A/N: INFINITY WAR SPOILERS
INFINITY WAR SPOILERS
INFINITY WAR SPOILERS
I'm not lying when I say I wrote this all in less than an hour and 30 minutes. I genuinely could not stop once the idea popped into my head. I'm so sorry.
This was not proofread and it was literally written while in a daze. And, because like Tony Stark, I fucking hate myself for writing this.
"There are moments that the words don't reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
Then push away the unimaginable.
The moments when you're in so deep
Feels easier to just swim down
The Hamiltons move uptown
And learn to live with the unimaginable."
— From "It's Quiet Uptown" by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Like all tragedies, it came without warning.
He avoided the look of the blue woman. Not because she was formidable (though she was) and not because he was too naturally curious about the alien technology that made up her anatomy and he didn't want to seem too eager (though he was); Tony Stark avoided her gaze because she was there with him on Titan. She saw it too.
The remaining Avengers – and Guardians, as Cyber Meeko and Angry Bald Smurfette were apparently called – had taken temporary refuge in Wakanda, out of the new Queen's own generosity. That, and the fact that they were the best chance that Earth had to restore what semblance of sanity that they could and that this was the best country that had the resources to help with the chaos could.
He felt for Millennial Princess Leia, he did. Kid had just had to inherit a whole country, lost her mother, and lost her brother in the same two seconds, apparently—it helped him to think of T'Challa that way instead of the friend he had been. And maybe friend was pushing it – nobody really liked him-liked him to call him an actual friend at this point in his life – but this was not the time for technicalities. Or his wisecracks.
Queen Shuri couldn't have been more than sixteen, seventeen. Probably around the same age as—
No.
No.
Stop right there.
Don't think about the kid.
"If you die, I feel like that's on me."
"Fuck," he swore under his breath, so quiet – too quietly – that nobody could hear.
Not that anyone was paying any attention to him right then.
Tony Stark grit his teeth and took a deep, sharp breath through the nose. With an imperceptible twitch of his head, he swallowed. He willed the thoughts of the kid away. The kid, the kid, the kid—Peter, his name's Peter. Is Peter. Was.
"Fuck," he grumbled again, grinding his teeth together. He felt his hand start to shake.
Not now, he thought to himself. Fuck sake, not now.
"Tony," he hears a voice say. Steve, it registers. No, wait—that's far too friendly. Captain Rogers, he corrects his thoughts in the same second.
His game face slips on like a snakeskin he'd just shed off—it didn't fit quite right but the pattern still looked the same. If Steve noticed the difference, the man didn't say anything. Nobody really wanted to talk about it out in the open. These are for the shadows to see—not the light.
Tony put on a practised smile – his muscles remembering, his pressed lips trembling – and he quirked his brows in a way that felt natural. His whole body changed – both defensive and proud at the same time. Saving face, saving grace.
Don't let the Captain see you fucking break.
"Yeah?" he quipped, putting in all the effort to make his voice sound effortless. It paid off.
Steve only gave him a thoughtful once over, those soulful, sombre sky blue eyes looking at him with all the forgiveness he never fucking deserved. He knew that look—he saw it in himself, in his mind's eye. The tragedy of loss, the weight of having to carry on like nothing ever even fucking happened.
"You alright?" Steve asked.
"Super," he answered too quickly to be true. But, before Steve could say anything else that was far too aggravatingly kind, Tony cut him off. He held a hand up and started to walk away as he spoke. "If you'll excuse me, Cap'n, I'm in the middle of something—Friday? Friday, you there, sweetheart?"
Tony fiddled with the device in his ear that was only just starting to reconfigure to his regular settings. The Wakandan tech had been lightyears of what he had developing at home. This shit made his tech look like a pre-schooler made them—and the fact that a sixteen-year-old girl had made this? It made him wish he were retired.
The world didn't need him anymore—why the fuck did it keep fucking taking from him? He was tired. He was so goddamn tired. Couldn't he just go take a fucking nap?
But no, there was work to do. There was always work to do.
Steve let him be and joined the others as they licked their goddamn wounds and assessed the situation. In the back of his mind, he was listening. He was always fucking listening; he always paid attention, even when nobody thought that he was.
It was a blessing and a curse, that he forgot nothing.
He could see the kid's eyes just as he crumbled to ash in his fingertips. He could feel the kid's fully strength holding on to his whole body – and good God, that kid was so fucking strong. He didn't have a suit to withstand the kid's strength and so he, and his bad knees, had fallen to the ground with the kid. And he laid him there, the kid looking him in the eye, telling him he was sorry…
Sorry for what?
Wait, fuck—no.
Don't think about it.
Don't think about him.
"Mr Stark, I don't feel so good…"
He could feel the kid's breath – still warm, still smelling like fucking tuna sandwiches – on his neck.
"I don't want to go," he'd said. "I don't want to go—"
From the time that Anthony Stark had been a child, there were very few times that he heard Howard Stark speak. When his work had been right, Howard would look at it sternly—a raised, unimpressed eyebrow; a purse of his lip; a tilt of his head. To a young Tony Stark, that was the only praise he sought—his father's silence. Because, if it had been wrong, Howard would have let him feel just how wrong it was.
Peter Benjamin Parker had done nothing wrong.
He was a kid—a sixteen-year-old kid from Queens.
And he was perfect.
He hadn't done anything wrong.
So, Tony kept his learnt silence. Hoping that was enough. But, knowing him, that would never have been enough. That kid deserves so much fucking better from the world, from him, and Tony watched him fall away into nothing right in his arms.
And Tony could feel it—he could feel it.
He raised his hand up, as if he could will the tiny molecules that remained of Peter Parker, to become visible to his only all too human eyes. As if some of the ashes of him had remained on his skin, cemented there forever. A permanent reminder of something so pure, something so good that he'd managed to completely disappoint and destroy to the point of no return.
Again.
As he looked as his hands, he noticed his hands shaking. Imperceptible to anyone else, maybe, but as it was close by, he could see the twitching of his ring finger. He concentrated on it, grit his teeth, and bid the kid's voice in his head to give him some fucking peace so he could figure this shit out.
And, like all tragedies, it came without warning.
The whirr in his ear suggested the return of his trusty AI coming back online. He straightened his back, the stab wound in his side only just healed but still roaring at the shift in position, and he groaned.
"Friday, you there?" he asked.
He pressed a button and the hologram appeared in front of his face. Her picture was large on the right hand screen and his heart fell, heavy. His lips trembled and a small, quiet, shaking gasp left his lips. Tony swallowed.
He knew what Friday would say before he heard her voice in his head.
"Mr Stark, you have an incoming call from May Parker."
It kept ringing as his eyes started at the image that only he could see. He willed the suit to wrap around his form and, while not perfect and whole, it was enough that he would be the only witness to this. He did not need the pitying, understanding look from Angry Bald Smurfette coming his way.
No, this was something he had to take for himself.
"Sir? Should I answer it?" Friday asked.
"Yeah, put her through," he said.
As soon as May Parker heard the click, she began to speak.
"Mr Stark!" she said, her voice shaky. May tried to sound okay—he could tell. He could tell from the feigned cheer in her voice, the shaky timbre he could detect as she called him just like Peter did.
In Queens, May was in his room.
It was in a state of disarray with bedsheets, clothes, books, dirty socks, legos, comic books, and all the like upturned—as if a tiny, itty bitty hurricane had gone through his room with the single intent of finding anything that had Tony Stark's contact details on it. When she couldn't find that, she tried the generic number for Stark Industries—for the Avengers facilities, anywhere she could think of.
It's been a whole day since the new incident, as those in New York were calling it now, and all the phone lines were still busy. May doesn't know how her call got through when it did but after hours and hours and hours of trying to find someone who knew Tony Stark's personal number, she came across it from a journalist at the Daily Bugle.
J Jonah Jameson was not an easy man to get a hold of and she was nobody special. She was nothing like her nephew—her son. And yet, there was nothing a determined mother—a determined aunt couldn't do when it came to her boy. It took a few hours but the number she managed to finagle had worked.
When she heard the click that the other line, she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Mr Stark! Hi!" she managed to greet, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her entire body was shaking. Her lungs felt tight—like they were on fire. Like she'd just inhaled a full tank of gas and her veins were burning rubber. She forced a smile.
"I—I just found this number, looking through Peter's things, you know how it is…" she lied.
"It's just—I know he's probably with you so he's probably fine but—" she swallowed nervously, a hand pressing hard against her heart, willing herself to stop the panic that was building up inside her. She felt it rising from the base of her spine up to her neck. "Well, he hasn't picked up. He hasn't—" she said, laughing nervously. "He hasn't picked up his phone in a bit. Hasn't returned any of my calls, my texts. And well—well, you know…"
Tony Stark's silence from the other end of the line made her want to die.
But it wasn't what she thought, she said to herself. Peter was fine.
"Is-is-is-is-is," she stammered through chattering teeth. May sniffed, tears falling from her eyes. She already knew the answer – for Tony Stark's silence spoke volumes – but no. It couldn't be. It couldn't fucking be.
"Is—is… i-is he there? Is Peter with you?" she asked. "C-could you tell him t-to—to please call me back?"
Vesuvius lived in her heart; she felt the heat and the rage and the fire burning up inside her and she didn't want to see it. She didn't want to hear it. But she had to, she had to.
"Mr Stark, are you there? Is the reception buggy or something? Did I call the right number? Hello? Mr Stark?" she said again into the silence. Her voice started to crack, the feigned calm and cheer that fooled absolutely no one was gone (not that it was ever there in the first place). "Tony, please—"
And then, she heard the one word – the one thing she never wanted Tony Stark to ever say.
"May…" he started.
That was all it took.
Tony heard her throw up violently, wherever it was that she was.
From the location of her call, she was at their little apartment. He placed himself on mute to her and ordered Friday to send a few drones to keep watch on her – both suicide and cardiac arrest, due to shock. Any goddamn thing that might happen to that woman due to the news he knew he had to say, he anticipated. He didn't know what to expect but he knew what he wanted to do. So, he assumed it was the same for her—maybe worse, he'd never be that arrogant enough to tell or admit.
"He can't—" she said on the other end of the line. If Tony didn't know any better, he would say she was laughing. Hysterical. "No, he's not—Tony, tell me he's not—"
"May—" he started but he corrected himself, knowing he had no right to address her as such right now. Not in this state. "Mrs Parker, I'm sorry—"
"YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF HIM, GOD DAMN IT!" she yelled, throwing up again.
He didn't need to know that her vomit was violently, brightly green for she hadn't eaten all day—and this was pure, panicked bile. Due to stress. He didn't need to know but he imagined that it was—he'd seen it too often from his own episodes.
"HE SAID YOU'D KEEP HIM SAFE!"
Tony could not respond—did not want to.
For a solid minute, Tony Stark could say nothing. May Parker hurled every abuse, every curse, every blame that she could at him and he took it in silence… having already said more of the same to himself, and then some. May Parker was too good of a person to imagine the things he knew he deserved in recompense for the lives he'd destroyed.
Tony heard her cry and scream for a long time, saying nothing.
When her cries died into softer, quieter sobs, he could almost see her in his mind's eye.
He could imagine the trembling of her lips. He could hear how her teeth chattered, involuntary. Her voice had turned hoarse from the screaming.
(May had fallen to the base of his wardrobe drawer, falling to her knees, picking up the first of his shirts that she could reach. Heaving, coughing—surrounded by her own filth and the belongings of the recently deceased.
May clutched at the shirt—it was light grey. It had a science pun on it. 'The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real!' it said.
It smelled like sweat and chemicals—it smelled like her boy.
Her good, sweet boy.)
"I didn't get to say goodbye," Tony heard her say. "I didn't get to say goodbye…"
In the comfort of his suit, he felt tears run down his cheeks. Here, in the shadows of his own making, he could weep.
"He was my son…" she heard her sob. "He was my son, god damn it…"
Tony stayed still and listened to her cry. May didn't realise that her phone had run out of battery, he knew, for when the call had cut out, he switched to the small drone that was now monitoring her location—just to make sure she was alright.
Of course she wasn't—but the kid would need his aunt in working condition when he brought him back.
Because he was going to bring the kid back, god fucking damn it.
"Sir?" Friday prompted. "Do you want to—"
Tony willed for his helmet to dematerialise. Still talking to Friday, he said, "Keep the drones on her. Don't let her out of your sight. Keep track of her vitals. Make sure she's still standing for when the kid gets back."
"Sir—" Friday tried, but Tony would not have it.
"I'm getting him back, Friday. I'm getting the kid back if it's the last fucking thing I do."