There were times when playing guardian angel for Peter Parker felt like a replay of Ross' meeting with the original Avengers. New York, DC, Sokovia, Lagos, rang a bell? That's the kind of déjà vu he was getting, watching footages downloaded from Peter's suit – bank robbery in Queens, Meadow Lake in Flushing, the Washington Monument in DC… and fifteen minutes ago, Staten Island Ferry just off the harbour.
"Ten percent to the boots' repulsor, FRIDAY."
"Yes, Boss."
"… You know what, give it all we got. We got to move, come on –" The lurch in his stomach and the blur in his peripheral vision made him want to throw up in his helmet. "Where are my backup repulsors?"
"En-route. ETA in five minutes."
He'd lost contact with Peter since the kid cut the video call with basically, "Nothing's up, toodles!"
Tony would like to say he knew a lying face when he saw one, but he did stare at one for two whole years and suspected nothing. Two years! Two years, Steve hid the truth about Howard and Maria's assassination, and in those times when they were alone, just hanging, nothing. Not a word about HYDRA, about the Winter Soldier – did Steve think that not telling would make the mourning any easier?
He had no right.
"Boss, I detect structural weakness in Spider-Man's suit. Extreme pressure concentrated in the limbs –"
"His location?"
"Suspended near the passenger deck. Or what's left of it."
He saw Peter struggling to hold the two halves of the ferry together. The webs' tensile strength wasn't strong enough for this – what was Peter thinking? He would've torn himself in half, and Tony doubled back to the lower deck, and flattened his palms against the hull.
This wasn't going to work.
Still, he pushed. It didn't feel like anything moved.
"FRIDAY!" he screamed into his helmet. He could feel the ship coming down on him. "Oh God. Full blast!"
His entire back shuddered as Iron Man's exhausts went ablaze, and the suspenders strained to keep his own body from ripping apart. Just as he was about to say his last prayers, his swarm of repulsors zipped past him, adhered along the hull, and –
"Push!"
The ship came together, inch by inch, until it was whole again. He shot up to the upper deck where he last saw Peter, and breathed a sigh of relief to find the kid gaping back at him, all four limbs still attached to his trunk. Jetting over to the ferry's vehicle space, he welded clefts and tears and swept the waters for shipwrecked passengers. There was a ringing in his headspace. When he was assured that they weren't shipping any body bags to the morgue, then only did he acknowledge that he was, in the simplest term, pissed off. Oh, he had the damn right to be pissed off – that Peter would sabotage the suit, and then defy direct ordersto not pursue these people.
Hadn't he make it clear that there were people in charge of taking care of these stuff? People like the NYPD, the FBI – they still exist, by the way. This wasn't Avengers business, so back off. If he didn't know better, it sure felt like Peter was trying his best to get on Interpol's "Most Wanted".
The other guy in the flying suit, though… he looked like Avengers business.
"Mr Stark," Peter's voice cut into the thickness of his thoughts, shrill and stuttering. "Oh my God, I'm – I'm not sure what – how can I help? I wanna help, please –"
He'd lost track of the Vulture. This was the second time he swooped in and out of chaos.
"Leave," Tony said, curt. "Make sure you're not followed. I'll meet you at this coordinate."
JOCASTA would know what to flash on Peter's HUD.
It was just one mess after another. Guess what, the FBI did show up after all. They were about to apprehend their targets when a red-and-blue super-crawler showed up and started webbing everyone in sight. So, that was a federal investigation foiled – after all the phone calls he made to make sure they'd open a case on alien-weapon-peddling, this was a slap in the face – millions of dollars of compensation to NYC Department of Transportation, the inevitable press releases...
Ross would never let this incident slide.
He could only take his leave an hour later after all passengers had been accounted for, and evacuated to mainland. As much as he dreaded to rendezvous with Peter, he knew it had to be done.
He'd tried so hard to fix all these – the Accord, the Avengers, the smithereens that were his life.
Tony hovered at the brink of the buoy, and Peter – his mask crumpled in his fist – stood up and looked at Iron Man with dinner plate eyes like he'd failed the entire world.
"Why?" was all Tony could ask. He made FRIDAY shut up all seventy-three incoming voice mails and messages.
"I told you these guys are different! They're dangerous!"
That it?
Tony let Peter verbally whale on him about how he wasn't taken seriously, about all the warnings he'd given to the Avengers that these thugs were something else, that all these wouldn't have happened if somebody would just listen, and that this probably wasn't important enough for Tony Stark because if it were, he would've been here.
Tony gripped the suit's ejection button so hard it dented.
"… Mr Stark."
For every step back that Peter took, he claimed. He'd gotten so close he could see tears brimming in the kid's eyes – why, so he could throw them both a pity party and wonder why shit seem to hit the fan so often lately?
"What if somebody had died today?" He advanced on Peter until they went out of parapet to walk on. "Different story, right? Because that's on you. And if you die, I feel like that's on me." Something flashed on Peter's face, but he didn't regret it. "I don't need that on my conscience, kid."
"I'm sorry, Sir –"
"I'm gonna need the suit back."
With stakes this high, with all the collateral, there was no other way about it. Spider-Man had to disappear. A passing rumour – no name, no face. Nobody would remember some punk in red-and-blue Spandex scaling walls and spitting webs after they put out the PR fire.
Peter was done, and Tony just royally screwed up again.
Shouldn't have gotten the kid involved in the first place.