EPILOGE

No one truly understood what had happened. One moment Peter was lying in bed, barely breathing and shivering, and the next he was gone. Poof, out of existence.

"What the hell just happened…?" Steve asked, staring at the now empty bed. "Where did he just-"

"He died." Loki's voice echoed from the doorframe.

"What the fuck do you mean he died?" Tony bit out. "Under what circumstances does that equate to his body disappearing?"

"These ones precisely. Honestly Stark, I'm surprised you didn't realize what was happening. I would have guessed at least one of you would."

"Loki, what matter are you speaking of?" Thor asked.

Loki rolled his eyes. "The child died but not in the sense of the word. More so, his time ran out so he left."

"But I thought he needed the machine to leave." Bruce said. "How did he leave if it wasn't complete?"

"Who says it wasn't?"

"Why do you have to be so cryptic? Spit it out already." Bucky demanded.

Loki shook his head. "When he first arrived, Stark said he collapsed and slept for nearly a day. That was the start of the deterioration process. He had no trouble with anything until he started work on the machine. The- feelings he got, the sickness he felt, it was connected to the work."

"You're saying that building the machine again was what was making him sick?" Natasha asked.

"In a sense, yes."

"You know that and didn't tell anyone? You let him continue to work knowing he was killing himself?"

"I already told you, he was not killing himself." He huffed. "Think of it as how your toasters work; you set the gauge, press the lever, and wait. That is exactly what was happening to Peter."

"He was cooking himself?" Bucky raised a brow.

"The next person to interrupt me will be silenced." Loki frowned. "The radiation in his body somehow reacted with the journey through time and set them on some sort of timer. From that point when he first arrived here, his cells started deteriorating because his time was ticking. The machine was destroyed in the journey though, so there was no limit on how long he would stay.

"But then he started his work on the machine and it acted as some sort of catalyst. With every completed part of the machine, the deterioration was sped up to match the time it took to finish the machine. When he collapsed, it was because the work he completed was much greater than his cells could take and it overworked him. Upon completing the machine, it was the greatest force and he couldn't handle it and his body acted as though it was ready to die. All that was needed was for the machine to be activated for his journey to find to an end."

Everyone's faces mirrored confusion. It was a little while before anyone spoke.

"So let me see if I have this right," Clint started. "Essentially, Peter originally built a galactic toaster, and he was the toast. Once he tried it out, the toaster burnt out and he was stuck until someone fixed it, and he was able to pop back up, all perfect, in his own time."

Loki sideways nodded. "In simpler terms, yes."

"How do we know it worked?" Tony asked. "How do we know that he was actually able to get back to his own time and isn't somewhere else?"

"We don't."

AVENGERS

The next morning when Tony woke up, something felt off. It wasn't the normal off feelings that he got sometimes, most of them equating to general sickness or a feeling of uneasiness.

That morning he was alone in the tower, the others having things that needed tending to, so Tony ate breakfast alone- the news playing softly in the background. He was going over papers and contracts, making sure he signed all the ones that needed signing and throwing out the ones he didn't want to deal with. He felt like he had forgotten something.

Time seemed to drag on into the afternoon, minutes passed like hours. The day just seemed to be going so slow. He didn't realize he'd been down in the lab all day until FRIDAY informed him it was nearly dinner time.

Then there was a click, literally and figuratively, as the door to the lab opened and Peter walked in carrying takeout.

"Pepper told me to keep you fed while she was away."

How, in all the years they spent together, had Tony forgotten Peter would be visiting? "You're a life saver, you know that?"

"I've been told that on a few occasions. Really though Mr. Stark, FRIDAY told me you've only had breakfast. If you die on my watch, Pepper will kill me." Peter handed Tony a takeout box.

"Come on, She's Pepper but I'm still Mr. Stark? Pete, you're twenty-six. I think you've earned the right." Tony dug into his good.

"I know it's only happened on a few occasions but you can think wrong." He set the remaining food on the table, rubbing his hand on the surface. "Still haven't figured out a way to get this up?"

Tony glances at where Peter's hand was; a scorch mark underneath it. "Haven't and won't. I like to think about it and remember how ridiculous it sounded when you first told us that you tried to build a time machine and brilliantly failed. You stopped building things for a while after that. Was the embarrassment too much to handle?"

Peter snorted slightly and rubbed the back of his neck. "Actually, Tony, here's the thing-"

There it is. Short and sweet little ending. Remember first name head canon? Maybe he does it for funny things too.

Okay just so we're all on the same page, my thought process for this last little bit was the future that they were all living before Peter first got there was erased because he was actually in their lives and not missing for however many years. If you change the future, how would people remember it if it didn't happen? Does that make sense? I dunno time travel is too much for me to handle in any logical sense. Besides, anything goes in fiction.

Please point out any grammatical or spelling errors I might have missed so I can fix them in the future.

Leave a review! I wanna know how confusing this whole thing was to read because it was very confusing to write.

Hope ya liked it. See ya in the next one!