Chapter Text
Peter has worn a variety of different suits in his time. He vaguely remembers being dressed up in a tiny suit for his aunt and uncle's wedding, years and years ago. He remembers, more recently, wearing Ben's old suit to homecoming; and, of course, there's the Spider-Man suit and its iron cousin.
This particular suit, though, all-black and stiffly uncomfortable, is the only one that's ever felt wrong to wear.
It's a stark reminder that something is missing, something he'll never get back. It doesn't feel real that he's standing here, watching Tony's wreath float away from them, knowing his mentor - his dad - is dead. They were supposed to have more time. Pepper and May and Happy are here, familiar faces, as well as the rest of the original Avengers, but Peter can see Tony's daughter from where he's standing. She's a visual reminder that it's been five years since Thanos killed half the world: five years since he died in Tony's arms.
It feels like five minutes since Tony died in Peter's.
A weird sense of numbness steals over him as he watches the wreath drift further and further away. The feeling of May's hand on his shoulder is fading, and it's like Peter is underwater. He can barely hear Pepper speaking about Tony, much less the eulogies that follow. His gaze is fixed; it's like his head is empty. Peter recognizes the feeling, that soul-stealing loneliness, from when Ben died. He should have realized it was inevitable he'd feel it again.
After the wreath finally disappears into the horizon, the mourners start returning inside. May gives his shoulder a squeeze before she heads in with them, telling Peter to stay if he needs to. When she leaves, he looks round to see the deck has almost emptied of people. He takes a step forward, to the edge, looking out towards the wreath that's still moving away from him. He wishes he could reach out and grab it, bring Tony back with the sheer force of his will. Instead, he sits down on the wood and dangles his feet over the edge. His dress shoes brush the top of the water, the toes likely getting wet. He couldn't care less. Right now, he doesn't particularly care about anything.
"Hey," comes a voice, and Peter looks up to see a curly-haired teen similar to his own age standing over him. "Can I sit?"
Peter nods, then realizes he probably needs to answer verbally. "Y-yeah. Sure."
"Thanks." The boy gets down beside him, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his arms on top. "I'm Harley," he offers.
"I'm Peter," Peter answers. "It's, uh... nice to meet you."
Harley lets out a humorless laugh. "Yeah. Could be under better circumstances, though."
Peter blinks, hating the heat that rises in his cheeks. He's too tired to cry, though, now. "Could be."
"He talked about you a lot," Harley says, and Peter turns to look at him.
"Huh?"
"Tony. Talked about you all the time. He really loved you, y'know? You could tell. He wouldn't shut up about you," Harley continues. "At least in the time before I got Snapped, anyway."
Peter's brow furrows slightly. "Oh. How did you, uh...?"
"Know him?" Harley completes. "Met him in Tennessee. Helped him with the -"
"- Mandarin," Peter finishes. "You're that Harley."
Harley looks slightly amused. "Yeah, clearly. I mean... how many Harleys do you think he knows?"
Peter huffs. "I don't know. It's been a long day."
That kills the humor, because Harley's smile fades. "Yeah. Yeah, it has."
"He talked about you, too," Peter offers. "When we were working in the lab, he kept saying what you guys got up to. He, uh... I think he was going to try getting us to meet, before... all this." Peter waves his hand vaguely in the air, trying to encompass everything that happened without having to actually acknowledge it. The Snap. The Vanished. Tony dying.
"I don't think so," Harley counters. "He told me if we ever met we'd probably blow ourselves up, so it was best to keep us at opposite ends of the States."
Peter laughs, despite himself. "Yeah, that sounds accurate too."
"We haven't exploded anythin', though, so..." Harley makes a pfft sound with the corner of his mouth, looking away. "Don't know what the fuss was about."
"We haven't exploded anything yet," Peter corrects. "Could still happen."
"Very true," Harley says, tilting a finger at him. "You want to try?"
Peter's about to reply when there's a scuffing noise behind him, and he twists to see Tony's daughter standing there, looking slightly like a rabbit in headlights. Morgan.
"Hi," she says quietly, waving faintly.
"Hey," Harley replies, and gives her a small smile. "You're Morgan, right?"
She nods.
"It's nice to meet you, Morgan. I'm Peter," Peter tells her.
"I know," Morgan says, slightly shyly. "Daddy talked about you all the time. And that's Harley," she adds, as if to prove her point, and Harley makes a choking noise and a muffled swear.
He stands, and Peter squints up at him, trying to ignore the bright sun above them. "I, uh... I'm goin' to head inside. Yeah." Harley claps his hands slightly, straightening up, and walks away. Peter can hear the slightly unsteady clip of his shoes on the deck.
Morgan comes up next to him, and Peter's suddenly hyper-aware of how small and close to the water she is. He throws out a hand on instinct as she wobbles before sitting down with a thump, legs swinging over the edge. She turns to beam at him, and it's like someone's hit Peter in the stomach. She looks exactly like Tony; her eyes are the exact same brown, her smile identical, though she's still so small. The air leaves Peter's lungs for a moment, and he struggles to breathe. He clenches his fists, looking out to the horizon past the water. He can't freak Morgan out.
"Did I make him sad?" comes a small voice, and Peter turns back to Morgan to see her looking up at him with worried eyes.
"No," Peter tells her, shaking his head. "No, he's just... he was sad already."
"Oh," Morgan says. "Is it because of Daddy?"
Peter swallows. "Yeah."
Morgan is silent, then, for several long moments. After a pause, she asks, "Are you Spider-Man?"
Peter nods, uncertain. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I am."
Morgan looks back out to the water pensively, like he's handed her another clue to some unknown equation. "Are you going to save my dad?"
Peter takes in a breath, because her tone is so full of hope that it feels like his heart's being crushed all over again. "No, I'm not," he says heavily, willing himself to not cry. Tony's daughter is four and she's holding it together; he can too.
Morgan frowns. "Why not?"
Peter blinks back the rising wetness in his eyes, and turns to face her. "I can't, Morgan. I'm... I'm so sorry."
"You can," she argues. "It's easy."
"Morgan, I -"
"You just have to follow the instructions," she carries on, and Peter freezes.
"What?"
She falters, looking confused.
"What instructions?" Peter asks.
Morgan blinks up at him. "Daddy left instructions for the time stuff. In case they had to do it without him. You can use them to save him."
Peter's heart thumps in his ears. "Where?"
She twists round, pointing a small finger back towards the house. "In there. In case the other place got broken."
"Can you show me?" Peter asks softly, hardly daring to raise his voice.
Morgan nods, and pushes herself to her feet. "This way!"
She grabs his hand, surprisingly strong, and Peter stumbles as she tugs and nearly sends him sprawling. Morgan leads him in and up the stairs, holding on to the kid-sized handrail lining the stairs as she goes up, and then she drags him left at the top. They come to a stop in front of a closed door, and she reaches up to push the doorhandle open. The door swings away, Morgan half-skipping inside, and suddenly Peter is staring into what looks almost exactly like his room in the Compound. It's even got the same decor, Star Wars posters littering the walls and small figurines dotted around on the desk. He freezes, aghast, heart aching, in the doorway. Morgan notices, because she slows down and comes back towards him.
"Daddy always said you were still in our family," she says, looking up with those hauntingly-familiar eyes, and Peter nearly starts crying on the spot. His eyes burn, and the world goes wavy through the tears in his eyes for a second.
"Really?" Peter whispers.
Morgan nods decisively. "Yep. Always."
"You know, you're... you're weirdly perceptive for a four-year-old," Peter says, slightly hoarsely.
Morgan nods. "Daddy said that, too."
"Thanks, Morgan," Peter tells her. She gives him a wide smile in return, and snatches his hand again.
"C'mon!"
Morgan tugs him over to the corner, where there's a small, wooden box sitting on top of the end table. It's perfectly rectangular, with a small clasp at the front. Peter assumes it's to keep Morgan out, but the effectiveness of the clasp gets called into question as she starts balancing on her tiptoes to reach it. Her tongue sticks out of the corner of her mouth, and Peter knows he would find the sight hilarious if not for the scenario he's trapped in. Morgan bats at the box and it slides closer to the edge, where she grabs the clasp and flicks it upwards.
"Open it!" she tells him, turning and pointing at the box.
Peter steps over and opens the smooth lid gently. Light shines out from within as he does so, and then it's fully open and there's a flash drive plugged in to a metal rectangle in the middle of the box. A ring of light illuminates the bottom, red, seemingly emitted from the rows of red tubing arranged in rows around the drive.
"What is it?" Morgan asks.
Peter unplugs the drive, and brings it closer to show her. "It's a flash drive," he says. "And... weird stuff."
"Are you going to see what's on it?" she questions.
"Yeah, we are," comes a voice. Peter jerks and spins, nearly dropping the flash drive. Harley straightens from where he's been standing, leaning against the doorframe, watching them. "We're gonna get him back."
Peter takes a breath. "We don't know that." The hope trying to take root in his heart is painful, weighing heavy with the pain in his chest. He doesn't know if he can let himself believe Harley, if he turns out to be wrong. "How long have you been there?"
Harley shrugs, coming closer. "Yeah, we do," he says. "We go back in time like they all did before," he explains, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, "and this time we save him. And not long, but I overheard y'all earlier, by the way. I know it's about the time machine."
"We don't have any way of doing that," Peter argues.
"Build it!" Morgan pipes up, voice bright, and Harley raises an eyebrow.
"Yeah, build it," he agrees. Peter opens his mouth to protest, but Harley holds up his hands. "We can, Peter. I build stuff all the time. I helped him fix his suit in Tennessee, you know that?"
"I helped him too," Peter mutters, childishly, and Harley makes a wild gesture with his hands.
"Exactly! We both know how to build shit."
Morgan looks up at Harley then, suddenly, and Peter makes a face at him. "Don't swear in front of her!" he whispers loudly, and Harley grins a little.
"We know whose daughter she is," he says. "She knows worse than that."
"Yeah," Morgan agrees happily.
Peter rolls his eyes. "Okay, okay. But, Harley, we're... we're still nowhere near as smart as he is." A bolt of ice shoots down his spine. "W-was. As he was," he corrects.
"You are!" Morgan protests, and tugs on Peter's sleeve. "You built your - pew-pew things," she says, making twin thwip movements with her hands, snapping her fingers to her palms clumsily.
Harley's eyes narrow then, and Peter freezes. "Uh," he says eloquently.
"You're Spider-Man?" Harley asks, slightly breathless.
Peter rubs the back of his neck, feeling his face heat up. "Yeah," he says, after a pause.
"That's perfect. We can definitely do this, Peter. And can't never could, y'know? We gotta try."
"Let's... let's look at the flash drive, first," Peter says. He still can't bring himself to let his hopes rise up. The likelihood is that this pipe dream of saving Tony is just that, and he's going to hurt even more if he lets himself believe it's not.
"Use that," Morgan says, pointing across the room to a StarkPad sitting on the wooden desk. Peter swallows.
Harley strides over and boots it up, holding out his hand for the drive as he sits. Peter hands it over, and the other boy plugs it in to the side of the computer. Peter leans over Harley's shoulder, Morgan on the other side of him, to see the screen as Harley opens the drive up. A folder opens, full of files.
"Aight," Harley murmurs, scrolling through them. "Let's see what we got."
The first few files Harley opens are schematics, blueprints and guides on how to operate and build the time travel machine. They're incredibly comprehensive, some pages littered with Tony's characteristic shorthand.
"This is it!" Harley says, sounding ecstatic. "Hell, this is everything we need. All we got to do now is -"
He clicks another file, and cuts off as a long text document opens up in front of them. Peter reads the title, and his spider-sense sparks dully in the back of his mind.
DANGERS
It's a terrifyingly long list, most items consisting of getting lost or being stuck between realities. Peter gets colder with every line he reads, and, from Harley's muffled swearing, he feels the same way.
This is a LAST RESORT, the document reads, underlined in bolded font. DO NOT use this equipment unless absolutely necessary.
"Hell," Harley mutters.
"What is it?" Morgan asks, voice small, though nobody answers her.
Peter keeps reading, eyes roving over the text. De-aging. Rupturing the continuum. Irreversibly altering space-time. The warnings continue on and on, finally ending with a short paragraph about how Tony has no way of listing the dangers comprehensively, so there could be thousands of even worse possibilities. Suddenly, Peter realizes why nobody except Morgan has suggested this before; they all know it's too dangerous a route to take. He doesn't doubt that the Avengers know of this box (otherwise, how would they have used it?) but the danger, for them, isn't worth it.
"Let's do it," Peter says suddenly, surprising himself.
Harley twists in his seat. "What?"
"Let's do it," he repeats. "This doesn't change anything. We knew it wasn't going to be easy, right? But - but it's worth it."
Slowly, Harley's face spreads into a grin. It's different from the previous one's Peter's seen, though; this one is warm, and genuine. "It really is," he says.
"So are you gonna save him now?" Morgan asks, voice small.
Peter smiles down at her. "Yeah, Mor. We are."
Unanimously, Peter and Harley decide not to share their plan with anyone else. The Avengers would stop them and Pepper would probably skin them for even suggesting it, so they vow to keep it to themselves. After the funeral is over, the Avengers filtering away to wherever they're headed next, Pepper comes up to both of them and hugs them tightly.
"Thank you for coming," she tells them. "You both have a place here, forever, okay? Keep in touch."
"We will," Harley says, voice solemn.
"Do you have somewhere to stay?" Pepper asks him, disentangling herself from the hug as they all take a small step away. "Or are you heading home?"
"No, I'm stayin' in New York for a bit," Harley answers, then hesitates.
May must sense the lie about to come, because she makes a small head movement and then Pepper is following her out of the room.
"Huh?" Harley's nose scrunches up, craning his neck to see them.
"Ssh," Peter says quickly, and closes his eyes to focus on his hearing. May's voice floats through the room faintly.
"They've been stuck together since they met each other," he hears May saying. Someone makes a noise of agreement, presumably Pepper. "If they need each other's support right now, then... that's what they'll have."
"Thank you, May. For everything," Pepper tells her. "He'd be so grateful."
"It's nothing," May says, voice going slightly muffled. Peter guesses they're hugging. "Take care of yourself, and text me whenever you need to. I'd be happy to help with Morgan whenever, too."
"Thank you so much," Pepper repeats.
"We should probably get back to them," May points out, and then they're walking back through the doorway and Peter tries to look like he wasn't listening. The raised eyebrow May shoots him suggests he's failed.
"Everything alright?" Harley asks, and May gives him a smile.
"It is," she says. "Harley, would you like to come back to Queens with Peter and I?"
Everyone swivels to look at Harley, and Peter feels his face slacken with shock. He wasn't expecting that.
"Uh," Harley blurts, "really?"
May nods. "Yup."
"Ma'am, that would... that would be great," he says honestly. "Thank you."
May squeezes his arm, giving him a smile. "It's no problem, Harley. You're family, now, anyway."
Peter guesses she's right, actually. It was Tony that linked them all, but ironically it's only now he's gone that they've all been brought together. They make a weird family, two moms and three unrelated kids, but Morgan, Pepper and Harley are his last links to Tony. He wants them to stick around, and he supposes they feel the same way.
"Will you come back soon?" comes a small voice, and Peter glances down to see Morgan looking up at both of them, bottom lip trembling. "Please?"
Peter drops down to his knees, on her level. "Hey, hey, don't cry," he says, when her eyes start filling up. "We'll come back. I promise."
"Daddy promised," she whispers, and Peter feels his heart shatter further than he knew was possible.
"Oh, Morgan," he says, and then she's hugging him tightly and his arms are around her. "It's okay, Mor. I'll come back, I will."
"Me too," Harley says, crouching down to the floor. "We'll all come back, okay?"
Peter lets go of Morgan with one arm, beckoning Harley into the hug, and then all six of their arms are tangled around each other on the floor. Morgan's in the middle, Peter and Harley on either side like guardians, and she's sniffling softly. Peter hugs her tighter.
They stay like that long after Pepper and May have left to give them a little more privacy.