Hello, Readers!
This was my favourite chapter to write, so yeah: it's longer than any other so far!
I'm realising that I actually like the Stephen-Peter relationship the way I like the Tony-Peter relationship, so maybe I'll make one of them after this.
As usual, please comment and letme know what you think!
Thanks!
Rebekah
SIDE NOTE:
I just finished watching Spider-Man: Far From Home and had this idea, so be warned that this potentially contains Endgame spoilers, Infinity War spoilers, Iron Man spoilers, and pretty much every other spoiler for any other movie before and including Far From Home!
If you don't care, I don't care! Just warning you!
Also, no rude comments. Please? If you don't like it, it's called the back button. It sends you back to the previous page. There's also the close button, that shuts down the entire window. Please feel free to use either or both of these.
DISCLAIMER: If I owned Marvel, or Spider-Man, or Iron Man, or any of the characters, you'd know. And I definitely wouldn't be posting fanfictions on a little website. I'd simply put it in the movie.
"Why am I not surprised to find you breaking my door down a year after I distinctly remember attending your funeral?"
Tony stared at the exhausted doctor and picked apart the question in his mind, extracting the one part he could contradict.
"I'm not breaking your door down!" He corrected indignantly. "I knocked three times!"
"And the funeral?" Stephen Strange shot back.
"Oh, yeah..."
Strange rolled his eyes and threw both arms out to the side.
"'Oh. Yeah.' He says," he looked at Tony his eyes narrowing. "Out of curiosity, what happened to the flowers I sent for your funeral."
"Who cares." Tony pushed his way into the Sanctum Sanctorum, Stephen stepping aside to begrudgingly allow him entry. Seeing him dead hadn't been a joyous moment for him, no matter how much he might have pretended not to be affected.
"I'm assuming you didn't come back from the dead to simply say 'hi' to me," the doctor crossed his arms and leaned against the closed front door. He was dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a sweater that was way to comfortable for the way it looked. "What do you need from me, Stark?"
"I need you to find Peter," Tony said breathlessly.
Strange only smiled slightly, the corner of his mouth turning up.
"Yes. I believe you do."
And Tony stared at him, realising all in one moment that the master of the mystical arts suddenly looked very smug. It was an expression he'd seen in the looking glass hundreds of times, but never exactly mirrored on the face of another.
"You knew I'd come," Tony scowled.
"For the kid?" Strange clarified. "Absolutely."
"You knew I was alive."
"I future-gaze as a hobby," Strange said boredly. "I didn't realise you were still alive at the time of the funeral, but later on, it might have popped up once or twice that your future wasn't as blank as it would have had you been dead and gone."
The two men fell silent for a long minute, just staring at each other, their eyes making all the communication necessary until Tony said, "Pep said a lot of people showed up for the funeral. I'm flattered. I lived most of my life believing that people generally hated me... and I was okay with that..."
"No one hates you, Tony," Strange said quietly. "No one hated you. No one good, at least. You had people who loved you. You still do."
"You hated me," Tony protested. "You all but said it."
"I didn't. I don't."
Tony was silent again, his eyes finding the marble floor as he shook his head slightly, minor tremors running through his body as he ran out of energy, his poor, abused heart thudding painfully in his chest.
"Will you find Peter for me?" Tony nearly begged. He appeared to want to step toward the doctor for a moment, and then he refrained and swung his arms slightly by his sides. "Please? I just want him back."
Stephen sighed and walked past Tony, one of his hands happening comfortingly upon the engineer's shoulder as he strode forward.
"I'll go get him," he said quietly. "Stay here. I won't be more than ten minutes."
He waved one hand vaguely in the air and Levi came floating down to join him, fastening itself around his shoulders as he started the portal and stepped through it, looking around at where it had taken him.
He was in a small town with rundown buildings surrounding him, and a quick look-around confirmed that he was on the roof of a building. As to the state he was in, he was unsure, but it could be easily figured out, he knew.
But as he reached for his phone, a voice broke the silence.
"Doctor Strange, Sir? What are you doing here?"
He turned around swiftly to view the speaker and saw the boy sitting down on the roof of the building. He looked utterly spent: physically and emotionally. His face was pale and thin causing Stephen to assume that the child had not eaten since the day before when the news alert had been released.
For a normal person, this would not be critical, but Peter wasn't normal. Peter burned calories the way fire burned dry tinder.
"Yeah, about that..." Stephen stepped forward slowly. "Where is 'here'?"
"We're still in New York," Peter assured him, his tone quiet and dull. "Cooperstown," he mumbled. "What are you doing here if you don't even know where it is?"
"I was sent to find you," Strange informed him, strolling slowly over to him. "There are a lot of people worried about you."
"Did May send you?"
Peter felt his heart sinking. He'd hoped May would understand that this was something he had to do.
"She did not," Stephen said firmly. "I need you to come with me."
"No."
There was a moment of absolutely deafening silence. Stephen Strange was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a way by a teenager, no less. He'd grown up in a time when children were respectful, and men kept them in line.
For a moment, he felt the temper flare up within him, building to the point of fury as he stepped forward, reaching for the child. And then he stopped himself.
It'd been many years since he'd promised himself that he'd never treat another child the way his father had treated him. His hand dropped back to his side as he stared down at the boy, meeting the hazel eyes that were filled with unshed tears.
Stephen's eyes shifted to the boys hands. They were trembling on the small knees they were rested on, and the doctor internally slapped himself as he dropped to one knee beside the child. And then he saw it in Peter's face.
Peter would going with him. The 'no' had been token: a small part of him that tried to convince both Stephen and himself that he wanted this. That he wanted to be alone, but the only person he was really arguing with was himself.
"Come, Child. Come back with me." He reached out a gentle hand, laying it over the boy's. "Come home with me. Then we can talk. You'll be safe. I swear it."
He held his breath for a moment, waiting to see if Peter would turn him down. Stephen would insist, he knew. Here and now really wasn't the place and time to tell the boy that Tony was alive, so this was actually nonnegotiable. He'd take him back with him if it was the last thing he did.
But then Peter's wrist twitched, and then it turned and Stephen felt the small hand clasp his. He stood up, helping the child to his feet after him and brushing him off of dirt like some overprotective mother.
Peter only stared at the ground, oddly silent for how chatty he usually was. It was testimony to how upset he was, and Stephen's heart went out to this boy, who had never actually asked for any of this to happen.
It started as a gentle hand on the back of the boy's neck, hoping to provide a small bit of comfort, but when the boy stepped forward, his forehead falling against the sorcerer's chest, he didn't move back. He kept the hand in its position, his fingertips lightly brushing over the fringe of hair at the nape of the neck.
"I miss him, Sir," Peter whispered. "I miss him so much."
The doctor's hand cupped the back of the boy's head as his heart tightened, wanting nothing more than to spit out the secret. But it wasn't his to tell.
"I know, Peter," he assured him. "Come with me, now. Let me help you."
Peter watched him make the portal, the gold strands spinning and weaving together to form the glowing ring that would take them back to 177a Bleecker Street. Peter hesitated.
"No one else'll know I'm there right?"
In lieu of a response, Stephen only smiled and offered a hand which Peter took, and together they stepped through the portal.