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Peter drew in a deep breath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And opened his eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A shallow, slow exhale parted his lips — the air that came out from his lungs was same as the air outside his body. Flowing through the spaces of his chest, the unmistakable texture of life coursing throughout him; as warm as the light that basked across his face. Just a breath of it, washing across his body.

Like a cozy blanket that spread across his skin.

It was warm.

Sunlight poured in from the window nearby, bright enough that his eyes nearly squinted shut when he found it. Slowly, cautiously, he took in his surroundings. Half-lidded eyes touched every corner and every wall, the sleep that weighed down his eyelashes clearing bit by bit. Second by second.

Something happened.

The room wasn’t the same as what he remembered. Smaller, different — homier. Streams of yellow light led him to turn his head, looking towards the window and finding the glass open and free of any screens.

The curtains spoke quietly with each drift of wind that blew through. The fresh air flowing inside was tepid yet thin, and with every breath he took, it warmed the inside of his lungs.

Peter blinked harder, opening his eyes further. The window brought the sound of urban life, distant chatter and commotion from where he couldn’t see. There we're people talking from far away, similar to same sounds he’d fall asleep to back home. The hum of city life was not much different than Queens, noises that seeped through the open window and wandered to the corners of the room.

Empty corners, where no one occupied the space.

A light draft of wind blew across his face, each breeze brushing his hair back against his forehead, giving way to the slight crease between his brow.

It was just himself, alone in the quiet room.

“Hey, kid.”

Peter whipped his head around, blinking at a rapid pace to adjust his eyes. A halo blurred his vision, blending with the colors of the room. The sun made it hard to see, shining a ray of light across the voice that spoke.

His eyes adjusted, but the halo remained. A spotlight on where Tony sat, a beam of sunlight casting from the window across the way.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter swallowed hard against his parched throat, forcing himself to sit higher on the bed. There was no struggle when he did. “What’s going —?”

An embrace stole his question.

“Oh,” escaped his lips.

Peter didn’t rush to get it back.

The feel of Tony’s body was heavy against his — pressing in, soft and warm. Leaning over the bed so suddenly that Peter didn’t know where he came from. One arm wrapped tightly around him — holding him with a pressure, all along his back. Keeping him grounded in a way he didn’t realize he needed. As if he’d float away if Tony dared to let go.

As if the crushing hug was the only thing keeping him from breaking apart.

It wasn’t until Tony’s hand pressed into the back of his head — pressed Peter’s face into his chest — that Peter realized the embrace was everything he didn’t know he needed. An energy that warmed his skin far greater than the sun basking across them both.

“Oh,” Peter repeated, unintentionally taking a deep inhale of Tony’s scent as his face pressed into the material of his shirt. It smelt like palladium. His eyes slid shut, and gently, he squeezed Tony back. “This...this is nice.”

There was a weight lifted off him, almost as if the weight of Tony’s body replaced all the stress in the world. Making every problem that came before trivial and inconsequential. Practically nonexistent.

Something had happened.

Peter decided he could wait to find out.

They stayed like that for sometime. However long, Peter wasn’t sure — there wasn’t a clock that he could see, and even if there were, he didn’t want to look at it.

He didn’t want to let go.

Neither did Tony, judging by the harsh, broken sniffs that shook his back. His attempt at stifling muted cries were halfhearted at best.

Peter didn’t mention it.

He pressed the side of his face snugly against Tony’s chest, ignoring the sounds of restraint from the older man — cries that were just scarcely held back, a dam that had been broken and repaired too many times to be at full strength.

Instead, Peter took solace in each thump of Tony’s pulse from beneath his rib-cage. A steady heartbeat, one that began to match his own. A sense of safety he’d never felt before welling tears in his eyes.

When Tony finally pulled away — after a time neither were aware of — he took a breath so hard that the exhale blew Peter’s hair back. His hand uncurled slowly from the crown of Peter’s head, and reached for soft skin of his cheeks. Latching on with purpose.

Holding his face as tenderly as he would a newborn.

Tony’s chin quivered with sealed lips that smiled.

Peter forced a smile beneath the callouses that pressed against his skin.

“Hi?”

The high-pitched, confused but welcomed sound of Peter’s voice was more than enough to break Tony’s smile into a full blown grin, teeth and all. He laughed, a wet sound that abruptly fled his mouth.

“Hi, indeed.” Tony sniffed, again and again. The shine in his eyes was nearly bright enough for Peter to catch his own reflection. Water pooled and stayed there, dangerously close to slipping out if Tony closed his eyes.

Yet he didn’t, not even blinking — taking Peter in with more detail than the first day they met.

That afternoon in the bedroom of his Queens apartment felt like centuries ago. With the way Tony was looking at him, Peter began to wonder if it actually was.

He never got the chance to ask. With three slow, soft pats on Peter’s cheek, Tony pulled away. Slowly, and very hesitatingly, returning to the chair that had been at his bedside all along.

“Where are we?” The question came like instinct. Peter didn’t remember thinking it, just asking it. Looking all around him for an answer he might be able to figure out himself.

There were no further clues in the room that pointed to something he didn’t already know — Africa. Hospital. Not home — and when he sat further up in the bed, his body didn’t sound any alarms that would refresh a memory of an attack.

Peter remembered the first time he woke up in the hospital of the Avengers Compound, after being rescued from that bunker. He remembered, vividly, the pain that screamed at his every nerve when wiggling his toes for the first time.

Peter wiggled his toes and shuffled his feet, receiving no communication from his body. Not a single ache to be found.

So he looked to Tony for answers.

“Mr. Stark?”

The first thing Peter noticed was how off something looked with Mr. Stark. His beard was fuller — lacking the usual style that captured his distinct personality, missing more than just a few days worth of shaving. It was fully grown in, and spoke of time that had passed — time Peter wasn’t aware of.

The patches of gray around his chin were more noticeable with its thick stubble, and it was hard to deny now that Peter was definitely the cause of it.

There was no anger on Tony’s behalf for the stress that aged him. His smile remained in place.

“We’re at a remote hospital in Birnin Zana,” Tony finally answered, letting his hand rest casually in his lap. Jeans and a cotton t-shirt replaced the underarmor he last remembered seeing Mr. Stark dressed in. “The capital of Wakanda.”

Peter’s head swiveled to the open window again, suddenly making sense of the city hum that coursed through the curtains. They weren’t towering over the jungles anymore, they weren’t close to the outskirts of Wakanda — this was the golden city he’d been told so much about.

A city he’d been told was miles away from the Citadel they'd originally brought him to.

“We weren’t here before.” Peter didn’t ask the question. He could tell.

“No,” Tony agreed with him, all while shaking his head. “No, we weren’t.”

Peter looked around the room again, as if something had changed in the minute that passed. While he wouldn’t say that the room was ‘less technologically advanced’ than where he was before, it certainly held less machinery. A major downgrade, if he did say so himself.

“Something happened.”

Again, it wasn’t a question.

Tony made a sound in his throat, something mixed between clearing the way for words and breaking a sigh that never formed. He leaned forward in his chair, just a smidgen.

“How you feeling?” he asked, genuinely — looking Peter dead set in the eyes.

Peter met that gaze with his own sincerity.

“Confused,” he said, his eyes bouncing the corners of the room before landing back on Tony, eyebrows sky-high. “Really confused. Like...constructing a multi-bishelled electrochemical reaction sorta confused."

Tony laughed again, this time muting the sound with the center of his palm, rubbing his hand across his mouth to hide the smile that grew on his lips.

Peter let a pause make the way for what came next.

“But better.”

The realization dawned on him no different than the afternoon sun seeping through the window, giving light to a room that had no lamps or artificial bulbs tainting the walls.

“I’m better?” Peter pushed himself the final inches up and away from the bed, finally sitting tall with his hands pressed down into the mattress.

All the while, he never broke his eyes away from Tony.

Tony nodded, dropping his hand to expose the smile that wouldn’t lessen.

“Looks like it.”

Peter found himself taking a deep breath in, and then another when the exhale dropped his shoulders low — and another after that to test the waters. Hands grazed over his chest and patted down the length of his arms, slowly and diligently, all while he stared at the back of his hands with a sense of astonishment.

His memory was fuzzy. It felt like scattered Lego pieces that needed to be organized into piles before slowly being put together. There wasn’t a linear timeline he could remember, just that he'd been sick. Really sick.

And now he was better.

And as much as that didn’t make a lick of sense to him, it also made him very happy.

“Mr. Stark…” The smile on his lips kept twitching, curving up only to fall flat just as fast as it came. Something wasn't allowing himself joy until the confusion cleared away. “What happened?”

When Peter craned his head back to Tony, something had changed in his appearance. It was seen in the slightest of ways; tension built beneath his muscles, eyebrows bunched tightly together. The lines on his face got deeper.

The answer got caught in Tony’s throat, noticeable in the lump that swelled his neck.

“You died.”

The two words were enough to freeze every muscle in Peter’s body.

“What?” His face fell flat, and further flat after that. Realizing that he wasn’t being told a joke — that there was no humor in what was just said.

Tony nodded, just once.

A silent confirmation.

“...how…?” Peter wanted to shake his head, but he couldn’t muster the strength for even that. Disbelief had snaked through ever crevice it could burrow itself in and planted itself strong.

He didn’t remember to breathe again until a slight burn in his chest reminded him to.

Which meant he was alive.

Which meant he couldn't have died.

Because then he wouldn’t be alive.

Right? Peter furrowed his brows until they became one.

Leaning back in the chair, Tony covered half his mouth with his hand. His nails hid deep in the hairs of his beard, almost as if his fingers could erase the troubles of the world — troubles that were permanently etched into every aging line along his skin.

Almost as if Peter couldn’t already see those same troubles immersed in the depths of his brown eyes. Looking straight at him, but through him all the same.

For a while, only the curtains spoke. The draft of air flowing through the window became the only sound.

When Tony looked at him again — truly looked at him — it was the first time Peter saw past those troubles that weighed him down.

It was the first time he saw Tony broken.

Peter frowned.

“...what happened, Mr. Stark?” T’Challa’s voice crept through the silence that covered the fields.

The words left his lips, but they never entered Tony’s ears. Falling somewhere on the barren land beneath them both, rejected like the remains of his helmet far away — discarded like the scattered pieces of a shield forged decades before he’d even been born. Broken and abandoned.

The touch on his shoulder meant nothing to him.

The body in his arms meant everything.

Tony had never held a corpse before.

It was a frightening realization when he came to understand that — when he realized the boy in his arms was nothing more than an empty shell, void of all the things that resonated life. The only movement came from the fierce trembles of his hands, creating slight shakes where there was otherwise stillness.

The only echo of a heartbeat was his own, pounding against his ribs with the torment of still being alive. Still being given the chance of a new day.

The sunrise beamed against his back with a warmth that he could feel on the exposed skin of his neck, a soft kiss of the morning that did nothing to stop the shivers deep inside of him.

It was the same sunlight that cast a splendid stream of light against Peter’s face, giving no warmth to his cold and lifeless skin.

Tony didn’t know when his palm found its way to Peter’s cheek, breaking through the ray of light that fell there. He didn’t know why he bothered; he felt nothing with his armor on. He wouldn’t have liked what he’d have felt anyway.

He didn’t know why he needed contact, why he needed touch.

Why he was afraid to let go when there was nothing to hold onto.

He couldn’t stop shaking, adrenaline deserting him in a quick and harsh departure. Abandoning him to deal with the wreckage on his own.

It was adrenaline that got him through the night; helped him survive the fight that saved so many others. Now, without it, Tony had no idea what would help him survive.

The squeeze against his shoulder tried to remind him that he wasn’t alone. The armor kept it at bay.

“In our culture…” It didn’t stop T’Challa from drawing closer. All but forcing his way into Tony’s line of vision as he sank further down onto his knees. “Death is not the end.”

T’Challa spoke softly, respectfully. Keeping his voice at a level only Tony could hear.

The men who came to clean up the carnage on the fields weren’t privy to their grief.

If Tony had the energy to scoff, he would have. Yet, it was all he could do to blink, letting loose the tears that burned fiercely at his eyes. Not caring as they rolled down the length of his face, cutting through dirt and blood — and the devastation of the night.

T’Challa’s hand found his way to Peter, touching down on his chest with a gentleness that seemed surreal. Knowing full well the boy had suffered enough and not even in death did he deserve more wounds.

Somehow, he ensured the sharp edges of his Vibranium claws didn’t dare come close to the exposed skin, from where his suit barely held on to his body — a toxic poison having burnt red and blue fabric until it was no more.

He bowed his head and took a deep breath in, his back lifting with the fresh air heaved through his throat. Briefly, for a moment Tony was unaware of, T’Challa looked away and craned his head up high. Watching as the sun cut through the clouds, painting the sky with the cleansing of white.

“We must hurry,” he finally broke the silence, so quiet the rustle of his feet was louder than his own words. The dirt he kicked up held more volume than his voice. Slowly, and only after removing his hand from Peter’s chest, did he lift from his knees. “Time is of the essence.”

Exhaustion stripped Tony of the ability to fight, the strength needed to argue. A sigh was the best he could offer. Even that shook.

“There is no time,” Tony murmured, giving the smallest shake of his head — the screaming of injured bones and torn muscles was becoming more pronounced as time drifted on. Time that he lost, time that he once needed —

Time was gone.

Right alongside Peter.

There wasn’t a way to get any of that back. The clock would keep ticking, the sun would keep rising, and the days would go.

Tony liked to think he was a strong person. Built with iron, hardened by the stories of his life. Dismantled and repaired until there was barely any traces left of the man he used to be.

But in that moment, he wasn’t sure he could go on.

Not after this.

Not with the body cradled in his arms — a corpse. A permanent stain that would never wash away, no matter how many times he’d break himself down and start anew.

Tony’s face screwed up in a tight pinch as he held back the aching sob that grew in his chest. Instead replacing it with a ragged gasp, as wet as the blood that pooled from his arm.

On the cusps of a breakdown, it was a King’s voice which kept him anchored.

“Please…” T’Challa looked at Tony until he forced his eyes away from Peter, blood-shot and exhausted and full of grief — but attentive to him, nonetheless. “Will you trust me?”

Tony wanted to ask — wanted to speak — but his voice was gone. Aching in the swells of his throat, caught in the sob that he refused to let out.

Tears dropped down his face as he swallowed, hard — again and again. Forcing down the bile that lingered painfully and pushing it away with every remaining ounce of strength he had left.

The sun cast a sharp ray of light across him. Tony could feel its heat burning through the stain of blood coating his arms and piercing through his eyes with a sharp tip knife. He squeezed his eyes shut.

And he nodded.

The chair squeaked as Tony shifted where he sat, moving enough that the halo of light no longer blocked Peter’s view of his face. The sun streamed in through the window across from them, but the light shifted with Tony. Casting over the walls instead, painting plain drywall with golden hues.

A tight smile pulled at Tony’s mouth, forced and slightly unnatural, creating harsh lines around his already weary eyes.

“Do you know the story of the Black Panther?”

Peter let a lingering pause be the way for his thoughts, digging deep to the back of his mind before coming up empty.

Ultimately, he gave a small shake of his head. If the room hadn’t been so still, there was no guarantee it would have been seen at all.

Afraid that it wasn’t, he didn’t break eye contact with Tony. Attentive in all the ways that didn’t include words.

“I didn’t either,” Tony finally answered, roughly clearing his throat. His voice seemed tired, but not in the way Peter was used to. “Didn’t think I ever needed to. Didn't ever think...”

Tony looked around, scrubbing at his nose — then his mouth, then reaching for the nape of his neck and bowing his head with a deep sniff that didn’t go unnoticed. The beat that followed contained whatever he needed to regain his composure.

By the time he returned his gaze to Peter, the sheen in his eyes was barely glistening. The remnants of what was inside now soaking the material of his jeans.

“It saved your life,” Tony quietly said. Suddenly, the grin on his lips wasn’t as forced. The crinkles to his eyes much less strained. “It brought you back to life.”

The words rang through the air with an effect far too profound for how they left Tony’s mouth. Soft and hushed, with syllables that barely grazed the skin of his lips. Still, they were spoken.

And they lingered for some time after, bouncing off the walls of the room and hitting Peter at all angles.

He could hear it said ten times over, and it still wouldn’t have made sense to him.

Peter didn’t have nearly as many years under his belt as Tony; he was young, and though it took time to accept that, he'd come around to the fact. It was hard to say exactly when — perhaps it was when he woke up chained to the wall of a sinking bunker deep under the sea, stripped of any hope that he’d be rescued. Positive that he’d die, and frightened by what his last thoughts would be.

Or maybe it was as simple as when he saw the largely written F that covered most of his hastily, poorly written school essay. A harsh reminder that no matter how old he wanted to be treated, he was still a kid.

He was young and still had a lot to learn.

So when absolutely none of that made any sense to him, Peter wasn’t sure to chalk it up to his own inexperience, or something far bigger than what even the great Tony Stark could figure out.

Judging by the look on Tony’s face — one Peter couldn’t quite pin, too many emotions that he’d never seen on Tony before — he was slowly starting to wonder if his age meant nothing when it came to this.

“I don’t...I don’t understand…” Peter trailed off, unsure of what words to use — what to say. “I...you...brought me back to life?”

That was officially the weirdest thing he ever said.

Ever.

Tony’s smile only widened.

Peter’s confusion only deepened. “...how is that possible?” Tony asked, not a single ounce of his voice free from the rasp that clung deeply to the layers of his throat.

The cryotank hissed sharply as the lid glided down; the cold air held inside released all at once. It sent a shiver through Tony’s spine, raising goosebumps on his arms despite the jacket that covered his skin.

The only thing worse than the freezing air pouring out from the tank was the body inside, kept upright solely by the straps holding him in place.

Tony looked away as T’Challa and Shuri detached those same straps, unable to watch as they maneuvered stiff limbs that were frozen long before the tank had any effect on Peter’s body. It sent a different chill through him, a pain that hit deep through his nerves.

“You’re talking about…” Tony trailed off, scrubbing at his face with his good hand — his other arm wrapped so tightly in their kinetic skeleton that he couldn’t so much as twitch his fingers. “You’re talking about resurrection, here.”

His eyes found their way to his arm, desperately looking anywhere but ahead. Suddenly unable to stomach the sight of a cold, gray corpse that had been hidden beneath the condensation of a cryostasis tank.

Just as Peter’s body had been concealed, so was his arm — hidden beneath the layers of his jacket, and beneath that the technology that kept the limb attached to him.

The doctors had told him if he were anywhere but in Wakanda, they’d have resorted to amputation. Stating, with no hesitance, that the damage was too severe for even modern medicine.

Now, it was just weeks away from having a few scars; imprints of teeth left behind to serve as a lifelong reminder of the events that had unfolded.

Tony swallowed, hard. If they had the means to heal him, save an entire limb that was otherwise irreversibly damaged, did they have the means for —

“Resurrection is very well the juncture that we stand at,” T’Challa answered his question with a quiet voice, nearly inaudible at distance.

He bent low with arms outward and a muted grunt hiding the discomfort of day old wounds. Pain didn’t stop him as he scooped the body into his arms once the straps were undone.

With the way T’Challa carried himself — and Peter — across the room, no one would have known his injuries were still fresh. Shuri hovered closely behind, with a heavy blanket tucked underneath her arm. Her stance looked as if she was ready to catch either of the men if they fell.

Tony could feel his jaw clench tight.

He had wanted to be the one to carry Peter out.

His sight hadn’t wavered from his arm, the jacket doing nothing to hide his reality. There was no point in even trying.

He hadn’t realized how badly he needed it — to be the one who carried him. He couldn’t carry him out of the fields, and he couldn’t carry him now. It may have just been six feet across the room, but the urge was still there. A primitive urge, a protective one.

He’d been the one to bring Peter into this mess, give him the means to be the hero he wanted so badly to become — was meant to become. He’d carried him into the world of heroism. Shouldn’t he be the one to carry him out?

But it was pointless, he knew that much. Peter wasn’t aware — Peter was dead. Gone. There was no memory of this for him, no need to have Mr. Stark around. No need for guidance when there was no longer anywhere to guide him.

Still. Funerals were never for the dead, only for the living.

And he wanted to be the one to carry Peter.

Tony forced himself to watch, a lump hard in his throat, as T’Challa gently carried Peter across the room. Not far from where they stood was a slab of metal, a table that had no place in the laboratory they occupied. One of the many labs inside the Birnin Zana hospital, with the only remaining cryotank they could still access.

There was no telling if the cryotank in the Citadel was still functional, let alone still standing. Even if it were, they had no way to get to it. It was only in the last few hours that the remaining guards and the Dora Milaje returned to the building; beginning repairs on a tower that had stood for centuries prior.

Barely twenty-four hours had passed since they were brought here — not just Peter’s body, but all of them. Birnin Zana offered his team refuge in the wake of destruction; their hospitals miles from the Citadel, and yet there was still smoke pouring from the tower. Strong enough to cloud the air outside.

Ground zero to a nightmare he still couldn’t wrap his head around.

With slow and steady movements, T’Challa adjusted Peter’s arms and legs on the metal slab. Only afterward did he ensure the folded blanket, placed at the top of the table, remained as a cushion to his head. Adjusting it under his neck like a pillow, and softening the wrinkles that formed at the edges.

Treating his body with more respect than Tony was sure he’d treated half the people in his life.

Not a second later and Shuri stood across from him, taking the wool blanket under her arm and draping it over the lower half of Peter’s body. The colors looked out of place — brightly decorated African designs that stood out among the white and blues of the lab; bringing a sense of life to the sterile, clinical atmosphere.

Unlike T’Challa, she left the wrinkles be. Crossing the length of the lab and disappearing behind a wall pillar shortly after. Making sounds of rummaging that barely crossed Tony’s ears.

With an inhale that lifted his back, T’Challa moved an open palm across Peter’s bare chest. Skin-to-skin, leaving pressure there for a moment that had no time attached to it.

“Though his body is preserved...” T’Challa lowered his head out of sight. “There is no heartbeat within the boy.”

Tony found himself clenching his eyes shut, his hand rubbing vigorously at his forehead until it hurt — until the skin turned red and raw. He didn’t stop until he felt the swelling in his throat lessen, dislodging the lump that allowed for his next words.

“We knew that when we put him in there,” he all but murmured, too exhausted to raise his voice any louder than that.

Exhaustion wasn’t strong enough to describe the way his body felt — medicine was the only thing keeping him standing. And with barely a day behind him holding the horrors they’d lived through, he was sure his legs wouldn’t hold his weight much longer.

Tony wanted to sleep. He wanted nothing more than to sleep — to find a bed, or the floor, a corner or closet — anywhere that he could collapse and give in to the trauma that had dogged his every step. He’d only managed a couple hours, right after they treated his injures — and the shock — all of which had only occurred with the aid of medication.

Without the drugs, Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever have shut his eyes.

Less than twenty-four hours after he was informed Peter was being held in cryostasis, he was brought to the very room that held his body. And kept in the dark as to why.

He had assumed they were keeping the body fresh for a funeral back home. A funeral he hadn’t even given himself time to think about.

Suddenly, his head was spinning between the onslaught of thoughts — the possibility of life tainted by the actuality in front of him.

Tony would be the first to admit, in the last decade he’d seen his fair share of the unimaginable. But resurrection was simply against natural physics.

It was impossible.

“Brother?”

T’Challa still had his palm on Peter’s chest when Shuri returned, this time approaching directly at his side.

“Are you sure of this?” Shuri tilted her head to meet his gaze, a tight crease forming between her eyebrows.

Tony found himself shaking again — the drugs were either wearing off, or the shock was slowly returning. Whatever the reason was, tremors lit his muscles on fire, renewing a deep ache that made itself painfully known.

“Alright, just — time out, please. You’re gunna have to…” Tony gestured his hand Shuri’s way, blood-shot eyes locking on hers. “You’re gunna have to hold up a minute. There needs to be some sense made out of this —”

“There is not much time to waste,” Shuri cut him off, though not ill intended. There was a sympathy laced into her voice he’d yet to hear until now. Her face, more-so. “With his body out of stasis, we must hurry.”

Tony wouldn’t look at the body she spoke about, wouldn’t so much as flicker his eyes in the direction of where Peter lay. It was all he could do to keep his stomach out of his throat, feeling sicker by the minutes that passed by.

“He’s dead.” Tony turned to T’Challa, every ounce of his exhaustion wearing heavy on his face. His words came out dense and bitter. “No heartbeat. You just said it. Gone. Dead.”

The words echoed, left hanging in the air while they stared at one another. T’Challa didn’t dare break eye-contact with Tony; not even as he removed his hand away from Peter’s chest.

Tony shook his head, barely a minuscule twitch. “Your technology can’t bring him back.”

T’Challa lifted his chin, just slightly, mimicking Tony’s movements with the smallest shake of his head.

“No...it cannot,” he said, followed by a brief stint of silence. “But long before our ancestors gave us the means to technology, they provided us something else first.” T’Challa looked to Shuri, before returning his gaze where Tony refused to look. His eyes landing, and staying, on the body that laid below him. “A gift from the Gods.”

T’Challa didn’t look away from Peter.

For the first time since they’d brought Peter out of the tank, Tony set his gaze in the same place.

He bit his tongue as he clamped down on his jaw, his chin shuddering hard enough to vibrate his teeth. Peter may have been in stasis, but the signs of progressing death still showed on his face.

Bloodless lips held the same color as gray skin, slightly parted enough that the bottoms of his teeth caught the lights from above. His eyes were shut, sunken and dark, and the hair he normally kept brushed and managed had been tangled and knotted.

There was a cold that cast off his body, a frigid air that rose off his skin from the cryotank's effects. Making the blanket that covered his lower half seem nothing more than redundant; an effort of modesty more than it was warmth.

Peter didn’t look like he was sleeping. He didn’t even look like he was at peace.

Tony hated that.

“You said it was all gone.” He looked up and away from Peter, forcing a shaky inhale through his chest — suddenly feeling like a wall of bricks had settled there. “That there’s none left.”

It wasn’t until a light caught the corner of his eye that Tony turned his head back around.

“It is,” Shuri began, hesitating before opening both her hands — shining a purple light on Peter’s otherwise colorless body. “Especially now.”

For a moment, Tony stopped breathing. The distance he stood from Shuri did nothing to lessen the glow of light that reflected against his face. He stared at Shuri’s hands — eyes wide and wild, unable to blink even as the light from inside her palms began to spread.

Tony pointed a shaking finger at the plant. “That’s…”

The unspoken was heard in the silence.

Tony pushed himself forward, only stopping when finally reaching the table — where Peter’s body separated him from both siblings.

“This was never an option before,” Shuri explained, as if reading his thoughts. “We did not lie to you. He would not have survived if we gave it to him while he was still —”

“You said it was all gone,” Tony repeated, a heat growing in his eyes. Too weak to call anger, but still sharp enough to say what his words didn’t.

Shuri’s lips pressed thin.

“It might as well be,” she bit back, and with no amount of hurt shrouded from her voice. “This is all that remains in the entirety of Wakanda. Of the world. We considered ourselves blessed to have discovered it at all, especially after that ipisi yekaka burnt it all to — ”

“Shuri,” T’Challa’s interruption was firm. A bite to his words Tony hadn’t heard before.

The look Shuri gave him was the most heated he’d seen exchanged with her brother. Gone were the jokes, the humor and the teasing. The lighthearted, carefree banter they’d once tossed back and forth no longer present — their own traumas surfacing where others could see.

The pain still lingered in Shuri’s eyes when she turned back to Tony.

“A farmer found it. Last year,” she further explained, closing both her palms together until the light was sealed away. “We scavenged the lands to ensure there was no more to be found. This is it. Once this is gone....”

She held the plant in her hand like she would cradle a baby bird, and looked at it no differently. As if it were the most treasured item in the universe — and circumstances considered, it may as well have been.

It dawned on Tony, the moment she sealed the light away inside the cusps of her palms.

“This is what you’ve been using to create a synthetic version,” he realized. “Building off it, no?”

Shuri simply nodded.

It began to make sense. Tony broke off the stare, looking at nothing and everything at the same time; forcing overworked wheels to turn in his head despite how badly he wanted to stop thinking, how desperate he was to shut down and shut down for good.

“Why not plant it?” The question came without his bidding. The thought spewed from his mouth before he knew he was speaking. “Grow more? Sow a seed and – and...farm a whole garden? ”

Shuri looked down to her hands, spreading her fingers apart just enough that a ray of purple light could seep out.

“I planned to,” she admitted, noticeably frowning. A kind of despair that tugged at her lips and aged her by years. “But only once I had the means for a synthetic version. Planting it first would be too risky. If it didn’t take to the soil, if it didn’t...it would be ruined. Forever. We decided we could not risk losing this little bit before having what I needed to create an artificial strain.”

Shuri’s pause came with a stifling silence, only broken with a sigh that dropped her shoulders low.

“Once it is gone, that will be it,” she repeated herself, but her voice carried a different undertone the second time around. Anguish replaced the anger she once showed. “There will be no synthetic version.”

Tony’s brows furrowed deeply, and he found himself looking between Shuri and T’Challa, neither setting their sights on him.

T’Challa looked to Peter, and Shuri to the herb.

Tony found himself doing the same, in that order, before lifting his gaze from the herb and over at Shuri.

“This herb can bring people ba —? ” Tony shook his head. He couldn’t get the words out of his lips — it was absurd. “It can resurrect?” That wasn’t much better.

The lack of an immediate answer only deepened the hollow feeling in his gut.

Shuri looked to T’Challa and Tony didn’t waste time to follow suit. Setting eyes on the only man who held an answer.

T’Challa never looked up from Peter.

“It has never been tried before,” his voice, as soft as his breath, managed to echo the four walls around them.

It didn’t take any where near Tony’s intellect to understand what was just said — to read between of the lines of what wasn’t.

Absorbing it, however, remained to be a different story.

Suddenly, Tony found himself urgently needing to sit. His knees nearly folded and he reached for the table beneath him; one hand gripping the edge fiercely. He’d never seen a chair look so divine, and yet the one across the room was screaming for him to sit down and comprehend what he’d just been told.

The days had blurred together and time was no longer a construct he could understand. Yesterday coalesced with the day before it, making the hours on the clock nothing but numbers that had no meaning.

Even still, though he couldn’t remember how long ago it was they arrived in Wakanda, Tony was aware enough to know it had only been days. Less hours than an average working week, less days than he had fingers on one hand.

The same hand T’Challa had shaken for the first time.

Just days ago.

Tony looked to the King, no crown on his head and yet the safety of his country a weight that rested heavy on his shoulders. A man who had offered him, a stranger to his land, the gift of…

Of…

“Why him?” Tony asked, a broken croak carrying his voice. “Why… ”

The words wouldn’t form, and the longer he stared at T’Challa — a stare T’Challa never returned — words were only further lost on his tongue. The depths of grief overwhelmed him with a sense of incredulity that not even his intelligence could work its way through.

“This isn’t fifty-fifty, this isn’t —” Tony shook his head, a huff of air concealing a broken sound of disbelief. “This isn’t flipping a coin. This is…”

Outlandish.

Beyond science.

"This is a hundred-to-one shot.” Tony looked down at Peter, swallowing hard past the burning nodule that swelled his throat shut.

Risky.

The thought rang through his head like the bell of a church steeple. Of all the risks he’d taken in his life — calculated risks, meticulous and well thought out risks — none dared touch the height of this.

He was sure if he’d ask FRIDAY what the chances were, what the percentage may be for a positive outcome, she’d throw numbers so low that it’d end up in the negatives.

He’d never take this risk. No matter how desperate, now matter how dark the grief felt, he could never make this decision.

Tony looked at T’Challa, the man staring at Peter so intently it was wonder if he thought the body might spring back to life on its own.

“You’re the one who…” Tony trailed off, his eyes finding their way down to Shuri’s hands again — where in the fold of her palms laid a relict dressed in lavender. An endling to an herb that existed long before they all ever walked the earth.

And it was being offered to him.

“T’Challa — this you?” Tony paused, the weight of the question too heavy to handle. “You’re the one who wants to do this?”

It was Shuri who regarded Tony evenly, nodding with a stiffness in her neck. Answering the question for her brother, and for good reason — T’Challa remained still. Holding his sight firm on where Peter laid, and keeping silent through it all.

Tony didn’t need an answer. The answer came in the look on T’Challa’s face, in the way he held himself — not much different than at the Leipzig airport, years behind them now.

The same determination he’d showed that day could be seen in his eyes now. Speaking what he wouldn’t.

“The herb does not go by the beat of the heart,” T’Challa finally spoke up, albeit it quiet and faint. “But rather, the soul of its receiver.”

There was a lot T’Challa wasn’t saying — Tony didn’t need to be told that. There was more to the history of their country than what he was willing to tell. Perhaps it was a restriction of time, perhaps he simply felt it wasn’t necessary.

But Tony was familiar enough with the legend of the Black Panther to know that it wasn’t something any ordinary person could pick up at a whim. It came with lineage, with rituals — dynasty and bloodlines.

None of which Peter was a part of.

So the look he gave T’Challa held every grain of the confusion he felt. Confusion so strong, words didn’t do it justice.

Even without breaking away from the sight of Peter’s body, T’Challa saw that.

“The night we lost the child, before his passing...I prayed,” T’Challa began to say, letting his eyes close shut just for a moment. When he opened them, they locked on Tony. “A vision from my father spoke to me. I feel it is my responsibility to listen to him.”

Tony didn’t intend for his scoff to be as loud as it was. The stillness of the lab amplified every noise, including his sound of incredulity.

“Right. A vision. That’s…” Tony was too exhausted to hide the roll of his eyes, let alone the sarcasm that filled his voice. “You’re gunna use the last of your magical, mystical, all-powerful flower on somebody who has been dead for nearly a day — not even knowing if it’ll work on the dead — not even knowing if it’ll work on some white kid from Queens — all because you...you had a dream. That’s...that’s the cherry on the sundae, right there.”

His cynicism did nothing to deter T’Challa.

“Mr. Stark,” his voice was firm, but understanding. “You are not a man who has sought the council of spirits.”

Tony’s lips immediately pressed thin. “Not the ones outside of a bottle, no.”

T'Challa nodded, though his eyes held no judgment. He held an open palm in the air — the same hand that had rested so gently on Peter’s chest.

“And that is okay.” He lowered the hand, slowly, with eyes that briefly found themselves back on Peter. This time, they didn’t stay there. Returning to Tony in a way that sent a chill through the room — no longer sourced by the cold air of the cryotank. “Will you please allow my faith to take the place where you have none?”

The question wasn’t broached with hostility — wasn’t condescending, wasn’t pretentious. If Tony didn’t know better, it bordered the line of a man begging to be heard. Pleas all too similar to the ones that left his lips just a day ago.

He wanted time, needed time. Begged for time.

The universe didn’t grant him that much.

Never a man of religion, Tony couldn’t help but wonder if this was something else offered to him in return. By what, or who — that was too far out of his depth to reach.

But maybe…

Just maybe...

Tony titled his head up enough to catch T’Challa’s eyes. They were sincere. Honest.

“Your father...” he could feel the words slip from his tongue, between one breath and the next. “What did he say?”

There was a long pause before T’Challa spoke again. For a while, Tony had to wonder if the question would go unanswered.

“Unyana wam...” T’Challa’s breath noticeably caught in his chest, the words of his native tongue stirring an emotion that was palpable from where Tony stood. He didn’t speak again until he took a slow breath in, deep enough to pull his shoulders back. “Let me offer you healing... in hopes that you may forgive me, at last.”

Tony frowned, a tight crease furrowing his brows as he watched T’Challa set his palm back against Peter’s chest.

And he said nothing more.

Peter furrowed his brows as Tony leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbow on his knee with a far-off stare that captivated the brown of his eyes.

“Not one-hundred percent sure myself, kid,” Tony answered his question, keeping the smile on his face, though it loosened slightly at the corners. “I thought for sure that science would be the way out of this. Turns out Strange was wrong.”

For a brief moment, Peter found himself looking where Tony did. He frowned when he saw nothing but drywall behind the few machines and African paintings hanging on the wall.

Yet Tony looked there as if it held the entirety of space and the cosmic universe, all within a two-hundred square foot room somewhere in the middle of Africa.

“It wasn’t science...wasn’t magic, either.” Tony took a deep breath in, holding it there for a moment. “Turns out it was…divine intervention.”

The lighthearted scoff that shook Tony’s back told Peter that whatever had occurred, it still rattled him to the core. It was a sound of luck finally paying out, of disbelief that still hung strong days after the fact.

It was the same disbelief that crashed heavy against Peter. Not a single thought formed in his head, nothing getting past the two words that echoed relentlessly in his ears.

“I died?” Peter repeated. When that didn’t warrant a response, he pushed himself further to Tony — practically leaning over the bed. “I died died?”

This time, Tony didn’t nod.

“Watched it with my own eyes,” he deadpanned, void of emotion and yet drowning in it all the same.

Peter opened his mouth to say something — exactly what, he was clueless to. His throat suddenly tightened shut and the unformed words dissolved on his tongue.

Tony sniffed, hard, and the smile that had found residence on his face slowly parted way for something heavier.

It was still a look that Peter couldn’t figure out. An emotion he’d never seen cross Mr. Stark’s face the way it was doing now.

Tony looked nowhere else but at Peter when he spoke. “We weren’t sure if this is going to work?” Tony looked away, suddenly finding himself dizzy at the sight of Peter. Swallowing wasn’t helping quell the nausea. Looking away did.

Shuri’s wrist twisted quickly in a back and forth motion, grinding the herb in the stone mortar and pestle that she held firmly in her other hand.

“It is as you said…” she worked the herb until it resolved into a liquid form, tapping the stone pestle against the edge of the mortar before transferring the liquid seamlessly into a different bowl. This one with a spout around the edge. “It is a one-hundred-to-one shot.”

Shuri’s next sigh could’ve rocked the floors with an earthquake. She eyed the bioluminescent liquid in the bowl, its glimmering purple bright enough to cast a glow on her face — a glow that highlighted the frown tugging at her mouth.

“Brother?” Without saying anything further, she handed off the dish. Not resisting at the slightest when it was removed from her grasp.

The last of the herb, the last there would ever be, sat gracefully in T’Challa’s hands.

With the way T’Challa held the dish, Tony would’ve thought there was a hidden garden tucked away containing thousands more of the herb. Unlike his sister, he showed no hesitance with his actions. A confidence in the unknown so powerful, it stole the rooms air.

Suddenly, there were prayers offered to Gods and pleas made in a language he didn’t understand, and before Tony knew it, the glowing purple was finding its way frighteningly close to Peter’s lips.

“Wait!” Tony shot an open palm forward, pressing his other hand firmly against his face. “Wait, wait, just —! Give me a damn minute, just —!”

A knot planted itself painfully in Tony’s chest and he spun around, pressing his hand even harder against his face. Hiding himself away, cowering behind his own touch.

It wasn’t enough — he needed escapism, he needed to not be seen.

He needed time, he needed a moment to think about this.

A dry-heave almost caught in his throat and he swallowed it down with all the moisture he could find in his mouth.

He needed someone else to make this decision.

The pressure suddenly got to be too much; the overwhelming responsibility slamming down on him with a cruel brutality.

This was asking too much. This was doing too much, this was —

Somewhere behind them, a quiet whoosh announced the glass door to the lab opening, without any footsteps to follow through.

Tony’s hand slid into his hair and he gripped until it hurt. He couldn’t think logically, he couldn’t count calculations, couldn’t list off pros versus cons — the emotion was suffocating, pulling him in a hundred different directions and screaming all at the same time.

He couldn’t hear the right answer.

“Do it,” the voice came from the doorway, weak and yet somehow still boisterously stern.

Tony spun around fast enough to crack his neck.

“Holy — shit, Rogers!"

And then he was running.

It was in the nick of time Tony got to the entrance of the lab, leaping there in eight large steps that nearly toppled them both over. His one and only functional arm wrapped around Steve’s bicep, holding firmly and keeping him standing.

“What the hell — sit, sit, sit! For the love of —” Tony was peeling Steve away from the doorway before he’d even spoken, forcibly unclenching the fingers that gripped the door-frame and instead throwing the man’s arm over his shoulder to help him stand. “Jesus Christ, someone get him a chair, now!”

It was a struggle maneuvering Steve across the lab — Tony with one arm to use, T’Challa rushing to his other side. Shuri busied herself dragging the chair to meet them halfway.

Captain America was, by no means, a small guy. And his size was all the more pronounced with the injures that kept him frail.

Steve spared no expense in pained, grunted noises as Tony and T’Challa worked together to get him sitting. His one leg spread out in front of him, wrapped in a thick, kinetic material. All the way from his toes to the top of his thigh, material so heavy it resembled a plaster cast.

Its only difference was the slight glow that lined the mesh with lights. A procession of pulsations that spoke of healing where they couldn’t see, technology far more advanced than a simple plaster cast could offer.

The same white lights cascading up his leg resembled the paleness that stripped his face of any color. Making the heavy, long tunic he wore all the deeper in color — any other day, and Tony might’ve mocked the man for wearing a dress.

As it was, he was too stunned to speak.

“Do it,” Steve breathed out the moment he all but collapsed in the chair. It was weak and hushed under his breath — Tony didn’t catch it the second time around.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Tony also used his breath to speak, pouring out the question with a sense of bewilderment. He looked Steve up and down, his hand still clenching firmly to the man’s bicep. If anything, his grip grew tighter. “How the hell did you — they said you just got out of surgery!”

Steve gave a pathetic attempt at a nod.

“I did,” he plainly stated, his voice more breathy than it was solid. “About…” Steve swallowed, hard — harder than Tony had ever seen him. As if a rock had lodged into his throat and he couldn’t get it down. “A-about an hour ago.”

Tony’s confusion was near nuclear. If his eyebrows had gone any higher, they’d be through the roof.

Steve craned his neck up to look at him, his brow dotted with wet beads of sweat.

“Their drugs can’t...keep me out, Tony.” Steve’s explanation came with a twisted grin, pulling only at the left corner of his lip. Shining with a sense of self-deprecation; of pity.

Pity for himself, pity that he brought the problem onto others.

Pity that he was used to it by now.

That didn’t make it okay for Tony.

“Shit,” he cursed under his breath, before giving a rapid shake his head. “No, we — your stash. On the Quinjet. What about —?”

“Used it...for the surgery,” Steve managed to say, closing his eyes and briefly squeezing them shut. When he tilted to the side, Tony was quick to hold him upright. “All out...right now. It’s —” Steve made a face. “Clint’s...handling it. He’ll be back..soon. It’s taken care of. It’s – it’s fine.”

It was absolutely far from fine, and the roar of indignation that rose up Tony’s throat was more than enough to win that argument.

“Rogers, you were hit with two-hundred-decibels —”

Steve kept shaking his head. “Tony —”

“—broke the sound barrier —”

“Tony —”

“— shattered your shield —”

“Tony —!”

“— ripped through your goddamn organs,” Tony’s voice was shaking now, nearly as hard as Steve shook. “They said they lost you on the fucking table and now you’re gunna come prancing down the hallways like your goddamn can-can girls —”

Steve latched onto Tony’s arm — his good one. His fingers dug deep there, but not out of animosity. The tremors in his hands spoke to that much.

Steve made sure he was looking Tony head-on when he spoke next.

“I can...barely hear you.”

It was only then Tony realized why Steve had been holding his gaze so firmly. It was for a reason.

He’d been reading lips.

A faint light flickered deep inside Steve’s ears, right where Tony found himself staring. It was too dim to see unless he’d been looking there all along. There was still rust that stained along his earlobe, blood that was apathetically cleaned up in a rush.

Tony had watched the same rusted color circle down the drain of a shower he’d hastily taken that morning, his own ears aching from the damage they’d endued — but promised a full recovery, with the same technology meticulously embedded inside of him.

Of course, his helmet had sealed out most the sounds that had stripped Wakanda’s land to dust and dirt.

Steve had no such protection.

The urge to sit got even worse and Tony was about to take the floor when a voice spoke up.

“The kinetic grafts inside his ear canals will recover the perforation to his eardrums in a few days,” the woman said from the doorway, her hands pocketed away in her lab-coat. There was a sense of exhaustion to her voice that inflated her accent. “But the Captain is right. He is currently at 94% deafness."

Tony looked at the woman with bugling eyes. It was only when Steve tugged at the hold on his bicep that Tony unlatched his death grip, using that same hand to point a vicious finger her way.

“You’re about as good as a candy striper,” Tony barked, his rage concealed by the tremors that lined his voice. There was no reason Rogers shouldn’t be knocked out ten ways to the year three-thousand, medicated to his eyeballs with narcotics that stripped the pain away and yet here he was — here he goddamn was. Tony felt sicker than before. “You’re just gunna let your patients gallop around freely —!”

“Tony!” Steve mustered every shred of strength he could for a yell that didn’t come out as anything more than a weak shout. It took him five full breaths to regain his voice. “I didn’t give her a choice.”

Tony purposefully ensured Steve was looking at him when he responded, his fingers gripping the man’s jaw and directing his face to him.

“Liar,” Tony all but spit back. “You couldn’t pet a puppy right now, Rogers.”

That got Steve to smile.

A chuckle broke through his throat, weaker than he was — he swayed to the side again and Tony hurriedly reached down to steady him.

‘Pissed off’ was written all across Tony’s face, but beneath that the undertow of concern that anger couldn’t veil.

He knew his own technology — he knew the damage that his weapons could cause. New or not, the ultrasonic pulse was no exception.

When Tony had seen the scattered pieces of the shield spread across the fields, he had assumed Steve was dead. Natasha had been the one to tell him he'd coded on the table — he had assumed, then, that Rogers would die. He braced himself for the worst, because there were no good outcomes going forward. Not after what happened.

Tony flipped his hand around until it was palm up, and his watch stared back at him.

That had been just hours ago.

“Somebody get him the hell back to —!”

“No, Tony, I—” Steve tried to nod in an ‘I’m okay, I’ll live’ sorta way, but the false sense of reassurance fell flat when his face screwed up into something too unfamiliar for Tony to decipher.

It was pain, sure — pain was ugly, pain painted the face with harsh colors of agony. But the pain that stole his breath also came from deeper inside, further than the wounds they could see, and even those they couldn’t.

Tony had never seen Rogers cry. The most he’d ever witnessed was a tear slipping down his face as he’d carried the weight of a former love on his shoulder, being the pallbearer to a funeral Tony had only briefly attended.

The other night was as close as it had gotten, when the man had made a decision that’d nearly destroyed Tony’s whole world. He’d seen a flicker of that emotion try to take him under, only for it be swallowed whole. Kept deep inside, where it couldn’t have its influence.

Steve stopped nodding and instead threw his head back, his face scrunched up with the anguish that, for once, he wore openly on his sleeve.

“Do it,” he commanded — every bit Captain America as the man fighting on the front lines, every bit as stern as the times that had come before.

“Whatever it is…”

But his voice was weak, frail and fragile. Trembling and shaking and yet, through it all, it was strong.

“Do it.”

Tony shook his head, the well of tears burning fiercely in his eyes.

Crying hurt, he was fucking sick of crying.

“You have no idea what you’re encouraging,” he tried to explain, his mouth setting in a grim line. “You don’t know what we’d be —”

“I don’t care,” Steve interrupted, his hand falling onto his thigh and trembling against the urge to squeeze the limb. His knuckles bent but stayed hovering over the mesh that kept his leg in one piece. “Do it.”

Tony’s mouth floundered like a fish out of water, opening and closing with words that wouldn’t form. He turned his head around, facing the table where Peter’s body laid. The radiant glow of purple swam in his eyes, creating a plum halo against his face — gone only when he turned back to Steve.

“That herb?” He pointed his finger to T’Challa, lackadaisically, too exhausted for anything more. “That’s...that’s it, Rogers. Limited edition. Out of production.”

There was a wetness that coated his voice. It drenched through each word.

“We take it, and…” Tony trailed off, unable to say any more.

Responsibility was a word that hung heavy on his shoulders lately. Right around the time he’d discovered Peter had fallen victim to OsCorp’s dangers; something he’d tried all damn summer to ensure wouldn’t happen.

The kid was his responsibility, and he’d failed him.

Responsibility was ensuring another Sokovia didn’t happen, that innocent bystanders weren’t killed because of their doing. Now there were repairs to be made and funerals to be planned. Soldiers who may have died with honor, but died frightened nonetheless.

Responsibility was putting the betterment of mankind over their feelings.

Taking the last of their herb — the last of their only means to the powers of the Black Panther — Tony knew, past the heartache and past the grief, that it wouldn’t be the responsible thing to do.

Steve looked up at Tony, with a single blink shedding the tears to both his eyes.

“I was selfish once, Tony.” Steve’s gaze was as steely as his voice. He fixed his eyes on Tony, and they refused to let up. “You can be selfish, too.”

It was in that moment, looking at Steve and stricken by the depths that drowned his eyes, Tony wasn’t sure who needed this more.

His throat spasmed as he moved his lips, fighting to form the words his throat didn’t want to speak.

Tony clenched his jaw. “This is doing the impossible,” Peter blurted the words out before he knew what he was saying. For what it was worth, Tony didn’t seem offended. “I mean...right? Isn’t that, like…?”

Superheroes were crazy. Radioactive spider bites were weird.

This was just…

Tony gave him a moment to speak what he knew sat on the tip of his tongue. When he didn’t say it — couldn’t say it — Tony just smiled and nodded.

“Resurrection,” he spoke in a way that understood Peter’s shock, as if he were in the same shoes prior. Unable to say the words that now seamlessly left his lips; spoken so casually, it didn’t sit right when they echoed the room. “Never achieved before. Never even considered. It wasn’t until…”

Tony blinked his eyes away from Peter, looking to a corner of the ceiling with a few lines deepening the skin on his chin. Even beneath the days of hair growth covering his jaw, the emotion could be seen. The quiver to his lips was vivid as ever.

It was then Peter figured out what emotion Tony was showing, the one he’d never seen before. The one so foreign, he almost couldn’t figure it out.

He’d never seen Mr. Stark cry.

Peter stammered for something to say, but the questions were storming through his head five at a time. He couldn’t settle on just one, and he couldn’t ask them all simultaneously.

“Why me?”

That seemed to be the one thought that broke through the haze.

Peter didn’t even realize he’d asked the question out loud until Tony looked back down at him, his one eyebrow arched high. Wordlessly asking for an elaboration.

“People have died before…” It sounded ridiculous leaving Peter’s mouth, but somehow made sense all the same. “They didn’t ever think to…?” Bring people back to life? Peter swallowed hard. “I mean, what about…?” Family? Friends?

He shook his head.

“Why me?”

None of it made sense.

Yet the confusion he felt wasn’t mutual.

“I had the same question, believe it or not,” Tony started to say, adjusting in his chair to lean more towards the side. It didn’t look like he was stiff or uncomfortable, rather buying the time to find his next words. “Death is, uh...it’s a complicated thing, kiddo. Death is a welcoming end to the journey we all take,” T’Challa spoke softly, his gaze set low on the dish held in both his hands.

Tony hovered on the opposite side of the table, his hand unknowingly clenching the material of the blanket beneath him. He gripped it with white knuckles, bunching the wool into a tightly fisted ball. Pulling the blanket off Peter’s waist in the slightest of ways that he couldn’t see, his eyes refusing to look anywhere but ahead.

T’Challa raised his hands high and the bowl went with it. Reaching for the ceiling above them all.

“It is as inevitable as the sun that sets across the horizon, as all journeys must eventually come to an end.” T’Challa looked up, closing his eyes before bringing the dish back down. Letting it rest chest-height in front of him.

“Some depart...long before they were meant to.” He kept his eyes closed, even as he spoke. “Others...right as they are supposed to.”

A moment passed in silence. T’Challa stayed still through it all, as if not even a breath coursed through his lungs.

He didn’t speak again until his eyes returned open.

“Bast and Sekhmet, it is not with meddling hands we ask back this soul that you have taken into your embrace.” T’Challa looked to the dish in his hands, sitting in the cusps of his palms. “But rather...it is with the pleas from many fathers…that you may give us a second chance.”

Of all the men in the room, T’Challa had remained the most composed. Levelheaded and rational, even amongst the discussion of the surreal.

His voice suddenly wavered at the edges, and Tony didn’t mention it.

Not even when he found T’Challa’s gaze had shifted, going to stare at him with an eyebrow just slightly arched high.

Tony quickly pointed a finger at himself.

“Do I —?” For a man who never stuttered, Tony couldn’t get his words straight. “Do I need to say something?”

T’Challa gave a small smile, barely a twitch of his lips, and an even smaller shake of his head.

“Are you ready?” he proceeded to ask, answering Tony’s question with his own.

Though his neck felt like a thousand pounds of cement hardened inside his spine, Tony managed to crane his head around, his eyes noticeably landing on where Steve sat.

He didn’t need to say anything. The unspoken was heard, and Steve nodded, saying everything he possibly could with just the bounce of his head. A nod, both of approval, and encouragement.

He was ready.

They were ready.

Tony wasn’t ready.

The chances were too slim — nonexistent. It was more than a hundred-to-one shot, it was more than holding out for a fluke or luck or strike of lightning, it was —

Tony swallowed. He was far, far, far from ready.

Still, he nodded.

T’Challa said something hushed softly under his breath, in a foreign language Tony had told himself countless times he’d learn once all this was said and done.

And with that, he proceeded to tilt the spout of the bowl against Peter’s lips.

“Hold on, hold up!” Tony was rambling before Shuri could express her frustration. His hand made all sorts of frantic, floppy motions ahead of him. “Maybe, maybe I do need to say something. Maybe — if this is – if this is, uh...okay, it’s-it’s Gods, right? Gods want prayers?” Tony couldn’t stop. The words purged from his mouth in a fit of anxiety. “Would it increase our chances if I said something? To them? You know, up the odds, increase the likelihood. If I...talked? To your — uh, your...Gods?”

Tony suddenly scrubbed his hand over his eyes. He thought the God of Thunder had shaken the core of his beliefs — on a good day, this was all beyond his comprehension.

But now?

T’Challa still held the bowl close to Peter’s lips when he looked up at Tony.

“They do not need to hear you speak, my friend.” T’Challa let the pause that followed give way to the smile that broke through his lips. “What resides in your heart is what they will hear. It is all they need to hear.”

Tony made a sound from his throat — not a scoff, closer to a chortle he wouldn’t let himself feel. A finger lifted and tapped firmly against his own sternum.

“It’s been through hell,” Tony mentioned with a self-deprecating smile, before letting his arm drop down to his side. “Might be too much scar tissue there for them to get through.”

“Tony…”

Steve’s voice was soft, and the quietest thing in the lab — a feat, considering the abundance of stillness in a room that was meant for lively activity.

When Tony turned to look at him, the soldier had his head low and his palm stretched out over his thigh. The waves of light that bounced off the mesh highlighted the veins underneath his skin, and it was for a second time in less than a day Tony couldn’t help but notice how pale the man looked.

And yet through it all, he stared back at Tony. His eyes nonjudgmental, and his face sympathetic.

“He comes first.” Steve lingered on Tony’s gaze, his eyes like a moth to a flame — drawing in his attention with a force that nearly felt unbreakable. "Do it."

Tony looked away, returning his gaze down below where he’d refused let himself look. The face hadn’t changed; the cold blue still bruised Peter’s lips, the waxy gray still kept his skin bloodless. There was a slight dampness to his face as the receding effects of the cryotank made itself known; condensation building a layer of itself against the room’s air.

But beneath it all — through the horror of a lifeless body, past the traumas endured and weight of reality — there was Peter.

It was still Peter.

Tony felt a twitch pull at his lips, right as his eyes grew wet with building tears. Looking at Peter, dead or not, seeing his face — a breath hitched in his chest and he allowed the grin to pull even harder at his mouth, until his eyes crinkled near shut.

It was Peter. Talk to fast, eat for seven, hyper to bounce off the walls and unwakeable the next — it was everything he knew about Peter Parker, everything about him shining bright on a face that had no light, no life.

But he saw past it. Saw past the sunken eyes, saw past the dry and cracked lips as ashen as his skin.

He saw past death.

 

Peter bounced in his seat. “Oh man, that means fingerprints, skins, eyeballs — oh, even vocal chords can be stored away no matter what its integrity is. That is —”

Tony held up a finger. “Don’t say it.”

“—so cool!”

Peter’s eyes brightened in the backseat of the car. “Wait, does that mean I’m an Avenger?”

“The suit’s great, Mr. Stark,” he waved his hand ahead at the group. “Really, it’s perfect, thank you.”

Tony sat on the sofa and crossed his legs. “I keep the new suit until you're full time though.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “You can keep it if it still has the Baby Monitor Protocol.”

“Oh, whatever,” he drawled out, rolling his eyes. “You’re so extra, Mr. Stark.”

“Uh-uh!” Peter squawked coyly. “I earned that fair and square.”

“No you did not,” Tony calmly explained. “That is something that is gifted, not earned.”

“Even worse then! You can’t take back a gift.”

“Hey, Mr. Stark?”

Tony sipped from his cup.

“Hm?”

“What are the chances of me actually going to Paris before returning to school?”

“Can I...” Peter lifted the camera shyly. “For my first picture?”

Tony shook his head. “I don’t do selfies.”

“Oh, uhm...” Peter lowered the camera slowly. “Right, sorry, that’s stupid —”

“I’m kidding. Christ, you’re like a kicked puppy. Come here, bring it in.”

“I think you’d make a great dad, Mr. Stark,” Peter said.

“I can’t leave Aunt May.” Peter’s words were quiet. “She needs me, Mr. Stark. I can’t just leave her...not yet.”

 

“Hey!” Peter stammered, slowly removing his earbuds. “I’m-I’m-I’m Peter.”

Tony smiled, pointing to himself as he announced, “Tony.”

 

“I don’t wanna die.”

“I don’t — I don’t — wanna go —”

 

 

Tony slammed his eyes shut.

“ I d’nt wanna go, Mr. ‘ark, I ‘nt wanna die, I don’t —!”

 

 

“Okay, dammit, just —!” Tony couldn’t look as he waved his hand at T’Challa. “Just do it already.”

There was no going back.

Tony wished he was too cowardly to watch — with his hand covering only half of his face, his eyes bared witnessed to the stream of purple liquid that poured seamlessly into Peter’s mouth.

T’Challa tilted the bowl to allow every remaining bit a free descent, spilling through Peter’s lips and pooling inside. When finished, he gently set the bowl aside, using his other hand to close the bottom half of Peter’s jaw.

It was unsettling as the glow of liquid shined through the soft tissues of his cheeks, highlighting the capillaries underneath his skin with a brightness that looked artificial. T’Challa kept his hand firm against Peter’s jaw until that same liquid began to disperse, leaving his mouth and flowing down the course of his throat.

Tony watched, captivated, as the fluid of the herb descended with little force pushing it along. It didn’t stop until it passed through Peter’s throat, bringing a flourish of purple to his neck that fell down along his chest.

It blossomed inside his sternum, again radiating each capillary and vein that slept underneath his skin. The purple grew large, spreading over his torso, and if Tony hadn’t blinked he would’ve swore he saw the outline of Peter’s heart. Covered in lavender, but visible all the same.

The radiant glow diminished with time — however long could’ve been a second, to a minute, to an entire hour and Tony would’ve known no difference. When the purple faded away, he didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what success would look like, and the loss of light — to him — could only mean one thing.

Yet, when Tony frantically looked to T’Challa for an answer, his fears weren’t shared.

T’Challa lowered his hand down to the table, spreading his fingers into Peter’s. Silently, he lifted the boys arm and laid his hand across his own chest — bare of any clothing, palm down and knuckles up. Once there, T’Challa laid his hand down over top of Peter’s.

After, he looked up at Tony. Nodding his head forward in a way that spoke the urge to draw near.

Tony raised his arm, shakily, the trembles growing harder by the passing second. He wasn’t sure where to direct it — it was T’Challa who reached for his hand, gently, and laid it on top of his. Sandwiching them together, with no pressure keeping them in place.

They stayed there for a moment. Three hands stacked ontop of one another, with silence covering every corner of the room.

Slowly, T’Challa withdrew his hand. Sliding it out without a fight, and without a word.

Right after, he reached for Peter’s hand. Pulling at his wrist, more gentle than ever before, and sliding his arm away. Returning it to the table and back at his side, though this time it laid over top the blanket covering his body.

Leaving just Tony’s hand behind.

No barricades in place, just skin-to-skin contact. Palm to sternum and flesh to flesh. The first time Tony had touched him since dawn broke on the barren fields of Wakanda.

And there, Tony felt it.

Beneath his own pulse, a heartbeat.

“Kid, I’m not a religious man.” Tony looked down at his hand, suddenly enthralled with the lines of his palms and the waves of his fingertips. As if Peter couldn’t tell he was distracting himself, his walls weak and ready to fall down at any second. “God, Buddha, Allah — without proof, we don’t know if any of them exist.”

Peter blinked in a way that made his eyelashes feel like lead. He was still stuck on the brought-back-to-life part of the whole story, and he did nothing to hide his shock.

But Tony was looking elsewhere when he spoke, and he didn’t mention how Peter’s jaw could clean the floors with how low it hung, or how his eyes were wide enough to put saucers to shame.

He was wrapped up in a memory that Peter could only hear in words.

“The herb doesn’t take to anyone not worthy,” Tony was repeating himself — maybe for his benefit, maybe for Peter’s. “Not ‘of noble blood’ as they say.”

Suddenly, he broke the stare on his hand, rubbing his thumb harshly across his nose.

“Odds were stacked against us. Never was this attempted on someone without Wakandian descent, never tried on a…” Tony let silence take the conversation for a second. “On a corpse.”

For every bit of relief that radiated Tony’s eyes, there was equal amounts of clouds that hid the joy. Soaked up in something much more haunting, something that made Peter feel much, much younger than the sixteen years he had going for him.

Corpse.

Mr. Stark said ‘corpse.’

Peter frowned, turning his head away just enough that he could watch his index finger poke the skin of his arm.

He’d been a corpse.

“By no means should it have worked.” Tony continued on as if Peter wasn’t repeatedly stabbing a finger against his forearm. If he noticed, he didn’t care. “It was the last ounce of the herb Shuri held onto it. A micro-dose she’d been using to formulate a synthetic version.”

That got Peter to stop.

His head whipped around at lightning speed, his eyes growing even wider than before — a feat, all things considered.

“You...you guys...she…?” Peter stammered, his eyebrows dancing between bunched together and high on his hairline. “The last of it was...used...on me?”

The look from Tony returned, the kind that made it seem like he was looking at Peter but through Peter all at the same time. Caught somewhere between time and a memory.

They fell into silence for a moment — it stretched until Peter couldn’t handle it anymore.

“It brought me back to life?”

A strong gust of wind came through the window, blowing back the curtains and lifting a few curls resting against Peter’s forehead. The lack of hair against his face only made his shock all the more noticeable, with lines deepening his forehead and brows creasing until they were nearly connected.

Tony only smiled. “It saw you as worthy.”

Peter didn’t expect that.

He expected a laugh. A scoff. A joke, a long-winded sarcastic tangent that would end with the definition of implausibility and a jab about his intelligence needing some study exercises and less junk food clogging the neurons of his brain.

‘Resurrection, Mr. Parker? Have we been reading too many comic books?’ Mr. Stark would tease him — back of his hand slapping across his shoulder as he rolled his eyes. ‘Go back to physics 101, spiderling. You’re in dire need of a brush up.’

Peter didn’t expect…

Worthy.

Okay, that…

That needed to be dealt with another day.

“How I’d…” Peter stammered for the most basic of words. Maybe he needed less junk food in his diet after all. “I mean, how’d I...die?”

Dead.

He was dead.

Actually, truly, one-hundred percent dead.

The words kept repeating and he kept blinking, unable to absorb any of it.

“We were too late,” Tony explained, a grimness setting his voice hard. At another time and on another day, Peter would come to appreciate Tony’s patience in dealing with his confusion. Because even as his mouth played a broken record, Tony answered him as if it were the first time he spoke. “The symbiote siphoned enough of your life to become it’s own...thing.”

There was no denying the chill that ran up Peter’s spine when he heard that.

Suddenly, the haunting look in Tony’s eyes made sense. It was the only thing, out of all this, that made any sense to Peter.

“It called itself Venom,” Tony spoke so quietly, he almost wasn’t heard.

If the room hadn’t been so quiet, Peter wouldn’t have caught it.

A light sparked in the corner of Peter’s eye, just narrowly. A little bit of white bringing an artificial glow to the room that had no lamps turned on.

Peter immediately looked at Mr. Stark, up and down — not once looking at the hand Tony again found himself staring at, the man still eyeing the inside of his palm and the crevices etched throughout his skin.

No, it was his other arm that caught Peter’s attention.

“Your arm —?”

Tony shot his head up, before looking to the aforementioned limb. Still wrapped in kinetic mesh, still covering him from shoulder to the tips of his fingers.

“In the grand scheme of things?” Tony shook his head, giving a one-shouldered shrug and a weak attempt at a smile. “It’s nothing.”

Peter shook his head right back, and firm at that.

“You’re hurt,” Peter forced out, and hating the words as they left his lips.

The heavy material on Tony’s arm caught his attention like nothing before, and he found himself unable to look away with a sense of morbid curiosity. It was wrapped up in some kind of cast, gloving his hand and keeping the limb stiff as a rock. Giving the occasional flutter of light along its length.

A weird light, one that almost seemed to match the pulse of a heartbeat.

Peter gulped.

“Did I—?”

“Peter —”

“How many people —”

Tony’s response was instant.

“No.” The hard look Tony shot him silenced Peter before he could even get the words out. “We’re not doing that.”

“It killed people.” Peter never did take no for an answer. “Didn’t it?”

For a room that was already deafeningly quiet, it got worse. A heavy blanket of silence washed over them both, and when Tony didn’t immediately respond, Peter knew the answer didn’t need to be spoken.

He almost wished it wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Tony reluctantly answered. “It did.”

His fingers — his good fingers, the ones not gloved and unbendable and injured and damaged and shit Mr. Stark was hurt — began to do the tap-tap-tap dance across the armrest of chair.

It was a sound Peter had become familiar with over time. A sound of Mr. Stark’s anxiety showing in the smallest of ways.

“Bastard took down half the Citadel along the way.” Tony ran his tongue across his teeth, briefly flittering his gaze down to his lap. “Luckily, they work fast here — unlimited access to Vibranium gives them an upper hand on construction times, that’s for sure.”

Tony briefly looked to the window across the room, as if he could see the Citadel from miles away. Even if it weren’t lacking its usual height, the structure of the city would’ve stolen that from him.

He looked away just as quickly.

“It was a hell of a fight,” Tony went on to say. “But we finally got the sucker out of you.”

Peter’s eyebrows were definitely close to the ceiling by now. Any further up and they’d be crawling through the vents.

“How?”

Tony gestured his arm wide open — just the one, though Peter had a feeling he’d be doing the same with his other arm if it wasn’t kept immobile. It was the all familiar Stark Poise making a return when he least expected it.

“It’s like I said...as simplistic as it sounds,” Tony’s smirk was undeniably proud, “you never know when you’ll need something really loud.”

Peter leaned back in the bed with slow realization, and equally as slow astonishment.

“It was sound,” he exhaled the words slowly.

Tony’s nod confirmed as much. “It was sound.”

Peter couldn’t help the chuckle that caught in his chest. And then the other after that. He laughed, just slightly, the kind of laugh that spoke to disbelief more than anything.

It really was that simple.

Go figure.

“And it...it killed me?” Peter asked, slowly shaking his head. “I died?”

God, how many times was he gunna say that before it sounded real?

“Before that, actually,” Tony answered, non-flippantly, leaning back in his chair and crossing one leg over the other. “We theorized that the symbiote would die along with you. Turns out it was the complete opposite. Once it bled you dry, it used you as a...a conduit, essentially. A means to...birth itself.”

There was a small pause that spoke to the thoughts running rampant inside Tony’s head. Breaking the illusion to his act of nonchalance. Peter knew now wasn’t the time to draw attention towards it.

“Even trapped in a cage, that damn thing’s an enigma.” Tony cleared his throat, hard. “Scientists here are having a blast trying to figure it out.”

Peter shook his head even faster, trying to formulate a response — nothing he thought of was good enough.

“I don’t…”

Tony didn’t push. Just watched as he fought for words, a silent encouragement at Peter’s bedside.

“I died?”

It kept coming back to that.

The surrealness. The reality of it.

The idea of dying had kept him awake more nights than he could count, the fear of death a growing ember that festered in his head until it became too much to bear.

And now…

Peter looked away, suddenly finding the edges of the wool blanket beneath him to be the most fascinating thing in the world.

It felt trivial.

Like there was nothing to be afraid of all along.

“The heart-shaped herb wasn’t a guaranteed thing,” Tony answered the question that wasn’t really ever a question, but rather a growing expression of Peter’s bewilderment. “We flipped a coin. Hoping that...I don’t know. Hoping that it…”

As Tony trailed off, suddenly lost for his own words, Peter slowly realized why the man wasn’t nearly as confused as he was. Why he spoke about some things so casually, without the struggle of disbelief.

Resurrection was against everything they knew. Science, the laws of physics — even weird spider bite mutations and magic from a wizard. At some point, Tony had been handed that card the same way Peter was being handed it.

Watching his fingers fiddle with the wool blanket, Peter couldn’t help but think Mr. Stark was handling it a lot better than he was.

“That ultrasonic pulse put up a hell of a first trial run,” Tony veered back around, as if noticing the touchy subject at hand and plucking out a distraction to get away from it. The grimace that fell over his face spoke a different story, though. “And its last, unfortunately.”

Peter frowned.

Tony clucked his tongue. “Just...one of the many things we lost.”

Without the knowledge of what, Peter — very appropriately, in his opinion — freaked out.

“Did I...did it —?” Peter all but shot up from the bed, his voice turbulent at the edges. Looking like he was ready to run out of the room no sooner than he spoke. “Venom...did it kill any of the Ave—”

“No, kid, no,” Tony quickly reassured him, a soft shake of his head following suit. He patted the back of Peter’s hand for good measure, and only after did Peter sink back down into the bed. “We’re all here. All accounted for. Seen better days, that’s for sure.”

Peter asked for the details with the look on his face.

Tony brushed it off with a wave of his hand.

“We all took some hits. Cap won’t be walking on both feet for some time — might even need to borrow Barton’s hearing aids for a few weeks. Wilson’s definitely got the lead on their morning runs for a while. We owe Romanoff for quelling an angry Hulk — she likes almonds, unsalted, remember that — and Wanda’s got a hell of goose egg on her head. You’re gunna need a new suit. I’m gunna need to get Dad’s blueprints out of storage at some point…” Tony trailed off, and Peter desperately hoped he would elaborate on that. He didn’t, instead offering a smile where he could. “But we made it out.”

Tony uncrossed his legs and leaned forward a bit, and it was then Peter saw just how close his chair was to the bed — his knees bumped into the mattress, and he reached forward, settling his hand over Peter’s forearm.

Peter didn’t mind. It felt grounding.

Felt safe.

“We got you back.” Tony squeezed his hold against his forearm, and held it in place. “We really got you the goods,” Tony announced, hand held high with a metal briefcase in his grip.

Natasha smirked, meeting him halfway in the hallway and seamlessly taking the handle of the case from him. She swapped him out, handing him a paper cup that Tony eagerly accepted.

“Captain Don’t-Do-Drugs will be very ecstatic,” Natasha quipped, barely lessening her stride as she kept pace down the hallway.

Tony followed suit, a large gulp of coffee working its way down his throat before he spoke again.

“How’s he holding up?”

They passed by multiple rooms, all with glass windows — some with curtains pulled shut for privacy, some wide open and displaying the occupants inside. They were nothing but strangers to them, the sick and ill being treated by the Birnin Zana hospital staff. Just average civilians dealing with average problems.

“You were gone for less than three hours.” Natasha gave him a side-eye, the faint bruising around her cheekbone looking more like a smudge of dirt than the gruesome injury she’d once had. “You going mother hen on him now, too?”

The corridors weren’t crowded, but they still passed by staff in scrubs and the occasional patient going for a stroll. Walking side-by-side down the halls together, not letting a single turn distract them.

Tony returned Natasha’s side-eye with his own, and much less mirthful than hers had been.

“Wouldn’t have needed to go at all if Barton had just emptied the whole stash on his round trip.” Tony let a large swallow of coffee bleed out the bite from his words. For what he couldn’t mange, Natasha was able to discern the rest.

“Cut the man some slack.” Natasha looked at the passing windows as they took a turn in the hallway. Some rooms were empty, some held a single occupant — some had entire families. It was the city’s only hospital, and it stayed busy. “It isn’t every day you see a demonic abomination tear though a Vibranium tower like a sheet of one ply toilet paper.”

Tony forced a chuckle between sips of coffee — large sips, because God knows he needed it. There was no arguing that much.

Besides, he knew — logically — that Helen was only able to give Clint so much of Steve’s painkiller provision, no matter how much the man screamed for more. If she’d handed off the entire batch — locked and sealed away under multiple different security measures — than SHIELD would have been notified asap. He’d taken what she could give him and got back to Wakanda as fast as the Quinjet would fly.

It was enough to get them through a couple days before Tony returned for more. Reluctantly. And with a few choice words on his way out.

Because of course it had to be Tony. After all, it was his security measures he had to bypass to empty the bunch.

Just like he emptied the paper cup of coffee, throwing it in trash can and walking away no sooner than it landed inside.

“Brought some of Peter’s stash, too,” Tony mentioned, patting the outside of his jacket and silently gesturing to the inside pockets where the tiny vials were stored away. “Just to be on the safe side.”

They rounded two more corners before both their paces began to slow down. And suddenly, the windows they passed by showed nothing but empty rooms. With even less staff walking about, and far less noise than the crowded corridors they came from.

“Not gunna need it,” Natasha reminded him as if he already didn’t know. Right as they both came to a stop, down near the very end of the hallway. She crossed her arms and turned to the glass window ahead of them, her feet finally rooting in place. “They said his liver even grew back. Not a scratch to be found.”

Tony made a sound from his throat — noncommittal but unargumentative all at the same time. He went to cross his arms no different than Natasha, stopping when the rigid cast of kinetic skeleton kept him from bending his other elbow.

A brief glimpse to the limb and he decided to just pocket his good hand away in his jeans. The damn technology worked like magic; he couldn’t count how many times he forgot it was covering his arm. Muting the pain of his injury all while healing it, and at a miraculous rate at that.

A look back to the window ahead of him and Tony frowned.

He hoped he wasn’t alone in that regard.

“You hear from Barton? Banner?” he asked, never breaking sight away from the window ahead.

A hospital bed laid centered to the room, with only two occupants inside — a patient, and someone at the bedside.

Tony saw, from the corner of his eyes, as a doctor came by and took the briefcase from Natasha. She handed it off wordlessly, before locking her eyes on the same sight as where Tony looked.

“They’ve been at the Citadel for most of the day,” she said quietly, hugging herself a little tighter. Tony pretended not to notice. “Helping with clean up and repairs.”

Tony arched an eyebrow. “Bruce? Doing construction work?”

Whether their conversation could be heard inside the room remained to be seen, but Tony found it coincidental that as they spoke, Sam briefly looked up at them both.

Peeling his eyes way from the book in his hands, he acknowledged Tony with a small nod — who returned the gesture silently.

“You know how Bruce is.” Natasha smirked, while dropping her head to the floor. “He feels...guilty. About the Hulk-out.”

Tony was listening, but looking at the same time. A small iPod caught his attention, sitting on the end table next to the bed. Sam leaned forward and tapped his finger on the screen a few times. The music changed, and though the doors were closed and the glass windows were heavy, Tony was sure it was Marvin Gaye he could hear playing through the speaker.

“And Clint’s not gunna stop working until he runs himself into the ground,” Natasha kept talking as Tony kept watching. “Okoye still isn’t fond of him, but I think she’s warmed up a bit now that he’s doing the heavy work over there. Every room he cleans out gets her a little less angry than before.”

Tony snorted. “Can that woman be anything other than angry?”

Natasha matched his snort with her own. “Hell hath no fury like the Dora Milaje.”

Whatever music was playing, whatever song filled the room — Tony knew that Steve likely didn’t hear any of it. Both for the fact he was fast asleep, with his head lolled to the side and his cheek smothered in the pillow behind his head. And for the fact that the damage to his ears had only been repaired to seventy-eight percentage hearing in the last few days.

Tony looked back to his arm and kept his eyes there.

He hoped whatever wonders were promised to him could be given to Rogers as well.

The man deserved it.

Judging by the look on Sam’s face — as if he could see Tony’s concern through the glass — they were on the right path to healing. A handful of days down the road and his own injuries were no longer physically present, no longer visible from his vigil at Steve’s bedside.

Just like Wilson, it would take time.

“They need to clock out for a few hours.” Tony straightened his back and let out a sigh. “Take a day off, go cash in some sick time.”

Natasha lifted her gaze from the floor and arched an eyebrow so high, it nearly met the ceiling.

“So should you,” she stated needlessly, going so far as to give him a long once-over.

Tony noticed, but not enough to bring attention to it. He looked down the hallway, where only one other door remained, with guards — plural — standing outside.

“I will when he wakes up.”

Natasha craned her head around, following his stare with her own eyes. They both lingered their sights there, though the image ahead never changed.

Sans the guard who winked at Natasha.

“Four days going on five,” she quietly mentioned, rustling her jacket as she stuffed hers hands deeper inside her armpits. “You might be waiting a while longer.”

Tony’s sigh was quiet, yet somehow audible across the long length of the hallway. His feet stayed rooted, even as Natasha turned away from him.

She gave a gentle pat across his uninjured arm before walking down the way they’d came, departing without a goodbye.

“Hey,” he called out for Natasha, catching her right before she turned the comer; not once breaking his eyes away from the door down the hallway. “You still keeping tabs on Wanda?”

It was rare that Tony used Wanda’s given name, always referring to her by her last. And that didn’t go unnoticed by Natasha, who cocked her head to the side as she turned to face him.

Natasha stayed tight-lipped as she nodded.

Tony finally turned to face her, though just by a twist of his hips.

“She okay?” Days worth of exhaustion coursed through Tony’s voice. He made no effort to hide it.

Natasha paused, shifting her stance right under a sharp gleam of florescent light from the ceilings. It highlighted the healing purple that circled around her cheekbone, and even from down the hallway, Tony could make out a few red spider-cracks still spread around the sclera of her eye. Deepening the blue orb that centered it all.

She waited a moment before shaking her head.

Tony worked his jaw until he heard a crack.

“We don’t blame her…” he started to say, shifting his eyes down to the floor. “She should know that.”

A couple of staff members passed by Natasha, taking the turn down the hall she hesitated on. She buried her hands inside her pockets, her eyes staying on Tony even as the man couldn’t look anywhere but his shoes.

“She’s gunna need to hear that for herself.”

With that, she turned the corner.

Tony didn’t allow himself any further hesitation to get where he needed to be. A few more steps and he was standing outside the last room in the hallway, with the window showing a similar scene inside.

A bed. Two occupants.

Tony bit his tongue as he eyed the scene through the glass, and bowed his head once he caught his own reflection against the window.

None of his suits, not even his armor could shield him from the emotion that arose when looking inside that room.

He nodded to one of the guards standing beside him, showing silent gratitude as they opened the door for him. They also closed it shut, leaving him nothing to do but walk inside.

It didn’t matter that it had been days. The sight ahead still took the breath out of his chest.

“Fear not,” T’Challa started to say, easily noticing his reluctance without ever looking his way. “He is still in good health.”

Tony swiped at his nose, forcing his neck to turn in an attempt to keep his composure. From there, he saw the clock hanging on the wall — an oddly placed, old fashion analog clock that looked out of place in the Wakanda hospital.

But, yet again, most things in the room did. It wasn’t the Citadel medical suite, it wasn’t even like the compound’s medbay. Little to no equipment — it wasn’t needed.

Romanoff spoke nothing but he truth. There wasn’t a scratch to be found on Peter.

Healed. Just like that.

Tony turned his head back around, his eyes settling on where T’Challa sat. Looking no different than any average man, with a demeanor that matched. Watching the child who slept in front of him, almost as if he was studying him — without a single word to be said.

No words were needed.

Tony pulled up a chair and took his place on the opposite side of the bed. Joining the King in his watch.

They had been in limbo for days and Tony spared no expense in expressing his frustration to the fact. The words ‘comatose’ were never used, they didn’t dare utter ‘vegetable’ or ‘catatonic’, or anything of the like. They said there was full brain activity, a healthy pulse, a completely functioning body that just…

Slept.

Peter was sleeping.

Why, how — no one had the answers.

After all, the herb had never been used for resurrection. They had no idea how long it would be until he woke up.

If he woke up.

Tony rubbed fiercely at his jaw, the unfamiliar feeling of an unkempt beard aggravating the nerves against his fingertips. Yet it didn’t bother him enough to take care of it — not any time soon.

Not with Peter still...

“You know,” Tony cleared his throat fiercely, earning a look from T’Challa along the way. “In the states...the, uh...the most common religion is Christianity. Most of Canada too, I’m pretty sure — actually, the majority of the population. By default. Though don’t quote me on that, I’m sure my statistics are off.”

He began to ramble. It was what he did best when he was anxious.

“For reasons — many reasons, none quite purposeful to my point. It’s outdated, really, first century Judaism that got passed down through the Roman Empire and along the way four separate branches divided their own people which only further caused separation with politics and —”

Pepper always did say he had a habit of digressing when the subject made him uncomfortable.

Tony paused only to take in air. This didn’t just make him uncomfortable. It was so far out of his element, it reached plains he never knew existed.

T’Challa was patient, nonetheless. His hands stayed in his lap and his eyes set on Tony, letting the man arrange his words as needed.

“Point I’m trying to make is, their God was known for miracles,” Tony cleared his throat again, rougher than the last time. All the while, never making eye contact with T’Challa. He could see the man staring at him, though. “The whole shebang. Healing the blind, getting the lame to walk, lepers and the deaf and so on and so forth...”

The words trailed off into nothing.

If Tony had anything else to say, it fell flat on his tongue.

He hadn’t realized he’d stopped rubbing his goatee until the hair caught on dry and cracked fingernails, long overdue to be trimmed. As he dropped his hand down to the armrest of the chair, a sound came from his mouth. Tangled between a sigh and something else.

T’Challa tilted his head to the side, just slightly. “You think what occurred here was a miracle?"

Tony realized his fingers were tap-tap-tapping against the armrest when it became the only sound between them. A question that required an answer lingering with time he could finally afford to waste.

“I don’t know what I think.”

The words slipped from his mouth, as quiet as each breath that gently lifted Peter’s chest.

Tony looked there — down at Peter’s chest, down at Peter. The blue Midtown hoodie hung loosely of off him, and a few strands of curls fell listlessly against his forehead. It was the first time in weeks the kid finally looked like himself; no raccoons holding baggage under his eyes, his skin lively with a pink flush pumping blood through his veins. And every few seconds, his chest lifted with a breath in. Unprovoked, completely independent. Natural.

T’Challa’s stare didn’t give way, and Tony still refused to look him head on. But he could feel the burn of his eyes, as if the man was studying him too — silently prying for more information, digging deep to know him better.

Tony wanted to warn him that was a bad idea.

“You do not like that,” T’Challa stated so matter-of-factly, his words finally caught Tony’s gaze. “Not being able to make sense of something...that brings you great frustration.”

Tony arched an eyebrow.

“It doesn’t for you?”

The answer came in the form of silence, and a small grin that pulled at T’Challa’s lips.

Tony plopped his elbow on the armrest of the chair, scrubbing at his forehead with callouses that scratched along his skin.

“I’ve lived with science my whole life, I was born into it — it’s basically my surname,” he muttered, rubbing at his eye until colors blew up behind his closed lids. Only then did he stop, waiting a minute before allowing himself to continue. “The fabrication of magic was shattered the day I meet the God of Thunder and his lunatic brother. Not to mention cosmetic crystals and Sorcerers of the mystic arts. It seems a year doesn’t go by where my world isn’t turned upside down.”

With a sigh, Tony let the side of his face fall into the palm of his hand, resting it there as he stared ahead.

“This is…”

He couldn’t say the words without a break in his voice.

Tony’s gaze flittered to T’Challa, and stayed there.

“I don’t know what to think of this.”

Religion was always ambiguous in Tony’s life, always had been. From the feel of it, it would continue on that way. The conflict of the unknown colliding with the scientific urge for proof — it was so melded into his bones that he knew no other way of life.

It was one thing to fight side-by-side with the God of Thunder. But to encounter Lazarus with his own two eyes…

T’Challa rose slowly from his chair, hands on his knees before he straightened his back.

“It takes a woman nine months to bring a child into this world. To birth life, where before there was none.” He met Tony’s eyes directly, with no preamble. No deflection. “Give Peter time. I have the utmost faith he will be returned to us.”

Only once T’Challa was half way to the door and out of sight, did Tony allow himself to sigh. It wasn’t one of defeat or disbelief, just a sound that made its way out of his chest. Blowing through his cheeks with a palpable impatience, whether he wanted to admit that or not.

T’Challa stopped at the door, turning to face Tony with his hand resting on the knob.

“And where you cannot have faith…” T’Challa tilted his chin low. “I will have it for you, my friend.”

Tony barely craned his head around in time to watch the door close behind T’Challa. And just in time to see him depart down the hallway, with one guard following at his side, and another close behind.

Even with the brief glimpse he saw through the window, there was a distinct difference in the man's posture. In his aura.

The weight of responsibility bared heavy on them all, in its own ways, for their own reasons. Yet of them all, Tony wouldn’t hesitate to say T’Challa wore it the most gracefully.

He looked back at Peter — a boy not much younger than the King of a nation, a decade and some change apart. The next generation of protectors, both handling the weight of their burdens with a strength Tony could only be envious of.

Tony frowned, looking to the clock on the wall — old fashion and slightly out of place. He was inattentive as the hand dropped down with each passing second, knowing that it didn’t matter what time it was — or how much time had passed.

When Peter was ready, he would wake up.

The clock wouldn’t dictate when that would be.

The watch on the inside of his wrist reflected back in Tony’s eyes, its digital design the only artificial light that Peter could make out in the room.

“It took six days and…” Tony eyed it carefully for a moment before turning his hand back around, and looking at Peter head-on. “Fifty-eight minutes for you to wake up.”

When Tony looked back up at Peter, the smile on his face only grew larger as the seconds ticked — the watch on his wrist telling him time that he no longer cared about. He didn’t give it so much a second glance.

“And here you are now.” Tony settled both hands in his lap, one covered in high-tech material that pulsated to the calm beat of his heart, the other bare and exposed.

Peter found his head swiveling around the room once again — nothing had changed, nothing had moved, everything looked the same as five minutes before. But there was something different he didn’t catch the first time around. An unspoken mural that covered the walls, a serene atmosphere that entwined with the fresh air pouring through the window.

It was calm.

For once in — Peter didn’t know how long — it was calm.

“It’s over?” Peter turned to Tony, unable to hide the hopeful suspense that washed over every feature of his face. Making him look far younger than even he felt in the moment. “The symbiote? It’s...it’s over?”

His voice cracked at the end. Any other day, and Peter would’ve hid under the covers with burning embarrassment.

He didn’t care.

Especially not as Tony nodded.

“We did it, kid,” Tony practically whispered, a spark in his eyes nearly as bright as the grin that pulled at his lips. “It’s over.”

For the first time since waking up, Peter grinned. Ear-to-ear, full blown teeth catching the sunlight from outside.

It was finally over.

“Wait!” Peter paused, the smile still caught on his lips but a look of confusion briefly stretching the lines of his eyes. “If they gave me the herb…does that mean I have powers of the Black Pa—?”

Tony barked out a laugh that nearly startled Peter straight out of bed.

“No, no no no,” his laugh fell into a chuckle, and Tony shook his head. “They’re able to...give and take that, if you will. Incredibly useful for their ‘rituals’ in earning the herb to begin with. After a couple days, and once doctors declared you brand new merchandise, they stripped it out of you. Freaked me the hell out too — wasn’t pretty, you didn’t wanna be there.”

Despite his story, and his self-criticism, Tony’s smile didn’t waver.

“Sorry pal,” he started to say, reaching forward and patting the back of Peter’s hand. “I don’t think Wakanda’s looking for a young, White Panther side-kick hanging around town. You’re back to being Queens good ‘ol Spider-Man.” Tony leaned back in the chair, his eyes never straying from Peter’s. “Fresh as laundry right out of the dryer.”

Peter let out an exhale so hard, he swore it was part of the breeze that blew the curtain forward.

“Holy...cow.” It was the most he could manage. Words weren’t wording, and if he didn’t get his shit together in time for Decathlon, MJ was going to have his head.

Which she could do. Because it was over.

They could go back home. He could go back to Decathlon, go back to school, go back to his life —

Peter looked away as fast as he could, hiding the quiver the worked the muscles of his chin before Tony could see.

It was finally over.

“It’s been a while since you were...up and about,” Tony began saying, his head noticeably tilting to the side. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Peter cleared his throat — again and again, discretely rubbing at his eye and hoping the shine of liquid against his fingers wasn’t too noticeable. The question was an easy one, and yet he found himself thinking far longer than he expected — to the point he was chewing on his bottom lip, gnawing away at the skin.

His memories weren’t coherent, weren’t linear. They were scrambled in a way that put May’s morning hash browns to shame. He mostly remembered bits and pieces, but they were covered in a hazy fog.

Some were recent, like rushing to the Quinjet to leave the compound before SHIELD caught on to what was happening.

Some were old, like hearing Mr. Stark’s voice all the way back at his birthday party, months ago now. Playing in his head like they were just spoken.

He mostly remembered feeling safe, hearing those voices. They had echoed through his ears in a way that stifled the fear he felt, bringing a sense of protective calm where he needed it most.

Tony cleared his throat and Peter realized he had yet to answer the question.

“You, uh...you said you had to go back to New York for a little while,” Peter finally spoke up, clearing his own throat along the way. “I woke up and...and you weren’t back yet. I think…”

The longer he thought about it, the thicker the fog got.

Peter shook his head. “I don’t remember anything after that.”

Tony nodded like he expected the answer from the get-go. He took a pause, allowing himself a deep breath in before exhaling with a hard sigh.

“You wouldn’t,” he explained, lifting slightly from his chair as his good arm dug into his back pocket. He rummaged around the pocket as he spoke. “That night, you escaped the Citadel. The symbiote began full possession of your brain by then. It...took over. Like we were warned it would do. But something in you was still around.”

A muted grunt sounded from Tony’s throat as he repositioned himself in the chair, sitting back down with an item clutched tightly in his hand.

He looked down at his closed fist before unraveling his fingers.

“I wasn’t able to get to it right away. Went back into the jungle a few days ago — found a couple of anacondas playing with it,” Tony said, lifting the sleek device where Peter could see it; dangling between his thumb and forefinger. “But there was enough of you left in that big brain of yours that you knew...you knew what to do.”

The moment Peter saw the watch, he immediately looked down at both his hands. It was the first time he realized he’d been missing the device, always so seamlessly sealed against his skin that he forgot he was wearing it.

As quickly as he looked down, he looked back up at Tony and the watch dangling between his fingers.

“I took it off.” Peter gave a ghost of a smile. “It activated the tracker.”

Tony didn’t nod. Only smiled in return, closing his hand once again and sealing the device away.

“I’ll hold onto it,” he mentioned, gesturing the closed fist in Peter’s direction. “You’ve been onto something — I’ve been hovering on you a bit much, been a bit too overbearing —”

“No, I —” Peter reached out, suddenly, his hand reaching for Tony’s before he’d even realized it. “I’d – I’d like it back. Please?”

Tony’s expression softened, and he nodded, handing over the watch without restraint.

Peter let the sleek device sit idly in the center of his palm, eyeing it no different than the first time it’d been handed to him. It didn’t have a single dent, clean as a whistle — looking exactly the same as he last remembered.

But at the same time, it didn’t. The story it held altered its appearance — not on the outside, no, the nanotech hadn’t been altered in the slightest bit. Not even a scratch — or bite marks — Peter’s eyes went slightly wide when he realized Mr. Stark said anacondas. All things considered, the device looked untouched.

And yet as Peter ran a finger across the black bracelet, he realized there was something different about it. About the way he looked at it.

“That night you came by…” Peter trailed off, a bob nodding his head with realization. “Huh.”

He had sworn, up and down and fifty times over, “I...I musta hit it in my sleep. Or something. I-I’m sorry.”

“You knew what to do,” Tony repeated, laying his hands down in his lap and entwining his fingers together. “You’re a smart kid. Even when possessed by sentient goop.”

Peter looked up from the watch, the brown in his eyes vividly large underneath the ray of light from the window. It was only after a long beat passed that he returned his gaze to the watch, slowly setting it across the back of his wrist until the nanotech sealed it in place.

A grin pulled at his lips, tugging at the corners where he could feel it the most. It always felt like a second skin, to the point where he’d forget he was even wearing it.

But he didn’t. He never forgot it was on, never forgot Mr. Stark’s words all those months ago.

“It’s a panic watch, directly connected to me.” Tony lifted his arm, showing off the same sleek, black bracelet strapped around his wrist. “So if anything happens to you — earth, wind, rain or shine, you can reach out to me.”

Peter blinked and blinked, and kept blinking until he could feel the moisture in his eyes start to dry up. There was a pressure that built in his chest, and it grew larger as he stared at the bracelet.

He couldn’t help but think about why it was created in the first place. One of the many things Mr. Stark had done for him.

One of the many things he kept doing for him.

The pressure grew until Peter couldn’t take in a full breath. His chest welled with the emotion that reflected in his eyes.

“Mr. Stark, why’d you…?” Peter’s mouth moved, but for a moment, no sounds came out. He tore his gaze away from his wrist, looking at Tony as he swallowed hard to get his tongue working again. “I mean...why’d you do all this?”

Tony quirked an eyebrow, high. “Do what?”

It wasn’t asked out of annoyance, it wasn’t even asked out of exasperation. It sounded more like Tony needed clarification — and rightfully so, Peter realized, as he played with the fringes of his blanket. Feeling disturbingly vulnerable.

It wasn’t a matter of what Mr. Stark had done for him. It was a matter of what he hadn’t done.

Gave him a suit, gave him a means to be Spider-Man. Went against SHIELD to rescue him from a bunker under the sea — barely months after the Accords were dismantled, barely months after the Avengers were already on thin ice with the agency that oversaw their superhero doings.

Gave him a means to train, to hone in his abilities. Gave him a second home.

Never gave up on him.

Not even when he yelled, said hurtful things, did hurtful things. Not even when things were at their bleakest did he ever give up on Peter. Not even when Peter felt like giving up on himself.

“You went…” Peter didn’t realize his throat had grown tight until he had to force out his next words, “you went way out of your way for me.”

Little crumbles of wool piled up beneath Peter’s fingers as he picked at the edges of the blanket.

“That’s an odd way of saying thank you for saving my life, but I’ll take it,” Tony jested, a weathered smirk pulling at his lips.

Peter wasn’t able to find the same humor in everything.

“I mean, you didn’t have to…” Peter slammed his mouth closed, unsure of what to say that would do the situation justice. Words just weren’t suited for this. “You didn’t have to...do...all that.”

Luckily for him, Tony was fluent in Nervous-Peter-Parker talk. He understood the unspoken long before Peter had said a thing.

“Oh yes, we sure did,” he tossed back. “A sentient abomination pummeling Hulk twenty floors down a Vibranium building? Fortunately for you, that’s an Avengers level threat.”

Peter’s eyes briefly grew wide at the mention of the Hulk. He’d come back around to ‘pummeled through a Vibranium building’ another time. There was only so much even his brain could absorb at one given time, towering IQ or not.

“Well, yeah, but…” Peter shook his head to clear away the shock. “I mean...you didn’t have to...you could have —”

“Eliminate the threat?” Tony shook his head right back at him. “Not in a million years.”

Peter made a face — if he came off as insulted, it was beyond his control. The confusion had him by the reins and held him tighter than the grip he had on the blanket beneath him. If his hand squeezed any harder, the wool would combust into a million little fibers.

“Venom killed people,” Peter’s voice grew dark, rueful. “I killed —”

“You didn’t touch a soul.”

The moment Peter heard Tony speak, all of the air swept from his lungs. There was a firmness in his voice, so hard and powerful that Peter was sure he never never, ever heard the man speak in such a way.

“That wasn’t you,” Tony insisted, not sounding like he was trying to convince Peter — not even sounding like he was trying to convince himself.

Rather, he spoke the facts. Talking as if the sky were blue and the grass was green.

There was a lot about Mr. Stark that Peter had yet to learn, but there was one thing he always knew — long before he ever met the man. If Tony Stark said something was true...it was true. The sky was blue and the grass was green.

Still.

“You didn’t have to…” Peter’s eyes flittered away. “You could’ve let SHIELD take me. Or the government. You could’ve...done it yourself.” Peter decided eliminate the threat didn’t need to be said twice. But it still rung in his head, even as his eyes drifted up to meet Tony’s. “Why?”

Peter found himself looking at Tony’s injured arm, where his hand was gloved and a sleeve made of technology covered the limb from fingers to shoulder. The lights dancing up the length of the limb had slowed down, immensely, making Peter wonder if it really matched the pulse beneath it or if it was just some kind of effect for show.

When he returned his gaze to Tony, he found himself doubting that theory. The calm in Tony’s face, the restful stance as he stared at Peter and no where else but Peter — there wasn’t any panic to be seen, no stress or trouble that could be discerned.

His heartbeat was calm, his pulse peaceful. It was only when silence briefly took their conversation that Peter realized that same calm had radiated towards him, soothing each beat of his own heart.

“Because…” Tony smiled, slowly, until the grin cracked the lines around his weary eyes. “You’re my kid.”

A breeze blew the curtains back, and the sun swelled through the window — just for a moment, just long enough for Tony to speak.

Peter went to say something, but only took in a breath instead, the fresh air crisp as it hit his lungs.

He heard the words. But he heard what was behind them as well.

Three words spoken, three words not.

 

‘You’re my kid.’

 

Tony smiled at him.

 

‘I love you.’

 

Peter smiled back.

 

There was distant chatter that grew from outside the room, the door shut but the cracks leaking in sounds. Hospital personnel passed by the hallway, and some equipment was rolled by after. Filling the silence between them with the ordinary; standard, every day life that continued on around them.

Peter felt a blush start on his neck, and he quickly moved a hand to rub it away. All while nodding in the direction of Tony’s arm.

“Is your arm…” he started to say. “Is it gunna be…?”

Tony looked down at the limb before shrugging it off.

“Wakanda’s kinetic skeleton? Far superior to my new skin.” Tony turned the arm around, almost as if he was giving Peter a good look at the technology. “Give us a couple weeks and we’ll be as brand new as you are.”

Peter chuckled, savoring how light it felt — how right it felt. How everything, for once in...an amount of time he lost track of, everything felt okay.

Everything felt right.

Tony seemed to be on that same page. He leaned back in the chair, crossing his leg until his ankle sat over his thigh with a slight bounce to his foot — not anxious, Peter noted, just...what it was.

“I love it here, by the way.” Tony looked to the window, smirking. “Thinking about buying a summer home in the golden city. Think Pepper would approve? Doesn’t have to be big, just a little shack off the corner street. Preferably away from the jungle —”

“That reminds me!” Peter sat up further in the bed. “Mr. Stark, you ever see that really old movie Predator?”

Tony shot him a look, and a finger from his injured hand pointed sternly his way.

“I don’t want a single pop culture reference out of you for the rest of this trip, understand?”

Peter laughed, his eyes bright and watery, and unashamed as he saw the same thing reflected back at him.

For that minute, everything was alright.

A soft wind continued to blow through the open window, free in its path, swirling through the burlap curtains with a language of its own. Each draft spoke silent words of comfort, a fresh breeze that landed on its occupants with a gentle touch.

An apology of sorts, an offering from the earth to cool the burns of pain, and to heal the wounds not seen.

Through the curtains and past the glass, the streets of Wakanda stayed busy. The market places hustled with activity, with civilians down below chattering about as they purchased their goods. Mothers eyed the handcrafted satchels on display with interest, as their children ran around them; smiles and laughter accompanying the sound of bicycles that kicked up dirt and dust, and far off traffic humming with the same life that carried on in the streets.

Life that carried on.

From high above in the Birnin Zana hospital, the sounds were nothing more than distant, ordinary commotion. But the same remained. Life carried on, from one man to the next. From Tony to Peter; the blood split between them may not have been the same, but it made no difference in their eyes.

Just like the wildlife who roamed the lands, from the jungles to the open fields. They stayed in packs, their relation in blood mattering not. It was a matter of sticking close to those they trusted — the lions protected their young, the elephants the same. Birds flocked in huddles while mothers brought their newborns food to eat, filling the nest until their bellies were full and their cries came to a stop.

The sun beamed hard on the creatures, some sheltering from the harsh heat in groups. They protected one another through whatever danger awaited them, both in daylight and dusk.

Time passed by no different than before, with an evening that brought colors to the sky and a sunset to close the troubles of the day. Giving rest to those who were weary, and reprieve to those who needed it.

The stars shined bright as they made an appearance, each dazzling beneath the moon with a vibrancy of excitement.

It was that same window Peter saw when he woke up again, so late in the night even the city lights of Birnin Zana had dimmed to a soft, muted glow.

His eyes opened slower than before, each lid peeling apart one languid blink at a time. The only source of light came from a small desk lamp on his right side; barely bright enough to show the way to the door.

Peter lolled his head in that direction, trying to figure out when and how the light had been turned on. When he'd fallen asleep, it was dark, and Mr. Stark had dozed off in the chair that King T’Challa was sitting in.

Suddenly wide awake, Peter jolted up in the bed, the sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes doing nothing to prevent them from becoming twice their size.

King T’Challa was here.

The King.

Of Wakanda.

Watching him sleep.

Peter opened his mouth to greet the freaking King of Wakanda, only for a squeak to sound from his throat instead.

T’Challa simply smiled.

“My child,” he managed a greeting first, and with the kindness to not mention the Alvin and the Chipmunks impression that Peter just put on. He leaned back in the chair with a sense of nonchalance, placing both hands idly in his lap. “It is good to see you with open eyes.”

Peter’s eyes were open. Very, very open. It took a few seconds and a handful of blinks to return them back to average size, and even then they were wider than normal.

After all, it wasn’t every day he woke up to a King at his bedside.

It also wasn’t every day that he died and came back to life.

Peter decided that his life officially couldn’t get any weirder.

His lips opened and closed, moving with unknown words that never formed. If there was something his mouth wanted to say, his brain wasn’t getting the memo. And there didn’t seem to be any repairs he could do on the faulty connection.

Confused, Peter noticed that T’Challa was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He’d never seen the man in casual attire before — granted, he’d barely seen him before as is, usually passing by with quick chatter to Tony and Shuri.

But he always looked like royalty to Peter, exactly how he expected an African King would look. Strong and tall, confident and powerful.

The black t-shirt and old, faded jeans made him look far younger than what Peter remembered. And much more modest.

“Do not be shy.” T’Challa tilted his chin low. “The reason you feel hesitance is not a valid reason to hold onto.”

It was after a moment of silence passed, where T’Challa sat quietly in the chair, that Peter realized he was trying to say five hundred different things at once. And when those five hundred different things wouldn’t separate and allow for a coherent sentence, he realized it didn’t matter.

He could say nothing, and somehow — Peter didn’t know how, but somehow — T’Challa knew.

“Regardless of what has occurred…I would not change my decision to help you,” T’Challa started to say, only further proving Peter’s realization. “And your family.”

Peter felt a heat grow against his neck, and he turned away briefly, hoping to hide the blush from where it could be seen. The lamp was dim, but it still showed them both — T’Challa could see the warm, lively skin on Peter and he could see the sincerity that swam deep in the man’s eyes.

It was the kind of sincerity Peter wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before in his life. So raw, and so entrenched, that it consumed his every feature.

“I know my people well,” T’Challa caught his gaze and held it. Suddenly, the lamp had no use. It could’ve been pitch dark and their eyes still would’ve locked onto one another. “If they knew, ahead of time, the outcome to which occurred...they would still give their lives for yours. Without hesitation.”

Peter’s mouth continued to struggle formulating a semi-coherent response, but his lips slowed their pace.

Suddenly, there weren’t as many thoughts in his head to pick from.

‘I’m sorry’ echoed the most.

‘Why me?’ was front and center.

T’Challa looked at him as if he heard those thoughts out loud.

“And without hesitation…” Slowly, T’Challa leaned forward in the chair. Even the squeak it made was somehow muted underneath the aura that flowed from the King. “I would gift you the herb, again and again if I could.”

Peter stopped trying to say something.

His words didn’t matter; they didn’t need to be heard.

T’Challa just knew.

Peter swallowed, a gulp that was somehow thunderous in the quaint little hospital room of T’Challa’s homeland. Every thump and thwack of his heart suddenly felt heavier, more laborious, but in all the best ways.

Peter never realized he’d be so appreciative for such a small thing. Without knowing it, his fist came to his sternum, his fingers pressing deep there as he treasured every beat of his pulse.

“Thank you,” he finally managed, nothing more than a whisper that broke through the air. “...thank you.”

Slowly, the corners of T’Challa’s lips turned upward. He smiled, and gave a relaxed nod.

Peter didn’t realize his eyes had welled up until the moisture hit his knuckles, still pressed firmly to his chest. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, uncaring to each drop of liquid that spread down his cheeks.

The five hundred thoughts came to a grating halt, and with an indebtedness words couldn’t express, Peter found himself grateful for each one.

He’d get to see May again.

He’d get to have his first date.

He’d get to go to prom.

He’d get to graduate high-school.

He’d get to keep being Spider-Man.

Slowly, Peter unclenched his hand and returned it to the mattress of the bed. The wool blanket slid off his waist and he made no moves to return it. His other hand swept away the tears across his face, brushing them off with a flicker of his fingers.

If T’Challa had anything to say about the show of emotion, he kept it to himself.

“In my culture, death is not the end,” T’Challa spoke quietly, softly, his voice no louder than his breath. His hands clasped together in his lap, and his thumb noticeably ran across the inside of his wrist. “It's more of a...stepping off point. You reach out with both hands, to Bast and Sekhmet, and they lead you into the green veld where you can...run forever.”

A silence fell between them, stretching on with an expanse not even the fields of Wakanda could match. Peter didn’t try to fill the air with any noise. It was a peaceful quiet, made all the more serene by the chill night air drifting through the window.

“They say that flesh and bone are the only things tying us to this plane of existence.” T’Challa looked down at his hands, where his fingers interlocked as one. “Another existence reaches just far beyond our eyes, where only those who cross its path can see its wonders. An ancestral plane...where our souls find comfort in the family who have departed this world long ago.”

Peter could feel his eyebrows twitch, knitting together in a moment of confusion.

T’Challa unclasped his hands and leaned forward in the chair, reaching towards Peter’s forearm and laying an open palm across it. Drawing close until the heat of his own skin spread across Peter’s.

“Who did you see, my child?”

Slowly, and wordlessly, Peter smiled.