Home isn't just a place

Chapter Twenty-Two

"What are you going to tell Peter?" Pepper asks, looking at him in shock. Tony clenches his jaw and looks away. He had woken up a few hours ago and remained semi-coherent, but struggled to stay awake longer than a few hours at a time. It was heart-breaking to see him like that.

"I'm not going to tell him anything." he says firmly. Pepper looks at him in shock.

"You're not?" she asked. "Why not? Tony, our son deserves to know---"

"Pepper, he was already horrified about Hydra's choice of experiment," Tony said. "I'm not going to tell him that we caught the experiment who is the same age as him. I'm not doing that to him."

"But---"

"Besides," Tony continues, looking down at their intertwined hands with a sad look on his face. "I don't want to stress him out anymore."

Pepper sighed and nodded. "You're probably right."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Probably?"

"Well, we all know that you're only right half of the time." Pepper grinned. Tony scoffed in mock offense. "The other half is you doing it anyway out of sheer stubbornness."

"And yet you married me." Tony grinned. Pepper smiled and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

"That I did."

______________________________________________

Everyone was acting weird.

Peter noticed it the second he woke up. He figured at first it was because of what happened. His condition got exponentially worse, and everyone was treating him delicately because of it. But now, Peter wasn't so sure that was the only reason everyone was acting strange.

He could tell that they were hiding something by the way they held hushed conversations just outside of his hearing range, and the second they entered the room, they would stop. Peter tried not to show that he noticed anything, but it was starting to drive him insane.

He was so exhausted now, too. He could barely keep his eyes open now. A part of him was terrified because he knew what that meant, but the other part of him was just too tired to care.

He wanted to ask what was going on, but he knew that if he did, they would get all tight-lipped about it.

Peter groaned in irritation, but all it did was cause Tony to start and look at him in fear. "Are you okay?" he cried. "What's wrong? Are you in pain? Dizzy?"

""M fine," Peter said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "Just tired."

An indistinguishable emotion passed through his eyes, but it was buried before Peter had the chance to decipher it. "Then you should sleep," he said, his lips pursed. "Sleep is the best medicine."

"I thought that was laughter?" Peter said with a smile. Tony returned it, but it was forced, it made Peter want to cry.

"Do you want me to make you laugh?" he asked playfully. Peter grinned but shook his head---slowly so that he wouldn't get too dizzy.

"No, it hurts to laugh," he said. The emotion flitted in his eyes once more and this time it was obvious. Tony was utterly terrified. It stumped Peter, although it probably shouldn't have. Of course he would be afraid, his son was dying! But it made Peter uncomfortable to see him this way, like it was wrong for the great Tony Stark to be afraid. "What're you doing?" Peter opted to ask, changing the subject. For the past few hours Tony had been fiddling with something on his tablet while he sat dutifully at Peter's bedside.

Tony tensed. "Nothing." he said, a little too quickly. Peter's eyes narrowed. So, he was working on something that was a part of the 'Big Secret', as Peter had taken to calling it.