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Word Count: 661
26. The number of people that have died in front of me. That number multiplied by thousands yesterday. Thousands. Thousands of monsters and demons and two people who were hell-bent on the freedom of 50% of the population. And only two of those thousands hurt me. And I'm pretty sure you can guess which one.
Tony Stark is dead. Those four words are the only ones that have been entering my brain for the past fourteen hours. Newscasts, social media, and just people. And I'd only said those words once. To a woman named May Parker. I'd probably said it hysterically about forty times after that, but I didn't pay attention to that. Because Tony Stark is dead. And that, in the whole wide world, is the only thing that matters today.
That, and an 11:30 AM funeral that I wouldn't miss for the world.
I didn't let May talk to me in the car, and she didn't dare to speak to me again after she saw a tear slip from my eye. I looked out the window for the rest of the ca
"Hey Kiddo, we're here," May says gently as she puts her hand on my knee. The look on my face said everything as I stared out of the window, dread pouring into my eyes as the monsters poured onto the earth.
People often assume that heroes don't have PTSD, but that statement is far more wrong than it is right. Tony was Iron Man for ten years, and sometimes there were cracks in his voice from the fear that he had experienced in the time. Bucky Barnes had the worst luck, forced to kill for decades, only to be reminded years later that he had made a sharp turn from war hero to criminal.
On a day to day basis you have to watch people bleed, and on a day to day basis you have to condemn people to a life behind bars, or to worse. But the worst of all is when you lose someone along the way. I don't remember my parents' death, it was merely a blip on my radar as a child, but when my Uncle Ben died I could feel the world burn around me.
"Peter, sweetie, we have to go in now," May whispers as if she spoke too loud it would give me a psychic break.
I don't speak after I get out of the car, and I barely move once I sit in the seat marked for me in the front row. Several people approached me, but no one spoke. They just simply put their hand on my shoulder and then nod their heads before I shrug them off.
The first person to give a speech is Rhodey, he cries softly, because apparently, soldiers can't cry when one of their friends is murdered. A long procession of speeches is said, most notably Happy and Pepper. When Pepper finishes her speech she looks at me, but I only shake my head. After she issues me the silent compliment she sits down next to a brown-haired girl I've never met, who can't be older than four. I can tell I look confused because Happy leans down and whispers "I'll tell you later" into my ear.
After the ceremony, we all walk out to send Tony's spirit out into the lake, and there is not a dry eye among us. As we send the arc reactor out into the water I notice the little girl poking out from behind Pepper's leg. I glance at her for a second, and then quickly look away, trying to get a look at Tony's heart for one last time.
The girl is still there at the "afterparty" and Happy motions to me, to signal that it's time to meet the girl, and the meeting is slowly seeming more and more important.
"Peter," Happy says when I'm in front of the girl "This is Morgan, Tony's daughter."
