Author's Note: Hi! Okay, so, I actually wrote this story last year, and I even posted it in here under this very same name as a massive one-shot. However, after much consideration, I decided that it felt a bit rushed as it was and that bothered me, and that's why I took it down and wrote the stuff I thought was missing from the original version. That's why now it's going to be a multi-chapter story — so that it be the semi-slow-burn I believe it deserves to be.
Anyway, I have aged up both Wanda and Peter a bit. Simply because I felt more comfortable that way — so, no, this won't be an underage story.
Without further ado, enjoy!
Tony should've gone back to his cabin.
No waiting around, no cleanups, no reunions, no meetings. No welcomes, and no hugs. Nothing. Tony should've packed up his shit and gone back to his little cabin — in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Alone.
As he belonged.
That's what he should've done.
It's not what he did, however.
Not even fucking close.
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It all started after the battle. It all started the second Peter materialized back into existence. It actually started when their eyes met and whatever was left of Tony's heart began to beat once more — after five fucking years.
It all started because Tony couldn't have Peter out of his eyesight. At all — not for one single damn minute. Not to eat, not to take a shower, not to give the boy a private moment to deal with his freaky rebirth.
'Cause, fuck that. Tony had made that mistake once, and he wasn't about to be lulled into a false sense of security just because Thanos was no longer around. This was the Endgame, yes, but all the pieces had yet to fall into place, and Tony would not take any chances this time around.
So, yeah, while Peter laid in the infirmary being checked by some random doctor, Tony sat at the end of his bed and tried to ignore the person wrapping his arm. Just like that — as though they were connected by a vibranium cord which was only about a foot or two long.
Tony didn't care about how it looked to the rest of the team or what anyone else might think of his sudden clinginess. The kid had died in his fucking arms — people could pry him away from him again over his cold, dead body.
It was a futile resistance, though, because no one said a word.
In fact, in a weird, but maybe not unpredictable twist of fate, everyone seemed to be doing the same — attaching themselves at the hip to those they had lost, living in fear that a mere blink of eyes would reveal that their return had been a collective sick dream.
The team — and all the extras that now were almost part of it — returned to the Compound as if it had been a spoken order, eager to regroup, to hear about what happened, to breathe in familiar air, to see the others, to step on known grounds.
What nobody seemed eager to do was go back to their own space.
(With the exception of Clint, of course, who pretty much went home the second the fight was over. Not a single soul dared to suggest calling him in to help with the aftermath.)
Instead, they all mourned for those who weren't there, who hadn't come back, who had given their lives in the fight. Gamora. Vision. Natasha.
Fuck.
Vision.
Natasha.
Tony didn't think about it. About them. He didn't. Of course not. He was Tony Stark and he had other things to do — important, essential things to do. He left the mourning to those who had earned the right to sit and break down.
Tony Stark was far too busy to mourn, to grieve.
Far too busy.
He had to look after the team.
He had to look after Peter Parker.
He couldn't- he was just…
Just… too busy.
Yeah, busy.
Right.
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"Oh my God, where's aunt May?" Peter suddenly asked, sitting up and nearly sending Tony to his early grave. He had been mostly silent since the battle ended and it was the first time he was showing any form of surprise or shock. "Where's May? Where's my aunt? What happened, I mean, where's she—"
"Geez, kid. Way to give me a fucking heart attack. For fuck's sake. Calm down. She's fine. Alive, of course. With her husband, I suppose." Tony tried to get his heart to calm down, focusing on his breathing. "Call Happy and talk to her."
"Wait, what? She got married?" Peter repeated, shock etched into every feature in his face. It's clear that he had expected anything except that. "To Happy?"
Tony nodded, trying to sound reassuring when he confirmed. "Sure did, buddy," he said, unsure whether he should step back or offer some kind of comforting touch. Delicate situations such as this had never been Tony's strong suit.
"When?" Peter was blinking too fast. Weirdly fast.
"Almost two years ago, I think. I'm not quite sure of the exact date but… yeah, somewhere around that."
"Did you go?" Peter asked out of nowhere.
Tony couldn't help the frown making its way to his face. "If I-I-No. I didn't go." He paused, then added for good measure. "I did give Happy two months of vacation. And bought them a house. You know, a present and all."
Peter's eyes widened. "A house? You bought them a house as a wedding gift?"
"Sure, why not? They had to live somewhere and Happy said your aunt refused to live at the Tower or the Compound." Tony shrugged. He couldn't even remember which house they had picked — F.R.I.D.A.Y. handled the details.
"What about our-I mean, the apartment? Where I lived with May, I mean. Before… just, you know, before."
There was no sugarcoating it. "She didn't stay there," Tony gently explained. He looked Peter dead in the eyes and prayed this wouldn't go south on him. "After the snap, she gave back the apartment and moved to a smaller place closer to Manhattan."
"But… but she hates it there. The main island- Manhattan...she loved living in Queens. Why would she-how could—"
Peter stumbled over the words, doing his best to make sense of the mess in his head, no doubts, and Tony refused to interrupt. It was better that he got his thoughts straight before he spoke with his aunt and said things that couldn't be taken back afterward.
Tony was painfully aware of how some things were impossible to be taken back, to be forgiven and forgotten.
So he allowed the moment to stretch.
Peter had every reason to freak out, after all. He had missed five years — five long, long years. It was bound to come with many setbacks — including having to learn about the new lives of the people who stayed.
Finally, Peter seemed to run dry. He stopped mumbling and went awfully quiet, as if only now the meaning of Tony's words had been processed.
"We were from Queens — why would she move?" He demanded, and Tony could only lift his open hands and show the kid he had nothing.
"You know her better than me, Pete. I'm not sure." Although he did have his guess, his assumptions. He kept those to himself, though, rather than sharing them with Peter. No reason to put any more weight on the kid's shoulders when he already took on so much more than his due.
He nodded weakly. "Can I call her?"
"Of course. You should, actually. I'm sure she's waiting to hear from you."
"Alright. Yeah, sure. I'll… go do that now."
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There were a million things to be done. Thanos fell, billions came back to life, but the battle had been bloody and gruesome — so many were still injured, broken, needing help, while others were down and would never need help again.
There was indeed much to be done, and Tony could feel his phone buzzing inside his pockets even as he continued to ignore it.
Still, some things couldn't be ignored.
Peter was busy talking to his aunt, which meant Tony had only a few minutes to himself while the kid was otherwise engaged.
He's supposed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else, really, other than here, where he's sure he would not be welcomed, and yet he still opened the door as if he owned the place — which he did — and stepped inside without giving himself time to back out.
It made sense, Tony told himself.
He couldn't leave her behind — not after everything.
Tony owed Vision.
Owed her brother, and her parents, and J.A.R.V.I.S., and Vision, and a never-ending list of people to protect her, to keep one eye on her, to make sure she recovered, not to leave her alone in that Compound after the fight was over.
It didn't mean he knew of a gentle way to explain that to her. He had no clue on how to begin to explain his reasoning to Wanda Maximoff, not when he was still so uncertain of his own feelings and running on pure adrenaline and spite.
"Pack up," he said as soon as their eyes met, gesturing to the stuff around them and ignoring her surprised face. Ignoring the hundreds of unasked questions hanging in the air between them. "We're leaving tomorrow."
Her eyes widened, and some emotion flashed across her face, too fast to identify. "Leaving?" Wanda asked slowly, as if it was possible for her to have misheard him.
"Yep. Ditching this hole, going away, leaving, taking the road—"
"I don't understand," she said, pushing herself up with her arms until she was seated on her bed, leaning against the headboard. "Where are we going? And who is 'we'? Is there a problem?"
"No problem," Tony hurried to clarify, although it sounded too similar to a lie when he said it. There were too many problems. They both knew that. "We — as in me, you, Spider-Kid. I'm taking us back to the cabin. This place is great and all — kudos to whoever created it — but we've been here long enough, and it's time for a break, hun?"
"Me?" Wanda mumbled, pushing some strands of hair off her face. She sounded confused and maybe a touch defensive. "What cabin? The others, where will they stay? What about the sto—"
Tony waved the questions away, shifting his body weight from one foot to the other. Christ, did she have to ask so many questions? And what was up with her eyes, anyway? Had she always looked so lost before?
"It's all been resolved," he said. "Cap will take the stones back. Brucie and the dynamic duo will stay with him to help. His royal highness and his entourage will return to Wakanda. Thor will leave with the space pirates and the rabbit — don't ask me why."
She cocked her head. "And you do not wish to stay here?"
"Me? Hell no, Granger. I don't wish to stay here any more than I wanted to be here in the first place," Tony affirmed, ignoring the way his voice almost cracked at the words. He's not lying; he did want to leave, to go back. Everything about the Avengers made him sick now.
Wanda wasn't in the mood to make things easy for him, though, and Tony could already see a thousand questions starting to form on her lips, and the last thing he wanted was to get trapped in that room, having to justify his actions with those green eyes staring him down. So he opted out.
"Now, now," he started, holding a hand up to silence her. "I see you have many questions. Well, save them. I have to… you know — things to do, places to be, papers to sign." He pushed his glasses higher up on his nose. "So, pack up. Like I said — leaving tomorrow."
Wanda looked alarmed now, moving to leave her bed. "Wait! Stark! There are plans to—"
"It's all taken care of — don't worry your pretty head with it," Tony waved away, feeling the panic starting to rise in his chest. She was still healing, still getting better. He fixed her with what he hoped was a stern look. "Get back on that bed before you hurt yourself." He opened the door. "Good talk. We leave in the morning."
And before she could utter another horrible question, or try to move around, or to, god forbid, ask him for help, Tony made a hasty getaway, shutting the door close behind him and taking a much-needed deep breath.
Shit.
Tony squared his shoulders. One task was done — now for the other seventy-eight he still had to solve before leaving.
He could do it. He's Tony Stark.
Whatever that meant those days.
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It was a strange car ride.
Tony was driving — more like sitting in the driver's seat, doing his best to pretend the car actually needed any input from him to remain in motion, actually — and both Wanda and Peter had decided to sit in the backseat leaving him to play the driver, and there were bags everywhere, and the silence hanging was almost claustrophobic with its fucking weight.
And Tony was tired.
Bone tired in a way he couldn't even begin to explain. Every single cell in his body ached and protested with each movement he made.
Even breathing hurt — as if the very weight of existence was hovering over him, sitting on his chest, crushing him down.
Despite the rational voice that whispered in the back of his mind about how the fight was over and how they had won and how it should be a cause of celebration... There was a cloud of smoke and tension surrounding him, preventing him from really understanding any of that.
He was running on absolutely no sleep, on adrenaline and pure will force, and it left him with no room for fancy mental elaborations. None.
His mind had room for two things and two things only: watching the road ahead and ever so often checking on Peter.
That was it.
His priority was making sure they would get to the cabin safe and in one fucking piece. All else was frivolous at the moment.
Still.
He wasn't alone, and Tony tried to be mindful of others these days.
"You kids wanna listen to some song or something?" He asked, his mouth moving without his consent. For a terrible moment, he feared they would say yes, forcing him to endure hours of mindless music when his own head had yet to give him a minute of peace.
To his surprise, Wanda responded almost right away. "No!" She said sharply, then quickly backtracked. "I-I just. I'm not fond of music."
Tony briefly met Peter's eyes on the rearview mirror and he saw the same understanding he felt flashing on the kid's face. It was nothing less than he expected — Peter had always been a better person than him, someone deeply familiar with death, and so it wasn't a surprise that he could sympathize with Wanda's recent loss.
"Yeah, it's fine, " Peter said without missing a beat. "I'm cool with silence."
Tony nodded, grateful. "Alright. Silence it is."
And that's the story of how they ended up driving four and a half hours in complete silence.
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"Welcome to my humble abode, blah blah blah," Tony introduced as soon as they arrived, opening the front door. He was tired and eager to get to his room for some much-needed rest. "There are two empty rooms on the second floor, so you may rock, paper, scissors to see who gets which. F.R.I.D.A.Y. can help with anything else you need. Say hi, baby girl."
"Good afternoon," F.R.I.D.A.Y. greeted. "Mister Parker, Miss Maximoff — welcome to the Lake Cabin."
Peter waved at the ceiling.
"Will Virginia be joining us?" Wanda asked. An innocent question.
"No," Tony answered dryly, swallowing the bitterness that rose from his throat. No, Pepper wouldn't be joining them.
She absolutely would not.
Before he could pretend to explain why, Peter interrupted: "What do you do for fun around here?"
"This is a cabin, kid. Not an amusement park," Tony explained slowly. "Fun isn't exactly a priority."
Peter shot a concerned glance at Wanda, who was watching the entire interaction in silence. "What do you do, then?" He insisted.
"There's a workshop," Tony said quite lamely, doing his best to remember the rest of the house. To pretend he didn't live full time in his workshop. "Uh… I guess there's a pool out in the back?"
For the first time, Wanda seemed interested. She perked up a little, sitting more straight on the couch. "Is it open?"
Tony shrugged. At least someone would use the damn thing now. "Sure."
The excitement clearly wasn't shared by the resident spider, who visibly cringed. "Ugh, water," he mumbled kind of under his breath. "Not a great fan, to be honest."
"Me neither," Tony said, surprising himself with the words. "It came with the property. I've never stepped a foot inside." His eyes slid to Wanda. "At least someone is happy about it. Although you'll have to check how it is — It's probably dirty by now."
The words didn't seem to discourage her. "That's fine," Wanda said, moving her hands to sweep up her hair into a bun at the top of her head, which seemed to come loose just as soon as she finished twisting it. She had already done that many times, Tony wondered why. "It will give me something to do; if nothing else."
"Sure. Great. Knock yourself out," Tony said. "Try not to drown or anything like that, though. I would rather not have to deal with the hassle."
"I will make an effort to keep myself from drowning, yes. If only for your peace of mind, Stark."
"Awesome." He said, then stopped. "Wait. You do know how to swim, don't you? Because if you don't, it would be better—"
"I do know how to swim," Wanda interrupted, looking somewhat amused. "I would imagine a pool won't be too much of a challenge for me."
"You never know," Peter grumbled, stepping backward until his knees hit the edge of the couch. He didn't even pretend to sit down properly, instead, in a blink of an eye, he was sprawled out across it, head mere inches from Wanda's thighs. "Bodies of water are tricker than they look. Gotta watch out for them."
It was weird. They both were behaving far too weirdly. Bubbly, happy. The sort of positive emotions that Tony wouldn't have expected from two people coming out of a bloody battle.
He wondered if this was the peak before the fall.
He knew it couldn't be anything else, and yet he hoped against all reason that they would remain as they were, ignorant to the changes occurring around them, to the collision happening between the old and the new world.
However, even as he wished for ignorance, Tony understood they were all living under a timeline and that it was moving up fast.
The second the bodies arrived for the funerals, it was over.
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The ceiling was still so white.
Several hours had passed, Tony knew that much, although precisely how many he had no clue, and still the ceiling remained the same shade of white it had been when he first threw himself on the bed, tired to the very bones.
So, yeah, still fucking white.
Not like he had expected it to change, in all fairness, although it would be far from the weirdest thing to happen to him in the last few days. It simply felt weird — wrong. Sacrimonious, really, that the goddamn ceiling could be so white — so perfectly white, without one fucking stain to speak of — when all else was just so… messed up.
They had won, trillions of people were snapped back into existence, the stones would be delivered to their respective timelines, Thanos was dead.
They had won.
Tony did it. He held all the Infinity Stones in his grasp and survived to see another day. Once more, Tony Stark did the impossible, and this time it fucking mattered a big time.
Peter was back.
Wanda was back.
So many Avengers… so many people, so many planets, and galaxies, and…
They were all back.
And Tony was alive.
Somehow.
He had no idea how that happened. How he survived the Stones when it should've been impossible, when Strange had looked at him dead in the eyes and nodded. Agreed. Gave him the signal that that was the one chance they had. The only timeline in which they didn't lose.
At the time, he had been ready to do it. To die for the trillions of people who deserved the chance to live once more, to come back.
If Peter came back, if his debt was paid to the universe, then it was more than worth it. He would've done it for Peter alone, to be honest. That he got to save the others was just more incentive to do what he would already have done anyway.
Still, the question remained: how come he was alive as well now?
Tony raised his bandaged arm, belidewered all again at his stupid, never-ending luck. An ugly, messed-up arm was nothing compared to the price he had expected to pay for his actions. Nothing a few weeks of rest wouldn't fix — as much as it was possible, anyway.
In his mind, for maybe the first time ever, vanity and narcissism failed to rear their ugly heads and the esthetics of it was the furthest thing from his thoughts. It seemed so small now, so inconsequential, so ridiculous to worry about his appearance when he could almost hear Peter's movements inside his house…
Peter was alive.
He was alive, and nothing could prevent a shocked, maniac smile from making its way to Tony's lips.
They weren't dead.
They were not fucking dead.
Who would've fucking guessed it?
AN2: And that's a wrap on this one!
If you feel like it, please leave a review — it's always a pleasure to hear what you guys have to say about the story.
Love, xoxo.
