Archive of Our Own

You don’t quite mind how long red lights are taking — push on through

Your favorite song was on the oldies station — push on through

You have it down, that old fight for survival — push on through

You’re in the crowd at her first dance recital — push on through

-“Oldies Station” by Twenty One Pilots

Tony’s first circuit board was actually a gift for his father. 

Howard Stark was always working on similar projects, and four-year-old Tony wanted to do something to help his dad — and to catch his attention. Howard worked long hours and didn’t seem to have much interest in Tony during his rare appearances at the dinner table in the evenings. 

He didn’t notice when Tony lost his first tooth. He made no comment when Tony showed his parents how he’d learned to play the first page of “Fur Elise” in his piano lessons. When Tony tripped over a corner of the rug during a dinner party, scraped his knee, and burst into tears, his father reacted by calling for Jarvis and then turning back to his conversation and apologizing for the interruption. 

To Tony’s utter shock, the circuit board actually made Howard stop what he was doing and pay attention to him. The man’s gaze, which usually passed right over him, was keen and eager as Tony showed him how the small device worked and what it could do. 

Tony was over the moon, and he happily complied with the other tasks his father set him — building a small robot, performing mathematical calculations, and fixing a broken computer. 

A few weeks later, now confident that giving his father a gift was the perfect way to get his affection, Tony labored over a card for Father’s Day. 

He used his best handwriting on the cover, and on the inside of the card, he painstakingly drew a picture of Howard, Tony, and Maria at the park together — something that had never happened before, but he hoped it might after he saw several of his classmates visit the park with their families after school. 

He’d been practically vibrating with excitement as he entered his father’s office that afternoon, eager for another dose of Howard’s rare look of approval. 

His dad was on the phone, and his eyebrows creased together when Tony tiptoed over with the card hidden behind his back. Howard swiveled his chair around so that his back was to Tony, but Tony was determined to wait him out. 

He stood in place for about twenty minutes, desperately trying not to fidget (Howard hated that), until Howard finally finished his call. Then he eagerly blurted out, “Happy Father’s Day!” and thrust the card in his dad’s hand. 

He waited with bated breath for Howard to respond. 

“Not now, Tony; I have an important phone call.”

Tony blinked in confusion — his dad hadn’t even looked at the card! He’d just immediately set it aside and begun dialing another phone number. 

He waited for another moment, but then Howard frowned severely at him, and Tony hurried away, his heart pounding in his chest. He hated that expression.

He waited outside the office for a while longer, hoping to hear his dad’s voice calling him back in — excitedly thanking him for the card and admiring the drawing like he’d admired the circuit board — but it never happened. 

Much later that evening, long after his bedtime, he snuck into his father’s office.

The card was poking out of the trash can, and something in Tony’s chest seemed to shrivel up and die at that moment. 

Years later, when writing his autobiography, his editor proposed that he start with a chapter about his first circuit board and what it had meant to him. 

He ignored the suggestion and started with his first day at MIT — he preferred to pretend that that was when his life began, and everything before that was just a meaningless footnote. 

***

“Jesus Christ, why did they stick me with a kid again?” Rhodes grumbled under his breath as Tony threw up in their shared toilet. 

“Fuck off,” Tony grumbled back, before his stomach lurched and he found himself heaving again. 

“I’m just saying — are you even tall enough for the rides at Coney Island? What are you doing drunk off your ass at…1 a.m. on a Tuesday?”

Tony glared weakly at his roommate. “I’m 14, not 4.”

Rhodes rolled his eyes. “Well, you don’t act like it.”

He disappeared for a moment, and Tony ignored the slight pang he felt at being left alone. He’s just your randomly assigned roommate, and you’re keeping him up — he doesn’t owe you anything, he reminded himself. 

The therapist Maria had made him see for a few months had said that Tony had “abandonment issues.” Tony had told her to go fuck herself and promptly abandoned therapy. 

But maybe she’d had a point. 

He jolted as a cool glass of water was pressed into his hand, looking over to see that Rhodes had returned and was now making himself comfortable on the bathroom floor. 

“Thanks, man,” Tony mumbled, gratefully taking a small sip. Feeling overheated, he clumsily tugged his jacket off. A scrap of paper — the paper that had started this particular drunken binge — fell out of his pocket and fluttered to the floor. 

“Here,” Rhodes said, holding it out to him. “You need this?”

Tony let out a harsh laugh. “You keep it. I’ll autograph it for you, if you want.”

Rhodes’ gaze flickered down to the paper. It was a clipped article from a tabloid showing Tony leaving a bar late at night, two girls on his arms. They’d only cozied up to him to get their fifteen minutes of fame; Tony knew that from the beginning, but it had felt nice to pretend that they were actually interested in him. The bold caption insinuated that the young Stark heir was partying his way through college, and that Stark Industries was surely headed for bankruptcy once Tony came of age and took over. 

Howard had scrawled a note in large, angry cursive across the article — 

If this is how you’re going to treat the Stark family name, don’t bother coming home for Christmas. 

Rhodes winced. “Jesus, man. That’s fucked up.”

Tony sighed tiredly. “I know, I know. I’m a massive disappointment; you don’t have to tell me twice.”

Rhodes gave him a concerned, searching look. “No — I mean your dad — what he said to you. It’s fucked up. And the paparazzi shouldn’t be following you around like that — you’re not even an adult yet.”

Tony stared at him. He probably had an ulterior motive for being nice to Tony — everyone did, except Jarvis and his mom. 

“Look, man. My mom is a really good cook — you can always come home with me for Christmas if you want.”

Tony knew he shouldn’t trust anyone — his father had warned him that his fellow students at MIT were his competitors, not his peers.

But looking at Rhodes’ earnest gaze, Tony couldn’t help but feel a little bit of hope. 

Plus, it would piss Howard off if he actually didn’t come home for Christmas to play at being a happy little family for the press.

***

When he was seventeen, his winter formal date, a chem major named Laura, told him that she always imagined having twins. “A boy and a girl,” she smiled, tucking her auburn hair behind her ear. “It’d be perfect. You get two kids, but you get all the hard stuff of raising two babies done at the same time.” It made sense — Laura had an older brother who was her best friend. 

“What about you, Tony?” She asked innocently.

Tony allowed himself to picture it for a moment — himself sometime in the future with a faceless woman, a little boy and girl running around.

The idea had some merit — he liked the idea of building his own family, especially since his relationship with his parents had gone to shit in recent years. He hadn’t spent much time with kids before, but he thought they were generally pretty cool — they didn’t usually care who his dad was or have any interest in cozying up to him for wealth and connections. 

But then he thought about how easily his drinking and drug use had spiraled out of control the past few years. He thought about how poison seemed to drip from his mouth when he spoke sometimes — like he didn’t want to be an asshole but just couldn’t help it. He tried everything in his power to not be like Howard, but he feared that it was in his DNA — the anger, the callousness, the inability to forge genuine connections with the people around him. 

He imagined a brown-haired boy looking up at him, his fragile, eager countenance crushed by Tony’s inevitable apathy and annoyance. 

“No,” he said curtly, downing his glass of spiked punch. “No kids for me.” He went outside to smoke, leaving Laura behind for the rest of the evening, her expression hurt. 

***

There were pregnancy scares in his twenties and thirties — of course there were. 

It was par for the course, given his background. Plenty of women wanted to receive child support payments from a billionaire and have their child be next in line to inherit Stark Industries. 

Tony was fastidious about using protection, no matter how drunk or high he was — something that was a surprise and sometimes a disappointment to his many partners. Still, the cases came through every now and again. It freaked him out the first few times, but Obadiah and legal quickly got a system down for ordering paternity tests and sending the women away empty-handed. 

The cave in Afghanistan and Obie’s ensuing betrayal only affirmed his position to be childfree, and then he became Iron Man, and his life became a shitstorm of death-defying stunts and never-ending catastrophes. 

Every once in a while, though, he found himself thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad if a test came back positive. Tony was nothing if not a novelty-seeker, and maybe a kid would scratch the horrible itch — the aching emptiness inside of him that he filled with drugs and alcohol and women and Iron Man. 

Then something fucked-up would happen again, the universe and all of his loved ones would be threatened, and he’d be immensely glad that he hadn’t dragged an innocent life into the mess that was his life. 

He encountered Harley along the way, and he was a good kid — intelligent and a mouthy little shit to boot, which Tony could respect. Harley had been hurt before when his dad left the family, so he didn’t put himself into a position where Tony could hurt him, which Tony respected even more.

A kid like that wouldn’t be so bad. Tony told Pepper as much, just to be laughed at. It hurt a little bit at the time, but looking back later, he was thankful for Pepper’s common sense and refusal to encourage Tony to have a kid when his life was so unstable. And he was just so shocked and relieved that Pep had stuck around with him through all the bullshit — all the ups and downs.

Surely that was enough of a family for him — surely he didn’t deserve anything more, when he was already so lucky to have Pepper and Rhodey and Happy by his side. 

***

Peter Parker looked at Tony like he hung the moon and stars in the sky, and Tony knew he was in deep shit. 

The kid really should have been more like Harley or like Tony himself — jaded and closed off to the world around him. He was entitled to it, in Tony’s opinion, after everything he’d been through at his young age — his parents dying, getting bit by a radioactive spider, his uncle dying — hell, Tony had encountered plenty of supervillains in his career who had much happier backstories. 

And yet the kid practically radiated sunshine over the most mundane things, like saving cats from trees and helping people cross the street and getting to see the Iron Man suit up close. Worst of all, he wasn’t just an Iron Man fan; he was a bonafide Tony Stark fan, practically able to quote Tony’s scientific articles and autobiography word for word. 

That type of idolization made him itch somewhere deep beneath his skin. So Tony did what he did best — delegated responsibility to Happy and sent the kid a dizzying flurry of mixed signals. 

At times, the mentorship thing was kind of fun, and he embraced it as a distraction from Rhodey’s injury and the aftermath of everything that went down with Steve and his merry band of outlaws. It wasn’t hard — he genuinely thought Peter was a good kid and Spider-Man was a worthwhile hero to support. It was exciting to think about pulling strings for him at MIT, showing him the way to becoming a younger, better Tony Stark. 

But then there were times when the reality of being responsible for another person’s life — a teenager’s life — was too overwhelming, and he pushed the kid away with a vengeance. 

And it turned out that he wasn’t even a good mentor anyway, so there wasn’t much point in trying. He took Peter’s suit away, and the kid almost died because of it. Tony hacked into security cameras in the area and watched the footage of Toomes dropping a whole-ass building on the kid when he was wearing nothing more than a glorified sweatsuit. 

He’d sat in utter horror as the minutes ticked onward — Peter had been trapped for a long time before he managed to lift the debris off himself. 

He must have been scared down there, all alone, with no way to call for help. 

Tony’s hands were shaking when he turned off the footage, and he proceeded to have one of the worst panic attacks of his life. 

Afterward, he offered the kid a spot on the Avengers as some sort of misguided attempt to make everything up to him, but Peter — wise beyond his years — turned him down.

He figured that that was the end of it — that he’d fade into the background as the kid’s distant mentor, much like what had happened with Harley. 

Then May Parker found out that Peter was Spider-Man.

***

The thing was, it wasn’t the first time a woman had showed up at his home to cuss him out. It wasn’t even the first time that the cussing had been in Italian. 

He’d pissed off a lot of people in his lifetime. 

But this was the first time in a long time — since before the Iron Man days — that Tony felt sick with shame as he was dressed down. It had been this way sometimes when SI still made weapons — jeering crowds screaming at him as he walked by, reporters asking invasive questions about how he slept at night — knowing that there was nothing to say that could refute their accusations because they were true — 

This was the same feeling as that. People had died because of Tony’s choices as the head of Stark Industries. Peter had almost died because of Tony’s choices as a mentor. 

“Fix it, Stark,” she snapped at the end of her rant. “Fix it now.”

“How exactly do you want me to do that? I’ve been leaving him alone,” he promised, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender, assuming that was what she wanted to hear. 

To his surprise, she shook her head, looking ready to launch into another round of shouting if he misstepped in this conversation. 

“No, Stark — fix it. Stop avoiding him and only interacting with him when it’s convenient. Be a proper mentor.”

Tony scoffed at that. “I hardly think I’m qualified for that — as you’ve just explained in excruciating detail for the past forty-five minutes.”

She glared at him. “You brought him up to the major leagues; now deal with the consequences.”

“Mrs. Parker, I really don’t think I’m the appropriate —”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” She laughed harshly. “There is no one else. All your other little friends are wanted fugitives. My husband is dead. Peter isn’t going to stop — it’s not in his nature.” She blinked rapidly and looked away, her voice tight. “I can’t protect him from this. But you can. So do it.”

Silence fell between them for a long moment. 

When May Parker looked back at him, her gaze was just as determined as her nephew’s had been when he lifted a warehouse off his shoulders. 

“I can’t lose him too, Stark. Don’t make me lose him.”

Tony was so screwed.

***

Tony tried to muster up his usual media-friendly smile when Happy let Peter into his lab a few weeks later. He wasn’t sure if he quite succeeded, and the kid looked like he might bolt at any second, his eyes wide as he took in his surroundings.

“How’ve you been, kid?” Tony asked, setting down his project and wiping his hands on a nearby rag. 

“Okay,” Peter shrugged, his backpack slipping on his shoulder. “Finally done being grounded.”

Tony would normally insert a cutting remark, weird nickname, or sarcastic quip at this point. Instead, he just looked at Peter for a long moment. 

He thought about Peter lifting that warehouse off of himself alone. May Parker, pleading with him to keep her nephew safe. 

“Sorry about that,” he heard himself say.

“About what?”

“You, being grounded. And…I’m sorry about a lot of other things too.”

Peter blinked at him before flashing a tentative grin. “My aunt really scared you, huh?”

He knew the kid was offering him an out — a way to switch to their normal joking banter. But Tony didn’t take it. 

“Everything she said was correct, unfortunately. I was an ass, I was selfish, and I had no right to conceal you being Spider-Man from her. I didn’t even tell her that I’d offered you a spot in the Avengers, which is probably the only reason I’m still alive today.” 

He smiled wryly at Peter, who stared back, looking dumbfounded. 

“So,” he said a minute later when Peter still didn’t reply. “I’m not sure where that leaves us, kid. I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t want anything to do with me. But at the very least, I promised your aunt that I’d keep an eye on you through the suit and provide back-up if needed. And…that lab bench over there is for you, if you want a place to manufacture your web fluid.”

Peter looked over at the state-of-the-art lab bench. Tony found himself holding his breath, awaiting judgment, wondering why he even cared if a fifteen-year-old kid wanted to hang around his lab or not.

“Cool,” Peter said casually, taking off his backpack and dropping it near his bench. “Because manufacturing the web fluid during chemistry is fine and all, but this classmate of mine threw a piece of gum at me when I was trying to mix a batch, and it almost landed inside, which might’ve caused the whole classroom to blow up. But it did get me thinking about incorporating some of the properties of gum into my webs — like, do you think I could blow web bubbles?”

Tony’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and he grinned at Peter. “I don’t know — let’s see if we can figure it out, kid.”

***

“Ow, ow, ow, ” he heard Peter chant under his breath as he flew close to the kid’s apartment unit. When he looked in the window, he saw Peter struggling to sit up in his bed, wincing as each movement jolted his arm. The repulsors had obviously alerted the kid to his approach.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter mumbled blearily as Tony opened the window and stepped inside. “Is there a mission?”

He seemed surprised when the suit opened and Tony himself stepped out. 

“I thought you were in Philadelphia,” Peter blurted out. “Is something wrong?”

Tony frowned down at the kid. “Yes, something is wrong. You have a broken arm, according to Karen.”

Peter shook his head. “But — then why are you here?”

He suddenly worried whether the kid had a concussion too — but Karen hadn’t reported any sort of head injury. “Because of your arm, Underoos.”

“But…you’re supposed to be at a board meeting.”

Tony snorted, stepping closer. “Board meetings don’t usually take place at midnight, kid. The board members will still be there in the morning, unfortunately."

“You came here just because of my arm?” 

Tony gave him a look. “Yes. Did you hit your head too?”

Peter frowned. “No. But…why are you here? It’ll heal by tomorrow.”

Tony quirked an eyebrow, pulling a small med kit out of a compartment in the suit. “And what if it doesn’t set right? You enjoy having full use of both arms, correct?”

Peter nodded. “Well, yeah, but —”

“But nothing,” he interjected smoothly. “Then you’re going to let me take a look at your arm, capiche?”

Peter seemed to be considering protesting further — but with a sigh, he reluctantly held out the offending limb for inspection, probably imagining the trouble he could get in with his aunt if Tony reported that he’d refused help.

“Right,” Tony said, taking a look at Peter’s arm, which was bruised and beginning to swell. “First thing’s first, we need some ice on that. FRI, honey, can you do an x-ray on him?”

Peter seemed to relax as Tony and FRIDAY took over. FRIDAY confirmed that the bone was aligned correctly, and Tony pulled out a disposable ice pack and shook it to activate it. He also handed Peter a protein bar and produced a sling that would immobilize his arm to his chest. 

“Thanks, Mr. Stark,” Peter said quietly when Tony had finished helping him tighten the sling. “You really didn’t have to come all this way —”

“Peter,” Tony interrupted. “I’m Tony Stark, remember? I don’t go places and do things unless I want to.”

He held Peter’s gaze until Peter blinked, looking a few moments away from falling asleep.

“Now, should I sing ‘The Itsy-Bitsy Spider’ to you, or do you think you can get to asleep on your own?”

“Oh, very funny,” Peter deadpanned. 

“I’ll be on the couch if you need me.”

“Mr. Stark!” The kid protested. “May will be home in a few hours. You don’t have to —”

“Hey,” Tony said, pointing at himself. “Tony Stark, remember?”

Peter rolled his eyes, but he was smiling as Tony left the room. As Tony took a seat on the couch, he couldn’t help but wonder how many times Peter had done this alone before — patching himself up, going to bed in pain and hoping he’d wake up feeling better in the morning. 

He felt determination settle over him — that wouldn’t be happening again. Not on his watch.

***

“Thanks for dinner, Mr. Stark! See you in a few days!” Peter called, grabbing his backpack and heading for the window. 

“Hang on a second there, bud,” Tony called back. 

Peter froze in place obediently, one leg already sticking out of the penthouse window, his webshooter aimed at a nearby skyscraper. 

“What’s up?” He asked, the expressive eyes of his suit showing his confusion. 

He’d come over to the Tower after school for his “internship” — where Peter mixed his web fluid and helped Tony with his various projects. They’d recently started eating dinner together after lab time, and Peter was heading out for a quick evening patrol before going home. 

“Did you finish all your homework?” Tony asked. As soon as the words left his mouth, he found himself wondering why he’d asked — surely it was overstepping. Rhodey and Happy had started teasing him about sounding like a helicopter parent where Peter was concerned, and this would only add fuel to the fire if they got wind of it from FRIDAY. 

And yet…May Parker had sent him her work schedule a few weeks ago, and he knew that she was working a double tonight. 

There was no one else to ask Peter, so Tony did it. 

Peter stared at him disbelievingly. “Mr. Stark,” he groaned. “Ugh, you sound just like May.”

“Well, I’m with your aunt on this one.”

“I’m not going to patrol for very long. I promise I’ll do it when I get home.”

Tony shook his head. “Sorry, kiddo, school comes before Spider-Man. C’mon, you can’t have that much to do, right?”

“Spanish and math,” he grumbled reluctantly. 

“See, that doesn’t sound too bad. You can do your math quickly, right?” Tony cajoled.

Peter looked like he was contemplating just shooting a web off and fleeing, but he let out a long-suffering sigh and pulled his foot out of the open window, tugging his mask off and returning to the kitchen table in the penthouse. 

Tony tried not to laugh at the teenage angst as Peter morosely pulled out his math worksheet and set to work. 

Tony figured the least he could do was keep the kid company, so he pulled out his Starkpad and replied to some of the emails Pepper had been bugging him about. As he’d guessed, it took Peter less than thirty minutes to finish his math problems. 

“Just Spanish left, right?” Tony asked encouragingly.

Peter glared at his textbook. “Yeah, but it’s a really annoying assignment. I have like 20 vocabulary words I’m supposed to learn, which takes me forever."

Tony tapped his thumb on the table thoughtfully. “Alright, how about a compromise. You can go out and patrol, but you keep a voice chat going with me, and you have to speak in Spanish and use as many of your vocab words as possible.”

Peter grinned. “Deal!” He hopped up and pulled his mask back on. “Hasta luego, Sr. Stark.”

Reviewing Spanish vocabulary words with a teenager wasn’t how he’d planned to spend his evening, but it beat the deafening silence that had settled over the Tower since the rogue Avengers had defected.

***

“What is the measure of one interior angle of a regular decagon?” The announcer asked. 

Tony held his breath as Peter slammed his hand down on his buzzer.

“144,” the kid said confidently.

“Correct. Point to Midtown,” the announcer remarked neutrally. Peter heaved a small sigh of relief, relaxing back into his seat as his teammates clapped him on the shoulder. 

Tony couldn’t help himself — he let out a loud whistle and began clapping proudly, not caring that people were shifting in their seats to look at him.

Midtown was the visiting team at this decathlon meet, so they didn’t have a lot of fans in the crowd. Tony knew that he stood out like a sore thumb, and he saw Peter scanning the audience with a confused look. 

“Cut it out,” Happy hissed, elbowing Tony. “Do you really want to blow your cover and have the media trying to figure out what Tony Stark was doing at a high school decathlon meet? Because let me tell you right now, Pepper and I don’t want to deal with the publicity and security issues that will cause.”

Tony rolled his eyes at his head of security, but he pulled his baseball hat down further over his face.

The next time Peter answered a question correctly, he was more prepared. 

He waited for Peter’s eyes to scan the crowd, and then he waved and flashed a silent but enthusiastic thumbs up. Happy let out an exasperated sigh but let him be, and it was worth it to see how Peter’s whole face lit up when he spotted Tony in the audience. 

***

“C’mon, Roo. You got this — it’s just basic physics. You calculate way harder moves when you’re swinging around the city doing flips in mid-air.”

“Yeah, but that’s me doing the movements. Not me trying to make something else do the movements!” Peter tugged at his hair for the dozenth time in the past ten minutes. 

“It really only takes a few simple maneuvers — I’m telling you; you’re overthinking this.”

“That’s easy for you to say; you’re not the one driving!” 

Tony felt torn between laughing and praying for patience. 

“Okay, just pull back out and we’ll take it from the top again. If you’re going to drive in the city, you have to know how to parallel park.”

“I’m trying! It’s just hard when I can’t see where the back of the car is — I keep feeling like I’m going to hit the other car.”

“Well, if you’d let me buy you a new car with a back-up camera, we wouldn’t have this problem,” Tony pointed out. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter complained. “Not that whole argument again. May’s car is fine.”

“Look, the sooner you conquer your fear and do it, the sooner I’ll drop it. Plus, if you do hit the other cars, I happen to know a billionaire who can easily take care of the expense.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging me not to hit things?” 

“What I’m trying to encourage you to do is drive. ”

“I’m just saying, I’m pretty sure most of my classmates’ parents are expressly warning them not to hit things —” Peter stopped talking abruptly, his cheeks going a little pink. “I mean — I’m just saying, May would be pissed if she heard you say that.”

“Well, good thing she’s not here then. Now. Take a deep breath and trust yourself.”

Peter looked a bit annoyed, but he huffed in a long breath.

“Okay, now back up a bit — start turning the wheel — nope, not quite like that —”

Tony reached over and grabbed the wheel, showing Peter how to turn the car as they moved into the parking spot, and then how to straighten himself out. 

“We did it!” Peter gasped, staring in disbelief at the car perfectly aligned in front of them. 

Tony grinned. “You did it! Now try it again, just like that, this time without my help…”

***

Tony had just taken the stage at a Stark Industries gala when his watch flashed with a notification from Karen. 

“...we’re thrilled to be partnering with all of you in support of a truly worthwhile cause tonight,” he said, smiling winningly at the crowd even as his pulse ratcheted up.

Under the guise of reviewing the script for his speech, he allowed his gaze to drift down to his watch.

I am detecting a spike in Mr. Parker’s vitals and am reporting it per the Baby Monitor Protocol.

Tony swallowed a curse. He took a small step back from the microphone and lifted his watch up near his mouth. 

“Is he injured, Karen?”

“No. My sensors indicate that he is displaying a heightened emotional state and the beginning stages of a panic attack.”

Pep was going to kill him. The press would have a field day — they would say that he was acting erratically, drunkenly talking to himself on stage. 

He didn’t care. 

“Anyway, that’s all we have time for, but I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the evening. Stark Industries thanks you for your support!”

He booked it off the stage, not waiting for applause or confused murmurs from the crowd. 

The suit was already forming around him as he ran into Pepper backstage. 

“What the hell, Tony! We agreed that you would speak for twenty minutes — that was barely two!”

“Sorry, Pep — can’t talk. It’s the kid.”

At the mention of Peter, the fire in her eyes softened a bit, and she sighed. “I hope he’s okay. Be safe.”

He gave her an appreciative kiss on the cheek and then took off, asking Karen to patch him through to the kid’s comms. 

“...Peter? Hey, kid, you with me?”

“Mr. Stark?” Peter whispered tremulously. It was clear that he’d been crying, and Tony diverted more power to his thrusters. 

“Hang on, Underoos. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Peter remained silent, but he stayed on the line until Tony touched down in an alleyway in Queens. 

“Spidey!” Tony couldn’t keep the frantic note from his voice as he retracted his face plate. “Are you hurt? Karen wasn’t reporting any injuries, but —”

Peter shook his head. He was staring numbly down at his hands, and Tony’s stomach twisted when he realized that they were coated in blood.  

“There was a guy mugging this couple, so I confronted him, and I webbed him up. I didn’t — I didn’t notice that he had an accomplice with a gun waiting in the alley. He shot the woman, and — there was so much blood — and I was too slow to stop it from happening.”

Tony’s chest felt tight as he recalled May telling him how Ben had died, and how Peter had been there to witness the whole thing.

This is over my pay grade, he thought, panicked. He could deal with physical injuries — much as he hated to see the kid hurt — but trauma was a whole different ball game.

Peter’s breath hitched. “I really messed up, Mr. Stark,” he concluded miserably. 

There is no one else, May had said nearly a year ago. Fix it, Stark. 

“Hey, kid,” Tony said, tugging Peter’s mask up so that Peter was forced to look at him. “You didn’t mess up. You did your best to help.”

His words grew more certain as he spoke, and he recalled all the times he’d felt like this in his Iron Man career — no matter how many lives he saved, he’d always remember the ones he couldn’t save. 

“But I should’ve noticed —”

Tony shook his head, his voice firm with conviction. “You may have enhanced senses, but you’re not going to be able to predict every single factor in a dangerous situation, especially when things are moving fast and there are multiple people involved.”

“What if she dies, and I couldn’t stop it from happening?” Peter whispered. 

He rubbed Peter’s shoulder soothingly. “Then you’ll have to learn to live with the fact that you tried your best to save her. It’s one of the hardest parts of the job, kiddo — take it from me.”

Peter sighed, looking much older than his fifteen years. 

“Come on, let’s get you home to your aunt, okay? I told Happy to meet us here with a car. I’ll send one of my doctors down to the hospital to help the woman who was shot. She’ll get the best medical treatment possible.”

He allowed Tony to lead him to the car. Tony climbed into the backseat with him, his heart heavy in his chest. If Peter was going to be a superhero, then Tony couldn’t shield him from the harsh reality that not everyone could be saved.

But at least he could make sure the kid didn’t have to go through it by himself. 

***

Tony watched with bated breath as Peter tore off the final strip of wrapping paper and flipped the large box over, his eyes widening at the familiar Lego logo. 

“Whoa!”

“Ohmygod, dude!” His friend — Ted? Fred? — gushed, clapping his hands to his face. “The Millenium Falcon?! This is the best day ever! That thing has been sold out everywhere for ages!”

“Thank you, Mr. Stark!” Peter exclaimed, reverently placing the box on the table and then flinging his arms around his mentor. “How did you know?”

Tony rolled his eyes, patting him on the back as he briefly returned the hug. “C’mon, kid. Give me some credit. You and Ted have been talking about that thing for months.”

“It’s amazing,” Peter breathed. Tony recognized the dawning look of guilt on his face. “Thank you so much! But it must’ve cost—”

“Uh-uh,” Tony said, holding up a hand to stop him. “Trust me, I already had to have this conversation with your aunt. I’m not doing it again with you.”

Peter looked at May, who shrugged, a hint of fond exasperation in her expression. “He was going to build you a life-size replica of the Millenium Falcon. I talked him down to this, honey.”

Peter shook his head in amazement as he stared at the box. “Thank you,” he repeated. 

Tony was rather pleased with himself, reaching over to ruffle Peter’s hair. “It’s not every day that your ki — um, spider-kid turns sixteen. Happy birthday, Pete.”

May gave him a knowing look at his near-slip of the tongue. Tony busied himself with cutting the cake to avoid meeting her gaze. 

***

It was perhaps the largest, cruelest irony of Tony’s life that he didn’t realize how much he cared about Peter until he was gone. 

All the growth he’d undergone in the last decade — the recent stabilization of his interpersonal relationships as he matured — the good he’d managed to do with Stark Industries — the lives he’d saved as Iron Man — it all seemed meaningless in the face of his failure to protect Peter. 

Sitting there with Nebula, numbly waiting to die or be rescued (not sure which one he hoped for more), he stared down at his hands, which now felt empty and wrong.  

Hours earlier, these hands had supported the weight of a boy who had disintegrated into nothing more than dust and ash floating across the vastness of the universe. 

He hated space — he had hated it ever since the wormhole — but Peter had loved it. He tried to find comfort in the fact that Peter had died surrounded by the stars, but then he remembered the pain, the fear, the confusion in his eyes, and he stumbled to his feet and retched bile from his empty stomach. 

Peter hadn’t died looking at the stars, after all — he’d died looking at Tony. 

Tony had once heard that having a child was like having a part of your heart walking around in the world. He’d chalked that up to cheesy Hallmark sentiment until now, when he very literally felt like a piece of him had died.

Somehow, without ever realizing it, he’d given a piece of himself to Peter to hold and keep with him. It was the small part of him that still believed in happy endings and optimism for the future — a fragment of his soul that had lain dormant since he was a young child and realized that Howard only cared about him as the legacy of Stark Industries. 

It was just a little seed when Tony handed it over, but Peter had carried it with him, nurtured it, and made it grow. 

Now it was gone forever — scattered across the universe in tiny dust motes, just like its bearer. 

Peter had loved space, but Tony hated it. It was so cold, and Peter had never been able to thermoregulate. Tony had made him a million-dollar suit with a heater; he’d bought him the warmest jacket on the market; he’d added space heaters to all of his labs; he’d loved him.

It hadn’t been enough to protect him. 

Tony cried like a child, clenching the vast emptiness between his fingers and feeling its unbearable lightness. 

***

“Tony,” Pepper said. Her voice sounded like it was drifting toward him through a dense fog. “I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I need to tell you something.”

She sounded nervous, and that fact penetrated the mist surrounding him a little bit. 

“What—” His voice was so rusty from disuse that he had to clear his throat and try again. “What is it, Pep?”

Even that small effort seemed to have exhausted him thoroughly. 

“Well…I don’t really know how to say this, so I’ll just…come out and say it.”

It was unlike Pepper to sound tentative or uncertain. Tony’s stomach clenched, various anxieties beginning to swirl around in his head. 

“I’m pregnant.”

Of all the million worries, this was one that had never even crossed his mind. He could only gape, disbelieving, first at Pep’s face and then down at her stomach. 

Jesus, he must really have had his head up his ass since his return to earth a few days ago, because now that she’d pointed it out, he could see the unmistakable beginnings of a baby bump there. 

“I found out while you were…away. I’m due in the fall, according to the doctor. October 15 or so.”

Tony cleared his throat again, unsure of what to say. 

God, why? Is this some kind of sick joke?

I can’t do this, Pep. How am I supposed to take care of a kid when I already got Peter—

Please tell me it’s not a boy. 

He thought through all of these responses and discarded each one. 

“Wow,” he simply said after several minutes of silence. “That’s really — how are you feeling? Are you happy?”

Pepper’s expression was bittersweet, and really, he didn’t deserve this woman. She’d been going through this all on her own, too afraid to tell him about it given how vulnerable he was right now. Even now, spilling some of the biggest news of her entire life to him, she didn’t seem to expect expressions of joy or elation or excitement. She just watched him, compassion and understanding in her gaze. 

“As happy as anyone can be in these circumstances.”

Tony let out a wry laugh. All of a sudden, it turned into tears, and Pepper, the saint that she was, held him close as he wept.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” she murmured into his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

***

He knew that there were rules to the universe — that death was immutable, and no one could be brought back from it. 

Usually he thought it was a good thing that the universe had a set of basic constraints to keep them all in check — he was a man of science, after all. 

Never before had he railed against those rules like he did now. 

It was just so final. So wrong. He was an engineer, and he fixed things. He caught himself obsessively poring over possible solutions, only to remind himself that there was no cure for death.

Peter had barely been sixteen. He wasn’t supposed to just…stop existing, leaving behind a trail of textbooks, empty web-fluid canisters, and Star Wars figurines as the only proof that he’d ever been there. He was supposed to outlive Tony by several decades, happy and healthy. 

If anyone deserved a happy ending to their story, it was Peter. 

Sometimes Tony was glad that May Parker had blipped so that he didn’t have to confront her rage and sorrow over the fact that he’d failed to protect her nephew. Other times, he desperately wished she was around. She was the only other person in the world who would understand the immensity of his loss. 

The pregnancy was hard. He tried to be there for Pepper as best as he could manage, dutifully attending doctor’s appointments and lamaze classes. They found out that the baby was a girl, and he mustered up a smile when Pepper showed him different paint color options for the nursery at their new cabin. But all the while, he kept thinking that Peter would’ve loved to be part of this experience — that he would’ve had a lively opinion on whether the wallpaper should’ve had rabbits or elephants on it. He probably would’ve read all the parenting books alongside Tony and anxiously been counting down the days until Pepper’s due date. 

And Tony found himself wondering why he should bother bonding with this new child when the universe would probably just snatch her up too, just like it had done with the other one. 

But then Morgan was born one rainy day in October, and Tony discovered that bonding wasn’t really optional. The doctors placed her in his arms while Pepper looked on, exhausted but radiant. Tony looked down at Morgan, not really sure how to feel, and then she blinked her eyes against the light, waving one of her perfect little fists in the air, and Tony felt like the breath was punched out of his lungs with the sudden rush of love that flowed through him. 

Oh. He recognized this feeling — this exquisite joy, the worry, the pride over the being in his arms. 

The part of his heart that Peter had once held was still dead — its edges blackened and jagged in his chest. But just like that, he found that Morgan had taken possession of another corner of his heart.

He fell into fatherhood surprisingly easily after that. There were long, sleepless nights, frustration when Morgan screamed for a week straight as she teethed, and terror when she caught her first fever. But there was so much good in his relationship with her — her sweet smile when she saw him in the morning, the way she giggled when he tossed her up in the air and caught her, the pride he felt as she took her first tottering steps in the kitchen. 

She needed him, and he found his sense of purpose renewed. He retired as Iron Man, cut way back on his R&D work at Stark Industries, and soon found himself living as a stay-at-home dad in a rural cabin — the complete opposite of his life up to that point. Sometimes he barely recognized himself when he looked in the mirror — his hair was steadily graying and his face was lined with new wrinkles. He’d traded in his suit coats and Iron Man armor for old sweaters and nail polish and whatever stickers Morgan managed to stick on him that day.

He’d always been terrified that he would turn out to be just like Howard — but it wasn’t like that at all. In fact, instead of blaming himself for not being the son Howard had wanted, he now wondered what the hell had been wrong with his dad. 

How could any father ignore their child or push them aside? How could anyone think that their job was more important than the little human being who viewed them as the center of their entire universe?

It was a healing experience, but raising Morgan constantly resurfaced his grief over Peter. After all, the reason why Tony was so confident in his new role was because he had practiced all of these skills already — the patience, the listening, the gentle discipline and guidance.

He told Morgan stories about Peter from the beginning, and that helped a little bit, to honor his memory in that way. But it still hurt sometimes, the pain always unexpected in its sharpness and poignancy — when he sat in the audience at Morgan’s first ballet recital and was reminded of Peter’s decathlon meets, when he patched up Morgan’s scrapes and remembered doing the same for Peter on many late nights, and when Morgan got her first Lego set and happily scattered the little bricks all over his lab.

It didn’t get easier, but he got more used to it. 

Which is why he was annoyed and angry when Steve and Scott and Natasha showed up, rambling about the Infinity Stones and time travel. Their existence threatened the tentative peace he’d painstakingly built over the past five years. It made him want to hope again.

He had vowed not to throw himself headlong into danger anymore after Morgan was born, and he knew this mission carried a high risk of death with it. It was something he wrestled with for a few days, silently working through things in his head. Pepper, the amazing human that she was, indicated that she would support him either way. 

And in the end, Morgan made the decision for him when he went upstairs to tuck her into bed. 

“Daddy,” she asked. “Can you tell me the story about when you first met Peter?”

The memory was normally bittersweet, but it felt like an especially herculean task to recall it on this particular evening. He recounted how May had welcomed him into the apartment, served him an absolutely disgusting slice of date loaf (Morgan liked that part), and then Peter had come home from school, wide-eyed and confused about why Iron Man was sitting in his living room. 

His voice faltered as he told Morgan what Peter had said in his room — that he felt he had a duty to use his powers to help others. To save them. 

When he returned downstairs to wash the dishes, Peter’s smiling face observed him from a picture frame, and he realized that he had to try to bring Peter back. To bring them all back.

Maybe he’d survive the experience — maybe he wouldn’t. But he could try to right this last wrong — to ensure that his children had each other and could live long, happy lives together.

He took a deep breath and headed down to his lab to bend the very laws of the universe.

***

Dying hurt, but he was content that he’d succeeded in his mission.

Pepper — the love of his life — and Rhodey — his oldest and most loyal friend — were here with him, by his side until the end. There was pain and sorrow in their eyes, but they would be okay without him. 

They were both strong — he was the one who had always needed them more than they needed him.  

“You can rest now,” Pepper said softly. He could see her mouth trembling with the effort of choking back sobs, and it felt like a knife in his chest. 

His eyes — so near to closing for the last time — flickered over to Peter. Peter, who had knelt before him a moment earlier, tears in his eyes, his voice sounding so young and heartbroken as he tried to reassure Tony that everything was okay; that they’d won the battle. 

Peter, who was alive and whole once again. 

It should’ve been a peaceful last image — to die seeing the boy that he’d brought back to life.

But Peter was crying silently as he stared at Tony with such abject horror and betrayal in his eyes that any semblance of calm and serenity slipped away from Tony’s mind. It reminded him of the pain he’d seen on Morgan’s face when she’d fallen off her bike and sprained her wrist last summer — Happy joked later that Tony had cried harder about the incident than Morgan herself had. 

How could he shut his eyes and drift away when his kids still needed him? When his loss would cause them such grief and despair? Peter had already mourned for too many adults in his short life, and Morgan was so young — he knew from his own childhood how traumatizing it was to grow up without a father’s steady presence. 

“Please, Tony,” Peter pleaded in a choked whisper, his gaze locked on Tony’s. “Don’t go.”

It was the hardest thing Tony had ever done — harder than getting himself out of that cave or flying a missile into a wormhole or wielding the Infinity Gauntlet — but he kept his eyes open and refused to give into the darkness that flickered on the edges of his consciousness. 

His eyes darted over to Pepper, and she knew him well enough to read the strain and resolve in his expression. At this point, they could almost have whole conversations through a look or a smile. That was his Pep, always ready to roll with whatever wild change of plan Tony threw her way. 

She started yelling for medical support, and Rhodey ran off to find help, dragging Peter with him. 

“Crazy man,” she said, laughing through the tears that were slipping down her face.

Thus began Tony’s long and treacherous road to recovery. 

***

He’d been envisioning a perfect fairy tale ending where they all lived happily ever after, but real life wasn’t like that. 

Getting irradiated really sucked. He almost died several times during the first few days, his right arm had to be amputated, and the rest of his right side was covered in gruesome burns that made his nerves scream with unholy fire, day and night. They kept him in a medically-induced coma for over a month, which meant his muscles had all but wasted away by the time he woke up. He could barely stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and he was constantly being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses. 

He hated being vulnerable in front of others, and this was the weakest he’d ever been in his entire life.

Still, his family was around him — Pep and Morgan and Peter and Happy and Rhodey planting themselves by his side almost every day, with occasional visits from May and the other Avengers. He wasn’t very good company, cycling between silently gritting his teeth in pain, grumpily muttering a few words, and falling asleep mid-sentence.

After a particularly bad night, where he’d thrown up twice from the amount of pain he was in, he awoke to the sounds of Morgan and Peter laughing over a board game in the corner of his room. 

Pepper noted his open eyes and the sheen of sweat on his face, and a worried frown creased her forehead. 

“Can you two keep it down a little?” She asked the kids. “Your dad needs to rest.”

They both looked up guiltily, and Tony took in how pink Peter’s cheeks got at Pepper’s word choice.

He reached out with a clumsy hand to touch Pepper’s hand, his mouth quirking up in a small grin for the first time in a long while.

“Leave ‘em be,” he managed to mumble. “‘S good medicine.”

***

It was a relief when he was finally able to come home to the lake house a few months after that point. It felt like a blissful luxury to sleep in his own bed and not be poked awake every few hours to have his vitals checked. He still had months of pain management, skin grafts, and physical therapy ahead of him, but it was a start in the right direction. 

Pepper had hired May to help Stark Industries with relief efforts now that half of the world’s population had reappeared, and she did her best to be at home as much as possible. Tony found himself appreciating the smallest things — hobbling downstairs to find Pepper making breakfast in his old MIT t-shirt — Happy admitting, with no small degree of embarrassment, that he’d started dating May — Rhodey coming by on one of Tony’s good days to take him out for breakfast — Morgan reading him bedtime stories instead of the reverse since he got headaches now. 

The only problem was that Peter wasn’t acting like himself. 

He put on a good show — he smiled and laughed at the right times. He became fast friends with Morgan and could often be found entertaining her, which was a huge help to Pepper and a healing balm to Tony’s heart. 

He visited the lake house often. He put on his suit and swung around Queens in the evenings, helping New Yorkers whose lives had been thrown into chaos since the reversal of the blip. May reported that he was getting good grades in school, and his two best friends had also blipped, so the three of them were still the same age.

It all seemed fine on paper, and he was sure that Peter had fooled most of the people around him. But not May. And not Tony. 

He was too quiet — too withdrawn. He seemed to avoid being alone with Tony, and May admitted that she heard him moving around his room at all hours of the night.

“I’m not sure what to make of it,” May commented, frowning thoughtfully as she stirred her tea. “It’s reminding me of when Ben died.”

It was a warm spring day, and Tony had managed the journey downstairs and out onto the porch to sit with her. 

Tony hummed thoughtfully. “Do you think he’s just struggling to adjust to all the changes? I mean — five years passed, and he missed all of it. That’s a hell of a thing to wrap your head around.”

“You’re telling me,” May agreed.

“Has he said anything to you about Morgan? I was pretty out of it when they met, so I hope — I don’t want him to think I replaced him or something.”

May gave him a funny look.

“What?” Tony asked, wondering if he’d fallen asleep mid-sentence again. 

“Nothing. Just…a lot has changed, like you said. You’re a big softie nowadays, for one.”

Tony pondered that as he sipped his coffee (decaffeinated per the doctor’s orders — ugh). 

“You think me being different is affecting Pete?”

May shook her head. “No. I mean, maybe, a little bit. I’m sure it’s part of everything. But…when I say that this reminds me of Ben’s death, what I mean is…have you noticed that Peter seems to be feeling guilty?”

As soon as May said it, Tony could see it. 

Peter texted Tony religiously to ask how his physical therapy was going, but he rarely shared anything about himself, instead seeming laser-focused on whether Tony was in pain or distress. 

In fact, the kid seemed unusually fixated on Tony’s missing arm in general, often staring at his shoulder with a grim expression. 

“Sorry if this is an insensitive question,” he’d blurted out over dinner a few weeks earlier. “But…couldn’t you have at least put the gauntlet on your non-dominant hand before you snapped?”

The question had made Tony laugh, but May had given her nephew a scandalized look, her fork halfway to her mouth. 

“Peter! We don’t victim-blame amputees for their injuries!”

“It’s fine,” Tony had grinned. “You know, Pete, I had bigger things on my mind at that moment than which hand I was going to irradiate. But you’re right; that would’ve been more convenient.”

The conversation had moved on from there to how the Avengers were disposing of the Infinity Stones, but he couldn’t help noticing that Peter had still looked troubled. 

May’s voice returned him to the present. 

“You did it for him, didn’t you?” She asked, her gaze tracing over his missing arm and the faint scars on his face. “For everyone else, yes, but — mostly for him.”

Tony didn’t bother to deny it. “Yes. I did it for him.”

They sat in silence for a little while longer. 

“Thank you,” May said softly, her eyes misty. Then she snorted, wiping a tear from her cheek. “I really scared you all those years ago, huh? Had you inventing time travel to avoid me yelling at you in the afterlife?”

***

Peter wasn’t the only one who was having a hard time adjusting. Tony found himself fighting back tears over the simplest things — hearing Morgan’s squeals of joy as Peter chased her around in the yard — adding an extra-large pepperoni pizza to their usual order for family movie night — finding Peter and Morgan passed out in a blanket fort in the living room. Hell, he lost it and blubbered like a baby the first time he almost tripped over the kid’s shoes near the back door — he’d completely forgotten about Peter’s annoying habit of kicking them off and leaving them all over the place.

There were hard moments too. When Morgan came down with a stomach bug, Tony hated that he couldn’t help Pepper take care of her. 

“Sorry, honey. Your immune system is too weak right now — we can’t risk it.”

Tony understood, but it still rankled. He compromised by telling Morgan a bedtime story over FRIDAY’s speakers. 

When Pepper got up early to leave the house for a meeting one morning, she accidentally woke him up. 

“Just rest,” she told him — which promptly triggered a flashback to her telling him he could rest on the battlefield.

After the ensuing panic attack, Tony had been an absolute wreck for the rest of the day, and Pepper had canceled her meeting and stayed home with him. He hated being so weak and needy, and he told her as much. 

“You’d do the same for me, honey,” she assured him. 

“No way,” Tony replied with a tired grin. “I’d stick you in a nursing home, Potts.”

Pepper grabbed a pillow and held it above his head, her lips twitching. “Watch it, Stark. Pretty sure I could smother you with this if I wanted to, and no one would hear your screams.”

“Ah, damn. You’ve just been in it for the life insurance policy all along, eh?”

Pepper met his eyes, and he could see that she was also thinking about all the ridiculous, insane things they’d experienced together.

“Yeah,” she laughed. “And the dental insurance is pretty good too.”

***

A few weeks later, Tony awoke from a nightmare where he was wandering around the battlefield after Thanos’ defeat, desperately looking for Peter but unable to find him anywhere. 

He rolled out of bed, almost faceplanting on the carpet. Irritated by the lingering weakness in his limbs, he used the mattress to pull himself up into a standing position, and then he stumbled to his feet and made his way to Peter’s room, relying on walls and doorways to keep himself upright. 

To his horror, Peter’s room was empty when he pushed the door open. Logically, his brain took in the signs of Peter’s recent presence — a hoodie draped over the back of the desk chair, a sci-fi novel on the bedside table, the slightly rumpled comforter on the bed — but the rest of his brain was screaming at him that the kid was still dead — that Tony had just imagined the fight against Thanos — that it was all wishful thinking, despite the very real pain in his missing arm. 

There was only one way to be certain. 

“FRI,” he gasped out raggedly. “Is Peter — is he? Where?”

His AI really was getting smarter over the years, because she somehow managed to understand his garbled inquiry. 

“Peter is currently in Queens with May Parker, boss. He will be back this weekend for a visit.”

Tony collapsed into Peter’s desk chair, shaking like a leaf. 

Happy found him there a few hours later when he came to pick Morgan up for school, and he wisely called May to ask if Peter could come visit a few days early. 

***

Spring melted into summer. 

When Tony had made the decision to invent time travel, he’d done so with the understanding that his days would be numbered. So it felt like a miracle to see the world pass through another season — the foothills around their cabin fading from gray and brown into various shades of blue and green, the garden smelling of warm earth in the lengthening afternoons, the birds returning to roost in the trees overhead.

He completely forgot about Father’s Day until he woke up at the crack of dawn one morning and found Morgan standing inches away from his face, whispering “Wake up, Daddy!” like something out of a horror movie. 

He jolted upright, automatically calculating where his closest gauntlet was, terrified that something was wrong — that they were being attacked —

Then he noticed Peter standing behind Morgan, clutching a tray and looking slightly awkward. 

“Happy Father’s Day!” Morgan shouted, abandoning all pretense of whispering now that Tony was awake. “Your breakfast is served!”

Pepper rolled over, squinting at the clock. “Morgan, it’s not even 6 yet. What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” Peter apologized. “I tried to hold her off a little longer, but she had FRIDAY set an alarm to wake us up at 5. And well — she’s, uh, a very enthusiastic chef, so I figured we’d better wrap things up in the kitchen.”

Now that Peter mentioned it, he could see that Morgan’s shirt was covered with flour. Tony snorted in amusement as he sat up, his pounding heart beginning to slow. 

“That’s very nice of you both. What do we have here?” He asked.

Peter settled the tray in front of Tony, and he found a serving of fruit, scrambled eggs, and slightly lopsided pancakes. 

Maybe May was right and he was a softie, but he felt his heart melt at the gesture from both kids. Tony’s recovery had been hard on Morgan, but she'd been amazingly patient with his new physical limitations. And it was significant for Peter to allow himself to be roped into Morgan’s Father’s Day plans. The first year he’d known the kid, Father’s Day had happened just a few weeks after the fight in Germany. The second year, he’d been about six months into his mentorship of the kid. Peter had showed up for an unscheduled lab day, his eyes heavy with grief for his missing uncle. They’d spent the day together, but neither of them had acknowledged the holiday. 

The third year, Peter had been dead, and Tony had been both dreading and anticipating Morgan’s birth. 

He wasn't even close to being hungry at this hour of the morning, but he was determined to eat as much as he could manage, eager to soak in his first Father’s Day that wasn’t overshadowed by loss. 

He ended up dozing off mid-way through his pancakes, but that was okay, because Morgan finished them for him, and then she fell asleep too, exhausted from her early morning, and he enjoyed a nice nap with her. 

Pepper and Peter made sandwiches for lunch, and Tony felt good enough to venture down to the lake with the kids. He sat on the dock and watched as Peter rowed Morgan around the lake in the old canoe, promising himself that he’d be strong enough to join them next year. 

Pepper had bought supplies for barbecuing and s’mores, and they built a small bonfire after dinner, watching as the stars rose overhead. It was shaping up to be a perfect day, and Tony hadn’t anticipated any of it. He certainly had no expectation of receiving gifts, but Morgan suddenly perked up after her second s’more. 

“Petey! We almost forgot to give Daddy our presents.”

He could tell from the look on Peter’s face — a mixture of reluctance and that peculiar guilt that seemed to be permanently weighing him down — that Peter hadn’t forgotten about the gifts at all — he’d been hoping that Morgan had forgotten. 

A little alarm bell started ringing in Tony’s mind as Peter rose and followed Morgan into the house. He exchanged a significant glance with Pepper, who seemed to have also noticed Peter’s tension. Neither of them dared to speak, given Peter’s keen hearing.

A small part of him worried that the problem was that Peter didn’t want to celebrate Tony on Father’s Day at all, and he was just going along with Morgan’s whims. 

He waited with bated breath as the kids emerged from the house — Morgan running and Peter hanging back — his instincts telling him that this was important — that it would offer him a clue as to what was going on in Peter’s head. 

He oohed and aahed over Morgan’s gift first — a card that she’d made at school a few weeks earlier, and a picture of the two of them in a frame that Pepper had helped her decorate with stickers and paint.

Then it was Peter’s turn. To his surprise, Peter’s gift wasn’t wrapped. He solemnly held out a StarkPad to Tony, and when Tony swiped to unlock it, he was greeted by an unexpected sight: a file with a completed design for a new prosthetic arm. 

He skimmed through the document, quickly taking the information in. Peter had obviously been working on this for months — and it was good. He’d accounted for everything — the fabrication, the wiring, the coding. There were pages of schematics and instructions for assembly. Hell, the kid was probably due a few patents for this project — and he’d done it in his free time, between Spider-Man and school and spending time at the lake house. 

No wonder he wasn’t sleeping. 

“Peter,” he said, shaking his head in amazed disbelief. “This is incredible, bud. It’s outstanding work.”

Pepper had been leaning over Tony’s shoulder, and she echoed Tony’s praises. “Wow, you did this all by yourself, honey?” 

He looked up, expecting to see Peter smiling shyly, too modest to accept the praise. 

Instead, Peter looked utterly miserable, his arms wrapped around his stomach like he was going to throw up at any second. 

“Pete?” He asked. He set the StarkPad aside and automatically started to rise to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

Peter shook his head, his expression unreadable, every line of his body tensed as he began backing away. “I, uh — I have to go. Ned is calling me!” 

He fumbled to pull his phone out of his pocket and darted away from the circle of light that the bonfire provided, taking off in the direction of the lake. 

Tony didn’t buy it for one minute, and he started trying to hobble after Peter, but Pepper stopped him with a hand on his arm. 

“I think you should give him a little space,” she advised. 

Tony sighed, wanting nothing more than to charge after his kid and fix things — which was probably a good indication that Pepper was right and his approach would only do more harm than good.

“What’s wrong with Petey?” Morgan asked, worriedly tugging on Pepper’s sleeve. 

“I’m not sure, honey. But Daddy’s going to figure it out while we go get you a bath. Right, Tony?”

“Right,” he said, trying to sound confident. 

After some deliberation, he decided to settle on the front porch swing. Then he wouldn’t have to make the long walk back to the house at a later time, and Peter would have no way of evading him, unless he went full Spider-Man mode and climbed up the side of the house. He was overdue for a dose of painkillers but decided not to take them — they would make him sleepy and hazy, and he wanted to be sharp for this conversation. 

As he sat and waited, he periodically squinted through the darkness, tracing Peter’s progress as he meandered around the lake. 

Even this would’ve been hard for him ten years ago — sitting and waiting. Considering what someone else needed instead of plunging ahead and doing things his own way. 

The sound of the crickets chirping was a meditative rhythm, and he had almost dozed off by the time Peter returned, the creak of the bottom step bringing him back to awareness. 

He blinked to find Peter standing in front of him, looking nervous. They both knew that Peter could’ve easily snuck past if he really wanted to, and Tony appreciated that Peter was at least willing to stand here and meet his gaze. It was a start in the right direction. 

“Sorry,” Peter said quietly. “I probably put a damper on Father’s Day, didn’t I?”

Tony shook his head immediately in denial. “Are you kidding me? This is the best Father’s Day I’ve ever had, kiddo. And your gift is amazing — I’m just…I’m worried about you. It seems like something is bothering you.”

Peter just gave a little shrug. Tony tried again.

“You must’ve been working on the prosthetic for months. Can you tell me more about it?”

It was rare for Peter to refuse Tony anything — he’d always been a people-pleaser. He shook his head mutely, though.

“Okay,” Tony nodded agreeably. “Can you sit with me for a minute, though? I miss my kid. I feel like I hardly get to see you nowadays.”

Peter’s face paled, but he reluctantly sat on the other end of the swing. 

Tony braced himself for the next question he knew he had to ask. 

“Does that make you uncomfortable? Me calling you my kid? Because I don’t want to overstep, Pete,” he said carefully. “Or make you feel obligated to celebrate Father’s Day with me and give me a gift. I certainly would never try to take your dad or your uncle’s place; I hope you know that.”

Peter shook his head again. “It’s not that. I — I wanted to be here for Father’s Day.”

Tony tried not to visually show how relieved he was to hear that, but it left him more confused than ever as to what was upsetting Peter. 

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Tony idly pushing the swing back and forth with his feet and gathering the words he’d waited five years to say.

“You know,” he said softly. “Every day that you were gone, I regretted that I didn’t tell you this, so I’m going to say it — I love you. I think of you as my son and a part of my family. I missed you, and I’m so glad you’re back with us.”

In the past, he never would’ve been comfortable admitting any of that — hell, he’d had a hard time even hugging the kid five years ago. 

But Peter had died. And then Tony himself had almost died. What was a little discomfort or vulnerability in the face of that?

Across the swing, Peter’s eyes shone with unshed tears. 

“Your arm,” he whispered, so quietly that Tony had to lean forward to hear him.

Tony could feel that the wall was about to come crashing down, but he knew better than to push. That worked on Morgan, but Peter was a different kid, and he required a different approach. 

“What about my arm?” He asked casually.

“What do you mean?” Peter snapped, his voice rising slightly with irritation. “It’s gone, in case you haven’t noticed!”

“And that’s what’s bothering you?”

“Yeah, because it’s my fault.”

Peter looked like he hadn’t meant to actually say that out loud, and he buried his face in his arms like he couldn’t bear to meet Tony’s gaze.

Tony got up without even consciously intending to do so, knees creaking, and went to crouch in front of Peter. The position made his right side scream at him, but that was meaningless in the face of Peter’s obvious pain. 

“What do you mean, your fault?” He asked quietly, using his left hand to lift Peter’s chin. 

“I — I asked you not to go,” Peter said miserably, tears spilling over onto his cheeks. It made Tony’s throat ache with sympathy as he wiped them away. “I begged you to stay alive on the battlefield. And now you’re in so much pain all the time, and you lost your arm. And everyone told me that the only reason you invented time travel is to get me back, and I’m the reason for all of this—”

“Hey,” Tony interjected firmly. “Let’s make one thing clear: none of this is your fault. I chose to go ahead with the mission to bring you back — it was my own decision, and that’s not something you’re responsible for.”

“But your arm,” Peter whispered. “You’re in so much pain. And you have to do physical therapy and have all those surgeries —”

It all made sense now — Peter’s evasiveness, his withdrawn demeanor, his late nights working on designing a new prosthetic. He carried the same sense of guilt and duty for everyone else’s pain as Tony did — it was something that had drawn them together all those years ago.

“Oh, bambino. You’ve been feeling responsible for that this whole time? Come here,” he said, holding open his arm for an embrace. 

For a second, he worried that Peter would make some excuse or dart away again — but to his relief, Peter’s face crumpled and he surged forward, his grip on Tony careful. 

Tony felt his own eyes burn at the simple miracle of both of them being here, on this porch together, Peter's chest rising and falling with each breath, his hands tangled in the fabric of Tony's t-shirt.

“I am so thankful every single day that I’m alive, Peter. You saved me on the battlefield. You reminded me what I was fighting for. You gave me a reason to keep going.”

He hoped that Peter could feel the conviction in his voice. He didn’t quite know how to put it into words — the fact that he would go through all of it again in a heartbeat — the loneliness in his childhood, the years of addiction and wild partying, the self-loathing, the trauma and terror, the crippling grief, the phantom pain of his missing limb — if it meant that he still wound up with this ending out of all the 14,000,000 endings.

If it meant that there was a universe where his kids woke him up with breakfast in bed on Father's Day.  

“You’re worth more than an arthritic old arm, Roo,” he said, his voice coming out slightly choked. “I would’ve given a lot more than that to have you back.”

I would’ve died, he didn’t say. 

He could tell that Peter heard the unspoken words anyway, and he pulled away, his forehead creased with displeasure.

“Yeah, that’s precisely the problem, Tony.”

“I don’t regret it, Pete,” he replied matter-of-factly. “It was my choice, and I knew the risks. It’s my job to look after you, not the other way around.”

“But —” Peter protested. 

“Look, kiddo, I hate to pull the adult card on you, but — can we table this conversation for the next twenty years or so? We can check back in once you have kids of your own. I really think you’ll understand my stance then.”

There were just some things you had to learn with time and experience; Tony understood that now. 

Peter didn’t know it yet, though, so he wrinkled his nose, probably about to protest Tony treating him like a kid — but he stopped, listening to something. 

“Morgan is coming.”

“For the record, I think you’re worth at least twenty arms, kid,” Tony joked, ruffling Peter’s hair as he stood, ignoring how his back ached, trying to end the heavy discussion on a light note. 

As usual, Morgan didn’t let a lack of context stop her from jumping right into the conversation when she appeared on the porch, dressed in pajamas. “No, Daddy! He’s worth 3,000 arms — that’s the best number.”

“Is that so? C’mere, little miss.”

Morgan hopped onto his lap, nestling there comfortably and letting out a soft sigh that meant she’d probably fall asleep soon. Tony lifted his arm and placed it around Peter, drawing him close. Peter’s head landed on his collarbone, his curls tickling Tony’s neck. 

He idly squeezed Peter’s shoulder, realizing that for the first time in five years, the awful empty feeling in his hands — both the phantom one and the real one — was gone. It had been filled again by something far more precious than the Infinity Stones or an Iron Man gauntlet or all the money in the world — the two scarred pieces of his heart that he’d once given away to his children, now whole and unblemished and safely returned to his embrace. 

“See?” Tony said meaningfully. “One arm is all I need, bud.”

Peter let out a soft humming sound, like he wasn’t quite ready to abandon his guilt and let the matter drop. But that was okay — they would work on it. 

They had time.