Heroes

Space Between

Stephen Strange groaned as he woke up. He found himself floating, still bound, with microsurgery needles floating all around him.

"In all the time I've served Thanos, I've never failed him." Ebony Maw said. "If I were to reach our rendezvous on Titan with the Time Stone still attached to your vaguely irritating person, there would be... judgement."

The needles began to go into Strange's face and the sorcerer grunted softly at the pain.

"Give me..." Maw said as the needles continued their job. "the stone."

Tony watched the scene from above, still a little shaken over his conversation with Nat. He would probably be better if he knew where she was. He felt something tap on his shoulder and raised his gauntlet, ready to fire at whatever it was. The cloak held up its edges as if it was raising his hands in a defense position. Tony slowly lowered his gauntlet at the sight of it.

"Wow, you're a seriously loyal piece of outerwear, aren't you." Tony said, still a little creeped out by the cloak.

"Yeah, uh, speaking of loyal..."Peter said as he hung from the ceiling.

Tony looked over in horror at the sight of the young man. Peter dropped from the ceiling and his mask retracted.

"What the..." Tony began.

"I know what you're going to say..." Peter said and held up his hands.

"You should not be here." Tony interrupted.

"I was gonna go home." Peter continued, gesturing with his arms.

"I don't wanna hear it." Tony warned.

"But it was such a long way down and I just thought about you on the way down..." Peter continued.

"And now I gotta hear it." Tony complained.

"...and kinda stuck to the side of the ship." Peter spoke over Tony. "And this suit is ridiculously intuitive, but the way."

"God damn it." Tony muttered and looked down, today was really not his day.

"So, if anything, it's kinda your fault that I'm here." Peter said.

Tony's gaze snapped to Peter and even Strange's cloak noticed that Peter had said the wrong thing. This prompted the young man to stutter and try to take his words back.

"What did you just say?" Tony asked, pointing at the kid.

"I take that back." Peter stuttered. "And now, I'm here in space."

"Yeah, right where I didn't want you to be." Tony informed him, walking over to him. "This isn't Coney Island. This isn't a field trip. This is a one-way ticket. You hear me? Don't pretend you've thought this through."

"No, I did think this through." Peter tried to talk to the man.

"No you didn't." Tony interrupted again. "You could not have possibly thought this through."

"You can't be a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man if there's no neighborhood." Peter explained.

Both men sat there for a millisecond, trying to process what the kid was saying.

"Okay, that didn't really make sense." Peter shook his head. "But you know what I'm trying to say."

Tony exhaled shakily as he gave up trying to yell at the kid. It really didn't matter anyway since they were already deep in space.

"Come on." He nodded his head in the other direction. "We got a situation." They walked over to where they could see Strange. "See him there? He's in trouble." Peter knelt down and processed the situation. "What's your plan?" Tony asked. "Go."