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Peter stares up at the night sky, mask rolled up to half his face. He has a concussion, his right wrist is snapped, his left knee is shattered.
There’s also a metal rod extruding off his chest.
He can hear the pounding rain, feel it on his face, his mask heavy with rainwater. His eyes are blurry, muddled. He doesn’t know if it’s rain, blood, or maybe tears.
He stopped feeling the pain a while ago.
The sky is violent, flashing thunder and lightning. A storm had been brewing all day, and upon a certain God’s arrival, the sky broke down. Peter had found it amusing.
Now, he finds the rain to be the only thing keeping him from drifting off. If he were to fall asleep, Peter knows that it would be very last time.
The lights of the thunder crackles keep his eyes preoccupied. He counts the branches of every lightning strike. Draws pictures of the night sky in his mind. It’s really beautiful, and he scolds himself for not having appreciated the stars before now.
Peter chokes and coughs, blood splatters his mask.
His eyes feel very tired now, but he can’t seem to close them. With his last bits of strength, he moves his left arm and opens his palm to the sky. He imagines himself as a star up there, because it’s so very beautiful.
And with that final thought, Peter draws in a ragged breath, and his arm slumps down against the hard rooftop.
Iron-Man flies across the thundering sky at full blast. FRIDAY scans everywhere for him. He spots him barely five minutes after searching.
He doesn’t know how he gets Peter to the tower, but he knows that he couldn’t feel Peter’s pulse, and Bruce had to hold him back as the medics rushed to take Peter out of his hands.
Tony doesn’t know when it happened, but his eyes were flooding with tears, and the entire Avengers were sitting in his common floor, including some Allies to the Avengers, several S.H.I.E.L.D agents, straight up enemies to S.H.I.E.L.D- and the government in general-, and some other people who he didn’t recognize but looked far too young to be there.
He was seated- or more accurately, laying- between Bruce and Pepper. Vision is hovering behind him and Bruce and Pepper, his eyes closed. Rhodey is on the floor, head resting half on the sofa. Steve, Bucky, and Sam are together in another seat, blankets and pillows surrounding them. Scott Lang is laying down at the foot of their couch, next to Agent Coulson.
In another seat, Thor is laying with Loki on his chest. There’s a dark green blanket covering them. Natasha and Clint are sharing another couch, with both Wanda and Pietro at the foot, covered in a deep red blanket that is somehow also the one on Natasha and Clint.
There are two teenagers in another couch, both huddled together with an antique white cover on them. One of them is a girl, with dark curls. The other is a boy, bigger than her in body, who seems even younger than her. At the foot of their couch Stephen Strange was wrapped in his trademark cloak.
In the single recliner chair, Wade Wilson is seated there.
In contrast to everyone, Wade is awake.
Tony knows this because the man is crying, shoulders hunched. He’s quiet, almost as if the man has had years of experience keeping his tears silent.
Tony stands up, not waking or jostling anyone as he moves.
He sets a steady hand on the man’s shoulder.
Wade curls up further, and he remembers a day when Peter had spoken so very softly and fondly about the ex-mercenary.
“I want to protect him. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, dad. I know Wade. I know how much it hurts for him, every day. I’ve seen him, dad. You will never understand why I love him until you truly see him for who he is”.
When Wade looks up, Tony sees Peter reflected in his eyes. He sees pain, sadness, anger, hurt. He sees a dirty 10-year-old boy in an alley, hugging his dead aunt and uncle as he sobbed and begged for help. When Tony looked at Wade, he finally saw what Peter saw.
Tony drew in the man for a hug, and he makes sure to never forget the moment where Wade Wilson holds onto him and sobs for the remainder of the night.
The two teens are Michelle Jones and Ned Leeds. They had been alerted by Karen that Peter had been injured. They were two of his emergency contacts. Karen had alerted every single person in her contact list of Peter’s injuries.
Tony makes sure to plan an update for her, as a thank you for saving his son.
Peter is breathing. Slow, long, shaky breaths. But he’s breathing.
Tony doesn’t even try to object when suddenly there’s almost twenty people living in his tower, plus every doctor in charge of monitoring Peter. He doesn’t even realize that it’s been a week and Peter hasn’t awoken, and Tony finally awakes from his own trance.
He had thrown up all over his bathroom, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. had alerted a lot of people, apparently.
Bruce had spoken about “shock”, “emotional trauma”, “coping mechanisms”. Tony could barely understand. He just nodded and made his way to the lab, where he picked up a wrench and never set it down. Dum-E had broken his trance momentarily by his insistent whines and mechanical whimpers.
He wondered if Dum-E was sad because Tony was, or because he knew Peter was injured. He always had a good connection with Peter, he understood, he was a smart ‘bot.
Bruce and Natasha lead him upstairs where they all eat together in silence. Or maybe they were talking and Tony didn’t hear him.
Dully, he noted that Wade wasn’t wearing his suit, and that he had taken a single bite off his food before dazing off into space.
It’s two weeks and Peter hasn’t woken up.
Medically induced coma. Will wake up when the time is right. Alive. Breathing. Alive.
Tony realized one day that he doesn’t remember taking showers or bathing. Bruce had led him into the bathroom one time, and Tony stood there for an hour before he finally stepped into a bathtub. Steve had been the one to get him out.
“Peter needs you. Focus Tony, he needs you. You need to be there when he wakes up, so focus”.
He started trying to gain the controls over his body after that moment.
He likes to watch them all cook. The kitchen is huge, so they all move with elegance as they set about making meals that often go untouched.
Nick Fury stopped by one day. He eyed both Deadpool and Loki, about to comment. He received several glares from everyone, and he’d kept quiet. He had placed a single envelope on the living room table before he left.
“HYDRA Agent successfully captured in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody”.
Tony smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
A few days later, after the agent has been tortured for every single piece of information he knows, he dies. Wounds resembling Peter’s cause his death, slow and painful and drawn out to the very last second.
They never speak of it.
Peter wakes up after a month.
Everyone is there for him, they had moved him into a much bigger room.
Peter makes grabbing motions, and Tony moves forward and he hugs his kid as Tony awakes from his own coma.
Peter wraps an arm around him, and another around Wade Wilson.
Tony watches as the life returns to the immortal man’s eyes, and he finally understands just how much the man loves his son.
And finally, after a month, Tony and Wade take their first real breath, finally alive now that Peter is finally okay.