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When Tony wakes he wishes oblivion would pull him straight back under. It’s not the first time he’s felt this way. Countless nights of parties and post-battle aches and pains have granted him as much.
Today it’s not much different.
He knows his eyes are open, though he can barely see straight, the world a mess of blurry colors and a fierce pain connecting his brain to his neck and spine. At first he thinks it’s a migraine, but a throbbing pain in his leg tells him otherwise. He squints through the haze of pain to assess the source of his hurt and sees, in striking double-vision, his right leg crushed between sheets of dull metal. He stares at it with wide eyed confusion until it clicks.
A trip to Vancouver. A fancy conference. Maple ice cream by the ocean.
The helicopter- it had gone down.
God, how he wishes it could’ve just been a migraine.
Tony squeezes his eyes shut and forces his mind to focus on his breathing. How in the hell had they crashed? Seriously, what were the goddamn chances?
He inhales, holds, exhales, holds. The air around him comes out in a faint wisp of fog, though he doesn’t feel cold.
He feels better.
A flash of a memory runs across his weary eyelids. He sees the pilot limp in his seat and hears panicked yelling in his ears. He sees a pale, freckled hand on his arm that connects up to Peter’s face, eyes wide and panicked. He’s holding onto Tony so tightly that he knows with a surety it will leave a bruise.
A scared kid, plummeting out of the sky.
Oh God.
“Peter!”
Tony winces as he tries to shift in his seat. The skin underneath his seatbelt aches as his fingers struggle to unclick the metal. Only now as his vision clears does he notice the pilot ahead of him, neck bent at an impossible angle.
“Christ. Christ!.”
Numb, he turns to look beside him and sees Peter pressed against the shattered glass of his window, eyes closed and covered in blood. His small hand is still stretched out towards Tony in what could’ve been a childish gesture, though empty and dripping with crimson.
He can’t tell if he’s breathing.
“P-Peter.”
Tony remembers it all now. How he’d pulled Peter out of school early to join him on the trip. How excited he had felt to show Peter off to his colleagues and for Peter to experience the conference. How he and Peter had sat on the coast, breathing in sea water and Peter facetiming May in front of a Canadian flag, smiling wide.
“Kid-” His breath freezes into a block of ice in his chest as he shoots his hand to the side, reaching desperately for the boy. It hits the damp material of Peter’s sweater first, once grey but now the colour of old rust. Swallowing against a sharp pain in his throat, he curls his fingers weakly around the fabric and tugs at it. Peter’s head slides further down the window, leaving a gruesome red smear against the glass in its wake.
Peter doesn’t stir.
Choking on air, Tony tries again, this time more intently. It makes his head spin. “Peter, wake up buddy.”
Still unresponsive, Tony feels his mind draw a blank and he drops his hand. His chest is tight and his heart is beating impossibly fast, so much so that he can feel his pulse in his temples. Through the harsh staccato of his breath he’s vaguely aware of the wind whistling through the cracks and gaps of the damaged aircraft. It sounds threatening, as if the outside world is trying to claw its way towards them and finish them off; to take Peter away somewhere Tony can’t follow.
He tries to breathe, can’t, and without much grace wiggles his fingers under the kid’s throat, praying for a pulse. After a moment of agonizing patience, he feels it. A beat of life.
“Pete-”
His relief is joined with an unwarranted sob as Peter groans. The pressure in his chest loosens, even if only slightly, and he continues to encourage the boy back to consciousness. “Earth to spidey.”
“F’ve more minutes.”
“Oh lordy. Peter!”
Ever so slowly, Peter shows his eyes. Tony watches brokenly as they fill with confusion. “Wha?”
“It’s okay kiddo. It’s okay. Look at me.”
“What?” Peter says again. His head pulls away from the glass and Tony winces at the tiny shards of it embedded in the side of his face. With great difficulty, Peter’s eyes reach Tony’s own. They flicker with understanding, even fear. “Tony? Y-you’re covered in blood.”
“I know. We had an accident.”
Breathing becoming more laboured, Peter tries to sit up and cries out as he does. His hands reach up to ghost at his abdomen where the seatbelt is still pulled tight. “Oh,” he says. “Tha’s not good.”
A familiar sting erupts in Tony’s eyes and he swallows against the tightening of his throat. Not good. So not good. “Breathe Petey. We’re going to be fine. We have to get out, though. Can you move?”
Still obviously struggling with basic comprehension, Peter nods hastily a couple long seconds after the close of Tony’s question. With shaking hands, the boy reaches for his seatbelt and grits his teeth as he pulls it apart. When it loosens he leans back with wide eyes as if blinking away stars and doesn’t respond when Tony tries to soothe him.
“Take it slow. Take your time.”
Peter is still staring heavily at the dented ceiling of the helicopter, breathes stilted. “The- the pilot?”
Looking over at the broken man, Tony feels his stomach tighten. “It doesn’t look good Pete.”
“Oh.” To Tony’s horror, a tear appears against the blood and grime on the kid’s cheek. His head rolls to look at Tony, fever bright eyes landing on his leg. “Tony-”
“I know,” he says tightly. The acknowledgment brings a fresh wave of pain over his body that makes his stomach twist into knots. “I’ll need your help to get it free. Think you can circle around and pry it out for me?”
Peter blinks, eyebrows furrowed.
“Kid?”
“Yeah?”
“I need your help to get free. Then I can help look you over. Okay?”
“Oh. O-okay.”
Tony watches closely as Peter curls his scraped and bruised hands around the door of the helicopter and pushes it ajar. It brings with it a gust of bitter air and they both shiver fiercely against it.
“Remember to take it slow buddy.”
Nodding, Peter uses the top of the door to shimmy himself to the edge of his seat, grunting through the pain. He must lose his balance because in the next second, he’s gone. Tony hears him hit the ground hard. Then silence.
“Peter!” Tony moves to help the boy and nearly screams when the movement pulls on his trapped leg. He grinds his knuckles into his forehead and fights to regain air in his chest. When the fit passes, he trusts himself to speak once more. “Peter! Are you okay?”
There’s another beat of long, painful silence before he hears the rustle of leaves. Peter’s head appears at the foot of his open door, pupils blown wide and looking dazed as ever. “‘M good. S’ry.”
Something twists savagely in Tony’s gut. God. He should’ve waited for Peter to get more oriented- should’ve made sure he was ready to move. All his rational thought has seemed to drift far away like a cloud from the sky they had fallen from.
“‘M coming.”
Before Tony can even open his mouth Peter is stumbling out of sight. He practically holds his breath until he hears the light scraping of metal against his own door and helps Peter pull it open. The movement must throw Peter off balance again because he falls backwards onto his butt, staring amazedly up at Tony like he had no idea how he got there.
“Careful bud,” Tony frets. He leans down and reaches out a hand to help Peter up, who takes it weakly.
“S’ry,” Peter says again, shaking his head. “Dizzy.”
“No kidding,” Tony agrees. Up close, he can truly appreciate how mauled the kid’s head is; thick blood coagulating against his temple and in his hair, leaving a gruesome trail all the way down to the neckline of his sweater and out of sight. He doesn’t even want to think of everything he can’t see.
Peter falls against the body of the helicopter, hands ghosting over the crunched metal around Tony’s leg. After what must be some delirious consideration, Peter’s hands find themselves on each side of the opposing medal. Without warning, he pulls.
They both scream.
It takes a long time for Tony to see anything other than the sudden whiteness that has dominated his vision. When it clears, he finds his leg is free. Very broken, burning with pain, but free. He chokes on his tears and swallows the acid in his throat.
“G-good job kid.”
Silence.
“Kid?”
Tony whips his head to the side and braces himself against the interior of the helicopter as his vision tilts and slides like a damn kaleidoscope. When it returns to an equilibrium, it nearly whites out again in sheer panic.
Peter is sprawled out on the grass on his back, lax face tilted up towards the sun. Tony’s too antic to tell if the kid is breathing and every shred of common sense flies away from him as he pushes himself out of the body of the aircraft.
He lands next to the boy and chokes on a scream when his bad leg hits the ground. He does throw up this time, shuddering against the pain of it all. A faint ringing has started in his ears, but none of it matters. All that matters is Peter.
With shaking hands Tony reaches to find the kid’s pulse, this time on his wrist, and collapses in on himself when he finds it for the second time. It’s fast and thready, but there all the same.
“Thank god,” Tony breathes. He crawls closer and taps on Peter’s cheek. The blood on his skin sticks to Tony’s fingers. “Peter. Pete.”
This time Peter’s ascent back into consciousness is easier. His eyelids pull up to half mast and he hums, head turning ever so slightly to meet Tony’s worried gaze. Everything in Tony’s chest seems to melt as he studies his kid. He brushes the hair out of Peter’ face, hand lingering. “What happened bud?”
“Dunno,” Peter replies honestly, eyebrows pulling together. “Hurt.”
Tony takes it as his invitation to check what injuries the boy’s been hiding. Peter watches detachedly as Tony pulls up the hem of Peter’s sweater and gasps at what he sees, limbs going numb and his pulse doubling in tempo.
All the skin Tony can see is a dark, molten purple, nearly black. In the worst of the bruising Peter’s skin is raised in ugly irritation. Tony’s no doctor, but he’s sure the seat belt had cut into his gut and wouldn’t be surprised if the kid was sporting some broken ribs or bruised organs.
Internal bleeding, his mind supplies, but he pushes it away.
They need help. Badly.
“Cold.”
Tony snaps his head towards Peter, finding him with his arms curled feebly around his frame and the setting sun casting long shadows across his face.
Not good.
Gears spin and catch in Tony’s head. “Hang on kid,” he says, then staggers to his feet, using the body of the helicopter to keep himself from falling. Fearful for what he might find, he heaves open the door to the cockpit and uses every last bit of strength to pull himself inside.
“Williams?”
Tony reaches out his hand slowly and rests in gently on the pilot’s shoulder. When it doesn’t illicit a response, his fingers ghost through the blood and broken glass to find one of the man’s veins. Unlike Peter’s, it’s still against his skin.
“Oh Christ.”
Tony sits back against his seat, hands trembling violently. Though thoroughly surrounded in it, the air seems to vanish from the atmosphere, leaving him gasping. God.
“Tony-”
A voice through the haze. He feels a warm hand on his thigh.
“Mr. Stark. Look at me.”
Slowly, he does, aware as if from a great distance Peter’s worried eyes. The kid is leaning heavily against the opening in the cockpit, looking faint but determined. “It’s not your fault. You have to breathe.”
It takes some time. It always does.
Again, Tony breathes.
“Good,” Peter mumbles in relief, head dipping forward. Tony snakes his hand up to his chest and feels the evidence of his heart working underneath the layer of grime and singed clothing constructing his shirt and takes a long moment to really feel it.
Eventually, the universe rights itself.
“Sorry kid.”
Peter shakes his head, but doesn’t raise it, body lax with exhaustion. If he hadn’t known any better, Tony would’ve thought the boy had fallen asleep standing against the side of the aircraft. His small voice travels up and Tony barely catches it. “D-does the radio work?”
Feeling dumb for not thinking of it sooner, Tony looks hurriedly towards the contraption. It’s crushed, just as his leg had been. Nothing more than useless scrap metal.
“Nada,” he chokes.
“Phone?”
Tony grits his teeth, pulling his phone out from his suit jacket. The cracked screen displays his worst nightmare. “No service.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
The sun is barely visible through the trees now, the last of its light turning the pine needles gold. Tony sees Peter shiver once more, this time harder, and he pulls himself towards the edge of the seat. “It’s starting to look like we’re going to have to stay the night kiddo.”
Peter shifts, allowing Tony to drop to the ground beside him. He looks distant, like all the times in a post-spidey incident they’ve had to hook him up to an IV filled with the good stuff. “The night,” Peter repeats, slurring his words. Then he laughs. “Camping.”
Against his better judgement, Tony smiles. “Yeah. Just like camping.”
“I’ve never been camping.”
“Well, there's a first time for everything.”
Peter laughs again, but this time, it tapers off into a grimace. The boy crumples like a poorly stacked card tower and Tony lunges to catch him, leg igniting in bright pain at the sudden movement. They end up in a tangled pile of limbs on the forest floor.
“Peter?”
Heart thundering once more, Tony raises himself and turns the kid’s chin into his line of sight. Contrary to his suspicions, Peter is blinking up lazily at him, expressionless but conscious.
“Answer me bud,” Tony says loudly, raw anxiety flooding every nerve in his body. His hands ghost over the kid’s abdomen and then his face where his head is still leaking blood. “Peter,” he says again, this time more urgently. The kid’s eyes remain painstakingly vacant. “Talk to me.”
The sunset shines like fire against Peter’s face. The young hero blinks, then blinks again. Slowly, Tony sees recognition return. He whimpers and Tony’s eyes well up with tears. “Peter? Can you hear me?”
Peter nods.
“Good, good. Can you tell me your name?”
Peter considers it for a moment before clearing his throat. It must cause another spark of pain because his eyes screw closed before reopening once more. “Peter.”
“And who am I?”
“Tony.”
“Great job kiddo. You’re acing my test. One more question, alright? How many fingers do you see?”
The confusion is evident on Peter’s face as he squints towards Tony’s raised hand. After a long painful silence, he gives up and falls back. “Six?”
If the fear shows on his face, Peter doesn’t pick up on it. “Not quite,” he says sourly, curling his hand back into a fist. “But that’s okay.”
Peter hums. “I’m cold.”
God, he’s never felt so useless in his life. Tony bites his lip hard and stares into the wide expanse of wilderness around them. He wonders if they’re still in Canada or if they had managed to cross the border.
Regardless, they need a fire.
“I hear ya kiddie,” Tony says. A sudden rush of adrenaline courses through his veins, numbing the raging pain in his leg. He runs his hands through Peter’s hair and the boy leans into the touch, eyes fluttering. “I’ll get us a fire started, okay? Stick tight.”
“Mmm?”
“Stay here,” he repeats. “I’ll be right back.”
But Peter doesn’t respond.
Gritting his teeth, Tony stands once more. He limps away from the helicopter and braces himself against the nearest tree to blink through the stars collecting in his eyes. Though he’s only moved a couple steps, he looks back towards Peter, the boy unmoving in the grass.
“Oh god.”
The adrenaline fades fast. Tony uses all of it he can to snap thin branches off surrounding trees and limp them back over to the helicopter. Everytime he deposits a load of wood he crouches down to make sure the kid is still breathing.
He makes three trips. By the fourth, he can barely stand and the sky is dark.
Peter doesn’t stir as Tony drops down to the earth beside him. He lets the kid sleep on as he arranges the wood together over a mound of disrupted dirt where the helicopter had sheared the earth clean. He grabs a fistfull of dry grass and tucks it into the center of his structure. Then, using the blessed lighter in his pocket, sets it ablaze.
It’s weak but functional and Tony nearly collapses at the relief of the flame. It illuminates the small area around them and Tony uses it to crawl towards Peter, shaking him awake. The boy’s eyes are completely delirious as he grapples to come back to himself.
“What?”
“We got a fire,” Tony explains gently. Under his touch, Peter’s skin is iced. “Come warm up.”
Nodding, Peter allows Tony to hoist him into a sitting position. The movement must pull at the injury in his gut because he grunts through clenched teeth, nearly collapsing back down. Tony catches him at his shoulder before he can, noticing the thin sheen of sweat on the kid’s neck and forehead with worry. “It’s okay,” he soothes. “Easy does it.”
After another series of awkward and painful maneuvers they end up leaning against the metal of the helicopter, side by side and the fire glinting like magic in front of them. He feels Peter relax against his side, the kid’s head falling to rest heavily on Tony’s shoulder.
He thinks of hours before when he and Peter had been enjoying matching maple ice creams. How they hadn’t shared a single care in the world.
Stupid of him to believe it could last.
Peter shifts against him, pulling him away from his thoughts. He’s looking intently into the fire. “Marshmallows?” He asks.
Chuckling, Tony holds him tighter. “Sorry kiddo. Not this time.”
“Bummer.”
The attempt at humour dies like the sparks shooting up from their small flames and Tony feels the dread creeping back into his bones like a disease. This is all his goddamn fault. “How’re you feeling kiddo?”
Peter hums as if in deep thought. The blood on his face is bright and unrelenting in the glow of the fire, like some permanent reminder of Tony's failures. “Did you know my parents died in a plane crash?”
Tony jolts, the response hitting him like a freight train. He rubs Peter’s arm as his throat tightens. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
“They must’ve been really scared.”
“Are you scared Peter?”
Slowly, Peter shakes his head. “No. Got you.”
Swallowing his tears, Tony presses a kiss to Peter’s temple. He grapples with his words, a deep sorrow replacing his physical pain for a brief moment. “Your parents had each other.”
As if agreeing, Peter makes a small noise in the back of his throat. “I wish I could’ve known them better.”
“They’re with you,” Tony assures quietly. He moves his hand to place it against the boy’s chest, the fabric warm from the fire. “They’re always with us, Pete. Our family never leaves us.”
Peter smiles. Even through the blood and dirt and utter delirium, he looks happy. “You’re family.”
Tony’s chest tightens.
“You won’ leave me. Right?”
“Never,” he promises.
Peter smiles again. There’s blood on his teeth Tony hadn’t noticed before and he hopes to god it isn’t new. “I’ll never leave you either.”
“Good,” Tony says. He pulls them closer together, trying his best to ignore the numbness in his toes. “I’m going to hold you to it Parker.”
“Mmm.” Peter’s smile falls slightly, eyes drifting closed. “M’kay.”
Tony feels his own eyelids drooping. He surveys the kid through heavily lidded eyes. “We checkin out?”
“Mm.”
Peter’s weight increases against his side as he falls asleep. Tony rests his head on the top of Peter’s curls and soaks in the warmth of the fire. For some strange reason, he feels a calmness he can’t describe. In fact, he can hardly feel the pain in his leg anymore.
Within seconds, he’s asleep.
---
When Tony wakes up the next morning, their fire is dead.
The ashes still smoulder, sending thin wisps of smoke up into the bright light of the morning. For a moment he lies still, blinking away his incoherence and moaning when his leg twists in a horrible pain.
God, he’s so screwed.
A chill rushes over him and he pulls his jacket more tightly around his frame with numb fingers. The warmth Peter had provided throughout the night is gone.
“Peter?”
Tony forces his eyes to open fully, turning his head to his left. He expects to see the kid curled up in a ball or leaned back against the aircraft.
Instead, he doesn’t see Peter at all.
“Damn it.” A stroke of fear beats hard against Tony’s chest like a drum. He scrambles in the dirt, sweeping his eyes over the clearing in hopes to find the missing boy. His breath hitches and stalls as he tries to curb the mounting panic.
Then he sees him. The boy is across the clearing, laid out on his stomach and unmoving as if he had fallen.
“PETER!”
Tony tries to stand and fails. As soon as he puts pressure on his crushed leg it sparks in agony and his knees buckle. He claws at the dirt, vision white, and for some time is quite unaware of anything past the lightning rods of hurt in his bones.
Vertigo washes over him as he twists on his side. Slowly, the world swims back into focus. God. Not doing that again. Taking deep, lung shattering breaths, Tony pulls himself to his knees.
“Peter!”
Again, the boy doesn’t move. Tony swears and hobbles forward on his hands and good knee, dragging his injured limb behind. By the time he reaches the boy, his muscles are shaking and he has sweat dripping in his eyes. He uses the last of his rapidly depleting strength to heave Peter onto his back.
“Kid?”
Peter’s face is more pale than Tony has ever seen it. His stomach twists and he raises the hem of Peter’s shirt once more, gritting his teeth at the unimproved arrangement of bruises and welts. If anything it’s gotten worse.
“Come on,” Tony urges, lightly shaking Peter’s arm. “Wakey wakey.”
The world seems to pause on its axis as Peter’s eyes slowly drift open. There’s absolutely no coherence in them, and it takes Tony another five minutes of talking to get the kid to even look at him.
“Tony?”
“Yeah kiddo, it’s me,” he says, voice thick. “What’re you doing all the way out here?”
“Here?” Peter shifts, cries out, and fights to breathe. His eyes snap shut and his fingers curl weakly in the grass as he writhes against the pain.
“Christ.” Tony’s hands hover uselessly over the boy, scared to even touch him. “Kid? You okay?”
“No-no!”
Maybe it’s the pain, maybe it’s the exhaustion. Hell, maybe it’s just the sheer audacity of the situation, but soon they're both laughing. It’s choked and bizarre and so astronomically far from humour.
Eventually, their delirious chuckles taper off into heavy breathing. Peter looks up at him with eyes that tell Tony he’s probably seeing in double again.
“Why’d you leave the helicopter?” Tony asks. “You can’t scare me like that Pete.”
“Sorry,” Peter says. His hands are still wound tightly into the earth. “I was- I was- I thought I heard Ben.”
Tony frowns, leaning forward to press his fingers against the wound in Peter’s head. It trickles blood at his touch and Peter swats him away. God, he wishes he had the technology to tell him exactly what was going on. He’s no doctor, but he’s pretty sure hearing the voices of deceased relatives is not a good sign.
“Don’ worry,” Peter says as if reading his thoughts. “I’m not crazy. Just got confused.”
“I know. I’m sorry Pete.”
“I wanna go home.”
“I know.”
Peter sighs out a shallow breath, staring up into the grey sky. “I don’t know if I can move.”
Trying to keep the panic off his face, Tony doesn’t bother arguing. He knows the boy is right. They’re running out of options. No food, no water, and both injured to hell.
“That’s okay,” Tony says. There’s a deep sadness in his chest that he can’t quite place. “Rest up here for a bit. Get that spidey strength back.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Not so good,” he replies honestly. “But don’t worry about that right now okay?”
“M’okay.”
It doesn’t take long for Peter to nod off again. Away from the cover of the helicopter, they’re much more exposed. Tony knows realistically that they won’t survive much longer out here. He knows realistically that he should find them shelter, maybe even water, but the idea is too much a fantasy to ever be achieved in his current state.
It’s out of his hands, now.
---
Harsh coughing brings Tony out of a fitful slumber. He doesn’t remember falling asleep but surely he must have, the sky now painted in neon oranges and pinks as opposed to the glare of the morning. They’re still lying in the middle of the clearing and Tony can’t feel his fingers and toes.
And Peter? Peter is choking.
Tony pushes himself towards the boy, biting his cheek harshly when his leg flares with pain. Peter is turned on his side, clutching his abdomen with both hands and struggling to breathe. There’s thick red blood spraying out of his mouth with each cough and Tony watches in horror as it doesn’t stop.
“Peter?”
If the kid can hear him, he doesn’t acknowledge it. The coughing persists, the bottom half of his face painted red.
He almost doesn’t notice the plane.
Tony feels frozen. He’s sure Peter is dying.
“Tony!”
The voice is distant. Tony feels strong wind whip through his clothes, his hair. He holds Peter’s hand and rubs his back.
“Tony!”
He spares a glance away from Peter and sees Rhodey hanging from a plane by a long rope, slowly descending towards them. His eyes are wide, reflecting Tony’s fear.
“Hurry! He- he’s dying-”
The relief of their rescue is buried in the very real possibility that Peter won’t make it out off the ground. His struggles for air are getting weaker now, lips tinted blue.
“T’ny.”
“Don’t talk kid,” Tony says. “Save your air.”
Rhodey reaches the ground and unclips his harness from the rope that had carried him there. He starts racing towards them, talking hurriedly over a com.
“Tony.”
One of the kid’s hands finds its way on Tony’s arm, just as it had when the helicopter was moments from hitting the ground. It scratches weakly at the fabric, eyes becoming more frantic.
“You’re going to be okay. Rhodey’s here. He’s going to help-”
“Oh my God!” Rhodey falls to the earth beside them, hands ghosting over Peter. “We need to get him in the sky now.”
Tony can feel his body shutting down. Everything that had happened since the helicopter began to plummet out of the sky comes crashing down around him. There’s a sharp sting of acid in his throat and he feels weak and dizzy.
He can hardly feel the pain anymore.
“I can’t carry him,” Tony says. “My leg. You need to take him. Take him first- come back for me after.”
“And the pilot?”
“Dead.”
Rhodey doesn’t waste any more time. After giving Tony’s shoulder a sharp squeeze, he pulls Peter up into his arms into a bridal carry. The boy, through his coughs, finds it within himself to scream. He jerks against the pain, hands curling into Rhodey’s clothes. Rhodey shifts the kid in his arms and his mouth moves softly in words Tony can’t hear.
As they turn and leave, Peter reaches out towards him, the distance between them growing.
“You’ll be okay,” Tony says to himself, though it’s clear the boy won’t hear. It’s a mantra, a promise.
“You’ll be okay.”
He watches dizzily as Rhodey runs back towards the plane. The world is shifting in a way that he’s not accustomed too. It makes him nauseous and tired and oh god he hopes Peter will be okay.
As his vision fades, he sees Rhodey secure himself back to the rope, holding Peter protectively against his chest. Even from where he sits, far away, he can see the kid’s red blood shining bright against his face.
His kid.
His Peter.
It’s the last thought he has before the world makes one last vicious twist, and he falls back into darkness.
---
He wakes up on the plane.
It’s a strange feeling, being weightless in more ways than one. They must have him hooked to some good drugs because he can barely keep his eyes open and his leg is blissfully unproblematic. From what he can see, he notices Peter laying in a stretcher beside him. The kid’s eyes are open too, but only slightly. He’s covered in bandages and tubes and wires. With numb fingers, Tony reaches out and touches the kid’s arm.
Peter shifts to look at him and smiles when their eyes meet. For the first time in two days, there’s safety in them.
“Hey,” Peter says. His voice is raw.
“Hey yourself,” Tony giggles. God, he feels higher than a kite.
Peter giggles too, his pupils still blown to hell. He shifts ever so slightly in order to lean closer to Tony and whispers as if uttering a secret. “No offence but that- that camping trip really sucked.”
“I agree.”
“I mean. I mean- there weren’t even any marshmallows.”
Tony laughs loudly. He can see Rhodey out of the corner of his eye near the wall, watching them in a weary, bemused expression. His gratitude for his friend is beyond words.
“Don’t worry,” Tony says. “Next time there’ll be, there’ll be-,” but the words die as everything blurs in a soft array of melding colors. He forgets what there’ll be, and when his vision steadies, Peter’s eyes are closed. He looks incredibly young, Tony thinks. Too young.
“No next time,” Tony decides. “No sir.”
He reaches out across his stretcher to Peter’s and grabs the boy’s wrist. The contact calms the last ember of his anxiety, and all the tension seems to drain out of his body.
They’re okay.
They’re going to be okay.