Chapter Text
“I should’ve stayed on the bus,” Peter says as he crawls into the ship.
###
If you’re nothing without the suit, you shouldn’t have it. Sage advice, right? Except without the suit he’s…
A masked stranger.
You don’t know his identity.
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“Battle One: Paadrick vs. Efreeti,” Abe says. “Shake the chains if you were on Shippy McShipface.”
How many infinity gauntlets are there?
“Stop playing pinochle, Bucky,” everyone says.
Someone doesn’t trust Thor. Why is that?
Mr. Stark tried to send Peter back to Earth. Humanity is facing genocide. Captain America is an old man now or maybe he’s in therapy with Nat. Peter’s drinking Celsius blue razz lemonade but it’s not the same as razzle berry pink squeezy. Or hot chocolate.
(“Retire that joke, librarians.”)
Peter and (Tony? Mr. Stark? What are you programmed to call Iron Man?) team up with Big Peter and the other guardians to subdue Thanos and everyone wants to be a hero. Or maybe they’re all just precocious.
Thanos snaps. Snapped.
Tense is important.
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Gamora and Nebula know why Thanos did it.
He doesn’t believe in Death. He’s a titan after all. But he has daughters now.
Daughters change men, Tony Stark. Jarvis dies—that doesn’t mean he stops caring.
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Peter will never know all that Mr. Stark sacrificed to save him. He knows Mr. Stark had a daughter during the blip—a daughter who will grow up out of the public eye with no father. Who blames him for Tony’s decision to help the Avengers resume the fight against Thanos? Will Morgan reach out to Harley when she grows up?
Peter inherits sunglasses with the capacity to end the world. He gives them to Mysterio. He fucks up—how many times are we at, people, who’s counting? —and Mysterio reveals Spiderman’s identity…
(maybe that happened when the mask came off after the school shooting)
Let’s talk about mental illness!
Let’s not.
Someone got angry at Bucky for being bipolar. “You’re psychotic.”
That’s the criticism so we can make jokes.
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May dies.
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Peter makes a new suit and slips out into the night. There are criminals to fight and little guys to look out for. He is who he is.
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Peter continues patrolling. Sometimes he thinks this is what he deserves, with no one to talk to and no team to help him. He tries to remember to eat and gets a few hours of sleep every night. He drinks his water and considers therapy before remembering that he’s broke and without insurance. It could be worse, he thinks, but he can’t imagine how. His parents are dead. Ben and May are dead. Tony’s dead. There are nights when he struggles to think of one good thing in his life, and others when he saves mugging victims or gets cats out of trees and things seem okay.
Is this chaotic? he wonders. Are the omniscient space octopi entertained?
What’s canon? Are we talking comic!verse or Karen’s perspective?
He’s out late patrolling one night and when he gets back to his apartment he sees that the lights are on. He’s certain he turned them off before leaving for patrol, so he hesitates outside the window—he’s mutating again on top of everything.
No one’s in the bedroom—but someone’s sitting on the couch in the living room.
You know who it is.
###
“We could talk about ascension magic, but Platypus knows more than all of you and I’m okay with that,” Tony says. “We could talk about the multiverse, parallel worlds, but it’s not just planet hopping I’ve been up to—we’re talking deep consciousness and a continuation of the collective lucid dream.”
He put on the infinity gauntlet. He snapped.
Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good…
“I wasn’t part of the vote that decided Cap should return the soul stone,” Tony says. “If I’d been here, I would’ve stopped him. What do you know about the game?”
“What exactly is a soul?” asks Rocket. “Do sentient procyonids get them?”
“The soul stone can control, manipulate, and capture souls, both living and dead, within a pocket dimension known as the Soulworld,” Tony says. “That’s our next stop after Vormir.”
“Dangerous,” Drax says. “Potentially devastating. I’m excited.”
“I am Groot!” says Groot.
That says it all.
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What’s Thor up to?
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“So you’re the man who has everything…and nothing.”
Tony doesn’t know how to spell Yensin’s name. He doesn’t know what language they’re speaking.
Do you want interiority?
Snap.
“Don’t waste it. Don’t waste your life.”
Did you really think that just because you have an idea it belongs to you?
Yensin says something about family.
“I am Iron Man.”
“Do it again.”
“I am Iron Man.”
“You’re at a press conference. Can you still do it?”
Cards. Read the cards, Tony. Everybody just wants you to read the motherfucking cards.
“I will not be taking questions,” Tony says.
The woman’s name starts with a C. Pepper’s watching. Everyone wants something from him.
Weapons?
“Phones.”
AI?
“It was more of a temperature issue.”
Should America blame Afghanistan?
“My business partner was making deals under the table.”
Were you in on it?
“Yes and no. Who knows about the omniscient space octopi?”
Telepathic space octopi.
“Whatever. Who knows?”
###
Peter intended to use Red Skull (yes, he knows the guardian’s name) as the sacrifice, but he wasn’t sure if it would be funny to push him off the cliff instead of jumping.
The show’s ratings are what they are.