There's always something else that can happen, after the dust settles. Tony knows it all to well.
There'll always be a next time, a new attack, some other threat to stop.
Boy, does he hate being right about it, too.
He wastes no time, after the first explosion jars him awake — he sends Pepper and Morgan to the closet, because that just so happens to be where he kept the secret compartment that would lead them into the belly of the compound. By the time Morgan is secure in Pepper's arms, she's howling in panic at the flashing alarms and thunderous collision of rock and metal in the distance. Tony presses a hand to her cheek and says, "It's okay, kiddo, dad's got you covered, just stick with mom," before pressing a kiss to Pepper's lips (you never know if it'll be the last, you just never know, fuck). "Stay down there, Pep, you hear me? Don't come out, not for anything."
"I love you, you idiot," she says, and vanishes along with Happy. If there's anyone he trusted to put Pepper and Morgan's lives above all else, it'd be Hap, and they exchange knowing glances as Tony rushes out into the thick of things. None of it makes any sense — FRIDAY is programmed to alert them to foreign dangers far before the danger actually strikes, so what happened here? Why did his systems kick into gear so late? He thinks it's more than possible that it's technology he's unfamiliar with — alien tech. Gritting his teeth, the Iron Man suit's nano-technology stretches across his body like living clay, molding to his person perfectly.
The timing of the attack left him with less options than he would have liked; some of their hardest hitters are out to lunch, so to speak: Scott Lang is halfway across New York City; Clint is back home with his family; the Guardians are still out there somewhere in the reaches of space, delivering the Space Stone to a secure new home where (hopefully) nobody like Thanos could get their ugly mitts on it; Thor was in Wakanda, helping repair the foundation of hope for his people; Spider-Man is trapped in his own body —
(He has to get to Peter, he has to get him to the closet and start him moving somewhere defended — It's not safe, he's gonna get himself fucking killed—)
He already sees the flash of War Machine as Rhodes speeds through the air outside, and Tony instantly feels a stab of panic at the thought of his friend being out there, seemingly on his own. Another violent hit rocks the facility — across the lawn, this time, the distant echo of Hulk's roar just audible over the blast. Tony propels forward through the corridor and realizes with coiling horror that the rest of the floor is in ruin, Wanda's limp figure slumped among glass fragments where the large windows used to be. A quick scan tells him she's alive — head injury, though, and more than likely something that will not only take her out of the battle until she can snap out of it. And make her a target for whoever is launching their strike.
Natasha's room had been completely wiped out, and he only hopes she'd gotten the memo from the initial shock wave and flipped her way out of there with Bucky and Sam and Steve.
"To— you — ea— me?" he hears Rhodes in his ear, the choppy and illegible message drawing a wince from him.
So they botched our comms, too.
Flying out from around the corner, a huge and lumbering figure comes into view through the debris and dust-fogged lounge area, which has been nearly destroyed in one of the first blasts; the bastard reminds him instantly of that bozo they'd all duked it out with in the park years ago, and it doesn't take Tony long to pinpoint why the armor and helmet and undeniable aesthetic was so familiar: this is one of Thanos' so-called children, the Black Order. Apparently there was more left, like little picnic ants all over your fucking food. The thought makes his stomach roil and his anger spike, teeth gritted. He figures that alone would be enough to spur forward his outrage — until he realizes the alien had his foot on a familiar kid from Queens and was in the middle of some interrogation speech he couldn't be damned about.
Peter is on his stomach with the bastard's boot against the buttons of his spine, as his arms and legs weakly wriggle. And there is a fucking spear wedged into one of his shoulders, one that was being twisted deeper for the pleasure of it.
Tony's vision goes red.
As the pointed weapon is pulled from the boy's trembling figure, Iron Man pulses through the air like lightning, a scream ripping out of him just before he slams into the over-sized alien motherfucker; he relishes the way ribs smash into pieces under his bullet-like body, or how there's not even room for a sound of pain as discolored blood sprays from the Black Order soldier's mouth and onto his helmet. The disposable monster is dead before he even hits the grassy knoll outside, and Tony doesn't feel an ounce of concern at the extra kick he delivers to the corpse, just for his own gluttonous need for revenge on Pete's behalf.
Pete. Oh god. Oh god, he's stabbed back there —
He turns and starts his panicked flight back towards the half-ruined facility, tunnel vision sweeping him. He sees Peter prone among the bits and pieces of what used to be a couch and table, with blood pooling near his head, and that's all he digests before a lasso whips around his ankle like a coiling snake and rips him back outside into the shitshow. "FRIDAY, we need radio devices back up, right fucking now! I gotta' know where everyone's at—!"
(Peter, I gotta get back to Peter, he needs to go with Pepper and Morgan, he needs to get outta here right now, goddammit—!)
"I'm working on it — si — It seems they are using pulses of energy — an unknown origin to delay emergency systems and — isable — our comm —" It's not the best news, and FRIDAY is clearly having her own problems to deal with, but he's at least thinking it can be reversed with enough time; as much as he doesn't want to charge forward and therefore away from Peter, he also knows that he has to keep soldiers at bay from the kid, and pinpoint where those pulses are coming from to destroy them outright. He aims and fires, tearing through the smaller ships like rice paper with his high-density lasers.
"You guys don't learn a goddamn thing, do you?! It's like an old dog with one trick," he bites.
He jerks his vision towards the horizon, where Falcon is ducking and weaving and trying not to get sucked up into the whirring engines of the mother ship. Radios are down, but they're blissfully close enough to yell like insane people at each other. "Tony, I think they're here for the—"
"—three stones still left on Earth?! Yeah, no shit!"
A large chunk of debris is flung in Sam's direction from seemingly nowhere, clipping his wing and almost sending him into a tailspin; he adjusts and adapts, arching upward back into the sky as a familiar face graces Tony's presence ahead of them — the figure who had decided to throw said debris, if Tony had to guess. The moment the light of the moon hits the guy's ugly face, everything clicks into place.
Ebony Maw, the noseless wonder, smiles as all pieces of villainous shit do.
"It's been far too long, hasn't it? Now — if you don't mind, we'll be taking those stones."
After Gamora met Peter Quill and her fellow Guardians, she thought she would someday die by their side; such a concept brought her a confusing but profound comfort, and most would think the thought a horrible and morbid thing. But for someone like her — someone whose life had been slicked with blood and shined sharp and deadly and loveless — it was one of the most wonderful realizations she'd had in her turbulent life. So imagine her heartache, when she was forced to die, not alone, but in the company of the man who had tormented her most all her life. It would have been easier if he hated her; knowing that he did truly love her only made his actions all the more painful, all the more terrifying. She wanted to die with her family — not with the cheap facsimile that called himself her father, against her very will.
She had been freed of him, though, in the end. Dead or alive, Thanos was ripped from her life at last, and she at least had that much.
And she had Peter Parker, to stave away the isolation.
A foolish, ridiculous boy, someone who pulled his punches against bullies out of obligation to use his powers for good. Someone who never seemed to have a shortage of 'sorrys' in his pocket, or shit-eating grins hidden up his sleeves. Someone who reminded her of her own Peter in their many ways of shining proudly — with energy, life, kindness, love. She had been nothing like him, when she was his age. She had been vicious, trained to kill with no regard for life, taught for too long that you should never care about those around you, because they would become your greatest enemy sooner or later.
And here young Peter was, almost stupidly innocent, his eyes twinkling with concern since the start.
They've been here in this place, they've surmised, for at least two years. Two years together, and with no one else to lean on, she had to admit to herself at some point that she loved this young man like family she'd been forced to part with — and so when he cried out in pain and fell to his knees, she gripped his arms and kept him from crashing down to the hillside with fear in her eyes. Her guts knotted while panic rippled through her soul in a great heaving rush. Blood — there was blood pouring through his shirt, and she recalled instantly the day he had hurt his chin in the real world.
("Bucky told everyone Sam let me fall over," Peter said with a laugh as she pinched his jaw in her hands, so that she could inspect the cut on his face with some disapproval. "When I get back, I should probably tell everyone Sam Wilson is an innocent man, you think?")
Gamora's face pales.
He's being impaled in the real world, she realizes with a pounding heart. He's being stabbed on Earth, and there's nothing she can do about it here. And there's nothing he can do about it here, not while he's trapped in this world and outside of his own body. She swipes her hand across his face, trying to get him to focus as he pours sweat and shakes under her fingertips. "Peter! Peter, look at me. Look at me."
"Gh— I'm okay," he whimpers, his fingernails pinching into her forearms. "I'mokayI'mokayI'mokay—"
("I'm sorry I make you worry," he whispered, and she hugged him more fiercely into her chest. He was a foolish boy, if he honestly thought it bothered her at all, to have someone she could worry about — someone tangible, someone who didn't leave her all alone in this place with her lonely thoughts and trepidation. She runs her hands through his curling locks, wild under her fingers—)
—and keeps stroking his head with steely determination in her eyes. "No you're not. You're not okay, and you need to go. Now."
His own eyes widen tiredly, the blanched face looking up at her in disbelief. "Wh... What?"
"I said you need to go. Peter, this is your chance. This — This is probably the strongest link you could have between your soul and body."
"I can't," he pants, struggling to breathe through what must be bruised ribs and a lancing pain through torn flesh.
"You can."
"I said I fucking can't!" he yells, the angriest she's heard him, frustrated tears lining his gaze. "I can't— I'm not strong enough to do it! It's too much—"
"Look into my eyes. Look here." She jerks his chin towards him as she had before, the gesture so instantly disarming that he looks at her now with round-eyed desperation. This boy has done too much for her here in this strange place, for her to let him fall apart and die before her very eyes. If there was anything she could do for him, it was to send him home. Send him back to people who loved him, who cared about him, people like Stark and his aunt, his friend. She smooths his hair back, a thin smear of his blood on his temple as she goes. "You're Spider-Man, aren't you? Your friends and family are out there, and more than likely they're fighting something terrible as we speak. They need you. They need one of Earth's Avengers."
"I won't leave you," he chokes. "There's nobody else. I can't leave you here."
Her hands press his cheeks, as she's reminded of Groot and his big eyes, so full of youthful compassion and wonder. She had missed him so much, wondering how he's been since returning to the living; wondering if everyone is treating him well. She supposes if anything, she had not missed the opportunity to be a mother, at the end of all things. She strokes a thumb under Peter's eye to catch a wayward tear. "You've done more than enough, Peter Parker. I'm forever indebted to you. And I'm glad that I had the chance to meet you."
"I love you," he gasps, tears spilling. "I can't leave someone I love behind."
Her eyes fill to the brim. Stupid child, with his feelings on his sleeve. So easy to speak his mind and heart.
Stupid, kind child, bringing these painful emotions to the surface.
Please don't make this harder for me, Peter.
"I love you, too. And I'll never, not once, forget that. And I'm— so sorry—"
She presses her thumb into his wound with all the strength she has, and he screams. It's a sound that will haunt her, knowing her own hand had been the one to cause it, and her face crumples with regret as she presses harder still. The pain of it is enough — it's enough to make this place no longer a safe haven, and she wills herself to be unrelenting as his blood stains her hand. "I'm so sorry, Peter, I'm so sorry, please forgive me— Go, Peter, go back—" His hands crumble away where they push at her shoulders, his legs fade and leave empty air at her side, and in a burst of gold and an echo of a wail of pain, he swirls away into nothing. There's little choice for him in the matter; pain here, or pain there, he has to choose. He has to choose now, when it could mean never waking up again.
She watches him disappear from her world, breathing a deep, shuddering sigh that tapers into a sob. Just one. Just one is what she will allow herself.
"Please," she whispers, struggling with her words. "Please go home. You have to live."
Please, live.
She will happily spend her existence in this fractured, empty world, if it meant she could do this one last thing. Years ago, before she'd met her crew of idiots, she would have lost her life in a battle — lost it as someone not worth loving, cold to the world and wishing for an escape from the empire her so-called father had built. Now, she can say she was proud of what she had become, built back up from the clay of those who stayed at her side, who were willing to be there all this time. She was proud to be theirs.
My family.
It's like a big bang going off in his brain, startling him into awareness as fast as ice water to skin.
There's smoke in his nostrils, debris sharp under his palms, tacky blood by his cheek.
Screaming pipes.
Erratic breaths.
Gamora, Gamora, no, no — Come back —
Everything's too loud, too real. Peter gasps to life, his entire body seized up with pain and fingernails chipping against the bent and broken flooring beneath his body. His senses are going mad, eyes darting, throat working uselessly to breathe. It hurts like it had on Titan, just before he faded away; he'd fought so hard to live then, his body panicking and trying to build him back up with sand that was sifting out through his pores every second he struggled. He had felt like every atom in him was coming apart at the seams now, but he peeled his eyes open anyway, and saw the clear, real moon, through what was left of the jagged rooftop — for the first time in years. He sucks in another needy breath and shakes violently where he remains almost completely immobile, unsure how to make his legs and arms work.
He rolls himself onto his back, into cooling blood, and gasps for air — tries to. It hurts so much, his lungs are seizing.
"Gamora," he moans, trying to see her face. But there's nothing, nothing but sore, reddened eyes and a mouth that feels numb and elastic and fake. He can hear the sounds of battle outside, in the distance. He can see Wanda slumped near him, can feel her heartbeat shake his bones every time it pulses (hang in there, Wanda, I'm gonna save you, I'm gonna get you). Life. Life is around him, and death, and destruction. He is alive. He's alive. But he couldn't — he can't move. He can't move. How can he move, when his bones feel like they're grinding against each other, or when his skull feels like it's going to explode?
'You're Spider-Man, aren't you?'
Peter forces his eyes open at the phantom voice in his ears as he lay wheezing, fighting back scared, childish sobs. He bites his lip until it bleeds and rolls back onto his stomach, pulling himself to his knees. It takes him a painfully long moment to recollect himself, but when he finally pushes up to carry his weight, his eyes are glowering with determination. "C'mon, Spider-Man," he whispers, "C'mon Spider-Man — c'mon Spider-Man, you're an Avenger, aren't you?! Come on! Move! Get off your ass, Spider-Man!"
He crawls. One throbbing arm in front of the other, he crawls, gritting his teeth. His fingers curl against his will, but his limbs obey. The world around him shudders and groans under the stress of the combat outside. People are fighting, fighting against what, he's not sure — but he knows where he's needed, and he knows what he has to protect. The thought wills him to push forward, even as every nerve in his body kicks and screams.
"Move, Spider-Man, move Peter Parker. Come on, Peter Parker!"
He needs — he needs —
"Come on, Peter!"
He sticks his hand to the hallway wall — drags himself onto feet that refuse to work. Sticks his other palm to the wall.
'They need you. They need one of Earth's Avengers.'
The armory doors are short-circuiting when he gets to them, but he shoves his way inside anyway, toppling into a table and displacing papers and equipment as blood tracks after him. There are thick glass tubes lining the room, filled with Iron Man suits, shield prototypes, and so many other things Peter used to gawk at after a long Friday after school. He stumbles through the area like a puppet floundering on strings and — and he doesn't crumble to dust. He doesn't crumble — he walks. He's alive. He's alive—
And to risk another quarter in a swear jar Tony threatened often, it hurts like a motherfucker.
"FRIDAY, are you there?" he pants, his hair sticking to his face as sweat drips along his jawline.
He's not sure how much longer he'll be able to stay upright.
"I — am — rker," she says, choppy. He only hopes she can still function well enough from the bowels of the facility.
"Unlock Item 17A."