Spider-Son & Iron Dad two shots

Innocent

The kid's gone and done something reckless and silly again, a natural-born Rambo, and now he's landed himself all tuckered out in the med bay.

He's been asleep for about forty minutes, give or take. Nobody expected him to wake up for at least a few more hours, letting that healing factor fully kick in and kick out all the gnarly wounds.

The timing of the incident couldn't have been better planned, because with Peter's sensitive ears, it's usually hard to get him properly knocked out during the day from all the hustle bustle of the compound's general maintenance. But it was rounding about twelve in the morning now, and the lights are low. The shutters are pulled over the glass walls of the medbay's yellow-tag triage room.

Tony hadn't moved from his spot next to the kid, and admittedly his lower back was starting to numb from the seat. An uncomfortable cramped crick was building in his neck.

There wasn't anything wrong.

Peter was gonna be fine, there wasn't the slightest doubt about that. Tony wasn't staying up because he was worried about him suddenly coding or whatever. He wasn't even feeling guilty about the injuries, which was a feat in of itself.

No, nothing was wrong. He was just... thinking.

This time, Peter got hurt doing something that Tony would never do, and never had done before. Something the pinnacle, the epitome, the ultimatum of morality. It turned Tony right over on his head, and now he was just processing it as intricately as he could.

(Bloodied and bruised on the plane, before they had known what the extent of the injuries were, Tony asked him in a frustrated flurry of panic why he went out of his way to save a young criminal that had nearly died in the ruins of a burning building.

Peter looked at him with a grimace, clutching the open wound left by a fallen chunk of cement on his thigh, and furrowed his eyebrows as if everything was very obvious. "Because I could've been him, Mr. Stark."

The way he said it let Tony know that he didn't mean the "stuck under a burning building" part of the description.

"Everyone deserves to be saved," Peter rasped. He shut his eyes tightly and hissed through clenched teeth as the plane jostled in the air.)

So, Tony stared at the kid asleep, and he thought— but the thinking was running itself in circles, because he just couldn't understand how someone as good as Peter Parker thought he could be the opposite of just who he was.

He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, grimacing from the series of cracks that resulted, and opened his mouth.

"I just don't get it," Tony murmured. "How can he not see it, FRI?"

"I believe he's asleep," FRIDAY whispered back, her voice filtering through the room. "That may be why he isn't seeing things, Boss."

"Wow. Who programmed you? You're just so intelligent, a real genius," Tony rolled his eyes. "I mean figuratively. The kid just doesn't see how he really is."

"I assume few people do," FRIDAY said sagely. There's a beat of silence before she spoke again. "How do you see Peter?"

Tony settled into a mist of quiet as he thought about how to answer the question.

He wasn't innocent. He wasn't really a kid, as much as Tony wanted him to be sometimes, particularly on bad nights where there are too many wounds and not enough bandaids.  The truth was that Peter had seen and experienced hardships that age you faster than you could imagine, and he had a self-discipline that rivaled anybody's and everybody's that Tony had ever met.

"...I see a young adult," Tony answered softly. "Who's supposed to be fifteen. He holds onto too much, but can't let it go because it's the same thing that drives him forward every morning."

Peter never talked about his uncle. Tony knew better than to bring it up. He'd learned from pre-Germany biography digging about the whole thing, and learned later second-hand about the experience from when he met May for the first time. She talked about how happy she was that Peter was taking risks and putting himself out there, because he'd been so secluded since it happened.

"If you can do the things that I can, but you don't," Peter had said, "and then the bad things happen— They happen because of you."

Tony looked over at him now.

Peter breathed quietly, his cheek pressed against the pillow. Ash and dust in his hair. Bandages in odd places on his arms and around his swollen knuckles.

"He's smart, though." Tony gave a wry smile. "Good head on his shoulders. He does everything for a reason, even if he doesn't get why. And he's trusting, too trusting. Sometimes I'm afraid it'll hurt him one day and I won't be there to pick up the pieces."

"And I guess that's another thing," Tony sighed, scrubbing a hand over his goatee. "I see a teenager who's way better than I am in every way, but who doesn't see it yet. I want more than anything for him to see it too. He deserves to know how great he is."

"That's nice, Boss," FRIDAY replied simply.

"Hm. Yeah. Thanks."

"You should get some sleep now."

"Yeah," Tony leaned his head back on the wall. "Just... give me a few more minutes."

It went quiet again, leaving only the sounds of Peter's soft snores behind.