The walk to Peter's room felt like it took an eternity, but in reality it was only a few minutes.
Mary Jane, Natasha, little May and the doctor walked quietly down the hallway with the two year old still in her grandmother's arms. None of them spoke, not needing to at the moment.
When the doctor stopped outside a room, she then turned to them, "He's in there. Now, he's not in the best of conditions, but he's currently stable and his body is already working on healing. I'm sure you were told of his injuries?" She asked.
They nodded their head in conformation before the doctor opened the door and allowed them in. As soon as they were in, she shut the door behind the three of them, allowing them their privacy.
As soon as their eyes landed on the young man in the hospital bed, a wave of sorrow passed through the two women. Peter was on the bed, his face lax and peaceful. He was covered in a thin blanket that was just a standard white color. But what stood out to them was where the blanket dropped down onto the bed where his right arm should be.
His face was a little pale too, they could see there was a bandage around his right eye and his hair was a lot neater then it was back on the battlefield.
Without any words, Natasha and Mary Jane walked over to the bed and sat down on either side of the young man.
Mary Jane set May down next to her and the little girl looked at her father in sadness. Before the two woman could react, May crawled over to her fathers good side and snuggled right underneath his arm so she was right up against his side, laying her head down onto his chest that was barley moving up and down.
Mary Jane was about to stop her but thought against it, May just wanted to be near her father and it would be cruel to tell her she couldn't do that, "Just be careful honey, he's hurt." She said to her daughter, getting a nod in return.
The three of them just sat there for a few minutes until Mary Jane broke the silence, "I can't believe he knew this was a possibility. When did he even have time to make his hand a gauntlet?" She asked, not expecting an answer at all.
Natasha laid her hand on Mary Jane's shoulder, "You know how he's like, he knew the risks and he was counting on the worst to happen. He's always prepared for anything." She said, staring at her son's face.
"He didn't have to do it though! He s-should have let someone else do it, I still need him..." She mumbled with tears starting to leak out of her eyes again. Movement caught her eye and she looked over to see her daughter looking at her. She quickly wiped her eyes, she didn't mean to break down in front of her daughter, she didn't want her to see her like this.
May moved from her place under her father's arm and crawled over to her mother to sit down in her lap. She nuzzled right up to her chest and laid her head down right next to her mother's heart. Mary Jane smiled tearfully and wrapped her arms around her daughter.
She doesn't know how she got so lucky in life. She has the most amazing boyfriend ever, an amazing family and an awesome daughter who takes after her father so much.
Honestly, from her nose to her hair, to the head tilt, it's all Peter. The only physical trait that she got from her is the eyes.
She even makes sure the people around her are ok. If she sees that someone is sad, she'd go up to them and just hug them to try and cheer them up.
It always worked...
Natasha looked at the heartwarming scene with a smile, Natasha knew how much the young woman was hurting, but she also knew that there was nothing in the world that would help erase all that pain unless Peter woke up.
Which, they still didn't know when he would...
It was gonna be a long wait...
—————
Tony sat in the waiting room with a Stark pad in his hand. He had to do something to distract his mind from everything that was happening at the moment, so what better way to do so then to try and design an arm for the savior of the universe.
Nebula and Rocket were both sitting next to him and trying to give different inputs for the arm itself. Nebula because she is experienced with her own mechanical limbs and Rocket because he has seen, and stole, a lot of metal limbs while traveling around in space.
The design itself was modeled after Peter's blueprints for his hand, so it wasn't that much different from what would be the young man's own design.
They all knew how much he preferred his own build over someone else's.
Suddenly, Shuri came up to them all and sat down across from Stark with her own pad. They all looked up with a raised eyebrow which caused the princess to snort.
Shuri touched her screen and brought up her own designs for a similar arm that looked like Barnes.
"I heard that Peter modeled his hand after these designs, so I thought you'd like the actual design for the arm to help you out. Plus we could head over to my lab to start it's production." Shuri said, setting her pad on the table in between them.
"What makes you think the three of us, need your help?" Rocket asked, crossing his arms across his chest.
"Well, I can prove I can be of assistance to you if you want." She said with a small smirk. She picked up her pad and less than a second later, Tony's Pad started to glitch and his designs were suddenly transferred over to her pad.
"Like I said, I can help. That was ridiculously easy to hack Stark ."
"Yeah, I bet. You know usually, people enjoy their privacy." Tony rolled his eyes at the princess. He could already tell where this was going, but he couldn't yet decide if it was a good thing, or a bad thing.
"Says the man who hacked the Pentagon for fun." Shuri deadpanned with a raised eyebrow.
Tony waved her off, "Ok first, I didn't hack it for fun, some asshat bet me I couldn't and everyone knows how I am, I couldn't let that fuck face think he could walk all over me, I needed to prove him wrong."
Shuri gave him an annoyed look this time, completely ignoring his response and asked, "You know I do have experience with making limbs for people, you could have just come to me for help too."
"Yeah, but I trust the space panda more than you. He's seen way more limbs out there than you have." Tony said.
"You can see all the metallic limbs you want, unless you know how to connect them to work with the muscle, to actually function like a limb, seeing them doesn't help us. When did you even become an expert at any of this stuff, hmm?" She asked.
"About two hours ago."
"Yeah, you need a little more experience then two hours to make a fully operational metal arm, sorry Stark."
"I'd listen to her Tony, she knows what she's talking about." Bucky said from across the room.
"Shut it Elsa." He said before he turned back to Shuri, "So you want to help build the arm, hmm?"
"I want to help the man who saved the universe get back up on his feet as fast as he can. I've seen his ideas on how he added his abilities into his hand five years ago and it's genius. I'm just looking to help him out." Shuri said.
Tony and Shuri stared each other down for a second before they both nodded and stuck their hands out for the other to shake.
She smirked at him, "I'll be picking the colors. Somehow I don't think a hot rod red and gold arm would be appreciated."
Tony rolled his eyes before he, Nebula, and Rocket followed the princess off to her lab.
—————
Peter jerked awake in a room he vaguely remembered.
Well he couldn't really call it a room, it was more like his old holding cell. The place he lived for the first three years of his life.
The place they killed his mother...
The ground was hard underneath his back. The walls were still that dark grey color that he remembered from all those years ago, with different blotches of darker stains on the opposite wall and some on the ground.
Blood stains...
Peter sat up from his position on his back to try and get a better layout of the surroundings while he was up, not spread out on the ground. He didn't fully stand up though, he didn't know how his body would react to that yet.
What confused the young man though was that he felt no pain. Nothing hurt at all. The last thing he remembered was all this power surging through his body, and then white.
He excepted to feel pain, but he felt lighter than he had in a long time. It was this strange weightless feel he had, he couldn't really explain it, he just felt...lighter.
Better...
Rested...
At peace...
He tried to think back to how he got to this moment and was instantly bombarded with images of the battle, images of Thanos and his army, images of his mother above him.
Crying...
Sadness overwhelmed Peter in that one moment, he didn't mean to die, really it's not like he wanted to, but if he didn't, the whole world, the universe would have been destroyed by the madman. He didn't have a choice, he had to protect his family.
But that didn't stop the guilt that was now on his shoulders with leaving behind his girlfriend, his mother, his daughter and the rest of his family.
"You're not dead Petya."
Peter whipped his head around when he heard the voice. Standing in the entrance of the cell was his mother.
His biological mother...
The one that was dead...
She was leaning against the open cell door, her fingers loosely griping her forearms that where crossed across her chest. There was a soft smile pulling at her lips. She looked exactly like she did the day that she was murdered in front of him. Her eyes were also sparkling with what he could only describe as fondness as she watched him slowly push himself off of the ground.
She was exactly as Peter remembered her...
"Mom?" He asked in disbelief, still not quite believing he was seeing her.
"It's me baby, I'm right here." She smiled at him before opening her arms for him. Peter didn't waste a second before he bolted over to her and buried himself in his mother's embrace, after so long of not being able to.
She instantly wrapped her arms around him, letting his head rest on her shoulder in the crook of her neck. The two stood there in the doorway of the cell just holding each other not wanting to let go.
After a few seconds of just holding each other, her hand reached up to brush through his hair. It was longer than he usually kept it, but he didn't have time to groom it before all this stuff with time travel happened.
It also wasn't soaked with blood at the moment.
"Why am I here? What do you mean I'm..I-I'm not dead?" He asked.
"You're here because you did something incredible. You saved the universe, so the universe is offering you a choice. You can either stay here, and come with me, or go back to the land of the living." she replied, "Most people don't get to choose their fate, but you do son."
Peter looked at his mother with an unreadable expression. He got to choose? To stay or leave? All his life, he always knew that he'd probably catch a bullet with the kind of life that he lived, but never did he imagine that he'd go out saving the universe.
Hell, before a few years ago he was sure that he'd die on a mission that the red room would give him. Send him off just to kill him and get rid of him, so they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.
But now? He's a vigilante, not quite a hero, but that was fine with him, he didn't need to be a hero to save people.
"I won't be selfish and ask you to stay with me, even if I really want you to. Instead, I'll tell you that when you go back, do everything in your power to live. Watch your daughter grow up, marry that girlfriend of yours, and do me a favor please. Tell Natasha that I'm really glad that you two found each other. You both needed someone in your life, you needed a mother, and she always wanted a child, tell her I'm happy she was the one to find you." His mother said with a warm smile, keeping him at arms length so she could look him in the eye.
A lump formed in the back of Peter's throat, everything that she just said, everything that she already knows has made so many emotions come up to the surface. She knows all about that, so does that mean she knows about...
"I..Uh...do you know...what h-happened to me after they..." He couldn't even bring himself to say it, what happened to her was awful and should have never happened in the first place.
She smiled sadly at him, "I know what happened to you, and I'm so sorry you had to go through that alone"
"I, um..didn't. I had a few people who were in my corner." He said thinking about Gwen and Ana but, also to another person. Another little girl that he met while on an undercover mission in an orphanage. A little girl he had the chance of getting to know better than anyone else in the world.
A girl he condemned to the same fate as him...
A fate that she had not deserved...
That will always be his biggest regret in his life, tricking her into becoming exactly what he had been, a monster. He felt a little ounce of guilt and relief that she was dead though, so she didn't have to live with the sins of her past.
At least she got to rest finally...
His little sister...
His Irina...
But no one, not even his other sisters knew of her, and he'd like to keep it that way. He didn't like to think of her that much, too much bad memories, too many regrets and there is nothing he can do to stop that can of worms from blowing open once he gets going.
Some things are better left in the past...
"Yes, your sisters, I'm really happy you found a good family Petya. It's all I've ever wanted for you. I've had to watch as you struggled everyday of your life, fighting just to get food on your plate. It warms my heart that there are people on the other side that care so much about you." Peter could hear a guilty undertone to her voice which caused him to slightly frown.
"You know, it's not your fault you weren't there. What happened happened, we can't change that now. All we can do, is move forward, and don't let our past mistakes define who we are. You never wanted me to get hurt, so I don't blame you ok? What happened to me wasn't your fault." He said with a gentle voice, laying his hand on his mother's shoulder.
His mother huffed and smirked at him, "How did I get blessed with such an awesome son, hmm?"
Peter sighed, "I'm not that great mom, I've done really horrible things before." He said, thinking back to the many of occasions where he hurt innocent peoples lives.
Like that one little girl he strangled...
He thinks back on her more times than he cared to admit, the fear in her eyes as she looked at him with her final moment will forever haunt Peter's mind. He knows that she wasn't native to that country, the assignment was in Florence and she spoke fluent English. Peter had come to the conclusion that she was on vacation with her family from America.
But unfortunately she was in the wrong place at the wrong time...
He didn't know what happened to her family, what the police told them after they couldn't find her body but he knows that no matter what anyone would've said, it wouldn't make the pain go away.
Peter, would always regret that kill, for as long as he lived...
Two of his worst regrets both involved little girls, how he hurt them and he'd rather just forget them entirely so he didn't have to deal with all the guilt that came with them.
But he knew that was impossible, all he could try to do was keep on burying them. Burying them until they stayed there, and never showed their ugly faces again.
He knew it wasn't that healthy and he knew Sam and Nat would probably flip out if they ever found out about what he was hiding, but at the same time, he doesn't really care.
Because he's scared…
And that, above all else, is more frightening to him then an evil, genocidal maniac…
"You may have done bad things, but you're trying to make up for them now, and that's all that matters. Don't let your past define who you are now honey, I'm pretty sure those are your words, hmm?" She smiled sadly at him, resting her hand on his cheek.
He smiled at her, he knew that he would never get over that little girls death, not anytime soon at least, but he'd pretend for her. He leaned into her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingers. "Okay, I'll try."
Marie smiled at the loving gesture and brought her other hand to run through his curly brown hair. Now that he looks at it, he definitely got his hair from his mother too. "That's all I'm asking you to do honey. None of us are ever gonna be perfect, we can only try our hardest to be better."
"Hmm, I think I know were I get my wisdom from." Peter sassed with a teasing smirk.
His mother smirked right back and winked at him, "You know it baby."
The both of them started to laugh with each other, still holding onto each other like their life depended on it, which technically, back then when they knew each other, it did.
Marie tried so hard to keep them away from her baby but there was only so much she could do before they forced her to give him up to be experimented on. So when she got him back, she'd always hug him to her chest while whispering soothing nothings to him, trying to coax her son into settling down.
All the two of them know is how to hold on like their life depended on it, because back then it did.
And Mary, or Marie, whichever one you prefer, they were the same person after all, paid the price in the end for that...
Peter slightly pulled away to look up at her. "Can I ask you something?"
"You just did." She smirked.
"Haha, very funny," he rolled his eyes before he continued, "Why did you marry dad?" He asked.
His mother sighed and a somber look crossed her face, "I didn't know he was Hydra. As I'm sure you're aware, I was a former Shield Agent, I met your father in one of the labs at Shield, he was a head scientist. I fell in love with the scientist I met back then, not the mad man he actually was. And I didn't figure it out until it was too late."
"It's not your fault mom, Hydra was infested in Shield for years, everyone was fooled from what I've heard." Peter said.
"It doesn't change the fact that I wish I could change that."
"Yeah...I guess you're right."
After a couple seconds of silence from the both of them, soaking in the comfort offered by the other, Marie sighed and looked Peter in his eyes, "It's time for you to go."
Peter cleared his throat, trying to get his emotions in check, "I wish I could have more time with you."
She stroked his cheek, "It's ok, The only one to blame is Hydra, none of what happened was your fault honey. Promise me when you get back, you'll do everything in your power to live, tie the knot with that girl of yours alright?"
Peter smiled, "Will do."
"And Peter?"
"Yeah?"
"I also know about certain activities that happen in Madripoor that revolve around you. And a word of advice, I'd recommend you tell them before it's too late, no one likes being lied to, and I think you know that."
He sighed and rubbed his hand down his face, "I Know, I know ok, it's just...I don't know how to start that conversation. I've wanted to try and keep them away from that part of me, not drag them into that drama but I know what you're saying." He said.
His mother smiled proudly at him before she leaned over and kissed him on his forehead, causing the young man's eyes to burn from all the emotions.
Peter closed his eyes as the world around him started to fade away and grow brighter.
The last thing he could see before he faded away was the look of absolute love radiating off of his mother's smiling face.