Peter sat alone in the cemetery, his heart racing and his throat closing up. Every part of him was tingling, but it was especially strong right beneath his fingernails. This wasn't his regular spider-thing, no that had never made him feel the need to puke. As he stood in front of the large grave, New Yorkers passing him and it at a brisk and unmoved pace, he wished he had more than just a tombstone to confide in. Ever since he'd been left alone, the whole world had been a silent blur. M.J. and Ned had moved on from him, Dr. Strange was doing… whatever he did, and Tony…
"Hi there, Mr. Stark," he finally got out. It was a whisper, barely audible, but it was a start. The words escaped him at the moment. Everything he'd been feeling was bubbling up all at once: How he'd gone from being surrounded by alternate timeline Peter's who understood him, only to have them and everybody else ripped away. How he was, for the first time in his life, without the loving guidance of Tony or Aunt May. Even worse, how he felt responsible for it all. Peter could have saved Tony. He could have saved May. And, if he hadn't been so dumb and selfish, he could have avoided losing M.J.
He opted to just try and keep going, knowing that a verbal up-chuck was better than an awkward silence. He could Tony his way through this.
"I, um… I know, or I don't know… I…" Great, he was getting nowhere with this. "When I was building my web shooters," he blurted. "I wasn't doing any math, or um, like, science. I sort of just knew what I was supposed to put where, you know? Everything just sort of worked out, or it came together. And when it didn't, or I hit a wall or something…"
Peter's eyes swelled shut, and snot started coming out of his left nostril specifically. Why did he have to be such an ugly crier?
"Me and my Aunt, you know May…" He started gasping between tears, the city passing by him ambivalently. It was the last good thing about living in Brooklyn. "We'd go out for pizza, and she would ask me about school. And then I'd tell her about my web shooters and, you know, tell her it was for science class."
"And when I started the superhero thing for real," Peter continued, gaining some rhythm. "I had you. I had you there to, like, to guide and yell at me." He paused for a moment, trying to keep himself together.
"I… I just feel like I'm falling, Mr. Stark. I feel like I'm falling and there's no one there to catch me."
Peter exhaled shakily, snorting a little bit and wiping his eyes. Suddenly, his peter-tingle went off. He saw a flash of black fabric to his right, and with one quick turn he was standing face to face with his would-be attacker.
"Mr. Stark?"
Tony looked back at him, a light from behind his signature aviators and that smug grin that pissed just about everybody who wasn't Tony right the hell off. "Hi kid."
Peter felt… Well he didn't know how he felt. "You're alive?" He asked loudly, this time drawing some attention from otherwise preoccupied New Yorkers.
"Not in a way that matters," Tony replied calmly. "And screaming at someone nobody else can see was probably not a great plan."
Peter stood for a moment, moving from disbelief to shock. A quiet, confused cry escaped him. "Why, I mean, um, what? And how-"
"Kid," Tony said in a tone that only he could. It was somewhere between comforting and condescending, but it was what Peter needed at that moment. "When I was building my suit…" Tony stood silent for a moment, deep in thought while Peter just stared at him.
"Peter," he said, as if to just prove that he knew Peter's name. "I built my first suit in a cave out in the middle of nowhere held captive by terrorists who I'd sold arms to. I didn't build it to be a superhero, and I didn't become Iron Man on purpose. I guess what I'm trying to say is that…" He paused for another moment here, causing Peter to suspect that all of this drama was intentional.
"You've gotta run before you can walk, Peter," he said finally. "And I think that, considering you didn't even eat breakfast, that starts with lunch. Have you ever had shawarma?"
Peter looked up at the sky, holding back tears as he tried not to laugh a little bit. "How the hell can you think about shawarma at a time like…" His Peter-tingle was back, and with a quick movement of his head he checked where Tony had been only to find it empty.
His thoughts quickly bounced between possibilities: Mysterio being alive, an old program, and the unlikely as well as unsavory possibility that it had been a real ghost. His eyes watered, tingling as they did so. His stomach was growling, his heart heaving and his stomach tied up in knots. Shawarma… it was a weird suggestion. But Peter could go for some shawarma.
