Chapter 51 - The Sun Sets

There were very few occasions when Tony would find himself in bed at dusk. He couldn't deny the exhaustion that was seated in his very bones though. Still he had argued, had fought against Pepper's insistence that he needed rest. He did. At some point, but first, well... that would have to wait now. At least till morning. His mind was drifting, jumping from one topic to the next like a cat distracted by a hundred light spots reflected off a glass crystal in the sun. Rest would help with that. And it also helped that Pepper was there, right next to him.

Her breathing was slow but deep. She was so close, lying right next to him, he could feel the rhythm of her breath more than he heard it. Her head snug against his chest, his right arm was curled around her, holding her next to him. Right away his hand had crept underneath the hem of her shirt with only his fingertips touching the warm soft skin on her waist, unmoving. Just relishing in the contact. She had her fingers entangled with his other hand, resting on his stomach. They had fallen back into this close familiarity just like that. Like they had never stopped.

"Rhodey's been trying to reach you." Her voice was low, treading carefully.

Tony turned his head towards her, but she wasn't even looking at him, just had her own head cushioned on his chest, her fingers lightly tracing the back of his hand. There wasn't really anything he could say to that. He tilted his face into her hair instead, eyes closed, trying to think of anything but that enormous shit show they were trying to get out of.

"Honey, we can't... We can't keep this from him. I can't lie to him and I know you don't want to either." She tried to control her breathing and with that the trembling of her voice. "I understand that you are trying to protect Addy, but Rhodey would never—"

"He can't know, Pep. It's impossible." Her body positively shook, she swallowed her frustration so hard. "Ross is just waiting for something he could use against us and Rhodey has the strictest rules of all of us and he needs to stick to them. If I tell him about Aiden, I'd have to tell him about Peter and if Ross sniffs out even just the tiniest hint of this, he'd court-martial Rhodey faster than I could supersonic fly myself to D.C. and it's just... No. No, he can't know."

She stayed quiet for a couple of breaths, fingers still running back and forth on his skin. "Just tell him he's alive then. That you... that you found him and that he's okay but you can't say anything else."

"Right." Tony huffed out a dry laugh, his voice muffled by her hair. "That's so much better and he's totally not gonna press both of us for however long it takes till one of us just tells him everything."

"Tony, please. He would never do anything to risk Addy. He wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it takes to keep him safe. There's a reason why you picked him to be his godfather, please, just—"

"I know that." Tony blew out a breath and turned his eyes back on the sky outside of their window, hoping to calm his mind. "And it would put everything on the line for him, Pep. Everything." His teeth grazed his bottom lip, still careful enough not to break skin. "He's at peace with how things were. No point in risking him like that."

She shuffled even closer to him as if the argument was threatening to tear them apart again. "That's not fair. He loves Addy. He knows something is up."

That was likely true. He'd had a few missed calls from Rhodey that he hadn't returned over the last couple of days and it hadn't just been that with all the craziness going down, that Tony simply hadn't had the time to return the call. He just didn't know what to tell Rhodey about what was happening. Partially, it had been a matter of Tony being in the middle of figuring out what was going on himself. The risk the truth posted for Rhodey because of his career and worst-case his freedom wasn't lost on Tony though.

"Let's give it a couple of days, alright?" He pushed his face back into Pepper's hair, eyes closed as he relished in how he finally got to hold her again like this, letting that feeling drown out the screaming intensity of all the other things that made his mind buzz. "I'll think of something to tell him about... about Addy."

He pressed a long kiss onto her hair, then relaxed his head back onto the pillow.

Pepper drew in a shaky breath. "Tell me about him."

His eyes were fixed on the sky, trying to ignore the city lights blazing from down below. The clouds were darkening as the sun set on the western sky. He never did look at the sky anymore, hadn't really since wormholes and aliens had become part of his reality.

"Tony..."

He shook his head. He didn't want to play this game.

"He's alive. After all this time, are you—" She stopped herself and sighed.

Her hand came up to lie flat on his chest and he couldn't help but flinch as pain pulsed through his rip cage.

Pepper shot up into a sitting position, startled by his grunt of pain. "What—what was that?" Her eyes were on his face, frowning.

"I... I guess those meds really are out of my system now."

"Does it... oh god, does your chest still hurt? Is it still not—"

"No, Pep, it's..." Tony closed his eyes and sighed, ready to surrender to the talking-to this would get him. She'd find out eventually. "It's just a bad bruise from... from the vest."

Her eyes were wide and she pestered him until he took his shirt off at last. He had expected a scolding but she was quiet, one hand tracing the edge of the bruise.

"Did Helen see this?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes."

"And why..." Pepper blew out a long breath, calming herself. "Why didn't she do anything about it?"

"It just a bruise, Pep. It'll fade. Nothing the cradle can do about it anyway."

"The vest. Is this... Is this from another bullet?"

"Pep..."

"Answer me," she bit out at him.

"Yes." His voice was low and cracking and not at all as confident as he had wanted it to be.

Her next couple of breaths were just as uneven, as was her voice. "They hit you in the chest. When?"

"I..." He shook his head. A couple of nights ago or however long it had been since Natasha had discovered the wound underneath his protective gear, he had gone through the hazy memories from that day. From that basement. But he just couldn't be sure. "Maybe... maybe in the basement when—" He cut himself off. He couldn't tell her how he had walked straight at them while one of them had held a gun pointed at the boy's head. He would have done so, vest or no vest, Peter or Aiden. It wouldn't have mattered. He didn't regret a single step but Pepper wouldn't feel quite as generous about Tony risking himself like that. She never did.

"You don't remember?" Her voice was low, making the strain on it stand out distinctly.

"I'm fine, Pep," he said, as much soothing smoothness in his words as he could manage. "It's just a bruise."

Her gaze found his and it was in her eyes how much this upset her. She pressed his shirt back into his hands.

Tony tilted his head to the side, making a point to hold the eye contact. "I was wearing a vest. The kid wasn't."

Her chest rose and fell with deep breaths. "Like you thought about that in the moment. Like you'd have done something differently if it hadn't been for the vest." She twitched goosebumps spreading down her arms, but her tone cut him even deeper. "We said no more bullshit. You promised, no more—"

"You're right. I'm sorry." He still didn't look away from her.

"Did you know that it was Aiden? Did you already know then? Or just... just suspect it?"

Tony swallowed hard. "No. No, I didn't."

"You did this for Peter then. For your intern."

Tony did look away at that. He took his time to work the shirt back over his head, giving himself some distance from Pepper's unwavering eyes on him. "He's more than just an intern, Pep. I... I knew what he did out there. The danger he exposed himself to. I promised I'd keep him safe. I promised that he'd be safe with me and then... and I couldn't." He flinched as he bit lip too hard, tasting blood. "Or rather, I didn't."

Her gaze was not on his face anymore. She was staring at the spot on his chest where underneath his shirt that bullet bruise was an angry burning red mark.

"I don't like this," she whispered.

"I know you don't." He reached for her hand then, squeezed it tightly. There was nothing to like about that situation they were in. Nothing to like about the decisions he had had to make. "I'm sorry, Pep."

"You really didn't..." She still didn't look at him, wheels in her head turning. "You didn't suspect anything?"

"No." He didn't even have to break his no-bullshit promise for that one. "No, I didn't."

It wasn't that the setup he'd had with the boy hadn't been odd. Especially for Tony's usual style. Maybe he should have been more suspicious. There had been something about the kid he had never been able to put his finger on. Just the way they had clicked. That ridiculous calm that came over him when the boy was around. Still, he didn't believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, in some underlying connection his subconscious could have picked up on. All that anti-scientific snake oil that people told themselves so they would feel better about the random cruelty the universe sometimes spat at them. All that had nothing to do with it. He just liked the kid. He cared about him, he could admit that to himself now. Not because any DNA test said he should. Because he had gotten to know him. Just because the kid was a great kid. Then Pepper pulled him out of his thoughts.

"His... his face, his mannerism, they are so—"

"I didn't, Pep. He's 13!" A painful jolt went through him at the thought of the boy's true age. Thought of everything he hadn't paid nearly enough attention to. Of what he had let a 13-year-old get away with. "He was only 2 then and I never... I never thought about it like this. I... I never thought he'd just show up like that it... I'm sorry, I know I should have—"

Pepper put a hand on his arm, making him look at her. "I was going to say, they are so you. So similar." Her mouth moved like she was actively biting her tongue to stop herself from saying anything else.

He studied her closely, mostly in the hopes of deciphering the things she'd try to hold back. "It's not that I didn't think that there was a chance... some hope that he was still out there. I... I even had... I had FRIDAY do another analysis of all the data we had gathered on Aiden and similar cases over the years. Fresh eyes. But... but not because I thought it was him just..." He shook his head.

"It's so unlikely, honey. So... such a coincidence. It's completely normal that you didn't even think about the possibility of this happening. Might even be a self-protection kind of thing. Something that you didn't want to think about and just pushed away."

He bit his lip hard, careful enough not to hit the same tender spot from before. He had no interest in anyone taking apart his mental state, not even Pepper. "I just... can we... can we just not analyze this right now? I..." He shuffled around in the bed until he came to lay back down again.

"I'm sorry..." Her voice was just a low whisper.

Pepper still sat upright next to him but he waved off her apology, only reached for her hand and pulled her back down. She obliged, settled her head back on the side of his chest, careful to stay away from his injury. There were a couple of minutes of silence between them though he could positively hear Pepper thinking.

When she spoke up again her voice was smooth almost innocent considering what she was asking. "Just... just tell me about Peter then."

Tony pressed his eyes shut. It was so obvious what she was trying to do but this wasn't all that much better. Even if he disregarded all the mess about who Peter had actually turned out to be, their relationship had been tumultuous. He had asked things of the boy he should have never asked. Left him to do his patrolling and crime-fighting to an extend that had been so completely irresponsible.

"Please?" she whispered and his heart ached with the realization of how he could just never resist whatever Pepper asked of him. Even if it tore him up inside. And all this? He'd had months with the kid. Months worth of them geeking out in the lab, getting to know each other. Months of memories. Granted, some of those memories made his palms sweat and his heart race uncomfortably fast, but still, nobody could take that away from him no matter what. He'd had months with the kid when Pepper had only had minutes and moments. That was it.

The selfish part of him wanted to keep everything that had happened close to his heart, didn't even really want to think about any of this let alone talk about it, but his tight-lipped stance wasn't fair to Pepper. He was taking the kid away from her just as much as he was doing this to himself. Tony took a deep breath, moving his right hand up from her waist to run through her hair instead. She curled into him, one hand shielding her face from him.

She sighed, her voice just a whisper. "I'm sorry I just—"

"He's smart. Really smart. And..." Tony swallowed hard. How could he even begin to explain Peter? "And bubbly and curious. He... he's kind and open. Too open sometimes, naively positive despite everything he'd had to live through." The kid had a soul so pure and righteous, it was difficult to accept it as it was without looking for signs of disingenuous motives. "After... after Siberia..." He swallowed deep as Pepper was tensing next to him, but she kept quiet, just let him talk. "He was at the Compound every day, checking... checking in on me." Pepper's hand rose up and quickly found his. He could feel her tears slowly seeping through his shirt as she squeezed his hand hard. "The day I... I woke up, when I sent you to get that picture frame it was because he had been in the room. Been hiding on top of one of the cupboards."

Pepper pushed herself up just enough that she could look into his eyes, tears staining her face. "He was in the room?"

Tony grimaced at her. "Yeah. Up on the ceiling, hiding."

"How... how did he get into the Compound? Into the med wing?"

"I gave him clearance for the labs at the Tower and the Compound. He... I just wanted to make sure he had a place to go if something ever went wrong while he was out there." Out there Spider-Man-ing. Crime-fighting. Tony swallowed hard. The boy had made use of that offer more than once too.

He pulled her back down onto the bed, held her close beside him, and then talked about lab days, the tinkering, how he had made Peter repair Dum-E that first night at the Compound. Pepper just held onto him and listened. He told her about the night they had met, after the boy had come to Pepper's aid. For just a moment he had contemplated not to tell her about that night at the Tower when the boy had been knifed. His stomach turned at the thought that he hadn't sown up a stab wound on a random enhanced teenager. He had been inflicting all that agony on his own son, no anesthesia, no trained medical supervision.

Tony's skin was wet with cold sweat as the memories rushed through him of how the boy had cried and whimpered from the pain on the table just next door to where they were lying now.

"Honey?" Her hand ran through his hair, concern clearly written in her face.

"I... I was so careful about it." He felt out of breath, exhausted even lying down. "Pep, I was so careful, I swear."

Her hand squeezed his, then ran up his arms all the way to his shoulder and settled there. "Of course you were, honey." She nodded fiercely and even her wet eyes couldn't hide the concern written so clearly in her face.

"I wanted to call an ambulance. I did. It was the first thing I did, but he begged me not to. He begged me not to call anyone. Actually tried to run, bleeding out in the process, it..." The grip of her hand tightened on his. "He... he was just so scared and I... I didn't know what would happen to him. A minor, clearly enhanced. I didn't know what they would do."

He hadn't been sure. There was no way he could have been sure what would have happened to the boy. Odds had been that all the kid's fear would have come true. That they would have taken him away from his home, would have likely kept him confined somewhere. But there was also another scenario. A hard and messy alternate timeline that could have had them reunited so much sooner. A scenario that would have taken this choice that Tony had to make for his son away from him and forced the boy's secret into the open. Would have left Tony with no other choice than to react and fight for him and no matter how messy it had been, at least they would have been together.

"You did what you thought was best, honey. I know that you would never do anything like that lightly." Her fingers were entangled with his, closely and firm, the pressure grounding.

"Maybe they would have tested his blood right away. What if they had and... we could have known months ago. Months." He blew out a shaky breath, but couldn't find the strength to look directly at her. "What if I had done that? That first night? It's not like his blood hadn't been all over the apartment, I... I could have known then. If I'd just—"

"Shh, don't do this. You don't get to blame yourself for this. You couldn't have known. There's no secret psychic connection. We're still in the real world and not some fantasy fairy tale where your son walked into the room and trumpets start to play and there's some heavenly sign."

Tony closed his eyes, unwilling and a little bit incapable of answering. He was looking for the right words, but they just wouldn't come. His head was swimming with emotion and exhaustion

"Just... just close your eyes." Pepper's voice was soft, soothing. "Just rest."

He gave his head a subtle shake just before he drifted off. "I can't I... there are still things to do. The research with... with that agency. I... I need to make sure he's safe. And... and I need to call the realtor. I need the Tower to be gone. As long as I have it I'll just use it as an excuse and I can't... I can't..." He sighed. His eyes were stinging.

"Honey, you're exhausted. When's the last time you actually slept?"

His head felt heavy as he gave it a couple of shakes. "Just... just last night I'm fine, I—"

"Please, not even I slept last night." The tips of her fingers traced up and down the length of his arms, the steady rhythm slowly calming the agitation he felt deep in his bones. "You didn't even nap, darling. Not like that would have counted as sleep with you."

"I... Listen, it's not—"

"FRIDAY?"

"Tuesday night before he left for the Compound."

He closed his eyes in resignation. "Snitch," he mumbled under his breath.

But the lecture he had expected to come his way never did come. Instead, Pepper just ran a hand through his hair. "Do you want me to get you something? Something to slow your mind?"

"Like a scotch?"

He'd expected more of a scolding tone on her, but the words sounded almost like her lips were pulled into a bit of a smile. "I was thinking more like an Ambien."

His eyes still closed, the corners of his mouth twitched in amusement. "I'm good, darling. Just..." He turned and pressed his face into her side. "I'm good with you here."

#

The moment Peter had opened the door to his home, he had realized that he was alone in the apartment. He had expected May to be waiting, to throw her arms around him and hug him close. This weekend had been the longest he had been away from home. Well, it wasn't like he had planned for it.

There was a note she had left for him on the dining table.

Peter,

I'm sorry I couldn't wait, but I had to go into work. I will be back for breakfast. Check in with me when you get home. I miss you.

Love,
May

Heavy feet dragged him into his room and he fell onto his bed face first, his frustrated groan only muffled by his pillow. He managed to lie still for less than two minutes before he turned to the side, his eyes on the tiny speck of sky, barely visible atop the narrow alleyway between his apartment building and the next. The clouds were darkening and night was falling over the city. With his aunt not at home this would be the time he'd usually go on patrol.

The hair on his neck stood at the thought. Even if he still had his suit, he wasn't sure he'd have the guts to go out there and patrol right now. Not after everything that had happened that weekend. His fingers fumbled with the phone that lay heavy in his pocket. A phone from Mr. Stark. Unless the Widow had been lying. Which was entirely possible.

If Mr. Stark had really given it to her for Peter to use, there was no doubt in his mind that there was a multitude of trackers buried inside it. But why go to that much trouble? What would he even do with that? Would he actually track where Peter was going? Check if he stayed out past his curfew? It seemed like he had never even taken advantage of that feature on the Spider-suit, so what would happen now?

He rolled himself out of bed and lightly tossed the phone onto his desk. After a moment's hesitation he pulled out a desk drawer and looked through it until he came away with his old smartphone. He hadn't used it in a while and the battery was completely flat. It took a couple of minutes until it was ready to go, a quick check confirmed that his number was still registered with that phone. Those couple of minutes were long enough for him to come up with a couple of sentences for May about how he was home and was looking forward to breakfast. Almost immediately his phone rang, May was calling. His finger hovered back and forth between the accept and deny call buttons.

She knew that he had just sent that message though. Not answering would only make her suspicious, if she wasn't already after that long weekend. It was a short call, May asking how he was, if she should come home, how he was, again. Told him that she could come home right away, but he declined.

"Are you sure that you're alright to stay home alone, sweetheart? I really can just—"

"No. I... I'm really tired anyway. There was so much... so much to keep up with this weekend and I... I think I'll just lie down." He grimaced to his empty bedroom, hoping an early night wouldn't ring any alarm bells with her.

"Okay, that's a good idea. Just rest a bit and I'll be there when you get up."

He nodded even though she couldn't see him. "Yeah, okay." Maybe it was better that she couldn't see him because then she might pick up on how he had every intention but to go to bed.

"I love you, sweetheart. Have a good night."

"I... I love you too."

It had been less than 5 minutes since Peter had hung up on his aunt. On May. He had been quick to pull out a pair of dark jeans and a black hoodie. His old mobile tucked into the pocket of his pants, the new Stark Phone disregarded on his desk, he was balancing on the edge of the window sill. A quick turn brought his hands against the building's brick wall. His foot slid the window shut and he pulled himself to the top of the building, carefully, quietly. He wasn't quite sure if his body was already back to full capacity, but it felt good to be outside, the summer wind blowing strongly between the building blocks.

He turned west when he reached the rooftop and took in the Manhattan skyline that lay spread out before him, Stark Tower lit up bright like a beacon among the lights of the city.

###

[author's note: Thanks for reading and commenting, everyone! I always love to hear your theories. I'm still polishing up a few things before the next chapter, but the wait shouldn't be too long ;)

Have an awesome weekend!]