A/N: This is it. The big one. The one I keep hinting at in the extracts at the start of the chapters.
Bear in mind that half of it is from a very concussed Tony's point of view, so it might not make much sense. Stuff will be cleared up in the next chapter, I promise.
Thanks as always to my beautiful reviewers: Waterfall-Orchid, EmilyF.6, feelzyfeels, One Wing In The Fire, and cryalforn. Reviews are my life force. Thanks also to all the followers and favourites - I can't believe this story has managed to hit 100 followers before the sixth chapter. I love you all dearly.
Enjoy.
ICARUS
6
FEEL IT IN YOUR CHEST
He sighs heavily. "See, it's like this, Pete. When someone close to you dies, it - well, it hurts more than anything, right? God, you probably know that more than anyone. But when they die because of you - that's - that's something else entirely. When they die because of their association with you, and if they didn't know you then they wouldn't have died ... that's hell. Whether or not you meant to let them die, whether or not you wanted them to - that's their blood on your hands, like it or not.
"And then there's when they die to save you. You know what that feels like, Pete? It feels like there are a thousand knives stabbing at your gut the whole fucking time, because no matter who you are, you never feel worthy. You never feel like they should have been given the right to make that decision - that their life is worth less than yours - because the very fact that they made it makes them better. A hundred times better. A million times better. And then you have to spend the rest of your fucking life trying to make yourself seem better, to stop their sacrifice from being completely in vain, but you can't. No matter how hard you try, it will never be enough. You ever felt that, kid?"
"So, kid, how would you like to go to a meeting with me?"
Peter turns to look at him. He's all hyped up because school's finished for spring break and now he has two weeks of freedom ahead of him. There are no signs of concussion in sight - or maybe he's just good at hiding them. "What kind of meeting?"
"A meeting where I try to explain to a very angry guy that I do not want him to become my primary supplier of iron, without saying anything that will further piss him or Pepper off."
"Oh. Do I get a choice in the matter?"
"Absolutely not. Come on."
A message from Winfield arrived earlier telling them that for security reasons, they have to park in the staff parking lot and wait there for a chaperone to escort them into the actual facility. It is undoubtable that this is not a security measure but a way to inconvenience Tony as much as possible. He kind of respects that, if he's being completely honest with himself, however much he dislikes the man.
It's Happy's day off, so Tony drives them himself in a brand new Audi he's been waiting to try out. Peter is awestruck: it's clear that he's never even seen the inside of a car as expensive as this, let alone been driven in one. He rambles for a solid five minutes about how nice it is - the smell, the upholstery, the design, the stereo, the noise of the engines ... Tony enjoys listening to it in spite of himself. Peter's genuine innocence is a lot of fun to listen too, no matter how long it goes for.
They draw to a smooth halt in the car park. It's a multi-storey block, but they find a space marked for visitors on the ground floor. They get out, Peter still chattering excitedly (Tony isn't quite sure how they got onto the subject of the best sandwich fillings, but he's happy to roll with it) and are standing and waiting for their chaperone when Tony receives a notification on his screen. He taps on it and opens a video.
"Hey, kid, go and watch for them while I look at this," he says, and Peter does as he asks, walking over to the entrance to wait. Tony plays the video in silence, because the kid is only thirty feet away, if that, and he doesn't want to have to go through any awkward conversations about what he's watching.
FRIDAY has pulled through. On the screen is a small, blurry Peter Parker walking away from the Tower, as shown on various security cameras. The footage is sped up, for which he is thankful, until a few minutes later, at which point Peter ducks into a small back alley, out of sight.
What in God's name is he doing in there?
For about a minute, the camera continues to watch the alley. Clearly there are no cameras beyond this one. Then, it is not Peter who emerges but a red and blue blur -
No. Dear God no.
- The video skips forward a few hours before the blur returns, moving slower this time, and then, five minutes later, Peter Parker emerges, looking a lot worse for wear.
Tony pauses the video with shaking fingers, Peter's pinched face frozen on the screen. Not him. Not Peter. Because this kid - this sweet, innocent, fifteen-year-old kid - cannot be the masked man who has been pissing Tony off for months. The guy who broke into Tony's personal lab and stole something. Who hacked his computers and deleted files. Peter, who's too shy and awkward to even refer to Tony by his first name. How can he be a vigilante?
But even as he tries to deny it, things are falling into place like pieces of a puzzle. The bruising. The tiredness. The panic about being late. The original reluctance to accept the internship. Hell, even the sensitivity to loud noise - it all makes sense.
Damn that kid. Damn that fucking kid for working his way into Tony's heart, for getting under his skin so he can use his technology and stop him from getting too close to the truth, for blinding him to Spiderman's true identity - because now he knows, it's obvious. It's so obvious that Tony would laugh if he wasn't so close to passing out. As it is, he stumbles back against the side of his car, looks at his angrily beeping watch and reads with detached interest its glowing message to BREATHE.
It feels as if he is underwater. His blood is roaring in his ears; his vision keeps slipping in and out of focus. His heart hammers wildly in his chest.
Panic attack.
Tony looks at his watch again as little black spots dance across his vision. BREATHE. BREATHE. BREATHE.
Looking at his watch is a habit, picked up from all the other issues he has. Rhodey helped him get into it. When you're panicking, just look at your watch.
Peter can't have - can't be - can't be Spiderman. He can't betray me too.
BREATHE. BREATHE. BREATHE.
Tony tries to remember how it feels to draw air into his lungs. His mouth is open, but he's gasping uselessly -
He finally musters the strength to look up at Peter, to see for himself if there is any possibility that another of the only people Tony has ever let in has betrayed him, but what he sees isn't what he expected at all.
Peter is charging towards him, faster than Tony thought possible, panic written over every one of his traitorous features.
Tony doesn't even have time to flinch away before Peter has seized him, hands grabbing at his sides, pulling, then pushing ...
And Tony finds himself flying backwards, shocked into silence by the sheer knowledge that Peter just threw him -
And then his world explodes into horrifying fragments of sound and light and pain and colour and smoke, and he slams into concrete just outside the entrance to the car park, staring up at an oddly black sky, and, for an indeterminate period of time, Tony Stark registers absolutely nothing at all.
He doesn't know how long he lies there. Seconds, minutes, hours, maybe, but when he blearily cracks open his stinging eyes and coughs out a lungful of smoke, nobody is there to help him. He heaves himself into a sitting feeling, ignoring the dizzying swoop of nausea and lightheadedness, and squints in a futile attempt to see through all the smoke and dust.
Nothing.
He coughs again and tries to suck in some clean air, but it burns and makes him cough more and isn't very clean at all.
He half expects to see someone running towards him at any moment, taking him to an ambulance, giving him an oxygen mask, taking him to a hospital, but there is absolute silence.
Not silence. His ears are ringing so loudly that he can't hear. He tries to shout but can't hear his own voice. Help, he tries to say, I need help. But no sound leaves his mouth. Or maybe it does.
There's something else. He loses his balance without warning and falls onto his back. Turns his head. There's a phone.
Look at your watch. BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE BREATHEBREATHEBREATHE -
Panic button. On his watch. His fingers aren't working like they should but after a few tries he manages to press it. Say something. He programmed it to take a voice message. Need medevac, he tries to say. Helen Cho.
Why does he need Helen Cho? He can have someone else fix him up. He doesn't need a specialist.
There's a phone next to his head.
Look at your watch. BREATHE BREATHE Peter. Where's Peter?
He lurches up again. Staggers to his feet this time. Doubles over and vomits. Blinding pain through his skull. Hurts. Peter.
Half-crawling through rubble. There's a hand.
Look at your watch. BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE. The screen is cracked and frozen. He tries to breathe. Then he lifts up a piece of concrete and drops it to the side. There's Peter. His legs are pinned but his upper body is free.
Something's wrong. He looks at his watch. BREATHE. The air is full of smoke and it hurts his chest. He coughs. It hurts.
Something's wrong. Peter.
He drops to his knees. Peter, he says. The boy looks up at him with wide eyes. Chest moving rapidly. Gasping for air. Reaching out to him. Something red trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Bad. He looks at his watch. BREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHE.
Words on the boy's lips. M'ssss'r S'rrk. Mr. Stark.
God.
Blood on his hands. A lot of blood. Is it his?
Not his.
Peter.
Blood coming from somewhere. Not just his mouth. Where?
He looks for a gaping wound, a hole somewhere. Nothing.
Wait -
He sits and observes the shuddering two-foot long piece of metal sticking out of the boy's chest. Is that meant to be there? Maybe it's like the arc reactor, ha, ha. But there's blood. Lots of blood.
Pressure.
He pulls off his filthy suit jacket and wraps it around the metal. Hurts. His head hurts.
There's his watch. BREATHE.
BREATHE.
BREATHE.
Peter is trying to fight him. Pushing weakly at Tony's hands. Stop, it hurts. Can't stop. Trying to help. Where's the medevac? How long has he been here?
Eyelashes fluttering. Stay awake. The ringing has subsided just enough for him to hear his own voice. "Come on, Peter. Stay awake." Throat is raw.
Hands shaking. He's scared. Look at your watch. BREATHE.
"You gotta breathe for me, buddy."
Peter's whole body judders with the effort. Tony barks a hysterical, humourless laugh.
"You can't leave me now, Spiderman."
Eyes widen. Opening mouth to say something. A sort of wet gurgle instead of words. Lips coated with red.
He smoothes the boy's sweaty hair off his alarmingly pale forehead, wipes the blood from his cheek, says his name again.
Tears in his eyes. When did he last cry?
Slowly, inevitably, eyes slide shut. No. Wake up. Wake up! "Peter. Peter!"
Nothing. He presses harder on the bundled jacket.
Nothing.
BREATHE. BREATHE. BREATHE.
Hands grabbing at his arms. No. Peter needs him. No! But his body is numb. Limbs don't work.
Pulling him away from Peter. "Tony? Tony?" That's Rhodey's voice.
Suddenly too weak to hold himself up any longer. Falling back into several pairs of arms, staring at a sky full of dust and smoke and thousands of tiny agonies, stinging his skin and burning his soul. Perhaps if he sleeps, the balance of the universe will be restored; spring will turn to summer, and summer to fall; the sky will clear; Tony Stark will return to his former self, sharp and funny and without having to worry about stupid interns who sacrifice their own lives to save his. Perhaps this nightmarish day will turn into evening, and when the sun rises, full of hopeless optimism, it will light a clear sky that doesn't burn the lungs of the people living under it, a sky that isn't full of tiny particulates that choke people to death, a sky that lets people survive the useless slot of time in which they have to live.
Perhaps today is an aberration, an anomaly that is ultimately disregarded from the final results, a difference in measurements so insignificant that upon review it is instantly ignored. Perhaps tomorrow Tony Stark will wake up in his own bed as if today never happened, think nothing of it, and move on.
But right now, as he finally succumbs to the exhaustion, as he finally allows his eyes to roll back into his head and lets the frantic voices calling his name fade to nothing, the wounds feel excruciatingly raw. All he knows is that the hard shell Tony Stark built for himself, the shield against anything that could possibly hurt him, the Iron Man armour that he kept around his soul until Peter Parker walked into his life, is gone.
And there is nothing in its place.
