IronDad/SpiderSon One-shots

Astronomy

Third Person POV
Word Count: 1,810
Spooktober Day Fourteen: Galaxies
Trigger Warning: Mentions of major character death/Mentions of death in general/Mentions of "accepting" death

Tony had been trapped in space for three weeks now. Twenty one whole days now. It will be twenty two tomorrow. He'd still be there on day twenty three, but he wouldn't be alive. Oxygen was supposed to run out in a little over twenty-four hours and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

The blue robot—Nebula, her name was—had been a strange companion. She was pretty stiff, which sort of made sense. She was a robot, after all. She would last a lot longer than Tony would, seeing as though she wasn't fully human. Tony didn't bother asking if she was going to die, too. It was a silent understanding that they didn't talk about the looming hours that they both had left to live. In fact, the two had made it a point to avoid each other. Tony stayed in the cockpit. Nebula was, well, he didn't really know.

It was about the time of day that Tony was supposed to record his message for Pepper. He had been recording one as close to daily as he could. He'd missed a few days, having to have Nebula work on his infected wound or simply just not having the energy to look into his broken mask and tell his wife time and time again how basically inevitable it was that he was going to die. He'd been adding tons of humor to it, of course, but it was still a fact. It was still what he knew.

Tony was going to die in space alone.

Space. Tony actually used to like space. He knew a lot of random facts about it. It wasn't even his fault he knew all the facts. No. It was a certain little teenager that had wiggled his way into his life.

("Did you know that when you look up to the sky, you aren't seeing millions of stars. You're only seeing a few thousand," Peter said one day in the lab to Tony.

Tony just laughed. "That was random," he said. He set his tools down and smiled at the kid, who looked up from his book. "Astronomy homework again," he asked.

Peter nodded. "Yeah! There's just so many cool things about the stars. Like, this-" he said. He turned his book and showed it to Tony. "Stars aren't actually green. When people are seeing green stars in the sky, it is just our eyes tricking us. They aren't actually green.")

The physical pain that spread through Tony's chest every time he thought of the kid was unbearable. It hurt more than the infection festering stubbornly in his chest. Hell, it hurt more than when he woke up with the god forsaken car battery implanted in his chest. He'd take that a million times a day compared to the pain that he felt when he thought of the kid.

That's all Peter was, after all. Just a kid. Everyone had been beating it into his head since he recruited Peter for the fight against Cap. Time and time again ("He's just a kid." "Isn't he a little young?" "Jeez, Tony, how old is this kid?"). Tony didn't see Peter as 'just a kid.' He knew that Peter would do what he was doing, regardless of his age. He was honestly just trying to help the kid out. Give him a helping hand. And a suit. Or six suits, not that he was counting.

But, he took it too far. He grew... close with the kid. So close, in fact, that after the whole Vulture incident, the kid started to come around more often. It was like it happened overnight. The kid went from leaving voicemails for Happy to calling Tony's personal phone number to talk about how school was that day. The change happened overnight. It happened before Tony could understand it.

And now, maybe Tony never would. Because the kid—his kid—was gone. Turned to dust. Right in his hands, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop or prevent it. Nothing at all. He could only sit there and watch in shock as the kid, literally, disappeared between his fingers. This horrible, haunting event that would haunt Tony till the day he'd die. Which was a little over twenty-four hours away.