Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

The Three Week Reunion

Spooktober 05: Collapse

It's been three weeks.

Three weeks since Avengers Compound replaced the dust of the people who had died. Three weeks since he held his trembling kid in his arms after five years of agonizing grief. Three weeks since he heard his voice and cried. Three weeks since Tony looked death in the eyes for not the first time and not for the last, and snapped his fingers.

Three weeks since he was rushed to an emergency hospital on a stretcher carried by the fastest heroes in the universe. Three weeks since he almost lost his life for the second time in a day bleeding out on an operation table while doctors scream around him. Three weeks since he made it.

After the incident first happened, after the surgery, it had taken two full weeks of a medically-induced coma for Tony to heal even the slightest bit. Apparently, it had been very tough-and-go for a long time, and there were debates on whether or not he would make it at all, even after all of this.

But the Starks were stronger than iron, as one would say. (One could argue that Tungsten was a better metal to use this metaphor with, considering the tensile strength is nearly four times as much as that of iron. But iron was for the use of mechanics, and Tony Stark is nothing if not the best mechanic out there. Also, picking apart metaphors is not the point anyways.) Tony kicked death again by sheer force of will. He made it through the surgery, and the coma, and after an extra week of sleeping on-and-off for hours per day, he finally was welcomed with the very mortal feeling of being awake and bored.

Tony hates hospitals. He's always hated being still for too long, whether that be in a meeting or a court room or just sitting in his house. The linoleum lights were harsh on his eyes, they reminded him of a place he hadn't been since 2008 and purposefully never looked back on afterwards.

Hospitals had few exceptions to being good. For example, the birth of his daughter. Pepper had insisted on it being at a hospital the day her water broke, despite them looking into alternatives before hand. Tony drove like a bat out of hell, pale face and wide eyes, and bickered with Pepper the whole way there to try and distract himself from the way she held his hand in a tight grip.

It was all worth it in the end though, to cradle the most intimate part of his soul in his arms as she cried and squirmed in the dawn of a new day. Tony wept and kissed her forehead. Baby Morgan, sweet Morgan, little light of his eyes with her mother's dimples. Hospitals were worth it for her.

So now, his entire side bandaged more than a mummy and his left arm pointedly being a lack-there-of, he sat still. For Morgan, he thought. For Morgan, for Pep, for Rhodes, and for—

...

The kid's first visit to the hospital that Tony was conscious for was three weeks and one day into the ordeal. After so much sleep, pain meds, hallucinations, and fever dreams; seeing the kid he had been missing for five years (FIVE YEARS) standing timidly at the window outside his room nearly had him wiping his eyes to check if the kid was even real at all.

Tony raises his right arm weakly, feeling the pain explode through his chest in a riptide. As much as he would have wanted to bite back the wince, the pain was unbearable, and Peter saw how Tony grimaced from the movement.

Nonetheless, he gestures for Peter to come inside. So Peter, nervous and jittery, opens the door and steps in.

Tony exhales slowly, looking at him in disbelief. The silence between them was thick enough to cut with a knife, as if the air was full with invisible words that filled their heads but didn't know how to say.