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Chapter Text

Six Months Ago…

Sweat drips down his brow ridge, hot and wet and stifling under the titanium faceplate obscuring his features. It's a fucking peculiar thing to worry about right now, when the world has exploded into orange-tinged desperation, when the purple asshole is back to reclaim the stones, to snap Peter away again, to snap everyone away again, and Tony's flying around in the Iron Man suit, blasting aliens indiscriminately-

Another bead of sweat slides off his brow, tickling across his eyelid and down his cheek.

Probably sweat. 

Maybe blood. 

Either way, it's goddamn annoying.

Tony's eyes rake across the battlefield, desperate to find his people scattered within the horde of Thanos's army, among the throes of superheroes battling the former. Some he knows, most he doesn't. 

He spies Rhodey, the sun reflecting off the metal of the War Machine suit as he lets his fist fly again and again, knocking back three of the ugly ass aliens consecutively. He finds Pepper, too, decked out in the new Rescue Suit, as she flits about the sky like him, her repulsors raining down fire and death from above. 

He's missing one. 

The same one that he's been missing for five years. 

There had been a single moment, a lull in the endless cacophony of battle and blood, after the kid had swung his way back into Tony's life via one of his webs.

He'd thwipped his way down, mask pulling back to display that stunningly living face, those brown eyes that Tony had tried his damned hardest not to forget, and then his kid, his living kid, had begun babbling. It fried Tony's brains to see his kid standing there, alive, his familiar voice filling in the silence of Tony's short circuiting neurons. 

There had been time to snag only one singular hug from him, the kid that Tony knew now that he loved, before the tide of battle had pulled them apart again, had crashed them against differing shores.

And now Tony can't fucking find him amid the sea of fighting.

All he sees is blood and war and scorched earth, and he combs the battlefield almost desperately for a flash of familiar vermillion.

A flash of the boy who had turned to ashes in his palms, who'd disappeared with a soft, panicked apology. 

That hug, that one solitary hug amidst the chaos was not nearly enough. 

He catches a flicker of red, eyes widening, but it's the wrong goddamn bug. It's not his Spider, not his brown haired, brown-eyed Spider-Kid. It's one of the seemingly endless supply of other bug themed vigilantes that have cropped up. 

The one from the airport, that lifetime ago, expanding to practically touch the sky in his newfound height, knocking back an entire platoon of Thanos's legion. 

Tony expertly dodges one of the bodies that is hit hard enough to take to the air, careening harshly to the left, and then he finally, finally, catches the red he's been desperately scouring the Earth for. 

He finds those achingly familiar brown eyes across the field, the world tunneling down to the soft, honeyed determination there. 

The battle blots out of focus, the world around him going blurry. Everything but Peter ceases to exist. 

Peter and the fucking Grape Ape towering in front of him. 

"No," Tony breaths out, the word harsh and tight in his throat. "Fri, full fucking power. Get me over there." 

He doesn't even hear her reply, because he's hurtling across the battlefield to where Peter is kneeling on the ground, staring down Thanos with the type of dignified resistance he's only ever seen the kid display, and there's a line of red blood dripping down his temple to his cheek.

Tony can read a million things in those eyes; the flash of fear, the acceptance, the resolve. 

And then Peter lifts up his arm and Tony's heart tumbles away, left behind somewhere among the battle and blood. 

Peter's wearing a rainbow of destruction across his knuckles, and Tony's close enough to see a tremor dance across the boy's body as the Infinity stones lock into horrifying place.

"No!" He cries, hoarsely, the sound tearing out of his throat. He's close enough to see Peter's body sway under the unfettered power cursing through his nerves, but he's not close enough to stop this. "Peter, fuck, don't-" 

Not Peter. Not Peter. 

He pushes his propulsors harder, begging the kid through comms that he can't hear, because Tony's staring into expressive eyes instead of the lenses of the kid's mask.

Tony's already gone a lifetime without those wide-eyes and that windswept, soft hair. He's only given one hug of the million he has on standby. 

There's a lifetime of love in store for the kid. He can't-

Peter's lips part, mumbling words that Tony can't hear, not among the roar and the blood of the battle, but words that he knows all the same. Words he's heard the kid utter a trillion times because Peter at his core is kind and selfless.  

"I'm sorry," and then. 

Then. 

        Peter. 

                   Snaps.

            ═══════════════════

Tony hums a childhood lullaby to himself, feeling positively domestic. He's standing in his kitchen flipping fucking pancakes, wearing an apron that declares Kiss The Cook in bright red letters. The sun is shining outside the lakehouse, warm and bright, and he's got little stick figure sketches adorning his fridge courtesy of his favorite little artist.

He's got both of his kids here. Alive. Safe. 

He feels like a regular fucking person. 

Since his retirement, he supposes he is.

"Hey, Mister Stark." 

The gentle voice has him twisting around, a smile already spearing his features.

"Hey there, kid." His eyes soften as he drinks in the sight in front of him. 

Peter, his hair still lapsidosical from sleep, still wearing the Spider-Man pajamas that Tony bought for him one of the Christmases he wasn't around to celebrate; pajamas that had caused Tony to sob, big fat tears, because he'd thought he'd never be able to gift them.

Tony doesn't let himself think about the scars. He definitely doesn't think about the space where Peter's right arm used to be.

Peter remains sheepishly in the breezeway between the kitchen and the dining room, a hesitant look on his face. "Pancakes?" He questions, curling his arm across his midsection. 

Arm. Singular. 

"Most important meal of the day," Tony tells him, twisting back around to flip one out of the pan and onto a plate. "Hungry?" He asks, already knowing the answer. 

"Yeah. Always. " Peter chuckles a little, and Tony can hear him shuffle across the tile floor to drop into one of the kitchen's chairs, the legs scraping on the floor.

He executes the action with an ease that he wouldn't have been able to manage even a month ago, and Tony's heart soars. 

Things are getting better. Steadily.

"Here you go." He flips another pancake onto the plate, twirling back around with dramatic flair to slide the stacked plate across the table to Pete. Syrup follows in quick succession. 

Peter looks up, offering him a small smile as he wraps his fingers around the handle of the mapled bottle. "Thanks." 

"No problem, kiddo." Tony can't keep the fondness out of his voice, nor off his face. He watches Peter fumble for a minute, trying to pour the sticky, thick liquid as gracefully as he can with his non-dominant hand, his only hand, and he fights the urge to jump in and help.

Peter's face goes red before he finally succeeds, and the smile drops away. 

Desperate affection thrums across Tony's nerves, warm as the outside sun, and he fights the urge to pull Peter into a hug and smooth the embarrassed lines off his face.

Domesticity has made him soft. 

Peter has made him softer. 

The kid shoves a bite into his mouth, keeping his eyes downcast. 

"Any good?" Tony questions, just to fill the sudden silence. He can hear Morgan upstairs, her lithe footsteps across the floor, and knows he'll need to call her down soon if they stand any chance of getting her to school on time.

Peter nods, shrugs a little, but keeps his eyes glued to the woodgrain of the table.

"You wanna go with me today? Take Mo to school?" 

Peter grimances around the bite in his mouth, swallowing it before he's chewed it. "Oh. No. That's okay." 

It's the same reaction that Tony has received every morning he's asked the question, and his previously soaring heart crashes back down. "You sure, Pete? Some fresh air would do you good."

He nods quickly, his eyes shifting to the plate in front of him. He doesn't move to take another bite. "Yeah. I don't wanna go out, you know, like this. " 

He shrugs nonchalantly, like those aren't some of the worst words Tony has ever heard. 

"There's nothing wrong with you," Tony tells him quickly, resolutely, blinking away the onset of tears. He drops into the chair next to him with an oomp, courtesy of old bones, and tries to find the kid's lowered eyes.

Peter shrugs again, finally looking up at Tony, then quickly away. "I'm- I'm all messed up, Mister Stark. I don't really want people to see me. Not until I-I heal a little more."

Tony doesn't bother to tell him what they both know; that he's unlikely to heal any further than what he has these past few months. 

Tony got better in the five years he trudged along without the kid; five years with Morgan and Pepper crafting him into someone who could give and receive love easily. Five years trying to fix things that could, and couldn't, be mended. 

So, it comes easy now, when he throws an arm around Peter's shoulders and pulls him into a makeshift hug. Peter relaxes into him, letting out a shallow breath as he presses his marred face into Tony's shoulder. 

"Peter," Tony says gently, his fingers splaying out across the kid's lapsidosical hair, "You're not messed up. Don't say that, okay ? You're a hero. A hero. "

"I'm not," Peter argues softly, voice muffled into the dark fabric of Tony's shirt and the ridiculous Kiss The Cook apron.

"You are. Fuck, you saved the whole universe. Doesn't that count?" 

"Dr. Banner did the snap that brought everyone back," Peter maintains.

Tony sighs deeply. "And how long would that have stuck if the late grape got his hands on the stones again?"

Peter is quiet for a moment, hopefully mulling the thought over. Tony's not sure how many affirmative words it's gonna take for Pete to start viewing himself out of the lense of self-depreciation that he usually keeps, but Tony's dedicated to the job. He's always been ridiculously stubborn.

Peter is late night inventions, and Thai food, and miracles and magic and one day Tony will make him see that.

Under his arm, the kid offers another shrug. "I don't know- I mean, someone had to do it I guess."

Tony grimaces, his hold tightening. Someone should have been him. He should've been the one to snap, kneeling in the dust facing down the Mad Titan. It should never, ever have been Peter.

As if hearing his self-deprecating thoughts, Peter speaks again. "I couldn't let it be you. "

Tony opens his mouth to argue that it absolutely should have been him, when he hears the telltale sound of Morgan skipping down the stairs, humming the same morning ditty that had been on his lips only moments prior. 

Peter's face seems to brighten, too, and he pulls out of Tony's embrace to send the girl a smile as she crashes into the kitchen. She's smiles and long limbs and floral dresses. 

"Good morning!" She chirps, joyful, her eyes widening at the food on Peter's plate. "Pancakes!" 

Tony chuckles, kicking up from his seat to flip some pancakes onto a plate for her. He ruffles Peter's lapsidosical hair adoringly as he goes. "Hungry, Maguna?"

"Duh." She flashes him her signature smart-ass smile before climbing into the chair beside Peter. "Good morning, Petey." 

"Morning." Peter grins at her in a way that has Tony softening more, turning him into something that could be spread as easily as butter across warm pancakes.

His kids. Together. Safe. Alive. 

Domestic as fucking hell. 

He drops the plate to the table in front of her, bending over to press a soft kiss to the crown of her forehead. "Go easy on the syrup, you fiend." 

Morgan harumpfs, sending him a haughty look that is so inherently Stark it pulls a laugh from him. "I know how much syrup I need." 

Peter nods knowingly beside her, a conspiratorial grin on his face. "You know best, Mo." 

Tony throws his hands up in the air. "Disrespectful brats. Fri, how long until we gotta leave?" 

The A.I. returns immediately, her voice reverberating across the kitchen. "Ten minutes, Boss, until you have to take Little Miss to school." 

He sends Morgan a playful look. "Better eat fast, know-it-all. "

She shovels a forkful into her mouth before turning the intensity of her puppy-dog eyes on Peter. "Ride with us?"

He smiles sadly at her. "Not today, Mo."

It's the only request he ever seems to deny her. 

He'll play dress up all day long, attend her prestigious tea parties, even watch all of her favorite movies. But he won't leave the lakehouse. The farthest he's ever gone is the dock, and that was only at Tony's behest in the cover of night.

She pouts for just a moment, her bottom lip jutting out in all its righteous indignation. "You never go." 

Tony watches the smile yet again slip from Peter's face, replaced by that damnable despondency he's come to hate. "Sorry." 

He hates that, too. Apologies leave a bad taste in his mouth now, especially from Peter.

Morgan is nothing if not resilient, and she bounces back quickly from the disappointment. She packs her mouth again, murmuring a, "That's okay, maybe tomorrow," around the food.

"Yeah. Maybe," Peter agrees, but his voice sounds hollow as he leans back in his seat, his own plate all but forgotten. 

"You want me to stay?" Tony asks softly, crossing back the kitchen to let a gentle finger trace down the part of Peter's cheek that is marred with ridged scars. The kid leans into the touch. It's progress. "I can call Happy to drive her."

Being away from Peter, even now, even months after the Snap that brought him back, and the Snap that took his arm, gives Tony horrible anxiety. It wouldn't be the first time he called the disgruntled man in to escort his youngest to school. Some days the anxiety of being away from his oldest feels big enough to swallow him whole.

Like he'll lose the kid all over again if he can't see him. 

" Daddy!" Morgan complains softly. She pouts again. Tony knows that her anger won't last long, though. She doesn't hold grudges. She's not like him. 

She especially doesn't hold grudges where the boy she knows to be her brother is involved. 

"Oh no!" Peter insists quickly. "No, no. I'll be fine. You don't have to worry about me. Honest." 

He holds up his hand in a placating manner, pulling away to shoot Tony a reassuring grin. 

"You sure?" Tony raises an eyebrow in Peter's direction, and the kid hurriedly nods. 

"Really, Mister Stark. I'm fine." 

"Alright," he finally relents. Tony has been trying, under Pepper's direct orders, to give the boy space.  

It's the antithesis to everything Tony wants. He wants to smother Peter in affection, to make up for all the time he's lost, to make the kid love the parts of himself he's come to hate. 

"Boss," FRIDAY informs them, "You must leave now to get Little Miss to school on time." 

"Hear that, sassafras? Time to go." 

He watches as Morgan forks the last of her food, sopping up as much syrup as she can before forcing it into her mouth. She mumbles something that sounds like, " Ready to go!" 

"I'll be back as soon as I drop her off," he tells Peter gently, the same as he has every morning since he started the ritual. Since he decided Peter was healthy enough to spend an hour alone. 

Even though decided feels like a false statement. It was really more of Pepper deciding and Tony begrudgingly agreeing. 

"Take your time." Peter smirks at him. They both know he won't. 

"Love you!" Morgan throws her arms around Peter's neck with such a velocity it has Tony jumping nervously to his feet in case it knocks the kid off of the chair. "Love you, 3,000! " 

The elite club of 3,000. More prestigious than the Jaeger-LeCoultre Gold Cup. Tony smiles.

Peter brings up his arm to wrap around her waist in a returning embrace. "Love you too, Mo. 3,000." 

She flings herself off the chair, grabbing her bedazzled, hot pink backpack by the strap. She hoists it over her shoulder. "Bye!"

Tony chuckles, watching her skip out of the kitchen and towards the front door, humming again. His gaze darts back down, to Peter sitting alone at the table, fumbling idly with the fabric of his pants, and he crouches down low in front of him to find his downcast eyes again.

Eyes he waited five years to see again.

"I love you, Pete," he tells him earnestly, clasping his remaining hand in his own. Peter blinks and offers a shy smile. 

"I love you too," he returns immediately. There's no hesitation in the words, no regret. 

Tony knows he doesn't deserve it. He'll never deserve what the kid has done. 

"Daddy!" Morgan calls from the front of the house, and Peter carefully extracts his hand from Tony's grip. 

"You better go," he says gently, but he sends another smile Tony's way that has his heart trying to take flight again. 

"I love you," he repeats again, for good measure, patting the kid's knee before rising from his crouch with a groan. Old bones. 

He can't help buy glance over his shoulder once more as he leaves, watching as Peter pulls his stacked plate back towards him. 

Peter's alive. 

Tony tells himself, again and again, that that's all that matters. 

            ═══════════════════

"Why doesn't Petey go to school?" Morgan asks him from the back, her voice carrying into the front. He can see her legs in the rear view mirror, kicking happily against the leather seat. Her fuschia backpack resides in the seat beside her, catching the errant ray of sun as he drives.

Tony winces, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. "You know why, baby." 

"Because he only has one arm?" Morgan questions, face scrunching up. "That doesn't make any sense." 

He lets out a huff of air. "It's complicated." 

"Only having one arm doesn't make him less smart," she argues, shaking her head at the idea. Her hair twirls with the motion. "He's, like, as smart as you. Aren't smart people supposed to go to school to get smarter?" 

There's a lump in his throat that renders him momentarily speechless. Trees blur past as he desperately tries to formulate an appropriate response to her query. 

He can't tell her about the disastrous week Peter spent at his apartment in Queens after Wakanda released him and sent him home to heal. He can't tell her that Peter just refuses to leave and has ever since May called him that fateful night in tears, begging Tony to let Peter stay at the lakehouse. 

There's no good way to explain away Helen coming out weekly to guide Peter through physical therapy, or his Aunt spending her weekends here because Peter wants nothing to do with the world he helped save.

He knows that Mo won't understand that her brother thinks something is irrevocably wrong with him. 

The savior of the literal fucking universe doesn't want to even be seen unless it's by his small circle of insiders.

"He's very smart," Tony finally lands on, his heart aching. "He's just focusing on healing right now." 

"How long does he have to heal?" She asks. 

His voice is quiet. "I don't know."

            ═══════════════════

It's not the biggest change that Peter encounters upon returning from the Blip and his subsequent coma, it's not even in the top five, but it still blows Peter's mind every morning he trudges down the stairs for breakfast. 

Mister Stark can cook now.

Especially breakfast. 

Every forkful that Peter shovels into his mouth is delectable, packed with the perfect concoction of cinnamon and vanilla. It seems like Mister Stark spent all five years of Peter's absence learning to prepare a phenomenal breakfast. 

And getting married. And having a daughter.

Something hard to reconcile flares in his stomach, and he pushes the plate away, running a hand across his face. He hates the way the action feels now, the ridged, unfamiliar feel of his own skin. 

Towards the front of the lake house, a door opens and shuts. 

"Hello?" He calls out, his head turning in the vague direction of the front door.

He knows that Pepper is at the tower today, dealing with the midyear stock meeting, and neither Ned or May are due for a visit anytime soon. Definitely not on a Monday. 

Anxiety flares in his stomach. People don't show up uninvited to the lake house. Tony knows- he knows that Peter doesn't like it, and he keeps most people away. The lakehouse is their private sanctuary.

"Hello?" He calls again, pushing back from the table and rising to wary legs. "FRIDAY, who's here?" 

Silence is his only answer, and his anxiety skyrockets into potential panic. FRIDAY doesn't go offline, ever. 

He makes his way cautiously towards the living room, avoiding the parts of the floor that he knows squeak. He keeps his ears trained that direction, hearing the faintest rustle of someone's clothes. One ear works better than the other, the right bearing the brunt of the Snap, but it's enough to gather there's only one heartbeat out there.

He rounds the corner, pausing when he finds the familiar form standing just inches into the living room, the front door still open behind him. Light pours in from the outside world, casting a long shadow.

"Mister Stark?" He frowns. 

It's too early for the man to have made it all the way out to Belleville Elementary and back, which leaves one option.

Mister Stark must have skipped driving Morgan to school after all, because of him. He's missing out on time with his daughter because of Peter .

Tony's eyes clock him the moment he speaks, crawling across him in a way that feels foreign and evasive. Like he's seeing Peter's scars for the first time and judging him for what he finds. " Peter ?"

Peter shirks back, curling his surviving appendage across his stomach. The words on his lips die, his warning about FRIDAY being offline lost in the repulsed look on Tony's face.

His eyes pause on the place that Peter's arm used to be, blown wide as though they haven't seen it before. 

It sets him on edge. Peter knows that the way he looks now is unsightly, but Tony doesn't care. Tony never, ever looks at him like he is right now. 

He feels his already shriveled world shrinking further. "Mister Stark?" He asks in a small voice, his gaze dropping down to the expensive hardwood of the living room.

Sandalwood, because even living remote doesn't mean that Mister Stark wants to live without a hint of opulence. 

"You need to come with me," Tony tells him. He's still standing by the door, his arms now criss-crossed across his chest. He's wearing a three piece suit that is nothing like the ACDC tee he had on leaving. "Now."

"What?" Peter takes an involuntary step back, his Spider-sense knocking into him hard. It dances across his shoulders and neck, traveling down to his phantom limb. Something is wrong. "Are you- are you in trouble?"

Tony's eyes narrow. "It's Morgan. She needs help."

A gasp tears its way from Peter's throat. "What? Where? What happened?" 

The lack of panic on Tony's face is disconcerting; Peter can vividly remember the fear that twisted Tony's features after Morgan fell off the kitchen counter a month ago, knocking her forehead on the edge of said counter on the way down. 

She'd bruised, the mark purple and blue, and it had nearly sent Mister Stark spiraling into a panic attack.

There's nothing like that on the man's face now, just a haunting indifference that borders on disgust.

Tony makes his way across the living room, his gaite even, and the force of Peter's Spidey-sense has him taking another step back. 

He can feel the warning, but he can't find the danger. 

"Peter." Tony chides, voice stern. "Don't you want to help Morgan?" 

It freezes Peter, even as his spidey-sense commands him to move. "Where is she?" 

Tony stops in front of him, face twisted into a frown, and Peter can hardly see against the blind panic pirouetting across his body. 

Because of Tony ?

"You'll be reunited soon," Tony says in a voice dripping with sarcasm, and then he reaches out a hand to grab Peter's forearm.

He falters away without meaning too, his body reacting blindly to the warning currently making goosebumps rise across his flesh, but it does him no good as Tony's fingers curl around his wrist.

A strangled cry escapes his throat as an electric current passes through him.

He's felt this before, back on Titan. The way his molecules had broken down, the way his skin had sloughed off of him into nothing but dust. 

" Wha -" He starts, brokenly, finding the dark eyes that he knows so well. 

He tries to jerk away, to reclaim the only appendage he has, but finds himself suddenly weak.

The moment before his body gives in, and evaporates into nothing, he sees what he should've all along. 

The man smells wrong; he doesn't smell like pancakes and grease and Dior aftershave. His heartbeat is just a couple paces too fast.

This might be Tony Stark. 

But it's not his Tony Stark. 

            ═══════════════════

ACDC is blasting through the car's radio when Pepper's call cuts in. 

He's speeding back down the twisty route to home, trees speeding past him at an alarming rate. He's going fast enough to earn a sharp tongue-lashing from Queen Pep herself if she finds out, but he decided a long time ago that it was worth the risk. This is the closest he gets to flying anymore.

He hasn't felt real speed since he put the Iron Man suit away. For good, this time.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" He asks, flipping the call to speaker and cranking the music down.

"Hey, I'm just checking in." He can hear papers rustling behind her voice, the quiet murmur of a group. From the sound of it, she's calling before this month's meeting with the shareholders. "How's Morgan?" 

"Good. Just dropped her off at school." 

"And Peter?" She takes on that soft timbre that she reserves for the kid exclusively.

Before the nightmare that had been the Blip, before the five tumultuous years Tony spent both mourning his child and simultaneously celebrating the birth of another, Tony had hoarded Peter selfishly. He'd kept the kid all to himself, sequestered away in the lab to tinker and create. Pepper had known nothing more about Peter than his status as Tony's personal intern, the fact that he loved take-out, and his proclivity to ramble.

Things were different now.

Apparently, saving the life of her ostentatious husband constituted an immediate friendship with Mrs. Pepper Potts-Stark.

No matter the bitter taste left in Tony's mouth by Peter's sacrifice.

"Good. I'm heading back now. Gonna see what the kid feels up to. Physical therapy isn't until Wednesday, so we got a freebie." 

"Movie marathon?" 

"Maybe. Maybe we'll tinker in the garage."

There's a pause on the other end of the line. "Any- Any word from Wakanda?" 

He sighs. "No, hon. Nothing yet." 

He feels the words settle heavily over the phone-line.

He had tried, desperately so, after the Wakandian surgeons had told him; had set him down to announce that Peter's arm couldn't be saved. It had been a blackened, deadened thing, and they would need to remove it before the sepsis could set in.

Peter hadn't even been out of the coma when they had wheeled him back to yet another surgery, when Tony had crafted the first draft to a sequence of prosthetics that would soon fail.

"Well, hopefully soon," Pepper allows. 

Tony had created nine different prototypes, outfitting each with everything he could think of. Super-strength designed to mimic Peter's own, a sticky adhesive that would allow the kid to stick to walls like his natural hand could.

He'd kept going, each time, until Peter had tearfully begged him to just stop, please. 

Tony couldn't fix his kid. He couldn't make something that would mesh with Peter's altered biology. Every piece of tech he created would rebel, sending painful pulses across Peter's nerves or careening the raw flesh there into another infection.

Wakanda had offered to do what Tony had failed at; create Peter an arm that would actually mesh with his physiology. 

He hits a curve hard, too lost in his thoughts to remember to slow down, and hisses as he slides precariously across the road. 

"Tony?" Pepper demands. 

He rights the wheel, clenching it tightly in his hands. "Shit. I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

"Please. Don't be the idiot I know you are." 

He barks out a laugh, checking the speedometer and wincing. She definitely doesn't need to know that he's hitting curves going seventy. "That idiocy is why you married me." 

"No," she quips back easily, "It was the money." 

He can hear the voices rise in crescendo behind hers, and she curses softly into the phone. "Okay. Okay . I gotta go, Tony."

Just because Tony is retired doesn't mean Pepper is.

If anyone had told Tony a decade ago he'd end up the equivalent of a stay at home mom while his wife ran his company, he'd have laughed. That was before the Blip, though. Before the little girl who helped to heal his broken heart. 

Before Peter had taken the infinity stones and affixed them to his own hand.

"Okay, hon. Love you."

She hangs up the phone before he even finishes his farewell, and the action pulls another laugh from him. Pepper is spark and flame and everything Tony could have ever wanted in this life.

The deciduous trees grow thicker the farther upstate he gets, and he knows that if he rolls down the window he'll catch a tang of the lake. 

It's home.

            ═══════════════════

Morgan slips soundlessly behind her desk, ignoring the tongue that Travis sticks out in her direction. She scoffs, keeping her back purposely to him, and resolves to pay him no attention at all.

At least until he learns some manners. 

She maintains her decision and carefully begins to arrange her school items across her desk; the green folder where all her homework resides, along with her pencil box decorated with stickers of all her favorite heroes. Mostly Iron Man and Spider-Man. A pencil. An eraser in the shape of a pink unicorn, half used.

Travis makes an annoying noise behind her, something meant to garner her attention, and she straightens her shoulders in retaliation, fixing her gaze forwards to Mrs. Miller and the blackboard, where this week's spelling words are being transcribed. 

Wet, set, net, met, bet-

From within the cluttered space of Mrs. Miller's desk comes the shrill sound of a phone ringing. The noise echoes across the classroom, grabbing the attention of all the students nearly instantaneously. Even Travis stops making his fake farting noises to listen in. 

Mrs. Miller turns from the blackboard, leaving the letters ge half written there. A frown graces her face. 

She wipes her hands on the puce polyester of her skirt, eyeing the class before she puts the receiver to her ear. She listens intently for a moment, the frown deepening, before her piercing gaze rises to find Morgan's. 

Morgan jolts a little in her seat, nervously pinching the soft material of her dress between her fingertips, crushing the petals of a fabric flower between them.

"Morgan," Mrs. Millington says, "You need to head down to the office, please. Your dad is here to pick you up." 

She cocks her head, confused. "He just dropped me off." 

Mrs. Millington shrugs a little, placing the phone back into its deskside home. "I'm not sure. That was the office. He's here to get you. Or, back here, I suppose." 

"Okay." Morgan frowns a little as pushes back from her desk, gathering her folder and supplies back up in her arms.

She makes her way over to the classroom cubbies, retrieving her backpack and shoving everything back in. She pointedly ignores Travis's curious stare.

She hefts the strap over her shoulder, ignoring the chorus of oooh's that follow her out of the room and down the hall. Travis is the loudest one of all.

Morgan makes her way down the school hallway, lockers framing her on each side, and muses the ramifications of her Daddy being back after just dropping her off.

Morgan doesn't think she's done anything bad. 

Well, anything too bad.

She pushed Travis yesterday at recess, but that was his fault. He was the one who was running around pulling all the girl's ponytails and making them cry. 

He didn't have any manners at all.

Mommy and Daddy had always told her to stick up for those who needed it. Additionally, both Petey and her Daddy were superheroes, so Morgan knew it was her responsibility to keep the playground safe from bullies like Travis. 

She definitely couldn't be in trouble for pushing him then. Not if it was the right thing to do.

Right?  

Her anxiety climbs as she makes her way, her dress swooshing across her knees and her shoes squeaking on the white linoleum. Her backpack seems to rest heavier and heavier across her shoulders as she traverses down the hallway. 

The principal's office comes into focus before she's ready for it to, before she has a chance to untangle why her Daddy is here and to prepare her arsenal of excuses.

Morgan can see him through the office's glass windows, leaning stiffly against Mrs. Baker's desk. She's the receptionist, and she keeps stickers and suckers in her drawers to give to students having a bad day. Morgan likes Mrs. Baker.

Daddy is fiddling with the sunglasses he has tucked into his suit pocket, arms crossed across his chest as he watches Mrs. Baker with disdain.

Morgan makes her way into the room, the bell above the door announcing her arrival with a soft ding. 

"Hey. Morgan." Her dad calls, sounding and looking impatient. One of his shoes taps restlessly against the carpet, and he twists around to watch her scurry in. 

Morgan cringes. He didn't call her Maguna, or Mo, or even Little Miss. He was mad. He never called her Morgan unless he was. 

"Daddy?" She asks, hesitantly, pausing by the door. "What's wrong? Am I in trouble?" 

She's going to tell him all about Travis and his ponytail pulling hijinxs. Daddy will hear about how she stopped him, saved the girls on the playground, and he'll be proud of her. He won't be mad after that. 

Hopefully .

Mrs. Baker sends her a kind smile from behind her desk, her eyes wrinkling up at the action. "You're not in trouble, sweetheart. Your dad is just here-" 

"We have to go," Daddy interrupts, shooting Mrs. Baker a look. The woman shrinks back underneath it.

Morgan's frown deepens. 

He crosses the small room quickly, placing a hand on her shoulder. His fingers dig into her skin, and she blinks back tears. 

Daddy was never mean to her like this. Never .

He leads her out of the room, his hand never leaving her shoulder. Mrs. Baker calls out a farewell, but Morgan is gone too soon to hear it.

"Daddy?" She asks, cowed, her feet struggling to keep up as he leads her out the front doors. The sun splays across both of them, casting a wide shadow. "What's wrong?"

He doesn't even look at her, frowning towards the parking lot. 

"Daddy?" 

Her temper flares up, hot, and she wrenches out of his tight grasp, stumbling back a few feet. "You're being mean to me!" She accuses, fighting back her tears. 

He whirls on her, his face awash in an anger so intense that Morgan considers making a break for it back to Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Baker. 

Something is wrong with Daddy. 

His chest heaving, he tells her, "It's Peter. He needs your help. Don't you want to help?"

"Petey?" Her eyes grow wide. "What's wrong with Petey?" 

If her brother was hurt maybe that could explain why her Daddy was so mad. He was scared-mad. 

"Come on. I'll show you." He holds a hand out towards her, palm up, and she swallows before reaching out to grab the offered appendage. 

He pulls her deeper into the parking lot, her shoulder complaining at the tension, but Morgan doesn't say a word about it. She doesn't want to make her Daddy more upset.

"Is Petey hurt?" She questions, a little breathless. 

"Shut up!" He snaps back, and Morgan finally does cry, a wet sound that tears up her throat. She wants Mommy. Or Petey. Not Daddy. 

He stops suddenly, and she slams into the back of him. His fingers don't loosen their tight hold on her hand, even when Morgan pulls against it. 

"Daddy!" She cries, confused, right before things get disastrously worse.

Her hand explodes into pain, like it burns, the invisible flames quickly jumping up her arm and across her body. 

Her Daddy is staring down at her, sneering, clutching her smarting hand tight so she can't pull away. 

Something is wrong with Daddy.

The backpack slips from her shoulder, spilling pencils and papers across the parking lot.

She screams, but the sound is lost. 

            ═══════════════════

The lakehouse is quiet. 

Mostly, it's by design. Tony and Pepper had agreed on the purchase only a few months after the Blip, after one too many catatonic, aching nights spent in his lab sequestered away from everyone. 

He'd needed a place to soothe the catacomb that had been left in his heart, the place that had been carved out and replaced by dust. 

The lakehouse hadn't quite been able to do that , to soothe the unsoothable, but it had been mercifully quiet.

There's no traffic out here, no horns, no beeping, no backfiring trucks that sound too much like war and death. No repulsors, no suits, no whooshing sounds that make him think about the end of the world. 

The lakehouse is never this quiet, though. 

There's usually the muted sound of Stars Wars playing across the living room TV, the hushed whisper of a pencil scratching across paper. Even Peter's subdued voice as he checks in with May or Ned on his phone. 

Now, there's nothing. 

"Pete?" He calls out, the oppressive silence already pressing down on him. "Hey, bud." 

He makes his way through the house, his worry mounting at each empty room. 

"Peter. Kid. Where are you?" 

He practically shoves open the door to the kid's room, his eyes raking across posters and Lego sets and dirty clothes. 

But no Peter. 

Tony's vision tunnels in around him, and he tries to take in a shallow breath that does little to ease the tightness in his chest. 

"FRIDAY," he gasps out, clutching his sternum. "Where's the kid?" 

She takes an agonizingly long moment to respond, and he can do nothing but lean against the wall in Peter's room, trying to take in a ragged breath that just won't come.

"He is not in the lakehouse," she responds, hesitantly. 

Tony doubles over. It's the absolute worst fucking time for a panic attack. "Where, Fri?"

Another pause. Another choked breath. 

"I am sorry, Boss. I do not know." 

"He left? " Tony demands, breathless. 

Peter doesn't leave. He never leaves the lakehouse. 

Not of his own will, at least. 

Tony slumps down, his back dragging along the wall until he collapses on the bedroom floor. The accusing eyes of Luke Skywalker seem to bare down on him from where he's tacked up, a poster gifted by Ned.

"He….disappeared," FRIDAY hedges, confusion clear in her modulated voice. "I believe you are suffering from a panic attack, Boss. Would you like me to go through breathing exercises-" 

"Track him," Tony demands, still clutching his hitching chest desperately. He can feel his heart stammering away underneath his skin, terror urging it onwards. 

Maybe Peter took a walk along one of the many trails that the house grants access to. 

It would be a first, but it's better then whatever the alternative fucking is. 

There's silence for a moment, broken by Tony's halting breaths, before she finally comes back. "All trackers connected to Peter Parker are offline."

A curse detonates on Tony's lips, tight and breathy and pained. He pulls in a wheezing breath, still cowering on the kid's floor. 

He's got Peter decked out in fucking trackers; the watch, the suit if he ever puts it back on, the soles of his Nike's. How are none of them working?

"Call his phone," he demands uselessly, knowing that it's a lost goddamn cause.

FRIDAY obligues, and the obedient tune of I am Iron Man starts playing from Peter's bedside table. 

The ring tone he deemed worthy of saddling Tony with in his phone.

"Oh, fuck," Tony ineloquently gasps out. "Okay. Okay. Play- play the footage of him. Of him…leaving." 

"My files are corrupted. I have no video footage to report from 7:47- 7:58 A.M. The last known footage I have of Peter shows him in the kitchen-" 

That makes it worse , that Peter has seemingly disappeared , and Tony's chest has suddenly tightened to the point of inaccessibility, his fingers clawing uselessly against his skin. 

He's thinking about dust, and about I don't feel so good, and the vacant look on Peter's charred face after Tony had collapsed next to him on the battlefield, desperately trying to wrench the stones from his knuckles-

Black dots dance across his vision, overtaking him, and he can't fight them off. 

He's lost his fucking kid.

Again.

"-Calling James Rhodes-" 

It's the last thing Tony hears for awhile.

Chapter Text

Six Months Ago…

All around him, the battle and blood stops, fizzling away to stunned silence as each of Thanos's men begins to disintegrate, blowing away in the soft New York breeze. 

Tony doesn't fucking care about any of that, though. 

He collapses to the ruined landscape, stepping out of the suit the minute his iron-clad feet touch down. 

Behind him, he's vaguely aware of Thanos, of Thanos turning to dust and blowing away, of the victory they've suddenly achieved.

The only thing he really cares about, though, is the kid who won them the war with a single snap of his fingers. The kid lying utterly still in the dirt.

He stumbles forward, dropping to his knees to try and gather up the splayed, broken limbs that belong to Peter Parker, to his kid. 

"Peter, god, god, fuck-" 

He can't even hear his own voice, not when he's looking down into Peter's suddenly vacant eyes, seeing the uncomprehending tears trailing down the kid's mottling cheek. 

He whimpers in Tony's lap, brokenly, and Tony fumbles against the stones still burning away the kid's flesh, cutting open his own fingertips as he tries to pry them off of the kid's suit. 

"Fuck Pete, no, no, no-" 

"Here." It's a new voice, distinctly feminine, and suddenly a pale hand is joining in the battle; helping to tear the stones off of Peter's blackening arm. 

Tony doesn't even bother to look up, to discover who the woman is. He's staring into Peter's glazed over eyes, babbling comforting nonsense that borders on obscene in the current circumstances.

"Peter, kid, you're okay, you're okay, I have you, I've got you 'Roo-" 

There are voices around him, unformed and unknown, because nothing exists right now but the boy who was formerly dust and is now arguably something worse; something burned and broken and hurting. 

Those bleary, achingly familiar brown eyes shift to his, a flash of recognition flaring up. He's still limp in Tony's lap, save for the aftershocks seizing across his skin, but his lips part and he murmurs a raspy sounding, "Tony?" 

Tony can't breathe. "Yeah, yeah, it's me. I'm here. I'm here. Stay with me, okay? You can't go, because I have about a million more hugs for you, okay? There's- there's been new Star Wars movies, kid, and I can't- I can't watch them without you-" 

He chokes off, throat closing up. He can see Peter's eyes fogging over again, the horrifying emptiness threatening to come back.

Only now does Tony tear his gaze from Peter's scorched face, desperately beseeching the gathered crowd silently for help. 

Rhodey is standing beside him, faceplate pulled back to reveal the horrified expression underneath. Pepper is crouching next to him, and he doesn't know when that even happened, but she's caressing Peter's unblemished cheek with a gentleness that has Peter's eyes rolling back to temporary alertness, and he's so thankful for that. 

Peter whispers a breathy, "May?" 

He sees Carol Danvers, recognizes the pale hand from before, and he can see the damned stones clutched tightly in her palm. He loathes them suddenly and explicitly with every fiber of his being.

Rogers is standing stiffly, face awash in shock, as well as T'challa and Nebula and Barton and a bunch of other people Tony decides he doesn't care about. Not right now.

"Help him," he begs, pulling the boy tighter against him. "Please. Please." 

Stephen Strange steps out of the assembled crowd, of people Tony should know but just doesn't right now, and he realizes with a jolt that he loathes this man as well, probably even more then the stones themselves. 

He saw this outcome in a sea of millions, and he chose the worst fucking one. Stephen Strange brought his kid back just to die. 

"You did this," Tony accuses, bitter. Only Peter's shivering body keeps him from getting up and blasting the regretful expression off the Wizard's face. 

"Let me help," Strange offers softly, cape billowing in the same soft breeze that floated Thanos away. Dust and dirt and grime covers the man's cheeks. 

Tony swallows down his bitter bile, his own scorching fury. "Help him." 

Nodding, Strange's fingers come to life. They twist and curl around each other, orange sparks flickering across the already ocherous sky. "I'm opening a portal to Wakanda. Let's move him." 

Peter whimpers again, his hair a tangled, smoking mess in Tony's lap. Still, Tony gingerly brushes a lock off the burnt skin there. "Stay here, Pete? Okay? Don't- don't disappear on me."

He catches sight of his own hands, now threaded through Peter's hair, and wants to gag. His fingertips are bloodied and black. 

Black with the part of Peter's skin that has flaked off, has turned to dying ash. 

       Ash. 

              And. 

                     Dust. 

             ═══════════════════

" Tones , man, what the hell." 

Someone is shaking him, rocking his brain around in his skull, and he slits his eyes at the aggravating motion. "Go away," he mumbles, trying to gain a sense of his surroundings. 

"Like hell I will." 

Tony rolls his eyes to the irritating voice, vision swimming until Rhodey focuses in. His face is warped in barely concealed worry, lips pressed into a thin line.

"Hey, there, honeybear." He sends the man a groggy grin. "Come here often?" 

Rhodey lets out a miffed breath of air. "Wanna explain to my why I got an emergency call from FRIDAY telling me that you passed out-" 

That jogs something in Tony's still soupy brain, and he jack-knifes up from the floor, nearly colliding with Rhodey's crouching form on the way up.

He's on Peter's floor. In Peter's bedroom. Luke Skywalker is still staring down at him with those accusing eyes.

" Fuck!" He spits, pushing Rhodey's worrying hands away to leap to his feet. "Fuck, fuck, fuck-" 

"Tony, what the hell -" 

Rhodey hovers around him, hands fluttering above him to catch if necessary, and Tony whirls around to clutch the man's upper arm's desperately, nails digging into the soft flesh there.

"It's Peter. Fuck!" 

Rhodey's face tightens exponentially, his eyes widening. " What ?" 

"FRIDAY," Tony demands, casting his gaze upwards, "Where the hell is he? Any change?" 

Please, please let him already be back, let this be a huge shitstorm of a misunderstanding-

"Peter is not at the lakehouse," she responds simply, dashing all his fucking hopes and dreams to the fucking bluffs. 

"Peter is gone?" Rhodey repeats, the words dancing frantically across his face. "As in, what, missing? " 

Tony doesn't need to extrapolate the schematics to him; if Peter is gone, it's bad. Its fucking apocalyptic. It will kill him this time.  There won't be enough pieces left of his heart for Pepper or even Morgan to reassemble.

"I took Morgan to school and he-he-" Tony's eyes widen again, his heart skipping a beat in his chest. "Oh god, Morgan." 

If someone took one of his kids, they might have taken both.  

The idea of that is so abhorrent, so terrifying, it has his knees buckling and his chest hitching once more. He's climbing up Mount Fucking Panic Attack again , ascending the slope to panicked unconsciousness.

"Tony, calm down ," Rhodey orders, gripping Tony's arms to keep him from collapsing. It's Tony's skin now that will be wearing the slivered crescents left by fingernails. Rhodey leads Tony like a petulant child to Peter's mattress, lowering him down gently. Tony's body aches at the motion, a combination of his old bones and visceral terror.

 "You gotta breathe. You can't help anyone if you don't breathe. " 

Tony pulls in a ragged one at Rhodey's behest, because fuck if the man isn't right. He has to pull it together for Peter. 

Rhodey falls down beside him, spreading his fingers out across Tony's back as he tries to pull in a heavy breath. 

" Breath. " 

Tony runs a hand across his face, unsurprised to find a salty wetness on his cheeks. 

" Breath. In and out. There you go." 

Each miserable breath feels like a burning coal in his gullet, but he inhales anyway. In and out. In and out. Finally, voice raw, he orders FRIDAY again. "Call Happy. Tell him to go pick up Morgan and bring her straight here. I can't- I can't risk it. Not until we know where Peter is. God- I-I gotta call Pep." 

Rhodey's fingers remain splayed on his back, a tether to reality. "Okay. Good. You need to contact the kid's friend and Aunt. See if he's with either of them." 

Tony is already shaking his head before Rhodey has finished. "We both know he fucking isn't, man." 

Peter doesn't leave. 

Rhodey's voice is soft. "Check anyway. Cover all the bases we can. What do FRIDAY's scans show?" 

Her disembodied voice responds before Tony even can. "My files are corrupted. I have nothing to report from 7:47 A.M. until 7:58 A.M. I would estimate the cause of such disruption to be a high concentration of electromagnetic energy-"

It's Rhodey's turn to curse.

Tony sees his own brand of panic written on the man's face.

            ═══════════════════

"With me?" May demands, incredulous. Tony can hear the high-pitched whine of her panic through the phone speaker, and he has to close his eyes at it. "God, no. Tony, he's- he's not with me. Of course he's not. You know he's not. You don't know where he is ?"

She pitches up at the end, her next breath ragged. 

"I don't know," he tells her miserably, balancing the cell-phone between his ear and shoulder as he desperately tries to repair the corrupted files in FRIDAY's hard-drive. 

Rhodey is standing behind him, a silent sentry, watching over his shoulder as he types endless lines of code into the Holoscreen that does squat to fix the broken code already cemented in FRIDAY's files. 

"Is he with his friend? That Ned kid?" 

If this was any other time, any other fucking time, he'd have pretended not to know the name. It would have been Ted or Fred or anything. 

Now, it's different. 

"You know he's not."

There's something accusing in her voice, between the decibels of her obvious anxiety.

"We need to cover our bases," Tony replies emptily, repeating Rhodey's earlier sentiment. He feels the man drop a hand down to his shoulder, squeezing. 

"I'll- I'll check. God. Where the hell is he? Isn't your lakehouse outfitted with tech? Your A.I? How could you lose him?" 

The words hurt, and Rhodey grips Tony's shoulder a little tighter. Tony can hear the unspoken one in the silence; again . 

Tony lost him. A-fucking-gain. "It's- something's wrong with FRIDAY." 

He lets his gaze drop down to the StarkPad in front of him, frowning. He tracks the video footage that is available, watching miserably as Peter eats his morning breakfast, quietly, before the footage cuts off in a bright flash of orange light. 

There's nothing until 7:58, until FRIDAY reboots her entire system and Peter is gone. 

Dust under his nails-

He hears May curse, and he drops his head into his hands, letting his elbows rest on the workbench in front of him. 

The garage, his modified lab, feels empty without Peter's presence to help fill it. The reminders of the kid are everywhere; the three subject notebook laying open on another table, filled with the kid's perpetually brilliant ideas. The web shooter beside it, the one to the hand that the kid doesn't have anymore. 

"I'm coming out," she informs. 

He doesn't bother telling her to stay home.

"I'll book you a flight," is all he says. 

She hangs up the phone without another word, and Tony can hear the continuing accusation in the silence she leaves behind.

Tony's the reason that Peter was on Titan, the reason that kid got Blipped light years from home, unable to even offer his Aunt a goodbye before he dissolved to dust.

Tony's the reason that Peter fucking snapped, the reason that Peter's arm scorched into something beyond saving. He's the reason the kid can't, or won't, return back to the normal life he deserves.

Tony's the reason that Peter is missing now.

"We'll find him, Tones," Rhodey comforts from behind him, voice artificially soothing. He sounds like an infomercial, offering midnight promises that can't be reasonably kept; Regrow your hair with this simple product! Lose 15 lbs overnight! Find your missing kid!

Tony lets the words pour over him without drinking them in. He doesn't deserve them. He's never deserved a single sliver of the constant good he's been gifted in this life; Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, Morgan, Peter . 

He's been destruction his whole life. He detonates everyone he cares about. 

"We have to." Tony's voice warbles, and he blinks away his tears to let his fingers dance across FRIDAY's inner system again.

He loses himself in her binary digits, knee tapping furiously as he fails again and again to fill the gap left in FRIDAY'S CPU. 

His phone rings, shrill, startling both him and Rhodey out of the near silence of Tony's fervent tapping and clicking.

He answers, gruff, fitting the phone back between his shoulder and ear. "Yeah?" 

"Tony?" It's Happy's voice, unsure, and the cadence of it has Tony's heart skipping a prelimary beat. 

"Happy? You have Morgan?" 

God, please, please let one of his kids be safe. 

Rhodey drops his hand back to Tony's back, his fingers fanning out across his shoulder, and Tony suddenly hates the touch. He wrenches away. " Happy ?" 

"Tony, I- she's not here." 

Tony rocks back hard in his seat, hand rising up to hit his tightening chest with a thud . "Where the fuck is she?" 

Rhodey vaguely swims into his vision, crouching down in front of him, but Tony can't really see him. He's blurry, features undisguisable in fog quickly overtaking his brain. 

Not with his kids fucking gone . 

He can't breathe, his oxygen is gone, gone , and he pounds his closed fist against his chest in a steady, painful beat. Rhodey tries to catch his hand, to calm the violent panic dancing across Tony's skin, but Tony practically shoves him away. 

"Tony, listen," Happy continues, voice coming to Tony out of a long, infinite tunnel. "I'm sending video to you, okay? There's something fucking going on here, okay? Morgan's school, they fucking got it on video." 

"Got what?" Tony demands, voice brittle and small against the overwhelming, oppressive horror that's playing out in front of him. 

The horror movie of his life fragmented with infomercials of falsely placating words. 

"Tony, man, it was you . You signed Morgan out, walked her into the parking lot and goddamn disappeared."

            ═══════════════════

The incoming video message blinks at the top of the StarkPad in his hands, and Tony watches it sluggishly. 

Blink. Blink. Blink. 

Tears trail down his cheeks unbidden, dripping off his chin and soaking into his shirt. He watches the blinking notification with a terror so insurmountable it holds him where he is, pins him into the chair.

He's got a million trackers on both of kids, tucked into backpacks and clothes and watches, and none of them do him a damn bit of good now. His tech has been fried. 

Morgan's fucking gone, too.

"Tony." Rhodey's fingers appear in his eyespace, unfurled and beseeching. Foggily, he lets his gaze trace across the lines in the man's palm. "Give me the tablet, man." 

Tony doesn't, but he also doesn't resist when Rhodey carefully plucks the rectangular device from his grasp. His own fingers curl back in like the legs of a dying spider.

A dying fucking spider. 

He blinks numbly up at Rhodey, running a hand across the wetness on his cheeks. "It's gonna be Morgan on there, Rhodes. Morgan." 

Rhodey grimaces, the expression traveling down to where Tony sits. "Call Pepper. Tell her to come home now." 

Tony closes his eyes, pulling in a ragged, lethargic breath. He can't move. He can't breathe. He can't even exist. "They're both gone." 

Crouching down in front of him, that damn tablet still tucked under his arm, Rhodey chases his eyes down until Tony looks at him. "I promise you. We are going to find them. Both of them. You have to believe me." 

Tony nods lifelessly, the words a million miles away. 

Peter. Morgan. Gone. 

Rhodey pushes forward. "But you have to pull it together. You have to. This isn't going to help either of them. You can't lose it right now." 

He lets his gaze travel to the blinking alert obscured under Rhodey's arm, the quiet threat there, and he forces himself to take a deep, steadying breath. The action pulls at his breaking heart, but he makes himself do it anyway. 

He lets the pain of breathing pull him out of the fog descending into his brain. He has to exist. "Okay," he finally allows, resolutely, shaking the remaining numbness away. "Okay. I can do this." 

His voice is still raw, still scratchy, but there must be something resolute in it that Rhodey can recognize. 

He appraises Tony for just a minute more, eyes narrowed in contemplation before nodding and rising to his feet. "Call Pepper. She needs to come home now. May. Happy. Get them all here." 

Tony runs a hand through his hair, nodding. "Yeah. Got it." 

"We'll call the Avengers. What's left of them. We'll get everyone here that we can." 

The video message continues to flash, demanding attention. 

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"Think they'll come?" Tony asks softly. 

Rhodey scoffs. "For the boy who saved the universe? Of course. Even if he hadn't, Tony, they'd come for you. They'd come for Morgan." 

Tony takes one more second, one solitary second, to close his eyes and wallow in the guilt and the fear and the horror of losing his two kids. He lets it wash over him and threaten to bowl him over. 

When he opens his eyes again, he's ready to fucking go.

"FRIDAY, message Pep. Tell her to come home now. Code-word, Clusterfuck." 

"Message sent, Boss." 

Clusterfuck ; something's happened with the kids. It's the absolute worst scenario that he and Pepper could ever have planned for.

He turns to Rhodey. "Play the footage." 

The video plays. 

            ═══════════════════

They watch it again and again at Pepper's behest. 

The Rescue Suits stands sentry in the corner of the kitchen, parked there after Pepper's frantic dash home. Tony could send the Suit away, could park it in the lab with the Iron Man suit for the time being, but he just doesn't have the gumption with his kids AWOL.

Pepper's eyes are wide and glassy, a hand pressed against her mouth as she watches Tony-not-Tony make his way into the school office, watches as he talks to the secretary there, flashes her a debonair smile. 

"That's not you?" Pepper demands for the nth time, her eyes flashing to his and back to the screen, watching the footage loop back around. 

"No." Tony assures her again. "It's- It's not me. I don't know what that is." 

He's pacing back and forth across the kitchen, the smell of cinnamon and vanilla still wafting up from the unwashed dishes forgotten in the sink. It feels like a lifetime ago that he watched Peter and Morgan scarf down pancakes. 

Pepper is propped up against the kitchen table, her fingernails digging into the wood grain as she watches the only piece of evidence they have repeat again and again.

There's an irrational sort of anger flowing through Tony's veins right now. He'd vetted this school religiously, had scooped out every possible danger possible before sending his precious cargo of a daughter there. He'd planned for every eventual anomaly. Bomb? Check. Shooter? Check. Reporters? Check. The only thing Tony couldn't plan for was apparently himself. 

Tony-Not-Tony lays a hand upon Morgan's shoulder, and god , Tony's heart breaks at the pixels of her, watching as she's led out of the office and into the parking lot where the footage mysteriously disappears again. 

" Daddy? " His daughter on-screen asks, " What's wrong? Am I in trouble?" 

The question makes him want to cry. 

Pepper actually does, burying her face into her shoulder and taking three hitching breaths. 

Tony is at her side in an instant, pulling her into an embrace that she collapses into. 

"What the hell is going on?" She demands, raspy. Her shoulders quiver under his touch.

Rhodey shakes his head from where he stands, leaning miserably against the wall. "The footage outside the school is corrupted, just like with FRIDAY. Whoever that is took Morgan outside before promptly disappearing off the fucking radar." 

Pepper pulls in another dry sob. "How is that even possible? FRIDAY can't be hacked. FRIDAY, were you hacked?" 

"I have no indication of that," the A.I responds. 

"It's- it's some kind of super charged energy pulse," Tony tells her, shaking his head. "That's what has everything fried."

She pulls back from Tony's embrace, tossing her head left and right. "So we have, what? A fucking clone of you -" She jabs a finger into his chest, "Stealing the kids? Why? How?" 

The air sparks with an undercurrent of sudden electricity, raising the hair on his arms. He pulls Pepper back in close, shielding her with his body. 

A ring of orange sparks forms in the middle of his kitchen, casting the hue across the room, and then a familiar figure steps through, dressed in full regalia. 

Stephen Strange regards them all in that cool way of his, the orange behind him shrinking away. 

"We have much to discuss." 

Chapter Text

 Six Months Ago…

"I'll be right back, okay? I love you." He feels Pepper press the words into his temple with a kiss, vaguely feels her untangling their clasped hands to rise from the provided hospital chair. 

"Where-" He wets his achingly dry lips, tearing his gaze up from the slate grey linoleum between their feet. She offers him a patient smile, illuminated by the soft fluorescents above. "Where are you going?" 

"I'm going to get us some water, okay? And call Happy. Check in on Morgan." 

He nods slowly. He yearns to hear Morgan's voice, the cadence that holds his heart, but he can't. Not yet. He's all fucked up right now. 

Lost. Drowning in blackened ash.

Peter's in surgery, in the proverbial land of the unknown, his fate dangling precariously off the edge of a cliff. Tony won't know, doesn't know yet, if he needs to plunge off the cliff, too. 

He's still waiting on the jury to hear if he's going to survive this, or peris along with his kid.

"I'll be right back," Pepper repeats, squeezing his shoulder tightly. He leans into it, a point of contact in the aimless sea.

He watches her walk away, maneuvering through the overcrowded hallway with ease, and he fights back a sob at the sudden and complete loneliness he feels.

Then he sees her, an apparition of the painful past. She struts down the hallway, her head held high, and even the tears streaming down her face can't ruin the force of her power. 

Wakandans on either side of the hallway seem to feel the gale force of her winds, not a gentle New York breeze but a full blown tsunami in their midst. 

May Parker. 

He hasn't seen her since- 

Before. 

Before he failed, before he took Peter from her and took him into space, before he cradled their dying boy as he dusted away. 

"Tony," she practically gasps out, stopping in front of where he's sitting, cowed in his own Wakandan hospital seat. He can hardly bring his eyes to meet hers, to see the silent soliloquy of a storm playing out there. 

He stares at her shoes instead, at the black scuffing marks that marr them. He swallows thickly.

"Tony," she tries again, imbuing her power into it, and he risks a look at her storm. 

She's raining, deep, unfathomable tears pouring down her cheeks. "Tony," she says for the third time. 

He hasn't seen her in years.

There's gray in her hair where there hadn't been before, an addition of well-earned lines in her face. Somehow, regardless of the status of their blood, he can see Peter in her. 

In the tempest of her eyes, the swell of her jaw. 

Even in the way she collapses in the seat next to him, grabbing his hand to wrap in her own, sending him warmth and kindness when he doesn't deserve it. 

He makes a choking sound, his extremities cold and hot all at once. There's dull pain on the tips of his fingers, courtesy of cutting himself on desperation and magic rock.

Somewhere, behind that glass door labeled OR-AUTHORIZED ACCESS is the stupid, truly altruistic kid they love. Fighting for his life. Barely breathing. Burned. 

He has to find a way to tell her that, to tell her that he let him get hurt again. That Peter was a hero. That Peter wielded power that should have been impossible. That he's brave. That he's stupid. That Tony can't live in a world without him anymore.

There's so much, and he's choking on it.  "Peter-" He manages, gasped and stunted and wrong, because he's still seeing him on that battlefield, where he shouldn't have been, seeing the charred flesh. 

"I can't-" he forces out, finally, holding onto her hands with an urgency, squeezing amidst the ache there. She's both the storm and the port, the lighthouse pulling him into safety. "He's gonna be okay- he's gotta be-" 

"Of course he will," she responds, voice so self-assured that Tony risks another glance at her. She offers him a small, determined smile, silent tears still tracking down her cheeks. "Peter- He's too stubborn to be anything but. And he knows that I'll ground him, so help me God, he knows-" 

She chokes up a little too, but holds steadfast. 

Tony swims to her lighthouse, nodding shakily. His breaths are painful, gasping things, but he's not drowning like he was. "God, May. Yeah. He won't want to cross you. Shit, no." 

They laugh, a desperate sound reverberating off the hospital walls. They get a few odd looks, the hallways here crowded with healers and patients alike, especially with the influx of wounded and returned. 

Still, there's far crazier things than two old, broken souls laughing desperately in the hallway of a hospital. 

"Okay," she finally says. "Tell me- tell me everything." 

         So. 

                Tony. 

                         Does.

             ═══════════════════

"What do you want, Dumbledore?" Tony demands, angling his body to keep Pepper behind him. He vividly imagines sicking the Rescue Suit on the Wizard, just for the satisfaction of seeing something beyond indifference or regret on the man's face. Tony wants to see fear. He wants someone to pay the debt of Peter's sacrificed arm.

Rhodey is at his side instantly, crossing his arms across his chest in the face of the wizard's scowl. He returns it with one of his own, his face twisted into something dark and angry. Tony could kiss the man for his unrelenting loyalty. 

"We have a problem," Strange informs them.

Tony feels his eyebrows jerk up and his temper flare hot. At least now he has somewhere reasonable to discharge it.  "You- you got something to do with this? My kids?"

He takes an immediate step forward, hands clenching to fists at his side, and only Rhodey's steadying hand on his arm keeps him from stalking across the kitchen in his surging anger. 

If Strange has done something, if he's responsible in any way for the fact that the kids are gone, Tony will crack.

If there's anyone more guilty then he is for Peter's missing arm, for the scars that keep the kid trapped inside the house, it's Stephen fucking Strange, Sorcerer Extraordinare. The man who was copasetic with sending a child to die.

The man who knew the outcome before it came. The one who knew that a 16 year old would take the weight of the world on his shoulders and Snap. 

Magic crackles in the air as Strange shifts his knuckles. His voice drips with the same type of sarcasm that powers Tony. "Please. I'm not here to fight with you. Contrary to your assumptions." 

"Assumptions?" Tony demands, shaking under Rhodey's open palm. "You were going to let a child die-" 

"For the greater good," Strange cuts in, impatient. His lip curls into a snarl, a challenge if Tony ever received one.

"Oh, fuck that-" 

"Stop." Rhodey's voice is cool and calm, the anger on his face not quite seeping into his words. Probably he knows that Tony has enough of it for the both of them. His fingers dig into Tony's skin just enough to quell the fury vibrating there. "Why are you here?" 

He directs the question to the unwelcome man standing on the opposite side of the kitchen, eying the silver sentry with obvious disdain. "Like I said, we have a problem." 

"The kids?" Pepper takes a step forward to stand by Tony's side, her gaze burning as she stares down the wizard. Her eyes practically spark with the intensity of her own fury. "This has something to do with Morgan and Peter?" 

Stephen regards her for a moment before nodding stiffly. "Yes. I'm afraid so." 

Tony barks out a laugh that lacks humor. "What did you do?" 

"I think you have a lot of explaining to do," Rhodey says, his voice barely able to maintain its reserved quality. Tony can fucking tell. He's close to snapping, too. 

Strange lets his cool gaze rake across the trio. "Have you heard of the multiverse?"

             ═══════════════════

When Peter awakes, he expects to be greeted with orange and dust. He imagines that he'll be back on Titan, confused, and he'll have lost another five years of his life.

Instead, he finds glaring white. 

The color is so bright that he immediately has to slam his eyes shut again, groaning at the intensity of it. He has a chance to wearily wonder if he's somehow in the medbay, when a timid, frightened voice calls his name. 

"Petey?" 

Instantly, his eyes fly open and he jerks upright, scanning the overwhelming sea of white to find her. 

"Mo?" 

She's huddled in a corner, her feet pulled up to her chest with long track marks of tears pooling down her face, her nose dripping terrified snot. "You wouldn't wake up ," she tells him brokenly, a sob crawling up her throat. 

His own itches with the same emotion, and he drags himself over to her. The floor beneath them is a hard, porcelain tile, and Peter can vaguely feel the ache of sleeping on it tingling across his shoulders and back. 

"I'm so sorry ," he tells her earnestly.

She shifts away from him at his approach, and he stills instantly.

"Are you- are you gonna be mean? " She asks him tearfully, looking up at him through her wet eyelashes. Her body shivers as her brain desperately tries to reconcile their situation

"Mean?" The thought hurts his heart, and he immediately shakes his head. "No, no. I promise. I'm- I'm not gonna be mean. Especially not to you. "

She appraises him for a solid ten seconds, sniffling, before finally nodding her ascent. 

Peter books it the rest of the way to her, pulling her against him with his only arm. She immediately buries her face into his chest, and he keeps his arm wrapped around her waist, firmly against him. 

"I was scared," she murmurs softly into his shirt. It's the same one from breakfast, the one emblazoned with Spiderman's mask. She's still wearing her taupe floral dress. 

That doesn't really tell him anything though. Not where they are, or when they are. They would still be wearing their same clothes if they'd been dusted.

He glances down at his wrist, hoping to find the black band of his specially designed StarkWatch; the one outfitted with a panic button to alert Mister Stark to any emergencies when activated. His heart sinks to find it gone, his wrist bare.

With Morgan sequestered safety in his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck, he takes a minute to appraise their surroundings. 

It's a white box, about the size of his room at the lake house but empty of absolutely everything. There's nothing to see but the overwhelming alabaster that surrounds them. 

Four corners. Colorless, cold.

Peter untangles his arm from around Morgan's shoulder, against her protests, leaning back with her to spread his fingers out across the wall behind them. 

The material feels like the floor, cold and hard, but there's something else there, too. Something that pulses beneath his fingertips. Electricity ?

The only light comes from what looks to be a single fixture inlaid in the ceiling. 

"Where's Mommy?" Morgan demands as Peter threads his arm back around her. She quivers fearfully in his lap, and his heart breaks all over again.

"I don't know, Mo." He tells her honestly. He doesn't even know when they are. "Are you hurt?" 

She shakes her head against his chest. "Daddy- Daddy was mean to me." 

That catches Peter's attention, and he shifts her to look into her dark, fearful eyes. "You saw him? Your Dad?" 

She nods, biting her lip. "He picked me up from school. He was mean. He said- he said you were hurt." 

As if she's just remembering that, her eyes blow wide and she scours the length of him. 

"I'm not hurt," he ensures her quickly, and tears well up in her eyes as she burrows her face back against him. "Are you hurt?" 

She shakes her head, offering a mumbled, "No." 

He lets his finger trace across her back, gently, in that way he knows soothes her.

It makes him think of the night she crawled into his bed, after a nightmare had yanked her from sleep. Peter had barely known her then, had just been sent to the lakehouse after the awful week spent at his apartment in Queens. Morgan had been raised on bedtime stories about him , though, had known him for a lifetime when he'd been dust.

She'd crawled into his bed that night, sniffling like she was now, and collapsed against him like he wasn't a piece of glass blown in heat too high. Like he wasn't deformed and broken. 

He'd reassured her, tiredly, that the monsters in her dreams couldn't get her. He'd keep her safe. He had sketched the word over and over again between her shoulder blades until she had fallen asleep again, huddled against him.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

Someone, someone who was and was not Tony had abducted them both. That Peter was sure of. 

If nothing else, he knew that. 

His fingers trace a heart out on Morgan's quivering back, and he knows one more thing. 

He's going to keep her safe.

             ═══════════════════

"The multiverse?" Tony questions, shaking his head rapidly side to side. The idea of it , the theory of countless parallel universes threatens to overwhelm him entirely. He digs the heel of his palm into his eyes before turning his red-rimmed gaze back to Stephen. "You're telling me that the multiverse is real?" 

"We exist in one of infinite realities that is known as Earth-618," the Sorcerer soberly informs him. 

"What the fuck ," Tony exclaims, running another hand across his face. He falters back a step, and Rhodey is there to steady him, as always.

"Yes." Strange's voice is cool. "I'm sure it's a lot to take in."

"Excuse me," Pepper cuts in, her voice taking on that quality that means her perfectly manicured facade is fraying. She takes another step forward. "I don't mean to be rude, but what the hell does this have to do with Morgan and Peter?"

"The multiverse is a hypothetical ," Tony insists, a little wildly. He can feel his head attempting to shake the thought away again, knocking side to side. "You're telling me we have a proliferating space-time continuum? Hell, factor in cosmological inflation-" 

"I don't much care if you believe me or not," Strange interrupts, blunt. "The multiverse is real. And it's in trouble."

"How?" Rhodey demands. 

Stephen begins to pace the kitchen floor, his boots scuffing loudly against the hardwood. He spares a glance to the Suit standing stiffly in the corner, scoffing at it. 

"We are at risk of an incursion," he tells them evenly, threading his hands behind his back as he paces. 

"An incursion?" Rhodey questions. He sends a questioning look Tony's way. 

Tony shrugs bitterly. "Ask Gandalf. I don't fucking know." 

Strange scoffs again. "Charming. An incursion is what happens when two parallel universes collide. Eventually, if the problem is not fixed, the two will implode." 

"Why are they…colliding?" Pepper asks carefully, her forehead furrowed in thought. Behind them, momentarily forgotten, Morgan continues to ask the same question over and over again. 

Daddy? What's wrong? Am I in trouble?

Strange clocks the screen behind them, his pacing pausing to watch the scene loop back around and play again. 

His face is hard, and he sends a glare Tony's way. " Someone is toying with the very fabric of reality." 

Pepper gasps, turning a horrified expression in Tony's direction. Her already pale face whitens further. " Anthony Edward Stark-" 

He holds up both hands placatingly, returning Strange's icy stare with one of his own. "It's not me. I'm retired, remember?"

"No," the man allows. He points a crooked finger out, the magic pulsing invisible across the air, to point at the footage. "One of your variants is." 

Simultaneously, three pairs of eyes dart back to the screen. " That's a variant?" Pepper questions, breathless, crossing back to the footage to stare at it in half disgust, half wonder. 

Tony watches the man who looks just like him, who apparently is him, drop his arm to his daughter's shoulder again.

"That is Anthony Edward Stark from Earth-173," Strange informs them. "He's the one who has taken the children, and the one threatening to destroy reality itself." 

"Why?" Rhodey wonders, gaze jumping incredulously to Tony. "If he's like our Tony, then he's gotta know-"

"He's not," Strange interjects quickly. "He's nothing like the Tony Stark you know." 

"What's his deal then?" Nausea bubbles in Tony's gut, watching as the man who is, and isn't, him leads his daughter away. He can see it as she crosses the threshold in the school office; the confusion and the wariness already brewing in her deep, dark eyes. 

An eerie silence descends over the lakehouse, until every eye makes its way back to the wizard standing stiffly in the corner of the kitchen. 

"You won't like it," he warns, and Tony's stomach lurches further. He braces a hand against it, curling over at the waist. 

"Tell us." 

The wizard deliberates for a moment, his lips tight, before finally opening them. "The Peter Parker variant is unique in the multiverse," he finally says.

The thought startles Tony, and he blinks. If there's fucking Tony Stark replicas out there, of course there's Peter Parker ones, as well. Rhodey ones. Pepper ones. Morgan ones. 

He's a fucking genius , and his head still pounds with the cursed knowledge of it. He straightens at the waist, bringing up a finger to rub the ache forming in his temple. "Unique how?"

"Truly evil versions of him are exceedingly rare. In fact, I've never met an iteration of Parker that wasn't inherently selfless." 

Pride blooms in Tony's chest, as well as disgust. "How many versions of my kid have you met?"

Dr. Stephen fucking Strange who brought Peter back just to die. 

"Enough of them. A few I have become close with." 

A protective instinct joins the pride and disgust fighting for property in Tony's chest. "And how many have you condemned to death -" 

"I didn't even know that Peter could be evil," Rhodey mutters quietly, gaze faraway. Tony can practically see the memories pirouetting across his pupils, can see Rhodey recalling the politeness, the eagerness, the selflessness that makes Pete who he is. 

Strange inclines his head in Rhodey's direction. "There's a propensity for evil in us all, I fear. Though, in Peter's case, the chances are…lowered. It helps to keep the multiverse stabilized to have certain individuals uniform across a multitude of realities. He's…an anchor point, in a way. Some variants, of course, would be evil-" 

"Our Peter would never ," Pepper tells the wizard, her shoulders held high. There's a finality to her voice that leaves no room for doubt. The sparks jumping in her eyes take fire, lighting across her skin. Tony can practically feel the heat of her temper. 

"That is why your variant," he points at Tony, "Wants him. He wants to turn a Peter Parker that should not." 

"Why?" Tony demands. What the fuck kinda sense did that make? Why the hell would someone want to twist Peter, kind Peter, into something that he wasn't? 

What kind of man would want to squeeze the good, the kindness, the very fabric of Peter, away?

Strange affixes him a look. "A plethora of reasons. Mainly, I suspect, to see if he can. He's going to have Peter kill Morgan."

The gasp that goes up across the room is deafening. 

Tony's face goes red. "Pete would never-" 

"He will be tortured until he does," Strange replies, brusque. "And if he does? I fear it will shatter our universe." 

            ═══════════════════

They sit in the white room for an insurmountable amount of time, Morgan perched worriedly in Peter's lap while he draws a gentle finger across her back. He spells out words that she has to guess, and they succeed in pulling delighted giggles from her every time she gets one right; cat, rat, bat, love . She spends the time telling him about her school, and her homework, and about the boy she pushed in class for pulling pigtails. 

He only puts her down once, amidst her pleas, to try and punch their way out of the ivory prison. 

He'd hit the wall with a closed fist, striking the wall with as much force as he could muster. The impact had merely traveled back up his arm, agonizingly, to the point he'd cradled his fist to his chest, biting off a scream. He'd been worried, frantically, that he'd broken his wrist.

That he'd lost one of the only weapons at his disposal before he'd even had a chance to utilize it. He'd examined his hand, carefully, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood before concluding that his wrist was fine. 

The wall had remained entirely intact. Not a chip or a crack from the impact.

He abandons the idea. Whatever mysterious, thrumming material their small cage is constructed of, Peter won't simply be able to punch their way out of it. 

He can still feel the aftershock in his knuckles, the numb pain radiating there as he rubs Morgan's back again. The pain is a pale imitation of the agony the Infinity stones had wrought upon him, but the ache is a haunting reminder nonetheless. 

"I'm hungry," she tells him softly, and his hand stills. 

"I know."

"Do you think that Not Daddy will bring us food?" She casts a hopeful look in his direction. 

She's too little for this, and he's too weak to get her out. 

Maybe, maybe if this had been before he could've prevented this. Before he'd lost his arm, before he'd lost the part of himself that was stronger. Before he'd lost Spider-Man. 

"Hopefully." He bites his lip again, tasting copper, and drowns in the guilt that washes across his psyche.  

"Do you think Daddy will come and save us soon?" 

She's broken down the confusing situation into terms that are easy enough to understand; Not Daddy is the man that both her and Peter encountered today. The one with the too fast heart. With the distinctly Not-Tony scent.

Peter doesn't know if it's a clone, or a case of some wicked mind control, but he knows that their Tony would never do this. He'd never kidnap them, would never do anything that had even the slightest risk of hurting them. Especially Morgan.

Peter misses his Tony fiercely.

"Of course." He hopes the words don't sound as hollow as they feel. Mister Stark might have no idea where they are. Or when they are. Peter doesn't tell her that, though, he simply wraps his arm around her tight to pull her close. "He's out there right now looking for us." 

She sighs in contentment. "Daddy is the best." 

Peter nods easily. "Yeah. He is. And I know that he's not going to rest until he finds you-" 

A sharp itch crawls across his neck, alerting him to the incoming danger a second before the wall shifts, a white laboratory door melting out of the alabaster. 

Like nanobots , his mind supplies, watching the wall ripple and undulate before his very eyes.

A loud whoosh emanates from the newly formed door, followed by a harsh gasp from Morgan. 

In one smooth motion, Peter flips her out of his lap and nudges her behind his legs, standing up to face whatever the threat is. 

He feels her clutching the fabric of his Spider-Man pajamas bottoms tightly, her face pressed into the back of his knees, her heart galloping a million miles a minute. He counts each beat.

The materializing door opens, and a familiar figure steps into the room. 

          ═══════════════════

Tony drops clumsily into one of the kitchen chairs, a hand rubbing against his chest. He can feel his heartbeat beneath the skin, quickening to an unhealthy pace.

"Go get them!" Pepper orders loudly, maneuvering to stand behind Tony's drooping form. She clutches his shoulder tightly, and he grasps her hand with his own, floundering. His pulse reverberates through his fingertips to hers.

The words repeat in his skull like a broken movie frame, replaying the same horror film over and over. Torture. Peter. Kill. Morgan.  

There's no infomercial promises, no placating vows that can fix his terror now. But wait, there's more! Your kids will be tortured !

"I cannot." 

Pepper's gaze hardens into stone. "Why the hell not? Aren't you supposed to be magic?" 

Strange hesitates. "This Stark is working with a very powerful relic on his side, something that he stole from another version of me. The sacred Book of the Vishanti. It's- the spells that this book contains are very powerful."

"How did he get it?" Tony demands. 

Strange sighs, a deep sound that seems to pull from very depths of him. There's a weariness on his face that seems out of place. "He betrayed everyone, from what I understand. Took the Avengers in his timeline down in one fatal, fell swoop. My counterpart was included in that." 

Rhodey lets loose a whoosh of air, following it up with a quick curse. "Well, shit ."

"Can't you just counteract his magic?" Pepper declares, a hint of desperation in her voice. She's still clutching Tony's hand, drawing strength from him as much as he is her. 

Strange shakes his head. "The book of Vishanti is not the only tool he has." 

"Is that what fried my tech?" Tony wonders aloud. His eyes widen, automatically plugging pieces into the puzzle. An electromagnetic pulse strong enough to temporarily shut down his systems, a flash of orange. Of course it's magic , the same type of magic that ignites when the Wizard flicks his finger, when he opens a portal-

"Yes," Strange replies needlessly. "He's using an inter-dimensionary travel spell; The Moons of Munnopor. It allows him to enter and leave a universe at will. As well as…remove things." 

"Why haven't you stopped him?" Tony's voice cracks. Things . His kids.

"Every time I make it to a universe, he is already gone. Like here." Strange motions to the entirety of the lakehouse. "I was too late. He retrieved your Peter and left before I had even arrived. It's been the same in every reality." 

Tony's extremities go cold, freezing like the tundra on a winter day. "Every reality?" He demands. "As in, he's done this before? Kidnapped a Peter Parker from a different reality?" 

Strange takes a deep breath, his face haunted. Tony remembers wishing for that very expression only moments ago, longing to see something beside guilt or indifference. This- this he hates. It terrifies him to his core, has the cold spreading across his arms and chest. Even Pepper's warmth struggles to keep him unthawed. "He has taken five Parker variants from their own realities. Including the one from his own world, he has destroyed six." 

The sound that tears out of Tony's throat is synonymous with grief. "Destroyed? He fucking killed them?" 

He tries to breath, to pull in a painful burst of air, but he keeps picturing Peter dead, Morgan dead, and he feels himself spiraling even though he had promised he wouldn't- 

He's beyond cold, he's cryogenically frozen.

"I know that must be hard to hear," Strange replies, and though it lacks the man's usual sarcasm, Tony finds himself rocketing to his feet in anger. Apparently rage can unfreeze him. 

"Hard to hear?" Tony all but shrieks. "Hard to hear? You're telling me my kids have been taken by some hocus-pocus other me, and that you can't track him down, and he's going to destroy them?" 

The rage propels Tony all the way forward until he's jabbing an accusing finger in the man's chest, his sentient cape billowing nervously around his shoulders. 

"I don't understand," Pepper's voice breaks, a desolate sound. "Why does this variant keep taking them?" 

"Like I said before. He wants to create a wholly evil Peter Parker. He keeps failing." Strange uses a hand to clutch Tony's, twisting the jabbing appendage away. "The first refused to kill his Aunt May." 

The words cause Tony to falter,  and he lets his hand be pushed away by the wizard. "Of course," he chokes out. "Of course Pete wouldn't kill his Aunt. Shit ." 

"The second, his Uncle. The third, his girlfriend. One version refused to kill you." Strange pauses theatrically, and Tony tries to wrap his mind around that ; an evil him threatening Peter to kill another him. It's insanity spinning around his skull, and he groans miserably. 

"He keeps trying different Parker's and different victims. None, thus far, have worked." 

"Go to him," Pepper orders, her shoulders squared like the CEO that she is. "Go into his reality, and Bring. Them. Back ." 

Tony could kiss that attractive mouth of hers. If he wasn't bordering on losing his actual mind at the moment. 

He'll catalog it for later; big fat kisses for both Rhodey and Pepper. And Morgan and Peter. Hell, he'll dole them out to Happy and May, too. The second he has his kids back, he's going to put his Kiss The Cook apron to good use. 

Strange meets her eyes evenly, guilty ghosts swirling across his features. "I cannot enter into his reality. Along with the relic, the book of Vishanti, he's created an entirely new element of his own that I have been unable to breach. He seems to have wrapped himself and his reality in it, this- this new element. I imagine he has imbued it with another spell-"

"He can do that?" Tony demands. "I thought you were an all powerful wizard." 

Strange, in usual fashion, regards him coolly. "Sorcerer. And you would be surprised what your variants can accomplish, Stark. Especially those who lack your empathy. This Stark is light-years ahead of you. A million times stronger." 

"I wouldn't say that," Tony mutters, perturbed. 

"I need you to create something that can shatter that protective barrier he's enacted around himself. If you can do that, we can save your child and Peter." 

"My children," Tony amends quickly, turning a burning gaze to Stephen. "Both of them, okay? Both of my kids. We save them both." 

Strange cocks an eyebrow. "You better get started then." 

            ═══════════════════

The man is wearing Tony's signature affable smile, decked out in an expensive three piece suit. He pauses by the newly formed door, tucking his hands into his pockets. 

"Hello," he greets easily, his eyes crawling across them. 

Morgan's head peeks from behind his knees, and Peter uses his hand to corral her back. 

"Who are you?" Peter questions, his eyes narrowing. 

The man opens his arms wide, hands removed from his pockets, the smile stretching into something sinister. "I'm Tony Stark. Genius, Entrepreneur, Billionaire. God ." 

Morgan whimpers. 

Peter squints, trying to find something to discern this man from the one he knows. There's still an undercurrent of scent on him that Peter doesn't recognize, his heart a little fast, but he's otherwise identical to the man Peter cares about. 

"Do all Tony Stark's have such an ego problem?" He quips back. 

The man cocks his head, amused. "Do all Peter Parker's have a smart-mouth?" 

Peter shrugs, feigning nonchalance that he doesn't feel. His Spidey-sense continues to dance uneasily across his skin. "I've only ever met one."

"I've met a few of you," Not Tony continues, blaisé, "Though not all were so broken ." 

Peter's cheeks turn red. "Where are we?" He questions. "Why did you take us? If- If you have a problem with Peter Parker then you should let her go." 

Morgan murmurs a frightened no , her hold on his pants tightening. 

"The first Peter Parker that I met," Not Tony bulldozes on, ignoring Peter's plea, "Was the one from my very own universe." 

Universe? Peter thinks quickly, his face morphing to shock. Like the multiverse ?

"He was older than you." Not Tony begins to pace, circling around them. Peter jolts, keeping Morgan behind him as he shifts to keep his face to the dangerous man wearing his mentor's face.

"Much older, I think." Not Tony pinches his chin thoughtfully as he paces, a predator circling around captured prey. "What are you? Like 12? My Peter Parker was in his 20's, and a pain in my ass." 

" Was ?" Peter questions, the word leaving his mouth of it's own volition. 

Not Tony smirks. " Was . You know what that pest did?" 

Peter lifts his shoulders in another shrug. "Probably something amazing, if I know myself." 

"He ruined my plans." The blaisé veneer finally cracks under the weight of fury that crosses the man's features, twisting his face into something that doesn't resemble the Tony he knows at all. 

"Were your plans… evil ?" Peter hedges. "Cause, that's, like, exactly the kind of plans that I try to ruin." 

"Morality is irrelevant when you're a God." 

"No offense, Mister Evil, but you sound like kind of a dick."

A cruel smile spreads across his face, his teeth glinting in the fluorescent light. "You haven't seen anything yet, Parker. Do you know what I did to him? To the Peter Parker that ruined my plans?" 

Peter wishes that he could do something to get Morgan out of here. He can feel her quivering, her legs trying to follow his as he maneuvers around the idly pacing man. He gulps, shaking his head. "Nah, that's okay-" 

He doesn't want Morgan to hear whatever it is that befell the Peter before him. He doesn't really want to know either. It sounds vaguely demoralizing.

"I killed him." 

Morgan makes a terrified noise, her fingernails digging into his skin with the intensity of her fear. Peter flinches.

"First, though, I kept him in this room." Not Tony gestures to the walls around them. "For months. I tortured him every single day. He paid dearly for what he did." 

Peter swallows thickly again. "Now you're stealing me from other universes? That seems a bit obsessive. Like a stalker. Joe Goldburg much?" 

"I have a theory." Not Tony reaches a hand out to the wall, his nail dragging across the cold material there as he circles around to try and catch Peter's back. "About morality. About making people forsake their beliefs in search of the pleasures of the flesh." 

"Okaaaay," Peter draws, pulling the vowel out long. He jerks quickly away as Not Tony paces too close, nearly tripping over Morgan's feet. She makes a quiet, terrified sound of protest. "Sounds crazy." 

He can feel his heart beating wildly in his chest, his stomach rolling uneasily. His Spidey-sense continues to assault his senses, demanding him to get out get out get out. 

"All the Peters so far have disappointed me. Greatly. None have done as I've asked."

For the first time, Not Tony's eyes drip down to the cowering figure behind Peter's legs. 

Peter feels his beating heart leap into his throat, and desperately grasps for anything to draw the attention back to himself, even as the implications of all the Peters knocks around in his head. "I'd probably get used to disappointment. I think that's probably a Peter Parker special. It's like my one good skill, you know? That and sarcasm."

"Idiot," Not Tony sneers, and it lacks any of the warmth that usually accompanies the name when his Tony says it.

Because Not Tony means it. Not Tony thinks he's stupid. 

Not Tony holds his hand out in front of him, a relaxed fist,  an action that Peter knows. Because whoever this Tony is, he shares some of the same mannerisms. He's calling an Iron Man gauntlet to him.

The tech grows across the man's skin in a way that is entirely unfamiliar to Peter, though, pooling across his arm as though it was molten sliver. Liquid, alive. He watches as Not Tony's forearm disappears under the liquid, watches as the metal solidifies and shifts to white.

Peter gasps at it before he considers the danger, because the tech if nothing else is wicked cool. It reminds him of Tony's nanotech, but it's entirely new. 

It's not the repulsor that Peter knows, not the familiar red and gold that has saved his ass many times over. 

The gauntlet on Not Tony's wrist is as white as the walls that hold him contained. The same cold, impenetrable material.

And it's pointed at him. 

"This is your task," Not Tony informs him, keeping the gauntlet pointed true. Peter can practically feel the sizzle of it across his sternum. "You're going to kill her," he darts his eyes down, once, and Peter's heart stops. 

"No," he grinds out. "Never." 

"If you don't-" the cruel sneer remains fixed on the face that was once so familiar to him, "I'm going to hurt you. Every single day until you die, or she does." 

Morgan lets out a wail. 

"She won't die," Peter vows. 

"Then, let the experiment begin." The gauntlet fires, and Peter has a single solitary second to twist and push Morgan out of the way before heat erupts across his side. 

Chapter Text

Five Months Ago…

Tony traces the ridges of Peter's remaining knuckles gently, acidic tears making their way down his face. He can feel the proverbial burn of them, and he bites back a sob. 

May Parker is curled into the room's small couch, tucked into herself in sleep. He doesn't want to wake her with his own agony, not when she's finally resting. Her face is hidden within the beige confines of the couch, but Tony would bet money that her cheeks hold their own dried remnants of tears. 

Peter lost his arm today. 

Tony forces himself to look again, to memorize the place that Peter's right arm used to be and now isn't. There's nothing but air where the charred limb was only yesterday. 

It's his fault. His fault.

"Hey bud." Tony's voice is hardly there, a whisper of a whisper. He watches Peter's eyelids for anything, for the faintest flutter. The knuckles beneath his fingers don't twitch. "I know- I know when you wake up that it's gonna be- gonna be hard." 

Tony bites the inside of cheek, drawing blood, choking silently. 

He thinks of Peter. 

Of Peter swinging across Queens with reckless abandon, of Peter tinkering in the lab, even Peter texting on his phone. 

He forces himself to stare at the empty space again. The space where everything has changed.

"We'll get through it, though, okay?" 

He brings up his tentative hand to comb through Peter's hair, brushing across his scarring skin in the process. Large portions of the flesh remain black and burnt, as fresh as that day on the battlefield of blood and death, but Shuri assures him that it's normal, that it's healing at its own pace. Even if Tony wishes fervently, prays even, that Peter's enhanced healing could do more. 

"I just need you to wake up." Another silent sob hitches up his throat, and he has to bury his face into his shoulder to stave it off. His fingers pause in Peter's hair. "Please wake up, Pete. God, May needs you. I need you." 

Nothing. No fluttering, no twitching.

"Your friend Ted, too." Tony smiles privately to himself, mentally filling in the silence in his mind. Imagining Peter scoffing, correcting, "It's Ned . You know it's Ned." 

"He's been here, you know. To see you. Spent the night and everything. Regular old nerd brigade that night."

He snags on a tangle and carefully sets to working it free. 

"Even that one girl, the scary one, stopped by." 

Tony grimaces a little as his fingers thread through the hair. "She, well, she wasn't snapped, bud. She's in college now, I'm afraid. And I know that'll be tough, too. Cause, well, I know you liked her. She came by though. Left you a card." 

Tony's eyes flick to the small table set up beside Peter's hospital bed, to the offerings and gifts left for him. Get well cards and flowers and Spider-Man memorabilia all piled together to nearly overflowing lengths. It's only a very small portion of what's been received, according to Happy, who's been dealing with the onslaught back at the Tower. 

The gifts and the gratitude have been endless since the world discovered it was Spider-Man who did the final snap and not one of the Earth's mightiest Avengers. Queens has never been prouder of their masked vigilante. 

"You've got a sister, you know," Tony continues, voice warbling. He brushes Peter's forehead again, wincing at the coarse healing there. "She's foaming at the mouth to meet you. Practically rabid. Told her she's gotta wait for you to wake up, though. She did not like that." 

Tony chuckles to himself. Only to himself. Because he's alone. May's in Lala land and Peter's someplace similar, just on a goddamn extended basis. 

Tony is alone, and it's his fault. His chuckle turns into a pained gasp. "Wake up. Please. Please." 

He drags a fingertip across Peter's unmarked cheek, fighting back the swell of his emotions and failing. "Wake up. Anytime now. We miss you."

He falls silent, closing his eyes. 

The muted chorus of May's snoring and Peter's heart monitor take up in the quiet left by his faltering voice. Tony breathes with it, lets it fill the cavernous hole in his chest. Each beep is a reminder that the boy still lives. Tony counts each one, holding the melody close, and eventually lets the sound carry him off to sleep as well.

He doesn't bother counting sheep anymore. He counts heartbeats instead.

        One beep.

                   Two beeps.

                                Three beeps…

             ═══════════════════

Peter comes back to sobbing. 

It takes him a moment to realign himself with the world, to push down the searing pain that's tearing across his abdomen and hip. 

He groans, pushing tentative fingers against the smarting pain. 

"Petey! Petey!" His name is being repeated over and over, a discordant mantra of terror, and he forces his eyes to open to find the owner.

Morgan's tear streaked face swims into focus, eyes a mile wide, and she lets out a heart rending cry.

"Hey, Mo," he coughs out, fingertips still gently probing the ache in his side. He pulls his hand up to see under the harsh light, and is relieved to find no red staining his fingertips.

Morgan is still sobbing, inconsolable, her head whipping back and forth. " Petey, Petey!" 

He takes a deep breath, pushing himself up from his prone position with difficulty. He hasn't quite mastered the one-handed push up on the best of days, and today is definitely not one of those. 

His abdomen flares at the action, red-hot, and he lets out a pained hiss before he can bite it back down, his eyes watering at the searing pain.

The man who isn't his Tony is gone. 

"You're- you're hurt!" Morgan wrenches out, snot trailing down her lips and chin. "Daddy hurt you!" 

"Hey, no. Morgan." He opens his arm, ignoring the pain, inviting her back into his embrace. 

She hiccups miserably, crawling across the white tile to ease into his lap. 

Her weight adds another layer of throbbing heat to his abdomen, and he uses the sleeve of his pajama shirt to wipe her nose and chin. "You're okay, Mo. I'm okay." 

She fists her little hands into his shirt, staring down at the singed remains of the bottom half. Peter follows her gaze, sucking in a breath at the dark, purpling bruise already spreading across his abdomen. 

The repulser hadn't been enough to break his skin open, but it had left a mark. 

"Daddy hurt you," she repeats, numb with shock. Her horrified eyes travel back up to his. 

He shakes his head quickly. "That wasn't Daddy, remember? That was the Not Daddy." 

It takes her a moment, her chest hitching, before she nods. "Not Daddy. Not Daddy." 

"Exactly. Not Daddy."

"He- he left food," Mohan tearfully tells him, pointing a hand behind her to some of the only color in their world of white. 

Peter's stomach grumbles furiously at the sight of it. Two bright red apples, two bags of chips, and what looks like two sandwiches wrapped in silo wrap. 

"Can we eat it?" Morgan asks, tentatively. He can hear the longing in her voice, can feel the stirrings of his own hunger even through the burning, bruising pain of his stomach.

He doesn't know how long they've been here, trapped in this cube, but the way his stomach is already twisting makes him think it's at least dinner time. 

He tries to weigh his options carefully, breathing evenly through the pain.

The man probably hasn't poisoned the food, not if he wants Peter to kill Morgan, which he never, ever will. 

Peter knows that he'll die before he ever lifts a hand to her. 

So the food is probably safe. 

His stomach lurches hungrily again, and it seals the deal. They won't last long if they don't eat. Peter really won't last long with his enchanted metabolism. 

He eyes the food warily again. The portions are small. Even if he ate everything that Not Tony left, including Morgan's portions, he'd still be within range of starving. 

"Yeah," he tells Morgan, because some food is better than no food. "Let's eat." 

She beams at him, the expression eerie against her pale, tear-stained cheeks, and scrambles off his lap to retrieve the food. 

The motion jostles him, and he bites his lip to hide the pained cry that threatens to escape, pressing a hand against his side. He can feel his heart hammering away against his skin.

Morgan scoops up the food, her arms full of it, and pulls a face. 

"Mo?" Peter asks, splaying his fingers out on the darkening bruise. 

She drops down in front of him, cross-legged, the food spilling out around her. "I hate bologna. I want grilled cheese." 

Peter grabs one of the silo-wrapped sandwiches, peeking at the lunch meat. "I know," he tells her gently, "But you should try and eat it, okay?" 

The pertrebeuted look doesn't leave her face, and she glares at the sandwich like it personally offended her. 

"How about this?" Peter offers, holding the sandwich out to her. "If you eat this, when we get home you never have to eat another bologna sandwich again." 

She appraises him, considering the deal with every fiber of her young brain, before she tentatively reaches out and takes the sandwich back. "Never again?" She confirms.

He nods. "Nope. I'll tell your Mom and Dad that they're hereby prohibited from ever trying to make you eat bologna again. Peter's rules." 

"Okay." She unwraps the sandwich, taking a large bite. Her nose crinkles in distaste, but she chews and swallows regardless. 

Peter tears into his own sandwich ravenously, his stomach rejoicing as the bland food hits his gullet. It's good to just eat, even if he finds himself yearning for one of Delmar's reubens. 

In the end, Morgan finishes off her sandwich, both of their chips, and an apple. 

Peter is still hungry.

              ═══════════════════

The lights never go off.

Eventually, with her hunger satiated, Morgan goes lax in his arms, her head lolling against his chest. He can tell by her lowered heart  beat and breathing that she's fallen asleep. 

He waits for a while, back resting against the cold wall, for the harsh lights to go away. 

His stomach continues to growl restlessly, demanding more food, but Peter can do nothing for it. 

He tries to close his eyes against the lights, and the hunger, and drift off into a semi-conscious state. He needs the healing desperately, and with food scarce, sleeping will be his only shot at keeping his metabolism going enough to heal him. 

Arm wrapped around Morgan's resting body, he eventually does drift off.

He dreams of dust and pain.

             ═══════════════════

Tony chugs the coffee in his hands, scowling. It tastes as bitter as his current predicament, and burns his throat on the way down. "How am I supposed to build something capable of shattering a multi-dimensional barrier when I don't even know what said barrier is?" 

He has his free hand braced against the workbench in his lab, eyes darting across the information displayed on the Holoscreen in front of him. 

It's all fucking shit. FRIDAY can't tell him a damn useful thing about the multiverse or elemental barriers that Tony doesn't already know. The wizard is asking him to understand and fix something that doesn't exist in this reality.

"Because you have to," Stephen replies curtly, leaning against the open doorway to the lab. His eyes are closed, his lids fluttering rapidly. It makes him think of Titan, of Strange plucking the worst outcome out of the air and dedicating Peter's life to it. It sends a shiver of disgust up his spine, makes him grind his teeth together to avoid saying something rash. Tony can see Pepper beyond him, frantically gesticulating as she speaks into the phone. 

Probably May. Maybe it's whoever is left on the frayed team that was once the Avengers. Tony doesn't really care.

"You're not getting it, Voldemort. I can't destroy something if I don't even know what substance it is . Because, according to everything I know, barriers like that should be fucking impossible." 

He gestures wildly to the Holoscreen in front of them, cocking an eyebrow.

Strange sighs, peeling open an eye to regard Tony. "It's an element known as Endo Sym. It doesn't yet exist in your world."

Without prompting, the screen behind Tony shifts to those terms. Like the wizard implied, the search comes up empty, an error screen flashing like an apology from FRIDAY herself.

Tony stares at the man in shock. "Then how the hell am I supposed to destroy it? I don't know what Endo fucking Sym is ." 

Pepper glances at him from the doorway, her expression pained. There's a silent pleading in her eyes that makes him sick, because he can't do this. He can't make something out of nothing.

Strange doesn't share his qualms, and neither does his cape apparently. In unison, they both shrug. "You invent it first. And then you invent a way to destroy it."

Tony is still staring at him slack-jawed, the empty results illuminating him from behind. "That's seriously your plan?"

"Don't underestimate yourself," Strange tells him seriously. "You created vibranium under a similar time constraint-" 

"I had blueprints!" He levels an angry fist down to the table, papers and tech flying off. The action doesn't prompt any movement from Strange, who continues to stare at him and laze uselessly against the doorframe. 

"You perfected time travel," Strange continues, "To bring billions back."

Peter , his brain connects automatically. He's staring numbly down at the displaced tools now strewn across the floor, the half-finished tech designs that he and Peter have been working on in the middle of night in lieu of sleeping.

Tony would never have fucked with time travel if it weren't for the kid. 

He stares at the remnants of the lab for a moment more, missing his children with an ache, an ache that offers to simply swallow him whole if he lets it, before he turns back to Stephen Strange. "Is there anything you can tell me that's actually going to help?"

"I can offer you something that might keep you motivated," the wizard replies, strained. 

Tony stiffens. "What's that?"

"Time flows different in each reality. What seems like a day for us might be much longer in another."

Tony blinks, feeling familiar cold horror creep across his flesh. "What are you saying?"

The Cloak affixed to Strange's neck rises up to stroke the man's cheek, gently, as though sensing some internal struggle that doesn't dare play out across his face. "If we manage to get your children back-" 

The statement pulls a strangled noise from Tony's throat.

"-I imagine that they'll have been there a lot longer than you've even been missing them. I suggest you work fast."

             ═══════════════════

In a bizarre twist of fate, caffeine appears in his hands all night. 

Pepper pours him a fresh cup when he finishes the dredges of his old one, Rhodey leaves at some point to bring back food that no one eats, passing off a steaming cappuccino when he arrives. Even Happy, who seems to just sneak in, brings a cup of joe.

He also drops Morgan's pink, bedazzled backpack to one of the workbenches, a grimace on his face. Tony chugs the steaming joe and cradles his daughter's belongings to his chest before he returns to the task at hand; accomplishing the impossible.

No one tries to make him rest, or sleep, or stop. 

Self-care is officially on fucking hold. 

Domesticity is off the table. 

Tony falls easily back into his insomniac ways. He'd never really left them, if he's being honest, not after moving away, not after putting the suit up. 

He'd spent too many long, suffering nights crying over Peter. Nights that he'd rather spend awake, sobbing, then spend dreaming of the kid turning to ash on his fingertips.

Even bringing the kid back hadn't really helped, not when Peter had spent the first few months waking up in full blown panic attacks, or with his long lost arm lighting up in phantom pain.

Suffice to say, Tony works through the night easily. The caffeine is just a nice boost.

Strange meanders idly about the lab, his cape free of its home around his neck, while the man judges the incomplete gadgets littered about, trailing unwelcome fingers across every surface in the lab.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony catches the man reaching down his finger to caress the discarded webshooter on one of the workbenches, the bench he's considered Peter's for what feels like a lifetime now. He thinks of Peter sitting there, a frustrated look on his face, as he desperately tries to relearn writing, his left hand capable of only chicken scratch. It's entirely too intimate, too important , and Tony growls as he watches Strange flip a page in the kid's notebook. 

"Don't touch that," he orders, hand curling around his empty coffee mug and chucking it across the room without even thinking about it. He feels it leave his grasp in a disconnected kind of way, his brain entirely independent of his limbs. 

Strange narrowly dodges it, and the cup shatters against the wall. 

"Jesus christ , Tony!" Rhodey complains, jumping about a foot in the air at the impact. "Was that necessary?" 

Tony shrugs, sending the glowering wizard one last glare before flipping around to his table. "Keep your dirty mitts off that table, capisce? Don't touch any of his stuff." 

Rhodey swears again. "Tony, man-" 

Tony doesn't even need to turn around to see the expression on either of their faces. He can feel the disappointment, the worry, burning a hole into his back. He doesn't care. "Cup was empty. Need more inventing juice, honeybear." 

"You need decorum," Strange snaps hotly.

"You dodged," Tony counters, easily. He finds himself wishing silently that the wizard hadn't. 

Rhodey grumbles something under his breath, all but slamming the door as he makes his way back into the house. Tony feels the vibration across the lab floor.

The cape billows its way over to Tony, fluttering around his shoulders, and he has a vivid flash of sitting on the couch with Morgan, watching Aladan. 

That damn cape is too close to the magic carpet that Morgan adores, too much a reminder of what's missing, that it makes Tony's temper flare. 

He shooes the thing away, biting off an irritated, "Will you keep the drapery under control?" 

"The Cloak of Levitation is a magical relic," Strange snaps back.

"Looks like something Great Grandma Stark would hang in a parlor." 

There's a terse silence before Strange finally speaks again, his voice strained. "The Cloak has a particular fondness for Peter Parker. I imagine it is worried ." 

Tony jolts back around, watching the velvety thing wrap back around Strange's neck, seeming to droop dejectedly back around the man's shoulders.

Tony drags a hand across his face, pulling his features taut. "I just want to get them back," Tony tells him wearily. 

Strange regards him for a moment, orange sparks dancing across his eyes. "Trust me, Stark. On this, we are in agreement."

              ═══════════════════

Morning rolls back around. 

At least, Peter thinks it's morning. 

There's no way to tell when the only light is the grating florescent above them. 

His body aches from sleeping with his back against the wall, the weight of a small child in his lap. No amount of rolling can seem to dispel the tight ache settling in across his shoulders. Particularly the shoulder with no arm. His temple throbs against the bright, sharp light above them.

Even Morgan, who had the better end of the deal, wakes up stiff. She rubs her red rimmed eyes, stretching and grimacing. 

"I wanna go home," she tells him solemnly. 

"We will. Soon." He runs his fingers through her tangled hair, trying to unsnarl the knot that has formed at the base of her skull overnight. 

She sniffles silently, and then turns those deep eyes up to him. "I have to go." 

He cocks his head. "Go?" 

Nodding forlornly, her gaze dips back down and away. "Yeah. Go. "

"Oh. Oh." 

Peter is pretty sure that both of their cheeks are a deep scarlet, and he glances warily back around their cage already knowing that there's nothing even close to a toilet within. Just cold and white and impenetrable walls.

There's nothing, period, except their bodies and the trash from their meager meal yesterday. 

"Okay, okay, okay." He takes a deep, mildly panicked breath, because this is not good . "Let me think for a second, okay, Mo?" 

She nods again, dejectedly, her hands clapsed in her lap. "Okay." 

Peter's thoughts catapult down their limited options; he could simply have her choose a corner and go, while he looks away. That really wouldn't be great for the long run, though, and probably wouldn't be idle for Morgan's morale. 

He could pound on the thrumming material that has them trapped in here, hoping that someone hears and comes, and cares enough to let a little girl use the restroom. 

He glances wistfully to the place where the door appeared yesterday. The wall has smoothed out, and the door has disappeared like it never existed. He'd spent an hour yesterday running his fingers across it, looking for a divet or a snag that he could use to potentially peel the wall away.

"How bad do you have to go?" He asks her, a little hopelessly. 

She mirrors him, shrugging in that falsely nonchalant way he has. "Pretty bad, I guess."

"Okay. Okay. Okay. " He takes a deep breath that pulls painfully against the deep bruise on his side, and he braces his hand there to take some of the pressure. "I'm gonna- I'm gonna try and get their attention, okay? Think you can hold it for a minute?" 

She nods, but the way she bites her lip belies the action. 

Peter promptly rises to his feet, grimacing, and knocks a flat palm against the wall. Not as hard as yesterday, when he'd tried to break them free, but enough to hopefully garnish some attention. "Hey!" He calls, the sound reverberating across their four small walls. "We need the bathroom!" 

Nothing returns. 

"Seriously!" He tries again, knocking angrily against the wall. "You're gonna lose a yelp Star rating over this! I'm gonna leave a really bad review!" 

The wall doesn't shift, and no doors materialize. 

Morgan's voice pulls him back around, her face scared and scarlet. "I really have to go." 

She's rubbing her thighs together, her floral dress shifting with the movement, and obvious panic paints her features. 

He cringes. "Okay. This is what we're gonna do. You're- you're gonna go into that corner-" he points at the one farthest from them, "-And you're gonna have to go there." 

She turns pale. " In here ? I can't go in here!" 

"I'm so sorry, Mo. If you can't hold it, you're going to have to." 

Her lip trembles. "But you're here." 

"I'll look away," he promises. 

"What about…. wiping ?" Her cheeks flame an impossibly deeper red against the pallid color of her skin. A red so dark it's almost purple. 

"We're gonna have to make due until your Dad gets here, okay?" He hates saying those words, and he hates seeing the horrified, broken look on her face. 

If only he wasn't so weak , he could get her out of here. He finds himself wishing viscerally, not for the first time, to be whole again. To have his arm instead of the empty air.

He expects another argument out of her, a last ditch plea for a different option, but she merely nods her head and offers a quiet, "Okay." 

It breaks his heart a little more hearing the Sass Queen so pliable. 

"I won't look," he promises again, and then he obediently turns around, dropping back down to the floor with his back facing her. 

He keeps his ear peeled, mainly the one of his that still works properly, and listens to her shuffle over to the designed corner. He hears the fabric of her dress ruffle as she pulls it up, and then he hears the telltale tinkle. 

There's enough embarrassment in the room that you could cut it with a knife, and he shifts miserably where he sits.

The smell hits Peter a second later, his sharpened enhances latching onto the acrid scent of it, and he wrinkles his nose. 

This sucks.

After a second, he hears the noise stop, and Morgan pull up her underwear. She's sniffling. 

"You all done?" He asks gently. "Should I turn back around?" 

In lieu of answering, she all but stumbles back into his arms, crying. "I hated that!" She moans miserably, and he can do nothing but wrap his arm around her midsection and hold her close.

Later on, after she's fallen back into an uneasy sleep, he tilts her out of his lap to go and empty his own bladder there. 

He feels incredibly low.

             ═══════════════════

Peter has barely begun to drift off himself when a familiar low hum invades his waning consciousness, joining the warning chill that spreads across his shoulders. 

His eyes fly open, seeking out the rippling material on the white walls. The door materializes there, and he propels to his feet, unsteady, pushing Morgan's fatigued form behind him. 

"Wha-?" She questions, voice thick with sleep, until her eyes must find the same shifting spot in the wall as his. Her fingers automatically cling to him, wrapping around his leg. 

"We'll be okay," he tells her gently, swaying on his feet.

His healing factor has already decided to put in for a leave of absence, doing little to heal the horrendous bruise left by yesterday's visit. He can see the dark, blue-black mark out of the corner of his eye, a startling contrast to their colorless environment.

Not Tony steps back through the door, the same suave smile painting his features. He's wearing a different suit, navy blue this time, but Peter is sure it's just as expensive as the last. 

"Hello again," he greets them easily, running a hand through his hair. It kicks up a scent that smells nothing like any shampoo their Tony has ever used, too strong and too spiced for Peter's nose to enjoy. It helps him to separate this Tony from his.

"Let us out," Peter orders, his hand alternating between tapping Morgan's cheek reassuringly and forming into a fist at his side. Clenching and unclenching nervously.

Not Tony lets his eyes wander across the small white room, chuckling at the corner that Peter has selected for waste. 

The man makes a tsk sound, shaking his head. "Children are so messy. That's exactly why I never wanted any." 

Embarrassed anger lights up Peter's nerves, and he grinds out, "Well, you didn't give us any other option, asshole. " 

"A toilet?" Not Tony questions, amused. "Is that what you would like?" 

Morgan makes a terrified noise from behind him, and Peter shushes her. 

"Well, yeah," he tosses back, "Unless you don't care about your five star rating. You're losing points by the minute, pal." 

"You use humor to cope," Not Tony replies, suddenly serious, "Possibly to distract from your obvious disfigurement. Let me tell you, kid, it doesn't work. People notice." 

Peter falls quiet, wincing. Okay, he concedes, that hurt. Especially coming from someone who looks like his Tony, who even sounds like him. Hearing that endearing nickname in that cadence is enough to make him falter, swallowing thickly. "Okay, mister. That does it. You've lost a star."

"What would you do for a toilet?" Not Tony continues, nonplussed. This visit, he seems content to stand where he is, back leaning against the door. 

Peter thinks quickly about launching an attack. About rushing the man and tackling him to the ground before he even has a chance to call a suit. He thinks about neutralizing him as a threat and springing Morgan from this white hellhole. His fist flexes with the idea of it.

He knows that he's got the strength to take down Tony Stark. He could probably take down Iron Man if he really wanted to, even with the loss of his arm.

If this Tony has an Iron-Man suit? Peter realizes he doesn't know. He definitely has a gauntlet. Peter's fingers probe his injured side absentmindedly.

Not that Peter would ever, ever want to hurt Tony. He'd never attack the man that he knows. He feels a little sick even thinking about attacking this one, this Tony Stark lookalike, even if the man standing in front of them is insane.

"Would you kill her?" Not Tony hooks a thumb in the direction of the cowering Morgan. 

She whines, and Peter forces his fist to relax and gently caress her cheek. " No ," he bites out. "I'm telling you right now, the answer is always going to be no." 

Not Tony shrugs. "Then you can keep pissing in the corner like fucking animals." 

"You're a terrible host," Peter says. It's better than crying, which he feels a little like doing. He can feel the prickling in his eyes, the tightness in his throat.

"I'm going to break you," Not Tony responds calmly. 

"Nope." 

"Do you refuse to kill the girl today?" Not Tony asks.

"I won't ever kill her," Peter says. 

Not Tony claps his hands together, gleefully. "Then it's time for arguably my favorite portion of these little experiments." 

He outstretches his hand again, in Peter's direction, the obedient silver stretching across his skin. 

Peter falters, wanting desperately to run away and knowing he has nowhere to go. The room is too small, and he has Morgan counting on him. If he moves, she'll be horribly exposed. 

He doesn't doubt that this man will use her to hurt him. It's a risk that he can't take.

He braces, gritting his teeth.

He can do this. He's still, more or less, Spider-Man. 

There's no way to prepare for the pain when it finally strikes him, though.

When he comes back to, Not Tony is gone and Peter has another large bruise adorning his midsection. 

There's no food left behind.

              ═══════════════════

He wakes up on what he is pretty sure must be their third day trapped within these walls with a vague plan.

He can practically feel his stomach starting to eat itself from the inside out, the hunger pains gnawing on him, but he forces that away. 

Just like he forces the throbbing, aching hurt across his entire midsection out of his mind. He can't afford to be distracted when he tries to execute this admittedly, well, stupid, plan. 

But Mister Stark hasn't come for them yet, and Peter fears that maybe he doesn't know where they are. 

It's up to Peter to get at least Morgan out of here. 

She wakes with a wide yawn, looking up at him with bleary, hazy eyes. "Morning," she tells him quietly, lacking all of her usual bluster. She's wearing dark bags under her eyes, and she wraps her arms protectively around herself.

"Morning, Mo." He shifts to press a kiss against her forehead, pushing away the pain that lights up his side at the motion. 

No pain , he reminds himself. Not today. 

He shoves it all into a mental box and duct tapes it, forcing it to the very recesses of his mind. 

"Has he come back?" She questions a little hesitantly, wriggling out of his lap, arms still wrapped around herself. 

"No." He shakes his head, watching the warring emotions play out across her face. Flashes of relief and longing in equal measure.

"I'm hungry," she admits. "I want pancakes." 

"Me too." He thinks longingly of Mister Stark flipping them in the kitchen, wearing that ridiculous apron that declares Kiss The Cook. He thinks of Mister Stark ruffling his hair, of him patting the shoulder that doesn't have an arm anymore, of him rushing into his room when Peter wakes up screaming himself hoarse. 

Peter swallows down the burning emotion that travels up his throat. 

"I think- I think I have a plan." 

She brightens at that, her eyes widening. "For pancakes?" 

"For escape," he amends. "I'm going to need you to listen very closely, okay?" 

She nods intently. 

"When the door starts to appear again, like it did before, I'm gonna try and get the Not Daddy before he even makes it into this room. I need you to stay down and stay away, okay?"

She frowns, her fingers fiddling in her lap. She pinches the fabric of her dress, her lips a tight line. "That sounds dangerous, Petey." 

"It- it might be," he admits, evenly, leaning forward to cup her cheek at the raw fear that crosses across her face. 

"I don't want you to get hurt," she whispers, leaning into his touch. 

He sends her a cheeky smile that feels a little false. "I'm Spider-Man, remember? I can do anything." 

This time, she nods with enthusiasm. Peter knows that Morgan grew up cutting teeth on Spider-Man and the heroic tales that both Pepper and Mister Stark would weave for her at bedtime. 

Morgan thinks Spider-Man is infallible. 

It makes Peter feels a little disgusted, and he crushes her in an aching hug to hide the look on his face. 

He hasn't been Spider-Man since the Snap . 

He's been nothing but broken-down, deformed Peter Parker.

             ═══════════════════

Peter's been so focused on the nonexistent door, checking for ripples, that he almost misses the movement when it happens. 

He gasps when he finally spies it, eyes blowing wide, and immediately pushes Morgan towards the farthest corner she can hide in. 

As much as anyone can hide in this white, open wasteland. 

" Go !" He hisses, and she sends him one last frightened look before stumbling away, her shoes scuffing against the floor. 

He scrambles the other direction, pushing away the pain, and the warning licking across his skin. He needs to focus. He keeps the mental box locked tightly away. 

Crouching low by the rippling walls, fighting an urge to reach out and touch the shifting material, he sends Morgan one last reassuring look before the door solidifies and opens. 

With a last deep breath that pulls against his side , watching the shadow step over the threshold, he tackles the man. 

There's an ompf , and a flash of pain, and then Peter is on top of the Not Tony, cocking his good fist back to level a solid punch against the man's face. 

Peter watches Not Tony's eyes widen, his features twisted up in shock, and then he's arching his fist back down. 

This is their chance. Peter has to get Morgan out of here. 

The hit never lands. He feels the warning across his skin a second too late, his Spidey-sense blaring at him, and then suddenly he's airborne, flying through the air. He crashes against one of the walls of their prison with a resounding thud, his breath stolen, and he's pretty sure he blacks out for a minute.

Somewhere, Morgan screams. 

The sound pulls him back, and he twists his head her way. She's braced against the wall, exactly where he told her to stay, and she's screeching at the top of her lungs. Shrill and loud and scared, her mouth open in a terrified O . 

He realizes that his plan, his stupid plan, has gone very wrong when he tries to get up off the floor. He can't move. 

Alarmed, he rips his eyes from Morgan to appraise his own body. He lets out a horrified whimper to find that all of his extremities are covered in the same liquid, silvery, material that forms across Not Tony's skin when he calls the gauntlet. This time, though, the material is keeping him pinned to the floor. 

He struggles quickly, twisting his body this way and that. Even his side without an arm is pinned effortlessly by the material, leaving him prone on the floor. 

Peter is trapped. He can't move . 

Without giving himself permission to, he starts to panic, his throat tightening as he arches and curls and rolls. Nothing phases the cool, liquid metal. 

It's as strong as vibranium. Stronger.

He can feel his meticulously taped mental box tearing at the seams, releasing Pandora sized fear and anguish and pain.

Black dots dance on the edges of his vision, and he rips his head back and forth. He can't breathe. He can't move. He's trapped. 

"Help," he whimpers, brokenly, forgetting about Not Tony and Morgan and everything except the terror flooding his system. 

He's stuck.

An irritated huff of air pulls him back, just a little, and he jerks his head to the sound. 

Not Tony stands up off the floor, brushing nonexistent dirt off his knees, and he stares daggers at Peter's pinned form. "Well, that got you fucking nowhere ." 

In a pained whisper, Peter whispers, "What is this?" 

He tries to flex his hand, his leg, anything. Nothing moves except his head as he pivots it between Morgan and Not Tony. 

She's not screaming anymore, but Peter thinks that might just be because she's screeched herself hoarse. Her mouth is still open, her eyes as wide as the moon, but no sound tumbles out.

"Endo Sym," Not Tony replies. "It's what makes up this entire room." He opens his arms wide, twirling around theatrically to demonstrate. "The hardest element in the entire fucking world, Petey-pie . Can't fucking get out of it, huh? Only a God could create something like this. Only a God could take down the Avengers, could keep Spider-Man contained!"

Peter takes another ragged breath, tugging uselessly on the metal. "Let me out," he croaks, a little desperately. 

"You tried to attack me," Not Tony counters, sauntering over to where Peter lies prone on the floor, his arms pinned to his side and buried under hardening liquid, the silver giving way to the same shade of white that everything around him is.

"I won't-I won't do it again," Peter promises, trying to force himself to breathe. He's hyper aware of Morgan now, staring at them with horribly frightened eyes, her pounding heart an eruption in his ears. Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic, he repeats the mantra over and over again, trying to make himself believe it. Trying to repair the ruined box of his emotions. If he freaks out, Morgan will definitely freak out. 

Not Tony towers over him, silhouetted by the bright light. He has his hands on his hips, a bemused expression curling his features. " Beg ." 

Peter shakes his head vehemently, his breath hitching beneath the metal encasing him. "Let me out!" 

Not Tony crouches down, and Peter flinches at the sudden closeness. His spidey-sense is screaming at him, begging him to move, and it only adds to the very close panic dancing across his nerves. "What would you do? Hmm? To be let out?" 

"Not… that ," Peter gasps out, his gaze flicking to Morgan once before back to the danger looming in his eyespace. He can see every pore on the man's face. 

Not Tony pouts a little. "So stubborn, you Parker's are." 

"That's-me-" Peter responds, each word raspy and tight. "Stubborn is the name- don't- wear it out-" 

"Do you refuse to kill her today?" He continues. 

"I- won't- kill- her," he pants. 

"Yet," Tony adds, shrugging. "Alright, big guy, time for your punishment." 

He reaches out and pats Peter's cheek, good-naturedly, and Peter can't hide a shudder.

He wants May. He wants the real Tony. He wants to be able to move. 

All he can do is watch with panicked eyes as Not Tony reaches into the pockets of his suit, pulling out a liquid, rippling ball of what must be the Endo Sym. It resembles mercury, pliable in the man's hands as he rolls and molds it between his palm. Its the same liquid that stretches across his forearm when he calls the gauntlet, the liquefied version of their white, impenetrable walls. Not Tony smiles, all sharp teeth, and then he pulls the silver taunt, forming a long blade.

Peter jolts in place, watching as the metal obeys the suggestion and seems to sharpen before his very eyes. Not Tony holds the blade up to his face, scrutinizing it, before smiling. 

"We're in business." 

Peter can't help the mewl that escapes his lips. He twists again, uselessly, and utters another breathless, "Let me go. Please ." 

He doesn't want to be stabbed like this, prone on the floor where he can't even move. 

Faraway, Morgan wails. 

Not Tony grasps the blade in one hand, using his free one to caress down the Endo Sym encasing his arm. Peter knows that he can't feel the touch through the material, but he flinches regardless. 

Not Tony is humming, a happy tune, and then suddenly his fingers are dancing across Peter's own, the hardened metal there softening and solidifying and melting down into the floor.

Peter feels the cool ambient air across the now exposed digits, and he gasps, pulling the two freed, middle fingers in.

"Endo Sym responds to my touch," Not Tony tells him, voice haughty and familiar and horrible, because his Tony sometimes sounds like that, after he's done something particularly impressive. "And my brain waves. The metal has imprinted on me. Tell me, Parker, could anyone but a God control the world's strongest element?"

"I met a God once," Peter wheezes, twisting again. "He- he had better hair than you-"

"Last chance," Not Tony tells him amicably, "Will you kill her today?" 

Peter shakes his head. "N-no-" 

Before he's even finished, the knife arches down. 

The blade is so sharp that Peter feels nothing except a sort of tug across his fingers, and he moans in confusion at the sensation, throwing his head back and forth. 

"What?" He pants, eyes straining to see. 

Then, the pain hits. Hot, and fast, and overpowering. 

He screams. He screams again. The world tunnels in, and he can comprehend nothing but the fire that is burning across his hand. 

It feels like the stones all over again, burning away his arm. He's going to lose this one too, and he's going to be nothing , nothing but pain and dust and blackened limbs-

Deliriously, amidst his screams, he thinks about Morgan. About how badly he's failed her.

He's vaguely aware of the man, of Tony , standing back up. He tucks something back into his pockets, and Peter thinks numbly that it must be the knife, the knife made out of the living metal, until he sees a flash of flesh. 

Sluggishly, he realizes that it's two of his fingers. 

Oh , he thinks, hazy, and he screams again. 

Now he's lost an arm and two fingers. 

The liquid metal melts away, fading back into the floor, and Peter can move. 

Too late. It's too late now. 

He closes his eyes, not breathing, and curls inward. 

Someone is still screaming. Maybe him.

              ═══════════════════

He wakes back up, and for a terrifying moment he wishes he hadn't. 

The pain flaring across his hand isn't dulled by shock anymore; he can feel the absence of his fingers just as easily as he can his arm. 

It makes him want to sob. Not Tony has taken the only two fingers he has that are capable of activating his web shooters. 

Spider-Man doesn't exist anymore. He hasn't for awhile, not since the Snap , but there had been a chance. A chance that Wakanda would come through with an artificial limb, that Peter would learn how to be Spider-Man through his new lense of existence. That chance feels more then distant now, it feels like it's gone.

Just like his fingers. Like his arm. 

There's a warmth, cocooned close to his chest, and opens his eyes to find Morgan pressed against him, her face hidden in his shirt. She's crying softly, the motion causing her shoulders to tremble. 

"Mo?" He asks, wincing at how hoarse he sounds. He was screaming, he remembers. "Mo, I'm sorry-" 

Her face flies up to his, covered in tears that are becoming far too familiar on her face. "I thought you were dead, " she accuses, angry. Her eyebrows are pulled in tight, her hands curled into fists. 

She pushes up, staring down at him with burning anger. He can't even bring himself to move from where he's laying. 

"I'm sorry-" 

"That was a bad plan! A bad plan!" 

He can see it in her eyes; the terror. She raises a fist like she wants to hit him, her mouth set into a grim line, and he voices a broken, "Yeah. It was." 

Her hand droops and her face breaks. "You're hurt ," she accuses. 

The pain doesn't seem to end, lighting up his own hand, and he nods wearily. "I'll be okay, though." 

He doesn't really believe it. 

"I- I tried to make it stop," she whispers, her eyes dropping down to where his hand is. "The bleeding." 

He knows that he has to look. He needs to access the damage that's been done to his hand, and probably wrap it so that he doesn't bleed to death in front of Morgan. 

He's terrified to see the empty place where his fingers should be, though. "Is it bad?" He mutters. 

She nods. "I'm so scared." 

"We'll be okay." 

She lowers herself back down, wrapping her arms around his neck. He can't quite return the favor. 

"Love you. 3,000," she whispers. 

He murmurs the same sentiment into her neck. "Love you, 3,000."

              ═══════════════════

The days bleed, and so does Peter. 

He doesn't have the energy to do anything but hold Morgan anymore. A combo platter of starvation and blood loss keeps him nearly immobile, keeps him from doing anything but keep Morgan close. She cries into his chest, desperately, and he can do nothing but sling an arm around her shoulder and press her into him.

When Not Tony shows up for his daily social call, Peter merely rises to his knees, hiding Morgan behind him. Tony shoots him with the repulsor, and departs. Sometimes he leaves them food, and Morgan helps him eat.

She has to open the bags of chips for him and peel away the silo wrap on the never-ending bologna sandwiches. 

Silent tears roll down Morgan's face every time she chokes one down, but she eats them regardless.

They both stink, but the smell of them simply coexists with the smell of excrement that tangles with the air. He imagines that the dictionary has the word depravity in it, with this exact definition. It might as well be a picture of their living situation, complete with bologna sandwiches and missing fingers.

He's a macabre painting of black and blue now, bruises littering across every inch of his skin. Peter hasn't tried to escape since, and Not Tony hasn't used the Endo Sym knife either. He seems perfectly content to gun down Peter with the gauntlet and leave.

He aches in a way that he's only known once before; after waking up from the nightmare that was wielding the infinity stones. He feels like ashes , like death and dust and burning limbs.

His fingers are gone , stolen, and he's wrapped them with fabric that he's torn from his shirt. It doesn't stop the bleeding, though, and he continues to drip more red onto the floor that was once white. 

Now it's covered in a pallette of horrid colors; the brown of his blood oxidizing against the tile, the burgundy of the fresh still oozing from his missing fingers. He tries not to think of the yellow.

Not Tony gives them barely enough to survive, and Peter finds himself sliding over large portions of his food to Morgan. 

It's killing him faster, but it's better than listening to her cry herself to sleep, clutching her stomach as hunger pains clench her insides.

On the night of what Peter thinks is the seventh day, after Tony leaves and Peter lays in a crumpled mess on the floor, he pulls his remaining fingers up to the light to find red. Red that hasn't dripped from his missing phalanges.

The gauntlet has finally managed to break his skin.

"Daddy is mean ," Morgan tells him brokenly. 

For the very first time, Peter doesn't have the energy to correct her to Not Daddy. 

Chapter Text

Four Months Ago…..

He taps the StarkPad in his lap restlessly, brow furrowed in thought. The half-finished diagram on the screen seems to mock him, seems to accuse him of not trying hard enough. Not being enough.

He frowns, sighing deeply, and dips his head down to massage his throbbing temples. He wants to finish the prototype before Peter wakes up. Wants to have something to offer his kid when he awakens to find everything inexplicably changed. 

Not if. Never if. Peter is waking up. It's just a matter of when. 

He lets his eyes dart up, away from artificial limb prototype in his lap, to Peter's eerily still form in the hospital bed. 

No flickering. No fluttering. 

The heart monitor continues to sing, though, the incessant beeping echoing across as the room as the most glorious sound Tony has ever heard. As long as he can hear that, he knows the kid is alive. Even if he's buried under tubes and bandages and still blackened burns. Peter's heart continues to serenade him, and Tony can keep living. 

Tony relaxes back into the chair, dragging his gaze from the bed and back to the pad in his lap. It's incredibly lonely here, now, with May back at work and Pepper back with Morgan. 

Morgan. 

God, he misses her. Misses the tight hugs that she gives, the way she pouts with a hand on her hip, the days that they'd spent in the kitchen together, him whipping up fluffy pancakes while she watercolors at the kitchen table. 

He misses Pepper, misses laying in bed with her, all tangled limbs, misses her soft lips pressing secrets into his skin, even misses her knowing smirk when she calls him on his bullshit. 

He misses the lakehouse itself; the slightly fishy tang of the nearby water, the golden hue playing across the hardwood in the morning, the unfinished gadgets sitting forgotten in his lab right now, silently beseeching him for life. 

Yet. He wouldn't trade what he has right now for any of that. 

His gaze travels back up to his kid, features softening, as he watches the tell tale rise and fall of Peter's chest. He memorizes every pane of the kid's face, the stained glass painting of both suffering and healing there. He listens to the tune of Peter's heart, smiling softly despite the situation. 

There is nothing, nothing, that could make him leave Peter's side right now. 

He sighs again, minimizing the diagram to send May a message. She'd been in tears when she left, great tsunami waves pouring down her face, but she insisted that she was needed. The blipped had brought unintended consequences with their arrival, including an overworked medical system that was now fraying under the work load.

Tony didn't care about that. He should have, being a superhero and all, but he just fucking didn't. 

Maybe he wasn't meant to wear the suit anymore. 

He's in the middle of the keyboard, between the G and K, assuring May that their boy is fine, still in LalaLand, still snoozing away- 

When the steady beeping of Peter's heart monitor falters, and then skyrockets. 

Tony jerks, the tablet fumbling out of his lap and crashing to the hospital floor with a loud crack. His eyes, large with panic, flit up to Peter's bedside, growing impossibly larger at the sight he finds. 

Achingly familiar brown eyes staring back at him. 

"Peter!" He gasps, stumbling up from his chair. His legs are jelly, refusing to solidify, and he feels his hands trembling as he watches Peter, awake Peter, open his mouth. 

"My arm-" he gasps out, voice raw and scratchy, his eyes widening in solidarity with Tony's, "My arm- what- I don't-" 

Jellied legs carry Tony across the floor, stumbling the whole way, until he's clasping Peter's remaining hand in his own, squeezing tight. "Peter, kid. Oh my God. Oh my fucking God." 

"Mister Stark?" Peter questions, watery, turning the miracle of his eyes Tony's way. Open. Awake. He's staring into honeyed consciousness. "Mister Stark, I think- I think- something's wrong. With- my arm-" 

He makes a gasping sound, his heart monitor beeping fast. Too fast. The kid's heart sounds like a possessed alarm clock, spinning out of control. Peter twists miserably in the bed, gasping at the motion.  

Tony's own heart stutters, and he tightens his hold on Peter's own. "Kid, Pete, Pete- Peter. Look at me. Right now." 

Obediently, those woodsmoke eyes flick to his, confused and frightened and unsure. "Sorry-" 

"You're okay," Tony bulldozes over whatever useless apology was building on the kid's lips. His heart is already breaking enough as it is. "You're okay. You're in the hospital, okay?" 

Peter pulls in two deep, staggered breaths, and Tony uses his free hand to gently comb through his hair. Peter seems to relax into it, melting at the gentle touch. 

"Thanos?" He asks, softly, after a moment. His frenzied heart continues to blare in the backdrop.

Dust , Tony thinks. Nothing but dust in the winds of New York. Instead, "Gone. He's gone. You're safe." 

"May? Ned?" Peter questions. Tony can hear the possessed alarm clock slowing, returning to something of a regular pace. He keeps up his gentle threading, his fingers brushing against scarred scalp underneath.

"Safe. Everyone's safe. I promise." He sends the kid a reassuring smile. 

Peter swallows thickly, his face twisting into a grimace at the action. "My- my arm?" 

The smile falters on Tony's face. He feels tears tickling his eyes, and he curses himself. Curses himself for empty space. "I'm so sorry, kiddo." 

Peter's face crumples, imploding like a dying star. He takes a ragged breath, tears joining the black still healing on his cheeks, and offers a broken, "Okay. Okay." 

"I'll fix it," Tony assures quickly, desperately, hating the desolation warring across his kid's face. He unthreads his fingers from Peter's hopelessly tangled curls, using a fingertip to tilt Peter's chin his direction. "I'll fix it." 

Peter nods shakily. 'Mister Stark…" His voice trembles, his lip quivering, and Tony can't take it anymore. 

Peter's alive. Alive. 

He bends at the waist, wrapping his arms around Peter's shoulders with unfounded gentleness, stroking the boy's burned back through his hospital garb. Peter all but collapses against him, chest hitching in silent sobs, before he wraps his arms around Tony's waist. 

Arm. Tony corrects the thought instantly. Arm; singular. 

"I love you," Tony breathes the words into Peter's hair. "I love you, Pete." 

He repeats the words again and again, a promise and a mantra all at once. He owes Peter a million of them, a billion for each year that Tony missed him. He'll spend the rest of his life uttering them, vowing them.

          "I

              Love 

                      You."

            ═══════════════════

Tony works through the night, desperately, downing enough coffee to drown a horse. He's practically swimming in the liquid, up to his eyeballs, because he's loath to even leave the lab to piss.

Not with Strange's terrifying warning; time flows differently. 

The thought of Peter and Morgan with that version of him has him tearing across his lab, flinging papers and tech in his haste. He's far past even chaos now, tettering dangerously into the abyss of careless. Shattered glass is scattered across his floor; beakers and mugs and vials that committed the cardinal sin of being in his way. 

Rhodey and Happy do their best to stay out of his way, merely depositing filled cups on his table and cleaning what they can. 

Strange paces the lab impatiently all night, the bags under his eyes as pronounced as Tony's by the time the morning sun greets them again. 

"How much longer?" He demands. 

"How much longer?" Tony snaps back, sending the man a spiteful look. "You want me to create a new element overnight?" 

Tony is a little taken back when Strange snaps, "Yes." 

The man's cool demeanor has been softened by the weariness he is now wearing on his face, the proud squaring of his shoulders drooping under the weight of their time constraint.

"Well, that's fucking tough luck, Nostradamus. You're taking about creating a brand new fucking element capable of outsmarting magic. Next time ask for something simple , like time travel! I'm a goddamn whiz at that!"

"You don't understand!" Strange throws his hands up, and the Cloak around his neck trembles with him. "You must work faster!" 

"I'm going as fast as I can, asshole!" Tony snaps back, his thinly stretched composure close to snapping. He curls a hand around the handle of another mug, one gifted to him by Morgan that declares Best Dad Ever in swirling cursive script, and it's only that fact that stops him from flinging it across the room to join the lot on the floor. "I'm trying." 

"It's been a day." Strange shakes his head. "A full day, Stark." 

Tony gnashes his teeth before turning the cup up, downing the remaining dredges. He practically sloshes with the amount of liquid in his body. "Those are my kids .  I'm fucking trying." 

Again, Strange shakes his head. Hesitation flies across his face, but he opens his mouth and speaks anyway, the words vitriol and damning and somehow vile. "Do you know how long a day is over there?" 

Tony pauses mid-gulp, horror growing in his caffeine adled gut. He sets the cup down with exaggerated care, swallowing. "If it takes me a day here," he chokes out, clutching his chest, "How long have they been there?"

"A week," Strange replies evenly, though his eyes are tortured. "They have been there a week." 

═══════════════════

He's so deep into the science of it, agonizing over the implications of the mutliverse itself, let alone the miraculous element that his counterpart has created, that he doesn't realize May has arrived.

He looks up at some point during the day, the traitorous sunlight pouring across his desk, close to tears, to find her leaning against the doorway, watching him. 

"I'm trying," he tells her, miserably, his throat cracking. He digs the heel of his palms into his eyes, rubbing away the wetness. 

The formulas across the desk, under his elbows, do little to fix the inherent problem that he keeps stumbling into; there isn't an element capable of withstanding the type of energy needed to both hold and repel magic. 

It's something that doesn't fucking exist.

Gravity, electromagnetism, vibranium.

None of them would be conducive in stopping magic, much less any use in inter-dimensional travel. 

Apparently, the only thing that can, is Endo Sym. Tony doesn't know how to make Endo Sym. He doesn't even know what it is.

"You gotta find him," May chokes back. Her hair is a mess, stringy and greasy with strands dangling across her face. Her face is flushed, soft tears trailing down her face. She reminds him of that day, a lifetime ago, when she'd met him in the Wakandian hospital, strong and steady. The resilience is still there, buried in the aging lines etched on her face, but there's despair, too. Tony understands. How many times can they be expected to lose who they love? "Pepper, she- she told me this is some crazy parallel universes shit that I don't understand. At all. God, I know this isn't your fault. It's- it's not."

He makes a strangled noise, dropping his head into his hands. 

It is his fault. It's literally another version of him doing this. 

"You have to find him, okay?" She continues, her arms wrapped across her stomach in a way that looks so similar to Peter he wants to shake and fall apart. She's always, always looked like him. He can see Peter reflected in her. "I can't lose him. Not- not again. Those five years, ugh-" 

He remembers it well.  

The look on her face when he finally made it back to Earth, to her doorstep, to tell her. His body had still been weak, half-starved and listless, but he'd made himself trek all the way out to Queens, to their apartment, his heart breaking the entire time. He'd left those pieces behind, trailing across the hallway that Peter would never tred again. 

She had known, obviously, when half the world blipped away. When the patient she'd been assisting on had vanished mid-surgery, when the doctor had dusted, too. When the world had descended into despairing chaos and Peter had simply never come home. She had known her boy was gone. 

Tony had said the words, though, had confirmed the worst, and she'd fallen to her knees in the threshold to her apartment, sobbing. 

"You did this," she had wailed, her face broken and open and twisted in pain. "Get the hell out of here."

She hadn't spoken another word to him until the moment Peter returned, had been whisked away to a Wakandian hospital on the brink of death.

"I'll do everything I can," he had assured her then, both of them standing over Peter's sleeping form. He'd been in the coma then, lifeless and eerily still. He said it then, and he says it now. "I'll do everything I can."

She nods, and steps forward to leave a steaming styrofoam cup on his table. 

"Bring him home." 

═══════════════════

They sleep so much that time stops mattering. 

Peter doesn't know if it's one week, or two, or even three years. The light never goes away, artificial and fluorescent and jarring, and he longs desperately for the soft, natural light of the moon and sun. He yearns for the warmth of a ray of sun against his skin, he dreams about sitting on the dock at night, watching the stars reflect across the lake.

They sleep side by side now, on the cold floor, with Morgan's arm wrapped around him and her face buried in his shoulder. He can hardly get up to hold her. 

She doesn't seem to mind much, anymore. She hardly cries. She just eats and sleeps and hugs him. 

They still tell stories, because it's about the only thing to do in their private white hell. It doesn't require them to move. 

"Tell me another," Morgan insists, her nose inches from his. He can feel the warmth of her exhale, and privately imagines that it's the sun.

His arm is slung haphazardly across her stomach, and he smiles at the excitement in her tone. 

He attempts to shrug. It ends up as more of an awkward jerk. "I think I'm all out, Maguna. Why don't you tell me one?" 

She ponders that seriously for a moment, her lips pursing. "Okay. I got one." 

He offers her a smile that hurts. Everything hurts, though. "Let's hear it."

"It's called The Spider." She opens her eyes comically wide at the proclamation, wiggling her eyebrows. 

"A spider, huh? What happens to the spider?" 

"He saves the world." She smiles at him. It's far subdued from that smile she offered him an eternity ago, at the kitchen table eating pancakes, but it still brightens his world.

"Yeah?" Peter questions softly. 

"Yep. All the bugs lived on the farm. There were ladybugs, and butterflies and even dragonflies." 

"Dragonflies?" He gasps theatrically, ignoring the way it tugs on his aching ribs. 

She nods sagely. "Yes. Dragonflies." 

"What about beetles?" 

"Um. Yes." 

He cocks an eyebrow. "Ants?" 

"Yes-"

" Fleas ?"

"Yes!" She makes a harumph noise, raising a finger up to tap his nose in irration. "All the bugs. But this isn't about those bugs. This is about the spider ." 

"Okay, okay. Tell me about the spider, Mo."

She eyes him suspiciously, anticipating another interruption, before finally continuing. "Well, everyone was scared of the spider. The spider was scary. So he didn't ever hang out with anyone." 

"Oh." Peter blinks. 

"One day, though, the farmer decided he wanted to get rid of all the bugs. He had a special spray that would make them all disappear. Like-" She snaps her fingers, the sound quiet and somehow deafening all at once, "- Poof !" 

Peter flinches. "This seems like a sad story." A horror story, and not the cheesy kind that he likes to watch with Ned.  A bona-fide psychological terror of a film. Death and dust and all the works.

"Nope." She shakes her head at that. Her hair has long since tangled past his ability to finger-comb. The few strands that remain snare free hang limply around her face.  "It's a happy story, because the spider ends up coming out of his secret hiding hole to save the day!" 

"Oh," he repeats again, swallowing thickly. It tastes like regret.

"He took away the farmer's magic disappearing bug spray before he could even use it! He hid the bug spray back in his secret hiding hole so the farmer couldn't find it, and he saved all the other bugs on the farm. Everyone decided that the spider was a hero." 

His voice is watery. "That's a pretty good story." 

She places a small hand against his cheek, and he realizes belatedly that he's crying.  

"Love you, 3,000." 

He smiles back weakly. "Love you, 3,000." 

And then the magic wall whooshes behind them, the invisible thrumming within the walls kicking up.

Morgan's eyes blow wide, fear immediately spearing her features. "He-He was just here!" She argues, tightening her fingers into the ruined remains of his shirt.

"Don't watch," he orders, struggling to his feet. She holds on, staggering to her feet with him. The singed fabric clutched in her small fist. "Okay? Look away." 

"I don't want you to get hurt again!" Her voice quivers.

"I'll be okay." He catches her eyes one more time before unfisting her fingers and shoving her behind him. She whimpers, immediately grabbing the fabric of his pants instead. "Don't look." 

It feels like the only way he can spare her from even a piece of the horror playing out here.

Obediently, she drops her eyes to the stained floor. 

The door flings open with force, and Peter winces, shuffling them back. 

He isn't prepared for the face that comes through. 

It's Tony. Obviously. But it looks like his Tony. Down to the frazzled facial expression, Dior aftershave, even the band t-shirt that declares AC/DC . 

"Mister Stark?" He gasps, swaying on his feet. Morgan pokes her head out from behind him. 

"Kids," he murmurs, softly, opening his arms wide. "I found you." 

Morgan breaks from her spot behind his knees, sprinting to the man just barely past the threshold. She leaps into his arms, and he spins her around once, laughing, the sound high and musical.

Peter feels dizzy, and places a hand against his temple. "Mister Stark?" 

Morgan is delirious, repeating, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" over and over again as Tony whirls her through the air. Her dress twirls with her, the stained and tattered fabric flowers taking flight.

"How lucky is it that I was able to find you?" Tony stops his twirling to turn and fix Peter with a smile. A toothy grin. "Looks like I was just in the nick of time. You're not looking so good there, pal." 

Peter sways again, shaking his head. There's an itch tingling across his neck, a quiet buzzing reverberating through his ears.

He can still hear Morgan muttering softly, her face against Tony's neck as he holds her. 

"I don't think you would have lasted much longer," Tony continues. "Look at you. You were kinda fucked up before you even got brought here. Good thing I found you, huh? Probably would've died soon." 

Peter shakes his head. This- this is wrong . 

He forces himself to look, to really look, past what he wants to see. He takes away the shirt, takes away the facial expression that has him aching to step forward and throw himself in Tony's arms. He even removes the Dior from the equation, swallowing thickly. 

He focuses on the heart. He counts each beat, following the pace that is too quick to it's bitter end.

Not Tony sees the realization the moment it hits Peter, and his lips curl into a devious grin.

"Put her down," Peter orders, low. He feels like his own heart is going to beat out of his chest. Because, shit, he was supposed to protect Morgan, and she's over there with him, with fake Tony and he should have known better- 

The hands holding her tighten, digging into the soft skin of Morgan's lower back, and she lets out a startled cry before pulling back to look at the man. "Daddy?" She questions, but even Peter can tell from the tremble in her voice that she doubts it. 

"I fucking hate kids," Not Tony murmurs, all traces of his previous Tonyness fading away. 

Morgan gasps, pulling away from the man. "Petey!" She cries. 

"Let her go, please," Peter begs. He takes a step forward that has him wanting to fold in half, to collapse onto the floor. His vision swims. 

"I meant it, you know," Not Tony continues, holding onto the struggling girl with ease. She's letting out breathy, panicked cries, shoving against him and twisting. "You look like shit, Petey-pie . You're gonna die soon. You sure you don't wanna live?" 

"You said that I had to kill her," he chokes out, hating the way the words taste. "You can't. So you have to let her go."

Peter knows that it will probably kill him to leap across the room and fight Not Tony for Morgan. His body is already spent. 

Nonetheless, he's lowering himself into a battle crouch by the time the man throws Morgan to the floor. 

She hits with a thud, letting out a despairing wail, before she's scrambling back across the floor to hide behind his trembling form again. She's crying loudly, and he offers her his injured hand to try and calm her down. "Hey, it's okay, you're safe. You're safe." 

"You'll be dead soon," Tony, Not Tony, whoever the hell he is, promises. He raises his hand, the flesh overtaken by steel, and aims for Peter again.

He hardly feels the heat this time.

═══════════════════

When Tony looks up again, its to the setting sun. 

Terror floods his system as he pushes back from the table, crossing the lab floor to stare out the small storm window. 

The sunset is beautiful, orange and pink and purple. It plays off the calm, rippling water of the lake, casting the entire world in the softest light. 

Tony wants to throw-up. 

The disappearing sun marks the end of day two. Conversely, the end of week two, if Strange is to be believed. And Tony does. He believes the Wizard even if he really, really doesn't want to.

He imagines Morgan, terrified and hurt and alone, calling out for her Daddy and that man showing up. He imagines the man offering her comfort before viscerally stabbing her in the back. He imagines Peter faced with that depraved choice, the one that Tony knows innately the kid will never take, because Peter at his core is selfless and kind and brave. And right now, in some bumfuck reality that's infuriatingly off-limits, he's paying the price for his morality. 

A tear makes its way down Tony's cheek as he watches the sun slip beneath the horizon. 

Gentle arms encircle around his waist, a face planting itself into the middle of his back. He's numb to the world, staring frozenly at the vanishing sun, and he doesn't move. 

"You can do this," Pepper tells him, her voice hot against his shoulder blades. She spreads her fingers across his stomach, holding him tight. "You can do this, Tony." 

"What if they're hurt?" He mumbles woefully, dropping his head to the wall and grinding his forehead into it. "What if that thing , that other me, has hurt them badly? It's been the two weeks over there, Pep."

She presses her lips into his back, her words spoken into his flesh."Then we put them back together. You just need to get them home." 

He closes his eyes, blocking out the damning sun.

It doesn't work. He can still feel the agonizing warmth.

═══════════════════

"What if he comes back?" Morgan murmurs, voice wavering. 

Peter tears his gaze from the ceiling, from the light probably burning his retinas to find her. She's got her legs pulled in tight to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself protectively. 

"You know he's gonna come back," Peter tells her wearily, letting his eyes slide back to the ceiling. He's too weak to justify wasting energy on rolling onto his side to avoid the brightness. 

He'll just lay here until Tony comes back and Morgan requires protection again.

"What- what if he pretends to be Daddy ?" She pushes on. 

"I'll know, Mo." He swallows, blinking back tears. He hadn't known, not at first. Not until Morgan was already in trouble. It burns his throat to think of how badly he's failing her. 

"We should come up with secret questions." 

His gaze flicks back to her. She's unfurled from her miserable pretzel, scooting over so her leg is brushing his. "What kind of questions?" 

She ponders that for a moment. "Questions that only the real Daddy would know. Classified stuff." 

Peter frowns. There's no way to know if this Tony knows the kind of information that Morgan would consider classified. If coming up with security questions is a waste of time. 

Still, Morgan is looking at him with a flash of hope in her eyes that he hasn't seen in a week or more. An eternity. Time doesn't really exist anymore. He gulps. 

"What would you ask that only your real Daddy knows?" It's not a failsafe, but it's something. It's the brief flash of hope behind her eyelashes. 

Peter will keep her away from Not Tony regardless. The questions can't hurt. 

She bounces her leg excitedly. "I'd ask him how much he loves me." 

Peter smiles. "3,000, right?" 

She beams in return. "Exactly!" 

"That's a pretty good question." 

"What about you?" She cocks her head. 

"Um. I don't know." 

"You have to have something," she argues quickly, crossing her arms. It reminds him so much of the sassy girl that she was before the white cube that his heart feels light. The secret questions are a great idea. He absolutely never should have doubted them. 

Peter decides to waste valuable energy; he rolls over onto his side with a pained groan. Morgan immediately shifts into his grasp, laying on her back with his arm thrown across her.

"I'd ask….I'd ask about my friend." 

"The one Daddy always gets wrong?" 

Peter nods mutely. 

Ned. He misses Ned. He misses late night conversations on the phone, talking about the new Lego sets that they'd missed in the five years they'd been gone, talking about the new movies that had come out and the new baby sisters that they both had gained in their absence.

They avoided talking about Spider-Man. Avoided talking about MJ. 

"I'd ask Mommy what my favorite movie is."

Peter laughs, lightly. Laughing deeply hurts. "I'd ask her about the peppermint cookies. The ones that gave me that bad allergic reaction." 

They continue down the list of every single person that Morgan has ever known, until everyone has a classified question to answer.

Coming up with secret questions becomes the new way to pass the time.

═══════════════════

Tony doesn't react when the sentient Cloak flutters to his desk, hovering nervously around him. 

It seems to peek over his shoulder at the formula he's got scrawled across one of Peter's notebooks, now unfortunately stained with tears and runny ink. 

Tony will have to buy the kid a new one. A million new ones. 

The Cloak brings up a velvety corner to caress his cheek, wiping away another salty tear, and Tony can't help but be a little comforted by the kind gesture.

Or maybe Tony's just fucking losing it.

"Don't suppose you can tell me how to make Endo Sym, huh? And then relatedly, destroy it?"

The Cloak pulls back, lifting its ends in what appears to be a shrug. 

Tony sighs deeply, rubbing his eyes. He is fucking losing it, and he's no closer to finding his kids. 

Despairingly, he drops his head into his hands. What Strange has asked him to do is insurmountable, and there's no amount of caffeine that can make it possible. He might as well be crying coffee by now, dripping off the bridge of his nose to run down the spiraling notebook beneath him. It's not enough. He's not enough.

A knock on the door catches his attention, but he doesn't bother to even raise his head. "Go away ," he mumbles. 

Just leave him to fucking rot in his own failure.

"I, uh, heard you might want some help." 

Tony's head jerks up, his weary eyes catapulting across the room to the man standing awkwardly in the doorway. The man raises up his hand, his curiously fleshy hand, and waves. 

" Banner? " Tony chokes out, eyes as wide as the moon. As the sun. 

The man shrugs, the action slightly stiff. He's wearing a cloth sling on one arm, that one that brought the world back, smiling softly. He's not green. There's not a tinge of emerald staining his cheeks, not a hint of viridescence across his skin. He's just Bruce.

Somewhere between snapping half the world back and disappearing off the face of the planet, he's lost the permeate sheen of green that was the Hulk. 

"Rhodes, he, uh, put out an emergency Avengers signal. Figured you could maybe use some help." Another unsure shrug, hindered by the strap of the sling across his shoulder.

"And you came, " Tony all but whispers, rooted to his place on the floor, his fingers spread across the dripping ink on the page.

"Of course I came," Bruce tells him softly. "You know that Steve and N-Nat would've, too." 

Tony nods his head mutely. Steve and Nat are long gone now. Like his kids. Like his sanity.

"Where's- what happened to the Green Machine?" 

Banner offers a shy smile. "It's, uh, a long story. Magic and stuff. Figured now probably wasn't the time for story telling."

That's the only segway Tony needs. "I need you to help me make a new element."

Bruce's mouth falls open in shock, forehead pinching together in immediate concentration. "A new element? That- that might be impossible."

"We made Ultron didn't we?" Tony fires back. 

"Yeah, but that was bad ," Banner argues in that gentle way of his. "Like, really bad. Monumentally bad. And we didn't accomplish that overnight."

"Bruce, god, I have to do this. It's my kids. If I don't, and they don't come back- I'll die. I'll just fucking die…you want that one your conscious? The death of the famous Iron Man?" He runs a hand across his face, trying to wipe away the tears that might as well be caffeine.

"Jeez." Banner shakes his head, grimacing. "Let's- let's do the impossible, I guess. Wouldn't be our first time, I suppose."

"Okay." Tony forces himself to take a deep breath. "How?" 

Banner seems to mull it over, crossing across the lab to gaze down at the equations that Tony has copied down longhand. He doesn't comment on the obvious runnage, letting a finger reach down to trace the curvature in the r of the Universal Law of Gravitation . "Well, you created vibranium, right? What if the other you, the one over there, made it, too? What if he used that to expand into Endo Sym?" 

"That's what I was thinking." Tony nods to the formulaic text as Banner fingers it. "But there's no goddamn way to make vibranium soft enough to shift through fucking matter. It's the toughest metal in our universe."

"But think about it, Tony." Banner moves swiftly to the side, using his free hand to shift the Holoscreen to the properties in the metal. He regards the information there before turning back to Tony, a glint in his eye. "Vibranium absorbs kinetic energy right?" 

"Yeah," Tony allows, "but enough of that and it'll melt. The amount of energy needed to travel across parallel dimensions? It'd turn into a nice little melty metal puddle." 

Banner nods. "We need to keep the rigidity of the vibranium, but we need to add an element to keep it elastic enough to penetrate the kind of elemental magic that Stephen Strange generates. That's how you create a new element."

Tony throws his hands up, knocking over the mug of coffee currently resting on his desk. He cringes internally, determined to keep this one from breaking. He won't lose his Best Dad Ever mug. Both he and Banner watch the dark liquid for a moment as it pools across the desk to seep into the notebook. Peter's brilliant ideas bogged down with brew. Tony's tears coagulated together.

Fresh ones well up in his eyes. "Nothing like that exists , goddammit." 

"Actually," Banner interrupts, voice quiet enough to be nearly inaudible. "I think something might." 

Tony whirls on him, eyes large. " What ?" 

"It's dangerous," Bruce continues quickly, avoiding Tony's wonderstruck gaze. He shuffles awkwardly on his feet, rubbing his neck. "Volatile. Believe me, I would know. But I think that this substance, coalesced with both vibruaum and a softer, more palatable alloy steel….I think- I think that it might offer you what we need." 

"What is it?" Tony hisses impatiently.

Banner finally meets his eyes with a hint of sadness, a hint of green. "I think…I think you need my blood."

Chapter Text

Four Months Ago….

"I hate this," Peter murmurs from the cot, his eyes heaven cast. 

"You're doing really well," Tony assures from his bedside vigil. He spends nearly every waking moment by the kid's side. Sleeping moments, too, for the matter. "You're healing is off the charts, Pete. The fact that you're able to get up and walk around at all even a week after waking from a coma? It's phenomenal. I really should be conducting experiments on you. You know, á la Mad Scientist?"

The joke hangs limp in the air. Peter doesn't laugh or chuckle, his haunted expression pinned to the ceiling above him. 

"I can't- I can't regrow limbs," Peter argues finally, bitterly. He pulls his gaze away from the white tiles above him, finding Tony with an agonized expression. "So my healing isn't that good." 

A lump forms in Tony's throat. "You're not a starfish, kid. So no, you can't regrow limbs.'"

"Shoulda been bit by one of those instead," Peter grumbles, eyes sliding upwards again. 

"Starfish-Man? Starfish-Kid? Doesn't have the same ring to it." Tony reaches out a gentle hand, intending to trace a fingertip down Peter's cheek. The black has finally begun to recede, leaving incarnadine ridges and lumps of scar tissue behind. Shuri assures them both that a lot of that, eventually, will fade.

Not all of it, though. 

Peter flinches, pulling away from the touch. 

Tony falters, freezing with his hand held out, before furling it back towards his own body. "Is it hurting?" He asks gently. "You need some more of those knockout drugs? The Spider-Man kind?"

"No," Peter snaps, voice suddenly full of indignant anger. Those achingly familiar brown eyes flash back to Tony's, brimming with honeyed fury. "No. I want you to stop acting like this is okay . It's not okay, I'm not okay, and I'm not Spider-Man anymore. I'm not. And I want you to leave me alone!" 

The heart monitor by Peter's head beeps out the kid's distress in no uncertain terms, fast and tempered and loud. Tony's face crumples at it. "Pete-" 

Peter's eyes blow wide, and he slings his arm miserably across his face, wires and tubes and all. "I'm sorry," he offers, mumbled, voice broken into the skin of his only arm. "God, I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that. Why I'm being like this. Mister Stark, I'm really sorry-" 

"Stop. Peter. Please." Tony blinks rapidly. He loathes the apologies coming from the kid's mouth, hates the way the taste of them is somehow left on his own tongue. The bitter aftertaste of shame and regret. "Come on, kid. You've been through a lot. It's okay to be upset." 

Peter remains quiet, arm still hiding his features. Tony wants to see those brown eyes again, those eyes he agonized over for five years. Those eyes he waited an eternity for while Peter was in his perpetual LalaLand. He can't bear to go a moment longer without them. "You should've seen me after Afghanistan. God, I was an asshole. More than usual. And the palladium thing? Forget about it."

Peter's chest hitches, the monitor beside him continuing to count out panicked, agonized beats. 

"And kid, listen to me, alright? You're always, always, going to be Spider-Man. If you never want to put on a suit again, you're still Spider-Man. Still a hero. Don't doubt that. Ever."

Tony longs to reach out a hand and brush Peter's arm away, to make the kid look at him and understand, to make him feel loved, but he doesn't dare make Peter flinch again.

Until Peter starts gasping and his heart monitor rockets wildly out of control. 

Tony leaps to his feet, standing over Peter's bed, gaze scanning across the kid's body to find something out of place. "Peter?" He's fumbling desperately around the soft sheets for the call button when Peter's frightened eyes fly open, finding his. 

"My arm-" Peter chokes out. He thrashes violently in the bed, dislodging one of the tubes in the crook of his elbow and tangling his legs in the sheets. "Mister Stark- it burns-" 

"Where?" Tony demands, pulling the call button from within the layers of silk surrounding Peter, pressing the button frantically. He tosses it back to the cot, fingers hovering above Peter's arm. "Where?" 

Peter pulls in a ragged, pained breath, his head rocking miserably from side to side. "Not- that one-" 

Tony's eyes crawl slowly across the kid's twisting body, stopping at the place where his right arm should be. Now there's nothing but air and regret there. There's no arm to burn. 

" Tony-" Peter gasps out, distressed, his voice effectively breaking Tony's heart.

Tony spares one glance towards the closed hospital door, begging it to open, and then he's tilting the boy's face to his, fingertip caressing the ridged flesh on his cheek. "I need you to breathe with me, okay?" 

Peter shakes his head, tears escaping the corner of his eyes. "Can't-" 

"You can," Tony assures. He pushes his own panic away, swallowing it down like bile, and focuses everything he has on his kid in the bed. "Slow and steady. Help is coming. Just breathe."

Peter wheezes.

"Breathe," Tony orders. 

             "Breathe

                           With 

                                      Me."

             ═══════════════════

"Your blood?" Tony demands. "The same blood that's been crispy fried by radiation? We're talking KFC extra crispy here-" 

Banner nods slowly. "I know. I know. I said it could be volatile-" 

"That's- that could be potentially catastrophic." Even as Tony says the words, his mind is spinning away. He whirls from Ultron, from the fuckaroo of that catastrophe, to the possibilities of this potential catastrophe. The idea of Gamma-infected blood, of using literal radiation, is just batshit crazy enough to work. And Tony knows he'll take any risk to save his kids. 

"Yes." Bruce cringes, his voice faltering. Tony knows that his mind is relaying the same images; destruction and death and chaos wrought by their creation, by their murder bot. There's a hesitation, though, where Tony has none. "Look, Tony- this element, if this works - well, the metal would probably react exactly like the Hulk does. The metal would most likely need to fuse to a handler's mind to even work . Like the Hulk has with me." 

Banner taps the side of his head. "He's in here. Even now. That's how this metal would work if we use my blood. Honestly, Tony, I'm not sure it's our best option." 

Tony shakes his head rapidly. "It's our only option. I'm not going to waste time pursuing other things when this is staring us in the face." 

"Tony-" Bruce starts, his features twisted in obvious worry. He runs a hand across his neck. 

"That's how my evil twin over there is able to guard himself so well," Tony exclaims suddenly, the knowledge sliding into place finally. The puzzle piece he's been desperately seeking. "The metal, this Endo Sym, is designed to protect him. It basically is him. He must have harvested Gamma blood from his own version of you before he, well-" Tony mimes a finger slicing his across his neck, shrugging. 

Banner winces, shifting from one foot to the other. "Listen, I'm not completely comfortable with this-" 

And holy fuck, Tony's heart stops. The weight of Bruce's words knock into him like a freight train, forcing him to take a staggered step back. Threatening to bowl him over. This is his only chance, his one chance, to get his kids back. He can't afford to let it go. No matter what.

"Don't- Don't you dare back out, Banner. God, I'll-Ill fucking force this if I have to-" 

Banner holds up his hand. "Let me finish, please. I don't feel comfortable with this. But. I'll do it. I wanna get them back. I know- I know I haven't been around to know them, but they're yours, your kids, and I know we need to get them back-" 

It's one of the longest sentences he's ever heard the man string together, jumbled as it is. 

Tony crosses the room in one bound, wrapping the man in a frantic hug. "Thank you," he whispers, squeezing tight. He can feel Banner tense under the awkward embrace, but he doesn't let go. "You'll- god, you'll love them. Morgan . She's wonderful. She's so smart, self-assured, and kind. A real artist, too. And Peter. Peter. A genius. And an idiot, of course. He'd have to be to put up with me like he does. Hell, the kid actually likes me-"

Banner finally relaxes into the embrace, letting loose an exhale of breath and raising his unbound arm to pat Tony's shoulder. "Let's do this."

Tony pulls back, not even acknowledging the Wizard's Cloak when it flutters through the open doorway, pausing in the threshold before whipping across the lab to caress his cheek softly.

Bruce eyes it cautiously. "This is insane. Sorcerers and magic and the multiverse ? It's- it's supposed to be a theory. God, when you even think about cosmological inflation -"

Tony takes a deep breath. "You have no fucking idea, Brucey." 

"You do understand, though, right?" Bruce fixes him a solemn stare, tearing his gaze from the Cloak hovering about them. "This metal, it's going to bond with its host. And from what Rhodes said, from what it sounds like, the culprit is a variant of you. That means the best person to bond with our version is, well, you. And we don't know what the side effects are, Tony. With this accelerated timeline that we're working with, we won't have the time to test it out." 

Tony meets his gaze evenly. "Whatever it takes."

             ═══════════════════

"How much do you love me?" Morgan demands, her face peeking beyond the sanctuary of Peter's legs. Suspicion rolls off of her in waves, clings to his pants like a laundry detergent.

"So, so much," the man replies, voice watery. He has his arms open wide, silently asking for a hug. The smell of Dior wafts from him, sickly sweet, and his face is awash with emotion.

False emotion. 

Peter shakes his head. "That's not him, Mo." 

She nods, a brush of tangled curls against his leg. Her voice is nearly silent when she answers, "I know." 

Not Tony doesn't know that the real Mister Stark loves her 3,000. 

Morgan's questions actually work. 

Instantly, the concern written across Tony's face morphs, twisting inward to become something distinctively Not Tony. The contempt is clear as day as he lets his gaze rake across them. "Well, fuck me. Looks like you guys aren't as stupid as I originally thought."

"Get it over with," Peter murmurs, wearily. 

Not Tony grins. "Will you kill her?" 

"No." 

"You sure?" 

"I won't kill her." 

"You're a self-sacrificial idiot." 

Tears well in Peter's eyes. He's heard those words before. He can hardly remember what they sound like without the sneer.

             ═══════════════════

"Hey, there Underoos." 

Peter whirls to the sound of the voice, breaking into a relieved grin. "Mister Stark, it's you!" 

Tony cocks an eyebrow beneath his sunglasses, lips quirking into a small smile. He kicks off from the wall, meandering into the lab. "Of course it's me. Who were you expecting? Thor?" 

Peter frowns where he stands. "I'm just really glad to see you," he finally settles on. 

There's sun pouring in from a small bay window in the corner of the room, soft and golden and beautiful. Peter can practically feel the rays of it dancing across his skin, and he tilts his face back to soak it in.

"I'm glad to see you, too," Tony offers, wry, pulling Peter's attention back to him. He's wearing one of his signature band shirts and he smells like pancakes. 

"Are you hungry?" Peter cocks his head towards his mentor. "Maybe we could order some Thai, if you want? Or some pizza? God, Mister Stark, I'd eat just about anything-" 

Peter watches as the smile on Mister Stark's face dips down until it practically disappears. Alarm barrels through Peter's nervous system. 

"What?" He asks, nervously. 

Something is wrong. Something is wrong with him.

Mister Stark rips off his sunglasses, eyes wide and horrified. "What did you do, Pete?" Tony demands, voice breathless. 

The warmth of the sun has shifted into something scorching, and Peter falters back at it, at the sudden pain flaring across him. Across his arm. 

Following Mister Stark's terrified gaze, he glances down to his right hand. 

His heart stops. He shouldn't have this arm anymore. 

He definitely shouldn't be wearing a Spider-Man suit. 

He definitely, definitely shouldn't have the infinity stones. 

He screams, eyes jerking back up to Mister Stark's. The man watches in horror, but doesn't move. 

"Help! Help!" Peter cries, clawing at the stones on his hand. They're killing him, burning him alive, and he knows that he won't survive again. "Mister Stark! Help! Please!" 

"I wish I could, kid." Mister Stark shakes his head sadly. "You're on your own this time-"  

Peter awakes with a gasp. 

The pain in his arm is all consuming, scorching across his nerves. It takes him a solid, pain-filled minute to remember where he is. 

To remember that Morgan is sleeping nearly nose to nose with him, her breathing even and warm against his cheek.

As quickly and as silently as he can, he rolls away from her. 

His arm is burning.

He doesn't even have the arm anymore and it's trying to take him down, to drown him in the pain of what snapping felt like. 

He bites down hard on his lip, drawing blood, trying to fight back the screams that attempt to claw up his throat. He doesn't want to wake Morgan up, to frighten her with his invisible pain. 

Because he knows, vaguely, through his haze, what this is. Dr. Cho had many lengthy conversations with him when the problem first arose, when he started waking up at night sobbing and crying because his nonexistent arm didn't feel so nonexistent anymore. 

Phantom pain .

Hissing, he claws the air where his limb should be. Eventually, he gives up on that, digging his overgrown nails into his shoulder. 

The physical pain brings him no peace, and all he can do is thrash around on the floor in agony. 

It's a waste of energy, of precious calories, to twist against the pain. He knows that he'll regret it when the imaginary pain goes away, because his body is already on the brink of giving in.

He can't stop though. 

He buries his face in his shoulder and cries. 

            ═══════════════════

"You think this will work?" Strange asks, his voice full of exhaustion. The pretense of his stoicism seems to have vanished, and the man rests uneasily in one the lab chairs, resting his head in his hands. The bags under his eyes are deep and pronounced.

"Well, it's the best we got, doc," Tony retorts irritably. "Unless you got a better idea. Really, pray tell. I'd love to hear it." 

He's standing side by side at the Holoscreen with Banner, both of their faces illuminated by the soft blue information displayed there. 

"This sounds dangerous, man," Rhodey adds. He shakes his head worriedly, leaning back in another of the lab's chairs. The one Peter would usually occupy. 

Tony doesn't let himself think too hard about that. Not with a solution staring them in the face.

"It is." Tony replies honestly, shooting Rhodey a look before shifting back to the screen. 

Banner reaches out and pinches an unneeded formula on-screen between his fingertips, tossing it off screen, cataloged onto some back drive in FRIDAY's system."If we add the blood in here, with the tetracycline, I think that's our best bet-" 

"Are you sure ?" Rhodey cuts in. "Tones, we can try and find a different way-" 

"Nope," Tony replies, at the same moment Stephen interjects with a weary, "We are running out of time." 

"No kidding," Tony snaps. "This is day three. " 

He doesn't need to finish the thought. They all know what three days mutates into on the other side. 

Three weeks. Somehow his kids have been stuck in that hellhole for three weeks. Tony won't stand for a minute longer.

"I can feel the edges of our reality peeling away," Strange monotones ominously. "Like wallpaper." 

Rhodey blinks in the wizard's direction. "What the hell does that mean?" 

"It means we're fucked," Tony offers helpfully, still turned to the screen. "Isn't that right, Mr. Wizard?" 

Strange cuts his eyes indignantly Tony's way, glaring daggers at his back. "While I disagree with your tactlessness, essentially-yes. I believe we have a day, if not less, until this universe implodes. We need to restabilize it as soon as possible." 

"Don't you think you should have told us that ?" Rhodey all but hisses, running a hand across his smooth head. " God."

"I didn't feel it would be helpful to inform you of your impending doom. Figured I'd try a different tactic." 

"How do you know?" Bruce asks, tearing his gaze away from the Holoscreen for the first time since their discovery. "That our universe is nearing an incursion?" 

Strange sighs, a deep noise that seems to come from the very pit of him. The Cloak, laying lifeless across his shoulders, awakens to swirl comfortingly around the man as he speaks. "I've been meditating. I can't quite access his universe, but I can feel the same shifting across both. Reality is thinning. An incursion like this would be devastating. Trillions of lives will be lost." 

"Jesus christ, Tony," Rhodey mumbles, mouth falling open in shock.

"It's not me, " Tony defends quickly, plucking a pen from the closest desk to throw Rhodey's way. It misses, landing somewhere across the room with a soft clack . "How many times do I have to tell you people I'm retired?" 

"Why?" Banner questions, gaze flitting between the screen and Strange's slumped form. "Doesn't this Tony know the risk he's taking? His universe is in jeopardy as well-" 

Strange holds up a hand, a spark of orange crackling across his fingertips before settling. Tony's gleaned it for what it is in the short, agonizingly long , time they've spent together trapped in this lab; a tell. It's ginger tinged irritation, playing out across the man's hands. " This Tony, the one from Earth-173, delights in such destruction. He is a narcissistic who lacks even the barest forms of empathy. Your Tony, while decidedly subpar, is leaps and bounds more empathic than the one from 173."

Tony bristles. "Hey. I'm empathic." 

"Relatively." Strange sends him a contemptuous look softened by his defeated posture.  "This timeline, and many more like it, faced the threat that we know as Thanos. 

A noticeable chill descends across the room, and Tony turns burning eyes the wizard's way. "What's that? Oh, you mean that little squeamish where you sent a teenager to die-" 

"On Earth-173," Strange continues, bulldozing over Tony's incensed sentence, "Thanos did not happen. He never existed. Tony Stark was essentially his universe's Thanos."

Silence joins the chill, knocking the room's atmosphere down to arctic levels. "Tony….was going to kill half of all life?" Rhodey demands slowly.

"No." Strange shakes his head. "This Tony Stark didn't want to eliminate life on Earth. He wanted to enslave it." 

"Jesus christ, Tony," Rhodey repeats, voice a shocked whisper as he turns to stare in horrified wonder at the man in question. 

"Again, not me. My freaky, evil doppelganger." Tony waves a hand across the air, like he could fan away not only the thought but the twin in question.

"What was his plan, doc?" Banner questions softly. "Did he succeed?" 

"He did not." Strange pauses, letting the silence stretch into something bordering on intolerable. "I will give you one guess as to who stopped him." 

"Peter." It's a broken statement from Tony's lips. " His Peter." 

"Indeed." Strange pulls in a deep breath, dragging a hand down his face. "I'm afraid my efforts to see further into his reality are being halted. The Endo sym. I can't…discern anything else." 

"I don't think we need anything else," Bruce assures quickly, meeting Tony's gaze. Brilliant blue reflects in both of their eyes, formulas mirrored across their pupils. "We know we have to stop this guy. That's all that matters."

"Stop the doppelganger. Bring home my fucking kids," Tony agrees. 

"Indeed," Strange repeats, nodding. "Within the next 24 hours, or I'm afraid it won't matter at all." 

Tony scoffs silently, turning away. "Ready to bleed, Brucey?" 

             ═══════════════════

Morgan rolls the bright red apple between her palms, biting her lip. She looks up at him, through her dark eyelashes, and Peter can see the obvious hesitation brewing there.

He sends her a reassuring smile. "Go ahead, Mo. I'm not hungry." 

His stomach immediately tries to counteract that statement, offering up a loud gurgle and clenching painfully. He presses his ruined hand against it, his smile turning immediately rueful.

She affixes him with a look that's entirely too knowing, her eyes narrowing to withering little slits. "Daddy says you're always hungry. That you need to eat a lot. " 

"So do you," he counters quickly. Salliva gathers in the corners of his mouth at the thought of food, of biting into the juicy red fruit and eating with reckless abandon. He can practically taste the sweetness, can feel the slight sting as the juice seeps into the wounds where his fingers used to reside. He swallows it all down, using the back of his hand to push the apple towards Morgan. "Eat up. I know it's your favorite." 

Peter loathes the bologna sandwiches nearly as much as she does, now. He wants to petition the government to strike them from stores, to erase them from existence. Bologna is an affront to God.

Apples are safe. They both love apples. But Morgan needs it more.

And this is the very last apple. The last shred of food between them, and Not Tony has been known to keep food away for days. Days that stretch on and on into painful oblivion, both of them curled into hungry little balls and fantasizing about pancakes and hamburgers and chicken lo mein. Peter would even take bologna sandwiches on those eternal days.

She clutches the apple to her chest, watching him with wide, perturbed eyes. "You're lying. You are hungry."

"I'll be okay. Honest." 

She glances down at the bright cerise in her palms, her sharp incisor biting down hard enough on her lip to nearly draw blood. "Let's- let's split it," she finally settles on. 

"Mo-" 

"No. No. We should share. Mommy says that you should always share. Always. " She sends him a look that brokers no argument, that looks so similar to Mister Stark's own that it has him agreeing without really meaning to. 

"Alright. Okay. We'll split it. You go ahead and eat half, and then I will, okay?" 

She nods, content with that, and switches her teeth to the skin of the apple, preparing to bite into the last of their food for who knows how long-

When Peter hears the terrifyingly familiar sound of electrical whirring, of walls shifting aside.

Morgan's petrified eyes find his, the apple freezing in her hands, and she lets out an exhale of fear around the fruit. 

"Behind me," he orders quickly, sharply, fumbling to move her with his hand that doesn't really work anymore, not the way it needs to, and his tone is enough to spur her into action. 

She stumbles to her feet, slipping her way across the tile to hide behind his knees again. She keeps the apple clutched closely to her own body, an absentminded instinct rather than a conscious decision. 

Apples are her favorite food these days, after all. 

Not Tony steps through the door a moment later, wearing another lavish indigo suit. Peter prefers this, this overdressed version of the man, because at least he isn't wearing his Tony's face. He isn't donning an Aerosmith shirt and reeking of Tony's Dior cologne. He isn't messing with Peter's frazzling brain. 

This is distinctly, and utterly, Not Tony. 

"Hey, Petey-pie," the man croons. "How's it going in here? Having a good stay?" 

Peter swallows. "Had better." He forces himself to his bambified feet, knees buckling.

"You're starting to piss me off, Parker." 

"I'm probably doing something right then."

"Maybe you want to die. Is that what this is about? You don't have the gall to do it, so you're gonna let me do it? Hmm? I suppose I understand, considering the state of you."

He takes a step into the room, his footstep somehow incredibly loud. It echoes around them like a nuclear warhead, dangerous and foreboding. Peter takes an intuitive one back, Morgan orbiting around him flawlessly. This is a song and dance they've perfected. Evade, maneuver, float. 

His body cries out at the motion, at the simple art of moving , and it takes everything in him not to give in and crumple into a Peter puddle on the floor. 

"I'm not going to kill her," Peter tells the man before he even has a chance to ask. "You're not much of a genius if you haven't figured that out yet."

Something dark passes over Not Tony's face, a stormy, enraged expression taking hold where amusement had once been. "Perhaps I'll just cut off your other arm. Make you match." 

It sends a chill across Peter's spine, pulls a gasp from his throat. Morgan pats the back of his knee silently, a quiet reassurance from behind. 

Not Tony steps forward again. Peter and Morgan step back.

"Stop moving," Not Tony orders, lips peeling up to reveal a half smile, half sneer. 

"I-"

His words choke off. Peter feels the floor melting over his bare feet, the cold silvery liquid pooling across his toes and up his ankles. 

He cries out, his heart lurching, immediately trying and failing to sidestep out of the material encasing his feet. He hears Morgan behind him, echoing his cry of alarm. 

"Caught a spider," Not Tony goades, hands on his hips. He keeps that horrifying grin plastered to his face, taking another loud step forward. Another cataclysmic footfall.

This time, Peter can't move.

An undignified whimper breaks the barrier of his lips, and he wrenches his legs desperately, trying to dislodge them from the hardened metal keeping him rooted. It expends energy he doesn't have, and his chest hitches with oncoming panic and exhaustion.

Morgan loses her hold on his pajama pants, and he feels her fingers flailing for purchase again. Terror rolls off of her, joining his, until he can hear nothing but his own galloping pulse and Tony's too loud approach.  

He's stuck again. Trapped in the living floor. 

On fear driven instinct, he tucks his aching hand into the sanctuary of his armpit, hiding his remaining fingers away. His three enduring fingers are gold now, priceless and valuable and rare and he can't bear to lose them.

"Stop." He shakes his head from side to side, rapidly. His breathing is constricted, trapped in his throat. 

"I thought spiders were supposed to do the catching," Tony continues, stalking across the floor wearing that predator's grin. He lifts his eyebrows in a humored way. "But I've caught you. Isn't that ironic?" 

Peter groans against the metal, using whatever fragments of Spider-Man he has left to imbue his struggling with strength. Nothing works. 

"Come on ," Peter all but whines. "This is cheating. " 

Not Tony shrugs. "Cheating is irreverent when you're a God-" 

"Sounds like something a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater would say!" He retorts, each word gaspy and strained. 

"I need you to kill this little brat," Tony continues hotly. He lets his stormy gaze fall, finding Morgan's hiding form. "Like, today . I'm tired of fucking waiting." 

"Literally, never." He keeps his priceless fingers tucked safety away, hidden in the funk of his arm, but he knows. 

He knows that he'd sacrifice his remaining digits, his only ones, to save Morgan's life. He'd let Not Tony take his arm before he ever let himself raise it to Morgan. 

Not Tony stops in front of him, face twisted into an angry snarl. " Kill. Her. " 

"Nope." 

He feels the warning across his skin, the itch of his Spidey-sense, and then Not Tony's fist crashes onto the side of his head, knocking his brain from one side of his skull to the other. 

He gasps, attempts to take a step away, and remembers in painstaking slowness that he's stuck. 

He rights his head, his ears ringing and his vision blanketed in swirling black spots, just in time to see Not Tony cock his fist back again. 

This hit knocks him squarely in the nose, and he hears the telltale tale snap before he feels the pain. He feels the warmth, the liquid dripping down his nostrils first, he feels the shock of it, feels his body trying to maneuver away, and only then does the pain hit. 

He's broken his nose before, a million times over. He broke it in elementary school, tripping over his own feet in the gym and face planting against the linoleum. He broke it in high school, after one of Flash's fists hit a little harder then either of them had expected, Flash near tears in the nurse's office as blood poured down Peter's face, soaking his shirt. He's broken it as Spider-Man thrice, at least, swinging into walls or tussling with bad guys who managed lucky hits. 

All of those times, though, pale to this. To being rooted to the floor, pressing the back of his only, ruined hand to the blood gushing down his smarting nose, covering his lips and chin in rivets of the red liquid. There's nothing like being trapped, barely able to twist as a fist arches towards your battered face. 

He hears Morgan shout, the sound no longer behind him, and flings his head in the direction of her scream. The fist sails by, missing his good ear, and he finds Morgan huddled in their safety corner, as far from Not Tony as she can get. She still has the apple clasped between her hands, held tightly to her chest. 

He feels the tingle again, raising goosebumps across his neck, and narrowly ducks another hit heading towards his face. 

"Stay fucking still!" Not Tony commands, through gritted teeth. 

"Why-" Peter ducks again, "Would I do that? "

He twists his legs miserably side-to-side, panting harshly against the restraints. The distraction costs him, and Not Tony's next hit lands flush against his cheek. Pain erupts across his face. 

" Leave him alone !" He hears the small voice through his haze, through the ringing in his ears, the small, determined voice echoing across the white walls, reverbing. 

Not Tony pauses, his face still twisted and curled in angry ways. There's a bead of sweat making it's trail down his flushed cheek, heading towards his grimacing mouth. 

"Leave him alone !" Morgan repeats, and Peter pivots his gaze to her, beseeching her silently to stop. To stay out of this. To stay safe. He can't protect her if he can't move, with his feet apart of the living floor, and he needs her to stay silent and hidden until he can. 

Morgan does the exact opposite, squaring her shoulders and fixing Not Tony with a simmering look. All of her anger, her hopelessness, seems to be directed into the stare, filling her eyes with haunting anger, and Peter shudders at it. 

He knows, from spending time with his Tony, that a Stark's anger is a dangerous thing to earn. 

Still, he whips his head desperately back and forth at her. " Don't ," he begs her, hoping his eyes convey the rest of the message. Stay silent. Stay safe. 

"Or what?" Not Tony throws his head back and laughs, the sound brittle. "You'll call me a mean name? Tell on me?" 

Her bottom lip quivers where she stands, tucked into the corner of the wall, but her eyes remain unfathomably hard. 

Not Tony flicks his eyes back to Peter, disregarding Morgan. She's nothing to him, just a thing for Peter to maim, to kill, and it shows clearly in his amused expression. 

It's an insurmountable flaw. 

The second his eyes slide to Peter's, his fist cocking again, Morgan pulls her own arm back.

Peter's eyes widen, letting out a breathy, " No ," and then Morgan's hand is flying forward, the bright red apple in her fingers taking flight. 

Peter tries to follow the red through the air, the blur of it, watching the world in curious slow motion, and then the red connects with the side of Tony's temple, the craaaaack of it resonating.

Not Tony falters, stumbling on his feet, as his fist relaxes to hold his head. Peter can see a lump forming under the man's splayed fingers, an immediate purpling taking hold.

The apple rolls to a stop beneath Peter's trapped feet, now misshapen and bruised. Peter thinks, a little unhinged, that he knows what the apple feels like. 

"You little bitch ," Tony seethes, still clutching his head. He swivels towards Morgan, eyes burning with a hot, unpredictable anger. "I'm going to kill you-" 

Which, obviously, Peter can't allow. He watches Not Tony take a step forward, loud and heavy, and then his body spurs into action he long since considered himself incapable of. 

He twists, bending at the waist, ignoring the pain flaring up across the entirety of his body, his only fingers curling around the rounded edges of the apple. 

In one smooth, fluid motion, he rockets back up, pulling his arm back. His hold on the apple is awkward, tenuous, but it's enough. 

He gathers up the vestiges of Spider-Man, of his strength, and sends their very last apple flying. 

A flash of red. A scream from Morgan's lips. 

And then. 

A crash. 

The apple lands, a bright red softball, and Not Tony falls. 

He hits the tile hard, thudding, his cranium bouncing against the floor, and then he's still. The white binding Peter to the floor melts away, turning grey, before it melds with the tile beneath them. Peter stumbles, his feet freed.

Not Tony doesn't move.

"Petey?" Morgan asks softly. Her tumultuous eyes are glued to the man on the floor. "Is he- Are you-" 

Peter pulls in a pained breath, bracing his hand against his stomach. He is the apple, bruised and broken and leaking. He can see it on the floor, beside the still form of Tony, split evenly in half down the middle. 

He can smell it, the sweet, intoxicating aroma of it, and he can hear Not Tony's too fast heart. 

Not dead, then. He's not dead. Peter isn't a killer. He doesn't want to be. He doesn't. 

He pulls in another deep, staggered breath, trying to make his brain work. He feels cloudy, stuck in a storm. The pain assaulting his body is almost too much to take, and he feels his brain spinning away into darkness, black crowding the edges of his vision-

"Petey?" Morgan asks again. She takes a tentative step towards him, away from the wall, and that finally breaks into Peter's floundering mind. 

Not Tony is unconscious.

This is a chance. Their one chance.

"We need to go ," he tells her, eyes jolting desperately to the wall where the door still remains, open the smallest crack. It's enough. "Mo, come on. We have to go." 

She crosses the floor quickly, side stepping Not Tony's body by about a mile. "We're leaving?" She questions, watery, offering up a hand that he can't really hold. Not anymore. He curls his thumb around her thin wrist.

"Yes. God. Yeah. We're leaving. I think we've overstayed our welcome here, huh?" 

He sends a frantic smile her way, breathing painfully deep, and then propels them both forward, towards the door. They both eye Not Tony as they pass, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the swelling of his temple, the thin line of blood on his cheek, and then they're there. 

At the magic door. The portal to freedom. 

Peter swallows thickly, sharing a conspiratorial look with Morgan, and he pushes the magic entryway open with his shoulder.

The air tastes like freedom.

             ═══════════════════

Banner holds the vial up to the light, his face awash in amazement. "We did it," he says, breathless, watching the hydrous silver ripple through the viall. "I can't believe it. We did it. " 

"Damn right we did," Tony murmurs over his shoulder, watching as the molten liquid catches the evening rays, encapsulating the hopeful mood. 

"A living metal." Banner shifts his gaze to Tony's, wondrous. "Do you know what this means?" 

Tony nods. It means a million things. But only one matters. "It means we can get my kids back." 

He holds out a hand, palm up, and Banner gently deposits the small vial into his grasp. Tony lets his fingers curl around the oblong item, gingerly, feeling the cold chill as it seeps across the glass to his skin. "Endo fucking Sym." 

Chapter Text

Three Months Ago…

"Why don't you invite that friend of yours out? That Fred kid?" Tony smiles as he says it, lips quirking into a conspicuous smirk. "I won't even complain about the teenage boy funk destined to pollute the room." 

Peter rolls his eyes. "It's Ned. You know it's Ned." 

Tony's smile cracks bigger at the familiar banter, at the good-natured grin written across his kid's face. Today is a good day, a day when Peter believes in himself. He'd walked the entire length of the hospital corridor, almost entirely on his own, using Tony's arm as a brace only twice. Tony can see the equal measure of exhaustion and pride in the kid's woodsmoke eyes. 

"Ned, schmed." He reaches out a hand to ruffle Peter's hair, nearly sighing in relief when the boy allows it, even leans into it. 

Today is an exceptionally good day. Which means it is completely on par for Tony to inadvertently ruin it. "I can't be expected to know the name of every kid you come in contact with." 

Peter's eyes flick down, towards the hand fisting his hospital bed sheet in his lap. "Ned's my only friend. You know that, too." 

The pride slips off Peter's face as though it had never been there, replaced by a sudden and fierce despondency. 

Tony doesn't know exactly what caused the sudden shift, if the kid thought about that girl who grew up and left him behind, if he thought about not being able to return to school this year or what. Tony knows that it's his fault, though. 

Everything is right now. Everything about this situation is because of him. 

"Ted. Invite Ted out again," Tony declares, somewhat desperately. He shifts back in his seat, pulling back to better see the expression written on Peter's face.

"I don't think I should," Peter mumbles softly. He shrugs, his shoulders slumping up and down. The action brings some discomfort because Peter winces. 

"He's been here already," Tony reminds gently, because he knows exactly what this hesitation is. It's the same hesitation he got last week when he asked Peter, again, if he'd like to meet his new sister. It's a hesitation born of embarrassment, and Tony hates it. Hates that Peter's already fragile self esteem has been knocked even lower, especially by something as inconsequential as scars. 

Scars couldn't dim Peter's light if they tried. If only the kid understood that. 

Peter looks up at him through his lashes. "Maybe I should wait a little longer. Heal a little more." 

Tony sighs deeply, the sound pulling out of the very core of him. "Fine. You're gonna have to get back out there, though. Eventually." 

Peter's eyes drift towards his hospital window, to the small slant of sunlight pouring in. "Yeah. Eventually." 

"Right now," Tony decrees, reaching out to pluck the TV remote from the small table beside Peter's bed, "It's time to catch up on the episodes of Brooklyn 99 that you missed." 

Peter's eyes flash to his. "How many did I miss? Did Jake and Amy finally get together?" 

Tony affixes him a grin, maneuvering himself gently onto the bed to stretch out. He feels their shoulders brush, the one with Peter's arm, and then feels Peter relax against him. It warms him up from the inside. "Buckle in, buttercup." 

Peter smiles up at him, a genuine one, and Tony fervently prays that time can indeed heal all wounds. If anyone needs it, anyone deserves it, it's Pete. His kid. He's wishing on tomorrow, on time that feels borrowed.

For now, though, Pete is resting against him, dropping his head to Tony's shoulder. For now, 

            This. 

                    Is.

                        Enough. 

            ═══════════════════

The air might taste like freedom, but it smells like rot. 

Peter's nose automatically crinkles up at the scent, his eyes watering as they try desperately to adjust to the dim lighting outside the cube. He's been living in filth, in the stench of it, so the smell of rot isn't something overwhelming, just different . 

Musty like wet wood and decay. Rank like a Queens alleyway on a hot day, the garbage festering under the sun. Sickly sweet like a bloating, decaying body.

Peter shudders, tearing his still adjusting eyes around. Morgan is flush against his side, quivering, and he keeps his thumb hooked around her wrist to keep her close and safe.

They need to move. Before Not Tony wakes up. 

Peter takes a stumbling step forward before he even has a sense of his barrings, tripping over his unsteady feet and dragging Morgan along as he goes. The floor beneath them creaks, an old, frayed wood, rotten in spots, and Peter gulps. 

The light from the open door of their cube, as bright and grating as ever, pours out into their new surrounding,  illuminating the dank walls around them. Peter had expected Stark towers, maybe, or the Compound, but never this.

Beside the high tech cube behind them, a room afloat in the middle of another, they're surrounded by weathering wood walls and deteriorating ruin. This isn't a place Tony would ever want to be.

"Where are we?" Morgan whispers, looking around with a frightened expression. 

Peter continues to all but drag her along, through another doorway with a door rotting off its hinges. It pools them out into a hallway, just as decrepit and forgotten as the rest of the building; a cream botanic wallpaper remains in some areas, peeling and molding. Underneath that is stained plaster. Peter can hear the pitter-patter of what he assumes to be rodent feet scurrying within the walls. They pass by several more doorways, opening into empty, ramshackled rooms. One of them has a wrought iron bed frame, draped in cobwebs and disintegrating sheets. Some doors remain closed. Peter leaves them like that.

"A house?" Peter guesses, eying an empty picture frame left on one of the walls, the photograph inside long since unrecognizable with yellowing.

"A haunted house, maybe," Morgan argues, breathless. He can hear her heartbeat as well, fast and frantic, can hear her chest hitching in exertion. Walking across the hall might as well be running a 5k for them. 

The hallway leads them to a treacherous looking staircase, complete with missing treads and rickety, dark balusters. Morgan eyes the descent warily. "Is this safe? " 

Peter laughs, a winded, frangible sound that seems to echo across the darkened derelict walls. "No," he admits, far too tired and achy and exhilarated to bother lying to her. He can see spots in the wood to avoid stepping on, the rot on them easy to spot with his enhanced vision.  "But it's gotta be better than the white room." 

The light of it seems to chase them even out here, casting long, eerie shadows across the floors and walls. Even without ghosts, Peter knows this place is haunted. He can feel it dripping down the ruined remains of wallpaper, can feel it pooling in the divets in the floor.

Morgan agrees, nodding at his side. "I wanna go home." 

They ascend the stairs together, quickly, Morgan wrapping her fingers into the stiff material of his pajamas, him keeping her wrist against his palm. The stairs creak threateningly beneath them, a high pitched warning, and it only spurs them on faster, their bare feet pounding across the rotting wood on their mad dash down. Morgan had shoes, once, an eternity ago. 

Peter had more fingers, too. 

It looks like the haunted house will be keeping both. 

They make it to the bottom safely, wheezing and hacking, and then Peter is dragging her towards the front before either of them have a chance to recoup their dwindling oxygen. Peter knows that if he stops, if he affords himself even a slice of a break, he won't be able to go again. He'll collapse right here, amidst the ruin, until Not Tony wakes up and drags him back to the white walls, to bologna sandwiches and burning pain.

Peter won't survive that again. It's go or die. 

Morgan stumbles beside him, and then he's curling his fingers around the brass knob of what has to be the front door. He can see another hallway to one side, leading deeper into the house, and then an open foyer on the other, with space for a couch and a family and a TV if this place wasn't so haunted . 

Peter grimaces, an agonized whimper falling from his lips as his fingers fail again and again to grab, let alone twist, the knob. He's back to his days after the Snap , when he struggled to get out of his hospital bed, when he had to relearn how to do nearly everything because his right hand had been his best hand, his left a useless sausage limb, unable to do anything and now he's relying on it and its failing- 

Morgan reaches her own tentative hand out, gently prying his struggling fingers from the knob and twisting it herself. "It's okay," she offers softly. 

Peter chokes on a relieved, and embarrassed sob. 

And then the front door is opening, with an earth-shattering creeeak, and real moonlight is pouring in. 

It's not the fake, artificial light that's been burning his retinas for weeks now. This is soft, and caressing, and makes him think of long ago midnight patrols, perched on a ledge in his suit overlooking Queens under the stars. This is nights at the lakehouse, being dragged out to the dock so Mister Stark can point out constellations in the sky. This is walking home with Aunt May, before the Snap, joking and laughing with each other while carrying grocery bags filled with snacks.

He looks down at Morgan, her face painted in the same wonder, still conjoined at the side, and then they both take a synchronized step out of the haunted house and onto the street.

Peter leaves the too fast heartbeat behind him. 

            ═══════════════════

The vial seems to pulse on the oak kitchen table, the liquefied metal inside undulating against the glass keeping it contained. 

"That's it?" May asks dubiously, leaning over the table to watch the metal with doubtful eyes, her fingers pressing hard into the kitchen table. Tony knows that if she had even a shred of Peter's superstrength, the oak there would be nothing but splinters by now. "That's- this is why you guys can't get into the bastard's reality?" 

She tears her gaze away, lifting her face up to find Tony's across the room. Tears pool in her eyes and her chest hitches. "You're going to bring them home now?" 

"Yes," Tony vows, meeting her thunderstorm gaze. "Yeah. We're bringing them home." 

"Is it enough?" Pepper asks. He can see the same doubt mirrored on her face, both women united in their worry. Everything hinges on the liquid in that vial.

"Oh yes," Banner cuts in, shuffling around to stand across the table from May. He affixes the vial a completely different type of look; wonder. "It's more than enough. The metal will grow. Exponentially." 

"And you know how to destroy it?" Strange demands from where he's standing, cross-armed and stiff-legged. 

Banner shoots a hopeless look Tony's direction.

"That's the thing, Strange-" Tony starts, shrugging a little.

"You don't know?" Pepper questions, voice distressed. She snaps her gaze between him and the vial, lips puckering into a tight line.

Bruce nervously clears his throat, garnishing the attention of the room. He seems to shrink a little under it, dipping his head. "The only way to destroy it is to force your epinephrine and norepinephrine to staggering lows. It's the adrenal medulla that controls the metal, the living metal, so the only way to destroy it is to bond with it, to sync it to your neurotransmitter-" 

Tony can see the glaze seeping across the crowd, their eyes glossing over as Bruce talks androgens and cortisol levels, and he knows they don't have time for this. They don't have time to try and make everyone understand the element, to get everyone on the same fucking page. Each second ticking away here equals something longer there . No one has to understand it, they just have to accept it works. Plus, he can see the worry on Pepper's face metastasizing with each syllable that rolls off of Bruce's tongue, twisting into something bordering on outright terror.

"To summarize," Tony pointedly interrupts, gaze sweeping the room, pausing meaningfully on Pepper's face, "I bond with the metal, I control the metal. Including Mr. Hyde's on the other side. I bring the kids home. Ba-da boom."

"You did not answer my question," Strange argues, shaking his head. "Do you know how to destroy this metal?" 

"It sounds dangerous, Tones. Even for you." Rhodey paces restlessly across the kitchen, the mechanical stints in his legs whirring softly. "How do you even know that the Endo Sym on the other side will respond to you? I mean, it was created for him, not you." 

Tony loves them. He loves their worry, and their fear, and their desire to keep him safe even if he doesn't deserve it. 

But he doesn't have time for it now. Not with his kids gone. "We're essentially the same person. What's good for the goose is good for the gander." 

He punctuates the sentence with a shrug.

"I was hoping to simply be able to destroy his shield. This is infinitely more…complicated." Strange digs his fingertips into his eyes, attempting to grind the tiredness away. When he looks up again, the dark bags remain.

"It will work," Tony assures. It has to. 

"How will we know?" Pepper asks. 

Tony eyes the vial again. "I bond to the metal and the Wizard does his little hand track. If it works, well, the portal will open." 

"If not?" Happy. 

Tony smiles a slightly mad grin, fueled by sleep deprived delirium and gallons of coffee. It says everything he needs it to.

If that portal doesn't open, I'll plunge. Right off the cliff into a chasm of depression so deep I won't be coming back-

Tony watches as Strange stalks across the hardwood floor, remaining stiff and postured, to lean over the kitchen table. He glares at the phial, deliberating, and then his fingers tip-tap across the air, sparking dark orange. He mumbles something under his breath, indistinct to Tony's ears, face drawn in serious contemplation. 

"Care to share?" Tony asks, raising a brow in the man's direction. 

Strange straightens. "I've imbued the contents of this vial with a powerful spell. Similar, if not identical, to what I imagine your variant has used on his own. Don't abuse it." 

"Don't turn into an egotistical maniac hellbent on world dominion and kill you, you mean?" 

Strange smirks. "Exactly. Don't do that." 

"No promises." 

             ═══════════════════

The street is empty, forgotten houses framing the road on either side of them, silhouetted in the muted moonlight. It softens things that might be harsh and sharp during the day; concaved roofs, dry, dead grass, rusted out bikes left overturned. Peter doesn't recognize this as part of Queens, not this graveyard of homes, so he figures that they might be somewhere else. 

Or maybe this is Queens. Just not his. 

He hasn't had a chance to mull over the multiverse theory, to ponder the ramifications of being so far from home, and he decides not to right now. 

Right now he needs to get Morgan somewhere safe and secret. 

Not Tony will be waking soon, no doubt, and Peter can't take the risk that he'll come looking for them to find them shuffling down the street, easy pickings.

"Where are we going?" Morgan asks, giving voice to his thoughts. 

"Um." Peter blinks, trying to formulate a plan. He wants to lay down right here, on the cracking pavement under his feet and give in. To fall asleep under the stars and let his aching body slip away from him for awhile. Each step is agony, pulling from reserves of adrenaline quickly trending towards empty. He can't, though. He can't leave Morgan like that. "We need to hide." 

She lets her gaze rake across the houses, cataloging each shattered window and collapsing roof. Distaste twists her features. "In one of them? " 

"Um." Peter wets his lips. They're dry, as cracked as the pavement beneath them. He can't remember the last time Not Tony gave them water. He thinks longingly of the mushy  apple left lying on the tiles in the white room, his stomach churning with hunger. "Um. No. No. We gotta get farther from here."

He doesn't know what technology this Tony has, if he has trackers and thermal heat seekers and whatever else their Tony has in his arsenal. He doesn't really know anything right now, and the realization has him biting back tears. 

"I'm tired," Morgan complains, the exhaustion evident in her voice. She tilts her face up to his, the dark bags under her eyes painfully clear in the star light. "And hungry. And thirsty." 

He swallows. "Me too. To all of those. Let's try and get a little farther, okay? And then try and find some food and stuff." 

She nods, the action somber. "Love you. 3,000." 

He squeezes her wrist. "Love you 3,000, Mo."

             ═══════════════════

Tony reaches a hand out towards the center of the oak, towards the vial, ignoring the worried protests that filter up to him. 

"Tony, man, are you sure -" 

"Be safe, honey-"

"This is insane-" 

His fingers curl around the small phial, already feeling the cold seeping into his fingertips. He wonders, idly, if the metal will feel as chilled when it grows around him, when it fuses to his own brain waves. Will it be a second layer of skin, like his Iron Man suit, or a covering of frost? He shivers in preparation. 

"How do you bond with it?" May asks, voice subdued. Tony catches it easy, though, amidst the cacophony of fretting and concern rolling off of his friends. He catches her voice simply because she's resolved to this , to doing whatever it takes to get the kid's back. She's willing to let this happen in a way his people haven't quite wrapped their minds around. 

He doesn't begrudge her that. He knows she'd trade places with him in a heartbeat if possible. 

He finds her eyes across the kitchen table, the resolve mirrored there, and offers her a false debonair smile. 

"Like this," he tells her, popping the cork and pouring the molten silver across the veins in his wrist.

             ═══════════════════

They walk and walk, their bare feet catching on stones and broken bottles, the colorful glass shards embedding into their feet. Morgan gasps several times, face pulling up into a grimace, and Peter has to stop to carefully pull each sliver from the heel of her feet. 

They cross streets, meandering aimlessly from Rowan Boulevard to Penrose Avenue, Morgan growing more and more sluggish the more miles they put between them and the white room. 

Between then and Not Tony. 

Peter is sure that the man must be awake by now, awake and rabid and furious, tearing across the streets in anger to finish his threat, to cut Peter's only arm off, to finish what the Infinity Stones started- 

Peter has to force down his panic several times, has to force his breathing to even out. 

He hasn't been down a street in eons, since that awful week he spent at the apartment in Queens, since he took a risk walking down to the store for May, since the old woman had seen him, had twisted her face in disgust at him, had sent him scampering immediately back home- 

Peter thrusts the panic away again, pulling in a ragged breath. 

They haven't seen anyone yet. No pedestrians. It's a blessing and a curse.

"Petey," Morgan all but whimpers. "I'm sorry." Her lip trembles as she looks up at him, dark eyelashes coated in tears. "I'm really, really tired. Can we stop ? Please?" 

He bites his lip, eyes darting to each side of the street. The abandoned homes are gone, overtaken by apartment buildings that do seem to contain life, hidden away within their confines. He can see a light on in a window of one, on the third floor, can hear a dog barking in another, several faded TV's playing. He doesn't know where to even stop anymore, unless he wants to condone breaking and entering. 

"Mo, I don't know," he tells her brokenly. "I don't even know where to go-" 

And then he catches it, the muted green in the dark. A street name that he recognizes. Sugarplum Lane. He'd laughed about that name a million times with May, walking home to the apartment with groceries on their arms, back when he had both of them. Sugarplum Lane would inevitably lead to 20 Ingram Street. 

To his apartment. To May. 

"Just a little farther," he tells her, turning her towards the street sign. He feels his waning energy renew, feels the excitement flush across his face. 

May. He needs Aunt May. 

"Okay," Morgan agrees, wearily, trudging along obediently at his side.

May. May. May.

             ═══════════════════

Pepper offers up a cry of belated protest. Rhodey curses. Happy inhales sharply. 

All snippets of love to Tony's ears. 

He ignores them, though, in favor of the silver circling around his arm, crawling up to his shoulder. It's cold, but not unbearably so. Like a can of Cola pressed against his neck, like a snicker from the little girl holding it there, declaring, "Is that cold, Daddy?" 

It is. It is cold. He shivers.

He feels the liquid across his wrist, sinking into his skin and veins. It pulls a gasp from him, watching it ripple and fluctuate across his forearm. 

"Tony?" Bruce asks, sounding faraway. "How does it feel?" 

"Like- like-" Tony reaches out to touch the metal, dipping his finger into the molten, shifting liquid. Immediately, the silver crawls up his finger and up his other arm, spreading across his shoulder blades. 

Cold. But not freezing. 

Like a vanilla ice cream cone in this very kitchen, smothered in caramel sauce, melting down his daughter's chin as she smiles a big, toothy grin at him. Like an extra few scoops for Peter, the kid shrugging sheepishly in his direction, the cold of the ice cream container icing against his palm.

Tony has known the arctic before. He's laid in the snow, his heart crushed between vibranium and lies. Tony has known the cold, and this isn't that. 

This is the type of pleasant cold contrasted by a hot day. Like coolers of ice and picnics of cold sodas and ice cream and swimming to beat the heat.

"Tony?" Rhodey asks nervously, taking a halting step forward. His hand hovers outwards, fluttering above the silver, afraid to touch it. 

Tony pulls in a deep breath, tearing his gaze from the metal long enough to gaze across his assembled committee. Worry echoes back to him. 

"It feels like summer," Tony informs them, seeking out Banner's face in the sea of fretting. "Feels great." 

"Has it fused?" Banner questions excitedly, eyes wide, gaze trailing across his shoulders and arms. 

Tony smiles, wiggling his eyebrows. He thinks a private move , and the Endo Sym instantly obeys, sliding down his chest and stomach.

Pepper gasps, a hand pressing against her lips. 

"It works," Tony tells them smugly, twisting around in the kitchen light to give them a view of his back, to watch the Endo Sym dance across his shoulder blades, forming the distinct shape of wings before melting back flush against his shirt. 

"It's- It's amazing ," Banner exclaims.

Tony flexes his brain again, shivering minutely as the cold bite of the metal pirouettes across his veins. The Endo Sym heeds his private order, shifting to long, unformed talons protruding from his knuckles. 

He frowns, running a free finger tip across the dull edge of one, attempting to think sharp sharp sharp. The silver ripples, but fails. 

"I can't seem to control it. Exactly," Tony informs them. Several eyes widen at his confession, but Banner merely nods. He has his working hand held out, fingers tapping against the air, an obvious dactylonomy of longing. The scientist in the man wants to understand, to study, to solve. 

"That sounds normal," Bruce tells him. "It will probably take time for you and the metal to fuse completely-" 

Tony's heart sinks down to his feet, and he's shaking his head before Bruce has finished. "Nope. No can do. I got plans, Brucey-boy. Places to be, children to save. I don't have time to take this fucking metal on a date and woo it with Chardonnay to learn it's innermost workings. Faster solutions, come on." 

He snaps his fingers in the man's direction. 

"I'm beginning to doubt the probability of our success," Strange deadpans, cracking a knuckle. The Cloak nods beside him, lifting and lowering one of its velvety corners in solidarity. 

"Give me a second," Tony bites back. "Let the people with the PhD's figure this out." 

Strange glowers. "Have you forgotten the Doctor in my name? I have five PhD's. I was literally a neurosurgeon."

Tony waves the thought away with his metal clad hand. "Wrong kind of doctor. Bruce. Talk to me." 

Bruce grimaces. "You could create a new suit?" He hedges hesitantly. "An Endo sym suit to give the metal a boost while you-"

"I don't have time to make another fucking suit. The kids have been there for weeks. " He blanches at his own words, the truth of them burning his throat like acid on the way up. Weeks. His kids have been gone for weeks, festering away in some hellhole with his evil alter ego. The idea of it makes him feel slightly insane. "No. I go now." 

He latches onto the first thought that spins across his mind. 

"Hey, Fri, baby?" He calls up to the ceiling, watching the metal shift fluidly across his own knuckles. "Can you fetch me my suit?" 

Pepper's eyes flash to him, her head cocking to the side. "The Iron Man suit?" The expression on her face isn't irritation, not quite, not in these dire fucking circumstances, but it might as well be it's ugly cousin. Vexation. Concern.

"On it, Boss," FRIDAY returns. 

"Aren't you retired?" Rhodey questions, sharing a look with Pepper that he catches. He doesn't care. He won't care about anything until he has his kids back. 

Tony shakes his head, ears peeled to the familiar whirring happening right outside this room, the clank of armor pulling itself from the lab wall display. Metal ready to serve. "Not anymore."

Maybe he was never meant to retire, to be a normal fucking person. Maybe domesticity isn't his forté. 

The suit, faithful Ole Reliable, flies in from the garage half-formed. Tony feels the nanos as they hasten to his body, the slight pin prick tickle as they grow over his skin. The red and gold washes over him like an old friend, an old dog that you maybe outgrew but kept around for nostalgia, that old hound rearing up to bite when the home is threatened. The silver, liquescent across his flesh, joins in with the red and gold, overpowering the colors, attaching itself to the main frame already in place.

"You ready, Boss?" FRIDAY asks, the moment the faceplate falls over his features. He glances down to see a curiously white gauntlet adorning his wrist, to see alabaster legs where his creation had once been shiny scarlet.

"You know I am, baby." 

Retirement's over.

            ═══════════════════

Morgan watches as Petey pauses in front of the building, his eyes wide. His nose isn't bleeding anymore, but it's still sitting on his face slightly askew and his lips and chin are still covered in drying, flaking blood the color of rust. 

It makes Morgan think of painting, of sitting at the kitchen table adding color to tree trunks. 

"Petey?" She questions, a little hesitantly. She looks up at the building, coincidentally the same color as the blood oxidizing on his face, and tries to see what about it has him looking so unsure. 

The sun is starting to make an appearance on the horizon, purple and yellow and orange and warm, and Morgan wants to cry for some reason that she doesn't understand. 

Morgan missed the sun. She'd like to paint it again one day while her real Daddy makes pancakes to eat.

The front door to the building opens, a man stepping out into the rising sunlight, and Petey immediately shirks back, tucking his face into his shoulder. Morgan frowns, listening to the rapid rise and fall of his breathing before a realization comes back to her. 

Her brother doesn't like being outside. 

The man saunters past, sending them a wary look, and then Morgan wraps her fingers around her brother's wrist, tugging slightly. 

"Sorry, Mo," he tells her, voice tight. He brings his face back to hers, now wet with tears. It makes Morgan want to cry, too. 

'Are we going inside?" She questions, trying to be soft and gentle like Mommy and her real Daddy. Like when she stubbed her toe and Mommy told her she was strong, like when Daddy held her close after she tumbled from the kitchen counter and cracked her forehead. 

"Yeah." He still sounds sad, so Morgan wraps her arms around him. Soft and gentle hugs always help. "We're going in." 

"Okay." Morgan pulls back to wrap her fingers around his wrist and then she's pulling him towards the rust toned building. He follows obediently. Morgan is okay with being in charge if it gets them someplace safe to sleep and eat.

She leads him up the stairs, squinting at the flickering lights above them. They make her think of the room, of the harsh lights there, and she shivers. 

"How much farther?" She asks him, her feet aching. She can feel the sting of all the little cuts from the street, and she wishes sadly that she'd never taken off her sneakers. 

"It's up there," Peter inclines his head down the hall, towards one of the doors on the right side. Morgan pulls them towards it, wearily, limping slightly. 

They pass by identical doors on each side of them, some with welcome mats and some without, until Morgan parks them in front of the one selected by her brother. There's a welcome mat here, spelling out something Morgan can't quite read yet, and she sees Petey narrow his eyes at it. 

"I'm tired," she complains again, after a moment of watching Peter stare down at the rug.

"Okay, Mo." He gulps, sending her a sheepish look, and then rapts the back of his hand against the door. They both listen as the knock echoes, reverberating inside the apartment. Peter stares down at the rug again, eyebrows furrowing. 

No one comes and Morgan whines a little, prompting Peter to wop the door a little harder. 

They wait a moment longer, Morgan contemplating just laying down in the hallway right here, on the ugly beige rug her brother seems to hate, when she hears the footfall of steps on the other side of the door. 

Petey stiffens, face drawn in concentration, and then the door flings open. "What the hell? " A surly, balding man asks. He's older, way older than even Uncle Happy, with deep creases of wrinkles and thick, flabby arms.

There's a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, smoke wafting up around his head and into the hallway. Morgan coughs at it, pressing a hand against her mouth. 

Peter takes a step back, pulling her with him. "May?" He asks. "I'm looking for May Parker. Please."

The man appraises them, squinty eyes blowing wide. The cigarette threatens to tumble from his lips, and he has to suck the butt back in. Morgan cringes at the smell, at the burn the smoke leaves in her throat and nostrils. 

"What the hell ?" The man repeats, eyes jumping from her to her brother. They linger on Petey, crawling across his face and down his shoulders. 

"May Parker?" Petey asks again. He pulls in a breath. "We're looking for her, please?" 

"The fuck is this? A prank? A robbery ?" 

Petey shakes his head quickly. "No, no, we're just looking for someone. Did she move?" 

"What the fuck happened to you?" The man demands. He pulls a long drag from the cigarette between his teeth, his eyes narrowing. He frowns in Petey's direction, and Morgan feels her brother cringe back. "Ain't no fucking May Parker here. You guys leave, now , before I call the police." 

Morgan looks up to Petey to find him already staring at her, his eyes tormented. He gazes back at the sour man, pleading softly, "A phone? Do you have a-" 

The man pounds a closed fist against his doorframe, pulling a terrified yelp from Morgan. She retreats quickly, backtracking l into the wall behind her and splaying her arms out against the tan drywall there. The man affixes her a glare. 

"I mean it. Get outta here. It's six in the goddamn morning. I ain't falling for any tricks." 

"This isn't a trick, sir," Peter insists softly, looking back at Morgan protectively. "I just need to uh, call someone-" 

"If you're fucking hurt go to the E.R. Don't hassle old men in the middle of the night." The man sneers in Petey's direction one more time, brown tinged saliva gathering in the corners of his mouth, and then he slams the door shut with a resounding thud so loud that it echoes down the corridor. Petey jolts at the noise, twisting around to find her against the wall. 

"What now?" She feels her lip quivering, her eyes building with tears. She's so tired. All she wants to do is eat, especially if it's something good, not bologna , and sleep. 

Petey stares back at her, tears forming in his eyes, too. "I-I don't know. I don't." 

            ═══════════════════

"I'm going with you," Rhodey declares, shooting Tony a mildly scathing look that brokers no argument. In emphasis, he taps the watch on wrist twice, sending Tony a metallic glare the second his faceplate falls. The War Machine grows easily over his friend's skin.

Tony laughs a little through his own familiar, and yet entirely unknown, suit. The cold tickles across his skin, his suit feeling more alive then it ever has. He glances down at the white one more time, the living ivory, and then twists his way towards Strange. 

"Magic shmagic, please." He hasn't heard his voice like this in years, this synthesized, modulated version of him. He hasn't felt the heft of a suit, hasn't listened to the clang of his own iron-clad footfalls. He hasn't felt real speed since the last time he wore the suit.

There's a part of him that loves it, that wants to fire a repulsor blast to sky, wants to rain plaster and splinters down upon the kitchen to take to the sky to fly, to soar across the clouds with that same kind of speed. 

That part of him pales in comparison to the empty, cavernous ache in his heart, though. The ache growing to a black hole, preparing to swallow everything if he doesn't get his kids back in his arms. He'd condemn himself to slow, earthbound steps the rest of his life to make it happen. 

Strange sends a wayward glance Rbodey's war, face pinched. "The Moons of Munnopor spell should allow us to enter and exit the world with ease, if your Endo Sym works, but taking too many people could further complicate the mission-"

Tony hears the mechanical indignation from Rbodey's corner in the kitchen, the way his arms crossed across his armored chest. 

"I'm going," Rhodey repeats. "I'm not letting Tony do this alone." 

Tony's divided into a paradox; he's a man who wants to keep his best friend home, safe. He doesn't want Rhodey engaging in inter-dimensional fuckaroos, doesn't want to ever find him in another situation where he'll have to watch his friend's horrifying descent to the Earth and the subsequent thud as he crashes into the dirt. The other half of Tony, the one winning every single battle right now, is the one dedicated to stream lining every potential choice to the only outcome he's willing to accept; bringing his kids home. 

He sends Rhodey a look, hidden beneath the face plate across his features, knowing that the man will catch it. Rhodey has always, always caught Tony. Even if Tony himself hadn't returned the favor, had let Rhodey hit the ground. 

Tony swallows that down, directing himself once again in the Wizard's general direction. "Chop, chop, Harry Potter." 

Strange shakes his head. "I hope you are prepared for this, Stark. I'm not sure what world we will find over there." 

"Make with the magic." He spares one last glance around, to the gathered attestations of his heart, living outside his body. Pepper, her face crinkled in obvious worry, head held high despite the horrid stakes. Happy, stiff-backed, stiff-lipped, the man who could zing Tony with a verbal lashing and take a bullet for him all in the same breath. Even May, arms cradled around her midsection, looking so much like his Peter that he has to look away. 

Bruce, too, since he's feeling maudlin and insane. 

Each of them watching him and Rhodey with the kind of fear that only comes with playing games that carry steep stakes. 

And nothing could ever be steeper than Peter and Morgan's lives. 

"I truly worry about our survival," Strange mutters, the worst fucking pep talk Tony has ever heard, and he's opening his mouth to tell the Wizard exactly that, when the man's hands crackle to life, glistering amber. Tony watches the small, emerging circle of orange expand, coaxed large by Strange's dancing fingers, and then he's staring through a portal into a dark world that's undefined. 

He can see the emerging sun, can see the soft cream of it bouncing off of what must be buildings, and he knows with every atom of his soul that his kids are there, in that dark world. 

"Walk through," Strange orders, fingers no longer playing a game of endless leap tag with another. 

Tony takes a deep breath that fails to ground him, because he can't actually be tethered to this reality. Not when he's about to be walk through a wormhole to another. 

He pushes away all of his accompanying trauma, the thoughts about space and New York and portals leading to disaster and pain, and them he takes a feigned confident step through. 

He hears the chorus behind him until it fades away to nothing, the addled, "Be safe!", "You better come back, Tony", "Bring them home." 

He walks away from that and into a world that innately feels different. Colder. 

Not a summer-day cold. Not ice-cream. Not refrigerated cans of soda cold. 

This feels like the arctic somehow. 

Like laying in the snow, broken and betrayed. 

He hears the clank of Rhodey's armor following him into the tenebrous world, hears the soft whirl of Strange closing the portal up. Then, both men are standing beside him, staring up and around at whatever version of Queens this is. 

"Welcome," Strange tour-guides, voice drippy with sarcasm again, "To Earth 173." 

             ═══════════════════

Peter scrutinizes the boarded up windows with preemptive guilt chewing on his insides.

Morgan sways a little on her feet next to him, leaning against his legs miserably, and it sets his mind to the regretful task at hand. 

Spider-Man wouldn't do this . He wouldn't break into an abandoned clothing store for his own gain, he wouldn't purposely damage property that didn't belong to him.

But he's not Spider-Man anymore. He's nothing but broken-down, deformed Peter Parker.  And Morgan's wellbeing outweighs the heavy culpability festering deep in his stomach like a rabid dog. He knows the feeling will devour him from the inside if he lets it, and he can't afford that. Not yet. 

He bites his lip nervously, gaze darting up and down the street. This Queens is different then his . This version of his Burrough is broken down, pockmarked with pockets of abandoned, run down neighborhoods and shops. He doesn't even see Avengers Towers in the sky, doesn't see the familiar outline of it against the warm, rising sun. 

The sun would probably still be taking his breath away in wonder if he had anything at all left to give. 

"Here?" Morgan asks, warily. The look on her face speaks to her utter resignation. Peter feels it, too. The desire to sleep anywhere, even in a shop forgotten and left to break down in a scummy neighborhood.

"Yeah." He swallows, taking a tentative step forward towards one of the boarded windows. His body aches, his legs trembling under his weight, and he shoots one more anxious look around before dragging a finger down a splintery board. There's no one around to witness.

The wood itself is sunbleached, similar to the crimson brickwork making up the storefront. The door is a miraculously unshattered glass, a sign taped up declaring closed. He can read the store's forgotten name where missing letters used to be, their sticky glue residue left behind. 

Marty's Second Hand Shoppe.

Peter hopes he can find a way to repay Marty one day.

He pulls his fingers in, forming a decimated, aching fist, and then pulls his hand back to slam it through the glass. 

Morgan gasps from a couple paces behind him, starting in place. 

Carefully, he makes quick work of the remaining sharp shards, knocking the glass away until there's nothing but the empty door frame between them and the inside of the store. He can smell the scent of musty clothes wafting from within. 

"Come on," he tells her softly, beckoning her forward with an outstretched hand. 

She falters for just a moment, pinching the threadbare remains of a fabric flower, before pure exhaustion wins out and she stumbles forward. Peter directs her carefully into the dim recesses of the shop, helping her avoid as much of the glass as he can. 

He bids the sun a repentant goodbye before following her in through the door. 

The smell is stronger in here, but not horrible. Not at all. It smells of a place locked up too long, left to its own devices. Morgan crinkles her nose at it, a little, running a hand across her face. Peter knows they've both smelt far worse. 

"We're going to sleep here?" Morgan asks softly, her voice carrying loud across the abandoned space. Peter winces.

"Just a little while, Mo." He takes quick stock of their hideaway, gaze lingering across haphazard piles of discarded clothes in the corners. There are empty garment racks littered across the store, empty of anything but metal hangers, and a single desk where he imagines a cashier might once have resided. 

"Is there…any food?" She questions shyly, upturning her fatigued features his direction. "Or something to drink? I'm really, really thirsty." 

"I'm sorry, Mo." He turns his head side to side, woefully, willing the tears pooling in his eyes back down. He needs every single ounce of liquid he can get right now. "How about we grab a quick nap right now, and when we wake up I'll try and find us some food and water, huh?" 

She considers that for a moment before finally nodding her assent. "Okay." 

He needs to find food and water and help , he needs Aunt May or his Tony, if the man even exists anymore. He needs someone to help him get through this because Peter is failing, failing Morgan- 

And suddenly he's falling, plunging face first into the worn khaki of the carpet. His body is utterly spent , running on vapors, and he leans into the fall. The thud knocks his brain a little, the carpet long since void of any plush, and he hears Morgan voice a worried squeak before he lets himself slip away. 

It's not sleeping under the stars, not by a long shot, or better yet, his own bed , but the cave of musty clothes is a million times better than the white room and that's all he wants right now. 

That, and Not Tony to stay away. 

             ═══════════════════

"Where are they?" Tony demands, gazing around at a world that is entirely unfamiliar. He's not a goddamn mapographer, to be fair, and his innate knowledge of Queens ends with Peter; Tony knows of the streets that Peter used to stomp around, the patrols that they used to share together and little else. He definitely doesn't know of someplace like this. 

"The spell should have portaled us to their exact location," Strange murmurs, eying the world around them with the same disdain. 

They've been deposited in the middle of an abandoned street, surrounded by desolate and crumbling houses on either side. Tony can see the sharp spires protruding from one of the homes, the roof long since offering defeat and crumbling. Another home, decked out in mediocre graffiti, the windows and door blown. A bike sits in its yard, upside down, the flat wheel spinning slowly in the soft wind.

"This is Queens? " Rhodey confirms, turning his alloy plated head in Tony's direction. Skepticism is easy to read even across the featureless metal.

"This is a version of Queens," Strange amends quickly, eyes narrowing. "They were here. Or the spell wouldn't have worked."

"Except your magic's kinda been on the fritz, huh?" Tony bites, frustrated. "Maybe you messed it up." 

Strange frowns, shaking his head. "No-" 

"I don't have time for this," Tony mutters. "Fri, track them. Somehow. Try and reconnect with their trackers. Try and find Peter's heat signature. You know he runs hot. I don't care how , find them." 

"It's because of our contradictory flow of time," Strange interjects, eyes widening. "They were here, but they'd already moved on by the time we had crossed the portal-" 

"Boss," FRIDAY interrupts, her voice a godsend to Tony. His eyes flick up to the corner of his eyescreen, drinking in the information spilling across in real time. "I have reconnected with Little Miss's tracker. Her signal seems to be coming from a house on your left-" 

Tony's head jerks that direction, barely cataloging the rotting house amidst the sea of rotting houses, and then he's taking flight. 

"Tony-" Rhodey calls through their comms, voice alarmed, before Tony blocks the unwelcome sound out. He barrels through the open front door, the wood groaning around his bulk.

"Fri, where?" He gasps out, a little breathless, gaze bouncing around the decrepit, empty room desperately. He begs for something familiar, something inexplicably her. 

"Upstairs," she comes back. "Second bedroom on the right-" 

He's off again, propulsors jetting him across the abandoned house and up the rickety flight off stairs. Rhodey careens into the house behind him, gauntlet held out in obvious threat to anyone within, but Tony's gone before he can focus much more on that. 

He makes it to the aforementioned room at light speed, crashing through the closed, decaying door with ease. The wood groans around him again, splintering and breaking, and then Tony's standing in the middle of actual fucking hell. 

Hell. Hell. 

And he realizes suddenly that Hell isn't hot. It's not flames licking up your skin for all of eternity, not charred flesh, not even blackened skin and dust. Tony had thought that would be the fate that awaited him, that he'd find dust and flaking black skin at the end, but he knows better now. 

Hell is a closed door, a chilly room. Hell is rotting corpses with indeterminate features, with skin melting off, with faces that you can't see anymore, due to bloat, but faces you know anyway. 

He gags within his suit, his heart and mind spiraling away, ascending to another fucking plane of existence, one where he can't breath , because he's sure as hell not staying here, not in this cold place- 

-"Little Miss's tracker is originating to your left, within a pile of what looks to be shoes-" 

He's spiraling hard, FRIDAY'S voice far, far away, and he has only enough wherewithal to tear his gaze away from the pile of fetid corpses to the pile of shoes and clothes in the corner, where his little girl's shoes must be, those cute little sneakers she donned mere mornings ago, a lifetime ago, and so she must be here-  

Every thought is fragmented, chaotic, jumbled anarchy. He's teetering on the cliff, ready to fall, because his kids are here , are in a pile of familiar corpses- 

Hands clasp the metal on his arms, and then he's ripped from the room, ripped back into this Hellish plane of existence. 

"Tony! Tones! Man!-" 

He knows that voice. He cares about that voice. He pulls in a breath so ragged, so impossible, it shakes the edges of his reality. The force of his exhale causes him to stumble, to falter, ad Rhodey has to catch him. 

Rhodey always, always catches him. 

"Tony, what the hell -" 

He looks up into those dark eyes that he knows, at the horror in his pupils, and pulls in another deep, painful breath. 

He retracts his own face mask, desperate to pull in a drag of oxygen, of fresh air, and realizes his mistake the second the available air touches his nose. It smells like death , like sickly sweet rot, and he gags again, fumbling in Rhodey's iron grasp. 

"Rhodey, oh god -" 

Cold. He's so cold. He's freezing within the alabaster of his new suit- 

"It's- It's not them," Rhodey emphasizes quickly, pupils blown to hell. The fingers digging into Tony's armored arms feel strong enough to dent, to leave lunate divets in the Endo Sym, even though Tony knows that's impossible. He's wearing the strongest fucking metal in either galaxy. 

"What?" Tony's gaze jumps back to the Hell room, to the lumps and mounds of what he knows are bodies, and they're not in there anymore, standing outside in the hall, but he might as well be stuck in that forsaken room for all of eternity-

"They're not ours," Strange interjects, fucking floating next to them, in the middle of the air, his cape billowing around him like the Goddess Shiva or some shit. He looks towards the room, towards literal Hell , and shakes his head. His next statement is full of a moroseness that not even Tony can deny. "They are the Variant's previous victims." 

"Not- not ours?" Tony confirms, dazed. He's sick , physically and emotionally. 

"Not ours." Strange takes a deep breath that looks as haggard as Tony feels. "There are Peter's in there. God . But they aren't the one we seek." 

The Wizard's voice catches on that syllable, on that single, horrified God, and Tony knows they're dealing with the opposite here. With evil. 

"He just- left them to rot ?" Rhodey gasps, squeezing Tony's arm tighter. His dark eyes start to slide that way again, into the dark, rotting room, but Tony watches him change his mind, his gaze snapping back like elastic. 

"Who's in there ?" Tony demands. 

Strange shakes his head, but FRIDAY, reliable as always, lets him know. "Bio Scans show composites to three bodies and two skeletal remains that match Peter Parker's, a skeletal remain that matches May Parker, a body that matches your biocomposite scan, Boss-" 

"Stop," he chokes out. "God, Fri." 

"My apologies, Boss." She sounds immediately contrite and falls silent. 

Tony pulls his faceplate back, desperate to escape the scent assaulting his nose. "Jesus christ. " 

"We have to find them," Rhodey punctuates. 

Tony wants to cry. He wants to break down and wail at the violence within these walls. At the fact that his kid, if not his kid, is rotting in that room, forgotten. Peter Parker should never be hurt. Ever. There shouldn't be a reality where something like this can happen. Not to Peter. Not to any version of him. 

"Should we- God, bury them? " Rhodey wonders aloud. He lets his face plate well back as well, hiding his face, voice modulated through the suit's speaker. It can't hide his dismay. 

"We have no time," Strange says, shaking his head from where he floats, a ghost haunting the stairways of this house. "This reality is incredibly thin…we must find them and get out of here. Sooner rather than later." 

"So we leave them ?" Rhodey demands, horror leaking out and making his voice watery, even through the filter of roboticness. "We can't do that, just leave them here like that-" 

Tony agrees so fucking much. These Peter deserve everything. Everything. But Tony knows the Wizard is right. Infuriatingly so. Because right now, his Peter, the boy who snapped, the boy who saved the world needs him. His daughter, his kind-heartbeat girl, his magic and love and miracles kids need him. 

"He's right," Tony takes a step away, towards the staircase and farther from the graveyard of a room. "We gotta go, Rhodes. We need to find our versions. We can save them." 

"If we hurry," Strange allows. 

"God. Those Peters." Rhodey spares another glance back, towards the room, towards the Hell within. "They didn't deserve this, man." 

Tony can't think about that. He can't. If he thinks too long about someone hurting his kid he'll have an aneurysm. "Let's go," he practically begs, and Rhodey finally turns, joining him on the stairs. 

"I hate this," he murmurs, voice a sibilant whisper. 

Tony wants to nod, to cry, to shrug, to scream. All he can do is focus. "FRIDAY," he orders, breathy, "Is there anyone who matches Peter's heat signature within your range of scanning?" 

"Scanning now." Her voice is gentle, probably softened by his earlier panic attack and his stuttering heart now. He's in delicate fucking straights. "There is a high concentration of energy emanating from another of the room's. Its signature is identical to the Endo Sym you currently wear, Boss." 

Tony swallows. "Any life forms?" 

"None detected. I believe it is a room." 

"A room," Rhodey snaps, disgust tainting his tone. 

"It must be where he kept the Peter's contained," Strange adds on solemnly. 

"FRIDAY," Tony pleads. "Please tell me you found my fucking kids?" 

Silence reigns for an intolerable moment, suffocating them all between it and the dust coating the walls, and Tony knows, knows that he has to go to that room and see where this bastard must have kept his kids, just to be sure, and he has to find them, like yesterday . 

"I have located a heat signature that matches Peter Parker's, Boss. A couple miles from here in a foreclosed clothing shop." 

"Show me," Tony orders, low, breathless. "Show me right now." 

The trajected course appears on his screen immediately, writing out his path in no uncertain terms. A treasure map with his kids at the end. 

He blinks back tears. "Let's fucking go." 

He'll peak at the room with the Endo Sym energy, just to be sure, to be safe, and then he's gone. He's jetrocketing to Peter and hopefully Morgan and he's going to stave off his mounting panic until then- 

He finds the room, and finds that it's haunted by more than Strange's floating. It's haunted by memories and unspeakable horror.

              ═══════════════════

They jetsam across the sky. 

The sun has risen on another day here, what must be it's thirtieth or so since his kids arrived in this godforsaken reality, sunrises they've undoubtedly missed if they damned white room bears any witness. 

Tony pushes that thought away, swallows down a lump of bile. He can't picture that room right now, he can't picture the garbage, the waste, the blood, not until he has his kids in his arms and can assuage his horror with their living faces.  

Rhodey flies next to him, all hard lines against the reflecting sun, with Strange on his other. There's a sober silence following them across the sky. 

He lets his gaze rake across the Queens skyline beneath him, across buildings and pockets of obviously deserted and desecrated neighborhoods. This Queens is scorched Earth, is battle and blood and suffering. He doesn't even see the outline of Avengers Tower here, a staple in his own universe even if he rarely visits the building anymore. Here, it's absent. 

"What the hell happened to this place?" He murmurs softly, dragging his eyes through ruined buildings as he flies. 

"I think-" Strange starts, voice filtering in through the comms, "I think Spider-Man disappeared." 

It jolts Tony mid-air, jerks him within the confines on his new suit. The Endo Sym responds, faltering in the clouds, before Tony thinks a harsh go! 

"Spider-Man's absence did all this?" Rhodey responds. 

"Paired with this Tony's betrayal? I think so." 

He spies a flash of color within the ruins of grey and grime, his eyes prickling as FRIDAY analyzes it and projects it onto the screens in his suit. He doesn't have time to stop, to reflect on it, but FRIDAY'S cataloged version does enough. 

It's a mural, painted onto the side of a brick-stone building. Not graffiti, not like so many of the tagged, ramshackle buildings in this reality, but an honest to goodness frieze painted across the brick. A frieze of the Avengers, of Clint and Nat and Steve and Thor and even Bruce, all equipped with textured, weathered wings, a heartbreaking R.I.P written across the top in dripping gold paint. 

His heart constricts at them, at their faces crafted in acrylic. Nat and Steve are gone, long gone, no longer Earthside. Neither is Thor, for that matter, the God somewhere up in Space. Clint has all but disappeared from Tony's life. 

But here, in this reality? Tony destroyed them.

"The hell is this place?" He shakes his head, clearing the piece from his screens but not his mind. Never his mind. 

"Look." Rhodey points out another mural as they soar across it, this one a wash of familiar ruby. It's Spider-Man, Queens's vigilante hero, adorning the side of another building mid-swing, the thwip of his webs seeming to come to life in the artist's rendering. Across the top of this one is written in heartbreaking black Come back Spidey! 

He won't, Tony thinks despairingly, the thought washing over him with vengeance, Because this universe's Peter is dead, is rotting away in one of your forgotten houses- 

It rattles his brain, his deteriorating, exhausted mind, to know that the one thread tying this universe and his together is Queen's need , their adoration for Spider-Man. 

His brilliant, altruistic, rotting kid. 

"How far is the shop?" Tony asks FRIDAY, voice nothing more than the brush of a whisper. 

"Below you. 500 feet forward." 

Tony blinks, and wills his thrusters to descend.

            ═══════════════════

Morgan hears the whoosh within the edges of her dream, and her mind immediately shifts to accommodate it. She's flying now, riding on her Daddy's back as he twists and twirls about the sky, a happy smirk on his face. She smiles, holding out her arms wide to feel the breeze across her skin-

An accompanying thud follows the sound, loud and harsh, immediately yanking her from the peaceful dream. She awakens on the floor, her face pressed into the carpet of their abandoned shop. 

It takes only a second for horrible alertness to come back, for her to remember Not Daddy and hunger and Petey-  

She twists her stricken face down, fear rushing across her veins, finding him exactly where he fell earlier. Still and unmoving aside from the rise and fall of his chest, the only evidence she has that her brother isn't dead. 

She hears a heavy footfall from the outside and blanches. More steps, subdued voices. 

Whimpering, she shoots a desperate hand out to shake Petey's shoulder where he lays next to her. He groans, but doesn't wake up. 

"Petey," she whispers, terrified, shaking him again and again and again. "Wake up, wake up, please. I'm scared!" 

He doesn't stir, and she jumps at the telltale sound of grass crunching beneath feet, to the front door, a scream working its way up her throat. 

Because standing there, in their shop, is Not Daddy. Decked out in his horrible white suit, his face plate pulling back to reveal the face beneath. 

"Maguna-" he whispers, taking another crunchy sounding step in. 

She opens her mouth and screams. 

            ═══════════════════

Tony finds something worse than he ever could have imagined in the small, forsaken shop. 

He finds his kids, his heart faltering at the sight of them, at the wreck of them. 

He finds them wearing the tattered remains of clothes that he remembers from only days ago, from a lifetime ago, the singed and stiff remnants of Spider-Man pajamas that had cried over once before, on Christmas, and is now prepared to sob over again. He finds the wilting petals of Morgan's taupe dress, the floral design buried in filth. 

He finds Peter, prone on the floor unmoving, still, still, inert as though he was in a coma, back in his perpetual, private Lalaland. He can't see his face, not from this angle, only the twisted curls of the back of his head, only the too-thin curative of his barely breathing back. FRIDAY's on screen alerts assure him that the kid is alive, though he looks like his counter-part back in the haunted house, like a dead corpse. 

He finds Morgan, her face so pale that it's porcelain, fragile and gaunt and breakable. She's crouching by Peter's unmoving form, her face awash in such horrible terror that it has Tony stumbling forward on instinct alone, instinct to wrap his skinny, hurting girl in his arms. 

"Maguna-" he whispers, broken, ordering his Endo Sym to pull back, to see his kids better, to see them with his own eyes and not his mask.

Morgan watches him with impossibly wide eyes, her pupils the size of the goddamn moon. Tony hears Rhodey behind him, faithful and ready to catch him, like always, and Tony takes another desperate, stumbling step forward.

Those wide, terrified eyes never leaving his face, Morgan opens her mouth wide and screams. Wails at the top of her voice, an inharmonious song of terror.

Tony winces, pausing mid-step, arms outstretched to cradle her, and then Peter, his Peter, jolts awake.

His face jerks up, still silhouetted by the dark shadows in the shop, finding Morgan's screaming instantly. He tenses, the action rippling across malnourished limbs that Tony still can't properly even see, and then Peter twists with an inhumane speed around. He pushes Morgan behind him in one jerky, uneven move, turning himself around to face Tony head on. 

And Tony finally gets a good look at that face, that stunningly living face. The concaves of his cheeks, the slope of his now crooked nose, the blood and the bruises tempered across his skin.

"Peter-" Tony breathes, staring into those familiar eyes.

Those achingly familiar brown eyes. 

Chapter Text

Three Months ago…

"Wait, hold on, wait-" 

Peter cuts an irritated look his way, those brown eyes narrowing considerably. "Mister Stark. I'm fine . I can walk." 

Tony knows that. He does. He's watched Pete traverse the entirety of this level of the hospital, bracing his hand against the walls, has watched him heal physically in a way that should be impossible. So Tony knows. 

It doesn't help, though. And Tony's watching Peter walk down these antiseptic white walls for the last time, and he's watching the kid's bambified legs buckle under the strain of his weight, and he's terrified, utterly terrified, of losing this kid again. 

"Just- here-" He thrusts his arm out at Peter's side, wiggling his elbow in the kid's direction. Peter sighs, a deep long pull of oxygen, but obediently wraps his arm around Tony's. 

"You happy?" Peter asks, wry. 

"Like you wouldn't believe." Tony smiles. Before, before the Snap, and the Blip, that statement might have been flippant. It would have been coated in Stark patented sarcasm, dripping in glib. Now, though, it's genuine. 

Tony has everything he could ever want. He has his family, has all the pieces of his heart together. Some parts might still be a little sharp, a little wonky, but Tony's a goddamn engineer. He can weld. 

Peter returns the smile, just for a second, and then it's gone again. He gulps, gaze pinned down the hall, towards their destination, and Tony can read the apprehension easily. 

"You doing okay?" He asks softly. 

"Yeah. I'm fine." Which is obviously bullshit, a steaming pile of it, and Tony snorts. 

"Okay, okay," Peter amends quickly. "I'm a little…nervous." 

A couple patients meander past them the opposite way, faces purposely avoided and devoid of anything even bordering reaction . Tony's made sure of that. He's a well-known menace here, in this tidy Wakadan hospital, because he's entirely too willing to throw barbed words and fisted palms at the mere suggestion of disrespect Peter's way. 

So the patients don't react. And Peter still turns his head immediately away, ducking the marred side to the wall where no one can see. 

Tony sighs. Peter catches it. 

"Sorry," the kid immediately mumbles, and Tony can see the bright red blush crawling up the kid's neck and cheeks. 

"Don't be," Tony answers quickly. He's so, so sick of apologies. Especially from his hero kid.

"Still am," Peter offers. 

"If you apologize to me one more time I'm grounding you." 

"You can't ground me." Peter harumpfs, but the comment does it's job; the kid's lips quirk in another approximation of a smile. 

"May, then. But you will be grounded, Parker." 

He feels the kid stiffen, feels the tensing across their touching skin as another pair walk past. This time, fucking thankfully, the kid doesn't duck his head. It feels like progress. 

"You're going home," Tony says softly. Home. Where Peter should have been the last five years instead of whatever reality the Soul Stone snapped him into. Where he should have been the past three months instead of healing from unimaginable injuries.

Peter deserves home. His kid deserves to be happy. Tony's going to do everything he can to make that happen. 

"Home," Peter repeats, a hollow sounding echo. He trips over his feet a little, a sharp gasp escaping his throat, and Tony helps to keep him righted. 

"Yeah, bud. Home."  

Tony knows there's some trauma here. Of course there fucking is. Peter lost his arm and most of his sense of self-worth snapping the damn stones. Kid's going to need one hell of a therapist for this. The best the field has to offer. Tony's going to get that all set up. Probably use the same one Rhodey did when he fell out of the sky and had to deal with that absolute shitstorm of a situation. 

Right now, though, it's time to get the kid home. 

"You excited? May's waiting on you. Took the week off," Tony says, just as soft as before. A feather floating to Peter's enhanced ears. 

Peter's eyes cut his way again. Not in irritation this time. In fear, or something very close to it. He watches as the kid gulps, the action bobbing his adam's apple up and down, his eyes drifting away again. "Yeah," he finally says, emptily. 

Which is, of course, another steaming pile of bullshit. Tony doesn't call him on it, though. Not this time. Because they're bringing Peter home and home is going to fix things. 

                 It 

                      Has 

                               To

              ═══════════════════

"Pete-" Tony breathes. "Oh my god. Oh my God. Morgan, baby."

"Stay away," Peter warns testily, the raspiness of the kid's voice causing Tony to wince in sympathy. He's already formulating, already systematizing ways to make his kids safe and healthy again. Water jumps towards the top of the list. Hydration immediately.

"I mean it!" Peter gasps out, eyes blowing wide and darting to the space behind Tony's head. He hears the whirl of Rhodey's suit, the soft flutter of Strange's sentient Cloak. He thinks about sending them away, asking for some goddamn space , but that would involve tearing his attention from his kids and he's not willing to do that. Not yet. Probably never again.

"It's me," he offers quickly, stepping out and away from the white Iron Man suit. He catches a strangled cry of protest from behind him, presumably Platypus, but pays it no heed. "FRIDAY, sentry." Peter flinches at him, at the suit, keeping Morgan tucked safety behind him, and Tony adds on a hasty, "Back up, girl. Go watch the store."

Obediently, the suit marches away. Peter watches it warily the entire time.

Tony can tell the kid is unsteady on his feet, can see it in the way his knees try to buckle again and again. Still, he holds up, keeping Morgan behind him while he guards her in a weak, protective stance. 

"I'll find another apple," Peter threatens.

"What?" Tony shakes his head, sure that his lack of sleep has finally driven him mad. He's definitely feeling insane right now. "What? No, I- its me, Pete. Tony. "

"We should hurry," Strange speaks from behind him, voice catching Peter's mistrustful gaze. 

"Give me a second," Tony practically hisses, crouching down slowly and deliberately. Peter follows the movement until his knees audibly creak. "Old bones," Tony jokes in their direction, soft and gentle, like speaking to a spooked animal. 

Peter holds a cautioning hand out in Tony's direction, palm first, and it affords Tony his first view of the kid's mangled hand. 

Remnants of sticky, bloody fabric are wrapped around his hand, loose and unrefined, but Tony can see the damage regardless. He can see the empty space, the place where fingers should be and aren't. His heart plummets, cracks, rips, breaks, absolutely shatters.

"Oh, bud," he whispers, tears tickling the corners of his eyes. He doesn't bother to hide them. "I'm so sorry, 'Roo." 

The kid falters, his outstretched hand trembling, his lip quivering, and then his resolve hardens, his face growing blank. "Yeah. Well. I don't believe you."

"How can I convince you?" Tony begs, still crouched down on aching limbs. He should have considered this, should have realized that the face he wore would be unwelcome after what they'd been through.

He'd fantasized wrapping them both up in hugs, in kissing noses and crying tears into their shoulders. He hadn't even thought of this, of standing only feet apart from them with a proverbial chasm between.

Morgan mutters something soft from her hiding place behind Peter's knees, something his ears can't discern but Peter's obviously can. His face pinches tight, and he offers her his bloodied, ruined hand. She latches on desperately.

"It's not- it's not him ," Peter tells her. 

Tony's heart breaks all over again. He catches a peek of her dark eyes, peering at him from behind Peter, a flash of her dark, messy hair. He wants to fucking hold her.

Morgan whispers again. 

Tony watches as Peter's chest hitches, watches as he grimaces in pain and pulls his hand from her to brace across his midsection. He looks minutes, seconds , from collapsing.

And still, he maintains his sentry in front of her, staring down the man he believes to be his torturer. Something larger than pride, than love, blossoms in Tony's chest.

"It is me," Tony promises, a vow that is absolutely useless based on the look that flashes across Peter's face. Mistrust to the nth degree. 

"We've heard that before," Peter snaps, gasping a little. "You need new material."

"How about me?" Rhodey offers from behind him, and then the man is crouching down, too, out of the confines of his suit. It feels like a risk to have them both opened and exposed like this, with only Strange and his magic as protection, but Morgan peeks around Peter's knees again, her eyes widening.

"Uncle Rhodey?" She questions, and Tony knows suddenly and explicitly that the man's presence here is a bullseye. He's gotta be a variation to what they've seen, to his face coming to haunt them over and over again.

Rhodey sends her the softest smile that has ever graced his face. "Hiya, my sassy girl."

Morgan's dark eyes flit up to Peter's. "Maybe-maybe it's them."

Peter eyes him with such open disdain that it has Tony faltering back. "Mo, it's not." 

Tears start to freely pool down her cheeks now, her face broken, and she slips back behind him to bury her face into the fabric of his pants. She cries, the sound muffled and soul snatching.

"Pete," Tony tries desperately. "It is me. God. It's me." He's very close to losing it, to darting across the abandoned shop and facing Peter's wrath if it will bring him closer to his kids. 

Morgan murmurs something against Peter's leg, her fingers fisting tight against his ruined pants.

Peter sends him a suspicious glare. "Okay, Mo." He's speaking to her in a voice so soft, so contrasting to his chary features, that it has Tony teetering on an inopportune panic attack. "Okay. Ask them. But- stay hidden, okay? Stay safe."

Morgan appears again, her tear stained face crossing the chasm to find them.

Tony wants to fucking hug her. He wants to wrap her up in iron arms and never let her go again. 

She sniffles, finding his eyes. "How much do you love me?" 

Her voice is so soft, so quiet, that he has to lean forward to hear her. It's a test, he realizes with a jolt. He's a student right now, taking the most important exam of his entire life. And he has exactly one shot to ace it. 

With a growing lump in his throat, and Rhodey's bracing hand falling to his shoulder, he whispers back, "3,000, baby. I love you 3,000." 

The prestigious fucking 3,000 club. More esteemed than the Met Gala, then the Carter's Queen cup. More important than air.

Her face breaks open, her lip trembling, and she reaches both arms out to him beseechingly. "Daddy!" 

He steps forward immediately, deeper into the bowels of this forgotten shop, trying to cross the cavern to find her, but falters again when Peter pulls the sobbing girl back. 

The kid's face is awash in confusion, a kaleidescape of horrible blue and purple. 

"It's me," Tony repeats. It takes everything in him not to bum rush them, to outwait Peter's well warranted mistrust. "It's your Tony."

"Say- say that again," Peter orders, voice raspy. " Please ." 

"3,000," Tony whispers. "3,000, 3,000. God, it's- it's fucking 3,000." 

He'll say it a million times. A million times over. He'll say it, vow it, until the end of his days. And then he'll come back from the grave, via Casper the friendly Ghost, to make sure his kids know it even then. He'll chant it every single night. First, though, he has to get them out of here. Back to safety.

"We should hurry," Strange warns. 

Tony almost snaps back, almost bites out an irritated, "Just shut up!" But Peter's looking at him with growing awe, looking at him like he might be actually be real, and Tony doesn't dare fuck this up. Not right now. 

Those eyes, those achingly familiar brown eyes, filled now with honeyed wonder, dip down to his chest. He watches Peter's lips move soundlessly, the kid making no discernable noise, but Tony knows. He knows that Peter is counting out each silent beat of his heart, and he knows that the final tally will somehow mean everything.

Finally, Peter pulls his eyes back up, choking out a pained, breathless, "What's- what's my best friend's name?" 

Edward Nathan Leeds, born in 2001 at a small hospital in South Huntington New York to parents Chris Sepulveda and Maria Leeds. The boy has a penchant for Legos, for Star Wars, for bringing a smile to his kid's face and is thus essential and priceless-

Tony swallows all of that down, knowing exactly what the kid is actually asking. He holds Peter's gaze steadily. "Ted, kiddo. It's Ted. " 

The words cause a chain reaction to play out across Peter's face, disbelief and devastation and relief and pain, and then he sags dangerously, a tortured puppet with cut strings.

Tony surges forward, absolutely done with waiting, with distance, and if Peter cracks him across the jaw, hell, if he breaks it, Tony decides he just doesn't care. A broken jaw seems like a fair trade if he can hold his kids again.

"Kiddos," Tony murmurs, slipping an arm around Peter's too thin waist, immediately shifting the boy's drooping weight onto his own frame. Peter weighs absolutely nothing, like a bag of goose feathers, and he weighs like everything at the same time. Like the crushing, heavy tonnage of guilt. 

"It's you ," Peter croaks out, furling his arm desperately around Tony's neck, fumbling miserably against the fabric of Tony's shirt with fingers that can't clutch. "Mister Stark- " 

Morgan is scrambling at his legs, sobbing and wailing with her arms held up, begging to be picked up. 

Tony struggles, trying to hold Peter and Morgan all at once, trying to fit them back into his chest, into the cavern sized hole in his heart, and he can't bear to let either go, to lose one again, even though he's grappling with trying to hold both of his children. 

"Here-" Rhodey is at his side now, holding open willing arms to take some of the weight, to take one of the vital pieces of his heart away, and Tony pulls back. 

"Don't," he warns, begs, shifting Morgan around so she can wrap her legs around his waist and can bury her face in the crook of his shoulder. Her tiny form is quivering against him, her body racking with sobs as she repeats, " Daddy, Daddy, Daddy- " over and over again. 

Peter's own face is still pressed against him, his breathing staggered and hot, his surviving fingers continuing to struggle uselessly to grab onto him. 

"I've got you," Tony promises, using one hand to clutch Peter to him, fingers spreading out across the kid's knotted curls. The other propping Morgan on his hip so she can sob into him. Both of his kids stink, they absolutely reek, but it's the least important thing in the world right now. Even if it makes him think of corpses and rot and horror. The memories can't quite touch him right now, not with his whole heart here in his arms.

"Oh man," Peter finally mumbles, pulling back enough to stare at Tony's face again in wonder. Silent tears are making their way down his face, and Tony doesn't even think his kid realizes they're falling. "Mister Stark I can't believe it's actually you -" 

Morgan's sobs are quieting, little by little, but he can still feel her rooting into his shoulder, as though she could melt into him.

"I'm so sorry," he tells them both, but he's staring into Peter's maimed face. There's more here now, more than the usual ridged scars that Tony has grown accustomed to. Now there's black and blue and blood and pain, and he knows that Peter's rail-thin body has to be worse. "I'm so sorry that it took me so long-" 

"You came ," Peter replies, resolutely, the simple statement meant to absolve him of all guilt. Tony gulps, tasting shame, and pulls Peter back into his one armed embrace. 

"We need to leave," Strange orders, voice terse. 

Tony's pulling back to sigh, to retort, to tell the Wizard to hold his fucking horses when several simultaneous things happen at once. 

The Earth trembles under their very feet, infinitesimal at first, until the vibrations seem to really take hold, until the small shop is shaking with the force of it. Several of the wire racks topple over, hitting the floor, and Tony has to spread his legs wide to brace not only his weight but his kid's weights as the shaking continues. 

Rhodey curses from beside him, voice quaking along with the world, and Tony clutches both Peter and Morgan tightly, trying to ride out the wave. 

"What the hell!" He twists awkwardly towards Strange, equipped with his precious cargo, eyes wide. "What is this ?"

Strange sends him an unfettered, frightened look, hands held out to brace himself against the wall as the world continues to tremble in violent aftershocks. " Incursion ,' he hisses, face white. "We're- we need to leave now. " 

"Incursion?" Peter asks softly from his side. "Like the multiverse, right? Man, I can't believe it's real. Especially with, like, cosmological inflation-" 

The rambling cuts off, to Tony's utter dismay, because he hadn't realized how much he needed Peter's wagging tongue until right this very second. Peter tilts his head, his good ear, towards the front of the shop, his face darkening exponentially. 

"Kid?" Tony questions. He feels another violent tremor rip across the Earth, sashaying them all on their feet. Strange actually yelps a little in surprise. It sounds oddly undignified from the infuriatingly dignified Sorcerer, and Tony would have laughed and snarked under different circumstances.

"Something's wrong," Peter mumbles.

"The literal universe is collapsing, bud," Tony explains, shooting Strange a look that says get on with it . Get them out of this podunk reality. Get them home. 

"No, it's- it's something-" Peter shakes his head.

Tony watches as Strange conjures up a ring of orange sparks with his fingers, the portal widening and widening at the corners of his vision. He keeps his eyes glued to Peter's face, the features there quickly trending towards panic. 

"Pete-" 

It's the last word to leave his lips before the world explodes into orange-tinged destruction.

              ═══════════════════

He feels the itch across his skin, the goosebumps pitching up his flesh. His eyes rip across the small shop, trying to find the danger danger danger somewhere in the shadows and crannies and nooks of the place.

Something is wrong . His breath hitches with the knowledge of it.

"Kid?" Mister Stark asks, staring down at him with a worried expression. It's real , not a mockery of concern, not a play acted out by Not Tony. Genuine affection. Peter wants to melt into it.

"Something's wrong," he mutters instead. There's danger here, somewhere, hiding beneath musty clothes or in darkened, forgotten corners. Something is coming. Or someone.

And Peter can't afford to be lax yet. 

"The literal universe is collapsing, bud," Mister Stark says gently, voice kind. And it's Mister Stark , the real one, his Tony, the man who perpetually smells like pancakes and grease and usually Dior, but not right now because he smells like funk, like a man who needs a shower, but who is Peter to talk with the way he surely smells.

Peter wishes he could ride the wave of this relief forever. He wants to melt into Tony, to finally give up, just for a while, to let Tomy knead fingers through his hair and promise him that there's nothing wrong with him and he wants to cry . 

Right now, though, he can't. Because the world is trembling again, an earthquake beneath his bare feet, and panic is darting across his veins.

"No, it's- it's something-" Peter tries to explain, shaking his head. It's something dangerous, something that has goosebumps rising across his arms and neck. It's something beyond the world trying to tear itself apart.

Tony tilts his head, features open and worried. Morgan is still clinging onto him with a feverish desperation, her face buried into the sharp hollow of his shoulder, and Peter feels a tiny bit jealous. "Pete-" Tony starts. 

He doesn't finish. 

The alarm dancing across his body flares, fierce and demanding, and then the shop explodes. The world around him detonates into bright, burning chaos. He feels the heat licking across his skin, burning in a way that he knows, instinctively, because he's felt the same type of fiery pain every day for a month now, for an eternity, and he knows with a deep fear what their danger is. 

The force of it all knocks him off his feet, rips him from Mister Stark's arms, and he's sure that he's blacked out for a moment, that he's slipped into a somewhat peaceful type of oblivion, because the next thing he knows he's laying on the ground, staring up at the open expanse of sky, watching curling black tendrils of smoke float up and away. He blinks, feeling the sting of dust and debris in his eyes, the vague ache of pain across his body, and then a thought finally breaches the comfortable numbness in his brain, barreling into him with the speed of a runaway train.

Morgan. Tony. Rhodey. Strange.

He gasps, jack-knifing up from his prone position on the shop floor. The action pulls across his aching body, pulls an agonized hiss from between his teeth.

He scours the burning wreck of Marty's Second Hand Shoppe, knowing that he owes aforesaid Marty a whole lot more now. The man's foreclosed shop is absolutely ruined. Bright flames licking up wallpaper and musty clothes, spreading across the threadbare carpet. The ceiling is rubble, is plaster and beams and detritus raining down upon them, and Peter is searching it desperately for any sign of his people. 

He finally spies Morgan, limp in Rhodey's arms. He watches as Rhodey coughs, the sound lost in the cacophony of raining debris and crackling fire, watches as Rhodey hugs the girl to his chest. The force of the blast knocked them both across the shop, across mounds of mountainous debris, but Peter can still see the absolute terror of it. Morgan doesn't move , her head lax against the man's chest.

Peter can't breathe for a second. Maybe it's the dust in his lungs, choking him from the inside, or maybe it's the fact that she's so still , that she's dead and he failed her-

Until he catches the quiet pulse of her heart, an assurance beating out to him from the ruin. He has to strain to hold onto it, to chase the sound of her pitter-pattering heart. Alive. She's alive.

He rips his gaze away, gasping against the smoke. "Mister Stark?" He calls out, uselessly, the noise gobbled up. "Mr. Strange, sir?" 

He drags himself against the carpet, towards Rhodey and Morgan, sharp splinters and burning embers biting into his arm. He has to get them out, away from the smoke and the fire of Marty's shop. Then he'll come back and find Tony and Doctor Strange. 

He won't lose anyone here. Peter would rather die than wake up tomorrow morning knowing he lost someone. 

He's making progress, shock doing a good job blocking out most of the pain that he knows, objectively, he should be feeling, when he hears it. 

Fast. Steady. Like the drums of war, reverberating in his ears until every other noise fades away, until he can hear nothing but the constant pulse of a heart beating way too fast. Not Morgan's heart. Not hers. She doesn't run like a locomotive. 

Peter gasps, eyes going wide, twisting around to see him. The man with the too fast heart, the one who wears his mentor's face. Not Tony. Emerging from the flickering, dancing flames. He's wearing a full suit this time, not just a gauntlet, and it's the same type of bright white that his Tony was wearing for some reason. It's not his Tony, though. Peter knows that for sure. His Tony wouldn't wear a twisted smirk like that, wouldn't pull back his face plate just to fix it in Peter's direction, flames painting his features ghoulish. 

"Hey there, Petey-pie ," Not Tony taunts, taking a step across the floor. An avalanche of a footfall to Peter. The voice carries to Peter on the smoke, and he gasps again, desperately scooting back at the man's approach. "You skipped out before dessert."

"What was on the menu? Apple pie?" Peter quips back, croaky, panic dragging him across the floor. He's not fast enough, his lone arm not strong enough, to out pace Not Tony's ominous walk. The avalanche of a man catches him. 

"That damn smart mouth of yours," Not Tony snaps, reaching down an armored arm to pluck Peter from the floor. He yelps, kicking his feet wildly, trying to find purchase. 

Dangling from the air, his feet flailing wildly, he risks a glance into Not Tony's exposed face. He's close enough to count his pores again, close enough to smell the sickly sweet stench of his exhale. There's a dark midnight bruise marking the side of his temple, the side swollen. "Are you ready to die, Parker?" 

He's groping Not Tony's armored fingers desperately, trying to pry them from where they're curled tightly into what once was a Spider-Man themed pajama top, but Peter is officially sapped. He has no energy anymore. Nothing. 

"I'm going to show them," Not Tony sneers, spittle flying from his jaws. "I'm going to show the world that you're not a God, not worthy of their adoration. You're nothing. Nothing! They should worship me! " He shakes Peter, the action snapping his head back and forth.

There's a crash, another section of the ceiling collapsing somewhere to his left, but Peter's head is spinning too much to latch onto the sound.

"You did this!" Not Tony screeches, his eyes reflecting wild in the flames climbing around them. "They shunned me! Because of you!" 

The man pulls a fist back, the gauntlet on his wrist lighting up in excited preparation. Peter knows that this time the hit will kill. Not Tony destroyed this entire shop with one overpowered flick of his wrist. Compared to that , Peter's tapestry of broken skin doesn't stand a chance. The repulsor will be his end. He screws his eyes shut so he won't see the bright flash when it takes him. 

"Hey, Discount Doofus." 

Peter's eyes fly upon, darting across the smoking space to find Tony, his Tony, standing among the wreckage. He's decked out in the same suit, the white metal stretched and solidified across his skin. His faceplate is pulled back, revealing not only a line of dripping blood down on his temple, but also the patented Stark fury that Peter is thankful to have been on the receiving end of very few times. 

Tony has his own gauntlet outstretched, glowing bright destruction, his gaze affixed on the two of them. 

Peter's heart skips a little because no matter what, Mister Stark is here. His Tony, the one who makes delicious pancakes and strokes his scars and spends night tinkering with him in the lab so he doesn't have to sleep and dream. No matter what, here at the end, Peter isn't alone.

And the roof is open, and he can see the sun. 

He'd missed the sun. 

              ══════════════════

"Put my fucking kid down ," Tony orders, his voice brittle and close to breaking. Hot fury is surging through his veins, contrasting the chill of his suit, and he knows that he's very close to going atomic, to detonating like one of his bombs of old. 

This asshole has his hand fisted in Peter's ruined shirt, holding him up in the air, his gauntlet drawn and ready to kill. 

To kill Peter. His kid. Which is a big fucking no-no. The biggest, in fact. 

He watches as the clone twists towards him, his face familiar and yet so, so not. Tony doesn't think he's ever looked that manicial before. Manic, yes. Maniacal? Definitely no. No way. He's never held his kid up like a fucking rag doll in the air, never sneered in Peter's direction like he's watching happen right here and now. He hates that it's his face doing it.

"You," the variant practically snorts, gaze lighting down the suit solidified now across Tony's body. The Endo Sym ripples across his skin, sensing his anger and demanding to act. "You discovered the Endo Sym, too. Isn't it wonderful?" 

The arm holding Peter, keeping him dangling into the air like a slab of meat, shifts. Tony watches the Endo sym there undulate, the liquid silver molding out into a long, sharpened blade from his variant's knuckles. The tip of it pointed right at Peter's jugular. 

Tony gulps. His outstretched hand shakes. Not Peter. Not Peter.

He knows that Rhodey, faithful Rhodey, has Morgan. That she's not currently conscious, which is fucking terrifying, but that she's okay. She's okay , and Rhodes is getting her out of here and back to Pepper no matter what. He can see them in the corner of his vision; the flickering of dark orange among the flames, the Wizard's dancing fingers in the curling smoke. He's bringing the portal back, fizzling it into existence. He meets the Wizard's eyes, clocks the small nod that he sends Tony's way. The man flicks his eyes towards the opening portal. Tony watches, relief tugging against his sternum, as Rhodey drags himself and Morgan towards the opening, his little girl lax in the man's arms. Her head lolls against Rhodey's shoulder, her face pressed into his shirt so Tony can't even see her. 

He can't even see her, and this might be the last glimpse he ever gets. The world rocks again under their feet, a groan emanating from the very depths of this imploding world. He can't see her, her mahogany eyes, her sunny grin, and time is short and Strange is trying to hurry him along with wide eyes and dancing fingers because their window of time is so fucking short here- 

But Peter is still dangling in the air, kicking his legs wildly, and there's still a sharp point pressed against his neck. Tony can't leave yet.

Rhodey sends him one more wayward, worried glance, Morgan clutched in his arms, before he takes a step forward and disappears from this reality. She's safe . It relaxes some of the panic, watching her disappear into sparkling orange, letting him focus his attention on Peter. 

"Unhand the kid," Tony demands, low. Peter's frightened eyes flick to his, yellowed flames dancing across his irises. What remains of the building groans around them, joining the chorus of the Earth itself.

The needle tip point grows a little longer, pressing against the delicate skin of the kid's neck. Peter inhales sharply, and Tony growls deep in his chest. 

"You're starting to piss me off, fuckwad," Tony tells him. "And I've got a famously bad heart. It's not good for my cholesterol, you know? So- let him go." 

"Apples, Mister Stark," Peter gasps out, his chest rising and falling rapidly. "This guy, his kryptonite is apples." 

His variant growls, an echo of his own, and twists his sneering face back Peter's way. "You idiot. " 

No one is allowed to insult the kid. Especially, apparently, himself. If he's wearing that horrible, condescending look on his face. "Coming from a guy allergic to apples?" Tony counters. He has no idea what the apple thing fucking means , because he's sure as shit not allergic to them, he loves himself an apple crumbling cobbler, but Peter grins at him and his clone audibly scoffs, so obviously the apple thing is gold. 

"You could be a God ," his evil twin mutters, features aghast in disgust. He gives Tony another once over, lips pinching together. Tony hates the way the sneer looks on his own face, the way repulsion twists his features into something cruel. He's looking into a mirror and hating the face he sees reflected. "A God. You- you created Endo Sym. You control a living metal. You could destroy the Avengers, you could destroy him. " The variant gives Peter a shake that has Tony seeing red. "You could destroy him before he foils you ." 

"And be without my favorite young adult?" Tony's gauntlet quivers, gaze trailing across the limbs of Peter, trying to find a way to free the kid without getting that perfect neck punctured. 

"Don't you want," his variant asks, voice still full of disbelief, "To be a God?" 

Tony's eyes narrow. "What I want is to be making fucking pancakes for my kids." 

He feels the truth of it the moment the words roll off his tongue. He'd missed the speed, the flight, the feeling of freedom that only his suit had ever been able to provide. Rocketing across the sky, twirling among the clouds; it had been a million times better than careening dangerously across the road in a car. It had been everything he'd remembered. 

And he had hated it. Hated every second of his freedom, of his speed, because his kids were gone. 

His variant sneers. "Then you are not a God at all. You are like them. You are pliant! You are stupid! You are inferior! To me! I'm going to show the world! I'm going to show them all! This fucking freak isn't infallible and he isn't the God they all think he is!" 

Tony can't help it; he laughs. It's probably the insanity, the fear, the exhaustion that pulls the sound from him. The absurdity, too. Because why is villain him such an utter caricature? Such a stereotype of evil? You'd think he'd at least be clever or some shit. Witty. Tony is witty. He's not whatever the hell this is. He's not madness cavorting across pupils, not monologging , for fucks sake. 

"-I am indelible! I am better than all of these mindless imbeciles! I deserve to control them!" 

Strange orders him to come with a frantic finger, gesturing to the shrinking portal. The exertion is clear on the man's features, the way his hands shake and his face sweats.Tony ignores him and his urgency, the world tunneling down to Peter and the sharp tip of the Endo sym resting against his artery. Tony's not going anywhere without his kid. 

His kid who looks worse for wear, whose legs aren't fighting anymore and whose eyes are beginning to flutter dangerously. 

"Hey, Spider-Man," Tony utters softly, hoping the words carry despite the monologging moron and the shifting, groaning world. 

Peter's fluttering eyes find him, filled with honeyed exhaustion. 

Tony gulps. He needs the kid to have just a little more in him, just a spurt of energy. He needs him to be alert, he needs him to be ready. He needs him, period. He needs Peter Parker. 

"Anthony," Tony says, tasting his own name. His variant pauses, fixing him a look more befuddled than anything. "Anthony, Anthony . Is this seriously the best you've got?" 

"You would seriously choose this?" His evil alter ego asks. Tony watches with a sort of frantic excitement as the pin prick tip of the Endo Sym relaxes slightly, the metal as distracted as its owner. "You would choose a life of mediocrity?" 

"God, no." Tony shakes his head, and the world shakes beneath them. Worse this time. There are heartbreaking screams from the world outside this shop, terrified people who don't yet realize what their Stark has done. He can't save them. Tony reminds himself of that thrice. He can't save them. He can't save them. "Not mediocrity. I'm Tony Stark. Can't be mediocre. Not if I fucking tried." 

Peter pulls in a deep breath, pupils blown wide. "Mister Stark, you- you gotta go-" 

That stupidly altruistic kid. That idiot. That hero. Like Tony would ever, ever leave without him. 

"No," Tony continues, bulldozing over Peter's horrifying plea. He glances in Strange's direction again, to see the size of their portal, their sanctuary, and sees that it's roughly the size of a hula hoop and shrinking. Stephen Strange is casting them terrified glances now, his chest hitching desperately. 

And, Tony realizes, his goddamn Cloak is no longer fastened to his neck. It's not billowing in the flames, not haunting the burning walls of this ruined establishment. 

No. Because it's flying towards his variant with a vengeance, spiraling velvet. 

Tony grins. "I would choose a life of domesticity ," he decrees. 

"Domesti-" The variant starts, voice disgusted. 

The Sentient Cloak whirls in, velvet revenge, and coils itself tightly across his evil twin's face. 

The man hollers, the sound choked off in the fabric of the rippling Cloak, and then he's dropping Peter, letting him fall to claw and gouge at the goddamn drabbery trying to smother him alive. 

Tony's leaping forward, his Endo Sym reacting to the thought before the words even have a chance to form, because the metal is learning him, understanding that Peter is precious cargo and must be protected. 

The metal knows because it darts him forward, propulsors kicking on in this small place, and he's rocketing forward to grab Peter's falling self. 

His clone is struggling, twisting around, yelling obscenities into the Cloak. The Endo Sym that responds to him, to his evil half, is attacking the Cloak mercilessly, ripping violent tears into the living fabric. 

Living fabric versus living metal. 

Tony barrels into Peter with an oompf , his arm immediately hooking under the kid's and hoisting him up, his fingers curling around a soft edge of the Cloak at the same time, the same fluid move.

The Cloak who has a soft spot for Peter. So obviously, essential. 

Then he's careening forward, past his clone, past the ruined remains of this clothing shop from another world, heading towards their ever shrinking portal. 

He can hear his clone screaming, calling out angry words to the world, the world which is literally imploding now, because he can feel it pressing in around him, can feel the air thickening like a pot of creamy soup on the stove. He can feel oxygen getting wispy, impossible to pull, can feel the invisible edges of this world curling up like a scrunched up newspaper. 

He hopes they have a world to return to. 

He flies past Strange, catching sight of the near bursting blood vessel on the man's face, and then he's soaring through the small circle, a kid and a Cloak clutched to him. 

He feels the world break behind him, feels the insurmountable pressure of it, and then he leaves it and his clone behind, a Wizard trailing at his heels, disappearing into a ring of crackling blood orange.

Chapter Text

Three Months Ago…

Tony's a mess. A barely functioning bundle of nerves. An exposed heart beating off kilter. 

He hadn't expected to miss the kid so much. Hadn't expected to spend every night of this week waking up from debilitating nightmares; nightmares of Peter dusting, of Peter falling apart beneath his very fingertips. Of Peter burning, of watching the kid melt like candle wax, red and drippy and horrifying. He hadn't expected to actually cry, sitting in his modified lab garage, watching the moon and trying to talk himself out of calling the kid, because it's three in the goddamn morning and Peter's probably asleep, healing like he's supposed to- 

The sound of his phone ringing helps to pull him from the mental staircase he's currently spiraling down. He sniffles, quickly wiping away the salty tears making their mark on his cheeks, and pulls the StarkPhone from where it's resting on the lab table. 

His frown deepens at the name scrawled across the screen. 

"May?" He asks, wincing at the rough hoarseness in his voice. He leans back in the lab chair, trying to calm the worried tremor already making it's way across his fingers. "What's wrong? Everything okay?" 

Tony's not in the habit of getting calls from May Parker in the middle of the night. Especially not the middle of this particular night, not after the doozy of a nightmare he just had; Peter calling out his name in terror while systemically taking a piece of rusted metal to his arm to slice slice slice.

He hears her across the phone line, pulling in a ragged breath. 

His panic skyrockets. "May?" He croaks. 

Not Peter. Not Peter. 

"Peter's- not hurt," she starts, her voice as scratchy and wet as his. There are tears on her cheeks as well, Tony can hear it even if he can't see it. "Physically- god." 

Tony's heart spasms. "What the hell does that mean?" 

"He's- he's not coping here, Tony. God, I don't know what to do." She breaks down, a sob hiccuping its way through the phone. "I thought it would get better. I thought he'd settle in, you know, after a couple days. I kept his room- kept it exactly like it was. Before. Didn't touch anything." 

Tony nods, shoving the phone closer to his ear, creating a vacuum between the two. 

"And I thought, you know, that he'd be okay. I love him.  I love him so much. And I need him to be okay-" 

"May," Tony gasps. "What- what's happened?" 

"He won't tell me, exactly." She takes a deep breath, and he can hear her trying to shove her emotions back down, trying to get them contained. "He-He went down to the grocery store. First time. It's- it's my fault. I baited him into it, you know? Told him that I wanted some of my favorite ice cream and that I was tired. It wasn't supposed to- supposed to go wrong like this. You know? I thought it would be good , that it would help get him out of the house. He just stays cooped up here, all the time-" 

Tony keeps nodding along, trying to piece together the puzzle. May sounds remarkably like the boy in question, her voice rambling on and on like he tends to when he tells a story.

"-But he came back, and he was so upset, and he didn't have the ice cream, which I didn't even want-" 

"Upset?" Tony drops his head into his hand, rubbing a digit across his temple. "How?" 

"Crying. Panicking. Upset." 

"Oh, Pete." 

The kid was supposed to be healing. At home and healing, and living. None of whatever this mess was. 

"He said- he said that he wasn't sure if it was even worth being alive. That he wished he wasn't." 

Her voice chokes off again, overtaken by a wet sob ripping up her throat. Tony barely hears it, though. Barely hears it through the sudden ringing in his ears, the jarring sound of it. The world is tunneling in on him, the lab fading away, because all he can think about are those horrible, ghastly, heart breaking words. 

His mind keeps them front and center, spelling them out again and again in his head. 

Wished he wasn't. Wished he wasn't. 

Peter dead. Peter dead. 

It's an oxymoron. Peter isn't allowed to be dead, especially over that. Never that. Never, ever that. Not when he's home and healing and living like he's supposed to.

Peter couldn't- couldn't do that- 

"Tony! Tony!" May's voice manages to cut across the panic overtaking him, her cadence sharp and jagged and raw. "Tony, stop, calm down." 

FRIDAY concurs. "Boss, you appear to be suffering from the onset of a panic attack? Would you like me to call Mrs. Boss? Or Honeybear?" 

"No. No. Don't call anyone." He forces himself to breath, to exhale and inhale through the horrible feeling festering in his gut. "I'm fine. God. Fuck. May." 

He's more than an exposed heart now. Now he's a gaping wound, a heart plucked from its chest cavity. He feels like he's splayed out on an examination table, a scalpel poised above his empty chest, ready to cut more from him. 

He can't lose Peter. Anymore more than he can lose Morgan. Both are essential. 

"I've got a therapist. For him. Got one on standby, so we can try and get him in pronto, as soon as you guys are ready-" 

"Yeah," she agrees softly. "He definitely needs that. Someone to talk to. He's been through so much." 

Too much. It makes Tony's stomach flip, makes him want to spew up everything he has in there. He's imagining Peter hurting, Peter hiding, Peter crying, and it's too much. Everything the kid has been through is too much.  Might as well be the kid's fucking tag line. 

"I'll get it set up May, right away. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. They'll clear the schedules if they need to, of course they will, I'm Tony Stark, and this is the kid that saved the universe, after all, they'll fucking make room-" 

She clears her throat, the sound rough, and it immediately makes his lips slam shut. "I think- I think maybe the city isn't working for him. Right now. Cause of, well, you know." 

The scars. Those goddamn scars and that missing limb that doesn't mean anything. Peter is too good for it to mean anything. Tony sighs. "Want me to send Happy out? I'm sure he can be convinced to bust a few heads. Hell, Pep can serve up some cease and desists on a silver platter if you want. Anyone that's messing with Pete will definitely stop." 

"I was thinking that maybe- maybe he could stay with you." 

Tony falters and nearly tumbles from his chair. "With me ?" 

"At the lakehouse," she clarifies quickly. Tears are beginning to sprinkle into her voice again, accompanied by sniffles. "I can hardly bear to be away from him. I don't want to lose him. I don't want him to go. But he's miserable here, Tony. Absolutely miserable. Imagine when I go back to work and he's alone. You know how much Peter hates to be alone." 

"I know." He's whispering now, leaning halfway out of his chair. He's thinking about Peter, about Peter being at the lakehouse. About not being so goddamned worried about him at three in the morning because he can trek down the hall and see him. See that he's not dust or melting wax or dead. 

"I'd love to have him here," Tony says earnestly. "You know I- I love the kid. Obviously. Of course he can. If you're sure?" 

Maybe Tony's selfish. He wants Peter here. Both of his kids, under one house. His whole heart under one roof. 

"I think Peter needs it. I can't stand him being so miserable. It's breaking me. I'll do whatever it takes to make him happy. Just- you have to- to keep him safe." 

"I will." 

            It's

                   a

                          promise. 

               ═══════════════════

Flying through the crackling orange portal feels nothing like when Not Tony took him. It doesn't feel like fire licking up his wrist, like his molecules are breaking down and away. It doesn't remind him explicitly of the stones, of snapping. It doesn't feel anything like how it did when Not Tony grasped his forearm, forever ago, dragging him across the universe into another realm.

In fact, it barely feels like anything at all going through Strange's portal. He's vaguely aware of falling, of Tony catching him, hefting him up in the metal arms of the horribly foreign white suit. Peter blinks, and then they're tumbling out of the sparking orange circle onto the Sandalwood floor of the lakehouse.

Of the lakehouse. 

Peter would know the lakehouse anywhere. From the opulent wood floor, the pure Tonyness of having something so exorbitant in the middle of nowhere. From the smell that hits him before he even properly lifts himself from the ground; the scent of pine drifting in through an open window, the smell of lapping water, the barely there aroma of pancakes. It smells like home.

"-kid! Peter!" 

He feels metal arms grasping at him, pulling him up, pulling on places that ache and hurt, pulling overextended muscles, and he hisses at the pain.

"Shit! Shit! I'm sorry, bud. I'm sorry. We need medical, Dumbledore, why'd you cough us up here-" 

"'S'kay," he mumbles, finally prying his eyes open. He's dizzy, a little foggy in the brain, and the familiar world around him spins before unblurring enough to see. When it does, and he can see the wrinkles beginning to etch themselves into his mentor's face, can see the concern there, his eyes fly open. 

"Mister Stark? Where's Morgan-" 

His gaze shoots around the room, around the lake house kitchen . Home . Somehow he's home. 

Tony's holding onto his shoulders, trying to keep him upright, wearing that alabaster across his wrist. It makes Peter shiver, his teeth chattering, and he fights the immediate urge to pull away. 

Around them, towering pillars of oozing emotion, is well, everyone. 

Pepper is cradling Morgan tightly against her, their faces pressed into each other. He can hear both of their hearts, the steady synchronized beats, can see the rapid rise and fall of both of their chests moving together. Morgan's okay. She's okay. 

He can see Happy standing above them, face open in a stricken emotion that Peter can't ever remember seeing the man wear before. His eyes keep darting between them; between Morgan wrapped securely in Pepper's embrace and Peter on the floor in Tony's. 

Strange is pushing up from the floor, face red, snatching his tattered Cloak and holding it close to him. "Earthquakes?" He's asking, yelling, "Have there been earthquakes here?-" 

There's a man in the corner, shuffling awkwardly, and it takes Peter a full five seconds of scrutinization to realize that it's Dr. Bruce Banner. The Hulk, which is crazy cool, but probably more importantly, one of the greatest scientific minds of the century. Of all time. Somehow. Here. In the lakehouse. The man offers him a wave, smiling amicably despite the situation. 

"Pete, buddy, are you okay?" It's Tony, his Tony, and Peter brings his traveling eyes back around. 

He's not okay. He doesn't feel okay. He feels floaty and thirsty and achy and hungry, and he wants to cry because this can't be real, he can't be home, he can't be in the lake house in Tony's arms and safe-

" Peter!" The voice catches his immediate attention, pulling his eyes away from Tony. Peter twists arounds, gasping at the pain, and then he sees her . The owner of the voice he'd recognize anywhere. The person he'd recognize anywhere. 

"Aunt May ?" He croaks, voice catching and breaking. She collapses down next to them, her hair a mess of flyaways, her cheeks painted in dried tears, and then she's yanking him from Tony's grasp and into her own. 

The action hurts, pulls at him miserably, but he doesn't care. Because he's home, and Morgan is safe, and Aunt May is here, and she's running her fingers through his hair and whispering, " I love you, I love you, I love you," over and over again.

Peter burrows his face into her familiar hold and cries. 

              ═══════════════════

Peter's crying. Morgan's crying. Both sound raspy and strained and tight, the sobs pulled from throats that are sandpaper, that are dry droughted deserts. 

So, obviously, Tony is crying too. He's not sure if it's the belated horror, the grief, the relief, or what , but he's sobbing right along with them. 

Pepper has Morgan in her arms, cooing softly into the girl's knotted mass of curls, pressing kisses into the crown of her head. May has Peter practically in her lap, both of them a tangled mess on the floor, and Tony has no one. 

His arms are empty and he can barely stand it. 

He wants to rip Pete back, wants to get up and pull Pep and Morgan into his embrace and never let a single one of them go. He's keeping them close, goddammit, from now on.  A reverse restraining order. They've got to be within 50 feet of him at all times. 

He can't actually yank Peter back, no matter how much his heart yearns for it, so he settles for the next best thing. He pulls the Endo Sym back with a quick mental touch and then he's splaying his fleshy fingers out across the bony ridgeature of the kid's back. He can feel all the divots and ridges and the hunger there, and he cries a little harder. He probably looks unspooled, like something breaking apart at the seams and barely holding on.

Peter's back hitches under his spread fingers, the kid struggling to pull in a breath amidst the sobs wracking across his gaunt shoulders. 

"You're okay, you're okay," Tony soothes gently, kneading a knuckle gently across one of the pronounced points that rests between Peter's shoulder blades. "You're okay." 

He meets May's eyes over the top of Peter's head, the unspoken gratitude pooling there and spilling over, flooding the expensive Sandalwood in relieved tears.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry-" Peter mumbles, voice catching in the ruffles of May's shirt. His back rises and falls rapidly under Tony's open palm, and May's features crumble, stricken, before she buries her face into the top of his head.

"No, no, no ," Tony breaths quickly, shaking his head side to side. "Don't apologize. Never.  No apologies. Never again." 

He hates, hates , the apologies that tumble without thought from the kid's mouth. Especially since the kid has nothing to apologize for. Ever. He's blameless. Spotless. A white fleeced lamb.

With one hand touching Peter, assuring himself silently that the kid isn't dust, isn't rot, he flicks his gaze back towards Morgan sequestered safety in her mother's arm.

His kids. Safe. Alive. 

Strange is still yelling about goddamn earthquakes, like he isn't aware of the monumental thing happening here. Like Tony isn't losing his mind because his kids are alive. Tony's unspooling, falling apart, and Stephen Strange is worried about fucking tectonic plates.

"I need to know, have there been tremors? Have there been-" 

Tony's spies Happy's scowl swimming in his watery vision, the bodyguard fixing the Wizard with a pertrebured look. "There haven't been any earthquakes here. Shit."

The Sorcerer seems to relax at that. He's holding his limp dishrag of a Cloak in his arms, the thing not moving, littered in slashes and cuts, and Tony feels a small pang for it. 

"Okay, okay,' Strange is nodding now, some of the wild emotion draining from his dilated pupils. He pulls his arms in closer, the Cloak closer. "We have hopefully avoided an incursion here, we've returned Peter to his own timeline in time-" 

There's a sharp intake of breath, courtesy of May Parker, and his eyes drop down to what he already knows but she doesn't. She's staring at the empty space on Peter's maimed hand, the hand clinging desperately to her shirt, clumsily, because it's fucking mangled, and she presses her own hand to her lips to stave off the horrified sound threatening to fall out. 

"Medical," Tony declares to everyone and no one at the same time. "We need medical here. Jesus christ." 

He should have thought about this , about the shape his kids would be in. He's fallen out of practice since the old days; days flying around in his own suit, days patching up stabs and lacerations acquired by Peter on patrol. He's gotten too soft, and he didn't anticipate this. 

He couldn't have anticipated his half-starved, traumatized, mangled kids. Because that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. 

Someone clears their throat, the sound echoing across the small, crowded kitchen. Tony's head flashes that way, towards the entrium between here and his living room, eyes widening at the luck of the figure standing there.

"It's Wednesday ," he chokes out. 

"I'm here for PT," Helen Cho says, slowly, deliberately, her gaze trailing across each of them. She pauses on Peter, her doctor eyes scouring and diagnosing things in quiet, quick concession. "But I'm guessing we've got more pressing concerns.

              ═══════════════════

Tony squeezes more of the soapy, bubbly water onto the top of Morgan's head. It trickles down her face, across her cheeks and down her nose, running over her eyelashes, and she barely reacts. 

The bath is eerily silent, just the sound of the faucet drip drip dripping every couple of seconds, something he really should fix, and the gentle splashing of water every time he squeezes the sponge. 

They've had to empty and rerun Morgan's bath water twice now, twice because the water quickly becomes a murky, dirty mess, and it has Tony quickly climbing up the mountain to a panic attack, because his little girl has suffered. That's clear in every dirty, streaky rivet of water that washes down her body. He's struggling already, having Peter downstairs, out of sight, getting a medical exam that he's not there for, but Morgan had tearfully asked for a bubble bath, to be clean, and Tony couldn't have refused that. So he's trying to exist, trying to remain calm and centered, while watching his daughter bleed off filth into the bath, her gaze emptily staring at the wall. 

"That feel good, Maguna?" He asks softly, pressing the sponge against her skin, desperate to hear her musical little voice.

She blinks, turning towards him. Her face is pale even in the warmth of the bath. He smiles gently. 

"It's okay," she finally offers. "I really like bubble baths." 

"We know baby," Pepper tells her. She's sitting on the closed toilet behind Tony, watching their near mute daughter with hawk eyes. Tony knows that Pep will probably never let the girl out of her sight again. He understands. "You can have as many bubble baths as you want." 

Before this absolute clusterfuck, Morgan's face would have brightened. She'd have gotten that devious look in her eyes, would have smirked. Pepper wasn't known for handing out hasty statements like that, for promising things to their pistol of a daughter. That was Tony's job. Morgan would have taken that and absolutely ran with it, would have abused her bubble bath privileges for the next month. 

Now she simply nods, crossing her arms against her tiny, starved frame. Tony's heart breaks, and he hears Pepper choke down a sob.

He threads his fingers into her hair, swallowing thickly, trying to untangle some of the impossible knots there. 

"Where's Petey?" Morgan asks suddenly. She affixes her dark, mahogany eyes on him, now deeper than he's ever seen them. Deep and unfathomable, the void looking back at him. 

"Getting checked out by the doctor." Tony snags on a knot, one of the million ensnared in his daughter's long hair, and pushes down the sudden flare of his anger. Her hair is absolutely ruined. 

"By Dr. Cho," Pepper continues. "You remember Dr. Cho, right honey?" 

Morgan bites her lip for a moment, thinking, before nodding her head. "Dr. Cho is nice." 

"I'm glad you think so, baby," Pepper says, offering the girl a strained smile. "We're gonna have her check you out, too. How does that sound?" 

Morgan shrugs, her eyes drooping to the bubbles in the bath. They're cotton candy scented, her self proclaimed favorite, and she runs a finger slowly through the mountainous range of them. Tony's practically used the entire bottle for this ever-lasting bath, for the filth that doesn't seem to end.

"Can we- can we eat? After the doctor?" Her voice is hesitant, her eyes still lowered, and Tony's heart breaks all over again. 

"Whatever you want," he promises. He'll move heaven and earth to give his daughter whatever her small, broken heart desires. 

Before, before , she'd have taken advantage of that. Of his hasty, undefined vow. He'd have payed the price of that for weeks until Pep would have finally decided to put her foot down on his behalf, would have ordered that ice-cream was off the table, would not be consumed for dinners any longer. 

Now, she just nods, looking up at him with those horribly haunted eyes. "No bologna," she declares. 

"No bologna," he agrees.

              ═══════════════════

Dr. Cho gently presses on his surviving hand, pinning his palm to the oak table. Peter winces, struggling to swallow the urge down to pull it away, to hide his priceless fingers.

He doesn't really want to look, to see the devastation there now that she has his makeshift bandage pulled back to expose the horror underneath.

May keeps pulling in shallow, shocked breaths from where she's sitting beside him. Her heartbeat is going a million miles a minute, so even though she's keeping her features carefully schooled, Peter knows it's bad.

He knows. Because his only hand is all deformed now. Like him. Broken and deformed.

Dr. Cho frowns at it, at the shredded tissue there, running a gloved finger across the severed flesh. Peter watches, sickened, hating his own skin, wincing at the painful touch.

"It looks infected," May murmurs, horror dripping into her voice. Her eyes flick to his face, wide, before dropping back down to the empty, mutilated space on his fingers. She pulls in a painful sounding breath.

"Sorry," he mumbles, hating the stress playing out on her face, hating the way he inadvertently put it there. 

May smiles gently at him, reaching out a hand to trace softly down his cheek and jawline to his chin. "Don't be," she tells him, earnest. "Larb you." 

"Larb you, too." He blinks rapidly, fixing his eyes back on his horror of a hand. He's already cried, sobbed on the floor in front of everyone, and he's determined not to do it again. Even if it's only him and May and Dr. Cho right now, sitting in the empty kitchen. Even if Tony cleared everyone out for him, for this, for Dr. Cho to examine what Peter already knows; he's deformed, all messed up. Peter's not going to cry again.

Maybe later. Maybe when he's alone.

When he can sit and stew and think properly about everything. About his missing fingers. About Marty. About all those people that died in the implosion that Peter didn't save. 

Helen pulls her eyes from his hand, up to his crooked nose. Her frowns deepens, and she lifts a finger to gently trace down it, pushing back against the crookedness. He hisses, screwing his eyes shut, and feels May reach for his hand, to hold, before she she fumbles and spreads her hand out across his back instead.

"Your nose has set wrong," Dr. Cho tells him gently. "We'll need to rebreak it to set it properly." 

Peter nods wearily, eyes still screwed shut. He's done that before, back in his Spider-Man days. Back when things made sense, when he made sense. When he felt like a whole person. 

"You're dehydrated," Dr. Cho continues. "And malnourished. Which means your healing factor isn't doing what it's supposed to, right?" 

Peter nods, finally braving opening his eyes to see the look on her face. Gentle pity. "Yeah," he admits, a whisper. 

She grimaces a little. "We need to transfer you to the Medbaby, Peter." 

That startles him. MedBay means leaving the lakehouse, which he never, ever wants to do again. MedBay means leaving Morgan, Morgan who's getting a well needed bath, Morgan who he hasn't been away from for a month, for an eternity. It's making him feel jittery to have her even upstairs, out of sight, even with her heartbeat drifting down to him on the stairs, because he can't protect her from so far away. 

Except she has Tony now. To protect her. Tony who will do a much better job keeping her safe then Peter has. He reminds himself of that again, swallowing. 

"I'm fine, really." Peter shakes his head. "I don't need that-" 

"Your Aunt is right," Dr. Cho tells him, voice still gentle. Because Peter is glass blown in heat too high. He's delicate and breakable. "You're hand is infected, and we need to get you started on a prescription of your antibiotics. We need to reset that nose, get you hooked up to some fluids. And give you a more comprehensive exam. Somewhere a little more sterile, huh?" 

She smiles at him, softly, gently, delicately. Peter can barely feel the warmth of it, though, his head spinning. He wants to lay down in his bed, his bed that he hasn't seen in months, in forever, and he wants to lay there for an equal amount of time. For months. Forever. 

He doesn't want to leave the safety of here. 

"Do I have to?" He whispers, eyes glued to the woodgrain of the table. He thinks that the old him, the better him, might have insisted harder. Might have been able to talk himself out of a MedBay visit. This him, this broken down version, is tired. 

"Yes." Dr. Cho nods. "But it will most likely only be for a couple days. Long enough to get some antibiotics and fluids into you-" 

"I'll go with you," May assures, her fingers still unfurled across his back.

Peter swallows thickly. He can't bare to look anywhere, not at their faces, not at the empty space on his fingers. 

He lets his eyes run across the woodwork instead.

              ═══════════════════

By the time they make it back downstairs, Morgan wrapped in her softest, plushest pair of pajamas, her tangled mass of curls pulled up into a bun to deal with later, sequestered safety again in Pepper's arm, Helen's already wrapping Peter's hand back up. 

May's still sitting at the table with him, exactly where she was when he reluctantly trudged up the stairs, and she's got a hand braced across his back to comfort him.

"Hey 'Roo," Tony greets softly, immediately crossing the kitchen to rest a hand on the kid's shoulder. He needs the touch, the physical reassurance that his kid isn't dust, isn't ash, isn't rot. 

Peter leans into the contact, closing his eyes and sighing. He's trembling under Tony's splayed palm, taking exaggerated, deep breaths. "Hey, Mister Stark." 

"Petey?" Morgan asks from Pepper's arms, her head resting tiredly against the woman's shoulder, her arms curled into herself to shrink. Morgan has never, ever wanted to shrink before. She's always been Tony's loud, outspoken, sassy girl. Now she's something haunted and small. 

Peter slowly drags his gaze up from the table to find her, smiling wearily. "Hey, Mo." 

"Daddy says we can have some food! Real Daddy." 

Shit. Fuck. Christ. Something about that excited statement physically hurts Tony. It reaches into his chest, right into the cavity where his heart resides, when it's not living outside his body in his kids, and it squeezes it like a wet sponge. His little girl is referring to him as that, as her Real Daddy, because another version of him wasn't, another version of him hurt her. She's furled into herself, small, and she's excited about goddamn food, about the prospect of eating, because a man wearing his face withheld it from her. Tony is sick with that, sick with lingering fear and guilt and shame.

No matter how he tries to spin the story, no matter how much he tries to rationalize this clusterfuck, Tony hurt her. He hurt his kids. 

"Not bologna," she continues, her joy hitting him like a bullet. Tony feels like he's drowning, like he's spiraling away into the land where he's not really existing, where he's not a person anymore, because this is horror at it's purest form, just concentrated fear, pumped right into his veins- 

Rhodey materializes behind him, dropping a steadying hand to his shoulder. A tether. And Tony wants to stay here, wants to stay in this reality, because his kids are here. And they're fucked up, and he's fucked up, and they're all goddamn fucked up, but Tony's going to fix them. 

He's a genius. He'll fix this. 

Tony shoots Rhodey a thankful look, inhaling deeply. They're a conga line of comfort right now, with Tony's hand spread out on Peter's shoulder and Rhodey's on his. 

"Told you," Peter replies smugly, though his voice still wavers beneath it. Helen tapes the last section of the gauze, smiling at him, and the kid immediately pulls his hand back in, tucking it underneath his arm. 

Tony cringes, because he knows that isn't sterile. The poor kid still stinks, the smell of it wafting throughout the house. Tony knows they'll have to open all the windows, have to invest in goddamn febreeze to ever get the stink of his kids and their suffering out of the woodwork. 

He doesn't dare say anything, though, his mouth a steel trap, because he's never, ever going to risk hurting either Morgan or Peter's feeling. Ever. He wouldn't have even risked mentioning a bath to Morgan, not until she'd asked for one. He's taking no chances. 

To everyone's credit, no one blinks an eye at it. No one crinkles their nose at the smell, no one pointedly turns away. Even Strange, pacing the living room restlessly, Cloak still tucked into his arms. Even Bruce, looking thoroughly out of place where he sits on the couch, fiddling his thumbs. 

Tony thinks that he might just be surrounded by the best people around. Scratch that, he knows it. With the exception of the Wizard, of course.

The Wizard who chooses this exact moment to pop his head in, gaze crawling over the already crowded space before coming to rest on Peter. "I need to return to the Sanctum. I have done what I needed to here." 

Tony snorts. "Sayonara, Crunchwrap Supreme."

"Thanks for coming, y'know. To, um, save us," Peter says, head ducked low. It's an instinct for the kid, to keep his features obscured, and Tony hates that.

Strange cocks his head in the boy's direction, the boy he sentenced to death all those months ago, and smiles. It's a genuine, stretched out across your face type of smile, and it has Tony's angry retort dying on his lips. 

"It was my pleasure, Peter Parker," Strange replies. 

"Hope your, uh, cape is okay." 

Strange glances down at the lifeless velvet in his arms, face pinched. Finally, "The Cloak will be." 

And then the man is gone, ducking out through one of his signature crackling portals. His departure, his genuine smile, has something uncomfortable brewing in Tony's gut. He twists around, scoffing, finding Helen instead.

"We're going to go ahead and move him to MedBay," Helen informs him, rising slowly from her chair. "This is- it's already infected. He needs medical care beyond what I can provide here."

Peter shivers under his touch, eyes suddenly faraway. 

Tony's breaking heart constricts in sympathy. "Does he really need that?" 

Helen nods sagely. "Unfortunately, he does. I don't believe he'll have to stay there long at all, though," she assures. "Probably a couple days. Just to get him more stabilized." 

"Petey's leaving?'" Morgan demands, all of her earlier excitement gone. Her wide eyes are rocketing from Peter, to Tony, to Helen and back again. 

"Just for a little while," Pepper reassures, patting the girl's back gently, as though she were a newborn again needing to be burped. It does little to calm the obvious panic growing on her. "And Dr. Cho will take very good care of him-" 

"No, no, no-" Morgan cries. 

"Mo-" Peter starts. 

"Maguna-" Tony says. 

Morgan jerks her head side to side rapidly, wiggling in Pepper's grasp. The woman gasps, grappling to hold her struggling cargo before slowly lowering Morgan to the ground, tears growing in her eyes. 

The second Morgan's feet hit the Sandalwood, she springs, bouncing across the floor to Peter and all but throwing herself into his arms. 

Arm. Goddamn arm. Singular. 

Morgan buries her face into his shoulder, obviously not caring about the smell, or maybe she's just immune to it now, because she's lived it, and her arms unfurl to wrap around Peter's neck in an iron grip. She's pulling in panicked, rapid breaths.

"Careful-" May cautions gently, her fingers hovering over both of the children, hesitant, unsure where to even risk touching anymore. She shares a stricken look with Pepper. 

Morgan's mumbling indeterminate nonsense into Peter's tattered shirt, squeezing his neck tightly. 

Peter shifts slightly in his seat, moving her to a more comfortable position, and then he's using his newly wrapped hand to trace out gentle shapes of her back. 

Now the conga line has increased, from Rhodey to Tony to Peter and now to goddamn Morgan, his shivering girl hiding her face in Peter's ruined shirt.

Suddenly and wholly disturbed, sick beyond reason, Tony wrenches away from Rhodey's comforting grip, pulling his hand back from Peter's shoulder as if burned. 

"She's, uh, a little scared," Peter explains needlessly, glancing nervously around the kitchen. 

Tony thinks a blunt duh , because his daughter is shaking and quivering and begging to stay with Peter. He can hear that in her panicked ramblings, that plea, and he falters back. 

They're fucked up. He's fucked up. Everyone's a big, steaming pile of fucked up right now. 

The entire kitchen is frozen at the outburst. Pepper crouched on the floor, her arms still held out, held open in case Morgan decides to return to her desperate arms. Tears are trailing down her cheeks, unbidden, unashamed, and she's staring at Morgan with the same horror echoed on Tony's face. 

Happy's standing in the corner, one foot held out in the air, stuck, like he wants to approach but doesn't dare. Rhodey's in the same position, his rebuked hand halfway pulled back to his body, staring at Peter and Morgan practically conjoined in the chair.

"She's not used to being away. From me. I guess," Peter continues, getting no reply. Tony watches his finger, one of three, draw a soft heart on the canvas of Morgan's back.

Helen recovers quickest. "How about we bring Morgan along as well? Since you wanted me to give Morgan a checkover, too." She sends pointed looks across the kitchen, focusing on Tony and Pepper.

"Hear that, Mo?" Peter continues, voice gentle, like a pro, like he's an au paire helping out the Stark family, like he's dealing with a regular tantrum and not a panic attack, "You wanna go? Take a ride with me to the MedBay?" 

She nods against his shirt, her breathing still irregular and terrifying, tiny fists curling into the remains of it. 

"I'll- I'll get the car," Happy declares, gruff. He wipes the flat part of his hand across his eyes, immediately turning and darting from the room. 

Tony watches him go for a minute, gathering himself, before dipping into a crouch in front of the chair containing his kids. His knees pop, courtesy of old bones, and he forces a breath before finding Peter's eyes. 

Those achingly familiar eyes. Honeyed patience.

"Hey sassafras," Tony starts. She shivers at the nickname, but doesn't turn to look at him. "I'm going to take you, okay?" 

She makes a muffled sound of protest, rooting deeper into Peter's chest. The kid winces but doesn't pull away, doesn't try and force her back. 

"We'll all stay together," Tony promises quickly. He touches her back, gently, just the promise of contact. "You and Peter. I'm just going to carry you to the car. Because Petey's kinda hurt right now." 

She finally acquiesces, her hold loosening, until Tony is gently prying her from Peter's lap and into his own arms. He tucks her head beneath his chin, inhaling the scent of her. Of Morgan. Safe. Alive.

"She's just freaked out," Peter explains again, almost desperately. "That's all." 

"I know," Tony replies. "I know, bud." 

He pushes his ancient bones up, groaning a little at the motion, at Morgan's scant weight. He drops his hand back to Peter's shoulder, selfishly seeking comfort from the kid, from the sheer wonder of him being alive and whole in Tony's palm. That's not enough. It's not enough. 

Tony pulls Peter into a hug, one of the millions he's still paying his debts on. The kid relaxes into it, dropping his head to the free real estate on Tony's left side, where Morgan hasn't already claimed, his face pressing into the hollow of Tony's shoulder. 

That's enough. Now it is. Now that Tony has his whole heart here, in his arms. He's got both of his kids. Safe. Alive. 

It's enough.

Tony tells himself, again and again, that that's all that matters. 

            ═══════════════════

Tony forces himself to look . To look at all the empty spaces on Peter. 

He should be asleep, like everyone else. Like Rhodey, dismissing himself to crash in his old room, the one they hardly use anymore. Like Banner, presumably asleep in a room utilized even less. Like May, an echo of the past, curled tightly into the beige of a hospital couch. Like Pepper, asleep in a chair, head tilting precariously to one side. Like Peter, spread out in his hospital bed, with his newly set nose and plethora of tubing; one for liquefied nutrition, one for fluids, one for Peterified painkillers. Like Morgan, curled up beside him on the bed and tucked into his side, because his daughter has a wicked separation anxiety now. 

He can't sleep. He can't sleep because Peter keeps losing pieces of himself. He can't sleep because Morgan is still quivering, even in sleep, even under a mound of cashmere hospital sheets. He can't sleep because he needs to fix this. 

And he doesn't know how. So he's just staring at the empty places on his kid. 

Only Happy remains awake with him, and the man's being a vengeful Rottweiler right now. He's standing sentry outside the hospital room along with Tony's Endo sym suit and Pepper's Rescue Suit. They're taking no chances. Never again. Happy's made it his solemn mission to keep this room safe-guarded. Precious jewels are in here, after all. 

Tony's exhausted, the weight of it a physical presence pushing on him. Back in the old days, before his old bones took hold, he could spend a manic week awake. He'd be half delirious by the end of it, pitching absurd ideas, but he could manage the feat. Now, though, he feels the strain of it weighing on him in a way he's never felt before. 72 hours and counting. 

He should be fucking asleep. Not awake, tearing his heart open on the jagged, empty places on his kid. Finding his only solace in the softly beeping monitor by his bedside, counting the beats like they're his own personal therapist.

He sighs, reaching out a hand to brush Peter's still matted curls away from his face before retracting it. He doesn't want to risk waking them, either of them, not when they're finally resting and semi peaceful. He drops his head into his hands instead, trying to relish the slow, steady pulse of Peter's heart.

"I know it's bad," Peter whispers suddenly, the sound of his voice nearly jolting Tony out of his seat. His eyes flash up, meeting the haunted ones laying in the bed.

"Jesus christ, kid," Tony whispers back, spreading a hand across his jack-hammering chest. "I have a bad heart. Can't be scaring me like that. Give me a heart attack. I'm old. "

Peter clears his throat. The lights in here are purposely dim, for Peter's enhanced senses, nearly to the point of darkness for Tony. So he barely catches the flash of disgust that flits across Peter's face. Like a ghost in the dark. "My hand. I know it looks bad. Messed up." 

Tony's eyebrows arch to the sky. To heaven, if he believed in such a thing. If he hadn't seen the inside of a wormhole, if he hadn't watched his kid float away as dust. If he hadn't been privy, nor responsible , for half the things he'd seen in this life. Maybe he could have. "Don't-" he starts, before Peter ramrods right over him. 

"I know it is," Peter argues, his voice choked in the dark. "I know it's messed up. I don't really have any arms, not anymore, not with my fingers gone like this, I have nothing, I'm nothing-" 

"Kid, don't say that, don't you dare say that-" 

The heart monitor kicks up a notch. 

"But it's true. " Peter's still whispering, hyper vigilant of Morgan pressed against his side even in his obvious distress. "I'm not going to be able to do anything on my own. I'll never- I'll never be Spider-Man again." 

"You're always Spider-Man-" 

"Those people?" Peter's agonized eyes, suffering apparent even in the dim room, roll up to the ceiling and stay there. "Those people in the other world? Marty? Everyone? They're dead , right?" 

Tony's heart lurches, his throat dry. "Who's- who's Marty?" He asks finally, choking on the words, avoiding the real sinker of that statement. The fact that trillions of people are dead. Trillion, destroyed in a blink of an eye. Trillions of people he's adding firmly to his own ledger, his badge of shame. Because his variant did this, he did this. He's always known that he had something evil in him, something wrong. He'd just seen the evilness play out to its bitter end. To the death of trillions. 

Trillions Tony is damn sure not going to let Peter saddle himself with. 

" Marty! " Peter snaps, voice rising in crescendo. Morgan makes a noise in her sleep, a groan, before shifting in closer to Peter. His next sentence is much more hushed, but no less devastating. "Marty. The guy. He owns the shop." 

"The shop?" Tony considers that for a second. "The clothing shop?" 

"Yeah. I-I broke in. I owed him. And now- now he's dead. He's dead like everyone in that universe. I should have helped them. I should have stopped Not Tony. I should have-" 

"No, no, no." Tony admonishes quickly. He grasps Peter's forearm in a tight, unrelenting vice because it's the only place safe enough to do so. The only place not a macabre tapestry of burns and bruises and pain. "No Peter slander. None. I won't stand it." 

Peter chokes on a quiet sob. "If I'd had my arm, if I was still Spider-Man I could have saved them. I could have protected Morgan. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I failed- " 

"Jesus christ." Tony's shaking his head rapidly, rigidly, surprised that the force of his own vehemence isn't knocking him out of his chair. Clasping Peter's arm isn't good enough, not anymore, and suddenly he's maneuvering himself into the hospital bed, knocking Peter's hip with his own. "No apologies. Ever." 

Tony's had it up to here with the apologies. He hates, loathes, detests them. 

Peter shifts over immediately, Morgan moving with, murmuring in her sleep, and Tony is pushing wires up and around, sliding underneath them until he's finally on the bed with his kids. Both of them. 

"Don't you dare," Tony repeats, voice low. "Don't you apologize like that. You're a hero, kid. You've always been a hero. You've got fucking hero blood. A hero soul. Hero heart. You're always going to be a hero." 

Peter buries his head in Tony's shoulder, silent. Even his cries are silent now. Silent to let Morgan sleep. 

"I didn't save anyone ," Peter argues, breathless, voice muted into Tony's shirt. 

"Bullshit," Tony says. He throws his arm around Peter's shoulder, pulling him in even closer. Morgan follows, a moon orbiting around its sun. Peter has always been a sun.

"You saved Morgan," Tony tells him. Peter mumbles something muffled against his shoulder, but something that is without a doubt utter hogwash. "You did save her. You kept her alive. Hell, you didn't kill her. Which is what that sonofabitch wanted. You got her out of there and kept her hidden for me to find you." 

"I wouldn't kill her," Peter exclaims, pulling back to look at Tony with wide eyes. Even in the dark Tony can see the shock there. "Honest, Mister Stark, I would never do that-" 

Like Tony doesn't know. Like Peter's missing fingers aren't evidence. Like his missing arm isn't enough to prove that. He was willing to sacrifice himself for the world once. Tony knows, without a doubt, that Peter would do it again. Even after everything. 

"Of course not," Tony harumps. "Cause of that whole hero heart thing. It's who you are. There was no way to save those people. None. I couldn't have done it. You couldn't have done it. You saved the only people that you could have. Morgan. And you." 

"Me?" Peter's incredulous eyes meet his, and Tony adds that to his list of things to hate. Peter's fucking increditiblity that he could possibly matter. When Peter is late night inventions, and Thai food, and miracles and magic and everything. 

"Yes, you. You idiot. Of course you. I love you, kid. If I'd lost you, well, then I'd have been fucking lost. Right off the cliff of sanity. So you saved me , too. Also, May. Pepper. Ned. It's a chain reaction thing. You're the nexus point." 

"I love you too." Peter rests his head back against Tony's shoulder. 

"It was hell without you." 

"I'm sorry." 

Tony scowls. "Seriously. Stop apologizing. It's a new rule. A Tony rule. Those are the most important kind." 

Peter falls silent, leaning against him, and Tony simply soaks up the soft ambient noise for a moment. The softly beeping machine, Morgan's muted snores, May's not so muted ones. He drinks it all in, the sound of his family. 

Finally, "Are you hurting?" He whispers. The kid's been drugged up to his eyeballs with his special Spiderling drugs, so he shouldn't even be awake right now, not unless those feel-good drugs have worn off.

There's a pause before Peter carefully admits, "Yeah. A little."

In Peter speak, which Tony is fluent in, that admittance means a lot. 

"I'll get Dr. Cho in here. Pump you full of some more of those drugs." 

"Drugs are bad, Mister Stark." 

Tony snorts. "Obviously. Don't do drugs. Abstinence. Except right now, absolutely do drugs. Because you are a minced meatloaf spiderling and you need it." 

Peter lets out a breath of air. "I'm not Spider-Man anymore. I wish I could be." 

Tony heart cinches. "You are Spider-Man, Pete. Always." 

"Not anymore." The voice is so morose, so despondent, it has Tony fumbling for a response. Anything to bring life back to that voice he loves. "I'll fix it," he promises, hasty, because he's the goddamn king of hasty promises. He tosses them to both Peter and Morgan like breadcrumbs. Most of them he keeps. This isn't one. 

"You can't, Mister Stark," Peter says brokenly. "You can't fix this. I'm messed up. You can't- You can't invent something for me- not an arm, not fingers, 'cause I'm messed up on a cellular level, you can't fix the radiation, neither can Wakanada or they would have already-" 

Radiation. His mind catches on that word, on the implications of it. The genius part of his brain tries to spin away, fast as a pinwheel, but he reigns it back in. For now. "I love you, Peter. I don't think you're messed up. Okay? I love you. 3,000. And I need you." 

Peter trembles at that. "It was Morgan's idea, y'know." 

Tony cocks his head. "Hmm?" 

"The questions." Peter laughs softly, but the sound is more biting than happy. "She came up with all these questions to ask everybody. Including that one. For you. And they actually worked. She's- she's a genius." 

Tony drops a kiss to Peter's tangled curls. He doesn't care that the kid hasn't properly bathed still, that he's been sponge-bathed and changed, but still has the same knotted, unkempt mess as before. Tony finally does care about something. But it's not that. He plants another kiss there just to be sure. He hopes the love can seep into Peter's genius, idiotic brain. "Of course she is. Have you met her parents? Her mother's a work of art, her father's the smartest man alive. And her brother's a literal Saint . She's got the best of all worlds." 

"It worked. The questions. But I could tell, too. Cause of your heart." 

Tony vividly remembers that, remembers fighting his desire to rush across the shop, remembering Peter silently mouthing each individual beat. 

"My heart, huh?" Tony teases gently, leaning back to bump his shoulder into Peter's. 

"It's slower," Peter allows. 

"Cause I've got a bad one. A bad heart. Years of stress. Directly Spider related. You've probably given me a murmur." 

Peter laughs, and this time it's not tight and stretched and close to breaking. It's soft and warm, and Tony melts at it a little bit. Melts into something gooey and maybe a little fluffy. 

"If you've got a murmur, Mister Stark. It's your fault. I'm blameless. I won't be held liable for that."

Tony hmmms , a silent agreement vibrating across his lips. Peter is blameless. A white fleeced lamb.

"Let's get you some drugs, huh? Special drugs." 

Peter nods. "Okay. Yes to drugs. I really missed you." 

Tony's heart melts again, melts until there's nothing left for it to do but turn gaseous, to turn into vapors and float away. "Missed you too, 'Roo. 

Later on, after Dr. Cho sends more liquid oblivion into Peter's veins, and the kid slips away, Tony lets himself go as well.

He has his kids back, safe and sound and tucked in close to him. Tony doesn't care how messed up they all are. Not right now. He'll worry about fixing everything later. For now, this is enough.

He drifts off to sleep, joining Peter in Lala Land, counting out each beat of the kid's heart. 

He imagines Peter does the same.

Chapter Text

Two Months ago…

"Well, well, well. If it isn't my favorite young adult." 

Tony's going for froth here, going for something light and whipped and easily palatable. It helps that he's practically floating with the knowledge that Peter is here. Here to stay. 

The look that he sees on Peter's face instantly dashes it, though, drowns his frothy words in thick regret. 

The kid shuts the car door behind him, a little too loud, and Tony flinches. He sees Happy do the same, crossing around to the back to grab Peter's bag. Because he is here. To stay.

Peter looks up at him through his eyelashes, shuffling nervously on the front lawn, the sun back splashing him, and offers a muted, dejected, "Hey, Mister Stark." 

Tony's mood immediately sinks. Peter is here, but he isn't here. That is immediately clear in the forlorn slump of his shoulders, the faraway look in his eyes, the way he keeps his features pinned to the grass. Peter is still stuck on the battlefield, still prone on the hospital bed, still trapped in whatever happened on that disastrous trek for ice cream.

Home was supposed to fix things. Home was where Peter belonged. Tony's been religiously counting on tomorrow, but tomorrow is here and Peter still isn't better. 

Happy hefts Peter's single bag out of the trunk, a worried expression on his face. "Offered to stop and get some grub. Kid said he wasn't hungry." 

Happy punctuates the last three words with a knowing look, his thin lips pressed into a tight line. He raises his eyebrows in Tony's direction. 

"I'm not , " Peter insists, voice sharp. His irritation is palpable. "Besides, Happy wanted to go to, uh, a restaurant. So, you know."

Which doesn't explain anything unless you know Peter. Unless you know that he's shriveling, that he's his own worst enemy. 

Tony swallows thickly, his voice soft in the midday sun. "How about we make some dinner here? Pepper and Maguna are gone for the night. Just me and you." 

Peter regards him for a moment. "You can't cook, Mister Stark." 

Tony laughs, the sound a little forced, not the froth he was hoping for, crossing the last few feet between them to throw an arm over Peter's shoulder. It's a little different now, a little lopsided, and Peter flinches at it, but Tony doesn't retract. He's not giving in to Peter's insane, probably self-deprecating thoughts. "You haven't tried my pancakes yet, bud. Truly my greatest invention to date. Trademarked, obviously. Since I am a generous man, I'll let you sample them." 

He propels Peter forward, towards the lakehouse, Happy following in their wake. Peter glances up at him, a little incredulous. "Pancakes?" 

Tony nods sagely. "Pancakes, my padawan."

              ═══════════════════

Morgan is screaming.

The cacophonous sound rips across the room, and it yanks Peter to horrified awakeness before his mind has a chance to catch up. All he knows, the only thing that matters , is Morgan's safety. He has to keep her safe, keep her alive, he was asleep, he was asleep , she's hurt-