Peter Parker One-shots

The Letter Part 2

I'm back! At least briefly. I stopped writing for a long long time, not just on here. I want to thank @Rosielisabet for asking me to write this again, you made me want to write again, if you hadn't asked me to write a part two then I probably wouldn't have started writing again, at least not for a lot longer than I already have. So, here it is, part two to The Letter. I'm not sure if it's exactly what you thought it would be but this is what I came up with, with help from @Rosielisabet. 

"Tony, bud, what's wrong with you?" Bruce asks, looking over at his coffee cup at Tony. 

He's just sitting there, staring off into space. Usually, that wouldn't be that alarming at eight in the morning as Tony wasn't exactly a morning person, but today was different. Tony spent the whole night tinkering and hasn't actually slept, so his usual morning fog shouldn't be going on. But he seemed to be off in his own world. 

"Tony? Tones?" Rhodey asks, putting down another cup of coffee in front of him. Maybe more caffeine would do the trick?

"Yeah, sorry," Is all Tony says, taking the fresh cup of coffee and standing. 

"What's wrong with him? Did someone break something?" Steve asks, watching Tony stumble out of the kitchen, luckily all his coffee stays in his glass. 

"It's a rough time of year for him. It's best to just let him be," Pepper says, watching her husband walk off with a frown, fully knowing what was going on. 

***********************

I should be more careful, Tony thinks, looking down at the shattered coffee mug. But it was hard. His head had been all over the place and he had been hanging around Queens for the last few weeks and seeing all the memorial items was doing funny things to his chest. A deep ache has taken up residency and no amount of alcohol or tinkering was helping. Queens knew that their friendly neighbor spiderman was gone, they had the right to greave, but still, Tony still wished he didn't have to see the kid everywhere he turned. 

It was unfair, how someone's life was cut short so quickly. Peter obviously knew the risks and still took them, Tony couldn't even fault him for that, but sometimes he wished heroes would be selfish, could be selfish. Too many people had died trying to protect others and he just wished it wouldn't have been a kid this time. 

But he would do what the kid asked, watch out for the little guy. And not just by making patrols and stopping crime. By donating to food pantries and offering an afterschool center for kids. Maybe if they had enough and a safe place to go, they wouldn't have to turn to the streets. At least that was his hope. 

But he knew that there would be more Peter's. More kids would die trying to protect others. And that thought killed him. How messed up did they make the world that kids died trying to save it?

*******************************

"Tony, you've been moping around the tower for weeks now, and you've been spotted in Queens a lot more recently too. What is going on with you?" Natasha asks, voice quiet as they watch a movie. 

"Just keeping a promise. Sorry about not finishing your gear yet," he remarks back, frustrated. A few weeks ago was the anniversary of his death and in five days it would be the anniversary of the day the letter was sent.

He looked into it, trying to figure out what happened. All he found was the fact that Peter went missing on a camping trip with his school and the only thing they found of him was a left leg in a pool of blood. Testing confirmed it was Peter's so it was assumed some animal had gotten ahold of him. They searched for weeks for his body, but never found it. After five weeks, his aunt finally found and mailed the letter, accepting that her nephew was dead. Tony suspected that it wasn't just an animal but some kind of villain. It didn't really matter though, dead was dead.