Tony's getting bored of being dead.
It was novel at first. He'd been in a coma about eight months after the Snap, but Pep looked like she'd aged about eight years—not that Tony was dumb enough to tell her that—and Morgan had grown and learned so much that it might as well have been a year for every month he was gone. He hated the pain he caused them. Hated that saving the world meant devastating those he loved. He hadn't realized how much his girls needed him. He'd suspected ending Thanos was a sacrifice play, but he hadn't thought about how much it would hurt those he'd left behind.
So when he woke up and Pepper stroked his scarred face and asked if they could forget about the world for just a little longer he'd agreed without pause. And it was nice for a while. No media. No board meetings or corporate bullshit. It was quite a lot like hermiting out at the lake house had always been, except the world wasn't half full any longer. But they'd still moved on without Tony Stark.
But now it's been almost a year where he's barely been beyond the bounds of his property and honestly he's getting a little restless. He feels like he should be doing more, but when he thinks about what he should be doing he isn't sure. He's a bit old for an existential crisis—not that he'd admit that either—but something is off. He thinks about telling Pep they need to come up with a story, figure out how to reintroduce him to the world half a dozen times. But then she looks at him with those eyes that can go sad with just one misjudged joke and he doesn't.
Tony's selfish by nature, but he's been working on that. Learned a few things over the years. From team-ups and team break-ups and wooing his complex, endlessly patient wife. And from fatherhood, of course, which he'd been sure he would suck at but somehow excelled, even when Morgan was born in a world in crisis.
When Pep had thrust her in his arms he'd expected them to shake. But they'd been steady, even through the tears he can't remember why he'd cried. It wasn't just that births were emotional. There was something else, tearing his heart apart and mending it back together. It's easy to blame Howard. But that doesn't feel right. His memory of that critical moment feels distorted somehow. Like something is missing. It grates, like dragging his knuckles against glass.
But. Selflessness. Tony's working on that. So even though he thinks more and more about declaring himself alive and rejoining the world he knows Pepper isn't ready, so he devotes himself to his wife and daughter and tells himself that he's happy.
He certainly is happier than he's been most of his life. Even if one of his arms is metal and half his body scarred in a badass way that nevertheless takes him out of contention for World's Sexiest Man. He is clean. He is sober. He is loved. And the threat that's been lurking over him for so long has come and passed. Half the world lost, yes, but half the world regained, and somehow in the midst of it all he'd found a way to build a live even within his own failure.
All those destructive tendencies that had fueled his youth and early adulthood seem like a lifetime ago. He no longer even remembers why they held any appeal. Perhaps because whole chunks of those years are missing, because he was too drunk or high to retain the escapades. He's fine with that. Less guilt that way.
He's gotten used to living life crystal clear. Committing to memory each of Morgan's milestones. Pepper's smiles and quips. Rhodey's eye rolls.
Except something had changed. Morgan's birth isn't the only moment that feels a bit fuzzy. It's the years before it, mostly, that have become patchwork. He knows what causes memory loss but that isn't right, because he'd been sober then. Maybe a slip up here or there, a bad night after Siberia. But he shouldn't have more than a handful of gaps.
Yet there are whole months with all the specificity drained, even though it feels like they'd been happy ones. He thinks that he laughed at a million jokes that he can't recall. That he'd found a purpose that has since evaporated.
He'd asked Rhodey once if he'd gone on any benders between the Mandarin and Thanos, because it's the only explanation he knows for blackouts.
He'd never forget the devastated look on Rhodey's face, as if he feared that Tony had just thrown himself down a cliff voluntarily, and all that he had left was to fall, fall, fall.
"Are you okay, man? You've been so good. But if you're having these thoughts we can get ahead of it. Get you help. And if it's too much in the cabin all the time—"
"Christ, Platypus, I don't want to drink now," he'd snapped, and Rhodey had started breathing again. "I'm asking about years ago. Because there's stuff that I don't remember right, and it feels important. But if I wasn't drinking, why can't I remember it?"
Rhodey doesn't have an answer for him.
It gets worse. And for a reason he can't explain, but one that guts him organ by organ, starting in his stomach before absolutely shredding his heart to pieces, it's worse when he's with Morgan.
He loves his little girl with a ferocity he had never thought possible. She's the very best of him and Pepper—brilliant and precocious and adorable and only occasionally annoying as all hell—and he knows she gets that from him. She's most of the reason he doesn't protest staying dead. His days are full of Morgan, and he doesn't want to miss any more of her life. He realizes how close she came to growing up without a father. He wants her childhood to be better than his was. That's why he focuses so much on praise and validation. Makes up inside jokes for just the two of them. Tells her he loves her every chance he gets.
But every time his heart swells with love it clenches with pain right afterwards. He doesn't understand why. She hasn't done anything wrong. It is he who is broken.
Inextricably broken.
Missing something.
He is cold. He is empty. He is numb.
No wait, that's Frozen II. Morgan has made him watch the damn carton roughly five dozen times. But he finds himself running the lyrics in his mind, over and over. It's a dark, heavy song for a kid's movie but he supposed everyone was fucked up after the Blip. Might as well sing about it.
This grief has a gravity, it pulls me down.
Grief.
That's what he feels when he looks at his little girl. When they all sit around the table discussing their day, as Morgan tells exuberant, rambling stories about school. Like someone is missing, and even though he doesn't know who, Tony is in mourning.
"Pep, I'm going to ask you something, and it's going to sound crazy. And insensitive."
Pep raises an eyebrow at him from the mirror as she smooths her hair back in a ponytail. He's whined it isn't fair that she gets to go to work, but she reminds him how far they've come; for years she had to drag him to the meetings he now claims to miss. "Oh goodie. Crazy and insensitive."
He's knows he's going to upset her but he asks anyway. Because he needs to know. The pain is getting worse, he can't trust his own mind and he's afraid if he just keeps stewing and wondering and grieving and spiraling he is going to break them and he can't do that, he can't. He needs his family. He's been so good. He doesn't want to fall down that rabbit hole.
"Did you ever? I mean, we didn't? Did you ever—lose a baby?"
She flinches, the same way he always had when Howard's hand shot towards him, and then she spins, so she's looking at him and not the mirror. "Why would you ask that?" she whispers. "Do you honestly think I would keep something like that from you?"
And God no he's losing them, breaking them, this is bad bad bad.
"Of course not." He reaches out and grabs her shoulder, trying to be steady. "I don't. This isn't you. But maybe it happened and I forgot somehow?"
She closes her eyes. Her whole body rises and falls with her breath. "Tony, are you drinking again?"
"No, babe. Of course not. How could I, even? I never leave the house."
But he wants to, he realizes, and that shocks him into silence. But then he recognizes the emotion that assails him, acid churning from his stomach up his throat.
Guilt.
Guilt and grief.
What the hell is going on?
"It just feels like we lost a kid," he stammers.
"Morgan is downstairs."
"I know. It isn't her. Feels like there should be another kid. I don't remember them but there's this hole where they should be and I can't figure it out."
Pepper watches him for several long seconds. He imagines their marriage crumbling. Her taking Morgan and leaving him alone in this house they built together, a mausoleum to their love, where only a handful of people even know to look for him. He's always been a screw-up. It's a miracle they've lasted this long.
But then she leans forward, rising up on her toes to press her forehead to his, and her hands frame his face. "Tony." It isn't chiding or exasperated. It's steadying. A declaration of faith. "I don't know what you're going through. But I know you. You invented time travel. You'll figure out."
She presses a kiss to his temple and she goes to work.
He wonders why he invented time travel. For a moment there is no answer.
The fate of half of all existence was at stake.
To prove that he could.
To stick it to Cap, who didn't think he was the kind of guy to lay down on a wire.
All reasons that might have been true at some point in his life.
Not when Morgan was at stake. Not when messing with time could have erased her.
He had told the Avengers no.
Why had he changed his mind?
It's the kind of question that he ponders in his lab late at night as he tinkers, tinkers, tinkers, because he's not really sleeping anymore and he doesn't want to snap at Pepper and he definitely doesn't want to snap at Morgan. But he solved time travel in a day, so why has it been weeks and he still can't remember why?
"Boss, I'm receiving an urgent message from Peter's AI."
"What now, FRI?" he asks, flicking away his blueprints. He's running on too much caffeine and not enough sleep, but just like the rest of his life, what his AI just said doesn't make any sense.
"Peter's Nice Try, Kid Protocol has been enabled. Karen told me Peter used the word tourniquet and she is very concerned that he's grievously injured."
Everything still sounds like nonsense. "Who the hell is Peter? And who the hell is Karen? I didn't know you had friends besides me, doll."
FRIDAY pauses, as if he actually stumped her, which should be impossible. "If you are trying to be funny, Boss, I do not understand your humor."
"I'm serious FRI. Who is Peter?"
"Peter Parker." His holo board flashes an awkward yearbook photo of some teenager, with brown hair slicked back and a wide, toothy grin. "Your protégé. You have written many protocols to ensure his safety. Therefore I am in frequent communication with the AI in his suit, who Peter named Karen."
"I have never seen that kid in my life." And he hasn't, he knows he hasn't, but his heart is thundering in his chest now, and that's never a great idea. His heart has never been exactly right since the shrapnel. And then the coma.
"That is incorrect." The photo changes, and this kid—this kid he does not recognize is standing right beside him, holding an upside-down Stark Industries Internship certificate—Stark Industries has never had high school interns—and they're both holding bunny ears over each other like they're Morgan's age.
"Well Holy Shit." Tony sits down on the nearest stool, hard. "I don't remember that. Why don't I remember that?"
"I do not know, sir. My memory banks are bursting with information on Peter. I'd be happy to share it with you. But I strongly recommend sending medical assistance to his location immediately. Karen is quite concerned that he may be bleeding out, although he has asked her not to contact you."
"Why the hell would a high school kid be bleeding out?"
"Peter has sustained many injuries while patrolling as Spider-Man, despite the many protocols you have installed in his suit."
"This kid's Spider-Man?" Tony knows about Spider-Man. The whole world does. He's been a huge pain in Pepper's ass—something about Stark drones and destruction of property in London of all places. The fault really lied with a disgruntled former employee, but Tony's a bit shaky on how he got his hands on the tech, and why he threw shade at someone who's apparently just a kid.
But maybe he and Spidey have teamed up before? If he really thinks about it he can kind of remember him in the Berlin airport, but how the hell would a high school kid have gotten caught up in that clusterfuck?
"Affirmative, boss." FRIDAY sounds annoyed, like he should know all this. "May I remind you that Peter Parker may be dying. Normally you would be quite distressed by this news."
That's like a jolt to his heart. "Okay. Right. Save the kid first. Ask questions later. Where is he?"
"He's on the seventh floor of an apartment building in Queens."
"Load the address in my fastest suit. Chop chop."
"Need I remind you that all Iron Man suits are currently disabled due to the continued ruse of your death."
"Damn it. Rescue it is then."
It might make the news, Pepper Potts Stark joyriding in her husband's last gift to her, but he's made her deal with worse PR. Their measurements aren't the same, but the nanobots adjust, and in less than a minute he's flying towards the city, still wondering what the hell is going on. But beneath the adrenaline and the fear and the mind-bending confusion there is a strange sense of calm. As if there is something familiar about this scenario. Something right.
As if the mystery that's been haunting him is about to be solved.
He crashes through the apartment window in a spray of glass, and finds Peter Parker lying in a rather alarming pool of his own blood.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit." All his calm is evaporated now. He'd been arguing with his AI while this kid was dying and there's a blackhole in his chest at the very prospect.
"FRIDAY, what do I do?"
"It seems Peter Parker was unsuccessful in securing the tourniquet despite Karen's instruction. I recommend you do so immediately."
"Right. Yes. Stop the bleeding. But he's still—"
"Heartbeat detected. Though it is slow and erratic."
"Not for long."
Cap had made them all take combat medic training, back when the Avengers were a thing and Fury said they needed "team building activities." Tony is grateful for that now, though Friday offers commentary every step of the way. The kid has a hole in his thigh, presumably from the rusty metal pole lying beside him, and is passed out cold. But as soon as the tourniquet is secured Tony brushes his thumb across the kid's throat until he feels his pulse, thready and weak. The rush of fondness Tony feels scares him almost as much as the lack of color under Peter's skin.
He doesn't remember this kid at all.
But God, he needs to save him.
"What next Fri?"
"Peter has lost a lot of blood. He likely needs a transfusion."
"Hospital, got it. Coming right up."
"Peter cannot go to a regular hospital. They will detect the mutations in his blood."
"Mutations? Shit. Okay. Then where do I take him? We're a long way from the Compound."
"That's why you set up a private Medbay a few blocks from here in case Peter was injured."
That still doesn't ring any bells. Why the hell had he let a child fight crime? He steps back into the suit and then gathers Peter into his arms, as carefully as he can manage. The kid emits a tiny moan that ends in a whimper which makes Tony's heart absolutely shatter, but he doesn't wake. He just tilts his head against Tony's borrowed suit.
"It's gonna be okay, kid," he whispers. He wishes he could retract the glove to brush the hair out of the kid's eyes, but there isn't time.
He wants to cradle the kid to his chest and never let go.
He doesn't have a clue who this kid is.
There are no memories to go with these feelings.
But these feelings are so strong that he might crack right open.
He tries to be gentle but speed is most important here. The MedBay is close, and the large window opens on Friday's command to reveal a well-stocked, sterile room with a hospital bed and an operating table.
What it lacks is a doctor.
"Doctor Hanover used to be on call, but you stopped paying her retainer six months ago."
FRIDAY's sass today is off the charts. "Any ideas then, babe?"
"You and Peter are the same bloodtype."
He looks down at the child in his arms, all blood and shadows. Too light, yet carrying too much weight on his shoulders.
He doesn't know anything about him but his name. But he wants to. He should.
He's pretty sure he found his lost child.
His missing piece.
The hole in every memory.
What's a little blood?
He'd give his very life for this kid.
"Walk me through it, Fri."