AN: This one is dedicated to parkrstark, caraminha, and Buckets_Of_Stars, who lit the initial spark of inspiration for this fic and then cheered me along as I typed out the first draft of this in our groupchat. I love you guys more than I love irondad, and that's saying something.

WARNINGS: references to sexual assault on a minor (nothing explicit, it's literally just a vagueness but please take care of yourselves if that might be a trigger)

INFINTY WAR SPOILERS BELOW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

A heaviness settles over the world after Thanos.

At first, it was the heaviness of grief. 3.8 billion people were dead. Everyone, no matter how untouchable they had seemed before, had seen someone let loved crumble into nothingness right in front of them. The losses replayed behind the eyes of the survivors on a continuous loop. It was as if the entire planet had donned metaphorical mourning clothes.

Every man, woman, and child wore the invisible cloak of could-have-beens.

And then, the Avengers saved the world.

Again.

Relief made the heaviness easier to bear, but it did not evaporate. Now, rather than the ever-present weight of what was lost, people grappled with the burden of what could have been lost for good.

There is a surprising darkness that comes with recognizing your own mortality. Recognizing that everything you have can be torn out from underneath your feet in an instant. People realized that they were standing on the edge of oblivion. One wrong step, and they were extinguished.

The world struggled to process what had happened, to process the enormity of their own insignificance. As it turns out, coming face to face with the momentary nature of existence makes people ask some pretty deep questions.

An influx of philosophers, religious zealots, and scientists scrambled to offer explanations for the ordeal. All around the world, people questioned life, the afterlife, and the meaning of destiny and fate.

In essence, the entire world had a simultaneous existential crisis.

But while everybody else focused on these big, unanswerable questions, Tony Stark fixated on a much smaller one.

"I don't wanna go. Sir, please."

He shook his head, turning his gaze to the teenager curled around a StarkPad just inches to his right. Peter seemed completely engrossed in whatever it was he was doing, eyes flicking across the screen and lips parted in concentration.

"Sir, please."

Peter must have sensed his mentor's scrutiny, and his eyes slid up to meet Tony's. He stretched a little against the mattress. "Hey."

Tony tries to convey nonchalance despite his churning thoughts. "Hey."

A lazy smile stretches across the kid's face. It's the most relaxed Tony's seen him in a long, long time. "What's up?"

"Sir, please."

"Peter," Tony shifts uncomfortably. He knows that he's about to shatter the tenuous peace he and the kid have found, but he can't help it. Those words are driving him mad. He has to understand, "Peter, buddy, I need to ask you something."

The kid's been skittish and easily startled since Thanos, so it doesn't catch the billionaire even a little off guard when his entire posted goes rigid and his eyes dart around his mentor's face, wild and uncertain. He pulls the StarkPad out of his hands and deposits it on the side table, out of the way, before Peter can accidentally shatter it. "Yeah?"

"On Titan, right before you…" both men tense, and Tony fights the urge to wince, "right before you, uh, went away, you called me Sir." He pauses, trying to gauge Peter's reaction before he even has it. "Why did you do that?"

He liked to think that he'd gotten pretty good at reading the kid, but even he hadn't expected such a violent response. Peter jerks back so suddenly that his head smacks against the bed's frame with a rattle and a thud. Tony lunges to steady him and the kid whimpers. When he finally meets his mentor's gaze, Tony is horrified to see tears in his eyes.

"Buddy?"

Peter sniffles. There is an aguish on his face that is bone-deep. It crawls out of the kid's eyes and settles into Tony's joints. A contagion of suffering.

"I didn't realize I said that."

"You did. And I've been thinking about it," more than you know, kid, "and you called me that after the ferry, too. But I don't think you've done it again."

Peter's breaths are short and shaky. "I hate that word."

"Sir?"

"Yeah."

"Then why'd you use it?"

"Because it just happens." For a second, Tony thinks the kid is going to lash out at something. The bed. A pillow. Hell, maybe even Tony himself. Instead, he catches his flailing fist in his other hand and holds it tight. Tony can almost hear the cartilage grinding in protest. "I can't help it."

He can't stand his kid's distress, so he backtracks. "It's not a big deal, Pete."

But Peter is shaking his head before the words can fully settle in the air. The movements are so violent that Tony reaches out to cup his face and still him. Peter turns into his palm and screws up his face. "It really is a big deal."

"Well," Tony pushes against the kid's cheekbone with a gentle thumb until he looks at him, "the last time I was messing with a "big deal," I managed to save the universe. Something tells me I can help you with your "big deal" too."

And there it is. The look that always makes Tony's heart stop. The look that he thought he'd never see again after Titan, even if he did manage to tear Peter back from the claws of Death, because he hadn't saved him. Peter had cried, Peter had begged, and Tony hadn't saved him.

If anything was going to break the teenager's blind trust in him, it had to be that.

But it hadn't. Even now, there was that same light of pure adoration shining in the kid's irises.

I don't deserve this.

"It's stupid."

Tony swallows down a hollow laugh. "Not stupid if it has you this worked up, buddy."

"It's not even happening anymore."

"Memories can sting just as much as the present, Peter. I know that better than anyone." He taps his cheek. "The past can be a real bitch."

Peter bites his lip so hard that Tony's heart skips a beat. "You'll hate me."

"Peter," he waits until the kid's gaze re-centers on him, then gives him a reassuring smile, "there is not a universe in which I could hate you."

Peter looks like he's balancing on the edge of a thousand-foot drop, just about to jump.

C'mon, kid, he thinks, just step off. I'll catch you.

Please let me catch you.

"He made me call him Sir."

There is a pit in Tony's stomach. He doesn't like the way that sounds. "Who did?"

"This guy. It doesn't really matter," Tony knows that it does, but he doesn't push, "but he… he did stuff to me. Stuff I didn't want him to do. Touched me in places I didn't want him to touch me. And he, uh, he made me call him Sir when he did it."

It takes Tony all of two seconds to connect the dots. "Oh my god, Peter. Oh my god."

And maybe that wasn't the best reaction, because Peter jerks away from his hand. "I'm sorry. I'm s-so sorry. I know I should've-I should've stopped it but I just… I just c-couldn't because I wasn't brave enough. I wasn't brave like I should have been." His next words come out so garbled by sobs that Tony can barely decipher them. "I wasn't brave like you."

It hits Tony like a ton of bricks. Peter thinks that it was his fault.

Some monster had assaulted him, and Peter thought that it was his fault.

Well fuck that.

"No, Peter. No. There's no brave or not brave in a situation like that. There's just surviving. And you survived. When someone violates you like that, just getting out of bed in the morning is your moment of courage."

The kid is shaking, and Tony longs to touch him, to pull him into his arms and give him every ounce of comfort he deserves, but he knows that he has to wait until Peter seeks it out himself.

He has to give him that power over his own body. The power of choice, because someone else didn't.

So he'll wait, even if it kills him.

"I'm sorry."

"Please stop apologizing, kiddie." I don't think I can stand hearing you apologize ever again. Not after. Never after. "This isn't your fault."

Bright, teary eyes latch onto Tony's face. It occurs to the billionaire that he is the only thing tethering the kid to shore. The mass of the responsibility is crushing underneath his ribs.

"It isn't?"

Two words. Two innocent, childish words. Peter is going to arrange his entire universe around Tony's response.

He shoots a metaphorical middle finger up to his dad and refuses to fuck this up.

"No, Peter." He sinks every ounce of his resolve into the words, and hopes they don't break under the weight. "It was never your fault."

He doesn't think ever been more relieved to receive an armful of snotty teenager in his life, but then he stalls his thoughts and thinks back to the moment Peter reappeared after Titan.

Maybe it's the second best time.

"He made me call him Sir."

The words are whispered like they're the gift wrap on a secret. Peter is offering him something that Tony does not yet understand, but he'll accept it all the same. "I know."

"Whenever I get scared, I just… say it." Peter's hands clench painfully against Tony's shoulder blades, but he forces his body to stay still. "I hate it. I hate that I don't have control over it. He took the control away and now, even after he's gone, I can't seem to take it back." He sniffles. "He's in everything I do. I can't escape it."

Tony sighs, threading a hand through Peter's hair. "But we know now, buddy. If we know what we're trying to beat, it's a hell of a lot easier to do it than if we're shooting blind."

"We?"

Tony smiles. This kid. "Yeah, buddy. We."

Peter snuggles closer, as if Tony's affirmation has given him permission to cling. "I hate that he dirtied this."

"What do you mean?"

"I called you Sir on Titan. I called you Sir after the ferry. He made this dirty. He made us dirty."

"No, he didn't." Tony shifts so that Peter's neck is at a more comfortable angle against his collarbone. "He can't touch this. He can't touch us. As Iron Man, I forbid it."

Peter giggles, wet but uninhibited by active tears. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The kid is silent for a moment. "I wish it hadn't happened."

Tony feels a pain, visceral and all-consuming, emanate deep from his chest. It ensnares all his thoughts and steers them in a single direction.

There are a million things I wish hadn't happened to you, little one. A million things I would rewind.

"I wish it hadn't happened too, buddy." He swallows. His words have never fallen easily into comfort. They've never fit the mold. But right now, they have to. They have to because Peter needs them to, and Tony would turn the universe inside out to give Peter what he needs. "But we can't live in the past. If you build your life on regret, it'll turn out pretty shit." He tightens the arm around Peter's back. "Take that from an expert in the field."

Peter pulls away just enough to gaze up at his mentor with a strange look in his eyes. "Your life isn't shit, right?"

Tony smothers the urge to scold the kid for his language, and then stumbles on the enormity of the question.

Is his life shit?

He's always assumed that his life was awful because he was awful. The karma of a sinner for a man who knew nothing but sin.

But then he thinks of Pepper and her soft hands, poised with power but gentle and kind. He thinks of Rhodey and his steadiness, the way his presence has cemented itself into Tony's life like the roots of an oak tree to fertile soil. He thinks of the Avengers and their mosaic, a family pieced together out of unusable parts, shattered, and then forged back together in the fires of war to make something better.

And then he thinks about Peter. He thinks about his rambling and his Iron Man hoodie and his tendency to leap without looking. He thinks about his unruly curls and his innocence and the way he smells like shampoo. He thinks about the way his eyes light up when Tony calls him Pete. He thinks about how the only redeemable quality of humankind was the fact that it produced Peter Parker.

He thinks about how the kid is curled around him now, offer a vulnerability to Tony that he's never given anyone else.

"No, Peter." He murmurs, something solidifying in his chest. "No. My life isn't shit at all."

And for the first time in his life, Tony Stark believes that he deserves more than a future of destruction and despair. That he deserves his own pocket of peace. Because, somehow, Peter Parker decided that he was worthy.

And that was enough for him.