, the two of them sitting as his friend had held the boy up. Tony had turned around at the boy's soft, shaking voice assuring Rhodey that he was okay only to find that the boy was clearly not...with dried blood dripping down his nose and from a cut that Tony hadn't been able to see in his hair. He'd hurried over, glancing at Rhodey as Peter had apologized in a voice that slurred.

Tony had gotten him through a portal, he and Rhodey supporting him on either side as his head had bobbed a little, telling Tony that the kid wasn't fully with it. But he had been alive. He'd been there, physically there. Not a figment of his imagination...not a dream he could wake up from. This was Peter. Peter was alive and Peter was...well, he was going to be okay.

He had fought the urge to press his hands to Peter's face and rest his forehead on the boy's...to bask in the fact that the boy was alive. The kid hadn't been looking too good, so he had helped get Peter over to the bed in the sanctum, giving Friday the order to disengage the Iron Spider suit. The nanites had retreated, leaving Peter in only his original suit sans mask. Honestly, Tony had no idea where the kid's mask was. All though it, Peter had just stared straight ahead, eyes dazed, mouth slightly open.

Now Peter looked the same, eyes dazed, but filled with a horror that Tony hadn't seen on his face before. Not even when fighting Thanos. "Okay...hey...look at me, buddy. Come one," Tony urged, gently turning the boy around and tapping his cheek. "You're okay. Look at me."

"He…Tony, what…"

"I don't know. I don't know, kiddo. But...look, we need to get out of here."

"Something...something killed him."

"I know. And as soon as we get out of this valley we'll call the police and…"

"No! We can't leave those people! We have to go back and warn them!"

Peter's voice verged on hysterical and Tony gripped his shoulders, then pulled the boy close, pressing his hand to the back of Peter's head and trying not to look at the old man's head on the ground. They needed to get away from this place. Out of this valley. There was...a serial killer? No, Tony thought, because what about the other man? Edgar? What kind of serial killer wasn't afraid of a shotgun? So...a monster? An alien? His thoughts raced as he squeezed the shaking boy in his arm, holding him until the kid took a deep breath, obviously pulling himself together.

"Tony...we can't leave."

He wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that just this once, they were going to save themselves first. That just this once, they were going to put themselves first and then call for someone else to save the people that needed it. Just once. Peter was still a kid for just a little longer and Tony had so wanted to give him one experience. One trip where he wasn't expected to be a hero.

But that wasn't Peter. Peter would never leave these people. And, if he really thought about it, neither could he.

So he took a deep breath and nodded. "I know."

For a moment, Peter looked around, eyes not straying down to the ground where the severed head of an old man that neither of them knew still sat. Then he turned back to Tony. "Do...do we...I mean, should we…" He jerked his chin in the direction of the man's head. "Bury...bury him? Or…" Lip trembling, Peter took a long shuddering breath and Tony squeezed his arms.

"Let's get back in the car. Once all this is over, we'll take care of him, okay?"

"Okay," Peter whispered, eyes darting back once more. "Yeah...yeah that sounds...good."

Tony nodded, patting his arm, then leading him carefully over to the car, throwing a glance to the shed that must have been the man's home, green roof covered in rocks as though they'd fallen from the sky. There was a tiny screen porch on the front with a door that stood open, and Tony wondered if the man had a wife or a family. Was there anyone else inside that tiny cabin with a ramshackle lean-to attached to the side? Any more severed heads? Tony shuddered at the thought, ushering Peter into the car. The kid was on high alert, and Tony could practically see how the hairs on his arms stood on end.

"Do you hear anything?"

Peter shook his head, looking around once more, eyes raking over the remains of the sheep once more. "No...I don't think there's anyone nearby."

"Alright. Let's get back to town."

Tony practically floored it, only slowly down when they ran into two of the road workers, both of whom had puffy blue noise-protecting headphones. They looked up as Tony hit the breaks, the one with the bushy mustache turning the jackhammer off. Rolling down his window, Tony spoke as urgently as he could, hoping for once to be recognized. "Listen to me, you need to get out of here. Right now. There's a killer on the loose. Something killed an old man a few miles from here, and another man in town. Get out and call the police if you can. We're going to warn the others."

The men just stared at him, then past him at Peter, and Tony couldn't wait around. Couldn't just wait for these just to believe him. So he rolled his window up and hit the gas again. Never before had he wished for their suits so badly. But he'd wanted a vacation! Not just for him...mostly for Peter. "Get out of here!" he called one more time, then sped away, heading for the main road.

They only made it a few minutes before Peter sat bolt upright, spinning around in his seat and narrowing his eyes, hair still standing on end.

"What's up, Pete?"

"Did you hear…" He narrowed his eyes, then closed them, and Tony let off the gas as if that would help his senses. But Peter just shook his head, turning back around in his seat and dropping his head against the headrest.

"Do we need to go back?"

"I...I don't know. I thought I heard something. Or...or felt something." He shook his head and rubbed his hands up and down his arms. "I think my senses are acting up."

After what had happened in Europe, his senses had been acting up a lot, not that Tony could blame them. Peter had told him about Mysterio and what the man had made him see. Something like that was bound to mess with your head. So Tony just reached out and tousled his hair, leaving his hand there for a moment as he navigated pot holes and sped back to the small town, hoping that one of them had a radio that could get out of the valley. If not, they would just have to have everyone follow them out in their cars. No way they could leave those people.

Tony pulled into the parking spot right in front of Chang's Market and jumped out after Peter, the two of them hurrying past the boy with the basketball toward the front door. Inside, a man they hadn't seen before was talking to Walter, the shopkeeper.

"I'm not accusing anybody. I'm just saying, some of my cattle are missing."

The two looked up as soon as Tony and Peter stepped into the building, pausing their conversation. "We need to use your phone," Tony told him, trying to inject some of that Iron Man authority into his voice. The boy with the basketball and another man followed them in, looking as suspicious as the couple from the first time they'd walked into the market, so Tony went on, heading toward the ancient payphone hanging on the wall that Heather had used earlier to call the doctor. Feeling as though he were speaking to an audience, Tony rested a hand on Peter's shoulder to pull him close. "We were on our way to the highway when we saw a pen full of dead sheep...and the man that must have lived there."

"Old Fred?" the man who had been talking to Walter asked, eyes wide.

"Old Fred is dead?" the boy with the basketball cried, and Tony gave a sharp nod, remembering the name on the mailbox.

"Just like Edgar!" Walter cried.

"Yes. I think someone is killing people in your valley and I need to use your phone." Without further ado, he pulled a quarter out of his pocket and pushed it into the slot.

"Wait...what happened to Edgar?" the man with the cattle asked as Tony listened to silence on the other end of the line.

Glancing over at Peter and shaking his head, Tony hung up the phone, turning to Walter. "The phone's dead."

"I didn't do it!" Walter insisted, holding up his hands.

"Do you have another phone I can use?"

"No...just the CB."

"Will the CB get out of the valley?"

Everyone stared at him like he was stupid and Tony took a deep breath, closing his eyes and trying to keep it together.

"Nestor, what's happening?" the man with the cattle cried, and the newcomer shook his head.

"Somebody killed Old Fred."

"What's going on!" Walter demanded as Tony headed for his car, tugging Peter along. They had to get help. The police or something. And then they needed to get out...maybe come back once they had their suits. Never again was Tony going on a vacation without his suit...no matter how often Pepper called him paranoid.

"Hey, hold on a second!" the man, Nestor, called, and Tony whirled around.

"Something in your valley is killing people," Tony told him softly, leaning in. "There is a murderer on the loose. First Edgar, now Fred. People are dying and we can't contact the police because none of you have a cell phone, because apparently you people are stuck in the nineties!" Peter gripped his arm and Tony swallowed, trying to get ahold of himself. But the man, Nestor, just narrowed his eyes.

"How do you know you're not the one killing people? You found both bodies, right?"

"You think I'm capable of chasing a man with a shotgun up a telephone tower?" Tony demanded.

"Well for all I know…"

"Hey, hey!" The other man stepped in, holding up his hands. "Okay...why don't we calm down, huh?" he asked, giving Nestor a pointed look, then held a hand out to Tony. "Sorry about him. We're all a little on edge right now. I'm Miguel."

Tony took a deep breath and nodded, reaching out his own hand. "Tony. This is Peter."

"Hi," Peter murmured, reaching out and shaking the man's hand.

"This is Nestor, and that's Melvin." He jerked his chin toward the kid with the basketball.

"We were here earlier...we needed to get gas and decided to try your town. That's when we found Edgar. We met Burt and Heather and they called your doctor for us. We were on our way back to the highway when we saw the sheep. And Fred."

"The closest town is Bigsby," Nestor said, voice a lot softer than before as he stepped forward, almost apologetic. "If you can get there...you can call for help."

Tony nodded, gesturing for Peter to get in the car. "Of course. We'll come back with help."

They were passing the sign that once more told them they were leaving Perfection, approaching the mountain pass, when Peter finally spoke up. "Do you think we're cursed or something?"

Tony snorted, unable to help the chuckle, even though Peter was completely serious and Tony half believed it himself. Still, no reason for Peter to know that. "No, bud. I don't think we're cursed."

"It's just...after everything with...with Thanos and Beck and now…"

"Hey, there's nothing to stop us now," Tony murmured, lowering his voice and trying to sound comforting as he turned toward Peter. "We'll get out of this valley, call the police, and then…"

"Tony, look out!" Peter cried suddenly, jerking back in his seat, and Tony turned and slammed on the breaks, heart stuttering as he nearly ran into the pile of boulders in the road.

"The hell!" he cried, tires squealing as they slid to a stop.

For a moment, both he and Peter stared at the road that abruptly ended in a landslide of rocks and rubble, the silence uncanny.

"We are cursed."

Tony sighed, shaking his head and opening his door, Peter following suit, the only sound the beeping of the car letting them know the door was open. "Hello!" He called, watching as Peter wandered over toward the rocks.

"What were they doing?" the kid asked, nudging one of the rocks twice the size of Morgan with his toe.

"No idea, kiddo."

On either side of them were the mountains made of jutting rocks, and as far as Tony could tell, this road was the only way out of the valley...unless they drove to the other side? His GPS hadn't shown any other roads, as far as he remembered, and he couldn't connect to it now. All around them was silence that sat thickly on the plains of weeds and brown grass and mountains made of rocks that jutted out like crooked teeth.

"Hello!" Peter called, louder than Tony as he jogged forward a few feet, starting to climb up on one of the rocks. "Hello! Road work guys! We need to get through!"

Tony started to lift his voice to join Peter's when he froze, heart leaping into his throat. On the ground not ten feet away from Peter's feet was a construction hat lying on its side, the inside filled with blood and pieces of red matter that Tony didn't want to identify.

"Peter!" he hissed, taking a step back. "Pete!"

The kid turned, frowning, then followed Tony's pointing finger. He seemed to go a shade paler, stumbling back and swallowing hard. "Get in the car," Tony ordered, and Peter took one more look around as if this strange killer would just appear out of nowhere. "Come on...let's go."

"But...what if…"

Tony knew the what ifs. What if the construction men were around somewhere? What if they were hurt? What if the killer was still around? But none of those what ifs matter because Tony didn't have his suit and therefore couldn't protect his kid. "In the car!" he hissed, and Peter nodded, half jogging back to car and climbing in, Tony slamming his own door and putting the car in reverse, back bumper bumping into the sheer dirt and rock wall and making both of them jump. Swearing under his breath, he put the car in drive and hit the gas only for the car to move forward a few inches and then jerk to another stop.

Peter turned to him, the confusion plain on his face, but he didn't seem to be feeling any of the anxiety Tony was...maybe because he was enhanced. Because he thought he could take on anyone, even without his suit. But Peter's wasn't bulletproof...and what if it was an alien or...or something Peter couldn't handle? What if Tony lost him again?

"Are...are you hung up?"

"Fuck!" Tony cried, hitting the gas hard and listening to the tires spin uselessly on the ground. He didn't want to get back out of the car...didn't want to risk Peter getting out of the car. "Shit! Damn...fuck!"

Peter went quiet beside him as he put the car in reverse, and then in drive again, putting the pedal to the floor. Glancing out the driver's side window, he could see no reason for the car to be stuck...there was nothing in front of the wheel! He released the gas then hit it again.

"Do you want me to get out and…"

"No! You stay! Fucking mother...asshole!" Tony snapped, lifting his foot and then slamming it down on the gas pedal, the car's engine revving as the car struggled to inch forward.

"I think you're hung up," Peter told him again, voice tentative as Tony worked the gas, pumping it up and down until finally, finally the car lurched forward and Tony could breathe again.

For a moment, there was silence between them, Peter's wide, almost frightened eyes on him, and Tony stared straight ahead, willing his heart rate to slow back down to something approaching normal. "If…" Peter swallowed. "If someone had attacked us...or if we'd been stuck, I would have…"

"Don't." Tony didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to know that Peter would have protected him because it was a terrifying thought and because he couldn't bear to lose his kid. Not again. Not ever.

"Tony," Peter whispered, but he just shook his head.

"I can't."

"Mr. Stark."

That name got a reaction...a full body flinch. The last time Peter had sounded like that...sad and lost...Tony remembered the first nightmare. The boy had been staying overnight at the lake house. He hadn't woken up screaming...Friday had been the one to alert To y to the boy's distress, and he'd raced into his room only to find him curled up in a ball, sobbing into his pillow, fingers ripping into the sheets. And then he'd looked up, face streaked with tears.

"Mr. Stark?" Like he hadn't been sure. Like there had been any doubt.

Tony sighed, pulling himself from the past and reaching out to pat Peter on the shoulder, still not daring to look away from the road as they passed the telephone tower where Edgar had died. "I can't lose you, Pete. I can't. Not...not again. Not to some...some thing killing people in the middle of Nowhere, Nevada. It's.."

"You're not going to lose me," Peter murmured, voice soft and soothing as though he were speaking to Morgan. "I promise."

"You can't make promises like that, Pete. You know that. There's just...we have no idea what's causing this...what's killing these people. But whatever it is, it's not afraid of a shotgun."

Peter was silent for a moment as Tony kept a hand on his shoulder, needing to feel the boy's presence. Needing to ground himself...to know that Peter was alive. He had been the same in the week after the boy had returned from Europe. And, he thought, he'd probably be worse after they got out of this.

If they ever got out of this.

Thanks for reading 

Chapter Text

I want to apologize for the long wait, and say a huge thank you to everyone who has been reading and reviewing!!

Peter shot a glance over at Mr. Stark, heel bouncing as they drove back through the valley.  The man was gripping the steering wheel and Peter felt a twinge of guilt, even though he knew that there was nothing he could have done differently...he couldn’t have gotten out of the car and risked freaking Mr. Stark out just because they were hung up.  He couldn’t have known that Beck would ruin his vacation.  

He couldn’t have stopped himself from falling apart on Titan.  Couldn’t have held Mr. Stark any tighter while his body had dissolved into dust and couldn't have come back any sooner.  So why did he feel guilty?  Why did he feel like it was his fault that Mr. Stark was so afraid of losing him?  He swallowed hard, leaning his head against the window and closing his eyes, so absolutely sick of seeing nothing but miles and miles of nothing but dirt and rocks.  It wasn’t his fault.  It wasn’t Mr. Stark’s either.  

A hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing gently, a thumb rubbing back and forth over his arm.  A silent apology.  But Peter felt like he needed to give a vocal one.  

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, not knowing what he was apologizing for as he continued to stare out at the expanse of nothing outside their window.  Something was out there.  Not someone, Peter thought.  Something.  A person couldn’t have chased that man up a telephone tower, not when he had a shotgun.  They couldn’t have mutilated all of those sheep, surely...so what were they dealing with?  An enhanced person?  An alien?  A monster?

The word sounded childish even in his own mind, but he kept going back to it.  A monster.  There was a monster in this valley.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Pete,” Mr. Stark murmured, squeezing his shoulder.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to...I just can’t lose you, kiddo.  I can’t. I can’t risk you, not when I...not when I don’t have my suit or...or anything.  I can’t protect you, Pete.”

“I don’t need you to protect me.  I can protect you,” Peter insisted, finally turning to look at him, eyes wide, his voice as earnest as he could make it.  He knew Mr. Stark wouldn’t believe him, but he needed to say it.  Just as he’d thought, the man shook his head.

“Pete…”

“I can!  I’m a superhero too!  I’m enhanced!  I can...I can protect you for once.”  He finished the sentence in a whisper, dropping his eyes, and Tony pulled off on the side of the road, hitting the breaks and putting the car in park.  Then he reached out, pressing his hand to Peter’s cheek...Peter let him, not moving.  Barely breathing.  Something was wrong...something buzzing in the back of his brain.  

“Peter…”  The man shook his head, eyes soft.  “For five years I had to live without you.  You know?  Five years.  I had to live with the fact that I never told the boy who was like my son that I loved him.  Just like my own dad.  I had to live with the fact that I kept you at arms length and wouldn’t let myself just...tell you.  Tell you how much I cared about you.  How much you meant to me.  Then, after I finally got you back, Beck used you to get his revenge on me.  I couldn’t protect you.  Over and over, I couldn’t protect you.  I can’t live through that again.  Okay?  I just can’t.  I can’t take it.”

Peter swallowed hard.  The worst part was, he got it.  Because he didn’t think he could lose Mr. Stark either.  “So…”  He shrugged a little, trying to smile.  “You protect me and I’ll protect you.”

Mr. Stark snorted, patting his cheek with a soft smile, then lowering his hand.  “Sounds like a plan, Spiderling.”  

The buzzing in the back of Peter’s head was getting louder, but when he glanced out the window, there was nothing.  The world outside of the car was just as empty as before.  So why did it feel like something was coming?  Something bad.  Something dangerous.  But Tony was putting the car back in drive, the air cleared between them, and as they pulled back onto the road, the feeling started to fade, so he left it alone.  He didn’t want this conversation to be over.  Not yet.  

“Whatever it is, we can take it,” Peter told him, making himself sound as sure as he could.  “We’re Iron Man and Spider-Man!  We helped save the universe.  We can handle...this.”

“Without our suits?  And without any kind of communication with the outside world?”  Mr. Stark asked, lifting an eyebrow, but his shoulders had lost some of that tension, which was a win in Peter’s book.  

“If you’re nothing without your suit…”  Peter reminded him, trailing off with a faint smile, and the man beside him groaned, rubbing his forehead with a hand and closing his eyes for a moment.

“Please, please don’t remind me of that day.”

When they pulled up to Chang’s Market, Burt and Heather were the first out of the general store. Mr. Stark climbed out first, followed by Peter, and Mr. Stark held an arm out, obviously wanting to keep him close.  Peter could understand that.  He understood it better than anyone.  So he moved to the man’s side as they faced Burt and Heather, followed by a woman they hadn’t seen before and the little girl that Peter had seen on a pogo stick, along with Miguel and the other man whose name Peter couldn’t remember.  It seemed like the whole town had been gathered there.  Then again, there wasn’t much else to do in this town as far as he could tell.

“I thought you two would be in Bixby by now,” Burt frowned in confusion, but it was the little girl Peter was focused on as she stepped off to the side, stared down at their car, and gasped before Mr. Stark could answer. 

“Mom!”

“Oh my god,” the woman who must have been her mom murmured, her skirt whipping around her ankles as she wrapped an arm around her daughter.  Peter turned too, Mr. Stark moving with him, as they all looked down at the back tire of their car.  Burt hurried past them, kneeling down and bracing himself with one hand while Peter felt frozen to the spot, Mr. Stark’s arm tightening around him.  

The thing hanging from their rear axle and dragging behind their back passenger’s side tire was like nothing Peter had ever seen before.  It was brown...his brain was able to take in that much.  Long and thin with a ragged end that must have been torn off, and he heard someone behind him ask if it was an eel...or maybe a snake.  

“I thought eels lived in the water…”  one of the men murmured.

“They do,” Mr. Stark said simply, moving closer to get a better look.  Peter moved as well, staying behind his mentor, but the thing didn’t move.  The other boy, the one around Peter’s age, stepped forward and wrinkled his nose.

“Where’d you get it?”  he asked Mr. Stark who gave him a look.

“I didn’t know we had it.”

Burt stepped away, then produced a shovel, sticking it down behind the tire and working at the thing.  The mouth, Peter realized, had been clasping the axel.  It had been trying to keep them from leaving.  “Don’t touch!” The shopkeeper started, but Burt waved a hand, dragging it into the light with the shovel.

“Relax.  It’s already dead.”

The mouth, Peter realized, was like the mouth of an eel, and on its head were two...antenna?  They pointed back toward its body.  But there were no eyes.  

“It...it must have grabbed us,” Peter told Mr. Stark, and everyone else went silent.  “That’s why we were hung up.”

“This thing stalled out your car?” Burt asked, incredulous, then shook his head.  “That has to be one strong son of a bitch,” he whispered.

“Stinks too,” Heather murmured.  

Walter Chang stepped forward then, turning to Tony.  “I’ll give you five dollars for it.”

Mr. Stark’s jaw literally dropped and Peter felt a hysterical giggle rise up from his stomach and nearly escape his mouth at the older man’s expression.

“Five...five dollars?” The man asked, incredulous as he looked from the thing on the ground to Mr. Chang.  

“Fine, ten!”  When Mr. Stark just stared at him, he went on.  “Fifteen!”  

Mr. Stark looked past him to Peter, eyes wide, seemingly at a loss for words, and Peter swallowed his laughter.  “Okay, we’ll do fifteen.”  Peter told him, making his voice sound authoritative.  

Mr. Chang counted out the bills, pulling them out of an ancient, cracked leather wallet, and handed them to Peter who raised his eyebrows, splaying out the three five dollar bills for Mr. Stark to see.  The man barked out a laugh, rolling his eyes.  “What could he possibly want with that?”  

“Is it some kind of mutation?” Burt asked, still examining the thing on the ground.  That caught Mr. Stark’s attention and Peter shoved the money into his pocket, growing solemn once more.  It didn’t matter what Mr. Chang wanted with it, not to him.  All he wanted to do was get out of this place...stop whatever was hurting people and leave.  Then Burt spoke again, voice even softer  “Whatever it is...just one of these couldn’t have eaten Old Fred and his whole flock of sheep.

“So…”  Peter started, glancing at Mr. Stark, all humor forgotten as he remembered Old Fred...the man’s milky white eyes.  “You think there are more of them out there?”

Everyone was silent, and Peter felt a chill go up his spine.  If there were more...where were they coming from?  He hadn’t seen a living one...but how had just one kept their car from moving?  It didn’t even seem to have eyes!  How had it found them?  And how were they supposed to get out of this valley?

Not an hour later, Peter sat at one of the tables inside Chang’s Market, a box of protein bars, a turkey sandwich, and a bowl of soup that Mr. Chang had let them heat up in his microwave sat before him.  Mr. Stark had a nearly identical meal, the food all bought from the general store.  The sandwich ingredients were all in a bag sitting beside them, and Peter sipped at his soda as he watched the little girl, whose name was Mindy, flinch away from the monster as Mr. Chang took her picture.  Behind her was a sign on yellow paper, “Photo’s- You + The Snake Monster.  Only $3.00.”  

So that’s what Mr. Chang had wanted with the thing.

“Honey, don’t look so afraid.  It’s not going to hurt you, I promise,” the little girl’s mom assured her, and Peter went back to his lunch.  Across from him, Mr. Stark was intent on his own food, his expression grim, and Peter drummed his fingers on the table, nervous energy rising up in him like a volcano.  They had to do something.  Soon.  His senses were shooting him warning after warning...they were in danger.  Not just yet...but soon.  And he could tell that Mr. Stark was thinking the same thing.

“Eat your food,” the man ordered softly, trying for a smile as he gave Peter’s toe a gentle kick.  “You’ve barely eaten all day.”

All day, Peter thought, taking a bite of his sandwich.  They’d only arrived in this town that morning.  It hadn’t even been a full day since he’d first seen Edgar in that telephone tower.  Then Old Fred.  Then the man whose name he had never learned...the construction worker.  How many more people were going to die?

“Look,” Burt started, obviously talking to the other residents of the town, but Peter turned around anyway.  Mr. Stark, on the other hand, got up, walking over to the wall by the coffee machine, sandwich in hand, as he studied a map.  “We arm ourselves.  We set perimeters.  We stand guard,” he said, putting his own cup of coffee down and nodding to himself.  “And if any of those snake things show up here, we make them extinct.”

“Alright!” Melvin, the teenager, cried, and Peter looked back down at his food, stomach turning.  But he had to eat, he reminded himself, taking a bite of the lukewarm soup.  

“C’mon Burt.  Get serious,” Nestor, who had been the one to almost accuse Mr. Stark of something to do with Edgar, chided Burt.

“Yeah, you make it sound like a war,” Miguel put in.

“What do you people got against being prepared?”  Burt cried.  

Trying to tune them out, Peter rubbed a hand over his forehead.  What if being prepared wasn’t enough?  He got it...really he did.  And it seemed like Burt was a survivalist.  The kind of man that was ready for anything. But hadn’t they been prepared against Thanos?  On Titan?  And still...he shook his head as they talked about the CB radio, finishing up his sandwich.  He didn’t want to think about Thanos.  He didn’t want to think about the being’s hand around his torso, pinning him to the ground...how he’d been sure, in that moment, that the man or monster or being was about to choke the life out of him.  Or then, after, watching him rip the nanotech spear off of Mr. Stark’s suit and thrust in into his side.  

He didn’t want to think about how sure he’d been that Mr. Stark was about to die.  How he’d stood there, mouth open, heart clenched, his entire body rooted to the spot.  On instinct, he glanced at the man by the wall, just to make sure he was there.  Just to make sure this wasn’t all a dream.  That Steve Rogers had really been the one to sacrifice himself.  That the man who was the closest thing to a father Peter had was still with him.

“Okay,” Heather said, her voice reasonable.  “The phone’s out.  The road’s out.  We’re on our own.”

“You two are just loving it, aren’t you,” the little girl’s mother said with a smirk, and Peter glanced at Mr. Stark again.  Things were getting heated.  If they started fighting each other, they wouldn’t stand a chance!  But...who was Peter to tell them to stop?  That was a job for the real leader.  Iron Man!

“Now come on Nancy!” Heather cried.  “Now let’s don’t get personal about this thing.  We’ve got to do something!”

“Hell yes!” Burt seconded.  “We are completely isolated!  We’ve got the cliffs to the north, mountains to the east and the west.  That’s why Heather and me settled here in the first place.  Geographic isolation.”

“Well there’s got to be some  way we can get help,” Nancy insisted.  

“For God’s sake.  This isn’t the moon,” Nestor muttered.

“Well what are you going to do?” Burt demanded, and Peter finished his soup, watching Mindy as she watched Mr. Chang and Melvin take more pictures with the snake monster.  “Walk the 38 miles to Bixby?”

That, Peter thought, was plausible.  He could do that.  But Mr. Stark...no, he realized.  Peter would have to go alone.  Mr. Stark wouldn’t be able to keep up with him.  No way.  And the odds of Mr. Stark letting him go alone were just about zero.

“Hey,” Miguel put in just as the camera flashed.  “There’s Walter’s saddle horses.”

“You’re welcome to them,” Mr. Chang told them just as the camera flashed.  Peter wondered if it still had film.  Did they know about digital cameras here?

“Somebody could ride to Bixby,” Miguel suggested.  

Before there was any debate, Tony turned away from the maps on the wall, setting the cup of coffee he’d gotten himself at some point down on the counter.  “We’ll go.”  

Peter looked up, eyes widening in surprise.  We?  As in...him?  He’d never even gotten close enough to pet a horse, much less ride one.  But Mr. Stark seemed sure.

“Aren’t you from New York?” Burt asked, an air of disbelief in his voice.  

“I grew up riding horses.  And we’re your best bet.”

“Why is that?” Nestor asked with a snort.  

“Because I’m Tony Stark,” Mr. Stark told him shortly.  

All around them were blank faces.  

“Tony Stark,” he repeated, a little louder.  

“Iron Man,” Peter put in, incredulous.  Surely they knew who Iron Man was!

“Oh, weren’t you, like, one of the Avengers or something?” Melvin asked.

For the second time in the last two hours, Mr. Stark’s jaw dropped.  “Yeah,” he finally told them.  “I was.”

“We don’t really get out of the valley much,” Nancy put in, almost apologetically.  “Which one were you again?”

“Iron Man!” Peter repeated, louder.  “He saved the universe!  Brought back the people from the blip or whatever!”

“Oh, I think I saw something about that on the news,” Heather whispered to Burt who nodded sagely.  

“I thought it was the commies, myself.”

“The commies?” Peter mouthed, turning to Mr. Stark who was staring into the middle distance, seemingly attempting to come to terms with this new development.  

“Okay,” Mr. Stark finally said, putting a hand down on the bar where he’d been standing.  “Peter and I are going to ride to Bixby.  We’ll get help.  Some reinforcements.  We can call for the Avengers...they’ll give us a hand.  At least then I’ll have my suit.”

“Wait,” Nestor asked, pointing a finger.  “I remember!  You were the one that was trapped in the ice!”

Chapter Text

Tony stared apprehensively at the horse, but forced himself to step forward, placing a hand on its neck. It would be fine. Sure, it had been at least thirty years since he'd ridden a horse, but he'd also known that neither him nor Peter could stand to stay in that general store and let other people risk their lives to ride to Bixby. So it would be them. Of course. And if he'd thought that Peter would listen to him, it would have only been him. The last thing he wanted was to put the kid in even more danger. But Peter would have followed him on foot, he was sure. Better the kid had an actual horse.

Peter stared at the horse with more apprehension than Tony, glancing over at him every few seconds. Of course, Tony was sure that Peter had never been on a horse. But that was something they were going to have to deal with. Laving the others and letting Walter saddle the horses, he moved over to Peter's side and put a hand on his shoulder. "How are you holding up, bud?" he murmured, squeezing gently and doing his best not to think about the snake monster...thing that had been attached to their car.

But his brain wouldn't let it go. How could one of those things have stalled out their car? How strong was it? What had it been attached to? How many of them were there? Why hadn't they seen it?

Peter turned to him, looking very serious. "Mr. Stark...I don't think these people have left this valley since the nineties...I mean...they don't know who you are, and Burt thinks the blip was caused by 'the commies,'" the boy told him, the air quotes obvious in his voice as he shook his head. "Who are the commies?"

Tony snorted, willing to play along if it was going to distract the boy. "They do still have pay phones."

"We need to help them get out of here. Maybe they're trapped! Like in that one movie with Sean Bean? And his dead daughter and all of the monsters? Wait...were they actually trapped there? I was only eight when I watched it and Ned and I weren't supposed to be watching it but we did anyway and I hid under the blanket for most of it...anyway, do you think they're trapped here?"

Chuckling, Tony ruffled his hair. "Maybe. One crisis at a time, huh?" He waited a moment, but Peter was silent, eyes downcast. "So...when was the last time you were on a horse?"

"Um...when I was four? And...it was a broomstick horse."

He laughed again, squeezing the back of Peter's neck. "Don't worry. All you have to do is sit in the saddle, push your heels down, and hold on to the reins. I doubt these are going to be wild horses. We'll have to go pretty fast, but I know you can do this."

Peter swallowed hard, looking up at him with that trust that never failed to warm and break Tony's heart at the same time. "Did you really grow up riding horses?"

"Sure did." He didn't mention the fact that he'd last ridden a horse when he was twelve. "I used to play polo. It's a rich person thing. And I've never even fallen off. If you do fall off, that's fine. We'll get you back on the horse and we'll keep going. Horses are nice. They're like big dogs. You love dogs, right?" Tony felt like kind of an idiot, talking to the teenager, nearly-adult, like a little kid, but Peter nodded, solemn.

"Yeah. I like dogs."

He grinned. "Then you'll love horses."

The group of townspeople were all congregated pretty close by, murmuring to themselves, and before they left, Tony led Peter by them, grabbing their bag and handing Peter a protein bar. He needed to get the kid some real food, but that wasn't going to happen for a while, so he'd have to do his best to keep him fed in the meantime. At the last second, he grabbed a new box of protein bars, emptied them into Peter's backpack, then took four bottles of water from the cooler and put them in there too. "Who knows how long it will take us to ride all the way to Bixby." He reasoned when Peter stared at him.

"Mr. Stark...we can't just steal them," he told the man in a hushed tone. Rolling his eyes, Tony pulled out a $100 bill and slapped it onto the counter before grabbing two more water bottles, uncomfortable memories of his last time stranded in a desert fresh in his mind. Looking around the general store, he felt his anxiety rise. This was nothing like Afghanistan, he tried to remind himself. But that didn't stop him from taking a bottle of spray sunscreen and dousing first himself, then Peter in it, then grabbing two of the large brimmed hats from a rack in the corner. Peter just watched him as he stuffed the sunscreen into his overfull backpack.

"What else…" Tony muttered, putting the hat on, and Peter snorted, staring down at his own hat. Tony had to fight back the urge to snap...to remind Peter that he'd been in the desert before. That he'd been without water, feeling his skin burn and peel, desperate for something to eat or drink or just some shade. But Peter was already freaked out by all this. And none of this was his fault. So Tony made himself smile, adopting a terrible John Wayne accent. "Put that hat on, pilgrim. You know what they say. Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."

Peter laughed outright, thought Tony wasn't sure if the boy had ever actually seen a John Wayne movie. Still, he put on the hat and joined Tony as the two made their way back to the horses, Peter with his backpack strapped to his back and Tony with his arm around the boy's shoulders. Outside, the horses were saddles, and Tony reminded himself that they had six bottles of water and twelve protein bars. They would be fine.

"Those hats are $6!" Walter Chang informed him, arms crossed as he stepped away from the horse.

"Already paid for," Tony assured him, gesturing back toward the counter. Turning to Peter, he lowered his voice. "Just watch me." Then he moved over toward the gray horse, placing one foot in the stirrup, then lifting himself up and throwing his other leg over the horse's back. Before Peter could do the same, a truck pulled up, and Burt and Heather climbed out, looking between them critically, both carrying large guns.

"You guys all set?" Burt asked.

"Ready as we'll ever be," Tony told him, glancing over at Peter who, not that all eyes were on the other two, placed his foot in the stirrup and, in one quick motion, lifted himself into the saddle, slipping his tennis shoe into the other stirrup. Tony knew they shouldn't be riding horses in tennis shoes...that lesson had stuck at least, but he'd just have to hope they didn't get their feet stuck.

"Heather and I are going to drive around a little. See if we can spot one of those things. You think you can swing by the doctor's place? See if they've left for Bixby?"

Tony nodded, gripping the reins when the horse under him shifted. He'd been to the doctor's partially built house when the man had retrieved Edgar from the telephone tower. "Good idea."

"Hey...wait a minute, guys. Don't you have anything to protect yourselves?"

"He can take Edgar's old rifle," Miguel suggested, holding up the gun.

"No way. You're going to need something that packs more of a punch than that 30-30. Why don't you take one of our Browning autos?" She shook her head, not letting him answer before holding out the gun in her hands. "Better than that, why don't you take my Model 70? It's .375 H&H mag ?"

Tony stared at the Winchester rifle in his hands, then back at Peter who watched the exchange with wide eyes. He knew the kid hated guns, and he knew why. But he also knew that they might need it. So he nodded. "Thanks, Heather."

"What about you?" Heather asked Peter who shook his head, looking like a deer in the headlights.

The boy shook his head, eyes still wide. "Uh...no...no, I don't…no thank you."

"You don't want to be out there without any protection," she stared, but Tony cut in, moving his horse just a little to stand in front of Peter's.

"No guns for him."

Heather frowned, opening her mouth to speak before the scream came from behind them. They all turned, Peter gripping the horn of his saddle as his horse shifted, and Tony reached out, grabbing for his arm with one and and for the gun with his other. Burt slipped behind his wife, gun at the ready as Melvin stumbled out of the store.

"Help! It's got me! It's got me!" The boy had the snake monster wrapped around his neck and Tony relaxed, his thumb rubbing over Peter's skin as he held the boy in the saddle, the kid reaching the same conclusion Tony had only a second later as Melvin broke into laughter, dropping the snake monster onto the ground as the little girl's mom grabbed her and pulled her backwards.

"Melvin!" Chang shouted as Burt stormed over, gun pointing at the sky rather than the teenage idiot.

"Damnit Melvin!" He stood over the boy who had knelt to put the thing on the floor, but Tony turned back to Peter instead of watching him scold the kid.

"You good?"

"Yeah…" Peter nodded, not looking confident at all.

"Just nudge with your heels to make the horse go. Guide with the reins. I'll lead, okay? Let me know if your senses start to go off."

The boy nodded seriously, eyes straying down to the gun before meeting Tony's gaze once more. "Okay."

"We've got this, Spider-Man."

Peter did smile at that, and, pressing his heels to the horse's flanks, Tony urged the animal forward, hoping he could remember all of those lessons from his childhood. Peter did the same, and the two took off at a gallop with the townspeople stood and watched them go.

At first, Peter clung to the horn of the saddle with one hand, rocking back and forth as his horse moved, but after less than a mile, he looked more comfortable, holding the horse with his thighs and using his supernatural balancing skills. "What do you think? Not too bad, huh?" Tony called, glancing back at him. Peter nodded, his face more relaxed.

"No...it's actually kind of fun."

Tony smiled, and Peter urged his horse forward a little more so that he could be beside him as the sun started to descend behind the mountains.

When they reached the doctor's place, Tony pulled back on the reins, and Peter did the same, copying him as he pulled his horse to a gentle stop. Tony hopped down, then reached his hands out for the reins of Peter's horse. The boy handed them over, then climbed a bit awkwardly down from the black and white horse's back. Once the boy was on the ground, Tony handed the reins back, and the two looked around the seemingly empty land. The RV stood with the door open beside the partially-finished frame of the house, tarps flapping in the wind from where they hung along the wooden studs. Leading both horses over to the house, Tony tied the reins of his horse to one of the pieces of wood, and Peter followed suit before they split up, Peter climbing the ramp and peeking inside the partially-framed house and Tony peering into the RV.

"Doctor!" Tony called, raising his voice, climbing into the RV and looking around. Peter came down the ramp of the house, shaking his head. "I hate this shit," he grumbled, wiping a hand over his face, then pulling off the cowboy hat and slapping it against his thigh as he felt the cool breeze ruffle his hair. "Why the hell did we have to stop in the middle of nowhere…" he cut himself off, not wanting to give Peter the wrong impression, but Peter didn't seem to be paying attention. "Well, their car's gone. Maybe they already left for the city," he told the boy, glad at least to see that their Ford station wagon wasn't parked around anywhere. That at least there were no hats on the ground possibly hiding any severed heads.

Peter shook his head again, looking around, and Tony put a hand on his shoulder.

"What's up? You sense something?"

"No...just...don't you hear that?" He took a step, looking around, and Tony frowned, cocking his head. For a moment, all he could hear was the wind and the fluttering of the tarp. The soft noises of the horses grunting and lowering their heads to sniff at the ground. But then he heard it...music.

"What the hell...where are the golden oldies coming from?" he asked, looking around for the source of the song he was pretty sure he'd caught Rhodey listening to once. Peter took a few steps away from the house, looking around. Tony didn't see a radio...and the sound was so faint, it would have to be far away. He stepped toward the RV again, wondering if he'd missed something, when he heard a soft 'clang.'

He turned around and found Peter standing, stock-still as he stared at the ground, head cocked, and then he dropped to his knees and started to dig.

"Pete?" Tony jogged over when the boy didn't even look up, the music getting louder with every step, until he was standing behind him. "Kid, what's…" The words died in his throat when Peter froze, both of their gazes glued to the ground. There, facing upwards and buried in the dirt, was the grill of a vehicle, the blue Ford logo staring up at them. Peter put a hand back down to the dirt, continuing to brush it away to reveal the rest of the grill, then a headlight, the bright yellow breaking through the dirt that still partially covered it. And, coming from just under the ground, the song continued to play.

Chapter Text

I'm sorry for the wait!  I hope you enjoy the new chapter :) 

A Horse

"Tony?" Peter felt his voice crack, barely noticing the fact that he'd just called the man by his first name.

"Get up," Mr. Stark urged in a whisper, grasping his upper arm, but Peter shook his head, hands pressing to the ground as he started to dig again. "Peter!"

"We...we have to...if they're still in there…"

"Pete…"

"We have to get them out!"

"Peter!" Mr. Stark pulled him to his feet and Peter let himself be pulled. The man looked heartbroken as he shook his head. "If...bud if they're down there…"

"No we…"

"They're dead, Peter."

Peter closed his eyes, shaking his head, but he knew it was true. He knew it was true because he could hear his heartbeat, and Tony's and the heartbeats of the horses. He could hear the music. The engine of the car. But he couldn't hear any other heartbeats. Tony leaned his head forward, pressing his forehead against Peter's and he held his upper arms, their eyes shut.

"They...everyone...everyone keeps dying and we...we can't stop it!" Peter cried, his own voice sounding too young in his own ears. "We're superheroes. We're supposed to save people!"

"I know," the man murmured, squeezing his arms. "I know. But we're going to get out of this valley and get help. They can bring our suits and...and bring backup. We're going to help these people as soon as we get out of here." Peter swallowed hard when Mr. Stark pulled away, meeting his eyes. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry Pete. I'm sorry that we're stuck in this godforsaken valley and I'm sorry that we haven't been able to save these people but...but we're going to. Okay? We're going to save them."

Peter swallowed hard and nodded, trying to push the tears back down. He was a superhero. He wasn't going to cry about this. Not after everything. Mr. Stark wasn't looking at him, though. Instead, the man was scanning the empty landscape, then urged Peter over toward the horses that waited patiently for them. Peter glanced back over his shoulder at the RV with the door that swung back and forth in the wind...at the frame of a house that would never be built. At the grill of a station wagon poking through the dirt.

Edgar. Fred. The construction workers. The doctor and his wife. How many people were going to be killed by these...these things before they could stop them?

Peter climbed back onto his horse, stooping to get his foot into the stirrup, and Mr. Stark did the same, except more gracefully. Gripping the saddle horn until he managed get his balance, Peter shifted and held the reins in his free hand, trying to ignore the sound of the music that kept playing from underground. The horse must have been able to sense his nerves because he tossed his head and blew out a breath.

"Come on, Pete," Mr. Stark urged, nudging his own horse forward with his heels, and Peter did the same, following him as the two rode for the mountain trail that would hopefully get them out of this godforsaken valley. Peter gripped the horse with his thighs, trying to get back into the rhythm of riding a horse once more. All around them was silence. Too much silence. It was strange that any place would be this quiet. Shaking the thought off, Peter focused on gripping the horse.

Mr. Stark led them as they turned slightly to the right, coming up alongside a seemingly endless line of fence posts and avoiding what Peter assumed was a drainage ditch, reinforced with concrete and at least ten feet across. "Mr. Stark...what could have done that?" Peter finally asked, lifting his voice above the sound of the hoofbeats.

"I don't know." The man looked strange...pale and almost sick, and Peter adjusted his hat, shifting the backpack still on his back.

"I mean...why? Why would something...bury a station wagon? Why not...I mean, if they wanted to kill someone...why go through the trouble of burying the whole car?"

"I don't know, Pete."

"But…"

Peter's words were cut off when his horse came to an abrupt halt, stumbling forward and nearly throwing Peter to the ground. He cried out and gripped the horn even tighter, and beside him, Mr. Stark's horse did the same, whinnying and throwing his head and coming to a stumbling stop. The other man swore and Peter tried to regain his balance as the horse under him spun in dizzying circles, neighing and throwing his head and stomping the ground. "Woah...um...horse?" Peter asked, tugging uselessly on the reins.

"They must smell something they don't like," Tony told him with a grimace, shaking his head and trying to reign his own horse in.

Peter started to answer when a jolt went up his spine, kicking his danger sense into overdrive as his stomach turned, making bile burn his throat. Bad. Something bad. Something dangerous. It was there. It was coming! He could hear a rumble under the ground and his horse and dust was flying but he couldn't tell if that was from the horses or something else.

"Peter?" Mr. Stark called, but he shook his head, meeting the man's eyes with his own wide ones.

"I don't see anything! Anywhere!"

Suddenly, Mr. Stark's horse threw its weight sideway, then his back legs buckled, sending the man tumbling to the ground. Peter started to reach out or yell for him or something when his own horse reared up, throwing him backwards and out of the saddle. He landed on the ground with a painful thump as he tried to roll and avoid landing on the backpack, his head cracking against the dirt. The horses continued to scream and turn circles, Mr. Stark's horse taking off and disappearing into the dust.

"Pete!" Mr. Stark crawled over, careful to avoid the horse as he gripped Peter's arm. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah…" He coughed, nodding and sitting up as he struggled to catch his breath. "Are you?"

"I'm fine." He caught sight of the gun in Mr. Stark's hand just as a horse started to scream and they turned, still on their hands and knees, to find Mr. Stark's horse on the ground, legs kicking up in the air as something wrapped around it. One of the snake monsters, Peter realized, with a mouth full of teeth that it used to bite the horse over and over as the animal struggled.

"What…" Peter whispered, scrambling backwards as Mr. Stark grabbed his arm, pulling the both of them to their feet. The horse continued to cry out and thrash as the thing bit it, and Peter glanced over at Mr. Stark to find the man looked just as stunned as he felt. "They...they're under the ground. That's how they get people...they're under the ground!"

Mr. Stark cocked the gun and Peter put his hands over his ears as he fired off two shots, one right after the other, making the long snake things jerk away and disappear back under the sandy dirt. The horse lay still on the ground, blood pouring from the wounds on its neck, and Peter had to look away, stomach turning. But before either of them could say anything, the ground directly underneath them moved, lifting as though something huge were passing right under them, and Peter grabbed Mr. Stark's arm, pulling him instinctively away as they took several steps to the side. His senses were screaming at him to run. To get out! But he had to know what these things were!

"There must be a million of them!" Peter cried, looking wildly at Mr. Stark, and then the ground burst open, and with a roar, a creature like nothing Peter had ever seen erupted out of the earth.

"Nope...just one," Mr. Stark murmured, grabbing Peter's arm and pulling him backwards, as though Peter had been about to rush into battle. But fighting this thing was the last thing on Peter's mind. He wanted to get away, his senses making every hair on his body stand up straight. The giant worm-like creature flopped over on its side and gave another roar, the four prongs of it's giant beak falling open and releasing three of the snake monsters that emerged like tongues, reaching out of them.

Mr. Stark began to back up, Peter moving with him, and fired shot after shot until his gun was empty. The monster's tongues only continued to slither toward them until Peter grabbed Mr. Stark's arm, pulling him backwards and running, not daring to look back. But he heard the monster go back into the ground. Heard the earth rumble and shake as the monster came after them. And he knew that if it came down to it, he would push Mr. Stark away and fight it. He would have to!

They had to make a sharp turn when they reached the fence, and Peter led Mr. Stark left, knowing that it wasn't too far to that concrete ditch. Maybe that would slow the monster down. Maybe that would give them a few extra seconds. And then...then maybe he could get Mr. Stark to jump first...behind them, the fence posts began to fall one by one, and Mr. Stark's hat flew off, lost to the wind. Peter gripped his and slowed a little so that Mr. Stark could keep up.

He reached back, grabbing Mr. Stark's arm and pulling him closer, then sprinted the last few steps before launching the both of them from one side of the concrete ditch to the other, landing firmly on the dirt on the other side and giving Mr. Stark a chance to regain his footing. They were about to take off again when he heard it. An animalistic cry and the sound of something slamming into concrete. Peter faltered, turning and looking down into the ditch, and Mr. Stark followed suit, keeping a hand on Peter's shoulder as though he could protect him.

The concrete wall had a hole in it now where chunks of the wall were falling to the ground, and a red liquid dripped from it. Peter wrinkled his nose, and Mr. Stark put a hand in front of his face. "What the hell is that smell?" he asked, jumping when Peter hopped down into the concrete ditch. "Peter!"

"I think...I think it's dead." Just then, another hunk of concrete fell and one of the tongues fell out, covered in blood and dripping. Mr. Stark sat on the ground, letting his feet dangle into the ditch, and then hopped down to stand beside Peter and examine the monster.

"What the hell is that smell?" the man muttered, grabbing at bits of the concrete and gesturing for Peter to help. He did, pulling away chunks of it until the rest of the head fell forward beak first. Together, they looked the thing over, Mr. Stark placing a tentative hand on the outside of its thick, leathery skin. "No eyes," he muttered.

"So...it's totally subterranean?"

"Looks like it."

"And the tentacles shoot out of its mouth and pull things inside...that's must be how it hunts."

Mr. Stark nodded and Peter hopped up out of the ditch, following the mound of dirt that outlined the monster's body until he reached the end almost fifteen feet away. Mr. Stark scrambled out behind him, kneeling beside Peter to examine the body. Reaching out, he touched one of the thousands of little black pointed scales along its body, turning it around and around. "It must propel itself forward with these…"

Peter had stopped listening, though. There was a figure in the distance, moving toward them, and although his senses didn't go off and it seemed like just a person, it wasn't a person he recognized. She was a little taller than Mr. Stark from what he could tell, with frizzy, curly hair. The woman was wearing a purple long sleeved shirt and khakis, and holding a handful of papers and something metal that Peter didn't recognize. She looked like she was out in the desert to work. "Mr. Stark," he murmured, his tone immediately catching the man's attention, and he longed for the days of just a week ago when everything had been so much easier. When they hadn't been thrown once more into a battle they didn't really understand.

The man straightened and Peter followed suit, the two of them watching the woman approached. She smiled as she got closer, then faltered a little. Once she was within reaching distance, she held out a hand. "You must be the other new guys. I'm Rhonda."

"Tony," Mr. Stark introduced himself quietly.

"Tony...Tony Stark?"

"Yeah." He nodded and they shook hands, her eyes widening as she shook her head, a slowly growing incredulous smile on her face.

"I thought it was you but...I...it's an honor, Mr. Stark. I'm a graduate student from Colorado. Seismology. I just got here a few days ago and I've been setting up equipment around the valley. I haven't had much of a chance to meet the locals, but I went into town this morning and Nancy mentioned there were a couple of men stopping by. I was supposed to go to Bixby but..." Then she turned to Peter as if remembering herself, giving him an apologetic smile and trailing off. "Sorry...I'm kind of meeting one of my idols here." She held out her hand once more and Peter shook it, trying to stay in the present. Trying not to listen for the rumblings in the ground that he knew he could feel. That he was sure he could feel.

"I'm Peter."

"Peter's my step son," Tony filled in, probably wanting to keep the lie consistent around the town. She furrowed her brow at that, probably trying to remember a mention of Pepper Potts having a son, but thankfully, she just nodded, accepting it, before turning back to the monster in the dirt. "My equipment was going crazy a few minutes ago. What…" She took a step closer and Peter stepped aside, letting her through. "What is that?"

"We have no idea," Mr. Stark told her, following her as she moved to kneel beside it. Peter stayed where it was, tuning out their talks of zoological discoveries and theories of where it might have come from. Tuning out her shock at the size of it, and her tentative questions of whether or not Mr. Stark had ever seen anything like it before.

"Wait…" Rhonda's voice was soft and contemplative as she grabbed her long papers and began rifling through them. Peter closed his eyes, blocking that out too as she started to talk about her research...he could feel something. Or...sense something. Far away. But maybe getting closer.

"Rhonda?" Mr. Stark asked, and she jumped to her feet.

"The way I see it, there are three more of these things," she told Mr. Stark, and Peter turned around, meeting the man's wide eyes with his own.

"Three more?" Peter repeated. She nodded.

"I've got seismographs all over this valley. And if you compare the different readings, here's one from 2 o'clock yesterday. But here's one three miles away at the exact same time. And here…"

"Okay...do you have a car?" Mr. Stark cut her off, voice low and urgent.

"Um...yeah, yeah, I have a truck. Just beyond that hill." She pointed at a hill that was uncomfortably far away, and Peter wished for their horses then. Even one horse! Mr. Stark and Rhonda could share and he could run! But how was he supposed to protect the two of them? Especially when Mr. Stark wouldn't let him!

A terrifying thought hit him then, one that made his stomach turn to lead. What if this wasn't real? It was too crazy...too random, right? What if it wasn't real? What if Beck...

"Peter!" Mr. Stark shouted his name, gripping his upper arms, and he was vaguely aware of the woman staring at him from behind Mr. Stark. "Hey, stay with me. Okay?" His words were almost harsh, but his expression was soft with concern. "You're okay. You're fine."

"Is it real?" Peter asked in a whisper, and Mr. Stark squeezed his arms even harder, grounding him.

"It's real. I wish it weren't, but it is." He gave Peter a smile that looked more like a grimace. "It's real. We're in the middle of nowhere, Nevada with a graduate student who is telling us that there are three more of these things, and we need to get out of the desert, back to town. So we're going to find her truck, okay?"

He nodded, coloring a little when he saw Rhonda avert her eyes. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry." The man patted his arm, then stepped away hesitantly. But Peter was fine. He had to be fine. Because if it came down to it, he was surely the only one that could protect them. The only one strong enough. "You ready?"

Peter nodded, shoving the fear down. Shoving the uncertainty down too. "Yeah."

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Chapter Text

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Tony glanced over at Peter as the boy adjusted the backpack containing their supplies, then at Rhonda, who, although he was sure was very capable, he worried about tagging along. Peter was enhanced. He was a superhero. And Tony himself had been training to save the world for years now. But this young woman was a grad student. Just a regular person. So if one of those things attacked...what were they supposed to do? As much as he knew that he had to protect Peter...he also had to protect the citizens of this town.

Maybe they could make it back. Maybe they could find a way to get everyone out and they wouldn't have to worry about these things until they had the Avengers on their side and then Hulk could rip them out of the ground and squish them like the worms they were...but of course Tony knew better. Rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and wishing he hadn't lost his hat, he tried to come to terms with it all. Monsters. Underground worms...alien...monsters? No, he chided himself. That's what Morgan would call them. Maybe Peter too. But he had to do better. So...aliens?

With a sudden fierceness, he wanted to get out. Get Peter and for once, just once in his superhero life, he wanted to be selfish. He wanted to save himself and his boy and then come back when all of the Avengers could help them out. And he wanted that for Peter too. He wanted Peter to have a fun vacation where he didn't have to worry about monsters or being attacked or keeping his guard up like he was now, his eyes darting around the desert as he kept an eye out. Or, well, an ear out. Tony thought about reaching out and gripping his shoulder. Asking if he was okay. But the last thing he wanted to do was embarrass the kid in front of this new person. So instead he focused on his own steps, carefully dodging a hole in the ground that looked like it had been made by a prairie dog.

It wasn't long before they were approaching the equipment that marked her camp, and she started gathering things, stacking papers that were stuck under rocks to keep them from blowing away and throwing an old backpack over her shoulder. Tony bit back the question of if this was really necessary, instead glancing over at Peter once more. The kid was standing stock still, chin pointed down, staring at the ground as if memorizing it, and Tony could actually see the hairs on his arms stand up.

"Peter?" he asked, voice pitched low, and Peter looked up at him, wide-eyed, just as the pen on the seismograph began to scratch frantically at the paper.

"Run," the boy choked out, turning first to Rhonda. The scratching caught her attention, and she stared at the line for a millisecond before Peter was grabbing her arm, glancing back at Tony to make sure he was following, and then pulling her away from her papers and into a sprint. By the fence, only about a hundred feet away, were stacks of the boulders that littered the landscape, jutting out from the ground in piles, and Peter paused by them, getting Rhonda up onto one before reaching for Tony who grabbed his arm instead, pulling the both of them up onto the boulder just as one of the snake tongues burst out of the sandy dirt and hissed, moving around and feeling for them. Thankfully, the alien tongue thing found only one of the poles that lay on the ground whose intended use Tony could only begin to guess at.

Mind filled with images of Peter getting sucked under the dirt...of Peter turning to dust in his arms, Tony wrapped an arm around the kid and backed up as far as he could go without falling off. Rhonda did the same, looking from them to the snake-like appendages writhing around in the dirt.

"Look!" Peter pointed at the second tongue that flopped over the boulder, ending in a ragged lump of flesh rather than a head. "Is that the one that got our car?"

"Think so," Tony agreed, turning to Rhonda while squeezing Peter a little tighter. "Do you have a car?"

"I have a truck but it's over there," she told him, breathless as she pointed. Tony followed her finger and stared at the truck off in the distance, parked by the long line of boulders broken up by long stretches of flat earth. So the worms couldn't get them if they were on the rocks...but they'd have to run between them. And these things...Tony had a feeling they were smart. What if they waited for them? What if they set some kind of trap while they were running?

"I could jump…" Peter started to murmur, but Tony shook his head. He wasn't sending Peter off alone. No way in hell. "Tony…" The boy's voice was soft and reasonable, but all Tony could see was Titan. All he could see was the boy reaching for him, stumbling forward and into his arms. His voice pleading and on the verge of tears.

Then the years in between. The years of waking up sobbing from those dreams where he'd relieved it over and over. Or worse, the dreams where it hadn't happened. Where he walked into the nursery and found Peter holding Morgan and smiling at him.

"She's beautiful, Mr. Stark!"

The dreams of his arms wrapping around both of his kids.

And then the mornings. The sobbing into a pillow or Pepper's arms. His boy. He'd lost his boy.

Now he had him back. And it was bad enough that Peter risked his life being a superhero every day. But this...they knew nothing about these things.

"I can do it!" Peter all but whispered, as if Rhonda couldn't hear them from less than a foot away. "They're underground! If I stay on the boulders..."

"We don't know what they can do, Peter. We don't know how strong they are, or how they hunt. Hell, for all we know they can fly."

"I mean...they obviously can't," Peter muttered, mouth set in that rebellious grimace Tony knew so well, and his heart clenched.

"Just...we need to think, okay? Maybe...maybe we can wait them out. Just...give it a little time before we do anything rash. Okay?"

Before Peter could answer, Rhonda turned and began to climb onto the boulder beside them. There were three or four of the huge rocks, all grouped together, and Tony tugged on Peter's arm as they climbed onto the largest one. Below them, the ground shifted as the worm withdrew its tongues and moved around to where they were standing. It knew. It was following them? So...what? Could they hear them somehow?

With a sigh, Rhonda sat, pulling her backpack off and making herself comfortable, and Tony could see that Peter still wanted to run for the truck. Still wanted to save them. But Tony needed him to wait. To wait for them to figure this out and actually think before they acted. So when Tony sat, Peter did too, and Tony thanked his lucky stars that Peter still listened to him despite the hero worship having worn off some time ago. He was already dreading the day when the listening stopped.

It wasn't ten minutes before his leg started to bounce, fingers fidgeting, eyes moving around the empty landscape as Tony tried to engage Rhonda in conversation. Peter wasn't great at sitting still in the best of circumstances, and he reached out, patting Peter's back as Rhonda told him about grad school and her studies. The boy flashed him a brief smile that seemed like more of a grimace, and he knew that Peter wanted to follow through on his original plan. That he wanted to get to that truck, consequences be damned, and get them out of here.

And, as the time passed, Tony found himself more and more amendable to the idea. They hadn't heard anything from the strange animals or alliens or whatever they were under the ground. Maybe they were gone. Maybe they'd given up. But Tony had never had such good luck in his entire life, and he doubted that it would start now. Soon, Peter was chatting with Rhonda about his own life, minus his vigilante activities, and potential colleges and his aunt. She didn't question their story, that Peter was Tony's step-son, but Tony knew there had to be some doubts. Peter did his best to call him 'Tony' but it was still a hard habit for the kid to break, not to mention the fact that Peter had offered to jump between the boulders like it was nothing. Still, the third member of their strange group asked no questions about superheroes or secret identities, and for that, Tony was grateful.

Soon, the sun was starting to set, and Tony could feel their eyes on him. Peter, especially, looked worried, and once more, Tony berated himself for pulling off the highway and into the worst possible town. One trip. That's all he wanted. And he swore that he and Peter would have a trip without any sort of terrible interruption one day, and if he had to convince the Avengers to come along to fight off potential threats, so be it.

"How about this," Tony started, voice placating as he glanced at Peter. "We sleep here. First thing in the morning, we see if Stumpy down there is gone. If he's not, we get to the truck." By we, of course, he meant Peter. And judging by the grim look on Peter's face, the kid knew it. Tony hated it. Hated that Peter was so ready to risk his own life...that he had to ask his kid to.

Rhonda agreed, glancing over at Peter and nodding, and Tony was glad that she wasn't going to ask any questions...at least, not yet.

As it turned out, she was waiting for the right moment.

It wasn't too long before Peter fell asleep, curled up in a nook between their boulder and the one beside it, his fingers stuck fast so that he wouldn't fall. They'd all shared some of the water Peter had brought in his backpack, and he saw the kid shivering a little in his sleep, but all he had were his own clothes. Hoping Peter would be okay for the night, and resolving to sleep close to him once he actually felt tired, he stared out at the landscape and wondered if he dared to see if the alien was still around. What if he just brought it back?

"So...what are Iron Man and Spider-Man doing out in the middle of nowhere?" Rhonda asked, breaking the silence with her whisper. Tony whipped around to look at her, but of course it made sense. Honestly, it would have been stranger if she hadn't caught on. She was smart, after all. "Nobody around here keeps up with the outside world much, but I did a paper on you in undergrad for one of my classes. Social sciences or something. All about superheroes. And there are plenty of conspiracies about Spider-Man...that he's your secret son."

Tony snorted, making sure to keep the sound quiet. Nothing would wake Peter faster than his own raised voice. "I have my AI keeping tabs on the rumor mill," he admitted. "I make sure to get rid of any evidence that might lead back to him."

"So it's true? That he's your son?"

Tony shrugged. "Close enough." Years ago, before everything, he would have denied it. Laughed and shrugged it off and assured whoever was asking that he most certainly did not have any secret children. That Spider-Man was a vigilante he'd helped out and that Peter Parker was an Intern he barely knew. Not now, though. Now, those words would taste like a betrayal, even if they were said to protect Peter.

"If we make it out of this, I won't tell anyone." He glanced over, surprised at the casual tone. It wasn't said as a bargain or as a plea, just a statement. A kind statement. She was smiling a little out into the darkness. "He seems a little young to be fighting monsters, though."

"Tell me about it." In his sleep, Peter shifted a little, and Tony reached out without thinking to rest his hand on the boy's back. "This was supposed to be a break for him. He'll be off to college soon and…" Tony shook his head, a little embarrassed to have let that slip out, but Rhonda smiled.

"My mom and I did the same thing after my senior year of high school...we took a road trip down the west coast and…" She trailed off, swallowing hard. "She, um...she died a few years back, but those were some of my favorite memories with her. Even the parts where we fought or got lost...I mean, that's not such a big deal compared to underground animals appearing out of nowhere and hunting you within an inch of your life but…" She trailed off with a shrug and a faint smile. "You know."

"I do," he said with a nod and a smile. Tony didn't ask how her mom had died. A few years ago was during the snap or the blip or whatever they wanted to call it. Had Rhonda disappeared? Had her mother? It was all too personal to even think about asking, even in the dark.

So instead, Tony lay back, resting his head on the rock and grimacing at the pain he knew he'd wake up with, his side pressed to Peter's back. Immediately, the boy turned, still sound asleep, and sought him out, his forehead pressing against Tony's shoulder and his knees into Tony's hip. "Little monkey, just like your sister," he murmured, missing his little girl with a fierceness that was matched by his gratitude that she wasn't here, trying to sleep on a boulder in the middle of the desert.

Peter hummed in his sleep, shifting a little closer, and Tony pressed a kiss to his hair before closing his eyes and trying to fall asleep.

When Tony woke, he was already sweating. Grimacing, he wiped a hand over his face, trying to shade his eyes from the sun that was too bright even this early in the morning, and turned to look for Peter, only to find the space beside him empty. Immediately, all of his grogginess and the residual pain in his neck and back disappeared as he jerked upright, looking around for the boy. "Peter?" he called, then found Rhonda stepping over from the boulder leaning against the one that had become their temporary home.

"Over there," she pointed, just out of sight, and adjusted her shirt. Tony nodded. Right. Bathroom. Which reminded him, that was something he would also have to take care of soon. So as soon as Peter climbed back into sight, Tony ruffled his hair, then climbed down to the lower boulder out of sight, keeping an eye out for any movement under the ground as he did so.

Once he had rejoined the others, he took the granola bar Peter handed him. It took the edge off of his hunger, but he knew that Peter had to be starving. They had to get off of this rock and back to town. Soon.

"Alright. Let's see if Stumpy the Asshole has given up on us yet."

Rhonda took the lead, reaching down for one of the many poles on the ground carefully, keeping her feet firmly on the boulder, then began to tap at the ground. Tony glanced at Peter, grimacing when he saw the boy ready to leap into action. He wanted to grip the back of Peter's shirt in his fist, like he would with Morgan when she was sitting beside him on the dock to keep her from falling in, but he managed to squash the urge.

She tapped the pole on the ground over and over, and he felt a rush of hope. Maybe it was gone. Maybe it…

And then a tongue shot out from the ground, grabbing at the pole, and Rhonda let go, jumping back a little.

"Fuck!" The word escaped from Tony's mouth before he was aware of it, but, he figured, at least it was Peter and not Morgan sitting next to him.

"Doesn't he have a home?" Peter grumbled, dropping his head back as he sat down hard on the boulder.

"Apparently not," Tony answered with a sigh.

"They're underground," Rhonda murmured, crossing her arms. "They have no eyes, no sense of smell…"

As soon as she trailed off, it clicked in Tony's brain. "So they hunt by sound." Both Peter and Rhonda turned to him, and he watched their eyes light up in understanding.

"The vibrations...they can feel the vibrations," Peter whispered.

"And this rock is a perfect conductor." While Rhonda looked impressed...almost excited, Peter's face dropped into incredulous dejection.

"So we're never getting off this rock."

Rhonda stood, moving over to the top of the largest boulder just as Peter began the argument he'd obviously been waiting for.

"I should just go now."

"Peter…"

"What? They hunt by sound. We can't just sit here in total silence for hours. We have to drink water! And eat something."

Tony knew that Peter had to eat something...probably sooner rather than later. And granola bars weren't going to be enough.

"Besides, I can get to the truck."

"You'll be alone." He wouldn't be able to get to him. Tony wouldn't be able to save him if something went wrong.

"Hey guys?" Rhonda called, but Peter was already speaking, voice soft and persuasive, like Morgan when she wanted a juice pop.

"Only for like, two minutes. I'll get to the truck,"

"What if they get you before then?"

"Guys? I think I have an idea…"

"They won't!"

"And what if they get you in the truck? You've never even driven a truck!"

"I've driven a car!" Peter cried, and Tony snorted despite himself.

"I saw that car after you drove it, kiddo. You totaled it. And it wasn't even your car."

"Okay, but Flash had it coming."

"Hey!" They both turned then, finding Rhonda standing at the edge of the boulder, one of the long poles in her hands. "You guys ever pole vault?" And with that, she stuck the pole in the ground, launched herself from the boulder, and the pole carried her to the next in the long line of rocks.