Chapter Text
There was a rule Peter’s elementary school teacher had always reinforced during art lessons: Never run with scissors. Personally, he’s proud to say he’s never gone against that rule because he didn’t want to trip and fall and impale himself. He was that clumsy before the bite.
Peter isn't quite as proud to say that he’s doing the superhero equivalent of running with scissors—swinging across a battlefield with a gauntlet full of infinity stones. He hates how accurate the comparison was because kids could be great sometimes. Then, other times, they’re exactly like the horde of shrieking aliens out for his blood and the gauntlet in his hands.
Peter’s mid-air, zipping towards the van with a time travel machine, still busting out quips that no one laughs at even as he moves out of range. Given how his audience consists of aliens, he’ll blame it on the language barrier. It’s totally not because his jokes are lame, no matter what Mister Stark says. Somehow, even though most of the aliens can’t physically reach him, they manage to launch each other at him like projectiles. He narrowly dodges one, pulling himself out of the way with a last-second web, only to collide into another. It latches onto him, nails biting into his skin as it screeches into his already sensitive ears.
Spittle flies across his mask, and Peter flinches back.
It throws his balance off, and he doesn’t catch himself before they both crash into the ground. The impact knocks the air out of his lungs, worsened still by the immediate pile-up the aliens seem to subconsciously agree upon. In an instant, he can’t breathe. The world is so heavy and he can’t see and-
“Engaging instant kill mode.” Comes Karen’s voice, and light breaks through as his suit flings the aliens off of him with its new appendages. Peter’s breathing hard, chest heaving with an arm still wrapped tight around the gauntlet. He sweeps his leg through the ground He socks an alien in the face hard enough that he feels its teeth cave in before the force sends it flying. He’s not really thinking after that, more relying on Karen to pilot the suit and his instincts to keep the enemies at bay.
With his Spidey senses so attuned to the battle around him, Peter doesn’t pick up on the gentle whisper in his head that goes- ‘You can end this now.’ -until his panic cuts through his instincts and he’s shoved his hand into the gauntlet and his arm burns.
Temptation is the infinity stones’ greatest weakness and strength all at once, Peter thinks. Because without someone to use them, they are nothing. Without everyone fighting over them, they are worthless.
Suddenly he knows too much of the world, memories of the stones rushing through him with the pressure of a broken dam. His being feels too big for his body, his soul no longer fitting his skin when he has seen everything wrong with the world.
Peter falls to his knees, too weak to hold himself up anymore as he takes in desperate gasping breaths as if they could ease the fire racing up his left side. The aliens flinch back, and his vicinity is absolutely silent, but maybe that’s because he can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears and the rippling pain in his arm even as his body stitches itself back together.
Peter’s eyes are open, but he’s like a spectator in his own body, watching from the back of his mind as the scene plays out.
He cradles the gauntlet, not registering the myriad of colours that race up his left side as something tells him to raise his head.
He meets Thanos’s eyes across the field. Then, he turns to meet Mr Stark’s.
He can’t hear anything, and there’s nothing he can say that they’ll hear, but Peter can still pick up the desperate look in Iron Man’s eyes as he abandons the fight to fly towards him. The hero’s mouth contorts to form the shape of Peter’s name. The boy thinks he might be screaming.
But what he hears is the oddly gentle sound of metal clinking together-
-and the clarity of a snap.
The Iron Man armour has never felt more cumbersome as Tony stumbles over himself to get to where Peter has curled up. The nanotech retracts into its housing unit with a sharp tap, and Tony feels naked as he falls to his knees on a crowded battlefield, ignoring both the cheers and the stares.
This is a victory, he remembers.
Peter is still cradling that damned gauntlet, and Tony wants to rip it off, destroy it, have it removed from existence and his nightmares, but it’s half-melted and stuck to his skin.
“Hey, kiddo, can you look at me, please? Stay awake, you hear me?” Tony taps on his cheek lightly as he rolls him over, drawing the boy’s glazed-over eyes. The older man feels his heart sink with fear. He barely registers the bite of gravel on his knees and shins.
“I need a medic here!” He hollers over his shoulder before lowering his voice into something gentle, something just short of desperate. “Come on, Spider-man… Pete, please.”
Tony shakes the kid’s good shoulder a little, and Peter opens his mouth, only to choke on air.
“M’ser St’rk,” He slurs in between coughs, and Tony grips him a little tighter.
“Yeah, that’s me, Pete. Keep your eyes on me. Can you do that for me?” The man’s voice is trembling, and there are people nearing, but Tony doesn’t care about them. (He can’t lose the kid again—not again—not when he was the reason Tony tried.)
Peter takes another rasping breath, and his half-lidded eyes don’t stray from his mentor’s face.
“Di’ we win?”
“Yeah.” Tony’s breath hitches. “Yeah, you snapped, and we won.”
Peter doesn’t reply to that with anything other than a shudder of his eyelids.
“Karen, how’s he doing?” Tony pleads, near shouting as he slides an arm under the boy’s neck to support it. Peter’s fingers curl around his arm, weak and somehow still tighter than a noose around his neck.
“Life functions critical.” There’s a pause, and Karen’s voice softens with something like cautious optimism. “Immediate medical attention advised.”
Tony’s head jerks around, looking for someone—anyone—who can help him.
‘Life functions critical,” runs through his head in that damning lilt.
Then, the princess of Wakanda is barking orders, and Strange’s cloak lies flat beside Peter like a gurney. The wizard waves a portal to life, fire sparking against the dirt. But Tony doesn’t hear any of it.
His head is underwater, ears plugged up with the drum of his heartbeat and “Life functions critical.”
He can’t lose his kid again. So, he lifts the boy onto the cloak as gently as he can, and scrambles to his feet.
They run through the portal; earth replaced by linoleum.
There is no whiplash from the sudden change of the dust-filled battlefield to the sterile-clean air. Tony is too busy to notice it because his fingers are clamped tightly around Peter’s right wrist, clinging to every slowing heartbeat. He’s closed his eyes, and Tony’s still begging for him to stay awake.
Someone rips him away from Peter as they push through the steel doors of the operating theatre. Tony’s struggling, trying to get away from the hands that refuse to let him follow the kid, and the Dora Milaje plant themselves in his way. It doesn’t matter. He’d run himself through their spears if it meant Peter wouldn’t go somewhere he couldn’t follow.
There’s shouting, and Tony barely realises that it’s from him until his throat is aching.
The Dora push him back, letting him collapse into a waiting chair when he loses the wind in his sails. He ends up staring at the spotless floors, (staring at the unresponsive Peter in his mind’s eye, and hearing the too small “M’ser St’rk,” and “Life functions critical.” playing over and over like a broken recorder in his ears).
They leave him alone at some point, sitting in the most comfortable waiting chair he’s ever been in while feeling the most out of place he’s had since Titan. They’re going to sort out the half of life that just came back.
(This is a victory, Tony remembers).
And he sits like that, hunched over in that chair, head lowered and eyes staring at his hands. He has never been a religious man, but at that moment, he prays to every deity he knows that they won’t take his kid from him a second time.
(But maybe not for him).1
Maybe Tony has stewed long enough in the deafening silence of the waiting room and his head because he realises, they were prepared for this to happen. Their response time was too quick, and everything had already been ready before they arrived.
They knew someone would need surgery.
The metal doors swing open, and Tony’s up on his feet, heart jackrabbiting as Strange walks through alone. It’s only been an hour and four minutes. Tony’s been counting.
“Why aren’t you in there?” Tony croaks out, throat dry.
“There is not where I’m needed.”
Something ugly rears its head, anger coalescing on his tongue.
“You were the best neurosurgeon in the country, and you can’t even help?”
“We’re not in the country, Stark, and I can’t operate anymore.” Strange is awfully different from how he had been previously. The arrogance in his eyes has taken a cooldown, and all that’s left is a self-deprecating creature that reminds Tony of himself. And if Tony were a lesser man, he’d say there’s something almost apologetic buried in the furrow of his brow and the downturn of his lip.
But there is nothing for him to be sorry for. Strange only has the life of Peter Parker on his shoulders, and he’d give it up easily for the world.
Tony wishes Strange would shout at him, though, or do anything that would distract him from this. And just as fast as the thought slips into his mind, Tony’s guilt rises like a tsunami and crashes down on the banks of his mind because this is his fault. He was supposed to protect the kid, and he failed again. (He’s not allowed to be distracted, not from this).
Silence.
Or maybe Tony’s terrified because the question slips out.
“Does he make it?”
And finally, Strange spares him a glance before he realises what he’s done and averts his gaze once more. His hands are shaking.
“I don’t know.” Strange stares through the glass of the metal doors. “I didn’t foresee this.”
Tony clenches his fist, nails biting crescents into his flesh. There were 14,000,605 endings, and only one of them worked.
“Don’t bullshit me, Strange. Someone warned them to be prepared for major surgery,” Tony snaps, ignoring the beep of his housing unit. He didn’t need it to know his heart rate was rising.
“I wasn’t expecting Peter to need it.” Strange can’t meet his eyes, though. Tony sees it in the way his eyes drift from the doors to the clock and back, resolutely avoiding his direction.
“Then who?” Tony shouts, breath coming hard. “Because there isn’t anyone in the operating theatres other than my kid!”
Strange doesn’t answer for a long time, and Tony doesn’t know what to think anymore because what does his silence mean? (He can’t think of anything but acquiescence with shameful agreement, and it kills him all the more so).
And maybe it’s selfish of Tony, to wish that there was someone, anyone else, who was in the operating theatre instead of Peter, but he did. Because it would mean that Strange really hadn’t let Peter go for the world.
Maybe the silence is too empty and too loud all at once because the once-surgeon speaks.
“I traded one life for the universe.” Strange looks at him with something horribly soft and sorry in his eyes. Tony slumps into the chair. He doesn’t want to hear this. “Yours.”
All the fight in him dies at that. Tony would die for his kids in a heartbeat but hearing it out loud was still a slap in the face.
One soul for the world.2
His gut twists with something mixed with apprehension and hope.
Just, maybe.
Peter’s been here before.
He remembers walking down this road too clearly, the memory kept vivid through his nightmares. The night is cold, and he tugs his jacket tighter around his body as he listens to the sounds of New York.
He’s running—why’s he running? —and this dream isn’t quite the same as the usual nightmare because this is the point when he’s always frozen even when he’s screaming at himself to move. But that doesn’t happen because Peter’s wearing his suit, and the gunman is webbed to the ground before he can even think about shooting.
He stares at the man, wanting to feel anger, fear; something, anything, but there’s nothing but apathy for a nameless killer whose face he can’t quite remember. (Shoulder-length hair and sunglasses with the smell of oil and ash, but that’s enough for Peter).
There is only cold in his bones, sharp and stinging and somehow holding his heart hostage. There is no feeling to this, and Peter can wipe him from existence with a snap, leaving no evidence sans the dust swept away by the winter wind.
“Peter,” Ben calls, and the boy blinks out of his stupor, swiping at his dry eyes. Peter turns and forgets about the man at his feet. His uncle looks at him, ever patient and gentle, and in the same way he knew that Peter was different the first time, he asks, “Did you do it?”
Peter smiles at Ben. “Do what?”
“Snap your fingers.” He gestures to Peter’s left hand, and he finds the gauntlet filled with infinity stones, melding into his skin until he can feel through the gauntlet as if it’s part of his body. From the peripheral of his vision, the body of his uncle’s killer has long since disappeared as if they’d always been alone. The night is strangely warm.
It should hurt, Peter thinks.
It doesn’t.
“Yeah, I did.” His eyes are glued to where his elbow becomes gold.
“What did it cost?”
Peter hides his left arm behind his back, not looking at his arm as it starts to melt, dripping off until there’s a puddle of colours on the floor and everything below his elbow is gone. He looks at Ben. It doesn’t hurt, Peter thinks to himself.
(It doesn’t).
Smile still in place, he answers.
“Nothing.”