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Autumn had settled heavily across fields of open land, long stretches of grass disappearing into thinning woods beneath a scattered canopy of amber and brown. The season had begun to strip the landscape of its color, leaving the distant trees thinner against a sky packed with gray as the wind moved freely through the exposed branches.

The sun barely managed to show through the clouds, leaving everything washed in the cold, colorless light of early afternoon. Fallen leaves gathered along the pavement and caught against the edges of walkways, stirred every so often by a passing gust before scraping across the concrete and settling somewhere else.

At the center of it all, the Compound stood just as still.

Beyond the glass exterior, movement came and went through the building in scattered pieces. A pair of agents crossed one of the lower walkways before disappearing around a corner, while another level below, someone pushed a supply cart through an open set of doors. Dull daylight spilled through the broad skylights overhead, reaching across pale walls and polished floors as voices occasionally carried from one corridor into another, never loud enough to disturb the muted rhythm that had settled throughout the building.

The activity thinned further upstairs.

The lounge sat along one of the quieter stretches of the upper floor, with only the open railing overlooking the levels below. From there, the movement of the Compound remained visible without ever quite reaching them. It offered a degree of privacy rarely found elsewhere under the same roof, and for the better part of the afternoon, four men had occupied the space with little attention spared for the world beyond those walls.

Tony stood at the railing overlooking the level below, both hands braced against the banister as he leaned slightly into it. His shoulders remained set, head lowered just enough to keep most of his expression from the others.

Several feet back, Steve sat forward on the sofa with his jacket zipped to his chest and the sleeves pulled far down to his wrists. His hands rested loosely between his knees, fingers folded together while his shoulders sat lower than usual beneath the weight of his own body.

Bruce occupied the chair across from him, sitting stiffly against the backrest with a tablet dark against his thigh. He hadn’t looked at it in several minutes. Farther across the room, Bucky stood with one shoulder against the wall, arms folded over his chest as he watched the lull drag on between them.

Whatever conversation had filled the room before then had slowly worked itself into silence.

Outside, another gust moved through the grounds. Leaves scraped across the windows, their faint movement swallowed almost entirely by the glass between them.

Tony remained facing the floor below.

Steve watched his back for another moment before his eyes dropped to his folded hands, fingers tightening slightly where they rested against one another.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

“It’s a choice,” Steve said at last, the words landing quietly into the space between them.

Tony didn’t move. His expression barely shifted; if anything, the darkness behind his eyes only seemed to settle deeper.

“It’s the only choice,” he said in turn, his voice rough enough that the words barely landed.

Steve gave a small shake of his head and straightened against the weight pulling at his shoulders. The exhaustion showed plainly on him, from the heavy shadows beneath his eyes to the effort behind the movement. He kept his gaze ahead.

“No,” he said, tired — but persistent. “It’s a choice.”

Tony didn’t look much better. The last two weeks had left a worn edge to his features, his movements slower and more deliberate than usual, as though sleep had become something he managed in pieces rather than hours.

His jaw clenched before he finally craned his head around, irritation breaking through the otherwise empty expression on his face.

“And what’s your alternative?” The question came sharper than anything he’d said so far, whatever restraint he’d kept beginning to wear thin. “Let another man like Johann Schmidt go on to live in this world, because crossing that line feels a little worse than knowing where it leads?”

Steve stayed facing forward for another moment, letting the sharpness in those words pass without answering it in kind. His attention settled on Tony instead, taking in the rigid line of his back and the fingers curled tightly around the railing— as though whatever he couldn’t hold together anymore had found its way into that grip.

“You know…for the record,” Steve started, slowly. Patiently. His expression softened, tempered by the kind of understanding that only time between them had managed to earn. “I never said I disagreed with you.”

Tony held his gaze.

Silence settled between them again. Steve shifted carefully on the sofa, one hand briefly pressing against his thigh as he tried to find a position that took less effort to hold, while Tony’s attention drifted toward the distant activity across the open levels.

“Yeah…” he finally relented, looking back below, his eyes focused on nothing all the same. “I know.”

His grip eased against the railing, though his hands never left it.

The air in the room grew thick around them, made heavier by everything those same walls had witnessed before. Only the few spread across the space now, each keeping to his own corner while the distant life of the Compound carried on beneath them.

Steve drew in a slow breath, his chest rising beneath the zipped jacket before settling again. For a moment, he seemed to search through the weight of everything already said for whatever still needed saying, all as his hands tightened loosely between his knees.

“It’s just…” When he finally spoke, there was no argument left in his voice — only a heavy burden. His gaze dropped, his posture carrying more resolve than hesitation. “As time goes on, the line we can’t cross keeps getting thinner.”

Past the glass windows, bare branches shifted against the sky, their thinner limbs bending with each pass of the wind. Steve let his attention linger there before returning to Tony, the conclusion between them requiring no further argument; he understood how they had reached it, and some part of him had reached it too.

That didn’t make the ground beneath it feel any firmer.

“It’s a choice,” Steve repeated.

A quiet rustle of fabric came from farther across the lounge.

“How would you even do it?”

Bucky pushed away from the wall, letting his arms fall from his chest as he looked between them. The question carried none of the moral weight Steve had been turning over. Whatever line existed between right and wrong had already become secondary to the considerably more practical problem standing on the other side of it.

“We all saw that thing. Nothing touched it. Nobody could put it down.” His expression tightened. “Not your magic guy, not your space gems, not the aliens — none of it.” Bucky paused, fixing Tony with a harder look. “So what the hell changes when you finally get your shot, Stark?”

Tony was too tired to roll his eyes. He turned his head toward Bucky instead, exhaustion flattening whatever reaction might otherwise have followed.

“For starters, there is no going up against that thing again,” he said, finally pushing away from the railing enough to turn fully toward the room. His back settled against the banister as his arms folded across his chest. “Definition of insanity, Barnes. Same play, same outcome, and somehow expecting the universe to feel generous the second time around. Even I’m not dumb enough to point the Hulkbuster at that thing, and that suit was practically engineered around bad decisions and overly excessive confidence.”

Steve’s expression tightened slightly as he shifted against the couch, one hand briefly pressing into the cushion beside him as he adjusted his weight.

“Do you think Hulk could’ve made a difference?” he asked, the question pulling his attention away from Tony and toward the other side of the room. “That Goblin form Norman created wasn’t much smaller, and we’ve all seen what Hulk can take. Could he have actually stopped it?”

Tony followed his gaze, something in his expression sinking as his attention found Bruce across the room.

Bruce had already looked away. His gaze rested on the dark tablet against his thigh, its screen catching the muted light overhead while his thumb sat still along the edge.

“Does it matter?” Tony asked, the question coming quieter than the rest as he let his arms fall loosely from his chest.

Bruce glanced up briefly, catching Tony’s expression before looking back down. Neither of them needed much clarification.

“I’ve been going back through Tony and Rhodey’s HUD footage from Bio-Labs…” Bruce shifted in his seat, his mouth tightening before he drew the tablet closer against his leg. For a second, he seemed almost reluctant to answer. “In Wakanda, Hulk threw everything he had at Venom….and he still got put down. That did something to him.”

The admission came without much hesitation, but Bruce’s voice lowered all the same.

“I know it did.”

Bucky’s attention settled on him. Steve remained quiet.

Bruce stared at the blank screen for another moment before his shoulders sank slightly. There was no anger in the set of his face, none of the old frustration that usually surfaced when Hulk refused to cooperate.

Tony caught the difference almost immediately, his attention remaining fixed on Bruce. What had taken the place of frustration seemed harder to carry — the uncomfortable recognition that, for once, maybe Hulk had been afraid of something Bruce couldn’t blame him for fearing.

“And even if it hadn’t…” He hesitated, the words sitting heavily behind his teeth before he finally let them go. “I’m not sure the Goblin was a fight he would’ve won, either.”

Tony looked away.

For everything Bruce carried beneath his skin, there had always been a certain comfort in knowing the worst thing in the room usually belonged to them.

Bio-Labs had taken that luxury away quickly enough.

“Strange, Wanda, Vision, Thor…” Tony shook his head, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. The names came easily enough; any other day, the list might have carried some reassurance with it.

Today, it sounded like an inventory of everything that hadn’t been enough.

“That thing isn’t the target. Its cells regenerate far too fast for anything thrown at it — we already learned what happens when you try fighting it head-on.”

His gaze drifted past the others toward the broad windows at the edge of the lounge. Gray daylight pressed flat against the glass, cold and uneventful, but for a moment Tony saw something considerably brighter reflected there.

Green fire.

The memory came back in flashes. Heat blistering through Bio-Labs, explosions erupting across the concrete as fire tore through walls around them. Tony remembered watching wounds disappear almost as quickly as they could make them — torn scales knitting beneath fresh layers of armored flesh, every hit that should have bought them an advantage purchasing little more than seconds.

And somewhere behind all of it, Peter had been lying nearly bled dry, his body reduced to raw material Norman had simply helped himself to.

Tony pulled his gaze from the windows before the green in the glass could turn red behind his eyes.

“The trick is going to be making sure Norman never gets the chance to become it again.” Tony’s eyes settled into something colder, the last traces of uncertainty disappearing behind them. “That’s how we take him out.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed.

“You don’t even know where this freak is,” he all but snapped. His arms dropped from his chest as he straightened, irritation beginning to edge past the practicality that had kept him listening this long. “How do you plan to kill him if you can’t even find him?”

Tony’s jaw shifted, his attention dropping briefly to the floor between them.

“Norman isn’t hiding from us.” His eyes narrowed as his arms dropped from his chest, digging deep into the pockets of his jeans. “He went quiet the second he finished what he started — and there’s no reason to keep rattling the cage when you already walked away with the prize.”

Steve shifted on the sofa, his hands loosening where they had been folded between his knees. He looked toward Tony with the same careful attention he’d been giving him since the conversation began.

“So that’s it, then?” he asked, almost too quietly. “You really think he’s backing off?”

Tony felt his fingers curl deeper into his pockets, his shoulders drawing taut in the beat that hung between them.

“I think he got exactly what he wanted,” he settled on answering. “Right now, laying low is the smart move for him. And as much as I hate giving him the credit, Norman’s been playing this a lot better than we have.”

Bucky’s expression soured.

“We’ve got enough satellites, cameras, and fancy Stark shit up in the sky looking for this guy to find a mosquito in Siberia.” He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, as though several billion dollars’ worth of surveillance equipment might be hovering directly above it. “Don’t tell me we haven’t been playing it smart.”

Tony gave him a sideways look, one brow lifting faintly.

“In the words of Sun Tzu…” He let the pause sit for half a beat.“'All warfare is based on deception.'”

Bucky stared back at him.

Tony let the words sit for a beat before one shoulder lifted, half shrugging, half defeated. “We are playing it smart. He’s the one playing invisible.”

Across from them, Bruce finally moved. His thumb pressed against the side of the tablet, waking the screen in a wash of pale light that reflected across his glasses. Data filled it almost immediately — cellular models, sequencing results, enough overlapping information that none of the others bothered trying to make sense of it from where they sat.

Bruce did.

“If he’s this far off our radar, then there’s a good chance Oz did exactly what we thought it would once he had enough of Peter’s blood.” Bruce’s expression tightened. He glanced toward Tony. “His cells would’ve integrated the new genetic material, stabilized the mutation, and rewritten enough of his baseline biology to make everything we used to track Norman obsolete.”

Tony turned from the banister with a scoff. “Forty-three percent blood loss, Bruce. ‘Enough’ isn’t exactly keeping me up at night.” His jaw tightened. “He got what he needed. We would’ve seen him long by now otherwise. And with everything he had waiting for him in that lab, I’d say our worst-case scenario graduated from hypothetical to very real, very fast.”

The room went still.

Bruce’s mouth closed around whatever response might have followed.

Bucky shifted his weight against the wall, his jaw tightening beneath the faint shadow of stubble along it.

Steve looked down.

His thumb moved absently over the inside of his opposite arm, catching against the crease of his jacket sleeve where the crook of his elbow disappeared beneath it. There was nothing left to see even if he rolled the fabric back. His body had seen to that days ago. The needles, the bruising — all of it had disappeared in the weeks passed.

He passed over the spot again anyway.

Tony noticed the movement.

His eyes dropped, and stayed there just long enough for Steve to catch what crossed his face. It was gone almost immediately, buried beneath the familiar set of his jaw, but not before something harder settled behind his eyes.

Steve knew anger in Tony. He knew the loud version of it, the reckless version, the kind that came sharpened into sarcasm because anything quieter might expose too much underneath.

This wasn’t that.

“When did you decide?”

Tony looked up. The pause came first, brief and deliberate; at first giving Steve more than the words did.

“Decide what?”

Steve held his gaze. There was no accusation in his face, none of the earlier insistence. He only watched Tony for another beat, reading the quiet in him for what it was.

“That he wasn’t coming out of this alive.” When he spoke, the question came considerably quieter than everything that had led them there.

Tony stared at him head-on.

Steve saw the answer before he heard it. No surprise. No calculation. Not even the brief pause Tony usually bought himself when he wanted a better version of the truth.

“About forty-three percent ago.”

For a second, Steve simply looked at Tony.

There was something uncomfortably clean about the answer. Not rehearsed, not defensive — just settled, with the kind of certainty that left little room for argument because Tony clearly hadn’t arrived there through one. Whatever debate might have existed had happened somewhere else, long before any of them had gathered in the lounge.

Steve’s gaze dropped. His hand settled against one knee as he leaned forward again, slower this time, the lingering weakness forcing a little more care into the movement than he would have liked.

“So the problem isn’t just finding a way to kill Norman, then,” he said, the conclusion coming out dry, faintly defeated, as though all that remained was the ugly practicality. “It’s keeping him Norman long enough to do it.” His fingers flexed once against his knee before his eyes returned to Tony. “How do we get to him before he gets the chance to change again?”

Tony didn’t answer immediately.

Behind him, the distant movement below continued through the open levels of the Compound, figures crossing between corridors without ever looking up. Tony watched one disappear beneath the overhang before finally pushing himself away from the railing.

The question had moved them onto firmer ground. A problem with variables. Something that could be taken apart.

“Science made the problem,” Tony said, all in a breath of exhale. “Science finds the off switch.”

He turned fully toward the others, folding his arms as he leaned back against the railing instead.

“Shuri’s working her end. I’m working mine. Somewhere in all that genetic soup Osborn cooked up, there’s a weak point.” His attention shifted toward Bruce. “We just need enough time to find it.”

Bruce finally moved the tablet from his thigh, catching the edge in one hand. “Except if the transformation’s biological now, we’re still stuck with the same problem.” He leaned forward slightly, brow drawing together. “We don’t know what triggers it anymore. Anger, adrenaline, conscious choice — maybe nothing we can predict. Getting close enough to Norman to use whatever we find could be enough to bring the Goblin out.”

“So we don’t get close.”

Bruce’s attention shifted across the lounge.

Steve had settled both forearms against his knees, hands hanging loosely between them. The posture did little to hide how much the last two weeks had taken out of him, but the earlier heaviness had sharpened into concentration.

“If Norman wants to disappear, let him,” Steve said. “We stop chasing someone who doesn’t want to be found and wait until he has a reason to surface.” His gaze moved back to Tony. “Sooner or later, he will.”

Against the wall, Bucky turned his head toward Tony, one eyebrow lifting slightly.

Tony caught it immediately.

“Relax,” he bit back. “I actually agree with Rogers on this.”

Steve glanced up at him.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Don’t make it weird.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth threatened to move before he thought better of it.

Bucky’s expression remained considerably less charitable.

“He’s right.” Tony pushed away from the railing altogether and crossed farther into the lounge, the restless movement carrying him around the edge of the furniture.  “We’re already down too many people to go stumbling around after Osborn blind, and right now he knows more than we do. He knows what he can do. We don’t. He knows where he’s been. We don’t." Tony’s hand caught briefly against the back of an empty chair before he stopped beside it. “And apparently he knows how to disappear well enough to make several billion dollars’ worth of surveillance equipment look decorative. That’s too many advantages for one psychopath with a chemistry set.”

Bruce’s eyes followed him across the lounge. “Which means chasing him only gives him the chance to decide where the next fight happens.”

“Exactly.” Tony’s fingers slipped from the back of the chair, and he resumed his slow circuit around the furniture. “We’ve spent enough time playing on his field. If he wanted us again, he’d have come after us by now. So, we take one advantage back,” he said. Something harder returned to his expression. “We stop showing our hand, and we let him believe disappearing bought him exactly what he wanted.” Tony’s gaze moved between them. “Meanwhile, we use the time to make sure the next move is ours.”

“And what makes you think he’ll come back?” Bucky asked.

Tony looked over.

Bucky had shifted his weight back against the wall, one boot planted slightly ahead of the other as he watched Tony pace the room. The question carried less challenge than the ones before it. Mostly, it sounded like he doing what he always did when the rest of them started building plans around assumptions — finding the one piece that could still fall out from underneath them.

“You said it yourself, he’s done with the kid. Got what he needed.” Bucky lifted one shoulder beneath his jacket. “What’s to say he isn’t half way across the world by now?”

Tony stopped.

The next step in his slow circuit simply never came. One foot remained angled toward the far side of the lounge while the rest of him went still, the pause small enough that, from where Bucky stood, it might have looked like nothing more than Tony reconsidering the question.

Steve knew better.

Done with the kid.

Tony’s gaze fell toward the floor.

There had been very little about Peter lately that looked finished. Recovery had come in fractions — numbers inching upward on screens, another bag disappearing into an IV, a little more color holding in his face before movement chased it away again. Peter had gotten increasingly good at saying he felt fine with enough conviction to make the words irritating, usually while sinking farther into whatever chair happened to be nearest.

Tony had gotten increasingly good at pretending not to notice.

The kid was better. That much was true.

Better simply had a considerably lower bar than it used to.

His thumb dragged once along the side of his index finger, the small motion disappearing against the chair before his hand fell away from it.

Norman might have been done with Peter.

Peter’s body wasn’t done with Norman.

Tony lifted his eyes. “Because disappearing and running OsCorp are eventually going to become mutually exclusive.”

He started moving again before the silence around him had a chance to settle, the break in his pacing buried almost as quickly as it had surfaced. Beyond the windows, another gust worked its way across the grounds, scattering leaves along the pavement in loose spirals before pressing them against the glass. Tony barely glanced toward it.

“The D.O.D. merger has Ross in his backyard, and the press has been treating the whole thing like the corporate wedding of the century. On top of that, OsCorp has spent the last month advertising an end-of-year shareholder meeting like they’re about to unveil indoor plumbing to the masses.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed slightly in thought. His attention drifted away from the tablet, following the shape of the argument instead.

Tony caught it.

“Exactly.” He pointed toward Bruce without breaking stride. “New partnership, new direction for the company, shiny new future ahead. Whatever they’re planning to announce, they’ve made sure half the financial world is waiting to hear Norman say it.”

“So he has to surface,” Steve said.

The words stopped Tony near the opposite end of the sofa. He turned his head just enough to look back at him.

“Eventually.”

Bucky frowned from the wall. “He could send somebody else.”

“For a quarterly earnings call? Sure. Court summons? Absolutely. For this?” Tony shook his head and continued across the room, one hand slipping free from his pocket as if the answer were obvious enough to require illustrating. “You don’t sell the Pentagon the next generation of super-soldier and send somebody from accounting to shake hands. Osborn’s selling a revolution with his name stamped across the box. Eventually, he’s gonna have to show up and sell it himself.”

That settled differently over the group.

Not relief. Nothing close to it.

But the uncertainty that had been hanging over the conversation finally had edges.

Steve eased back a fraction against the sofa, some of the tension leaving his hands as his fingers loosened over one another. Across from him, Bruce looked down at the glowing tablet again, though this time the data seemed less like an answer they were waiting on and more like a clock already running. Bucky stayed where he was, expression still guarded, but the argument had at least given him something concrete to push against.

Below them, the Compound continued moving.

Upstairs, the four of them had finally found the beginnings of a plan.

“Until then, we stay quiet,” Steve said.

Tony’s gaze shifted back to him.

“We stay quiet,” he agreed. “Shuri keeps working the science. She’s cross-referencing everything we pulled off the symbiote with what we know about Oz.” His expression sharpened. “I keep OsCorp legally radioactive in the courts and make sure the D.O.D. has to crawl through enough red tape to forget what they were trying to deploy in the first place.”

He stopped near the railing again, though this time he didn’t turn toward it. The gray light from the windows caught one side of his face, flattening the exhaustion there without softening anything beneath it.

“And before Norman decides to show his face again, we make damn sure the man is the only thing we have to put down.”

The room settled around the words.

Steve watched Tony for another moment before shifting carefully against the couch, one hand pressing beside him as he eased some of the weight off his back.

“Speaking of,” he titled his chin a little higher than before. “Rhodey get us anywhere on that front?”

“Enough to keep it alive.” Tony glanced toward the windows. “He opened a few doors. I’m meeting with someone tomorrow who might actually know how to keep them from slamming shut again.”

Steve studied him. “You trust this person?”

Tony’s mouth pulled faintly at one corner. “I trust that he’s used to working in the dark.” He paused. “And that’s exactly the skillset we need right about now.”

Steve held his gaze for another second, weighing whatever Tony had chosen not to say, before giving a small nod. For the moment, that was enough.

“That gives us a few weeks.”

“If we’re lucky.” Tony's sharp answer faded into the quiet.

For the first time since the conversation had started, nobody seemed particularly eager to fill it. Bruce lowered his eyes to the tablet again, scrolling through something without really reading it. Bucky drifted back toward the wall, though he didn’t quite settle against it this time.

Tony looked toward Steve.

Whatever reserve he’d pulled from during the conversation appeared to have run out somewhere along the way. He had eased farther into the sofa without seeming to notice, one hand planted beside his hip while the other rested heavily against his knee. Even the stubborn straightness he usually carried had begun to give beneath simple exhaustion.

Tony’s attention traveled over him once before settling on the hand braced against the cushion.

“Alright.” Steve shifted again, slower this time. “I suppose it’s best that I stay here until I’m cleared for duty.”

“Good idea,” Tony said, the response arriving almost too quickly. His eyes flicked once toward Steve’s legs before returning to his face. “Considering standing up still looks like an extracurricular activity for you.”

Steve ignored that.

“And you?”

Tony knew what he was asking.

His eyes moved toward the corridor leading away from the lounge, lingering there a second longer than necessary.

“Tonight.”

Steve gave a small nod. His fingers shifted where they rested against his knee.

“May knows?”

“She knows.” Tony looked down, thumb dragging once along the side of his hand before disappearing back into his pocket. “He doesn’t — not yet. Gotta keep it as low-profile as possible.” His mouth shifted faintly. “And you know how loose his lips can get.”

The joke barely disturbed the exhaustion on his face.

Steve’s expression softened anyway. He watched Tony glance toward the corridor once more before looking back, and whatever concern remained in his face settled a little deeper rather than disappearing.

“You’re sure about this?”

Tony looked over at him, and paused.

“I’m sure he deserves a shot at whatever’s left of these so-called glory years while we figure this out.” His expression tightened slightly. “Kid’s spent so much of this year waking up in these damn medbays, I’m starting to think this place is more familiar to him than his own bedroom.”

One hand remained buried in his pocket. His fingers moved once against the denim, curling and releasing before going still again.

“Osborn could stay buried for weeks. I’m not turning sixteen into one long lockdown because that man still has the unlucky privilege of breathing.” Tony’s jaw shifted. His attention wandered briefly toward the windows, where the gray afternoon had begun flattening into something darker at the edges, before returning to Steve. “We do that, and Norman walks away with something he never even had to take in that lab.”

Steve stayed quiet for a moment.

Something in his face eased — not much, just enough for the tension around his mouth to loosen. His gaze dipped toward his hands, then lifted again.

“I agree.”

A beat passed.

Tony’s hand came out of his pocket.

“That doesn’t mean I’m taking my eyes off him.”

“I know.”

“I mean that literally.” Tony pointed at him, the gesture immediate enough to make Steve’s brows lift a fraction.

“I know, Tony.”

“Queens is getting enough Stark surveillance to qualify as a small sovereign nation.”

The faintest pull appeared at the corner of Steve’s mouth.

Tony caught it immediately.

“Laugh now. You’re the one staying here — stuck with Barnes, God help you.”

From across the room, Bucky’s face flattened. “I’m standing right here.”

This time, Tony did roll his eyes at him. “Unfortunately.”

Steve managed a half-hearted smile, though it faded almost as quickly as it appeared. He shifted farther into the couch, the movement slow enough to betray how much effort he’d been putting into sitting upright all afternoon. By the time he settled, one hand had braced itself against the cushion while the other rested heavily over his knee.

“Not much choice,” he said. “It’s doctor’s orders.”

Tony’s gaze dropped briefly to the hand anchoring Steve in place before moving away again, wearing indifference about as convincingly as he had the other three times he’d checked on Steve that afternoon without calling it that.

“Yeah, well, draining yourself dry for a hundred-and-seventy-pound teenager tends to earn you more than a few days off your feet.”

Steve glanced toward him. “I’ll survive.”

“Fantastic,” Tony drawled out. "Try doing it vertically for a while, and then we’ll talk.”

There wasn’t enough bite behind the words to sell the sarcasm. Steve caught it anyway, something in his expression easing as his palm moved slowly over his thigh. His fingers pressed into the muscle and remained there, holding firm until whatever lingering weakness had pulled at him seemed to settle.

“Haven’t felt this put out since Wakanda,” he mentioned, the firmness in his voice almost broken by the exhaustion in it.

The faint amusement left Tony’s face.

For a beat, he simply looked at Steve. The room offered plenty of room for another joke, but none came. His attention eventually slipped past him instead, settling somewhere across the open levels beyond the railing.

“We just put that behind us, you know.”

Steve’s expression quieted. His fingers curled once against his knee before relaxing again.

“Yeah…”

Tony looked away.

The lounge seemed larger in the silence that followed. Empty chairs sat scattered around the furniture where people usually dropped into them without asking, and beyond the railing, long stretches of corridor disappeared into parts of the Compound that had gone increasingly quiet over the past several weeks. A building that had spent most of the year gathering people beneath one roof had thinned almost without anyone noticing it happen — one mission, one injury, one holiday and absence at a time.

“It’s been a hell of a year,” Tony said. The words left him on a low exhale. His attention shifted toward the corridor again, lingering there for just a second. “He needs some distance from all of this while things are quiet.”

Steve studied him.

Tony kept looking toward the hall, his posture loose enough to suggest the conversation had nearly run its course, but Steve could still see the tension caught along his jaw. It was there in nearly every decision Tony had made that afternoon — the need to hold one thing still while everything else refused to cooperate.

Steve’s gaze lowered briefly before returning to him. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“You’re making the right choice, Tony,” he said.

Tony finally looked back.

Steve held his eyes for another beat, something firmer settling into his expression.

“About both things.”

 

 

 

 

 

The doors to his room whooshed open before Peter could see the typing bubbles finish their act.

“Why are you always doing schoolwork?” Bucky crossed the threshold without bothering to slow, an empty dufflebag hanging from his flesh hand.

Peter blinked and looked up. Bucky didn’t wait for an invitation before coming further inside. Then again, after two weeks of people wandering in to check IVs, take blood samples, hand him pills, take away pills, measure things, scan things, and occasionally ask whether he knew what year it was, Peter had mostly stopped expecting one.

He looked to the books sitting in his lap, almost forgotten about as he found himself absorbed in his friends conversation — and consistently distracted by MJ. The chemistry textbook beneath his notebook had been open to the same page long enough that claiming academic productivity felt slightly dishonest, but there were equations on the paper. Some of them were even finished. There was also a doodle of a tiger with spider legs.

“Because..I’m…in highschool?” Peter wasn’t sure why he asked his own response. He shook it off with a furrow to his brow. “And I kinda wanna graduate, and go to college, and — hey!”

Bucky had reached the bed before Peter realized that was apparently a warning. Two books vanished from his lap in one sweep, the movement catching the edge of one of the blankets and dragging it halfway toward Peter’s knees with them.

“Dude — what are you doing!” Peter reached for his book, and especially the blanket. “I was in the middle of that!”

He leaned farther than he should have. The room answered with one quick, unpleasant sway beneath him, enough to stop Peter’s reach before his fingers ever found the book. He sank back against the raised mattress with considerably more dignity than balance, hoping the pause had looked intentional.

Bucky’s eyes flicked toward him.

That was all.

No hand immediately came out. No question followed. He didn’t move any closer or give Peter the look everyone else seemed to have perfected lately — the one that made every stumble feel bigger than it was.

Bucky simply caught the dufflebag against his leg, pulled it open, and dropped the books inside before turning to keep packing.

Peter liked him for that. Bucky noticed. He just didn’t make Peter notice that he’d noticed.

Without looking behind him, Bucky kept forward, grabbing items along the way and stuffing them into the dufflebag in his hands. A wrinkled NASA T-shirt disappeared first, followed by a pair of sweatpants Peter had kicked halfway beneath the chair sometime yesterday. Bucky caught a single sock from the floor with the side of his boot, bent down, and threw that in too.

Peter stared at the bag.

There was only one sock.

Bucky apparently considered that sufficient.

“Pick it up later. We need to get going, your ride’s here.” Bucky said, grabbing discarded clothes by the handful and stuffing them into the bag.

Peter watched confused. Something in the sentence had arrived out of order. His eyes moved from Bucky to the dufflebag, then briefly toward the open doorway beyond him.

“Ride?” Peter frowned. “Where?”

“They’re discharging you,” Bucky said, matterly of fact. “Stark’s finishing paperwork now, let’s hurry it. You can’t say you have energy for homework if you can’t pack up a few books and clothes.”

For half a second, Peter forgot to be irritated.

Discharging.

The word settled slowly, pulling his attention away from Bucky and toward the little sprawl he’d built across the bed over the last two weeks. Books, blankets, loose papers, half-finished homework — all of it suddenly looked temporary in a way it hadn’t five seconds ago.

Something lighter tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Then Bucky shoved a clean shirt into the duffel without so much as pretending to fold it.

Peter’s expression flattened again.

“I can carry a couple books to my quarters, Bucky,” he insisted, rolling his eyes as he gathered the notebooks still balanced across his lap, trapping loose pens and pencils between the pages as he stacked them together.

“No. You can’t.” Bucky’s back lifted with a scoff. He tossed the dufflebag onto the bed. It landed beside Peter hard enough to bounce once against the mattress. “Besides, we ain’t going there.”

Peter’s hands stopped over the notebooks. The small spark of relief that had begun forming behind his expression immediately stalled.

He frowned as he started gathering items into the dufflebag Bucky threw him, slower now, attention shifting repeatedly toward Bucky as though the answer might somehow reveal itself in the way he packed.

“Where are we going?” he asked, placing the notebooks inside.

His phone began vibrating beside his thigh. Peter turned toward it instinctively.

Bucky snapped his fingers. “Give me your phone.”

Peter looked at him.

Then at the phone.

Then back at him.

“Why?” Peter paused with a sudden frown and furrow. "Wait, no. And why?"

“Cause Stark says you’re incapable of spending five minutes without texting your friends.” Bucky held out his hand. “And this all needs to stay hush hush.”

Peter immediately curled his fingers around the phone and pulled it closer, suspicion overtaking confusion fast enough to sharpen his expression.

His grip tightened around the phone as Bucky’s black-and-gold Vibranium arm reached across the mattress. Peter tried moving it out of reach, but between the blankets, the books, and the fact that his reflexes were currently operating several steps behind the rest of him, the attempt lasted approximately half a second.

Bucky took it cleanly from his hand.

“What needs to stay —?”

Bucky had already turned away, slipping the phone into his jacket pocket before reaching for the nearest thing on the side table.

“You need this?” Bucky lifted something.

Peter frowned. “Uh, yeah, that’s my —”

Bucky dropped it into the open bag beside Peter before he finished identifying it. He reached again, this time coming up with the television remote.

“—this?” Bucky asked, lifting the TV remote for view.

Peter stared at it, then slowly looked back at Bucky, increasingly certain he had abandoned packing and moved directly into psychological warfare.

“What? No. Where are—?”

Bucky dropped the remote back onto the side table and let his attention move to the chair instead.

The jacket still hung over its back; dark, formal, and sharply cut enough to look almost absurd against the medbay furniture. It had remained there since Mr. Stark’s wedding — one of the few pieces nobody had bothered moving while the rest of Peter’s belongings accumulated around it.

Bucky hooked two fingers beneath the collar and lifted it.

“What about this?” He lifted the suit blazer.

Peter frantically shook his head.

“No!” He snapped. “Bucky, what’s—!”

Bucky tossed the jacket aside. It sailed past the foot of the bed and landed across the far side of the room in a loose heap, well away from the open duffel.

The doors opened again. The timing could not have been better.

Happy stepped into the room just as the jacket finished sliding across the floor. His eyes dropped toward it first, one eyebrow arching before his attention lifted to Bucky, then to the half-packed duffel sprawled across Peter’s bed.

He folded his arms. “Well, so much for him being ready in five minutes…”

Peter’s head turned sharply toward the doorway.

Happy’s presence only made the situation stranger. His gaze flicked from the man standing there to the half-packed duffel on his bed, then briefly toward Bucky, suspicion giving way to a deeper confusion as the pieces refused to arrange themselves fast enough.

“Happy?” he asked, definitely without a squeak to his voice. “What are you doing here?”

Happy smiled.

Peter stared at him, then glanced down at the dufflebag before looking back toward Bucky.

Slowly, the confusion began to clear.

The realization hit him as he smiled in return.

 

 

The steps leading up through the Forest Hills apartment building creaked quietly beneath six feet, though only four of them seemed particularly confident about where they were going.

Peter’s dirty tennis shoes dragged against the edge of another stair before finding purchase, the rubber sole squeaking faintly against the worn surface as Happy kept a steady hand beneath his arm. Tony followed one step behind, close enough that Peter probably knew exactly what he was doing and far enough away to maintain the polite fiction that he wasn’t doing it at all.

His hands stayed to himself. His attention didn’t.

Peter made it another two steps before his knee buckled.

Tony’s hand shot forward.

“Easy — easy.”

Happy caught most of Peter’s weight before he could drop, one arm tightening around his middle while Tony closed a hand around his other arm.

For several seconds, nobody moved. Peter stayed bent slightly forward between them, breathing through parted lips as he waited for the dizziness to pass, the brown curls along his forehead shifting with every shallow breath.

“I got it,” he managed, just as quietly and considerably less convincingly. “’M good. I g’t it…”

“Mm-hm.” Tony didn’t let go until Peter straightened again. Even then, the distance he gave him had more to do with the kid’s much-requested dignity than any confidence in his legs. “Just like your landlords got the elevator under repair, right?”

The climb resumed. The steps kept creaking as the stairwell took the echo of their words, every footfall traveling farther than it had any business going in the narrow space around them. Tony kept his place behind Peter, watching one sneaker follow the other with the kind of concentration he usually reserved for live explosives.

“Called him about it again yesterday,” Happy supplied, glancing back while keeping Peter anchored against his side. “Really pushing him this time.”

Tony stared at him with open incredulity.

“Hap, the kid lost damn near half his blood,” he shot back, keeping his voice low even as it carried between the narrow walls. His gaze dropped to Peter’s feet, watching another stair disappear beneath them with agonizing slowness. “At this rate, I could’ve rebuilt the damn elevator and still beaten us upstairs.”

Happy’s expression remained stubbornly neutral. “I said I was pushing him.”

“With what,” Tony shot him a look, “a strongly worded voicemail?”

Peter made a breathless sound that might have been a laugh.

It cost him.

His sneaker clipped the edge of the next stair. His leg gave out beneath him almost immediately, pitching him sideways before Tony had time to do more than react.

Happy pulled Peter hard against his side as Tony caught his other arm, both men taking his weight between them and carrying him through the last uneven step until his shoes scraped safely onto the landing.

“There we go.” Tony kept him upright until both feet were planted, his hand lingering around Peter’s arm before sliding carefully to his shoulder. He waited until Peter stopped swaying before giving it a small pat. “Still won’t let me fix the elevator?”

Peter opened his mouth, but the answer took another breath to find.

“G’me…” He swallowed, leaning more heavily into Happy than he seemed to realize. “Gimme a sec.”

Neither man argued.

Tony left his palm against Peter’s shoulder while the kid caught his breath, feeling each uneven rise beneath his hand. Whatever little color Peter had picked up on the drive down from upstate had already faded again, his face paling beneath the dim hallway lights until the shadows under his eyes stood out even darker.

A faint crease settled between Tony’s brows as he watched the kid stare at the floor and wait for his own body to catch up with him.

He could have fixed the elevator by now.

Peter had insisted on the stairs.

Tony understood enough not to ask why. Two weeks spent being lifted, carried, wheeled, monitored, all the way down to being told when he was even allowed to stand had left Peter with precious little say over what his own body did anymore.

A few flights of stairs weren’t much, but they were something he could still choose for himself. And apparently it was important enough to suffer for.

So Tony kept the objections behind his teeth and his hand where it was, waiting until Peter finally raised his head again.

“You got eighty-six thousand of them, Underoos.” Tony gave his shoulder a slow pat, his hand lingering there afterward.

Only then did he glance down the hallway stretching ahead of them and give Peter’s shoulder another small squeeze, silently encouraging him forward.

Peter lifted his head enough to squint down the corridor.

The distance couldn’t have been more than a few dozen yards, but his pace deteriorated enough along the way to make it feel considerably longer. Happy adjusted without comment, taking more of his weight each time Peter’s steps shortened, while Tony remained beside them now rather than behind, one hand occasionally finding Peter’s back whenever his balance shifted too far.

By the time they reached the final door, Peter was breathing hard again.

Happy eased enough of Peter’s weight against himself to free one hand, reaching past him for the knob. The lock had already been turned from the other side; apparently the text he’d sent a few minutes earlier had been warning enough. He pushed the door open with his shoulder, widening the gap until all three of them could make it through.

Warm air met them first.

Then came the smell of something sweet; vanilla, chocolate, maybe cinnamon — Tony couldn’t quite separate one from the next, though the kitchen offered a decent explanation.

Plastic containers crowded nearly every stretch of counter, stacked two and three high in places, each packed with enough home baked desserts to supply a moderately successful elementary-school fundraiser.

“Oh!”

May spun around from the kitchen. The container in her hands slipped immediately — plastic clattered harmlessly against the table before she was already moving, one hand flying toward her mouth as her eyes found the figure standing in the doorway.

“Oh my gosh…!”

Peter barely had time to straighten.

May crossed the living room at something just short of a run, slipping around the corner of the table without ever taking her eyes off him. Peter’s mouth had only begun to pull into a smile when she reached the doorway and wrapped both arms around him.

The force of it rocked him backward into Happy.

“Oomph—!”

May caught the movement immediately. Her hold loosened just enough to keep from knocking him off his feet, but she never really let him go; one arm stayed firm around his back while her other hand came up behind his head, drawing him in again with considerably more care.

Peter’s arms had already found their way around her. They tightened slowly, his cheek settling against her shoulder as whatever greeting he might have managed disappeared somewhere into her sweater.

Tony quietly stepped back.

Happy did the same.

May held Peter with both arms, one hand spreading protectively across the back of his head. When she finally pulled away, tears had already gathered beneath her glasses, leaving faint wet streaks where she hurriedly tried to blink them away.

Her hands went immediately to his face.

“Hi.”

Peter’s smile grew a fraction. It was tired and small and nowhere near the one he usually wore, but it reached his face anyway.

“Hey.”

May looked him over as though two weeks of medical updates had suddenly become completely irrelevant now that she could count everything herself. Her palms rested against his cheeks, thumbs passing carefully beneath his eyes before one hand disappeared into his hair, pushing the overgrown strands away from his forehead. Her fingers drifted along his cheek afterward, catching against the faint stubble that several days spent in a hospital bed had allowed to grow there.

She pretended not to notice, for the sake of her own sanity.

“You want some cookies?” she asked instead.

Peter blinked, amused.

“I’ve done so much baking.” Her voice wavered despite the smile fighting its way through. “You can have lots of cookies. You can have lots and lots of cookies.”

Something in Peter’s face gave way. He leaned forward before she could say anything else and folded himself around her again, considerably slower this time.

May caught him just as carefully, one arm circling his back while the other came up behind his shoulders to steady him against her.

Peter closed his eyes.

“I mis’d you, M’y.” The words disappeared almost completely into her sweater.

May pressed a long kiss into his hair, then rested her cheek briefly against the top of his head. “Missed you more.”

She didn’t let him go. Neither did Peter.

Tony watched from several feet away as whatever had been keeping the kid upright for the last few minutes seemed to finally run out. Peter’s shoulders dropped first, then the rest of him followed, settling more heavily against May until she was supporting considerably more of his weight than she had been when the hug started. There was no embarrassed attempt to straighten this time. No immediate ‘I got it’ waiting behind the next breath.

May noticed the change without calling attention to it. Her arm tightened around his back, shifting her footing just enough to take the added weight as Peter’s forehead came to rest against the side of her neck.

Tony’s eyes lingered on him.

The kid had fought them over the stairs. He’d fought Happy over how much weight he was allowed to carry, fought Tony every time a hand came too close, and spent the entire drive insisting that getting discharged meant he was perfectly capable of walking into his own apartment.

Apparently the performance had ended at the doorway.

Happy shifted beside Tony, his attention moving toward Peter with the same quiet recognition.

May eventually eased back just far enough to look at him again. One hand remained curled loosely behind his neck while the other settled against his upper arm, keeping him steady as her eyes moved carefully over his face.

Peter let her look without complaint. That alone probably told her enough.

“Okay.” May gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “Bed.”

“What?” Peter’s eyes opened wider, his brows drawing together as his mouth turned down into something perilously close to a pout. “No way, I just got out of one.”

The objection earned him precisely nothing.

May’s hand moved to the side of his face, her thumb brushing once across his cheek before she gave him a few light pats there. Peter leaned faintly into the touch despite the protest still written across his face, undermining his own case considerably.

“And now you get your own,” she simply said.

Peter’s mouth twitched, caught somewhere between surrender and the stubborn need to make one last attempt anyway. “I’m fine, May. Really.”

That brought a small silence over the entryway.

Tony looked at Happy.

Happy looked at Tony.

May stared at Peter.

Peter held out beneath all three of them for perhaps two seconds before his gaze dropped.

“…I could probably lie down for a little bit.” His lips pressed together, shoulders sinking with a quiet defeat that looked suspiciously close to relief now that somebody else had made the decision for him.

Tony’s mouth pulled faintly at one corner.

“There he is,” he murmured.

May smiled through what remained of the tears beneath her glasses, the expression softening as her hand lingered briefly against Peter’s cheek before slipping away. Then she wrapped an arm around him again and turned him farther into the apartment, keeping her pace naturally slow enough that Peter never had to ask her to.

Peter managed the first step on his own before his balance shifted, and Happy was there again without needing to be asked, catching him beneath the arm.

This time, Peter didn’t argue.

That caught Tony’s attention more than the stumble had.

He lingered near the doorway as the three of them moved farther inside, May tucked close against one side of Peter while Happy steadied the other. Their uneven steps carried past the living room and toward the short hall beyond it, slowing whenever Peter did, until the apartment gradually swallowed them from view.

Tony remained behind for another moment, taking in the abandoned container on the table, the counters crowded with cookies, and the way Peter’s shoes left faint marks across a floor that had probably seen them a thousand times before.

He reached back and pulled the door quietly shut behind him.

Something almost imperceptible answered from inside the frame. A narrow strip of Stark technology embedded along the wood pulsed once before fading from sight. Across the apartment, another faint blue point stirred near the window, followed a moment later by one beneath the sill.

Tony’s gaze passed over each in turn, checking them almost automatically until the final light disappeared.

Only then did he turn from the door and follow the others inside.

 

The four-by-three foot window stood open to the fading evening, its narrow frame catching the last of the evening light as an autumn breeze slipped through and stirred the curtain into the room.

Past it, the neighborhood softened into the cramped little bedroom, where the computer desk sat beneath the muted blue cast of an arc reactor housing unit. Beside it, a battered laptop remained held together by duct tape in five different places, and farther over, Peter slept in the lower bunk beneath a heap of blankets, a soft beanie pulled down over his head and eyes.

The housing unit radiated enough heat to leave the small bedroom almost stifling, its warmth filling the space so completely that the cool air coming through the open window barely made a dent of a difference.

It was much of the reason Tony had left it open after stepping out onto the fire escape himself — the breeze didn’t stand much of a chance against his technology. That much was a guarantee.

After all that had happened lately, he had a feeling he needed that comfort more than the warmth was needed to the bedroom behind him.

Beyond the brick, Tony stood alone on the fire escape with his forearms braced against the railing, gaze fixed somewhere past the rooftops ahead. Windowlight gathered unevenly across the blocks below, broken by dark water towers, fire escapes, and the occasional sweep of headlights through the intersections. Farther off, the elevated train rattled along its track before disappearing behind another row of apartments, its sound thinning into the low hum of traffic and evening settling in.

There was nothing remarkable about any of it, which was probably why Tony stayed where he was. The ordinary rhythm beyond the railing gave him something that, for once, didn’t need solving.

“Psssst.”

The sound didn’t startle him so much as pull him out of the rare quiet he’d managed to settle into. It wasn’t until the noise caught him off guard that he’d even realized his thoughts had drifted away — Tony turned his head over one shoulder, one eyebrow lifting above the dark lenses that hid his eyes.

May had leaned halfway through the open window behind him, one hand braced against the frame as she peered out from the bedroom.

“Care for some company?” she asked, half a smile pulling at her lips.

He pushed himself upright, pulling the glasses from his face and letting them hang loosely from one hand as he shifted along the narrow platform to make room for her.

“By all means,” Tony said, glancing back at her. “And at your own risk.”

May eased herself the rest of the way through the window, one hand gripping the frame while the other pressed to the brick for balance. The narrow opening forced a little more effort out of her than she expected, and she exhaled once both feet finally found the grating.

“Whew.” May straightened once she had her footing, rolling one shoulder before letting out a slow breath into the cooler air. “Gotta say, didn’t think I’d ever see you willingly choose the fire escape,” she said, glancing back at the space she’d just squeezed through, amusement tugging at her expression despite the disbelief underneath it.

Tony followed her glance to the opening, then back to where she stood. The corner of his mouth shifted faintly as she settled beside him, close enough that the little platform suddenly felt even smaller. Oddly, he didn’t mind.

“You underestimate an engineer’s willingness to fit through spaces he absolutely should not.”

May gave a quiet laugh at that, settling one hip against the railing as the wind caught a few loose strands of hair around her face. Her loosely held bun kept the rest in place, secured even against the breeze. “You and Peter have more in common than either of you likes to admit.”

“In common, maybe.” Tony lifted the sunglasses in a small gesture toward the open window, the movement carrying more acknowledgment than he probably intended, before tucking them into the inside of his light-weight jacket. “In size, he’s still got some catching up to do.”

May’s smile lingered as she folded her arms loosely against the railing.

“Well, he is only…” she made a face as her words got caught in thought, struggling in her head to do the math that finally arrived. “…five months shy of seventeen? Cut him some slack, will ya.”

Tony’s mouth pulled slightly to one side, conceding the message before his expression settled again.

“Fair point.”

For a while, neither of them said anything. They stood shoulder to shoulder against the railing, looking out as the light continued to drain from the sky. The train passed again somewhere in the distance, its rhythm folding into the low hum of traffic below, and the quiet between them felt less empty than shared.

Tony kept his gaze ahead, the last traces of sunset warming the brown of his eyes. Beside him, May shifted almost imperceptibly, but he noticed the change anyway — the way her shoulders drew in, the way her arms folded a little tighter beneath the cardigan.

The breeze moved through the trees below and sent a few loose leaves skittering along the street. Across the block, the remaining amber light faded slowly from the windows, leaving more of the neighborhood to the gathering blue.

“How is he?” May finally asked.

For someone who knew the question was coming, Tony wasn’t sure why he let the silence linger. For a moment, it just felt easier to stay in the quiet.

“Getting there.” Tony finally straightened from the railing, one hand dragging slowly over his jaw before returning to the metal. His voice came quieter this time, stripped of most of the humor he’d been leaning on. “He’s moving around more. Legs are fine. Stamina’s still shot — couple minutes up and he’s done.” His eyes stayed fixed ahead for a beat. “Two weeks in…he doesn’t realize that’s more than we could ask for.”

His eyes stayed on the street below, tracking the slow crawl of headlights without really seeing them. The words came out almost by routine, like he’d already repeated them too many times.

“We’ll check his hematocrit every couple days, make sure it stays stable while his body continues to replace what he lost.” His fingers tapped once against the metal railing. “Mostly it’s rest now. Food. Fluids. Fuel the healing factor. Keeping him from deciding he’s recovered just because he made it from the bed to the kitchen without falling over. Long as the numbers keep climbing and he doesn’t decide ‘taking it easy’ is a personal attack, he can recover from here.”

May nodded once, slow and thoughtful, but didn’t answer.

Tony let the silence stretch, his hands resting loosely against the railing while the life below filled in the space May left open. He listened to it all without really meaning to, wondering if maybe the streets were answering for him — if the distant traffic, the rattle of the train, Peter asleep just beyond the window and brick wall, and the simple fact that they were standing there at all could make the rest of it feel a little less uncertain.

“Tony.”

There was something in the way she said his name that made him turn.

May was looking directly at him.

“Really,” she said, softer now. “How is he?”

Tony’s eyes stayed on May for a second longer before dropping to the railing between his hands. His thumb dragged once along the cold metal, slow and absent, as if the answer might be easier to find there than in her face.

He knew what she was asking. She knew it, as well.

Tony had spent nearly two weeks watching Peter’s body drag itself back from somewhere it had no business returning from. Forty-three percent of his blood gone — plasma standing in for what his body couldn’t replace fast enough, and Steve following close behind with more than he should have given because there hadn’t been another choice.

Then the numbers had started moving in the right direction, one stubborn fraction at a time, until Peter had done what he always seemed to do.

Survived.

Tony knew how to follow that part. He knew what to measure — numbers, symptoms, warning signs — all of it gave him something concrete to track, something he could anticipate before it went wrong.

What he couldn’t prepare for was what came after waking up and understanding that someone had put lines into your veins and drained you nearly empty while you were still alive to feel the violation of it all.

The feeling was familiar enough that, for one unwelcome second, Afghanistan felt much closer than it had any right to.

And that hadn’t happened in isolation. It had landed on top of everything else Peter had carried through the year, one impossible thing after another. Tony had spent so long measuring success by whether Peter made it through the next impossible thing that somewhere along the way, simply surviving had started to feel like enough.

May knew better.

Deep down, so did he.

“Tired,” he finally answered, the word leaving him with the same weight it carried. A quiet breath slipped through his nose as he glanced back toward the open window behind them, toward the dim blue glow spilling from Peter’s room and against the curtains. “He’s really tired.”

Tony understood that better than he wanted to. The lull to his own words spoke the exhaustion he was too tired to acknowledge himself, the same kind that had settled into him months ago — the kind sleep didn’t fix, the kind that sank a little deeper every time the next crisis arrived before the last one had finished leaving.

Somewhere along the way, exhaustion had stopped feeling temporary and started becoming part of the rhythm of things — another weight carried forward because there had never been time to put it down.

Looking back through the window at Peter, Tony had the uneasy sense that the kid was beginning to learn that rhythm too. There was nothing he hated more than that. Not even Osborn himself.

“Has he talked about any of it?” May asked, her voice soft enough to nearly disappear into the breeze.

Speak of the devil — and these days, the phrase felt a little too literal for his own liking. Tony’s jaw tightened before he drew in a slow breath, letting the next cool breeze take some of the edge with it.

“Bits and pieces. Here and there.” Tony’s hand shifted along the railing, thumb dragging over a patch of chipped paint as he kept his attention somewhere past the buildings ahead. “Usually buried under five jokes, or brushed off like he never said anything in the first place.”

May’s mouth pulled into a small, knowing smile as she tipped her head toward him. “So…Peter.”

A faint huff of amusement left Tony, barely there. He looked down for a second, then back out over the skyline.

“Very Peter.”

He leaned farther over the railing until his forearms rested along the metal, hands hanging loose on the other side. Below, a porch light clicked on across the alley, throwing a pale square across the pavement. He eyed it for a long time, focusing on a spot that meant nothing as his thoughts kept going.

A hundred miles away, and the medbay still had a way of pulling him back. The image came easily — Peter half-lost beneath the sheets, face drained of color, still trying to move like he had more strength than he did; quickly burning through what little energy he had before he seemed to realize it was already gone. And yet, somehow, still finding the strength to blame himself for it all.

The wedding. Steve. Tony. Every consequence Osborn had left behind became something Peter tried to account for himself, folding each one into another apology as though surviving the worst of it had somehow made him responsible for what it cost everyone else.

The fight had been easier for Peter to talk about. Those memories came with motion — Quill cutting through the chaos overhead, Thor disappearing beneath the force of a hit, Tony catching him before gravity finished the job. Peter could string those moments together quickly, almost brightly, turning panic into timing and close calls into something that sounded better in hindsight than it ever had in the moment of life or death.

Give him something that moved, something he could laugh about afterward, and the words came without much resistance.

Tony had learned not to mistake the volume of everything else for openness. Sometimes the loudest parts were just what Peter used to keep the quieter ones out of reach.

“He’s not shutting down,” Tony let the words sit for a beat, his fingers still curled loosely over the railing before he went on. “He’s still eating, he’s still talking — still texting everybody. Still somehow making it sound like there should’ve been a camera crew there for all of it when he gets into the nitty gritty of it.” One corner of his mouth tugged upward, faint and tired. “Still Peter.”

Beside him, May’s shoulders eased by a fraction. Her grip on the railing loosened, and for the first time since she’d asked, some of the tension left her face.

“But?”

Tony let out a slow breath, watching it disappear into the cooler air before his hands folded together against the railing.

“But he’s had a hell of a year.”

Sixteen still felt close enough that Tony could picture it without trying — the belated party, the lounge louder than it had any right to be, the ridiculous games all six grown adults partook in — all while Peter found himself caught somewhere between mortified and completely overjoyed that the heroes he’d grown up admiring helped make up for the birthday he never really got to have.

Tony still remembered how young he had looked in the middle of it all, even after everything he had already survived by then.

Now seventeen was only months away.

Somehow, that felt wrong. Like the year had moved faster than Peter had been allowed to.

“So have you.” May’s voice pulled him back before the thought could settle any deeper.

Tony glanced toward her, then let his attention drift past the fire escape to the neighboring windows and laundry lines strung between buildings. His shoulders sank a fraction as he rested more of his weight against the railing.

“Yeah, well.” His thumb rubbed once over the edge of his knuckle. “I’ve had more practice with all this.”

May turned toward him fully now, cardigan shifting in the breeze as she studied his profile.

“That doesn’t make you better at it,” she said with a smirk.

Tony’s mouth pulled faintly to one side. He looked down at his hands, let the silence sit, then gave the smallest nod.

“No,” he admitted. “Apparently not.”

The breeze pushed through the narrow space between the buildings, carrying the muffled sounds of traffic and voices up from the street. Somewhere below, a horn sounded twice before another answered it.

May tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Is he safe here?”

There it was. Her question settled differently than the others had, and Tony went still for half a second, the easy posture leaving his shoulders as his attention stayed fixed somewhere beyond the neighboring buildings.

“Safer than he is anywhere else I can put him right now,” he managed.

May studied him instead of the view. The answer sat between them long enough for its shape to become obvious, and her expression shifted with it — not accusatory, just unconvinced.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Tony’s mouth tightened faintly. He looked down, then away again, as though buying himself another second.

“I know.”

For a moment, he kept his gaze forward, retreating into the thoughts he hadn’t put into words — the memories of steel groaning somewhere beneath black water in the Atlantic Ocean, the unforgiving sight of black tendrils crawling and consuming all over human skin, all the way to a monster with green flesh stretched over a body too large, too twisted, and too far gone to resemble the man underneath.

And after all of it, Tony still couldn’t escape the sense that every protection he built only ever arrived in time for the aftermath.

“I’ve got Stark tech threaded through the entire block. Anything gets too close, the whole place lights up like a Christmas tree — just considerably less festive.” Tony still went on to say, though the usual confidence behind the words had hollowed out somewhere along the way. “And if something somehow gets past all that, it gets me.”

“Tony—”

“—I’m not gonna tell you zero.”

The admission came flatter than he meant it to. He shifted his weight and looked past her for a second, jaw working once as if the rest of the sentence had gotten caught there. He knew how much easier it would be to give her a clean answer. He also knew better than to insult either of them with one.

May held his gaze.

For a few seconds, neither of them moved. The breeze tugged lightly at the edge of her cardigan and lifted a few loose strands of hair near her temple, but she stayed fixed on him.

Tony understood the look. She wasn’t asking for comfort anymore. She was asking for the truth.

“Zero doesn’t exist,” he continued. “Not here. Not at the Compound. Not with me standing six feet away from him in a suit.” His expression hardened slightly, not with anger so much as resignation. “Learned that one enough times this year to stop pretending otherwise.”

May’s expression tightened at that, the weight of the answer settling in slowly. After a moment, she gave a small nod — not because she liked it, Tony could tell.

But because she believed him.

“If anything changes?”

“You’ll be the first to know before I finish finding my shoes.” Tony answered without hesitation this time, the certainty coming easier when it was something he could actually promise.

That pulled a small breath of laughter from May, quiet and brief, but enough to loosen something in the air between them. Her shoulders dropped a little, and one hand disappeared into the sleeve of her cardigan against the cold, her fingers curling into the fabric as if holding onto the warmth.

“Good,” she said.

Tony turned his head toward her, one eyebrow lifting as if the answer had somehow come up short. For all the tension that had been sitting between them, some part of him had apparently prepared for more.

“That’s it?”

May looked back at him, the corner of her mouth still curved, amusement settling more comfortably into her expression now. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know.” Tony shifted, one hand brushing absently over the front of his jacket while the other dropped loose at his side. “More questions. Mild interrogation. Threats involving my kidney.”

May looked at him for a beat, the corners of her mouth lifting faintly. “I’ve already threatened you enough this year.”

Tony’s gaze dipped for a second, while the response came without effort. “Debatable.”

May let the exchange settle, the lightness of it lingering for only a beat before something quieter took its place. Her attention slipped past Tony toward the open window and the dim blue wash beyond it.

Peter hadn’t moved. Somewhere beneath the pile of blankets, only the crown of his beanie remained visible, his face turned toward the wall as he slept.

“He needs this.” The words came softly, without the edge that had been there before. May drew her cardigan a little closer around herself, eyes fixed ahead as though the answer were somewhere in the clutter she saw — the old furniture, the broken laptop, the familiar mess of a life that existed long before any of them had started trying to save it.

Tony followed her gaze.

For a second, he said nothing. The sight of Peter there, folded into a bed too small for everything he had been through, struck him differently than the medbay ever had.

“Yeah…” his voice carried away.

For a moment, they simply stood there together, both looking through the open window at the small room beyond it.

“You know…” May shifted on her feet, her expression easing into something more distant and familiar, “he’s always done this.”

Tony glanced toward her, the shift subtle enough that the rest of him barely moved. The tiredness in his face gave way to a flicker of curiosity.

“What’s that? Sleep like the dead?” One eyebrow lifted. “I assumed it was a recent development.”

May softened at the joke, though she kept her attention on the room.

“No,” she said instead, pausing for a beat. “Collect people.”

His brow rose a little higher.

May turned around fully, settling her back against the fire escape railing, folding her arms loosely as her gaze drifted somewhere past Tony — caught more in the memory than the view.

“When he was little, every kid sitting alone somehow became Peter’s problem. New kid at school, kid nobody wanted on their team, somebody who forgot their lunch — didn’t matter. Give him twenty minutes and suddenly we were hearing about them over dinner.”

Tony looked through the window again, the corner of his mouth pulling faintly upward.

“So this is a longstanding condition.”

“Afraid so.”

“Explains the repeat offenses.” Tony gave a faint huff through his nose, then pushed himself upright and turned, settling his back against the fire escape railing beside her.

From there, both of them faced the window instead of the neighborhood beyond it, the last of the sun nearly gone into the night, leaving Peter’s room framed mostly by the muted blue glow of Stark technology that looked strangely out of place among the ordinary clutter.

May chuckled softly, the sound carrying a little easier now that the worst of the conversation had passed.

“Ben used to say Peter never met a stranger. Just people he hadn’t bothered long enough yet.” She tipped her head back against the metal behind her, eyes still fixed on the room across from them.

Tony’s mouth pulled at one corner, the line landing somewhere warmer than he expected. “That I believe.”

“He brought home a stray cat once.”

“Of course he did.” Tony’s eyes stayed on the window.

“Then another one.”

That earned a slow nod, like the escalation had somehow made the story more credible. “Less surprising.”

May let the pause hang just long enough.

“Then the first cat’s owner.”

Tony finally turned his head.

May finally looked at him, fighting the smile that had already started pulling at her mouth. “Peter found the number on the collar. The woman came to pick him up, she was probably seventy, lived alone a few blocks over.” Her shoulders lifted faintly. “Peter decided she looked lonely.”

A beat passed while Tony stared at her, expression caught somewhere between disbelief and inevitability.

“Please tell me he didn’t adopt the owner,” he finally got out.

“Christmas card every year until she moved to Florida.” May smirked.

Tony looked back through the window, lips parting slightly as if he had a response prepared and then thought better of it.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

His gaze settled on the pile of blankets again.

“Kid’s a menace.”

“The worst.”

For a moment, the joke stayed with them, the kind of small, easy warmth that belonged to a life neither of them had been able to hold onto for very long lately.

May’s smile faded first. Her attention dropped toward her hands, where one thumb rubbed absently over the edge of her sleeve.

“He doesn’t know he does it.”

Tony looked over, the humor easing out of his face.

“The people thing,” she clarified. “He never has.” May glanced back toward the room. “Peter doesn’t sit around thinking about whether somebody deserves his time. He just sees somebody who needs it and…” She gave a small shrug, almost helpless in its familiarity. “There he goes.”

Tony’s gaze returned to the bed.

Inside, Peter remained buried beneath the blankets, completely still. His beanie sat crooked over one ear, a few curls escaping along his forehead, and even asleep there was something heavy in the way he’d folded into himself, as though his body had simply run out of anything left to give. Tony watched from beside May, both of them facing the room in the quiet blue light.

Something in her expression changed — not sharply, but enough that Tony noticed. The fondness remained, only now it carried something heavier beneath it.

“I worry he’s forgotten that,” she said, her voice quiet enough that the breeze nearly carried it off.

The words caught Tony somewhere he hadn’t expected. His attention stayed on Peter for another moment, on the small rise and fall beneath the blankets, while May’s meaning settled into place.

Peter had spent so much of the year reaching for everyone else — apologizing, fixing, worrying, finding ways to carry pieces that had never belonged to him in the first place…

He looked at her.

May kept her eyes through the window, but the memories had pulled her farther away than the few feet between them. Tony could see it in the stillness of her face, in the way she seemed to be looking at the sixteen-year-old asleep there and every younger version of him at once.

“He’s always cared about being good. That’s Peter.” Her brow pulled together faintly, the words careful as she searched for the difference she was trying to name. “But lately it feels different.”

One hand slipped beneath the opposite sleeve of her cardigan, more for something to hold than for warmth.

“It used to be something he just was.” May hugged the fold of her arms tight against her chest. “Now sometimes I hear him talk and it sounds like being good is something he thinks he has to keep proving.”

Tony said nothing. He stayed beside her with his shoulders against the railing, watching the same small room without really seeing it anymore. The sentence had already found somewhere uncomfortable to land.

The breeze moved through the open window and lifted the curtain between them and the room, briefly obscuring Peter before letting him back into view. Tony watched the fabric settle again, something in his chest tightening with it.

“He screws something up, somebody gets hurt, something happens that he couldn’t possibly have controlled…” May shook her head, frustration softening into something sadder. “And suddenly he’s promising me he’ll do better. That he’ll be better.”

Tony’s eyes lowered. He had heard it too, though Peter rarely said it plainly. It lived in the apologies. In the way every mistake became a debt. In the way surviving something somehow turned into a promise to deserve having survived it.

The words dragged another voice up with them, younger and thinner, carrying more weight than it had known what to do with.

Tony’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

The answer came back with it just as clearly, sharp enough that even now Tony felt the edge of it. Standing there now, with Peter asleep in the room ahead of him and an entire year sitting between those two sentences, Tony wasn’t sure which one had followed the kid further.

He had watched Peter work in one form or another for almost as long as he had known him. A fight he couldn’t win became proof he wasn't ready. Someone pulling him out became something he should have handled himself. Every mistake demanded another improvement, every scar another lesson, every close call something Peter could have prevented if he’d only been faster, smarter—

Better.

And less than two weeks ago, Tony had sat beside another hospital bed and listened to him do it again.

Norman had followed him. Norman had taken him. Norman had strapped him to a table and drained nearly all the blood from his body — and somehow, after Peter had turned the whole thing over enough times in his head, he had still managed to find somewhere to put himself in the chain of blame.

Tony had told him then. None of that was his fault. At the time, he’d thought Peter needed to hear it because of Norman.

Standing beside May now, Tony wasn’t so sure Osborn had been the beginning of anything.

May glanced at him; Tony didn’t meet her eyes right away. He stayed where he was with his back against the railing, shoulders drawn in slightly as one hand slipped into the pocket of his jacket and the other rested loose at his side, his posture going still in that familiar way it did when the answer mattered more than he wanted it to.

“You’ve seen it.” May’s words came gently, without accusation.

Tony’s fingers curled once inside his pocket. There wasn’t much use pretending otherwise. Too many conversations came back at once — apologies dressed up as jokes, promises Tony hadn’t asked for, the way Peter could turn almost anything into evidence against himself if given enough time.

He let out a slow breath through his nose. For a moment, the only movement between them came from the curtain lifting and settling in the window, the soft blue light shifting across the room with it.

“Yeah.”

The answer was quiet, but it was enough. May watched him for another beat, reading the strain left unguarded on his face without the glasses there to hide it, her expression sharpening slightly as the meaning settled in.

“How long?”

Tony’s attention stayed on the room ahead of them, but the question pulled him inward. His shoulders shifted slightly against the metal behind him, and one foot scraped once against the grating before going still again.

He considered that.

“A while.”

May nodded faintly, though the movement carried no relief. Her eyes dropped for a second before returning to Peter, the crease between her brows deepening as if the answer had only widened the thing she had been trying not to name.

“I don’t know where he got the idea that he has to keep earning it.”

Tony looked through the window again. Peter slept on, oblivious to either of them, curled into himself beneath the blankets with one hand tucked somewhere beneath the pillow. The sight of him made the question feel heavier than it had a second ago.

“World’s got a pretty aggressive performance review for him going on these days.” Tony exhaled softly, the answer coming out with the dry edge he usually reached for when there wasn’t a better one.

“Not helping.” May’s look lingered for another second before easing. She shifted against the railing, one hand tugging at the sleeve of her cardigan as Tony tipped his head back and let out a tired breath through his nose.

“Wasn’t meant to.”

For a beat, neither of them moved. May’s eyes stayed on him just long enough to catch the weight beneath the answer before she turned back toward the room.

“I know.” May pulled her arms a little tighter around herself, the cardigan bunching beneath her hands as the cold settled in around them. Her gaze stayed forward, but some of the tension in her face eased now that the thought was finally out in the open. “I just want him to know he doesn’t have to become some better version of himself every time something bad happens. He’s already good.”

This time Tony looked at her. Something in the simplicity of it caught him off guard.

“He was good before the Avengers. He was good before Spider-Man. Before any of this.” May’s expression was soft, but there was certainty behind it now, the kind that came from knowing Peter long before any of the rest of them had. She nodded faintly toward the sleeping boy beyond the window. “I just wish he’d believe everybody when we tell him that.”

Tony was quiet. He stood with the thought, shoulders resting against the metal behind him, eyes lowered just slightly as though measuring his answer before giving it away.

Then his attention returned to Peter, watching the slow rise of his breath beneath the blankets for another second before his shoulders sank with a quiet breath of his own.

“Been working on it.” There was no defensiveness in the answer. If anything, it sounded tired.

May studied him for a second. A faint smile touched her mouth, small and knowing, and Tony caught the look without turning fully toward her.

“I know,” she said.

Something in his posture eased at the answer. No explanation followed, and May didn’t seem to need one. The silence that settled between them afterward felt lighter for it, no longer asking either of them to fill it.

May looked through the window again, taking in the small bedroom on the other side. The unfinished schoolwork. Clothes that hadn’t quite found their way into drawers. Peter’s phone buried somewhere beneath enough blankets to qualify as excavation work. None of it was particularly remarkable.

“At least here he doesn’t have to be anything.” May pushed away from the railing and rested one shoulder against the brick beside the window, her arms loosening around herself as she took in the ordinary clutter.

Tony stayed against the railing a step away, his gaze wandering over the same familiar mess.

A breeze found its way through the open window, stirring the curtain and lifting a few loose pages along the desk before letting them settle again. May watched the room respond around Peter in those small, familiar ways, her gaze lingering on him for another beat as something in her expression softened.

“Thank you for bringing him home,” she all but whispered.

Tony’s expression quieted at that. His eyes dipped briefly toward the grating beneath his shoes before lifting again, the gratitude landing with more weight than the simple sentence should have carried.

“Yeah.” The answer came quietly. He shifted against the metal behind him, one hand slipping free from his pocket as his fingers flexed once at his side.

Bringing Peter back here had felt less like a decision and more like something that was drastically overdue.

May looked at him, but he kept his attention ahead, the blue light catching along the tired lines beneath his eyes as he watched Peter sleep, his expression softening by degrees.

Tony let another moment pass.

“He needs this,” he quietly agreed.

The words felt considerably more tangible now than they had back at the Compound. There, normal had been something they talked about like a treatment plan — a stretch of time without missions, without medbay alarms, without another crisis waiting just beyond the next door.

Here, it looked different.

This wasn’t some abstract idea of normalcy Tony could build for him. It was a cramped bedroom with too many books. Homework waiting unfinished. Friends occupying a phone somewhere beneath the blankets. A kitchen stocked with enough stress-baked cookies to violate several dietary recommendations. A broken elevator downstairs and a fire escape Tony remained reasonably certain hadn’t passed an inspection since the Nixon administration.

Nothing extraordinary.

His eyes moved slowly over the room again — the mess, the homework, the worn edges of things that had been used too long and kept anyway — it all felt more important than anything he could have ever engineered into place.

That was why it mattered.

May pushed away from the brick and stepped back beside him.

“Don’t stay out here too long.” She nudged his shoulder gently with hers before reaching for the open window, one hand catching the frame as she shifted her weight forward. The gesture was small, almost absent, but familiar enough to carry the rest of what she didn’t say.

Tony finally looked away from the room long enough to glance around at the narrow platform beneath them, then down at the aging grating under his shoes.

“Don’t worry.” One corner of his mouth pulled faintly upward. “Pretty sure the building’s eventually going to make that decision for me.”

May shook her head, smiling as she carefully maneuvered herself through the opening, one knee finding the sill as she shifted her weight through.

“Goodnight, Tony.”

He watched until she had both feet safely on the other side.

“Goodnight, May.”

She disappeared inside.

Tony lingered where he was.

The curtain lifted in her wake and brushed softly against the frame before falling back into place. Through the opening, May crossed the bedroom without turning on another light, pausing beside the lower bunk long enough to bend and press a kiss to Peter’s forehead. He shifted faintly beneath the blankets, more instinct than waking, and she smoothed the edge of his beanie before moving toward the door.

A warmer glow waited beyond the bedroom. Happy stood near the couch gathering two abandoned mugs from the coffee table, and May said something as she approached that disappeared somewhere between the living room and the open window.

For another second, Tony kept looking through the window.

Then he turned away.

The neighborhood had changed with the last of the daylight. Brick facades had flattened into deeper shades against the evening, water towers standing dark above the surrounding roofs while scattered apartments began glowing from within. Headlights slipped through the intersections several stories below. Somewhere down the block, a horn sounded and went unanswered while a dog barked from an open window farther along, and music wandered briefly out over the street before the breeze carried it elsewhere.

None of it asked anything from him.

For weeks, nearly everything Tony looked at had been filtered through the same question. Satellite imagery, security footage, facial-recognition sweeps, corporate records — one monitor after another turned toward the same missing man, each new piece of information judged by whether it brought Norman Osborn any closer to him.

Here, there wasn’t a monitor in front of him. No satellite feeds washing continents in data. No facial-recognition software combing through crowds.

Tony glanced through the open window one last time.

Peter remained deeply asleep, curled beneath the blankets with the beanie covering his head, the muted glow from the arc reactor housing unit spilling across the room and catching along the edge of his face. The light softened the exhaustion there into something younger, almost untouched.

Tony watched him breathe for another moment, letting the steady rise and fall register somewhere deeper than any readout could reach.

Then he turned his attention outward again, toward the rooftops beyond the fire escape. Somewhere below, a car rolled through the intersection; farther off, the elevated train rattled briefly between buildings before fading into the surrounding hush.

For weeks, his attention had stretched outward in every direction, searching skylines, reports, cameras, satellites — anything that might tell him where in the world Norman Osborn would surface next.

Tonight, he looked at Queens instead.

And for now, Peter’s world was enough.