Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was a rule Peter’s elementary school teacher had always reinforced during art lessons: Never run with scissors. Personally, he’s proud to say he’s never gone against that rule because he didn’t want to trip and fall and impale himself. He was that clumsy before the bite.

Peter isn't quite as proud to say that he’s doing the superhero equivalent of running with scissors—swinging across a battlefield with a gauntlet full of infinity stones. He hates how accurate the comparison was because kids could be great sometimes. Then, other times, they’re exactly like the horde of shrieking aliens out for his blood and the gauntlet in his hands.

Peter’s mid-air, zipping towards the van with a time travel machine, still busting out quips that no one laughs at even as he moves out of range. Given how his audience consists of aliens, he’ll blame it on the language barrier. It’s totally not because his jokes are lame, no matter what Mister Stark says. Somehow, even though most of the aliens can’t physically reach him, they manage to launch each other at him like projectiles. He narrowly dodges one, pulling himself out of the way with a last-second web, only to collide into a second. It latches onto him, nails biting into his skin as it screeches into his already sensitive ears.

Spittle flies across his mask, and Peter flinches back.

It throws his balance off, and he doesn’t catch himself before they both crash into the ground. The impact knocks the air out of his lungs, worsened still by the immediate pile-up the aliens seem to subconsciously agree upon. In an instant, he can’t breathe. The world is so heavy and he can’t see and-

“Engaging instant kill mode.” Comes Karen’s voice, and light breaks through as his suit flings the aliens off of him with its new appendages. Peter’s breathing hard, chest heaving with an arm still wrapped tight around the gauntlet. He sweeps his leg through the ground He socks an alien in the face hard enough that he feels its teeth cave in before the force sends it flying. He’s not really thinking after that, more relying on Karen to pilot the suit and his instincts to keep the enemies at bay.

With his Spidey senses so attuned to the battle around him, Peter doesn’t pick up on the gentle whisper in his head that goes- ‘You can end this now.’ -until his panic cuts through his instincts and he’s shoved his hand into the gauntlet and his arm burns.

Temptation is the infinity stones’ greatest weakness and strength all at once, Peter thinks. Because without someone to use them, they are nothing. Without everyone fighting over them, they are worthless.

Suddenly he knows too much of the world, memories of the stones rushing through him with the pressure of a broken dam. His being feels too big for his body, his soul no longer fitting his skin when he has seen everything wrong with the world.

Peter falls to his knees, too weak to hold himself up anymore as he takes in desperate gasping breaths as if they could ease the fire racing up his left side. The aliens flinch back, and his vicinity is absolutely silent, but maybe that’s because he can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears and the rippling pain in his arm even as his body stitches itself back together.

Peter’s eyes are open, but he’s like a spectator in his own body, watching from the back of his mind as the scene plays out.

He cradles the gauntlet, not registering the myriad of colours that race up his left side as something tells him to raise his head.

He meets Thanos’s eyes across the field. Then, he turns to meet Mr Stark’s.

He can’t hear anything, and there’s nothing he can say that they’ll hear, but Peter can still pick up the desperate look in Iron Man’s eyes as he abandons the fight to fly towards him. The hero’s mouth contorts to form the shape of Peter’s name. The boy thinks he might be screaming.

But what he hears is the oddly gentle sound of metal clinking together-

-and the clarity of a snap.

The Iron Man armour has never felt more cumbersome as Tony stumbles over himself to get to where Peter has curled up. The nanotech retracts into its housing unit with a sharp tap, and Tony feels naked as he falls to his knees on a crowded battlefield, ignoring both the cheers and the stares.

This is a victory, he remembers.

Peter is still cradling that damned gauntlet, and Tony wants to rip it off, destroy it, have it removed from existence and his nightmares, but it’s half-melted and stuck to his skin.

“Hey, kiddo, can you look at me, please? Stay awake, you hear me?” Tony taps on his cheek lightly as he rolls him over, drawing the boy’s glazed-over eyes. The older man feels his heart sink with fear. He barely registers the bite of gravel on his knees and shins.

“I need a medic here!” He hollers over his shoulder before lowering his voice into something gentle, something just short of desperate. “Come on, Spider-man… Pete, please.”

Tony shakes the kid’s good shoulder a little, and Peter opens his mouth, only to choke on air.

“M’ser St’rk,” He slurs in between coughs, and Tony grips him a little tighter.

“Yeah, that’s me, Pete. Keep your eyes on me. Can you do that for me?” The man’s voice is trembling, and there are people nearing, but Tony doesn’t care about them. (He can’t lose the kid again—not again—not when he was the reason Tony tried.)

Peter takes another rasping breath, and his half-lidded eyes don’t stray from his mentor’s face.

“Di’ we win?”

“Yeah.” Tony’s breath hitches. “Yeah, you snapped, and we won.”

Peter doesn’t reply to that with anything other than a shudder of his eyelids.

“Karen, how’s he doing?” Tony pleads, near shouting as he slides an arm under the boy’s neck to support it. Peter’s fingers curl around his arm, weak and somehow still tighter than a noose around his neck.

“Life functions critical.” There’s a pause, and Karen’s voice softens with something like cautious optimism. “Immediate medical attention advised.”

Tony’s head jerks around, looking for someone—anyone—who can help him.

‘Life functions critical,” runs through his head in that damning lilt.

Then, the princess of Wakanda is barking orders, and Strange’s cloak lies flat beside Peter like a gurney. The wizard waves a portal to life, fire sparking against the dirt. But Tony doesn’t hear any of it.

His head is underwater, ears plugged up with the drum of his heartbeat and “Life functions critical.”

He can’t lose his kid again. So, he lifts the boy onto the cloak as gently as he can, and scrambles to his feet.

They run through the portal; earth replaced by linoleum.

There is no whiplash from the sudden change of the dust-filled battlefield to the sterile-clean air. Tony is too busy to notice it because his fingers are clamped tightly around Peter’s right wrist, clinging to every slowing heartbeat. He’s closed his eyes, and Tony’s still begging for him to stay awake.

Someone rips him away from Peter as they push through the steel doors of the operating theatre. Tony’s struggling, trying to get away from the hands that refuse to let him follow the kid, and the Dora Milaje plant themselves in his way. It doesn’t matter. He’d run himself through their spears if it meant Peter wouldn’t go somewhere he couldn’t follow.

There’s shouting, and Tony barely realises that it’s from him until his throat is aching.

The Dora push him back, letting him collapse into a waiting chair when he loses the wind in his sails. He ends up staring at the spotless floors, (staring at the unresponsive Peter in his mind’s eye, and hearing the too small “M’ser St’rk,” and “Life functions critical.” playing over and over like a broken recorder in his ears).

They leave him alone at some point, sitting in the most comfortable waiting chair he’s ever been in while feeling the most out of place he’s had since Titan. They’re going to sort out the half of life that just came back.

(This is a victory, Tony remembers).

And he sits like that, hunched over in that chair, head lowered and eyes staring at his hands. He has never been a religious man, but at that moment, he prays to every deity he knows that they won’t take his kid from him a second time.

(But maybe not for him).¹

Maybe Tony has stewed long enough in the deafening silence of the waiting room and his head because he realises, they were prepared for this to happen. Their response time was too quick, and everything had already been ready before they arrived.

They knew someone would need surgery.

The metal doors swing open, and Tony’s up on his feet, heart jackrabbiting as Strange walks through alone. It’s only been an hour and four minutes. Tony’s been counting.

“Why aren’t you in there?” Tony croaks out, throat dry.

“There is not where I’m needed.”

Something ugly rears its head, anger coalescing on his tongue.

“You were the best neurosurgeon in the country, and you can’t even help?”

“We’re not in the country, Stark, and I can’t operate anymore.” Strange is awfully different from how he had been previously. The arrogance in his eyes has taken a cooldown, and all that’s left is a self-deprecating creature that reminds Tony of himself. And if Tony were a lesser man, he’d say there’s something almost apologetic buried in the furrow of his brow and the downturn of his lip.

But there is nothing for him to be sorry for. Strange only has the life of Peter Parker on his shoulders, and he’d give it up easily for the world.

Tony wishes Strange would shout at him, though, or do anything that would distract him from this. And just as fast as the thought slips into his mind, Tony’s guilt rises like a tsunami and crashes down on the banks of his mind because this is his fault. He was supposed to protect the kid, and he failed again. (He’s not allowed to be distracted, not from this).

Silence.

Or maybe Tony’s terrified because the question slips out.

“Does he make it?”

And finally, Strange spares him a glance before he realises what he’s done and averts his gaze once more. His hands are shaking.

“I don’t know.” Strange stares through the glass of the metal doors. “I didn’t foresee this.”

Tony clenches his fist, nails biting crescents into his flesh. There were 14,000,605 endings, and only one of them worked.

“Don’t bullshit me, Strange. Someone warned them to be prepared for major surgery,” Tony snaps, ignoring the beep of his housing unit. He didn’t need it to know his heart rate was rising.

“I wasn’t expecting Peter to need it.” Strange can’t meet his eyes, though. Tony sees it in the way his eyes drift from the doors to the clock and back, resolutely avoiding his direction.

“Then who?” Tony shouts, breath coming hard. “Because there isn’t anyone in the operating theatres other than my kid!”

Strange doesn’t answer for a long time, and Tony doesn’t know what to think anymore because what does his silence mean? (He can’t think of anything but acquiescence with shameful agreement, and it kills him all the more so).

And maybe it’s selfish of Tony, to wish that there was someone, anyone else, who was in the operating theatre instead of Peter, but he did. Because it would mean that Strange really hadn’t let Peter go for the world.

Maybe the silence is too empty and too loud all at once because the once-surgeon speaks.

“I traded one life for the universe.” Strange looks at him with something horribly soft and sorry in his eyes. Tony slumps into the chair. He doesn’t want to hear this. “Yours.”

All the fight in him dies at that. Tony would die for his kids in a heartbeat but hearing it out loud was still a slap in the face.

One soul for the world.²

His gut twists with something mixed with apprehension and hope.

Just, maybe.

Peter’s been here before.

He remembers walking down this road too clearly, the memory kept vivid through his nightmares. The night is cold, and he tugs his jacket tighter around his body as he listens to the sounds of New York.

He’s running—why’s he running? —and this dream isn’t quite the same as the usual nightmare because this is the point when he’s always frozen even when he’s screaming at himself to move. But that doesn’t happen because Peter’s wearing his suit, and the gunman is webbed to the ground before he can even think about shooting.

He stares at the man, wanting to feel anger, fear; something, anything, but there’s nothing but apathy for a nameless killer whose face he can’t quite remember. (Shoulder-length hair and sunglasses with the smell of oil and ash, but that’s enough for Peter).

There is only cold in his bones, sharp and stinging and somehow holding his heart hostage. There is no feeling to this, and Peter can wipe him from existence with a snap, leaving no evidence sans the dust swept away by the winter wind.

“Peter,” Ben calls, and the boy blinks out of his stupor, swiping at his dry eyes. Peter turns and forgets about the man at his feet. His uncle looks at him, ever patient and gentle, and in the same way he knew that Peter was different the first time, he asks, “Did you do it?”

Peter smiles at Ben. “Do what?”

“Snap your fingers.” He gestures to Peter’s left hand, and he finds the gauntlet filled with infinity stones, melding into his skin until he can feel through the gauntlet as if it’s part of his body. From the peripheral of his vision, the body of his uncle’s killer has long since disappeared as if they’d always been alone. The night is strangely warm.

It should hurt, Peter thinks.

It doesn’t.

“Yeah, I did.” His eyes are glued to where his elbow becomes gold.

“What did it cost?”

Peter hides his left arm behind his back, not looking at his arm as it starts to melt, dripping off until there’s a puddle of colours on the floor and everything below his elbow is gone. He looks at Ben. It doesn’t hurt, Peter thinks to himself.

(It doesn’t).

Smile still in place, he answers.

“Nothing.”

Chapter Text

The last thing May remembers is dust. It’s everywhere—in her hair and hands—and she felt as weightless as the ones floating in the air. It must have been some kind of knock-out gas that causes hallucinations as a side effect because suddenly, the dust is gone, gravity begins to work again, and there are strangers in her home.

She lets out a hacking cough, lungs trembling with effort as oxygen stings her nose. It feels like she’s just learnt to breathe all over again.

Vaguely, as May focuses past the initial confusion of dust on her dry tongue disappearing, she’s aware of the couple that’s lurched away from her. They make a mad scramble across the couch as if the barrier of the sofa between them would bring a semblance of sense to the situation. It’s the same one she has, if not a little more worn out. One of them is shouting in alarm, something about calling the police, and all May can do is turn and look around in some sort of detached haze.

This isn’t her home.

It’s been refurbished with newer things. The fridge is the same, even if Peter’s achievements and their calendar aren’t there anymore. Instead, May’s eyes zoom in on the new date of the replacement tracker on the counter.

17 October 2023.

2023.

Her eyes wander from that, looking at the miscellaneous things the couple have written down on it; nothing but a designation for a couple of chores for Matt and Vera. There’s no sign of her or Peter Parker.

“Hey,” May interrupts the near-hysterical man, and it shuts him up so fast as his eyes widen at the first reaction that he’s seen from her. She wants to laugh. She, too, wishes to fall into hysteria. “What year is it?”

The man stutters, still looking at her like she’s an alien, “T-twenty-twenty-three.”

May nods as if she’d been expecting that. There’s a strange detachment to her movement, drowning out the would-be anxiety that gnaws at the back of her mind. Somehow, she keeps herself calm enough to act, unlike the couple behind her.

“Can I borrow a phone, please?” She tries for a kind smile, but she knows it falls short of what it should have been when the man all but throws his phone at her.

She catches it by the corner, fumbling for a moment as it slides in her hands. It’s not any model she’s seen before, but on the edge of the phone, ‘Stark Industries’ is emblazoned. May’s “Thank you” comes mumbled as she moves away from the living room, falling into a familiar step towards the bedroom. (Not hers.)

She doesn’t look at either of the two strangers in the face. She can’t. There’s so much fear in their eyes, and she’s never had something like that directed at her.

May is kind—too kind.

That is a fact.

She doesn’t want to see the hotpot of emotions that comes with your life getting turned upside down because some random stranger appeared in what they thought was their apartment.

And because May doesn’t look, she misses out on that one little thing glimmering in their eyes, steeling in their bones and settling in the base of their throats. It stirs gently but holds their hearts in a vice grip, ready to snap and break more at any given moment.

The couple hold their hands tight together as they stare at the lady who appeared from the dust, too afraid of what this something means.

This something that feels a lot like hope.

The phone has no password on it, which might as well have been the strangest thing so far. And yet, May doesn’t so much as blink an eye as she dismisses the lock screen, not letting her eyes linger on the date. She doesn’t need a visual. She has the numbers and words italicised, underlined, and bolded in her mind.

Her fingers dart across the screen, and it’s too easy to remember Peter’s number.

But the phone rings for too long before cutting off to an automated recording instead of her nephew.

“This phone number was registered to someone who was blipped. Its use has been discontinued permanently. We are sorry for your loss. Please stay on the line for the recorded voicemail.” And May doesn’t understand that. Blipped? But then the line beeps and switches to Peter’s voice.

It comes out muffled, through the static of the recording.

May waits for the familiar Star Wars extract to play, worry drowning out the smile that wants to tug at her lip. This is when it all crashes. This is as far as her calm takes her, and the storm rises to take its place.

“Sweetheart, it’s May, I really hope you got off that spaceship because it’s 2023, and I need an explanation. Call me back as soon as you get this, okay?” The words come out rushed, only half-joking, and May can’t help but think about Peter did that too—resort to humour when he was terrified—he learnt it from her, in fact. Something in May squeezes, and her panic dies for a second. “I larb you.”

Then, she hangs up. The couple who’ve moved from behind the couch to sitting on it tense up, not ready for a confrontation. Instead, May dials a second number.

It rings exactly once before a familiar Irish lilt answers.

“You have reached FRIDAY, please identify yourself.” May hasn't realised how much she needs to hear a voice she recognises until now. If that recording plays again, she might have lost it in a panic.

“May Parker.” She swallows around her name, anxiety rising in her throat.

“Profile found. Patching Aunt Hottie to Boss.”

May wants to roll her eyes, but she can’t find it in her to do so at something that resembles normality. Tony Stark’s AI calling her Aunt Hottie is probably the best thing that has happened to her so far.

“May.” He breathes her name like a prayer, an apology and a revelation all at once. May’s heart drops, something in her chest shrivelling.

“Peter’s not answering his phone.” And it sounds like an accusation; the words are pressed into a needle, a knife, a weapon, and it deals a harsher blow than Tony’s own guilt.

“It’s a little difficult for him to do that right now.”

“What’s going on, Tony?” He’s stalling, and she’s desperate.

“Not over the phone. Where are you now?” It’s clear to May that Tony isn’t going to tell her anything now, and she hates it so much. She hates how she’s always the last one to know about everything and anything that happens to Peter.

“The apartment, but there are other people and they’re staying in my house, and all of Peter’s and my stuff is gone!” She’s not a superhero. She’s not someone who can sit and wait at home while Peter flies to space, where she can’t contact him.

She can’t.

“Listen, May, we’re in Wakanda right now. I’ll get you here, but meanwhile I need you to stay where you are until a pick-up arrives.” All she hears is that Peter’s out of her reach, and the only thing she can do is wait again.

May’s throat locks up, and her grip on her phone loosens. The static rings too loudly.

“May?”

“Yeah,” She answers out of reflex, voice cracking around the word. “Yeah, okay.”

Tony mentions something about a driver getting her to Stark Tower, but May barely hears anything he says because by then she’s running on autopilot. She has to keep going; she has to. So, when Tony hangs up on her, she knows what to do even though she doesn’t know why.

The phone almost slides out of her grip. But she catches it and lets it clatter on the countertop. May feels herself slipping, fracturing at the ends. Worry is stuck around her fingernails and in her bottom lip, and she can’t stop picking at them and chewing on it until the sourness of blood joins the sourness of panic on her tongue.

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes, sucking in a shuddering breath before turning around to look at the couple. They nearly jump at her attention, figurative hackles rising as she smiles as best as she can. It must fall short because it does nothing to calm them.

It does nothing to calm herself either.

“Thanks for letting me borrow your phone.” She leaves the device on the counter. “Is it alright if I stay here while waiting for someone to pick me up?”

They agree, surprisingly.

She turns with a confidence she doesn’t feel, legs numbly moving to sit on a dining chair. It’s foreign, not the ones she used to own. Her ribcage is shrinking, shrivelling, and twisting in time with her lungs, and May knows Tony said to stay where she is, she knows.

But if she stays in this house that isn’t hers any longer, she might just go insane.

So, May steps out of her not-home and steps into chaos instead.

She stares, eyes nearly bugging out, as people just appear on the streets. And she must be unlucky, because someone reforms from dust right in the middle of the road, and a car swerves out of the way, right at her instead.

It’s green, and the digits on the number plate add up to fourteen.

That’s a strange detail to pick out, she realises, and everything goes black.

They put May in the operating theatre next to Peter’s.

Tony swallows, chest trembling, the faint taste of metallic coconut on his tongue. He hasn’t had the arc reactor in his chest for a long time, but he might as well have never had it removed, for how he can barely breathe.

He walks away, doctors and nurses running past him. There’s nothing he can do here. He’s not even allowed past the waiting room. There are mountains of clean-up he should be focusing on instead, because May is just one of many, because there are probably countless dusted who returned where they were. In the middle of the road, the sea or the sky. He doesn’t know how much hope he’s allowed to have at this point.

They saved the world, but they couldn’t save everyone.

Tony swallows and starts giving orders to open relief centres and trigger disaster response teams. He knows he’s not going to be any use waiting here like this, so he walks away, wondering what it was all for.

Chapter Text

Peter’s floating somewhere, back on clouds and jelly. He’s swimming, he thinks, suspended somewhere between an orange haze and a grey blur. The world keeps spinning around him, and he should be drowning, but he’s not. There’s pressure on his chest, like someone’s holding his lungs. Maybe it’s Uncle Ben.

Peter spoke to him earlier, didn’t he?

Uncle Ben is gone again, though, and now it’s just him and Aunt May. Like it always is.

It’s strange—not having to breathe. Aunt May is floating on his left. They’re both weightless giants in an unfathomable space, eternity overlapping all around them. Her fingers curl at his side, a gentle tugging like she’s trying to get his attention. All he feels is saltwater, but he still turns to look at her.

Aunt May’s face is lined with stress, her smile twisted by grief. He hasn’t seen her like this since Uncle Ben died. She looks like she’s been crying.

Peter can’t breathe.

She’s saying something, but that’s silly. They’re underwater, so there’s no sound, and all his apologies remain as the pressure on his chest while her lips move around words he can’t make out.

Aunt May, he tries, mouth open, tasting sand and saltwater. The currents shift around him, pulling them apart. There’s a warmth to these waters as they tug him down. The caustic curves halo over her head while he sinks like a stone. Peter reaches out like he could touch an angel, and she reaches back like she could catch him.

But Aunt May was on his left side, and his arm stops at the elbow.

Her fingers pass through the space where his left hand should be, and he slips out of grasp, sinking into silt. He’s never gone diving before, but maybe this is what it feels like. There’s water in his ears, and he doesn’t have any goggles so he can’t open his eyes, or the saltwater will get in.

I’m sorry. He hears. Her voice?

Then, Aunt May disappears just like Uncle Ben did, and Peter’s alone again at the bottom of the sea, swallowed up by an endless deep to keep the secrets of the world. There are no angels as he lives through a whale fall, a lonely end for lovely beginnings he’ll never see. He’ll die here, Peter thinks, body sinking all the way down until he hits the ocean floor.

He wonders who will find home in his ribs.

There’s a quite murmur just behind Peter, like the beginnings of a song—when there’s nothing but an idea of a tune—and it’s stuck in his head. He shifts at the sound, blinking his eyes through the bleariness. His series of dreams are never linear, falling into something like curious allegories for what the universe has shown him. This time he still has his arm, but it’s a charred, shrivelled mess, and he can’t move his left side at all.

He feels his bones digging into his skin, like he’s about to fall out of his own body. The peripheral discomfort sticks to the roof of his mouth, nausea clinging as his head spins. Peter decides he doesn’t like this dream. Then, Mr Stark appears at his right, taking up his hand. Warmth radiates into his palm, and Peter can’t help smiling at the man, loopy. He’s saying something too, just like Aunt May did, desperation on his face, but everything swims again, and Peter sinks.

There is a boy with thick glasses and asthma in Peter’s dreams.

For a long time, he hasn’t needed air like this. Floating for a thousand eternities, he’s forgotten what it’s like to breathe with a weight on his chest, pressure on his ribcage and claws digging into his neck.

He remembers now. It’s fine.

He’ll be fine if they just get the weight off him.

Instead, Mary and Richard kiss him on the head, lingering for as long as they can while Peter suffocates slowly. They keep their coats on and pick up their briefcases for the flight. He thinks there should be a taxi outside, honking impatiently for his parents to get a move on, but the moment in between them stretches out the way prolonged suffering does.

He’s sinking—sinking into the mourning in his fingertips.

“Be good for Aunt May and Uncle Ben, will you?” His mother’s hand lingers on his cheek, touch on his numb face.

“Can you and Dad postpone your trip? Just go tomorrow morning instead of tonight?” His voice is so small and so shrill with childish fear. Peter knows that they’ll chalk it up to separation anxiety the same way they do every time he has this dream. They’ll chuckle shakily with tears, kiss his cheeks, walk out the door and never come home, but he has to try.

“I’m sorry, Peter, but we have to go. We love you, and we’ll be back before you notice, okay?”

Lie.

Mary thumbs his cheek, and Richard ruffles his hair. He feels tiny in their arms, the wrong size for his skin as he clings desperately to his parents.

“We’re so proud of you, Pete. We’ll see you soon.”

They kiss away his tears and pass him to Uncle Ben, but Peter never stops crying when they step away. He buries his head in the crook of his uncle’s shoulder with his saltwater grief.

They won’t ever find the plane, no trace of humanity in the middle of the ocean. But he’s sunk to their depths too. Peter knows their secrets; he keeps their secrets, and they’ll keep him too. (Two thousand and forty-six fragments on the abyssal plains. He has lived through the same whale fall as his parents.)

This is the start of him losing everything.

He doesn’t—can’t—watch them leave.

(Not again.)

The second time he wakes up, it’s with a splitting headache, a throat dryer than Titan, and the left side of his body throbbing in time with his heartbeat. The dreams stay with him instead of fading the way dreams do when lucidity takes the control. Instead, they sit like ghosts in the corner of his vision, barely there until he takes a closer look.

“Hi,” Peter’s battered voice cracks out, and he licks his lips with a dry tongue, grimacing. The chair by his side screeches harshly against the floor when Mr Stark stands up too fast with too wide eyes. He looks old, white hairs interspersed with black, aged in a way Peter never saw before.

“Peter,” Slips out of Mr Stark’s mouth, and he’s never known his name could sound like a prayer before then.

The man reaches forward as if to check if Peter’s real and not just some hallucination his sleep-deprived mind has conjured up. He jerks back when the boy coughs.

“Water?”

That kicks Mr Stark into motion, and he fills up a small plastic cup from the pitcher on the bedside table that Peter didn’t notice. The boy tries to hold the cup, but his right arm begins to tremble from exertion when he lifts it, and he can’t move his left side at all. His mentor makes no mention of it, simply continuing to wear his stupefied expression as he holds up the cup and a straw for Peter to drink.

“H’w long’s it been?”

Mr Stark takes the cup away, placing it back down on the table.

“Eight days.” It’s said like a confession, what with Mr Stark’s eyes downcast and his shoulders sagging—with relief or fear, Peter doesn’t know. His jaw drops at the revelation. He’s never been knocked out for more than two days, much less eight. He’s going to be so grounded after this.

Then, Dr Helen Cho walks into the room, and Peter forgets his previous train of thought.

“Oh my god.” He stares at her. “You’re Dr Helen Cho.”

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“You know who I am,” She observes, and Peter can’t help the snort that escapes him.

“Sorry, it’s just- Usually Mr Stark’s the one saying that,” He explains. “Your genetics series on autophagic signalling pathways addressing cancerous tissue with the regeneration cradle was amazing.”

She smiles at that.

“Well, I don’t think you have any brain damage if you can remember all that, but humour me, would you?” She goes through medical protocol methodically, asking him to recite his full name and date of birth before checking the rest of his reflexes.

“Any physical discomfort at the moment?”

“Yeah, uh, I can’t feel my left side?”

Dr Cho pauses at that, stepping around to the left side of the bed. She peels the blanket off him, revealing the mess of his arm. From his elbow down, it’s a charred thing half the size of his right hand, burnt down to the skeleton with a sheen of gold. Between his knuckles, damning, six stones are embedded.

“Just the arm? Or your whole body?” She asks as she pokes and prods at him.

“Just the arm.” Theres a convoluted horror in the way the three of them look at his arm. Peter should be screaming in pain. The flesh of his left hand is all but gone, and the gauntlet fused to his body, but he feels nothing from it, not even a twinge.

He can’t stop staring at the six gems that killed him and half the world; six gems that killed him and saved the world.

“The flesh isn’t necrotic, but I’d rather we err on the side of caution, considering we have very little understanding of the powers at work here.” Dr Cho says, gently turning his arm over. “No pain?”

He shakes his head.

“We’ll continue monitoring the state of it for now, but if it starts spreading, then we might have to remove the arm.”

Peter’s mouth goes dry.

“Ah.” Dr Cho sounds professionally apologetic as she delivers the news, her words too clear to be anything but. It’s something for him to ponder and come to terms with, but he already knows this. The loss of an arm, Peter thinks, is nothing.

“I’ll be back to check on you in an hour. If you need anything, just let Friday know.”

Then, she leaves, and it’s just him and Mr Stark.

The man’s face is whittled with wrinkles he didn’t have the last time Peter saw him, grey in his hair and mouth pinching repeatedly like he’s trying to decide what to say.

“Where’s Aunt May?” Peter asks—is compelled to ask.

Mr Stark closes his eyes at that.

But that isn’t the right question for him to be asking Mr Stark. Peter knows exactly where Aunt May is. He saw her this morning just before his trip to MoMa. She made him a PB&J sandwich and hugged him while smelling like vanilla and cinnamon and home before rushing off for work. Except, the trip to MoMa got interrupted by the Black Order’s invasion, and then Titan.

After that, there was dust, and everything was splitting pain even as he stitched himself back together desperately, and that was five years ago.

Then, they were back and so was Thanos, and they fought until Peter-

Spider-man snapped.

No more running with scissors. He ended the battle, and dust, and the splitting pain was a broken parody of that morning five years ago. (It was worse.)

(It was nothing.)

“Look, Pete.” Mr Stark moves from where he stands to sit on the bed, staring at where the IV goes into Peter’s skin. “There’s some news I couldn’t tell you earlier because you weren’t lucid, and I…” His voice dies.

Peter knows exactly where Aunt May is. He saw her this morning as he was drowning.

“It was quick,” Mr Stark says instead. “I’m so sorry, Pete. May didn’t-”

Peter stares at the soft blanket that bunches under his white-knuckled grip, feeling so numb. He’s been dreaming of the dead.

“You’re lying,” Peter interrupts, voice cracking, in denial but he knows. “You’re lying. Is this your idea of a joke? This is just some prank, right?”

Mr Stark’s mouth snaps shut; mouth pressed so tightly together that his lips turn white. Shock is etched into the crow’s feet around his eyes, and his eyes glaze for a second, looking through Peter at something that isn’t there. A flashback, the younger boy thinks, because he’d rather pick out that one detail than think about anything else.

Absently, he wonders if Mr Stark had said the same thing when they told him his mother was dead.  

“I’m sorry,” Mr Stark repeats. There’s nothing else he can say.

“I need-” Aunt May. Peter can hear his own heartbeat quicken with his breaths. “I need to be alone right now.”

Mr Stark steps back, uncertainty all over his actions as he moves towards the door. He hesitates, unsure if he should leave the grieving teen alone now. Peter doesn’t see any of it. His eyes are burning with saltwater. He hears Mr Stark say something about Friday before he leaves.

The six stones sit in his hand, infinite power at his fingertips at a price far too steep. He’ll die for what he wished for. It was supposed to be just him. (They were supposed to be just dreams.)

The loss of an arm is nothing.

But as he’s sinking, he thinks that maybe he’ll fall short of being saved.

Leaving the room is mechanical, his body on autopilot as he steps out the door. Tony hears a sob as the door slides shut behind him. His hands are empty as he slumps into the hard plastic chair outside the room. Morgan crawls into his lap unceremoniously, one hand still tight around her Spider-man plushie.

“Daddy? Why’s Petey crying?”

Pepper is up in DC, putting strategy into place and corralling world leaders into cooperating in light of half the population returning. One of her first actions was to put all SI-registered blip numbers back into service. Then it’s been press release after press release, formal notices and PSAs about what’s been happening.

FRIDAY has been assisting her while Tony and Morgan wait for Peter in Wakanda. She’s been sending him intermittent updates, and he’s been fixing the tech remotely, but he’s high strung, thoughts straying back to Peter, unconscious and conscious. Tony is in no mood to be arguing with the UN, or worse still, the president, while they all search for answers he can’t give.

May is—was—too close to home since he read about the case of bodies crashing from the sky near the airport. Blipped passengers on planes reappeared mid-air, only to fall to their deaths. They’re all just another number.

Billions of missing people are unaccounted for, and Tony’s hands are empty.

“He lost someone he loves, and he misses her a lot,” Tony answers his daughter, truthful and softened around the edges for a child. She pulls his fingers—previously thrumming against his thigh—into hers, wrapping his fingers around the miniature Spider-man and giving him something to hold. They won, he reminds himself, they get to go home.

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“I don’t know, Maguna, but we’ll be with him every step of the way, won’t we?”

“Like Spider-man when I have nightmares?” She thrusts the toy towards his face, lifting both their hands in the process. He thumbs his daughter’s cheek, pressing a kiss into her hair. Tony thinks about Peter, who saved the world and lost everything. He’ll build Peter a new arm, he’ll make sure the boy has a home when this is all over.

That’s what Tony does; he fixes things.

“Exactly like that.”