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“Okay, that’s it, kid, I’m not letting you put off your lunch anymore,” Tony says, patting Peter on the shoulders. “You’re a growing boy. You need to eat. No more working.”
“I’m gonna keep working,” Peter says, eyes only a little bleary as he stares at the screen. “But this isn’t work. This is fun, this is like, my favorite thing—”
Tony laughs. “Fine. But growing boy, needs food, c’mon. We were supposed to eat two hours ago. This is what happens, this is why I get yelled at, it’s never my fault, and yet—”
“I’m a man,” Peter says, briefly glancing back at him. “Spider—Spider-Man, it’s in the official title, Tony, and I know you respect titles.”
“Uh huh.”
“And—I’ve probably stopped growing. I don’t know. The powers maybe—maybe I could still be growing, because of my powers—you know what, I don’t know, like you’ve said before—always learning.” He types in a couple more commands in Tony’s computer, and Friday opens up the specs for the left foot gauntlet on Mark 105.
“Always learning,” Tony says, snatching the wrench off the desk and tossing it in the air, catching it again. “One day you’re just gonna start levitating and we aren’t even gonna be surprised—oh, just another one of his powers—”
“I hope it’s full out flying,” Peter says, trying to scan through the lines of code. “Like, if I can just levitate? Boring.”
“One day you’ll be able to ditch the webshooters because the webs will just start coming out of your wrists,” Tony says.
Peter whips his head around to look at him. “Ew,” he blurts out. “That’s—no. No, I hope not. I hope not. That can’t happen.” He narrows his eyes. “No. I hope that can't happen. That better not start happening.”
Tony snorts. “Okay, pasta from last night or a sandwich? I think we’ve got—turkey, salami, pb&j—”
“How about turkey and salami together and that pepperjack cheese that I mostly ate but didn’t finish?” Peter asks, and he grins and bats his eyes, because Tony didn’t know that he ate the cheese.
Tony’s brows furrow. “Fine, crazy,” he says. He leaves the wrench on the shelf next to the door, and heads out. “Don’t blow anything up!”
“I can’t make promises!” Peter yells.
He hears Tony laugh before the door seals back behind him, and Peter smiles, looking back at the computer.
He’s been here at the new compound for three days now, and they’ve spent most of their time in the workshop with a pile of old Iron Man suits and two new models.
It’s been hard, since the end of the world was no longer the end of the world, more like…a new beginning. Sorta. Being stuck in a timeless colorless non-existence wasn’t the best thing in the world, by a longshot, some pocket universe full of the echoes of all the lost, all the ‘blipped’, and Peter couldn’t do anything and lost hope about a billion times amongst all the entropy, but then he just—came back. They all just came back and then Strange dragged him right into the middle of a massive battle and it had been two years two whole years—
He blows out a breath and shifts the specs around on the old suit model. Peter feels like he gets super crazy and hyped up when he thinks about all of it, about everything, how he almost lost Tony and how he should have lost Tony, how that probably would have been how their story ended if Carol and Thor and Bruce hadn’t gotten there in time to support him when Tony snapped his fingers—
And Peter was half inside his head for the first month or so after—
Who is he kidding, he still is, and it’s been seven months now—
But Tony is fine, he’s back on his feet, he’s actually back out in Avenger battles and helping with dangerous shit even though everybody tells him not to—
And Peter is inside his own head, yeah, he is, worrying about him and everything else all the time—
And May and MJ encouraged him to go into therapy, with a Tony-chosen professional who knows all of their identities, so he’s been doing that—
But this kinda stuff is more therapy, to him. Hanging out with the Avengers, May helping him with his homework and college applications, sitting with MJ and Ned on the roof of the new compound, actual dates with MJ, working on suits with Tony. They focused on a whole fleet of new Spider-Man suits, for a while, and then eventually, after some chiding and hint-dropping from Peter, Tony said they could work on some Iron Man suits, too.
It makes Peter feel calm, to work on these. It reminds him of programming the new security system at May’s apartment, or giving MJ and Ned those watches that are essentially like technological Swiss army knives. He likes making sure Tony’s suits are the cream of the crop, especially if he insists on being on the front lines.
Peter thinks he’s still on the front lines because Peter is still on the front lines. But he isn’t giving up any time soon, so he doesn’t exactly know how to approach that subject. So he just doesn’t, and he hopes that one day, Tony will allow himself to retire. He deserves it. He’s got his wedding anniversary coming in December, and maybe kids on the horizon—he deserves it. He deserves for his time to be his own.
But Peter knows Tony will never stop supporting him.
He sighs to himself, and tries to get out of his own head. He sifts through the repulsor modes for a second, then moves on to the levels on the reactor beams and how Tony can pair with some of the other Avengers to create more powerful blasts. Peter smiles to himself, and knows he and Tony have a few pair-ups, like when Peter shoots a web bomb and Tony blasts it at the same time.
“I need to come up with more stuff like that,” Peter whispers, clicking his tongue. He knows Tony is gonna want him to get off the computer when he gets back in here with lunch, and hopefully, after they eat, they can actually start tearing into the suits and putting new parts in, so Peter starts scrolling through protocols while he still has time.
Tony’s got all kinds of weird names loaded in here. The Snake Bus Protocol. Frozen Banana Protocol. Slippery Jackrabbit Protocol. Happy Hogan’s Day Out Protocol.
And then there’s one labeled Avalon Protocol that’s got two black dots next to it, unlike anything else in the list that Peter’s seen so far.
He narrows his eyes, and his curiosity gets the better of him. He opens the details.
And his breath catches.
He sees the lines of code to, to—to put the protocol into action and he sees the description which also has a voice memo from when Tony coded it in but it’s outlined right there—right there in words that each hit Peter with a kind of force that shouldn’t feel like trucks slamming into him but here they are—
IF HEARTBEAT EVER STOPS AND BODY DIES, PROTOCOL IS FOR THE SUIT TO CONTINUE RUNNING ON AUTOMATIC ACTIVE SENTRY MODE DESPITE USER STARK BEING DECEASED. CONTINUE RUNNING DEFENSE AND ATTACK UNTIL THREAT IS NEUTRALIZED. BRAIN SCANNED AND MAPPED TO CONTINUE ACTIVITY.
Peter braces his hand on the desk and feels like he’s gonna vomit. He glances down, fighting through a wave of dizziness, and he looks back up again to make sure he’s reading this right, and he reads it again and nearly gags because yeah, it says it, it says it, and it’s active, it isn’t old it isn’t out of date it isn’t—it isn’t something that Tony rethought and got rid of, no, it’s still there, it’s still there—
Peter closes it. He closes the protocol list and clicks out of the suit altogether.
He gets up, pushes the chair back and knocks into the toolkit on top of the sliding tray and it clatters to the ground, but his vision is knocking him off balance, and he clutches at his stomach because he genuinely feels like he’s gonna hurl. He can’t look at the suits behind him. He can’t look at them. He can’t.
He thinks about it. He thinks about what he just read and he imagines it, he imagines it in a real world scenario, he thinks about it happening, he thinks about what it would be like in the end, when the suit opened up, and would it open on its own or would they have to pry it open, and there’s so many times it could have happened when Peter was there with him, so many times, so many, and now all of those memories are mutating to have that horror story ending, and he can’t stop his head from taking off with this, he can’t stop it, and he and May have talked about this they’ve talked about this and how to come back from it but he’s already in a tailspin and he can’t stop thinking about it and he has to get out of here—
He stumbles around the workstations and nearly knocks a couple more things over and he pushes the door open and breaks one of its hinges.
He doesn’t want to run into Tony on the way out. Then he’ll have to explain himself. And he keeps picturing his dead body falling out of the suit and he might puke on him if he sees him.
So, of course, as soon as Peter gets up onto the next landing after climbing the stairs, Tony is standing there with a plate.
His brows furrow when he sees Peter. “What’s wrong? You okay? You didn’t hurt yourself, right?”
“No,” Peter says, and he looks down at Tony’s feet instead. Body falling out of the suit. Body falling out of the suit dead body dead body.
He chose that. Tony chose that. He put that in there. It flickers in Peter’s brain like an angry ember and he grits his teeth and brushes past him. “MJ needs me for something important, I gotta—I gotta go, sorry about the—sorry about the sandwich—”
He hears Tony rushing after him, and he holds the sandwich out for Peter to take. “Well, take this—can I drive you? Is she alright? Do I need to put the suit on?”
Tears spring to Peter’s eyes and he takes the sandwich and nearly stuffs half of it into his mouth. Put the suit on. No. No. No. “No it’s like it’s fine but I gotta go and I told Happy already and he’s driving me and I’ll talk to you later okay?”
He says it all as he’s walking and his face burns with embarrassment and sadness and horror and anger mixing together in some toxic waste and he’s definitely gonna puke and he chews the sandwich and he’s gonna puke and he could easily never have another sandwich again because Tony died inside the suit and none of them knew it because the suit kept fighting until the battle was done until he fell out dead and what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—
Peter marches out, panicking and losing it and chewing the sandwich.
“Pete!” Tony calls. “You’re not okay, talk to me, huh, lemme—”
“I’m fine!” Peter yells, and he runs to get the hell out of there.
~
“And you didn’t say anything?” Happy asks, sitting next to Tony at the counter.
“No,” Tony says, feeling sick and dejected. “And he lied about you too, so, I feel like something—happened. Well, I know something happened, because I already talked to MJ. And May.”
Happy snorts. “You called them?”
Tony narrows his eyes at him. “Of course I did, Peter flew out of here, feathers all fluffed up, he looked like he was about to cry and I was so taken aback that I didn’t handle it right at all, dammit, and they said he’s not with them and I just don’t—I mean, I don’t know.”
“I know you’re trying not to do this, but—”
“Yes, I tracked him,” Tony says, with a sigh. “He’s alive and has a raised heartbeat but physically he’s fine, he’s off sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge and I have no idea why.” His heart hurts and he’s worried as all get-out and he doesn’t know what the hell to do. “Should I fly out there? See what’s going on? I know he gets in his head sometimes, I don’t know if I should—”
“Just leave him for a bit, Tony,” Happy says. “He’ll be okay, and you’ll see him again soon, and he’ll probably explain and it’ll be some off the wall thing that doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“But he knows I can help him,” Tony says, cracking his jaw. “So—”
“So you’ve done the same thing with us, and him,” Happy says. “He’ll figure it out.”
Tony doesn’t want to push, or be overbearing. He drums his fingers on the counter, anxious for Pepper to get home and give her opinion on this.
~
And she does, and it’s similar to what Happy said, and then Tony doesn’t see Peter for four days.
He calls and gets the answering machine, he texts and gets silence, and then he hacks into the suit and gets a curt response about being busy and yeah he seems to be busy fighting some low level whatevers, but the response just doesn’t seem like Peter. It doesn’t seem like Peter. And Tony knows he’s done something, he feels like he’s gonna fucking lose his mind because he can’t figure out what, and he even asks Friday and she doesn’t know, either.
So Tony has seventeen breakdowns and twelve strokes and four heart attacks, and he’s actually thankful when there’s a high-level drone situation on Fifth Ave and 23rd. He’s thankful, because they all respond to the event, including Spider-Man.
It’s already an outrageous outbreak when Iron Man arrives there, and Spider-Man shows up fast after, still carrying an air of tension and anger down to his very aura. Tony tries to stay focused on the drones, and the clearly self-enhanced assholes controlling them, and he lets Rhodey take lead while Steve and Natasha run around the perimeter of the compromised area, trying to figure out what the endgame is here.
Tony dodges a couple big blasts from one of the larger drones, but it’s close, and he nearly gets clipped.
“Stark, status?” Peter’s voice says, angry but panicked in his ear.
STARK?
“Fine, Spidey,” Tony says, a little incredulous, and he glances down, seeing the kid on the ground. He’s fighting back and forth with one of the more spindly drones, and it whizzes around his head as Peter peers up at Tony.
“What’s got his panties in a bunch?” Sam’s voice asks, and Tony doesn’t know whether he’s saying it to him on a private line or not.
Tony just clears his throat because he doesn’t have a legitimate answer.
“Friday, line two—Rhodey,” Tony says, his voice sounding stupid and pinched. “You hear him? What did I say?”
“Yeah, uh, he’s pissed off about something,” Rhodey says, and Tony can hear the chaos around him. Another drone shoots at him but he manages to disable this one, and another one that Clint hacked with the nano-arrows flies by and escorts the dead one to the ground. “But he’s still concerned enough to ask you if you’re okay?”
Tony flies forward, and he does get shot by one of the smaller drones. It gives him a little jolt, but nothing more than that, and he whips around, aiming a repulsor—
“Stark, you good? You okay?” Peter’s voice again, yelling.
“Kid, I’m good, are you good, are you okay?” Tony asks, and he looks down at him. Peter’s gotten rid of the spindly drone and he’s fighting an actual guy this time, one of the lunatics in the backpacks. Tony sees a whole hoard of some of the larger drones flying in, and Thor is on a building a few down, knocking them around and smashing them together.
Peter doesn’t respond, but Tony sees him looking back and forth between his opponent and Tony himself.
What the hell is going on? Why is he watching him so closely?
“What did you do to him, Tony, huh?” Rhodey asks, on the other line, still. “Sounds sassy, sounds pissy, what the—oh shit, one second, these big ones are worse.”
“I see that,” Tony says, watching the explosions, and shit he always tries to avoid the property damage—they’ve got all the people out, or so Bruce and the ground team reported, but he was hoping to avoid anything too big—
A couple cars fly up into the air with a bigger explosion, and he has to check in with Steve and see if this is a distraction for something bigger.
He starts to fly away, Friday targeting a big cluster of the larger drones, when he looks down at Peter.
The kid is a little further down the street, but now he’s just. He’s just standing there. He’s just standing there, and staring at him. Staring right up at him, unmoving, just staring, hands balled into fists, and Friday starts to scan him without Tony asking her to—
And then a big drone just fucking blasts him.
Tony startles because it shoots more than once, and the car next to Peter blows up, and the kid wasn’t paying attention because he was staring at him and a fireball flares up and completely encompasses him—
“KID!” Tony nearly screams, and he immediately changes his trajectory and speeds towards him. The air is hazy with smoke and flames but he surges through, and Friday highlights where Peter is laid out on the street, clutching at his head. Tony swoops down and scoops him up, holding him close and flying him out of there.
It’s selfish, but nothing seems more important right now than getting him safe.
Peter is groaning and clutching at his head still, and Tony lands on a roof a little ways away, so that the chaos and carnage is more muted.
“I got you, I got you,” Tony says, setting him down but still holding on to him.
“Oh, do you?” Peter snaps, pushing away from him. “Because—because I don’t know. I don’t know.” He stumbles back and immediately yanks his mask off, and Tony can see a line of blood dripping down the side of his face.
Tony tries to stay calm even though he doesn’t feel normal, and Pete isn’t normal either. “Kid, I distinctly remember asking you to refrain from injuring yourself, you remember that? When we started on team duty?” He laughs, and his laugh sounds fake.
Fake enough for Peter to immediately mock, making a stupid face and rolling his eyes. “Well, well, well, we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Tony’s facade drops immediately. “Pete, what the hell is going on?” he asks, and he retracts his mask down, too.
“Oh, you’re still in there?” Peter asks, stumbling around, away from him, nearly tripping over his own feet. He stares at him with malice. “Good. Good. Because, you know, I couldn’t tell. Maybe I couldn’t tell.”
“Peter, you’ve been acting insane for the past however many days and it’s giving me a goddamn ulcer, what’s going on, what did I do? Tell me. Tell me and I’ll fix it.”
Peter is still stalking around, and Friday is listing off his injuries, from a concussion to broken ribs to a sprained ankle, and Tony feels sick looking at it all.
“You’ll fix it,” Peter says, glancing over at him with pure disdain, the look bookended by matching explosions somewhere behind them. “Yeah it’s something you can’t fix, if it happens, nope, can’t fix it, it would just—but you’re just saying—”
Tony starts forward towards him. “Pete, explain to me what’s happening, please.”
“The protocol, the protocol,” Peter insists, waving his hands through the air.
Tony shakes his head. “The protocol?”
“The Avalon Protocol, Tony,” Peter spits out, with venom.
Tony stares at him, his brain working.
Peter scoffs at him again. “Yeah, I saw it, I saw it when I was—looking at the suit, and the lists of stuff, and I—I saw it.” His lower lip trembles a little bit, but he’s clearly trying to keep up his stony, angry face.
Tony tries to wrack his mind. He has eight hundred billion protocols built into the suits. He tries to remember.
“You dying in the suit, the suit—scanning your brain and keeping on without you even if you’re dead in there—and that face, you don’t even—you don’t even remember—”
He does, when Peter describes it. He programmed that back after the wormhole in the sky. When his brain officially broke, when all his paranoia rose to the surface. But he forgot about it because he forgets about a lot of things.
He scoffs, now. “Oh, that?” he asks, which is clearly the wrong thing to say, because Peter’s whole face falls. “That’s—that old thing—”
Peter looks hurt, wounded by that response and he shakes his head. “You, you—you, you don’t—you don’t even…” He trails off, looking at Tony like he’s the worst thing he’s ever seen. He starts stumbling away from him again, towards the other end of the roof.
Tony follows, panicking. “Kid, that—that’s not anything—”
Peter doesn’t look at him. “It’s anything, it’s something—”
“No, it’s—I haven’t thought about that in a hundred years—listen, it’s fine, you’re hurt and we have to take care of that—”
Peter gasp-sobs then, and groans after it like he doesn’t want to be crying, and he’s starting to move faster. “You don’t even get it, you just don’t—you don’t even care you don’t even understand—”
“Pete—”
But he shoots a web and he’s already swinging away.
“Goddamnit,” Tony says, and he starts flying after him.
The kid is wavering all over the place, awkward swings that are badly angled, and his webslinging isn’t normal, barely accurate half the time, and he’s moving so fast that Tony has to activate his backup thrusters in order to keep up with him.
He opens a private line between the two of them, but he doesn’t even know if Peter is listening, because his mask is still off.
“Kid, c’mon,” Tony says, trying to keep him in view. “Hey, stop, stop—”
Peter weaves in between buildings, and for a moment, Tony loses him. Tony’s heart rate picks up, and he nearly blows right past until Friday tells him to turn.
Peter’s broken through a window on an office building, and it looks like the floor he chose is under construction, which is a lucky break. Tony flies in too, barely fitting through the frame, and at first, he doesn’t see Peter. Just tarp and wooden paneling and unlaid tiles, carpets rolled up in tall cylinders leaning against the far wall.
Tony lands on his feet and starts looking around, breathing hard and relentlessly worried.
“Where is he, Friday?” Tony asks, watching her scan. “Peter? Kid, please—”
But then he hears him. Somewhere off in the corner next to some strips of plastic hanging from the ceiling, close to a wall of exposed brick.
“You don’t even get it, you just don’t get it don’t even understand—”
Tony retracts his helmet again when he gets closer, and then he sees him. Peter is huddled on the ground, and he has his knees drawn up to his chest like he’s trying to make himself as small as he can. He’s shaking his head and muttering, fingers contracting in and out.
“Boss, from my scans, I believe Peter potentially has internal bleeding,” Friday says.
Tony nearly vomits, the whole world tilting around him.
“Okay, we gotta go,” Tony says, surging towards him. “Jesus, you’re shivering—”
Peter holds out his hand, trying to ward Tony off. “No, no, no, no—”
“Pete, please, please lemme help you—”
Peter gives him a withering look. “You can’t, you can’t, not if you’re dead, not if you’re dead and we don’t know, and then what, and then what—”
“I’m not dead, bud,” Tony says, and he bends down, glad he’s in the nano suit, so he can move better. “I’m right here.”
“You don’t get it you don’t get it,” Peter says, and tears are running down his face. He looks like he’s trying to focus, and having a real hard time of it. “What if it was me? Or Rhodey, with that—with that protocol, huh? And we died and at the end of the battle when the suit comes off we just flop out—dead. You’ve been thinking the whole time you were talking to us but you weren’t because we died. Because we were dead in there.” He sounds angry but he sounds forlorn, too, like this has been eating at him, and the injuries and high pressure situation have just made it that much worse.
And that example does exactly what Peter intended it to. It hits Tony like a freight train. The visuals are—too much, and he feels sick again, with thinking about it and thinking about Peter’s injuries and his tears and his hurts and the days he’s been sitting with this.
He was standing there, staring at Tony, worrying about this. And that’s why he got hit.
“Okay,” Tony whispers, crouching in front of him, his hands up, as nonthreatening as he can be. “Okay. I get it. I get it.”
“You don’t,” Peter says, his whole face screwed up with tears. “You don’t at all, Tony, at all, at all.” He hiccups a little bit and rests his head on his knees, trying to make himself smaller. “How could you? How could you?”
“I’m sorry,” Tony says, softly. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“You’re not—”
“But we have to get you out of here now,” Tony says, gentle but assertive. “Okay? We’ll get back to this later and you can yell at me all you want, as much as you want. You’re bleeding, you’re hurt, I gotta get you to Helen.”
Peter doesn’t look up, just shaking his head. “No, no,” he whispers. “How could you? How could you? How could you…”
Tony’s heart feels like it’s fucking shattering, and he’s panicking again. He’s gotta get him out of here, get him safe. He slips a gentle hand underneath Peter’s knees, and the kid starts gasping. But instead of pushing him away, he wraps his arms around Tony’s neck, holding onto him. “There we go,” Tony says, his heart dipping and straining again, and he stands up with Peter in his arms.
“You’re so stupid,” Peter breathes, hiding his face in the crook of Tony’s neck. “So stupid. The worst.”
“I know,” Tony says, and when he puts the facemask on Peter pulls back and looks at him. He grimaces and shakes his head.
“No, no,” Peter breathes, as they lift off, and Tony hopes they can get through the fucking window. “No, no, not—”
“I’m in here, I’m in here, I promise,” Tony says. “I’m not dead, nothing’s happened. Keep talking to me and I’ll keep talking to you.”
Peter shakes his head and jolts a bit, and he rests his forehead on the chin of the Iron Man mask. “Dumb. Stupid. The worst. The worst, you’re the worst. The worst.”
“I know, bud,” Tony says, swallowing hard, still living with the image of the Avalon Protocol being in Peter or Rhodey’s suits. “I know, I know.”
~
Peter half passes out on the fly back, even though Tony keeps startling him awake. Tony hates when he’s all limp, like a rag doll, but whenever he wakes up he freaks out more, worse and worse each time it happens. Tony alerts Helen of the situation, and he thinks this is a surgery type deal, because the kid is also bleeding through the suit on his right side. It feels like it takes a billion years to get him back, and Peter wakes up one more time when Tony is rushing him down the hallway to the med bay.
Tony’s not in the suit anymore, the nanos inside the housing unit, but Peter is fully inside his own head now, pushing at him and wailing and trying to get away.
“Peter, Peter—”
“No, no, no, Tony, Tony—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I promise, kid, I swear—”
“No, no, it’s not, it’s not, just stop,” Peter sobs, and he pushes at him and clings to him for a moment, burying his face in his neck and just crying. Tony would rather that, even though it’s agonizing, but then Peter pulls back and starts trying to get away from him again. He’s clearly in a weakened state, but his strength is still coming through, and Tony knows he’s gonna have bruises all over his arm.
“Lay him right here, Tony,” Helen says, urging him to a gurney. Peter’s eyes are glassy and unfocused and he’s scaring the ever loving shit out of everybody, Tony can tell, all the nurses who know his identity and Helen herself.
Tony lays him down.
“You’re dead in there,” Peter says, looking right at him, pointing at him. “You’re dead in there. You’re dead.”
“Pete, I promise, I’m not, I’m okay—”
Peter lays back and trembles and covers his eyes with his hand.
“Hey,” Tony says, grabbing at his wrist. “Hey, hey, listen to me, look at me—”
“Dead. You’re dead. Mom dead and Dad dead and Ben dead and Tony dead and May dead next and then me dead and we’re all dead—”
Tony’s sweating and freaking out and his heart isn’t doing well with this, at all. “Peter—”
“Tony, you need to go,” Helen says. She pulls Tony’s hand off of him, and she steps in front of the gurney, in front of Tony, separating him from Peter.
“No, no, no, I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere—”
Peter is just getting louder. “You’re dead you’re dead you’re dead you’re dead—”
Each word hits him like a spray of bullets, and Helen gets more serious.
“You need to go now. You’re stressing him out. We’ve got this.”
She starts pushing Tony towards the door as the nurses wheel Peter away.
Tony feels dizzy, sick in the face of the entire fucking situation, and he doesn’t know what to do or what to say or which way is up. “I’m, I’m—”
“You’re dead,” Peter yells. “Dead. Dead in there. Dead dead dead you’re dead you’re dead—”
Helen urges Tony out the door and lets it close behind him, and she rushes off after Peter, who’s still yelling. Tony stumbles back until he hits the wall and his eyes are straining with how hard he’s staring, and he doesn’t even realize Rhodey is next to him until he starts speaking.
“What the hell is going on?” Rhodey asks, grabbing Tony’s shoulder. “What the hell happened? Is he saying all that to you? Because that doesn’t sound like—not our Pete, not to you, Jesus, what the hell—”
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I saw he got hit, I saw you got him, but why’s he yelling at you—does this have anything to do with how he was acting before—hey, look at me.”
Tony does, on instinct, and Rhodey looks worried.
“You two are always a team, what’s—what’s happening? What happened?”
Tony sighs. He can’t make any shit up because it’ll come out anyway, somehow—he doesn’t know if Peter is gonna be in the mood to protect his mistakes when he wakes up after surgery—and the kid always hates surgery he hates being in there alone but now he hates Tony more than that, and Tony sighs and looks down at their feet.
“Tony,” Rhodey presses.
“Okay, just—don’t be mad at me now. Be mad at past Tony, okay, like, years ago Tony, not yesterday or last week, but years and years ago.”
“Peter is pissed about something from years and years ago?” Rhodey asks, his brows furrowed.
Tony sighs again. “Back after the Battle of New York, I—I built a protocol into the suit that made sure it would keep fighting no matter what.”
Rhodey stares at him. “What’s that mean?”
Tony doesn’t say anything.
“Like, if you broke your leg or something, it’d keep going?” Rhodey asks.
Tony clears his throat, feeling how bad it is with every passing second. “Uh, no matter what, it’d keep fighting.”
Rhodey keeps staring at him.
“No matter what.”
“What are you saying?” Rhodey asks, letting go of his shoulder. “What are you saying to me, what are you talking about?”
Tony looks away and Rhodey punches him in the arm. Hard.
“Okay, okay,” Tony says, wincing.
“For one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, you’re truly a fucking moron, you know that? You hear me?” He punches him again.
Tony moves away from him. “Okay, Rhodey, yeah, I get it—”
“Do you?” Rhodey asks, brows furrowed. He walks away from him, but quickly turns back and looks like he wants to punch him again. He doesn’t, but his glare could melt Everest. “And it’s still active?”
“Yeah,” Tony says. “I just—”
“Shit, Tony, what would make you ever—and leaving it active—and leaving it where the kid can fucking see it? Tony?”
Tony sighs, feeling the weight of it leaning on him heavier and heavier. “I didn’t remember, I forgot, alright—”
“Not alright, not alright,” Rhodey says, hovering close to him again. “Anything could have happened at any fucking time, and you didn’t remember, Jesus. You forgot. How did he even see it? How?”
“I don’t know,” Tony says, shrugging. “I guess—I guess it came up, somehow, when we were working on the suits—I mean, I guess, that’s what he said, he said he saw it, so I guess—”
“You guess—”
“I haven’t thought about it—”
“You didn’t think at all, you never do,” Rhodey says. He crosses his arms over his chest. “That kid—let’s see, he ‘died’ and came back, was lost in some fucking—world we still know nothing about, for two whole years—his Uncle died, his parents are dead, he nearly gets killed on the daily, he had to watch you nearly kick it, too, and all the while he’s trying to grow up like a normal teenager when he’s the complete opposite of normal—and now he’s out here worrying, because of you and your dumb self-sacrificing shit, that he’s watching your fucking corpse flying around in the sky—”
Tony closes his eyes and hangs his head.
“You traumatized an already traumatized teenager that you supposedly loved—”
“Love, not past tense—please, okay, I get it—”
“What if he put something like that in his own suit—”
“Stop, okay?” Tony asks, looking up at him. “He already played that with me. I understand. Lovely imagery, real cinematic—I fucking hate it, I hate it, I understand.”
Rhodey stares at him. “When are you deleting it?”
“Now,” Tony says, sucking in a breath. He looks up at the ceiling. “Friday.”
“Yes Boss?”
“Please delete the Avalon Protocol in perpetuity forever and ever, etc etc, every backup or trace of it,” Tony says, his throat tight.
“Understood, executing the command now.”
Both of them sigh. Tony’s arm hurts where Rhodey hit him and where Peter was pushing at him, and he still feels like he’s shaking, and his worry is pulsing under his skin. He can still hear Peter yelling dead dead dead in that dazed and agonized voice, and he’s never seen him like that, ever. Not like that.
Tony just wonders how the hell he keeps making such catastrophic mistakes.
“Need to call May,” Tony says, feeling small and stupid.
“I’ll do it,” Rhodey says. “She’s on a double right?”
“Yeah,” Tony says, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. “So you have to call that—that special number she gave us, where you’ll actually be able to get a hold of her—”
“I know,” Rhodey says. “We all know the Peter protocols.”
Protocol.
There was once a time when Tony was completely fine with dying inside the suit. Letting it carry on without him. There was once a time when he felt like Iron Man was the one that mattered, not Tony Stark.
And he let that loom over the rest of his life like a specter. A reminder of that listless hell he was in—he could have let it take him long after he’d learned to love himself, truly, not just for the cameras, not just for paparazzi antics. He could have let that take him when he had so much to live for. So many people who love him.
Dead in there.
Dead—a horrible surprise, a horrible shock at the end of a battle hard-won.
He gets their anger and he burns with embarrassment.
How could he do that to them? How could he even allow it to be a possibility?
“I’m just getting on you because I love you,” Rhodey says. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” Tony says, voice cracking. “I just hate the whole thing, and I hate that he, uh—that it affected him so badly. And I know why,” he says, looking up. “I’m just pissed that it happened and I let it happen.”
Rhodey’s got that look that means he’s keeping things, he’s not saying them, he’s not saying things that he’s gonna say later. And Tony assumes, because he knows him, that the things he isn’t saying are all about telling everybody else. Pepper, Happy, May, the team, everybody, and Tony figures they’ll find out anyway, because Peter’s pissed at him and Peter is never pissed at him and that’ll raise questions. And again—he knows the kid probably isn’t in the mood to help Tony save face.
“I’ll go call May,” Rhodey says, and he pats Tony’s arm now, doesn’t punch him, thankfully. “You can go wait on him.”
“I’m sorry, Rhodey,” Tony says, shaking his head. “Alright? I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too, that you ever felt you needed to do that,” Rhodey says. “More sorry that you fucking forgot.”
Tony sighs.
Jesus Christ.
~
And Tony waits and boils inside his head, like he’s boiling alive in a giant pot of his own shame. Whenever he’s panicking like this he loses track of time, and he can’t tell if it’s been minutes or months by the time Helen comes out and says Peter is asking for him.
“Asking for me?” Tony asks, nearly tripping over his own feet as he stands back up, bones creaking and cracking. “Me?”
“You,” Helen says, and she’s giving him a look like she knows what’s going on, even though there’s no way she can, unless Peter became a lot more coherent.
“He didn’t—he didn’t wake up during surgery, right?” Tony asks, mouth dry, worry flaring up. “Right? Not again, right—”
“No, no, everything’s—I took care of it, it was—relatively minor, for him, but of course he’s not resting and recovering, because he is who he is—and he’s delirious on his Peter drugs and he’s yelling for you.”
Yelling.
Tony starts to follow her. “Like, in a—mad, a mad way? Like he’s—shouting, angrily, saying—”
“No,” Helen says, glaring at him again. “He’s just calling for you, like he needs you.”
Tony swallows hard. May still isn’t here, which is concerning, and he checks his phone and doesn’t see any updates from anybody. He catches sight of the time and sees that it’s been almost two hours, and he wonders how long surgery took, he wonders when Peter started asking for him, he wonders why he is, he wonders he wonders he wonders—
“Tony!” Peter yells, from a couple doors down. “Tony, Tony, hey, hey! Tony, where—where are you—”
Tony narrows his eyes and exchanges a look with Helen, and she blows out a breath.
“He’s a mess,” Helen says. “And I have no idea what’s going on between you two, and I’ve seen him in a lot of different—situations, and—emotional states, and this—this nearly takes the cake, I’ll have to do some comparisons but—”
“Tony! Tony!”
“Jesus,” Tony mutters, and both of them pick up the pace. “But he’s fine, you said he’s—”
“He just went through surgery, and as usual, he had injuries that would have completely decimated a normal person—he’s emotionally wrecked over…whatever is going on, so he’s not fine, is he? Is he ever fine?”
Tony lets out a shaky breath, not wanting to answer that or acknowledge it, and he strides forward into the room just as Peter calls for him again.
“Just don’t make it worse,” Helen says, and Tony hears her walking away as the door swings closed.
Peter is in bed, bandages all over his face, his hair all mussed up, and he’s pale as a ghost. The sheets are drenched in sweat and tangled up in his legs. His face lights up, at first, when he sees Tony, and his eyes are glassy and unfocused.
“Hey, hey, buddy,” Tony says, gently, walking further into the room. “Hey.”
Peter smiles for a second, and then he wilts back against the pillows, averting his eyes. His face crumples and he shakes his head, and Tony rushes over and sits on the side of the bed.
“Kid, you’re gonna give yourself an ulcer,” Tony says, taking his hand. “Or I’m gonna give you an ulcer. To go along with the rest of it.” He sees that Peter has bandages on his arms and neck, too, the ones Helen uses to treat burns. “Pete.”
“I can’t calm down,” Peter says, nearly slurring, shaking his head at him. “I can’t. I can’t. You’re gonna die. You’re gonna die in there, you’re gonna—”
Tony shifts around so he’s facing him, and he covers Peter’s hand with both of his own. “I’m not. I got rid of it, I got rid of it already, it’s gone.”
“Your own coffin,” Peter sobs, tears tracing down his face.
Tony shakes his head, not even sure if he’s hearing him. “Pete—”
“Just dead in there and we wouldn’t even know it, Tony, we wouldn’t even—” He hiccups and gasps, leaning forward and bracing his head on Tony’s shoulder. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am.”
Tony’s heart breaks, and he feels the weight of his past mistake careening into his future, poisoning the kid who was unlucky enough to fall into the ‘son’ category with none other than Tony Stark.
“You’re right here, okay?” Tony whispers, and Peter’s hair is sweaty but Tony cards his fingers through it anyway, at the base of his neck. “You’re safe, I’m safe, don’t worry about it right now, okay? Just rest, please, for once in your life—May’s coming, team’s gonna come, I’ll get MJ and Ned here—”
“I don’t know where I am,” Peter says again, voice smaller this time, more childlike, a role he tries desperately to get away from when he’s in his right mind, but he’s falling right into it now that he’s not. Now that Tony’s confused him beyond belief and broken his trust entirely, backed him into a corner where he got himself blown up. He shoves closer and sighs, shaking his head, and Tony hates himself.
“You’re right here with me,” Tony says, rubbing his back. “And I’m not going anywhere, so we’re okay.”
“Help me, please,” Peter gasps. “I don’t know how to—figure this out—”
“Hey,” Tony says, worrying so much that he’s sweating now, and he grips Peter’s shoulder. “Hey. Whatever you need, okay? Okay? Anything.”
Peter doesn’t say anything else, just cries worse.
Tony wilts, his head pounding. “We’re good, we’re okay, you gotta sleep, that’s it, and I’m not going anywhere. Right here, that’s it. Okay? Say okay.”
“Okay,” Peter says, sniffling. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Tony says again, and he feels the bumps and bruises on the back of Peter’s head. “Nap time. Just a little siesta, that’s all. You can yell at me for hours when you wake up, as many hours as you sleep, exact match. Okay? Relax, Peter. Relax.”
“Okay,” Peter says again, still sniffling and shaking.
“I got you. I got you.” Tony rubs his arm, ruffles his hair, tries to be gentle even though he feels like a giant, one that breaks everything he touches.
He feels like shit.
~
And Peter rises up out of a bog or a fish tank or an overfull bath tub or something, and he floats on the surface. He hears their voices.
“No, Tony, you’re out of your mind—”
“I know, trust me—”
“I don’t think you do know.”
“I can’t believe it, and I can’t believe—”
“Listen, all due respect to everyone in the room, including my actual wife, but I shoulda waited until he woke up to let him yell at me first, considering the knowledge of my pseudo-suicidal tendencies got him blown up—”
“You’re making me even angrier at you—”
“Even though I would prefer hugs, not yelling—”
“You’ll be lucky if—”
Peter groans and covers his eyes with his hand, even though they’re still closed. The talking stops and he can hear a general sort of shifting, and his head feels like a raw piece of meat that some idiot has been punching or something. He doesn’t know, he’s only seen about half of Rocky. That was when that swarm of whatevers took over City Hall, and they had to run out, and they never finished it.
“Peter,” May’s voice says. “Sweetheart.”
“Peter?” MJ asks, gently.
Tony clears his throat. And a couple other throats are cleared, and when Peter pulls his hand back and opens his eyes, he sees that the room is completely full. May and MJ are on one side of him, and Tony is on the other, and nobody is around him, like he’s got the plague or something. And the room is completely full, which makes the empty space around Tony even more ridiculous. Ned is behind MJ, Thor is in here, Sam and Bucky are in the corner, Steve and Natasha and Rhodey and Clint and Happy and Pepper, and they’re all looking at him, everybody is looking at him.
And Peter looks at Tony. And remembers the whole reason he was mad, and remembers how that anger felt like it blew up within him when the drone fired, like it gained its own cells and its own membranes and its own beating heart the second Peter’s brain rattled around in his head with the force of the explosion. His anger turned icy frozen and it was a billion times worse, it festered over those four days that he avoided Tony but the explosion made it big, made it crazy. His injuries latched onto his anger like leeches and made him hollow.
And he’s still mad and he can barely remember what the hell he even said when all of that crap was happening—but he knows he has to—he knows he has to—talk to him. Like a normal person. And he can’t do that with an audience.
Peter draws in a breath. “I’m okay—”
“We all know what he did, Peter,” Pepper says, cutting him off. She looks at Tony like she barely even knows him, or knows him way too well. “He told us, after some needling—”
“Not that we wanted to know something like this,” Happy says, bitterly, “but Tony’s always full of lovely surprises—”
“We should know by now,” Rhodey says, rolling his eyes at him.
“And that’s some sick shit,” Sam says, sneering over at Tony. He knocks Steve on the arm. “I mean, imagine if—”
Steve blows out a breath, looking down at his feet solemnly, as if the unthinkable has already happened. “I know,” he says. “I don’t really like to imagine—”
“I feel like I would have known, though,” Natasha says. “If it ever happened. I mean, he’s always talking, so if he was quiet for a long time I feel like I would be able to clock that there was something wrong, but at that point—”
“At that point the worst has already happened!” Thor nearly yells. “And that is the problem, Stark—”
They all start talking over each other then, arguing about situations in which the Avalon Protocol could have shown its ugly face, and Tony isn’t adding to the conversation. May’s in there, though, with the best of them, yelling and shouting like she’s got her own iron suit and shows up to battles when called. Ned keeps saying YEAH here and there, like he’s involved too, and MJ squeezes Peter’s hand. Peter meets her eyes and feels kinda crazy and overwhelmed and guilt is in there too, getting bigger and thicker and more overwhelming the longer this goes on.
MJ seems like she feels it, and she looks at him for another long moment before she quickly presses a kiss to his knuckles and lets go of his hand. She stands up and walks around the bed, and she moves to Tony, holding onto his shoulders and leaning down to say something to him that Peter can’t hear. Tony briefly looks up at her, and Peter can hardly bear the pain in his face, even though he’s still angry and he still feels sick about the entire thing.
“Okay, hey!” MJ yells, standing by the door and clapping her hands. She has to say it again because they don’t stop talking. “Hey, hey! Heroes! Hey. Let’s go be heroic in the hallway. They need to—hash this out. And then you guys can all—hash it out—separately.” She grimaces a little bit at Peter and shrugs, but everybody starts to file out anyway, listening to the instruction and muttering as they leave.
May sighs loudly as she and Ned start to leave too, and she gives Peter one last forehead kiss.
“This isn’t over,” May says, shaking her head, not yelling but using her disappointment voice. “Not by a longshot.”
“I know,” Tony says, chin resting on his folded hands.
Ned looks anxious. “Peter, I’ll grab some—flaming hot Cheetos,” he says, nodding at him.
“Okay,” Peter breathes, nodding back.
“No,” MJ says, as the two of them leave the room. “No, let’s find something—not that.”
And then Peter and Tony are alone. And it feels like the first time since Peter found out, because he can barely count anything after the explosion, because his brain was shaken jello and too much blood, seeing through a broken lens.
Tony sighs. “Pete, I—”
“I need to know what you’re gonna do with the protocol,” Peter says, his voice trembling.
“I deleted it already,” Tony says, looking at him intently. And he seems serious.
“Like deleted deleted?” Peter asks, trying to sit up straighter. “Or like, Tony deleted, AKA it’s sitting in some folder somewhere ready to be reinstated or like, accidentally, you know, loaded back in somehow when some alien monster hacks in to your suit or whatever the hell—”
Peter doesn’t really realize he’s having such a hard time sitting up or that his hands are sliding on the covers until Tony stands up and takes his elbow. He readjusts the pillows and helps Peter move, and then he sits down on the side of the bed. His shoulders are slumped and he looks so defeated.
“It’s deleted deleted,” Tony says, meeting his eyes again. “Gone, never coming back, all traces of it, every backup, they’re all gone. Kaput.”
Peter stares at him, still unsure.
“I promise, okay?” Tony says, widening his eyes. “That’s why I, uh—I told everybody else, because Rhodey heard you when you were yelling when I brought you in here, and so I told him and uh, between you and him it just really—hit me, so I had to—hold myself accountable, and let everybody know, and just—take the anger, and just learn from it, and not be such an—an asshole again. A forgetful, moron asshole.”
Peter cracks his jaw. “You’re not—”
“I am, and I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty.”
Peter sighs. He stares at him and tries not to remember all the things he was agonizing about for those four days after he found out about the protocol. All those visions of death and lives without him that snowballed out into every horror he could have imagined. “I hate the protocol,” he says. “It’s awful, it’s—it’s just seeing yourself as a weapon. Not a person. And it robs your team of knowing—knowing that you died, it robs your team of—trying to get you help, trying to save you if you get that injured that death is—that close. If the death is abrupt, it’s just—morbid. And it creates a very—very horrifying way of discovering the fact that you—died and your body—and it sucks. The whole thing sucks and I hate it.” Peter sets his jaw.
“I know,” Tony says, quietly. “I know, it’s—it’s really bad. It was.”
“Did you really not—not remember that you even—had that protocol? That you even made it, left it active?”
“I didn’t, Pete, I swear,” Tony says. He looks up at the ceiling, and at the door, and then finally back at Peter again. “You know I’m not—the most lovey dovey, shit, kid, but—my life changed a while ago, and then it changed even more when you swung through the door, when you—helped me out with Captain Sparkles out there and then just never left and I never wanted you to leave and I—I’ve made a ton of mistakes in my life and a bunch of them were with you, and you don’t deserve it, and you deserve better than me, but if I had remembered this stupid shit protocol existed when I started—realizing you’re the son I never had, well, I would have gotten rid of it immediately, I would have gone through my own private—self chastising moment and gotten rid of it and never thought about it again, and I hope you can—I hope you can believe me when I say that, Pete, honestly.” He clears his throat and his eyes are shining with unshed tears.
Peter feels like he’s gonna start crying too, and he wipes at his eyes preemptively. “I do,” he says. “But I just hate that you ever felt that way and that there was all that time when you could have just—died in the suit and it would have kept fighting instead of us using those moments to—to help you or to get you help and I’m—I’m gonna be thinking about that for a long time.”
“I know,” Tony says, a little breathlessly. “And I can’t fix that, and I’m sorry. I was in a bad headspace when I made the protocol, but it’s—it’s in the past now, all that, I got through it, I’m—it’s better, I don’t think like that anymore. Long involved process, lots of therapy, lots of aliens, lots of near death, but we’re—on the other side of it. But leaving it there, not—remembering I did that shit…I messed up big time and even though I hate that you had to see it, I hate that you had to find it on your own and live with it and then you got hurt because it was so in your head, I’m glad—I’m glad you saw it because then you reminded me and I was able to kick it to the curb. Get rid of it, get rid of—that whole attitude that I never should have had in the first place.”
“And you’re not gonna have it again?” Peter asks, voice breaking.
“No,” Tony says, definitively, shaking his head. “I’ve got too much now. Too much good in my life. Even though everybody’s pissed at me.”
Peter snorts, covering his eyes with his hand. “I didn’t mean for that.”
“They insisted on seeing the footage of when I brought you in and you were yelling about me being dead and everybody being dead and you yourself being dead and then they all yelled at me for about ten minutes straight about traumatizing a teenager,” Tony says. “Their favorite teenager, at that.”
“Oh my God.” Peter doesn’t remember doing any of that. And he definitely doesn’t want to watch himself saying anything like that.
“I get it if you stay mad at me,” Tony says. “What happened to you is my fault—”
Peter pulls his hand away and looks at him. “No, it’s my fault, because I was distracted, and I could have chosen to not be like that and I could have—chosen to talk to you—but instead I just went a little crazy and got too paranoid thinking about it and watching you and—I got myself blown up, you didn’t get me blown up, I got myself blown up.”
Tony is looking at him sadly, and fondly, and he blows out a breath. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“You scared me too.”
“On multiple levels.”
“Listen, I don’t even know what I was doing,” Peter says, shaking his head. “That wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was, I don’t remember any—any of my actions. Just feelings.”
“Yeah, that’s bad, kid.”
Peter’s lower lip trembles and he scoots forward, hugging him before the waterworks can start. He buries his face in Tony’s shoulder and wishes he would have just resolved this immediately when he found out, but he let his emotions get the better of him, because of course he did.
“I’m sorry,” Tony whispers, holding Peter tight, being wary of his wounds and burns. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Pete.”
“I’m not mad at you,” Peter says, closing his eyes. “Anymore, I’m not—but I just—I don’t know how quickly I’m gonna—get over it. I really let it get into my brain like a worm and now it’s in there and I just—”
“I know,” Tony says, gripping the back of Peter’s neck. “You can take however long you want, okay? And I’ll do whatever you want to fix it, whatever you want, you can stay away from me, put me on timeout—”
“No,” Peter says, shaking his head. “I don’t even like that everybody else is gonna stay mad at you because of me.”
Tony laughs a bit, rubbing Peter’s back. “They’re always gonna take your side, you’re the baby, you’re the little mascot.”
Peter sighs, but still doesn’t let go of him. “I’m not a baby.”
Tony snorts. “I know I know. But you’re—you’re team baby, the team baby, that everybody loves, and usually you’re on my side always, so when you’re not—they know something’s up, something’s wrong, and this in particular—”
“Wasn’t good for anybody—”
“Wasn’t good for anybody—”
“Because everybody loves you,” Peter says, clutching at him tighter as the fear rolls back in. “And nobody wants anything to happen to you. Because we almost lost you once and the fact that we could have lost you like that, like that, when we could have helped you, at any time, and we didn’t even know it—”
“It’s not gonna happen,” Tony says, softly. “Okay? It’s not. It’s gone.”
Peter nods and doesn’t say anything for a moment, his head pounding. “It just drove me crazy to see it sitting there in the list, like it was normal,” he breathes. “Drove me completely insane and then everything else made it crazier and made me crazier and I just love you, okay? I just love you. But you know that. And you can’t die, you can’t die, okay? Okay?” He keeps hugging him. He’s not gonna stop hugging him. He has the option to hug Tony Stark and he’s always gonna choose it. His own heartbeat becomes one with the pounding of his head, like an earthquake cracking in his veins.
“I love you too,” Tony says. “A lot a lot, okay? A lot. It was a mistake. It’s over, it’s done, it’s deleted, it won’t happen again. It won’t, I’m a lot smarter now than I was then, I’d never come up with anything like that now, maybe something that pops me out of the suit if I need it to keep fighting, like fighter jet eject—”
Peter laughs but it comes out like a sob and it hurts his head and he sighs, groaning. He needs to chill out. He’s starting to realize that everything hurts. Emotion wise and body wise.
“It’s okay,” Tony whispers. “It’s okay, Webs, it’s okay. It’s okay. Just relax. I’m sorry.”
Peter keeps nodding, feeling worse and worse for too many different reasons. “What did MJ say to you on the way out of the room?” he asks, quietly.
Tony chuckles, then, rocking them back and forth a little bit. “Uh, she said ‘hugs not yelling’, which is what I had just said, so—holding me to my own philosophies. And look, hey, we got there.”
Peter smiles for what feels like the first time in forever. “Yeah, let’s stay there,” he says.
~
Peter falls asleep after a while, and Tony has to do the walk of shame in the hallway, where they’re all still chastising him and glaring at him, and he has to remind himself it’s from a place of love, and he deserves it, really.
“You got yourself checked out, right?” Pepper asks, the two of them standing by the door of Peter’s room when Tony is about to head back in there.
“Why? You worried about me?” He raises his eyebrows.
She narrows hers. “I just still can’t believe you’d do that in the first place, let alone forget about it, Tony, let alone let Peter of all people find out about it?”
Tony sighs.
She starts brushing at a cut on his forehead. “We’ll get over it, it’s just—you need to be more—”
“Careful. Smarter.”
“Both,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “I know you’ve grown, from back then and all that, but I don’t wanna see any more flashes of that guy. I loved him too but he didn’t know what he was doing.” She kisses him fast, and glares at him again. “Helen looked at you, right?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” she says, still glaring, and she kisses him one more time. “I’m gonna make sure the kids and Thor aren’t burning down the building, though I can usually trust MJ to keep things under control.”
“Clint said he was gonna make sure their beds were made up,” Tony says. “So—”
“We know, Tony, let’s not act like you’re the responsible one when you were just out there trying to get yourself killed—”
Tony winces and shakes his head. “I was not just, I was not just—”
She gives him a soft look, teasing but not teasing, full of love and worry and annoyance. “Mhm.” She pushes him a bit and shakes her head, starting down the hallway. He sighs and rolls his eyes and heads into Peter’s room, where May is still sitting beside the bed, listening to the cacophony of Peter’s snores.
“Still out?” Tony asks, quietly as he can.
May nods at him. “Big time this round,” she says. “When he wakes up he’s gonna be hungry, as usual, so we have to make sure we’ve got the favorites lined up.”
“Natasha’s here, so she can make the meatballs this time,” Tony says, and May nods. They haven’t exactly been alone since all this started, and he knows she’s pissed at him, too. A different, more layered kind of pissed than everybody else.
“Once,” May says, drumming her fingers on her watch. “It was about—two months after we lost Ben, I think—I had to pick up another shift immediately after mine, a friend had an emergency and I had to cover, and everything was so jumbled up and crazy that I forgot to tell Peter. And we don’t keep our phones on us, and I wasn’t thinking, and after about two hours went by he—he showed up at the hospital. And he was drenched from the rain and out of breath and practically in need of emergency care on his own, and he’d—he’d come all the way there, because he thought something had—happened to me, because I wasn’t answering. He didn’t think to call the hospital itself, he just panicked when he couldn’t get to me, and I blame myself, not him—he just—he loves so deeply, so warmly and fully and completely and when he loves you, he loves you. He loves all his circles of people, but we’re—” She sucks in a breath. “He’s like the sun, or the sun’s core, and we’re like—the next closest layer? The radiation zone, I think? I don’t know, I don’t remember exactly—”
That metaphor should be funny, and it kind of is, but it only brings tears to Tony’s eyes. He nods. Peter is like the damn sun.
“You know what I mean. You, me, MJ, Ned, we’re right there. We’re the ones surrounding him, we’re his—inner group. He’s lost his parents and he’s lost Ben and those things just fundamentally changed him, there’s no way around that. If anything, they made him love deeper, but he’s more paranoid and protective, intensely so sometimes—he’d do anything to keep us safe. And when we’re not safe, when anything’s wrong, that’s—that hurts his little heart. Makes him sink.”
Tony wipes at his eyes and clears his throat. “I messed up, for sure, it was just—negligent. All around. I didn’t realize, I just—genuinely didn’t realize.”
“But you know now, and it can’t happen again,” she says. She shifts in her seat a bit, and glances at him. “I don’t know how he’s gonna be able to—trust that something else isn’t looming under the surface. After that incident with him and me, it’s been full open communication—actually, I’m lying, I was completely open and then the Spider-Man thing happened, and we had an entire argument and I called him a hypocrite. But after that, it was full open communication, we track each other, no more secrets. Of course I worry and he does too, but we’re a team and we make decisions together. He thought he had that with you.”
“He does,” Tony says, maybe too loud. “He does, May—”
“He needs more than your word, Tony,” she says. “He loves you. And this was truly—something.”
Tony sighs and sits back in his chair. “I hope he does know that I’d put him above me, at any time. Because I know he wants to protect me and wants me safe, but I’m not allowing—”
She waves her hand through the air. “That’s a whole different thing, and you two will go back and forth about it in the thick of your own stubbornness forever and ever, in every universe, so I’m not even getting involved with that. Two Mr. Heroes with all the drama attached.”
Tony clicks his tongue. She’s right. He stares at Peter’s face, the cuts and bruises, the way his eyelids flutter. “Well, how do I fix it?” he asks. He’s usually Mr. Fix-It but he’s coming up empty. Maybe because he hasn’t thought about it properly, yet. “What do you think? Because I deleted the thing already. It’s gone.”
She shrugs. “You just have to show him that it’s safe,” she says. “Show him proof that you value your own life, that you’re not actively trying to leave, like that—Avalon Protocol seemed to say you were.”
Tony blows out a breath. “That’s not exactly what it was, I was just—so messed up back then that I was just—I needed to help, however—however I could, and I couldn’t let my technology go to waste if it was still needed, even if I—even if I was gone, you know? Even if I couldn’t keep fighting.”
“Priorities have to be different now,” she says, and she’s smiling knowingly. “This little duckling’s imprinted on you. And it’s been my honor to have gained such a high profile co-parent, never could have imagined.”
Tony snorts, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Priorities are different now,” he says, looking at Peter. “You’re right.”
Because the kid is worth as much as the whole world. The whole damn universe.
~
Everyone’s energy towards Tony is so outrageously negative that he’s starting to have a hard time believing that it’s coming from a place of love. He gets constant glares, huffs, brush-off’s that he’s starting to feel like he murdered someone right in front of everybody—
And yet they’re all hanging around. Making use of their bedrooms, coming to group meetings that usually consist of Tony, Rhodey, and one odd other, now those meetings are packed to the gills—packed with negative energy, sure, but everybody is there. And they all show up to lunches and dinners, too.
It’s only been two days, since the whole thing, but nobody’s jetted off anywhere, yet. Despite the looks and the harrumphs and the narrowed eyebrows, everybody’s still—around.
Sam passes him in the hallway, and rolls his eyes when they catch each other’s gazes.
“Why are you pissed at me?” Tony blurts out.
“You know why.” Sam scoffs as he keeps walking by. “Because you’re out here forgetting you locked a suicide button into your damn suit. Zombie button. Zombie Iron Man. Nobody wants that.”
Tony stands there and watches as Sam looks over his shoulder, walking a little slower than he was. “You just pissed because everybody else is pissed?” Tony asks.
Sam turns around and faces him fully. “No,” he says. “I don’t want you to die, moron. Nobody wants you to die, nobody wants to think about your dead body flying around in the suit, nobody wants to think—you’d rather your dumbass dead body kept fighting instead of the suit alerting somebody that you needed help. That’s sick, that makes me sick, to think about.”
Tony clicks his tongue. “How long you gonna be mad for?”
Sam shrugs. “Don’t know. Maybe when you start taking care of yourself, old man.” He turns around and keeps walking.
“I’m touched!” Tony yells after him. “Genuinely—emotional—at how much you care—never knew you cared, Wilson! I never knew!”
“Well now you know,” Sam says, turning the corner and out of sight.
Tony hums to himself.
~
Peter is out of the med bay and back in his own room, the one he’s got when he stays here, and when Tony heads there to check on him that afternoon, he finds him in the middle of a nightmare. May is back at work, only a half shift today before Happy goes to get her, but Tony was wary of leaving the kid alone after such a big injury and emotional outburst, and this is exactly why. He’s been sleeping more since it all happened, slowly and surely healing both body and soul, but Tony is no stranger to nightmares, and neither is Peter, especially when something like this happens.
This one doesn’t look violent, not the sheet thrashers Tony’s been witness to before, but Peter is covering his own face and muttering in his sleep.
“No, no—no no no—”
“Pete,” Tony says, flipping the light on, nearly knocking one of his frames off the wall.
Peter twists back and forth, his brows furrowed severely. “Don’t let him—no, why would he—why would he—no, no—”
Tony rushes over to the bed, leans down and gently shakes Peter’s shoulder. “Hey, kid, wake up. Wake up, it’s okay.”
And sometimes it takes longer to drag him out of it, but not this time, and Peter nearly collides with him as he sits up, sucking in air like he’s drowning.
“Hey, hey,” Tony says, holding onto his shoulder and his side, sitting next to him. “Hey, Pete, it’s okay—not real, you’re awake now. It’s okay, it’s over.”
Peter looks at him and almost seems to startle, a little bit, when he realizes who it is, and then he lets out a big breath, shaking his head. “Man,” he breathes. “Ugh.”
Tony’s guilt rises up again. “Lemme guess, uh—”
“Yeah, I—yep,” Peter says, trying to even out his breathing.
“Bad?” Tony asks, almost sheepishly
Peter nods, solemn, still huffing and puffing like he was out for a run. “We were in a big fight like we were the other day and I was talking and talking and talking to you and you weren’t responding and I had to shoot you out of the sky to get the suit to stop and it was like I knew but I didn’t know and I pried it open and—”
“Okay,” Tony says, squeezing his shoulder, and he doesn’t wanna know what happened next. Even though he already knows. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter says, closing his eyes and shaking his head. He straightens a bit and draws his knees up, and he covers his face with his hand.
Tony wraps an arm around his shoulders, and Peter leans into him. “Why are you apologizing? For having a bad dream? Because if that’s the deal, I have a lot of apologies to make, especially for the recurring one about the octopus guy, that went on for months—”
“I just need to stop bringing it up,” Peter says, muffled behind his own hand.
“No,” Tony says. “You’re not bringing it—it’s because I haven’t fixed it yet, not in your head.” He clears his throat, thinking fast. “Let’s go down to the workshop, right now.”
Peter wipes at his eyes and pulls his hand back. His face is red and he’s sweating and Tony just has to settle this properly, at least the best that he can. He can’t keep letting the past hurt his kid, he can’t. Peter is too important to have to pay for his mistakes.
And he has to show Pete that he’s changed. That he’s really changed, that he’s ready to—completely wipe out anything that might put him in danger like that. Anything else he might have—forgotten.
Peter shrugs at him. “What are we gonna do, I mean—you got rid of it already.”
“Whatever you wanna do,” Tony says. “We’re gonna go down there as a team and figure this out until you feel better about it, but you’re in charge. You make the decisions.”
Peter blinks, staring. “Really?”
“Yup,” Tony says, squeezing his shoulder. “And I will provide—a cheese plate. And a vegetable platter. And one Red Bull.”
“Two Red Bulls.”
“One Red Bull.”
~
“Okay, Friday,” Peter says, sitting in the red rolling chair. “How many protocols do you have loaded and active that put Tony’s life at risk?”
Tony grimaces, bracing himself.
“Eighty-seven, Peter.”
Peter spins around in the chair to look at him, his eyes wide and his jaw nearly off its hinges. He’s staring at Tony, and Tony feels like there’s a spotlight on his head. “Can you repeat that number, Friday?” Peter asks, his voice going high pitched. “Because I don’t think I heard you.”
“You heard her,” Tony says, clearing his throat. “She doesn’t need—Friday, you don’t need—”
“Eighty-seven, Peter,” Friday says again.
Peter stares, for a long long moment, and Tony’s just got—no way to defend himself. Not really, not anything that would mean anything to him.
“I don’t understand,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Like? Why? What could—I just don’t…” He looks horrified and he shakes his head again and his face seems stuck in a perpetual grimace. “Friday, can you give me, like, an example—”
Tony sighs. “Pete—”
“The Apple Bottom protocol is set to blast Iron Man away from groups of civilians if his suit has any harmful materials on it. This protocol prioritizes removing Iron Man from others but does not prioritize Tony escaping from whatever harmful materials are in question.”
Peter stares at him. Worse this time. “Why is it called that?” he asks, deadpan.
Tony shrugs. “I genuinely—I genuinely don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember naming it that?” Peter asks, eyebrows raised high on his forehead.
“Maybe I was…listening to the song at the time?” Tony says, gritting his teeth, and he for real doesn’t remember. His face burns.
“Friday,” Peter says, still staring at Tony. “Delete the Apple Bottom protocol. And when I say delete I mean delete it forever and all back-ups.”
“Deleted,” Friday says. “Another example, Peter—”
“Fri, he didn’t ask for another,” Tony says, shaking his head. “Cool it.”
“—is the Precious Cargo protocol—”
Tony’s heart dips. “NO—”
Peter’s eyes go wider, and he clocks Tony’s tone and the look on his face. “Go on, Friday—”
“Fri—”
“Which entails that the suit abandon Tony if you, Peter Parker, need its life-saving capabilities, and this is at all times, even in the middle of battles where Tony may also need the suit for protection.”
There’s silence.
Loud silence.
Yeah, Tony remembers that one. He remembers the exact moment he sat down to code it, full of guilt when he found out about what happened at Coney Island.
“Don’t flip out,” Tony says, staring at him. “Don’t flip out. Peter. No flipping out.”
Peter just stares at him, almost like the time it’s taking to process that one is making him malfunction.
Tony runs his hands down his face. “Listen, I—I worry, I’m—I worry a lot—I’m a worrier—”
“Friday,” Peter says, voice shaking. “Delete that and delete all the other protocols that put Tony’s life in danger.”
Tony sucks in a breath and he looks at Peter again. Peter’s eyes are shining and he cocks his head. He looks serious, and Tony feels dizzy.
“Confirmation, Peter?” Friday asks.
“You said—I was in charge,” Peter says, voice still wavering a little bit, and he crosses his arms over his chest.
“You…you are,” Tony says, nodding at him. “You are. You’re in charge. Go—go ahead.”
They nod at each other, even though Tony feels like his legs are about to give out from under him.
Anything to fix it. To put his mind at ease.
“Do it, Friday, please,” Peter says.
“Deleting the remaining eighty-six protocols that put Tony’s life in danger,” Friday says. “And all back-ups.”
Another silence, and Tony swallows hard. He feels like a kid, somehow, as he shuffles over, and he sits down next to Peter in the blue rolling chair. Peter spins them both around so they’re looking at the computer, and he pushes out the extra part of the keyboard with the special symbols for coding.
“We’re gonna sit here and we’re gonna fix this,” Peter says, and he sniffles, holding his chin high. He reaches over and grabs a cube of cheese and pops it in his mouth. “Like, completely. And we’re gonna make it so—we can both be safe. Because we can both be safe without you totally needing to—just die. You don’t need to just die because you’re trying to keep me safe. I don’t know how you think that makes any sense.”
Tony leans his elbows on the desk and sighs. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re just crazy,” Peter says.
“Yeah.”
“Glad we agree.” Peter clears his throat and stares at the screen. “But I love you anyway.”
Tony laughs. “I love you too, kid.”
Peter leans on the desk too, resting his forehead on his arms, and Tony matches him, closing his eyes, feeling very strange and vulnerable without those protocols in place, whether he remembers them or not. It’s so rare for him to just delete shit full-stop without thinking about it, without combing through to make sure he’s doing the right thing, and he hasn’t done anything like this since he got rid of the majority of his suits for Pepper.
The Precious Cargo one, he’s—he hopes they can create one that’s just as safe for Peter to replace it with.
But all the others…maybe he feels free.
It’s time to fix it. It’s time to start over.
Peter nudges him, and then rests his head on Tony’s arm. “You’re literally the dumbest person alive, like, on the entire planet.”
“I know.”
“Apple Bottom.”
“Please.”
He feels Peter sit up, and he looks up and sees him cracking his neck and rubbing at his eyes. “Okay Friday, first protocol we’re putting in place—prioritize suit occupant Tony Stark. If Peter Parker or any other team member needs lifesaving suit technology, deploy a second suit from a…location we will set up ASAP. If suit is compromised, eject Tony Stark with parachute employed with Stark Technology to make sure he lands somewhere safe.” He looks at Tony, nodding. “Call it, um—the Phoenix Protocol.”
Tony smiles at him, full of fondness and hope, and he nods too.
“The Phoenix Protocol is active,” Friday says.
“Thank you,” Peter says, leaning back in his seat. He lets out a breath that sounds like a weight off his shoulders. “And make sure nothing can override that. Suit occupant Tony Stark—always has to—stay safe.”
“You feel better?” Tony asks, softly.
“Yeah,” Peter says, looking at him. “Yes. Thank you. And don’t…don’t get rid of it.”
“I won’t,” Tony says.
“Because you’re not going anywhere,” Peter says, eyes shining. “Because nobody wants you to go anywhere. And I’m—I’m not gonna let you go anywhere.”
“Nope,” Tony says, squeezing Peter’s wrist. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Not leaving you. Not leaving any of you.
Peter smiles. “And we’re just getting started,” he says, and he looks at the computer again. “Okay, Friday, next one, this one is called, um—Spidey Knows Best, and it entails that on every Thursday after 5pm, all active suits will swarm Spidey where he is and will carry him to the top of the Empire State Building and just, like, fly around it eight or ten times, just, you know, because.”
Tony snorts, nearly chokes, and he buries his face in his arm again. “The Red Bull’s kicking in. Red Bull Peter is here.”
“Spidey Knows Best protocol is active,” Friday says. “Good work, Peter.”
“Does that—what if I’m in one of the active suits?” Tony asks, glancing up at him. “Will I just—
“Yup, you’ll just—we’ll be meeting up, hanging out, you’ll be flying around the top of the Empire State Building. It’ll be fun!”
“Great,” Tony says. “Perfect. Because that’s exactly what we need.”
“It’s exactly what I need,” Peter says. He rubs his hands together, and Tony snorts, shaking his head. “Okay, next. Lemme just do a couple more fun ones here and then we’ll do some serious ones, I swear, I swear. Okay. We’re gonna call this one…Never Gonna Give You Up.”