Archive of Our Own ^beta

Demons come in all shapes and sizes, some more obvious than the rest. The bad guys that hurt and steal and murder, for example. Others are more subtle. Nasty comments and the eyes that watch and judge. But the ones that hurt you most of all are the ones that nobody else can see.

They lie in the pictures hidden away in boxes and under piles of books, or if you’re particularly brave, hung on the wall in plain sight. They lurk in the little things, the gifts they gave or the things they used to say. They creep up in the night, overwhelming you with memories and sadness and guilt. Eventually you go numb, for lack of a better word. It’s not that you don’t feel the pain, it just settles into a dull ache that overrides all other emotion.

Peter Parker sat on the roof of the apartment. Everywhere he looked, he saw him. He was in the murals splashed across the sides of buildings. He was in the in memoriam columns they put in every newspaper and every magazine on every corner. He was in the boxes of bolts and scraps Peter tinkered with when he was bored. He was there every time someone said “hey, kid.” He was there in every nook and cranny and no matter how hard Peter tried to run, the reminders were everywhere.

With every painful reminder, Peter closed himself off a little bit more. Brick by brick, he built a wall around his heart. That way, he thought, he wouldn’t have to feel it. He wouldn’t have to remember the way Tony’s chest shuddered before his eyes closed one last time. He wouldn’t have to remember the burned and blackened face of his hero, his mentor, Tony.

But as Peter sat by the lake, his walls began to crumble. He could feel the all-too-familiar burn of tears as they began to form. He let them. Peter was done running from the hurt. He was too exhausted to keep going, so he just stopped and let the demons overtake him.

For the first time in months, the tears came pouring down his cheeks. His shoulders heaved as the battle flashed before his eyes.

‘I am inevitable.’

‘I am... Iron Man.’

White.

An army, crumbling in the most literal sense of the word.

A man, propped up against the rubble, his face blackened and burnt.

‘We won Mr. Stark. You did it sir.’

‘Tony, look at me. We’re going to be OK. You can rest now.’

The tears poured freely as Pepper sat down beside him. She didn’t say anything, just sat next to him as he let loose.

When the tears subsided, Pepper spoke. “You know, he loved you. Like a son.”

Peter didn’t say anything.

“You know the first thing he said when he got back to Earth? It wasn’t ‘we failed’ or ‘it’s good to be back.’ The first thing he said was ‘we lost the kid.’ You were the most important thing that happened. It wasn’t anything else. It wasn’t being stuck in space for god knows how long or almost dying. It was you.”

Peter didn’t say anything.

“And I was watching him that night he decided to bring everyone back. He turned Steve and Nat down just hours before, but he was doing the dishes and accidentally got some water on a picture of the two of you together. He picked up that picture and I could see that in that moment, he knew what he had to do. He knew he had to do whatever it took to get you back. And I know that he would’ve fought just as hard if he had lost Morgan. You weren’t just some secret weapon or child prodigy he picked up as a charity case. You were the closest thing he had to a son.”

They sat together in silence, watching Morgan play tag with Happy. Finally, Peter broke the quiet.

“I miss him.”

“I know.”

And in that moment, Peter accepted that Tony was gone. He wasn’t over it, for sure, but the only thing they could possibly do is to rebuild. Move on. And for the first time since Tony Stark breathed his last breath, Peter Parker smiled.