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Tony always laments how slowly people evacuate the compound when they’ve got drills, as bad as it is in elementary schools when all the kindergarteners kick and scream because you’re pulling them away from their Legos and art work. This isn’t exactly a drill—it’s a threat, and a threat they’re taking seriously by evacuating. But he doesn’t want to scare people, doesn’t wanna panic them, so he doesn’t start screaming over the intercoms just yet.
They’re searching for some pathogen, or some kind of poison. Something that’s supposedly gonna start feeding itself through the vents within the next ten minutes. They found out through a weird message on the Stark personal server.
Tony stares at the cameras on his phone, watches everyone leaving leisurely, which doesn’t do wonders for his anxiety.
“Rhodey, how are we doing?” Tony asks, into the com in his ear. “Why’s everyone walking out of here like they’re in line for A Small World? Jesus.”
“Happy’s on door duty, I don’t know,” Rhodey says.
“You find anything yet?” Tony asks, walking up the stairs to the third level. “You think this is just bullshit?”
“Probably,” Rhodey says. “Fifth threat this month, feel like we should be done with all this after saving the world, but we brought back all the baddies, too.”
Tony shakes his head, clicking his tongue. He’s just glad Pepper and Morgan aren’t here right now, but Peter is, and that’s itching under Tony’s skin. The kid ran off as soon as they all started their searching, and not having him within eyesight during something like this is like sitting on the surface of the sun.
“Tony,” Peter’s voice says, over the coms.
Tony’s heart jolts. “Speak of the—think of the devil, more like—hey kid, meet up with me, I don’t like you running around here alone during all this.”
“I, uh—I’m on the third floor, in the red lab, uh, the back storage room. Back right corner.”
Tony narrows his eyes, and picks up the pace. “Alright, you okay? You find something?”
“Uh. It’s worse than we think,” he says, and Tony can hear his voice shaking.
Tony starts running. “Why?” he asks, his heart slamming against his chest. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“Whoever this was, he took over your system. Like—like a virus. I was able to get in through a backdoor, but it took a lot—a lot of messing around.”
Tony turns the corner, speeds up when he catches sight of the red lab. “Are you okay?” he asks, enunciating every word. “Did something happen to you?” He slams through the lab door, and the lights don’t even come on when he stumbles into the room. He looks around, and sees Peter in the corner through the glass door.
“Off coms,” Tony says, striding over. “Kid—”
“Stop!” Peter yells, a little muffled through the door. “Stop, stop!”
“What the hell is going on?” Tony asks, breathing hard through his mouth, stopping right in front of him. “Did you get hurt, did something happen, did you find something, what—”
“Off coms—I was able to find a backdoor through the virus,” Peter says, and when Tony really looks at him, he can see the redness around his eyes. “But it was...able to track me. My location, where I was working from. It...it started to feed the poison through this room, Tony, but I was able—”
“Which room?” Tony asks, too loud. “Which room, where?”
“This room,” Peter says, wringing his hands together. “The—the room I’m in.”
Tony sways on the spot.
“Just the storage room, though, not the lab. But Tony, I was able to—”
Peter’s voice drains out and gives way to a high pitched noise, the kind that usually finds Tony when he’s close to absolutely losing it. He glances up at the grate in the storage room, and his heart sinks when he sees the white cloud slowly coming through. This room. The room Peter’s in. It’s filling with poison. He’s being poisoned.
“I’m opening the door,” Tony says.
“No!” Peter says. He swallows hard, blinking slowly. “It’s locked, anyway, didn’t you hear me?”
“No, I didn’t hear you,” Tony says, trying to swallow his emotion and think clearly through this fog. “I’ve gotta get you out of there.”
“Tony, you can’t,” Peter says, lower lip trembling. He doesn’t look good. “I just—I just said that, I was able to keep working and override the trip to feed out through the rest of the compound, I stopped it, it’ll just—it’ll just feed into this room, no—nowhere else. That’s why you can’t—you can’t open the door, you’ll—you’ll let it out.”
Nothing feels real, they were just having lunch a fucking hour ago, the kid was laughing about the way Sam tripped and fell in the kitchen, and now this is fucking happening, a nightmare, an impossibility, the universe stepping in once again and trying to take his kid away from him.
“No, Pete,” Tony says, stepping towards the door. “No, you can’t stay in there. Not allowed, sorry. Come out. We’ll fix this.”
“There’s no fixing it if we open the door,” Peter says, and he looks like he’s gonna hit the glass before he thinks better of it, knowing he could break it easily. He runs his hand over his face, and he takes one uncertain step before he drops to the ground.
“Fuck, fuck,” Tony blurts out, sinking down along with him, his heart much too loud in his ears. “Kid, I—I can’t—” I can’t watch this. I can’t lose you. Not again. “Coms,” he says again. “Rhodey.”
“What’s wrong? Where’d you go?”
“Get everyone the fuck out, now,” Tony says, watching as Peter sways, leaning against a set of shelves. “Now, instant. Ring the emergency bells, red alert one.”
“What? What happened—”
“Now,” Tony says, finding himself shaking as he watches the kid waste away. “Now. In one minute I’m letting the goddamn poison out into the compound. Get your suit, come back in and get me and the kid when I stop responding. Then seal it all off.”
“Tony, no,” Peter whispers, blinking at him, reaching out. “C’mon.”
“What?” Rhodey asks.
“You heard me,” Tony says. “Alarms, now. Then do the rest.”
“Jesus Christ, okay.”
Everything goes dark and black, red lights shining and the emergency horn blaring, over and over again.
“No,” Peter says, but he’s fading, and fading fast. “No, please, c’mon, you’re—one minute isn’t enough, and—soon as it hits the air, it’s—it’s gonna kill you.”
“Don’t care,” Tony says, cracking his jaw. “You’re not sacrificing yourself, no way, bud, no how. Sorry. Not after everything. You’re not getting away from me that easily.” He presses his hand to the glass, and Peter paws at it with his own.
“No,” he breathes. “No, you’re so—you’re so dumb.” He looks horribly pale, the skin around his eyes getting darker. The breaths he’s taking are ragged.
“You’re dumber, thinking I was just gonna stand here and watch you die,” Tony says, his heart aching. “Already did that once, Pete, didn’t like it. Not a fan.”
“You can’t do this,” Peter breathes, trying to push himself up and failing. “You—you have a kid.”
“I’ve got two kids and I’m not about to let this happen to one of ‘em,” Tony says. “Too stubborn for that. You already know. And I updated my will yesterday, you’re inheriting too much shit to just bail out on me now.”
Peter’s eyes are falling shut.
“Hey!” Tony says, pounding on the glass. “Hey, wake up, Peter. Stay with me, stop it.”
“Love you,” Peter whispers, shaking his head. His hand falls away from the glass. “Tony. Dad.”
Tony lets out a sob, his eyes filling with tears, and he gets up, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Rhodey,” he says, voice shaking.
“Tony, I—”
Tony knows he heard. He doesn’t care. Nothing matters right now. “They’re all out, right?”
“Looks like it, should be—”
Tony slams his shoulder into the glass. It doesn’t budge, and he does it again, harder, pain blooming all up and down his side. He does it again, over and over again, and feels the glass splintering. He looks down at Peter, lying still, and Tony lets out a yell that feels feral, from deep inside him. No way, no way. Not again. Not him. He slams into the glass, once, twice, three more times before it shatters.
He can feel the tainted air as soon as it hits him, and he tries to carry on as long as he can. He kicks out the glass, away from where Peter is, and he reaches in, grabbing him, pulling him into his arms. The poison hangs and flows out in a wave, and Tony tries not to breathe, cradling Peter close. The kid is gigantic now and it’s hard to hold him, but something is pushing Tony forward—pure adrenaline, moving him away from the broken storage room and towards the main door.
He doesn’t have much of a plan, and the poison is hitting him faster because he’s just a man, not an enhanced, like the kid. Peter’s head lolls around on Tony’s shoulder, and Tony slows down once he’s out in the laboratory, every step like sludge. His vision glitches. He thinks about Pepper, Morgan, the people he loves. The kid in his arms that might already be gone.
“Rhodey,” Tony gasps, stumbling out into the hallway. “Rhodes, Rhodey—”
“Should I come?”
Tony is moving through darkness. The red is eating him. He falls, and makes sure not to fall on top of Peter.
“Tony,” Rhodey’s voice says, very far away. “Tony.”
Slow motion. Eggshells. Tony gathers Peter up and holds him close.
Then there’s nothing else.
~
“Yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was close. Yeah. We took them off oxygen yesterday, they’re breathing on their own now. Thanks a lot, Strange, always just a couple minutes late—sure, sure. Alright. Yeah, I’ll tell him you called. We’re getting lots of calls. Yeah, you’re late on that too. Sure. Oh no, don’t feel bad. You’re busy, huh? Right?”
Rhodey’s voice.
“It’ll be sealed off for—hey, lemme call you back.”
Tony squeezes his eyes shut tighter than they were before. There’s gotta be...a piano on top of him or something. Does he have both arms? Both legs? Holy shit.
“You are fucking lucky you’re alive, Tones,” Rhodey says. “Jesus Christ.”
Tony groans.
“Yeah, don’t blame you, lunatic. Both of you are lunatics. Self-sacrificing—I can’t, truly. I feel bad for Pepper, Peter’s girl, May, my own damn self, and Happy—Happy nearly had a heart attack. It’s always gotta be drama. Always. Tony Stark brand, and you passed it right on to Peter Parker. Nice.”
“How is he?” Tony rasps. Peter was dead. He was really dead. Tony’s heart constricts just thinking about it.
“Open your eyes,” Rhodey says.
Tony does, slowly, horrified at the brightness. He sees Rhodey, sitting at the edge of his bed. And then there’s Peter, in the next bed over. His face is still slack, but he’s...he’s breathing.
“You just missed Pepper,” Rhodey says. “She’s taking a shower. You two have been out of it for four days. It was touch and go for the first couple hours, I’m gonna be real, but we managed to pull it out after going deep into the archives, Helen whipping up some back alley antidote nobody could have imagined. Flushing it out of your systems was really hard. We’re in a remote facility in Albany. Compound needed some flushing, too. Looks like a scene from ET over there, probably take another couple of days to get it back to normal.”
Tony stares over at the kid. “Peter’s okay,” he whispers.
“He woke up earlier for about ten minutes,” Rhodey says. “Got to say hi to May. She yelled at him pretty good, but like, quietly? You don’t know how much trouble you’ll be in, Peter, as soon as you’re back on your feet. She said it while kissing his forehead over and over. Very sweet. She’s got Morgan right now, they’re having lunch in the cafeteria.”
Tony nods, closing his eyes again. “Sorry for the drama,” he says. “Felt like it was—you know, getting a little stale.”
“Uh huh, uh huh,” Rhodey says, looking at him fondly.
“We’re not radioactive, right?” Tony asks, not knowing why. Feels like something the kid might wanna know.
“No, thankfully, but it was on the list of things to potentially worry about,” Rhodey says. “For real. We’re still trying to find the asshole that did this. He was a smart one, one we’re gonna have to worry about. A lot of people could have died if it wasn’t for Peter. Nobody was hurt but the two of you. He saved everybody.”
Tony smiles to himself. “Of course he did.”
“Yeah, big hero. Now we gotta make sure none of them were the ones that did it.” Rhodey reaches out and pats Tony on the cheek. “I’m gonna go get May and Morgan. And slip a note under the bathroom door for Pep.”
“Okay,” Tony whispers, looking at him again. “Hey, push Pete’s bed—a little closer to mine, huh? Just while you’re gone.”
Rhodey snorts. “Fine,” he says. He gets up, walks around, and very carefully wheels Peter’s bed closer. Then he heads out the door.
Tony reaches out, grabs Peter’s hand that’s hanging off the side of the bed. “Hey,” he says. “I know—you’re awake. I know your sleeping face by now and this—isn’t it.” He coughs a little bit, shaking his head.
Peter pops one eye open, smiles slightly. “You’re so dumb. I’m—I’m mad at you.”
Tony scoffs, squeezing Peter’s hand. “Please. I could say—the same exact thing.” Talking still isn’t really easy, and he sighs, trying to breathe.
Peter shakes his head. “Thank you for—for saving me.”
“Thanks for saving—everybody else,” Tony says. They both lay there for a couple long moments, and Tony doesn’t let go of the kid’s hand. “You know, you—called me Dad. Just letting you know. It happened. I remember—it happened.”
“Nope,” Peter says. “You’re making that up.”
“Sorry, short stuff,” Tony says, squeezing his hand again, rubbing his thumb back and forth over Peter’s own. “Dear old dad heard it.”
“I wish I’d died.”
“Shut up,” Tony snorts, tugging on Peter’s hand a little bit. There’s another easy silence, and Tony doesn’t think about the weirdo that did this, who they’re gonna have to focus on as soon as they can focus on anything. He doesn’t think about that. He thinks about the fact that they made it. Again. By the skin of their teeth.
“Love you, kid,” he says.
“Love you too,” Peter says. And then, after a moment. “Dad.”