The scene was the park.

A favorite place of his, because it held many of his best memories from his childhood. He'd loved the place. The area that was frequented by the most varied of people. Even when he was a little kid, he loved to watch the different people, and wonder what they were thinking, and what they were doing. There wasn't anyone in the park, just then, but if he concentrated, he could see the place where the older kids would play sports, and the college-aged people would flirt with the opposite sex, and even better; the place where he'd go to watch the really old people play chess – and even play with him a time or two, once Ned's mom taught him the game and he'd found that he liked it.

The air held a slightly red tinge to it, as if he were wearing glasses that were colored with red tinting to them. The sky – which should have been blue – was blueish red and the grass a greenish red, just then. He looked around the park, and then something told him to turn his head, and when he did, he saw her sitting on the bench that they used to sit on. They'd be eating hotdogs and watching the people around them. Talking about life in general, and the two of them in particular.

Peter walked over, feeling an ache in his chest that made his breath come in short, silent, gasps, and he stopped in front of her.

"May…"

She smiled up at him.

"Hi, sweetheart."

It was her. He knew it was. Something deep inside him told him that he wasn't dreaming her, or hallucinating. She was really sitting on the bench in his favorite place, and she was waiting for him. Peter fell to his knees, his legs unable to support him, just then, and he wrapped his arms around her legs, resting his head in her lap as he had so many times when he was little.

And sometimes even when he had been older.

"May…" he felt a sob bubble up and out of him, and felt her arms come around him, holding him, and suddenly Peter was crying, weeping like a child. Happy tears. Sad tears. Just overwhelming emotions bubbling over. He didn't know, and he didn't care, just then. His grip on her legs tightened. "May…"

"Shhhh… it's okay, Peter." She soothed him with a touch that was so familiar that it made him sob harder. A touch that he'd never thought that he was going to feel, again. That he'd lost forever. "Hey…"

She didn't hurry him, though. Like she always had been, May was patient with her nephew and simply held him until he was able to raise his head and look at her, his cheeks smeared with tears and his eyes wide as he stared at her.

"May. What… how are you here…? Where are… is this real? Are you real?"

"Yes. It's real and so am I," she assured him, smiling softly, and brushing his hair back from his forehead, her eyes alive with love. "Look how much you've grown…"

"What's going on?"

Peter was smart enough to know that she was dead. Suspicious enough to wonder why anyone would want him to believe that he could have her back. He spent enough time with Natasha to know that things weren't always the way they appeared. Enough time mourning those loved to know that the dead didn't come back to life just because he missed them.

Besides, the last thing he remembered was standing on the roof of the compound, and that was a long way from the park.

May's smile was amused, now, as if she could hear his thoughts, and his suspicions.

"You're right. But you're also wrong."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that, yes, I'm dead. No one is trying to tell you otherwise. But you're wrong when you think that we can't be together."

"What? Wait." He looked around, again. "Am I dead? Is this heaven?"

Peter didn't really believe in heaven. He wanted to, because he wanted his parents and May to be someplace amazing and he wanted to know that he'd see them, again, someday, but he always assumed that the universe didn't love him that much, either.

May smiled, sadly, as if she was able to follow his thoughts, and then she proved that she had when she spoke, next.

"The universe does love you, sweetheart. Even more; right now it owes you a great deal for what you did – and what you've been through – and all you need to do is decide what you want. And what you want to do."

OOOOOOO

It was close to mid-morning when Natasha walked into the operating room that everyone was already calling Peter's room. The compound was quiet; it had been a long day the day before and an even longer night, and everyone was tired. Much too tired to do more than what they'd already done. They'd issued a simple statement for the media that didn't tell them anything, really, with a promise of a more comprehensive report of the state of things, later, and then most of them had gone to bed for a few hours.

Natasha was an exception (as was Steve). He was too busy being responsible to sleep; taking care of the many tasks that come with something so mindboggling happening – and the sad job of beginning to take care of the dead under his command. She had been unconscious, and even though it wasn't real sleep, she wasn't tired. Besides, she was worried about Peter and wanted to check on him, rather than accept second-hand reports.

She paused at the door, opening it quietly, walking through and then closing it behind her. There was a privacy screen blocking part of the room, but she could see that Pepper was asleep in the bed that Peter had been in before they'd moved him to the chamber. She was warmly covered, so Romanoff assumed that Tony had sent her to bed and she hadn't wanted to go any further than the closest place she could get some real rest.

Natasha was there to send them both to bed.

Silently, she moved to the other side of the screen, and her lips pursed, tightly, when she saw the chamber, and the boy that she loved so much floating in it. Forcing herself to turn from him, she saw that Tony was asleep, too. He was sitting in a chair that was pushed right up against the side of the tank – Natasha hated calling it that, but it looked like a fish tank, more than anything else, and that was the word that came to mind.

Stark had fallen asleep leaning against the smooth surface of whatever the thing was made out of, with his cheek close to where Peter's was on the other side. His hand was also propped up by the arm of the chair until it, too, was pressed against the tank. It was a poignant sight and made Natasha's eyes burn with unshed tears as she walked over and knelt down beside the billionaire's quiet form.

"Tony…"

Her voice was soft, but he opened his eyes, immediately, looking at Peter, first, as if expecting the worst, and then over at her. Natasha put her hand on his arm, reassuringly.

"Hey… it's okay."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm going to take over for a while so you and Pepper can get some real rest."

He glanced at Pepper, who had opened her eyes when Tony had spoken, obviously also on edge, even when asleep.

"We're good."

"I know," she knew he had to argue with her, first, but she had no intention of letting him do this alone, and he had to know it, too. "Go to bed, though. Get some rest, get cleaned up and take care of Pepper and yourself, too, that way you're good to go later."

She knew he was going to argue, but Pepper didn't give him a chance to do more than open his mouth.

"That's a good idea," she said, sliding gracefully out of the bed (which was a far cry from how Peter would have rolled himself out – probably rolling over whoever was next to him, if someone was) and moved to stand next to where Natasha was still crouched. "We'll be back in a few hours."

"A couple of hours," Tony corrected, getting to his feet without complaint since he knew both women were united on this and that meant that he wasn't going to win.

It didn't matter, though. They were right; he needed to change, and shower, and he wanted to find out what the rest of the world was saying about what happened, so he could get an idea of what he needed to do to protect his avengers from being overrun by the media (and almost worse, politicians) and, of course, to protect Peter.

He didn't notice Pepper mouthing a few to Romanoff when she took his hand and squeezed it lightly, then kept it to use to lead him from the room.

Natasha watched them go, and then stood, looking in the tank and watching Peter. He was breathing; his chest rising and falling, steadily, and if she concentrated, she could see his pulse beating against the skin of his throat. His body was covered in various burns, but the fluid kept her from seeing any but the most serious of them, and the right hand was just as horribly blackened as she'd been led to believe that it was.

The assassin put her hand on the tank's surface; she idly decided that it felt like a fish tank, too, and cleared the lump out of her throat before speaking.

"Hey, baby…" she murmured. "What are you doing, sleeping?" he didn't reply, of course, but Natasha hadn't expected him to. It didn't stop her from talking to him, though. "Nick has Nutmeg, so he's alright. Just so you know. For now, anyway. You know how Nick is…"

She sat down in the chair she'd shooed Tony out of, and leaned her cheek against the glass, too.

"I went by your quarters, and your door is broken," she said, still speaking to him, but now pulling out a tablet. "I'd say it was Jack, if nothing else, but it's broken the wrong direction – in ward – and that little guy of Steve's couldn't do that much damage. So we're going to look at the video, and see if we can figure out what happened. You know how much I hate a mystery."

She continued on in the same vein, chatting with him as if he were simply sitting next to her, reading a book, or playing a game. She knew he wouldn't mind, and it made her feel better. She brought up the video footage from the corridor outside of Peter's room (since she knew as well as anyone that there wouldn't be any from inside the boy's quarters) and started it from roughly when the battle began.

It would take a while, but she had plenty of time to spend with him.