A/N: Basically just my own little post-IW tale to tell, with main focuses being on Peter and the people he's closest to. There'll be lots of other characters in and out of the story, too! As a warning, the story does involve Peter in a walking vegetative state, so if that's something that upsets you enough to avoid it, feel free to avoid it! I can't say how the story'll go, but it centers around that fact. Also I have no idea what I'm doing, forgive me.

It takes two years for them to right everything. Two long years — most of it spent in chaotic shades of tears, screaming, silent defeat, and a very unsuccessful five stages of grief for everyone involved. It's a world where billions of people have all had their candle wicks pinched in tandem between ugly purple fingers, their lights gone out in the pits of their mourning loved one's stomachs. There was not enough time in the day for funerals, not enough room or money for smoothed gravestones, and far too many people that will never, ever be identified as dead. Those people, the ones without families and friends, they simply never existed. Perhaps in the backgrounds of neighborhood photos they weren't meant to be a part of, but ultimately? They are vagabonds who just blew away in the wind.

And those who did have people left behind, who mourned and prayed for them?

They were just memories on walls.

Nobody from their team of heroes took their noses out of books or their eyes off screens, carving out new and old information on celestials, on resurrection, on righting the wrongs done by an arrogant bastard who decided to snap his fingers and purge the universe of any happiness; that same purple bastard had vanished without another word, and Thor had paced through the Avengers headquarters those first days with guilt etched into the lines of his weary face. His brown and blue set of eyes looked into Tony's, and his lips had pulled into something of a haunted grimace, and he said with no ounce of doubt, "This could have been over, had I aimed for the head."

The half of the Asgardians that Thanos had spared came to earth just a few months after; they filled in the broken pieces of a fractured glass Wakanda that had been devastated by the loss of their king. It was an intellectual gathering, more than anything, a concoction of mad sciences that would yield more together than apart. Steve Rogers kept in touch with them, eyes and ears waiting to be sated by something fruitful, about Thanos and his whereabouts.

They didn't need flip phones because they lived down the hallway from each other, and sometimes when Tony wasn't pouring through information with Bruce, he was letting the captain talk his ear off about world news that might matter if Tony would let it. With every passing day, the Sokovia Accords became a relic, something from the old world. The fight in Germany almost didn't feel real anymore. But it was, and it had been the catalyst in meeting a young man from Queens who loved Alt-J and Star Wars.

The scroll bar on the missing children's pages Tony's accrued is so tiny, he can barely see it on his screen. He sits there at the kitchen table while Morgan sits on his lap and slams blocks around like a tiny radioactive dinosaur. And he's tired and regretful as every face seems to blur and morph into Peter's (his goofy shirts, his awful Mets hat, the fifth Jansport backpack that month). Pepper makes Tony coffee, rubs his shoulders, makes breakfast for their daughter. He looks at both of them every day and reminds himself he doesn't deserve them.

Rhodey brings updates from Ross, as an exasperated courtesy more than anything.

Tony also cares very fucking little about that, too. Natasha is in full agreement.

Oh, and the raccoon stuck around, too. Two years, and Tony Stark made friends with a kleptomaniac trash panda who lost almost every person he's ever come to love, and the blue chick might as well be counted among the lost, because she hit the atmosphere running and never stopped (but if there's anyone Tony would bet on for killing Thanos through hate alone, Nebula might be able to accomplish it before supper). Rocket heads out from time to time to try and find clues in the deep reaches of space — "Where's Thanos? Have you seen where he ran off to? Where's that ugly son of a b—" And you know, it ends about as successfully as the last time the little garbage bear rolls back in. Truth be told, he likes Rocket a lot. Good eye for tech, familiar snark used to push people away, a raging hate-boner for a certain mass murderer...

Ah, yes. The bastard who sacrificed his daughter, go fucking figure. Tony looks at Morgan's freckled face as he changes the umpteenth diaper that day and can't fathom the concept of being her end. It's horror fiction, the pages ripped out of books conjured to be nothing more than a terrible daydream of a bored writer.

It's the same horror fiction where Peter clings to him sobbing for help, falling when his legs disintegrate underneath him.

Tony looks for that kid everywhere, despite knowing exactly where he is.

He waves the photograph in Pepper's face, inches from her, the sharp juts of his fingernails biting into the Polaroid like dog teeth — (retroware, a camera found in a dumpster, delicately and lovingly re-mantled into a working camera, pictures snapped in quiet labs on lazy Sundays where Tony pretends the kid shouldn't be there) — but Pepper just looks at him like he's a wild man, and maybe he is, with owlish imploring eyes and unkempt hair, but nobody is listening, they just talk about their day and nobody is looking at this kid in this photograph: the kid with the curvy brown hair and pinching, smiling eyes and thin lips, he's only a kid, he's missing, does nobody see that? But Pepper just puts her hands up at the sides of her head and shrugs like he's out of his mind, and she's talking about being behind schedule —

"Tony, honey, there's nothing there — I don't know what you want me to see." And she is getting progressively more furious at him, because there's nothing, but he can clearly see this teenaged boy's face looking back at him when he turns the image back to himself: he's in the lab, Tony took the picture (say cheese, and the kid said provolone, because he's a massive nerd, but Tony would have done it too, so what does that make him), and no, Peter's not in the lab, he's not anywhere. Not in the ground, not in an urn, not standing on his feet, not stuck to his hands.

"No. No no no, look at him, why - why are you not looking at him?" Tony asks, curled fingers pecking over the shirt on his chest, right where his blue heart used to be, and he's so fucking angry that Happy said it Pepper said it Steve said it Everyone says it, the same thing, different voices: "It's a black box, Tony. It's just a black box. The picture's not developed. Something got screwed up, sorry."

He looks at the photo again and wants to see a black box, wants this to just end, but he knows it can't. In the Polaroid, the kid is tied to a chair in sweltering heat in the middle east, under the shadow of cave walls, streaked with mud and blood and wet from torture, and Tony has it on good authority the human body was not made to live in the sea, not made to breathe the deep dark waters in a two-foot basin of murky water. But Pepper looks right through the photo every time and asks him if he's remembered to water the ugly office plant she put on his desk — he shoves it off and it smashes all over, dirt underfoot crunching with the same texture as Titan. The desk is covered in nothing but Polaroids of every waking fear he's had, but they all swear on their lives—

"They're all just black boxes."

He wakes up with a strangled sound of panic, the sheets ripped out from under Pepper's soft pale arms, and she darts awake alongside him with little choice in the matter. He isn't sure how to even begin to explain the nightmare, so he doesn't, which seems adequate enough for her at this point; she instead rakes kind fingernails over his scalp and he lets himself rest in his own sweat, until eventually it dries up with her ability to stay awake with him. But there's no sleeping now. Which is fine, because not an hour later Morgan's crying in a crib that Tony doesn't let leave their room. She's smart — not quite two yet, but she's got an eye for how to get what she wants. She slaps her hands on the bars like she's a chubby convict and says, "Juice!" like she hasn't already had enough juice in the day to turn into a berry.

"... I got her," he says with feigned exasperation, but more than anything, he just wants to hold onto the kid and remind himself she won't crumble into dust. He walks her through the hallways and stares out large windows, places where the memory of Peter Parker ghosts the halls in Tony's mind. He stands where Peter watched in boyish awe as the jets took off — where he'd lead him down a path towards reports and a new suit. Regrets dance like spots in his vision. Run along now, young buck.

He misses the others, too. He thinks about them often, wants to get them back from the jaws of death.

But everyone knows Peter is a special case, for him. A special mission set aside to complete.

There's an aunt across the city that somehow manages to get up and go to work every day. She's all that's left of a family she'd married into — the last Parker, putting unopened Christmas and birthday presents in a room that hasn't been touched in two fucking years. Tony doesn't know how she does it, after the Parkers and her husband's death; perhaps it's not always the abundance of loss that breaks someone; perhaps it's the abundance of loss that helps steel them for the next blow.

Either way, he gives her as many promises as he can muster, and she just nods like she can actually trust him.

"If it isn't the terrible terror," Rocket slurs from the end of the walkway, as he rounds the bend. Tony can't believe his eyes; he's sure there must be some youtube video out there of a raccoon holding a vodka bottle, but seeing it in person is another thing altogether. The short-statured creature adds, "Not the gremlin baby, I mean you."

"Robbet!" Morgan says, gleeful and unaware of just how alike her and Rocket's walking performances would be toe-to-toe.

Tony is less enthused.

"Did you — Did you fly back drunk?" And really, he's not one to talk after some of the stunts he pulled in his suits, but when he looks out the window there's a clearly tipped over spaceship on the front lawn of the headquarters, almost meeting the tarmac where the quinjet resides.

Rocket wags a paw at him like he's nuts. "Seemed like the thing to do. You Terran nimrods are great at it."

"You could've hit the building, you jackass," he hisses, "There are people sleeping here you could've killed."

"Wouldn't be the worst way to go out on this stupid planet."

"You're so lucky I'm holding a toddler, or I'd kick you in the head."

"Bring it, old man." But the longer the squabbling goes, the more Rocket seems to completely lose whatever steam he has. They end up sitting right against the big glass windows, and Tony lets Morgan rub her grubby hands all over the panels, because he's pretty sure the cleaners here prefer her messes over the ones Tony leaves in the labs (you know, the ones that almost start fires). The kid eases something inside him, and he's not one to recommend having a kid as therapy (because it definitely didn't solve his panic over being a shit dad), but it at least keeps him grounded. Gives him perspective. Focus.

"Robbet," she commands, fidgeting with Rocket's ear. The raccoon's gotten used to the attention, so much so that he just lets it be, and Tony watches expectantly for words he knows are gonna come sooner or later. This isn't the first time Rocket's stumbled in like this, though he'd hesitate to say it's common enough for an AA meeting.

"Nothin's out there, Stark," he says tiredly. "Thanos is in the wind after we pinned him in the rice terraces. Nebula's out there givin' her... I was gonna say blood, sweat, and tears, but I dunno how much of her is even left t'do that. But the universe is too damn big." He rubs his eyes tiredly in a way that is obscenely human. "We ain't ever gonna get the bastard, much less reverse the damage. I can't keep putting off..."

"Mourning?"

Rocket and Tony lock eyes for a moment, the billionaire's face unreadable.

Rocket looks away, and for once, he can't usher up a snarky, assholish retort.

"Mourning."

And Tony could understand that much. The world has already been grieving and crying it out, but the Avengers? They haven't allowed themselves to do it. Scott's got his kid, and he's all his kid has now — the cops had found her wandering a park alone, crying for Ant-Man to save them, and Tony's paid for therapy but fuck if that always helps. Clint refuses funerals for the two children he and his wife lost, not until Tony can look him in the eye with complete certainty and say 'there's nothing else we can do'. And Tony is not gonna lie about that shit, not even for a moment. Steve always chases for Bucky, and Tony expects as much (both in a fond way, and in a resentful way that makes him wanna strangle the bastard; what, we can't all be perfect at making up)... He also talks about Wanda and Vision and Sam often, and the room always descends into pained silence by the time they both realize how many people they've lost.

"Sorry I called you a gremlin," Rocket suddenly says, and Tony's confused for a moment before he glances over and finds Morgan sitting between Rocket's legs, cupping his furry face in her hands like she's trying to figure out why his beard is so much more out of control than her father's. Suffice to say, the drunk raccoon eventually passes out against the window, and Natasha makes her cameo in the shaded moonlight long enough to click her tongue and heft the creature up. Usually it'd be a more violent affair, but he's so out cold, he doesn't even so much as twitch.

"I'll get him in the recovery position, I guess," she says with a quirk of her brow.

One time he'd asked her in a moment of admittedly godawful anger how she managed to be a stone-faced robot in the wake of all of this; she had slammed him down onto a table and said it was the hardest thing someone can ever do.

"Could always throw him into a tree," is his reply, and she smirks — but tucks Rocket in, regardless.

They're all he's got now.

Two weeks later, Captain Marvel gives them the location of Thanos.

One week after, Thanos is dead and Bruce and Tony are staring at the melted, twisted remains of a gauntlet adorned with six stones.

It's a full month, when the snap is finally undone.

"W-what the flying fuck just happened?"

Probably not the most eloquent way Peter Jason Quill, Star-Lord and fearless leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, could have reclaimed his life and body, but that's the way it happened. One moment his sinking despair had been blown away in the wind with the rest of his crumbled body; the next, he's gasping for air like a newborn baby with his hands on his chest — unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to do anything but feel helpless and lost. Then his name comes back to him, his age, where he's from, followed by the first of many memories: his mother and him, making cookies with The Rolling Stones blaring on an old radio in the background.

Then all of it follows like a stampede trampling over each other: the ravagers, Ego, celebrations full of booze and old 70's and 80's hits with his team; he groans pitifully and remembers too suddenly that his mother is dead, Yondu is dead, Gamora is dead — and then he cries like he's never cried before in his goddamn life. Like, full-bodied sobbing, harder than he's ever allowed himself in the last thirty years. His fingers curl in rough alien soil and every nerve in his body is alight with something he can't really explain, leaving him shivering. When all is said and done, it's cathartic, but his head is pounding and his eyes are red and wet and — and his legs don't want to work, exactly, so he drags himself into sitting and stares all around him with a helpless, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Where are the others?

Drax crawls out from behind the rubble with a bit-back curse as if summoned by Peter's sheer will alone, and Strange floats down from god knows where. Both of them wipe their faces and breathe like they'd just run a marathon, one you'd sprint for — to try and escape the returning memories. The questions bubbling under the surface can wait (when, why, how, who, where; where the fuck is Thanos so I can kick his head in and ignore the aching guilt of the stupid shit I've done). Peter's lips curl into a relieved grin despite himself and he staggers to his feet, rushing to meet Drax before the lumbering warrior can collapse on his knees; he steadies the two of them, and between four colt-like legs, they make it work until they can move on their own.

"Drax, holy shit. I'm so happy to see you right now, I saw you and — where's Mantis? And... Stark and the kid?"

He's not gonna pretend the last two weren't cliff notes in his order of priorities, compared to Mantis. That's his sister, his family, and his heart is pounding at the thought of losing anyone else from his team... because Gamora's so fresh in his mind, an abrasion so new and raw and — don't think about it, Quill, don't think about it right now, not until you can make it to a ship and find somewhere to lick the wounds. It's so hard to breathe, so hard to keep his memories in check. Judging from the pinched expression Drax has, he can only imagine the miserable television show going on in that thick skull of his. He had family, he had a life, a home, and now it's all coming back in thunderous waves.

Drax perks. "I hear her. This way!"

And like clockwork, Mantis sobs more loudly from over the hill of debris, and Peter is already leaping over and down it, displacing rubble in his wake. It claws him up as he goes, but what's one more injury if it means getting to his team sooner? Add another wound to the dozens lanced in his heart, whatever, he can take it. What he can't take is finding someone he loves gone again because he wasn't good enough—

("I love you, more than anything.")

"Mantis! Shit, dammit — hang on, we're coming, hang on!" He skids to a stop at the bottom with Drax hot on his heels, and it's only there that he's relieved to find she's unhurt, curled up and sitting on her legs; her back is trembling, hands poised in front of her — no, no, hands pressed to the temples of a crumpled figure with shaggy brown hair and a terribly youthful face. He swallows hard at the sight, guilt coiling in his guts, because he had made this kid a footnote in his concerns all but fifteen seconds ago.The other Peter.

("Peter, huh? Samesies!" the spider kid laughs.)

The kid is on his back, and his eyes are open, face lax under Mantis' shivering fingertips. Quill automatically assumes the worst: that he didn't make it, because even if his skin has a healthy color, he doesn't look alive. Why didn't... he come back, too? What went wrong? Crouching down beside his friend, he examines the boy and his listless gaze that looks right through him, right through everything. A death stare. He's seen so many in his life — from ravagers and enemy alike — that he doesn't question it further than that.

"... Mantis, it's okay," he says softly, placing a hand on her shoulder. "He's gone. We gotta move."

"No, no, Peter," she weeps, freezing him with her desperation, "You're wrong. He's still here. I can feel him. But th-there's so much pain — something is wrong, and it hurts."

"She's right," Strange says with a surprisingly soft voice, "He's still breathing."

Quill watches with wide eyes the rise and fall of the kid's chest, and then the surprising drip of tears into the shells of Peter's ears.

"It hurts," Mantis says again, black hair curtaining her pained expression. "He's further and further away. I can't do anything. He is so afraid."

Peter Parker's eyes are open, half-lidded, without any sign of life behind them. But Quill feels like every word Mantis sobs is a memory he can't quite bring into focus... like — like a dream he'd forgotten in the time he'd been nothing but ash. Like a beacon, scrambling all of his senses and blinding him just before he had burst back to life from under the current of death. He remembers a snippet of what it was like on the other side, rolling over and over like he's stuck in a sea — a sea of souls. He remembers it was the kid's voice, calling out from oblivion as they were hoisted back into their bodies.

He remembers hearing his own voice... remembers saying, thinking, screaming: Hang on, kid, I got you!

— it hurts, it hurts, it hurts—

He puts his hand gently on Peter Parker's cheek.

It's warm. His body breathes in steady rhythm.

So why isn't there any life behind those eyes?

The lab is quiet, save for the rambling of an excited high-schooler bragging about their odds at the new decathlon competition. Tony doesn't really mind so much, though he's not about to tell that to the kid sitting there in his old thrift shop sweater; the same kid whose hair is curling out of control now, escaping the prison of hair gel he adds in the early morning. Peter's always so animated with his hands, most of all — always fidgeting, always moving, always so eager to sign and gesture faster than Peter's mouth can move. "And Ned's got a brand new video-game he's dying to try out, but I dunno if he can handle it; it's a horror game, you know? He's kind of a big softy — oh."

Tony glances at Peter with a scoff and a raised eyebrow, though his smirk fades a little at what has drawn the kid's already battered attention span from the conversation. Peter holds an old trophy in front of him that he had taken off the nearest shelf: a replica, actually, but still no less important. It's the arc reactor, etched with those intimate, familiar words that Pepper still whispers to him when they're alone and living in their own little world.

"Aaww, look at that," Peter says with a playful smile, pressing the trophy against his chest, where the reactor would've resided in Tony's. "... Proof that Tony Stark has a heart."

Peter's smile softens painfully, his eyes reflecting a long and sad goodbye before he crumbles away into nothing.