Chapter Text
They were right.
Hell is full of fire.
Fire. Screaming. The acrid scent of smoke and death. Pain like nothing ever felt before. Burning, encompassing, devouring. The heat. He barely even noticed the heat through the searing pain. Blood didn't taste like copper - They always got that wrong. It smelt like copper. It tasted like iron. Rich and cloying on his tongue, the last thing he would ever taste. Or...Maybe it would be the ash, fluttering down like snowfall. It made him think of Siberia, of the ski trip he took three years before. It had been crisp, cool, peaceful in those mountains.
He blinked through the grey flakes caught on his lashes and tried hard not to think about how some of it was human. He dared not look to his left again. Only five minutes ago, the grotesque, glistening mound of flesh there had been a twenty-three year old man with a bright, lopsided smile and a girlfriend.
Breathing hurt. He longed to stop.
Pepper.
Red. Heat. What did they say about redheads? Fiery. Pepper knew nothing of fire. Neither had Tony. Not until now. Those cosy nights in front of the fire. All those mishaps in the lab. That had been fire. This was Hellfire.
Hell. And he wasn't even dead yet.
He looked back up at the sky. Those were his two options; the ashen, blurred darkness above him or the wasteland expanse to hie right. The warped, smoking husks that were once armoured trucks. Burnt out shells, broken and ripped open and useless. It was one of those that pinned him now, five-thousand pounds or so he figured, stopped only from cleaving him straight in half by a scrabble of rocks. As it was, it had only crushed his hips and his lower lips, pulverising his internal organs. The car wasn't even what bothered him the most. The pain had become so blinding down there it was numb.
His chest.
Or...What had been his chest. Now it was a gaping, bloody hole, full of glinting metal and glistening blood. He wanted to laugh, but his muscles didn't work. They'd always called him heartless. Now, he supposed, it was true. The Merchant of Death. The Dark God. Could the Reaper himself be killed? If Tony truly was the Merchant, the answer was yes. He wondered what catchy headline they'd make of it. His own missiles blowing him up. Would it be catchy? Snarky? Would they mourn him, or would they celebrate the end of his reign? Pepper would mourn, he knew that much. She rarely spoke on his inventions, the cost of his name, but she loved him. He knew she loved him.
He wondered how long it would be before she moved on. Knowing Pepper, she would orderly follow the five stages of grief. She'd devote herself to the company first - It was hers now, anyway. He'd made sure of that. All 60% of his shares were now in her name. Or...Would be, the moment that they declared him dead.
He blanched.
God, would they ever even find his body? He was in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan. Looters and vultures would likely be the only thing that found him.
He could feel it, now. The hazy pull. It was kind of like falling asleep; heavy headed, tired. He almost didn't even register the pain anymore. He knew what that meant - Endorphins were flooding his body, over-riding his nerve endings. He was dying. Or...Really dying, now.
He didn't want to go.
The sky was ashen. Dark. When he blinked it was clear, crisp, blue. Tiny flakes of snow drifted down slowly, peacefully. Coated his cheeks, though he couldn't feel the cold. It was...Nice. He breathed out, wet and rattling. Maybe if he just let himself rest. Maybe just for a moment. Then he could figure this out. He'd have the energy to think of something. Maybe if he could get out from under the car...
He let his eyes close.
He woke up.
That in an of itself was wrong. He sucked in a breath, felt it glide cool and easy through his lungs, effortless. It revitalised him, it spread through his every fibre and his eyes focused on a red, stormy sky. For a brief moment he thought he was back there, back in the dirt and dust, awake maybe just in time to see Hellfire rain upon him like Heaven's wrath.
But it was silent.
Water lapped at his jaw, stirred into life by the heaving of his chest as he stared up at that broiling, rolling sky. Reds and oranges and golds bled into an artwork of fury, unmoving and still above him. The water was cool around his fingertips, nudging at him, hinting that he was alive.
He felt so heavy.
He let his head loll to the side, cheek sinking into the water as he looked dully to his right. The sky stretched on endlessly, with no breaks or give in the inferno colour. The water, a crystal reflection of the sky, stretched on equally as infinitely, broken only by the the whispers of ripples where he moved. He stared across it for some time, blank and void of emotion. Was this it? Was this Hell? Some first level, maybe? Or was this Purgatory, that in-between No Man's Land where he was bound to sit for eternity, with nothing and no-one, just water and red sky. He turned his face skyward again, pulled in a slow, even breath, just to feel the effortless, painless way his chest rose and fell.
He was hit with the sudden urge to sit up, crushing him from the inside out and he gasped, sucking in a croaked breath as he gathered his arms and surged upwards. The heavy feeling pulled at him, threatening to drag him back down, like something was weighted to the backs of his shoulders. He took a shuddering breath and strained against the feeling, heard the water around him slosh and splash as something rose from it, sending a tidal wave of ripples and a cascade of rainfall around him. He jerked his head to the side and stared, numb, as from a waterfall cascade a large, sculpted wing rose like some resurrected deity, stretching out towards the endless horizon.
His breath hitched and the wing - Wings, because he could feel the heft across the backs of his shoulders, shuddered like a sentient being. The steady plopping of the water falling from them drowned out the wheeze of his breathing as he watched the appendage flex and twitch like a newborn discovering it was quite suddenly alive. He could feel the tremor all the way through his back, down his spine, and he let his head fall forwards as he tried to get his sluggish brain to work. He considered, briefly, all the possibilities, cycling through them until the world around him seemed to suddenly charge, static and too bright, electricity making his teeth chatter as he squinted against the white-gold light in front of him that grew and grew until he had to lift a hand from the water around him, covering his eyes against it.
Every nerve in his body felt jittery and alight, trembling as a high-pitched ringing filled his ears, rattling his head until he felt it might explode. His enter body tensed and surged with energy, and as suddenly as the feeling came it settled like the aftermath of a storm, gone but not forgotten, leaving behind only a bright but tolerable glow that coaxed him to look over his bare arm. He blinked in surprise, looking down at himself.
He hadn't even realised he was naked.
Anthony Edward Stark.
It was a voice, but...Not a voice. It had no discernible identity to it, just white sound that somehow formed coherent words that whispered through his head. He moved his arm to rub at his temple, looking weakly up at the glowing figure before him. It was tall, ten foot at the least, and broad. It was ethereal and mostly light, but it had faces. Faces, because there were six, forming a ring that hovered above what might be smooth, broad shoulders. Each face pointed in a different direction, details barely perceptible as he stared. One had what could be no less than a hundred eyes on the face of a beast he had no name for. Another had teeth that sprouted in different directions, dripping with liquid gold. Above those was a tilted ring of gold light unobscured by the six wings that protruded from its body.
It seemed to wear robes, but he couldn't tell. It all just seemed to be light, given the bare amount of structure that allowed it to take on shape and form. What looked like liquid fabric fell from the broad figure and into the water where it stood, the barest hint of arms clasped at its abdomen like a Priest visible, four in all. Tony had to remind himself to breathe as he stared at it. The foremost face was blank, round at the top and tapering off into the same hint of draped fabric. It was eerie, unnatural. It stared at him without eyes.
I have a thousand eyes, and I see all. I see you.
He shuddered, pressing his heel against his head as that sound flowed through him again, shaking his head as though that would work to shake the voice right out of him. His tongue, though it felt heavy and unwilling, worked when he dared to try and speak. "What are you?"
I am The Guardian. The Keeper. The One. I have a hundred names, and none.
The foremost face tilted. The beast-like one licked its gaping maw.
I am unto you, salvation. You are dead, and alive.
A time ago, he'd have made a quip about being Schrödinger's man. Now, he sat void and unsure, floating somewhere between existing and not. Dead and alive. "Where am I?"
The In-Between. The Void. The Empty. Of your kind, most may call it Purgatory.
There was no satisfaction in having one of his assumptions validated. No relief at the knowledge. At his side the wings drooped, wilting like they'd run out of energy, sinking back into the mirror-like water slowly. It gave him more questions than answers but he couldn't bring himself to ask them. He felt empty. Like a shell of his own body; no character, no energy or personality. Just...There. Existing, somewhere outside of the life he knew. Outside of anything and everything familiar.
You have been given purpose, Anthony. Salvation from your careless life of death and destruction. You will repent for the lives you claimed as yours to take. You will atone for sorrows you reaped from so many sowed seeds.
It was the question he had longed to ask since The Guardian had answered his first, but the one he dreaded to ask the most. He forced his lips to part, backed the words with a fortifying breath. It came out weak, near a whisper.
"What am I?"
The six wings rose and spread slightly, like arms spreading in gesture. The Guardian's form rippled and moved, the four ghost-like shapes of arms spreading in tandem.
One of us. You are me, and I am you. One in the same.
"I don't look like you" he rasped, shaking his head. He couldn't. He wouldn't. He didn't even know what The Guardian was. For all he knew, he knew nothing. He couldn't have six faces, six wings, four arms. Couldn't exist in no solid state, a something not a someone.
Not as you are now. Not for this purpose. In time, perhaps. This is the form you desire to see. Vanity and familiarity sculpt you like clay. We serve the same purpose. You will guide and protect. You will cherish and adore. All that you were robbed of and all that you stole in your past life. Salvation.
He didn't dare ask from what. With a creeping sense of foreboding, he knew anyway. He'd thought the desert was Hell; but this, this being, this vast and barren land, this was what stopped him from seeing true Hell. He felt suddenly so tired, though it was purely the term in emotional concept. Physically, he felt...Nothing. The cool of the water, the pumping of his heart in his chest. The weight of his wings. But no exhaustion, no pain. His legs, when he looked down at them, were pristine and void of blood or damage. He looked as he had the morning he'd flown out to Afghanistan, and not a glimpse of what he'd looked like when he died.
"I don't understand" he plead, looking back up at the figure. "I died. I'm dead. I don't-- I don't know if any of this is real. I don't know what you want me to do".
Between one blink and the next, The Guardian stood right before him, one shapeless hand reaching for him. It held no pressure, no form when it touched his forehead, and what followed was inexplicable. His head snapped back on a gasp, staring upwards, lips parted as his eyes clouded over, glossing black an empty with shattered fragments of light dancing in the liquid darkness like a galaxy. An infinite series of images, snippets of life and existence. Microbes in their most basic form, people, learning to walk for the first time. Guardians, endless amounts of them, roaming, touching, sculpting. Energy, pure and raw. The cosmos, space far beyond anything he had ever seen. A single breeze that carried a scent that encouraged a quadruped beast to flee from its predator. A dream that encouraged the first man to make pigment.
He understood.
The whispered glimpses of Guardians that humans had incorporated into art for centuries. An infinite amount of acts that sculpted time and history. Life, everywhere, on planes of existence and Universes that he didn't recognise. Influence and control, all controlling and guiding like the crew of a theatre. It cut off like a film running out of reel and he stared up into the roaring sky, struck lifeless and into reverie by all he'd witnessed. When he finally came back to himself he looked forwards. The Guardian stood where he had before, a few mere paces from his heels, waiting.
Now, you understand.
He nodded. He couldn't describe how he knew, much less what he knew, but it fell into place like a puzzle piece, learned as easily as reading instructions. He knew what he could do, in this new form. What he could influence, create, control. He was an artist on an ethereal form, an indefinite canvas at his fingertips. He could decide where the scale tipped, what eyes saw, which leaf fell from which tree. It was power in its purest, largest form, a power he could have only ever dreamed of as a mere moral, as a man. His heart thundered in his chest and he knew it was because subconsciously, he was making it. Sculpting this form into Tony Stark because that was what he was most comfortable with, that was what he saw himself as. Eight fingers and two thumbs, carefully trimmed facial hair, a personality crafted like a defence wall.
A sound seeped through The Empty.
It was far away, faint. It flowed like mist, unobtrusive and melodic. A gentle, steady thumping. The Guardian seemed tog low brighter.
It is time.
Anticipation crawled up his spine, a steady pulling sensation that drew him towards it. It belonged to him. It called to him. Ignited every atom, every fragment of energy that crafted him. He didn't know what it was, though a part of him felt like it did, and he forced himself to move, gathering himself, rising from the water slowly. It ran down his hips, the backs of his thighs, trickled down his calves as he drew himself to stand straight. He longed to follow the sound, longed to understand why he felt that way. "What is that?" He asked quietly, looking around. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere, had no source in this barren place.
Life.
The Guardian's wings rose and spread, and from one moment to the next The Empty became a neonatal ward, three rows of tiny, wheeled cribs, each containing a tiny newborn baby. They were stood in the midst of the room, surrounded by the cribs, and instinct drove him to approach the topmost one on the right. Within it a small newborn lay, awake but silent. It was swathed in a rich blue blanket, tiny arms swaddled, and its honey-shaded eyes fixed on him, tiny mouth opening and closing on soft little gurgles. Tony felt...Whole, staring down at it, almost completely forgot about the presence of The Guardian at his side.
As Tony Stark, he'd convinced himself he didn't want a family. He was young, a billionaire. CEO of a family name company, partying with coke and whores on a weekly basis. He'd been free, orderless, could get his cock wet wherever he wanted, whenever. He lived the playboy CEO lifestyle, Malibu one weekend and London the next. He'd decided he didn't want a family.
He was terrified of having a family. Of wanting a family.
Terrified he'd turn out like Howard. Terrified he'd fuck it up. He'd fled to a Doctor and got a vasectomy the moment he could. Couldn't shake the idea that maybe the condom would break one night or the woman's birth control would fail and nine months later she'd be at his door with a baby.
Now. Looking at this tiny child, this baby that wasn't even his, he felt complete. This innocent little life form, a mere speck in the Universe was suddenly all that mattered to him. Like a moth to a porch light he was drawn, reaching out slowly to touch its soft little head. The hair there was dark, thick already. Dark hair, dark eyes. Tony looked up, caught sight of himself in the reflection of the glass viewing window. Dark hair, dark eyes. As he stared, a couple walked into view and he froze, but at his side, The Guardian did not move.
They look, but they do not see.
Tony turned to look at the faceless figure, then back down at the babe, which lay serene and quiet. Were babies supposed to be this quiet? Every baby he'd met or seen on TV had been loud. A screaming ball of senseless fury that no amount of hip-jiggling or soothing words would temper. Behind them a baby chortled and gurgled to itself as it lay there, wriggling and exploring this new state of existence. But this one, his baby, it just lay there, gaping up at him.
"Does it see us? Is it...Okay? Its so quiet" Tony breathed, tracing a chubby, soft cheek with his fingertip.
He sees. He will not cry. Not until they take him home, when a car horn will awake his slumber.
"You can...You know the future? His future?"
I see.
The Guardian reached out with a shapeless hand, passing it silently over the babe. Its head inclined, and Tony reached out without thinking, gathering the tiny child up carefully in his arms, cradling it to his chest. The child snuffled, but made no other sound as Tony held him. He knew the couple staring adoringly at their own babe through the glass would see nothing. The baby was a small weight in his arms, barely anything, a pure and innocent spark. Tony wondered if this is what parents felt, when holding their child. If they could sense that beautiful clean slate of life, freshly carved, untouched and untainted. If they felt this...Bond. Drawing him in, enveloping him in this sense of warmth and belonging.
"Peter" he breathed, and it was right. The baby blinked at him sleepily, and Tony looked up at The Guardian. "Why...Is this my purpose? Him? What am I supposed to do?" He asked. He felt raw and fragile, suddenly exposed and nervous. He couldn't look after a baby, man or...Whatever he was now. He'd never done that before. And whatever form he was, he still had Howard's upbringing. He might not be Tony Stark anymore, but he still had Tony Stark's life as his only one lived so far. Still had all those memories, all those fucked up connections between love and family. He couldn't do that to someone else. Much less a child that wasn't even his.
He is yours. Yours to keep safe. Yours to teach. To learn from. You will protect him and watch over him. He has a purpose.
A Guardian Angel. The thought was blithe and mirthless, though Tony knew there was humour in it somewhere. Him, the protector of someone. The Merchant of Death to a Guardian Angel. A killer to a keeper of life.
He looked down.
He couldn't imagine hurting Peter. Couldn't imagine letting any harm come to him at all. Even a scraped knee seemed unfathomable. "Do they all have...One of us?" Tony asked after a moment, looking around at the other babies. Fat ones and little ones, peachy babes and babes with skin like obsidian.
Some. Not all.
Tony nodded once, taking a fortifying breath as he looked back down at Peter.
"How?" He choked out, running his palm over that soft mop of hair. "How can I do it? How can I...I'm not...Why?"
You will not fail, Anthony.
"How do I protect him? How do I keep him safe?"
You cannot protect him from all things. You will know when to tip the scale, and when to leave nature to its own balance.
Tony was struck suddenly with the reminder of why he was here. He has a purpose. The sudden image of Peter meeting the same grisly end, of being alive only to fulfil some sort of mystical plotline. How long would Peter live? What was his purpose? How would he die? He wanted to ask, but for all The Guardian had answered him thus far, he felt he would not receive an answer to this. When he looked up again, that featureless head tipped.
You will understand. You will know.
He moved carefully, slowly, setting the babe back down on the soft bedding. He ached all over suddenly. His wings felt too heavy, leaden on the backs of his shoulders, and all his energy left him at once. He couldn't do it. He couldn't ruin someone else. He couldn't be another Howard.
Something touched his hand.
Peter had wriggled free of his blanket, one tiny hand extended, clutched tight around his pinky finger where he'd set his hand down on the edge of the crib. The baby looked at him from under comically long lashes, eyes wide and round, fixed on him with blind trust. Tony could feel his wings quiver behind him, shaking where his hands refused to.
"I'll do it".
Peter was the perfect baby.
The Guardian had been right. Peter had stayed sleepy and quiet for the two days he and his parents remained at St. Bonaventure's Hospital. He giggled and chortled when his parents entertained him and he slept whenever he wasn't being toyed with or fed. Tony stayed at his side for all of it, never bored, watching from a corner or right there, amongst everyone, present but unnoticed. Nobody could see him, nobody but Peter. Tony didn't know how he automatically knew how to control who could and couldn't see him, but he did. Did as easy as he knew how to breathe. The Guardian had left him some time after Tony had first met his new charge with cryptic words and the promise that all Tony would need to do is will for help, and The Guardian would come to assist.
Now, stood on the sidewalk and watching Mary and Richard Parker cautiously easing their bundle of joy into the car, Tony jerked at the sudden blast of a car horn, turning his head to see where a cab had emergency braked to avoid a careless old lady who hadn't looked before crossing. Almost immediately a soft, near tentative wail came from the car, as though Peter wasn't even sure that he could cry. Tony listened to it for a few seconds, surprised by the sound. It was high and breathy. Tony suddenly wondered if Peter had cried when he'd been born.
A single flap of his wings and he was sat in the backseat of the car, watching as Richard, a first time Dad, tried valiantly to shush his child. Richard was a good man; work driven but impossibly soft with his wife and his child. He called Peter his little Teddy and fretted endlessly over whether Peter was too warm or too chilly and if it was too early to start saving for a college fund. Tony waited for several moments, watched as Mary tried to quiet the baby to no avail, leaning around from the passenger seat, her voice low and soothing. Peter's little head turned, finding Tony, and one chubby, stumpy little hand flailed for him insistently.
Tony hesitated, then reached out, cautiously allowing those tiny fingers to squeeze his thumb. For a small baby, Peter had a strong grip, and Tony let himself feel the pressure, the weird sensation of too-soft nails scraping along his skin. They wouldn't harden for several more days, he knew. Pepper had talked about children a lot, especially when her friend Mary-Anne had a baby. Peter's wails died to half-hearted fussing, aborted whimpers that Tony itched to soothe. Without thinking he shifted, unfurling his left wing to curl it around the seat where Peter lay. Where Tony sat on the seat, his wing moved through the vehicle, unbound by the human laws of physics and solid matter. Peter's whimpers died entirely as he watched it, little mouth open wide as he writhed.
Tony followed his gaze, eyeing the feathers. In the two days that had passed he'd come to terms with his new form, with the wings that lay behind him heavy and weightless both. He knew it was vain to say, but they were beautiful things. Softer than any material he'd ever touched before. They were the size of cars each, though he learned they could be bigger. Each feather was an inky black, fluffy and soft, unlike any bird he had ever seen. Light blue seemed to swirl amongst the black, like a blue tiger's eye gemstone. Here and there tendril-wisps of blue seemed to move through them like light. The feathers at the top were small, puffy like baby owl feathers. They tapered off into stronger ones, pointed like arrows at the bottom. The largest feathers were the ones that formed a sharp point at the end of each wing. Those were the bluest, like they'd been dipped in paint.
Peter was quiet for the rest of the journey, which perplexed the Parker's as much as it relieved them.
"He looks like he's holding something" Richard announced when they pulled up outside a stately looking detached home, leaning into the back seats through the open door. He had his hands on his hips and a frown, eyes flicking from where his sleeping baby drooled, to where he clutched at thin air. Tony had watched him fall asleep but hadn't had the heart to pull his hand away.
"As much as I adore staring at our darling child, my dear, I have six stitches and a crushed bladder. I'd quite like to get inside" Mary coaxed from where she stood at the base of the porch, leaning on one tall, carved pillar as she looked at her husband with annoyed fondness. Tony's mouth curved a little, sadness tinging his smile. He wondered what Howard and Maria had been like, when he was born. Disinterested and unbothered, perhaps. Wondering how soon they could drink or fuck again. Impatient for the help to take their screaming child away, maybe.
Richard began to unbuckle the baby seat and Tony allowed his wings to move, one sturdy, soundless beat taking him from the car to the porch as Richard swore quietly and wrestled with a buckle. As Tony looked up at the neat home he took pity on the man, a twitch of his fingers releasing the sticky mechanism from where it had jammed.
The Parker household was nice. Tony dimly recognised the outskirts of Manhattan, somewhere near the South. The porch was painted a soft eggshell blue, chipped in some places. Flower boxes lined it, the soil a little dry from several days' neglect. A welcome mat lay new with the tag still on and through the foremost window he could see a lounge, filled with books and comfortable, worn couches. He stepped aside out of habit as Mary approached the door, watching tenderly as her husband introduced the babe to each part of the house.
"This is the porch. Not that you know that yet. The flowers over there are Gardenias, a pain to keep alive but pretty. This is a welcome mat. You wipe your shoes on it. Your Aunt May bought us this the other week. Oh, and those are our neighbours over there. On the left we have-"
"Richard" Mary reminded him patiently, and her husband flushed but scurried to the front door, juggling the carrier and his keys. Tony blinked, and waited for them inside the kitchen. It was homely, warm in a way the kitchen at the Stark Manor had never been, personal in a way his own at the Tower had never been aside from whiskey bottles and lab tools in the kitchen sink. Small photographs lined the walls, a mug of forgotten coffee sat old and pungent on the table. Tony stared at it forlornly, missing quite suddenly the taste and simplicity of coffee. What had his last coffee been? That cup of shitty airport coffee when he'd landed in Afghanistan. It had been bland and tasteless, but the caffeine had woken him up.
Several hours later, Tony drew his wings tight against his back, warm and heavy as as he listened to Richard read. Mary had retired early for the night, reluctant to leave her little cherub but worn out from the aftermath of childbirth. Richard, wide awake, had settled in the lounge with Peter nestled in a mobile crib in front of where he lay. Richard's voice was soothing and low as he read from a physics thesis, pausing on almost every other word to explain to Peter what each term meant. Tony's own head lolled and his heart ached as he watched. It was a life he could have only dreamed of for Peter. Two caring parents, a wonderful household.
He didn't know if he could fall asleep, but he closed his eyes anyway. And he must've, or something close to sleeping, because he opened them again to Peter's quiet fussing, the barest, hinting threat of crying. He pushed himself up from the couch, wings trailing behind him as he approached the cradle. Richard was sprawled face-down into the couch cushions, glasses bent at a strange angle, book fallen to the floor. It seemed his reading had lulled all three of them to sleep. Tony gave a small smile and leaned over the cradle, looking down at where Peter's tiny brows had pulled together. His little mouth was pursed on the beginnings of a wail, and Tony stooped, blowing over his face gently.
"Hello, little thing" he cooed, watching as Peter turned towards the noise with a soft mewl. "You ought to be sleeping" he chastised softly, moving his wings forwards, curving them around the crib and close in, so Peter was sealed away safe from the outside world. Tony's fingers twitched and a soft blue glow began to emanate within the little bubble of space, illuminating just enough that Peter's sleepy, squinty little eyes could see him. "There we are, handsome" Tony shushed him, reaching inside the cradle to gently take one of Peter's hands.
"Go to sleep, sweet thing. Another hour. Just one more" he coaxed, and watched with blooming warmth as Peter's lashes dipped down, down, before his eyes closed. Peter gave him the requested hour, sleeping soundly until Mary came shuffling down the stairs to answer his wails for a four-am feed. Tony averted his eyes out of politeness, perusing their book collection as Mary juggled Peter in order to wrestle her husband's warped glasses from under his cheek. They had romance novels and science books, fiction and autobiographies and more books on babies and parenting than Tony had mind to count.
He smiled, wings folding in neatly behind himself. Peter was gonna grow up just fine.
Tony turned the page of his book curiously, Toddlers and the Terrible Twos balanced on his knee as he read.
He looked over the rim of the book, watching from across the kitchen table as Peter giggled and threw his head to the side, vehemently denying another mouthful of mushed peas between spurts of giggles. Peter was a week of being two now, growing too fast for Tony's liking. He was talking and walking (and, god, weren't those suddenly the fondest, proudest memories of his life?) and still Richard's little Teddy and Mary's little cherub. Though perhaps it was more little terror now, with half his dinner on Richard's flannel shirt.
Tony looked back down at his book, brows furrowed. Apparently some magical change in persona happened at the age of two, when darling little children became monsters sent from the depths of Hell to terrorise their parents. Tony looked back up at Peter again, round cheeked and big-eyed, making grabby hands for his Dada and politely saying no peas, car'rors please.
"Not my Peter" he decided, shaking his head at the book. No, not his Peter. Peter, who had been nothing but a delight the past two years. Peter who had taken his real first steps towards Tony, late in the evening when Mary had nipped quickly to the bathroom. Peter who had giggled so sweetly when he'd tripped, landing in the soft, curved cradle of Tony's wing as he caught him. Peter who slept so soundly for a child. So quietly, little fat cheeks mushed against his pillow.
Soon, the time will come when you must be neither seen nor heard.
The Guardian had come back one night, when the Parker household was sleeping soundly. A gentle warning that one day, Tony would have to retreat to a silent presence in Peter's life, unnoticed and forgotten, a figment of his youthful imagination. Tony knew it was true, knew that his job wasn't to selfishly relish in suddenly having a family, a child, someone to love and care for. His purpose was to keep Peter safe, keep him alive. He watched Peter take the spoon from Richard, chubby fingers curling around it briefly before he promptly set it down on the table, untouched, a broad grin showing his gummy mouth.
Tony shifted and let his right wing extend, stretching forwards until the sturdy, long feathers brushed against Peter's shoulder and arm gently. "Eat your greens" he chastised softly. Peter's gaze flit about the room, mouth opening and closing, before to Richard's delight he picked up the spoon and reluctantly slurped up the green contents. Tony sympathised - Peas were never his favourite either, but he knew just three spoonfuls and Peter would get pink Jell-O for dessert.
Pink Jell-O was Peter's favourite. He liked to smack it around and watch it wobble.
Secretly, Tony did too.
His wings were still Peter's favourite. Secretly, partially, Tony had warmed up to them too. He liked them most of all when Peter's little hands were buried in the feathers or when he used them to cradle the boy, wrapped around him in a protective shield. One of Tony's favourite moments, however, came around that night, when Peter was being taken to bed after a day full of playing and learning to finger paint. Mary cradled him close as she tidied up the crib, plumping the pillow and shaking out the blankets with her free hand. Tony watched her as he sank down onto the floor besides the bed, one wing shaking out and stretching out until it lay over the mattress. When Mary settled the boy down he nestled amongst the feathers, head cushioned on the marginal feathers, tiny hands instinctively fisting in the secondary coverts. To Mary nothing would look out of the ordinary, but to Tony, he got to lay there for the night, cradling his charge protectively and watching fondly as he snuffled in his sleep.
It made him ache for a life he'd never lived. It made him cry for the life he had.
It made him vow to dedicate this new life to Peter. To keep him safe. To protect him and cherish him.
To love him.