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xxx-cat-xxx · 5 years ago

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What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood

Summary: The universe is saved, Thanos is defeated, the Vanished are returned, and Tony has survived (though with severe radiation burns and one less arm). Everything should be good now - except that it isn’t.

While Tony embarks on a painful and frustrating recovery, he wrestles with the fear that he’s no longer capable of caring for his family. Meanwhile, Peter tries to find his place in a world that just doesn’t feel like his own anymore.

Words: 13.5k

Tags: Irondad, Spiderson, Ironfam, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-it (but it takes a while to get there), Emotional and Physical Whump, very faint mention of death ideation, Injuries, Vomiting, Everyone needs a Hug

A/N: For @aderymoonlight. Thank you for the prompt and for waiting half a year until it was finally ready. A million thanks to @whumphoarder for being the world’s best beta reader (seriously, I don’t know how I would have done this without you). Additional thanks to @sallyidss, @twentyghosts, and @newnewyorker93 for helping me with the tricky details. You are amazing!

Link to read on AO3

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Like the flame of a candle caught in the wind, the arc reactor in Tony’s chest flickers, resists, and then eventually dies down. And so does something within Peter.

“Stay back!” Dr. Strange shouts. He draws a sparkling circle into the dusty air, encompassing Tony and Pepper before making them disappear right in front of Peter’s eyes.

And suddenly, Peter feels a wave of exhaustion crash over him. The world shimmers before him like it’s about to dissolve. He sinks to his knees, drawing in laboured breaths. It’s simply too much. Within one day, he went from a school bus, to another planet’s moon, to the battlefield where the fate of the world is being decided, and he feels as if some parts of him are still scattered throughout the universe.

Peter thinks he might throw up (or possibly faint), and he figures that he should probably alert someone to that, but the only person he actually knows around here is Mr. Stark, who might be dead, and oh god-

“Spider-Man?” It’s Colonel Rhodes, to whom Peter has spoken maybe twice in his life. But the man looks at him as if he’s known Peter for years, as if he’s relieved to see him alive, and as if he still isn’t sure whether Peter is actually back or just a dream. “Are you injured?”

“I don’t- I don’t know,” Peter stutters, and he honestly doesn’t. He tries to get to his feet, but the world starts to spin around him in a nauseating way, so he sinks back down onto his knees. He can taste bile at the back of his throat and instinctively presses a fist to his mouth.

“Okay.” Rhodey gives him a quick once-over, apparently not liking what he sees. “Stay put. Now where’s that goddamn magician -”

Then Rhodey is gone and maybe a minute, or a year, or a century later, the world explodes into golden sparkles and Peter has the unnerving feeling of being crumbled up into small pieces and sucked through the hose of a vacuum cleaner before being spat out again. He lands on a very clean linoleum tiled floor, his stomach in his throat.

He starts gagging for good then, and someone is shoving a kidney-shaped pink basin into his hands. Hospital, his brain registers while he heaves up the breakfast he ate years ago mixed with dust from another planet’s moon, all the while his heart pounding with worry for his mentor. He clings to the basin with all he has because something in him is still convinced that he might dissolve again at any moment.

“Take it easy, kid.” Someone is patting him on the back, and all Peter can do is nod before he is throwing up again. “Be right back,” the someone says, but then nobody comes back for a long time. There’s all hell broken loose around Peter, doctors and nurses running hectically to and fro, wheeling patients around. He knows that he should probably help - he’s Spider-Man after all - but he isn’t sure whether he can stand up just now.

It seems like years that he sits there, faintly wondering whether everyone has maybe just forgotten about him. He stops throwing up at some point, but still feels dizzy and his bones seem weirdly light, as if he might float away if he isn’t careful.

Then, finally, there’s a voice he knows. “Kid? Kid, is that you?”

“Happy?” Peter glances up and there he is, older and heavier and with a child in his arms.

“Kid? Peter? Oh god.” He sets down the girl and then encases Peter in his arms, tightly, the second completely unexpected hug today. “It worked. Oh my god, it worked. Where’s Tony?”

“I don’t know,” Peter croaks, and then, out of all the questions in his mind, he picks the most recent one. “Is that your kid?”

“What? No, no. That’s Morgan. She’s all Tony’s.” The girl has started to cry, tugging at Happy’s coat with one hand while hiding from Peter behind the man’s knees. “Okay, let me get her to Pepper and you into a bed - you look about ready to pass out.”

Ten minutes later, Peter is lying in a hospital bed, his suit pulled down to his chest to reveal dozens of bruises, an IV in the crook of his elbow and a blood pressure cuff wrapped around his bicep, and all he can think is Mr. Stark has a daughter?

After a while, Happy comes back and shoves a phone into his hands. May is on the other side, breathing heavily. “Oh god, Peter, oh my god,” she chokes out. Peter tries to reply, but suddenly everything comes crashing over him and he’s sobbing, heaving, hyperventilating, until someone empties a syringe into his IV port that knocks him out.

May is there when he wakes up. The sedative is dissolving quicker in his body than it would in a non-enhanced human, but it’s making him drowsy and slow and his limbs so heavy that it feels impossible to even move.

“Hey darling,” May whispers, blinking tears away. May doesn’t cry very often, so this must be bad, he thinks woozily.

“I’m okay,” Peter slurs, despite having no idea whether that’s even true. And then, although sleep is pulling him under again, he simply has to ask, “Were you… here?” Because he has to know if she had to spend another five years in grief - has to know just how broken she is.

“No, honey, I was gone. Reappeared in our living room in the middle of someone else’s family dinner, just to see that they finally painted the walls.”

“Okay,” he breathes, and then, his eyelids already closing, he murmurs, “How’s Mr. Stark?”

“He’ll live,” May says. She adds something else, but he’s gone already.

When Peter wakes up the next time, May asks him whether he’s okay with her joining the understaffed nurses in treating all the wounded. Besides those hurt during the battle, many were injured while Returning, snapped back to life in the middle of road crossings or deposited into thin air where there used to be five-storey buildings. May’s a doer - she hates to sit idle when she could help - so Peter agrees immediately.

He’s got a bunch of broken ribs, a concussion, and a number of deep cuts, all of which are already starting to heal, but they let him stay the rest of the night because it’s not like he has anywhere else to go. The hospital is overcrowded, so they have to move him and that’s how Peter ends up in a bed next to Tony’s. There’s a thin curtain separating the patients from each other, but it isn’t pulled completely closed, so Peter is able to catch a glimpse of his mentor.

Tony is hooked up to so many tubes and wires that he looks like a Cyborg. Despite knowing that these are the very machines that keep him alive, Peter suddenly has the irrational desire to tear them all off and free him, as if that would make him healthy again.

He doesn’t, of course. Instead, Peter drifts a little, unable to really go back to sleep, and that’s how he witnesses Tony waking up for the first horrible time, before they put him in a coma for days. His mentor takes one painful, wheezing breath, and the only part of his face that isn’t covered by bandages shows raw panic. He makes a choking noise, gasping for air, and then cries out in a way that sounds barely human anymore.

He might be dying, Peter thinks. What if he dies here and now and I can’t do anything to stop it? But then a doctor bursts into the room and minutes later Tony is out again.

That’s the first time that Peter wonders how much it cost to bring him back.

Five days later, when Peter is long out of the hospital and the world is slowly starting to shift back into a state that once used to be called ‘normal’, when Tony finally stirs and his eyelids flutter open, Bruce expects a joke. A punchline. Triumph. A retroactive kick to Thanos’ ass.

But instead, Tony whispers, brokenly, “Please tell me it’s over.”

And then, to Bruce’s horror, he starts to cry.

The Parkers’ old apartment was rented out to new tenants during the five years they were gone. May takes one look at the family staying there, too many people for the three tiny rooms, and decides that she doesn’t have the heart to enforce her right of return.

Instead, they now temporarily stay in an awfully luxurious home that Happy arranged for them through Pepper. Peter knows he should be grateful for not ending up homeless, but he’d have almost preferred to live in one of the shelters where the rest of the Returned are staying, just to make him feel a little less out of place.

Everything is still settling - the bureaucracy’s gone crazy, and school won’t start for another month at least, which will likely result in severely shortened summer holidays - but May is already back to work. The hospitals are still overfilled and every person with medical knowledge is needed. Thus, Peter spends his time catching up with Ned and MJ and trying hard not to think too much about what happened.

A few days after Tony has woken up, Happy texts Peter to let him know that he can visit.

Happy picks him up with an electric car that opens with a fingerprint sensor - despite half of the world’s engineers being dusted, technology seems to have advanced quite a bit. He’s as grumpy as ever, but somehow in a softer way that makes it clear to Peter he doesn’t really mean it. He glances at Peter every few seconds through the rearview mirror as if he still can’t believe that the kid is back. Peter can’t blame him. He himself has a hard time digesting what all has happened, and more than once he’s woken up bathed in sweat from a nightmare of Titan.

There are drawing books and a plush toy in the backseat of the car and Happy doesn’t say anything when Peter eats a chocolate muffin and the crumbs fall down onto the leather upholstery. It’s nice somehow, but also weird. Just another detail that makes Peter realise what all he’s missed. Happy is ‘Uncle Happy’ now.

Peter’s stomach is curling anxiously when they pull up to the hospital. He wants to see Tony, but something about the memory of him wheezing in the hospital bed is gnawing at him. He wonders how much Tony has changed in the five years that passed. He wonders what he’s going to say to him.

In the end, it turns out that his nervousness was in vain. Tony is fast asleep when he arrives at the hospital, knocked out cold by the combined force of painkillers and the effort of having been awake the whole morning. He doesn't flinch when Morgan scrambles over him in the hospital bed with her stuffed animals. The girl doesn't seem to be phased anymore by the tubes and wires sticking out of her dad, but Peter is careful not to touch anything, afraid that a single wrong move might worsen Tony's condition.

Tony looks a bit better than he did the day of the battle, but not much. His right arm is gone - nothing left there to be salvaged, they say. His face is still mostly covered in bandages that run down to his shoulder, but Peter can see that his right eye is continuously leaking tears from below a burnt eyelid.

“We'll let him know that you came by. He'll be glad,” Pepper promises, and Peter nods and thanks her but secretly he isn't so sure that Tony would be glad about being seen in this state by anyone. On the other hand, that was the Tony of five years ago, and the more Peter observes everyone around him, the more he realises that he knows practically nothing about this new Tony.

He asks Happy to drop him off at Ned’s and they spend the evening getting up-to-date on the state of the world’s computer games. For a few hours, he almost manages to pretend that everything is normal.

Recovery isn’t a straight road.

Ten days after the battle, just when Tony is able to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time and the doctors are starting to reduce the meds that keep him high and loopy and generally incoherent, Tony’s stump arm gets infected.

Pepper first notices the chills that run through him while he weakly plays with Morgan in the hospital bed. By evening, he is throwing up what little lunch they managed to make him eat and the next day his temperature is up to 103 degrees. The meds do nothing to keep away the fever dreams. Pepper finds herself at her husband’s bedside once again, squeezing his one remaining hand while he moans and shivers his way through the nightmares and pain.

He has a seizure the night after that when his temperature hits 104. Then Tony’s heart gives out and for a few terrible hours Pepper is afraid that after all he’s gone through, this is how they’re going to lose him. She has Morgan in her lap on the waiting room bench outside while the medics are shocking the life back into him, not sure whether her child is holding onto her or the other way around.

Tony wakes up with a gasp. His memory is a blur of pain and surreal, screwed images of a world in which everyone he loves is dead. But that can’t be true because just next to him, his wife and daughter are sitting, very much alive, looking at him with obvious relief on their faces.

“What appn’?” he croaks, trying to reach for Pepper with an arm that isn’t there.

“Drama queen,” Pepper whispers, and he notices she’s crying. “I almost thought we were gonna lose you.”

“What, because I took a bath in gamma radiation?” he replies with a smirk. The words get stuck somewhere in the middle, but she understands anyway, smiling through the tears on her face.

Tony, it turns out, is stubborn as a mule. After they resuscitated him, the antibiotics finally showed some effect in fighting the infection. His fever breaks two days later.

It’s the only time Pepper has cried since they left the battlefield. Rhodey talks the doctors into putting a second bed in the room and takes Morgan out to the playground for some distraction. Pepper makes it to the bed before collapsing, then sleeps for 14 hours straight. Tony, still feverish and weak, joins her for most of the time, but watches her whenever he wakes, wondering how he ever deserved someone like that.

He remembers the battle with a mixture of horror, awe, and disbelief. They did it. They won, just like the kid said. Everyone is alive, has come back to life, except for Natasha, who definitely deserved better. But Tony knows that everyone in his team would have thought it worth to trade their own life for so many others’, the assassin included.

It should all be good, then.

But it isn’t. It won’t be for a long, long time.

“Tony, it’s okay, you’re okay, hey, just wake up -”

“Oh god,” he jerks awake with the leftovers of a scream on his lips, taking huge, desperate gulps in an attempt to suck in air. It was real - so fucking real.

“Breathe with me.” Bruce’s voice is impossibly calm and reassuring. Tony would call him out on not being that kind of doctor if only he could spare the breath to do so. His chest is hurting so much that he’s almost sure he’s dying for real this time. “In and out. Come on, Tony. Look at me.”

Tony tries, tries so hard, and after a few minutes he’s gotten himself enough under control that the pain in his chest subsides and the air actually reaches his lungs. But with the oxygen comes the realisation, crystal-clear. It’s not over. It will never be over. Even after his death and defeat, after being killed not once, but twice, Thanos still has a firm grip on Tony’s mind. The disappointment hits so hard that it drives tears to his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says. “You’re okay now. We’re all fine.”

“It’s not okay,” Tony croaks, defeated. “It’s not fair. It’s over, we won, this isn’t supposed to happen anymore -”

Bruce gives him a sad smile. “PTSD doesn’t end when the threat goes away, Tony. That’s why it’s called post-traumatic.”

“I know,” Tony replies impatiently, remembering New York clearly enough, how he never really left space even after coming back to earth. “I just thought that now - now that we’ve brought them back - that it would make a difference.”

But that’s it, the ultimate proof that it’s not Thanos who is responsible for how screwed up Tony’s mind is, but Tony himself. Defeating Thanos was not a magical solution to all of Tony’s problems the same way that Thanos’ plan was not a solution to any of the universe’s problems.

He almost wants to cry. “Will this ever get better?” he asks, voice impossibly small.

Bruce gives him a sad look. “I’d like to say that it will, but I don’t want to lie. You know, my father died almost thirty years ago, and there are still nights when I wake up and feel like he’s leaning over me, about to hit me with a belt.”

Tony bites his lip upon that admission, feeling ashamed and angry all the same. Bruce is somehow dealing with his trauma - hell, everybody is. He shouldn’t be having so much trouble pulling himself together.

“Don’t think that.”

“What?” Tony asks.

“I can see it on your face. Stop thinking that you’re being silly. You’re not. I know how much it screws with your mind.” Bruce’s voice is warm as he continues. His huge finger lightly brushes Tony’s hand. “We’re all here for you, you know that, right? And once you’ve recovered a bit more, maybe you could give therapy a chance.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, his voice lacking conviction. “Thanks, big guy.”

He doesn’t want to go back to sleep, but the meds he is on don’t really leave him any choice. He sinks back onto the pillows. Minutes later, he is falling through a hole in the sky. Thanos is exactly where he left him.

When he was younger, Peter used to own a game in which he had to tilt a small wooden maze back and forth until the tiny metal balls contained in it rolled into the right divots. It’s a little how the world feels to him now. People are trying to find their place, struggling to fit in, but there are just too many metal balls and not even close to enough divots for everyone.

Peter’s lucky. With May, Ned, and MJ all having been snapped, nobody close to him has moved on without him. This is what he tries to tell himself whenever he doesn’t recognise a reference to a movie, or when he realises that his juniors are suddenly a whole head taller than him, or when he mourns the loss of all his personal possessions. Ned is much worse off. Only half his family got snapped, and his mom moved on - and in - with a new boyfriend in the meantime. After Ned and his father Returned, his parents have been fighting without break until Ned temporarily moved to stay with one of his uncles. MJ categorically doesn’t talk about her family, but May’s heard rumours that MJ’s older brother left during the five years and still hasn’t been found.

Peter’s lucky. That’s what he tells himself when he gasps awake from nightmares of Titan, of Tony’s deathly pale face in a heap of rubble, when he has to dig his nails into the back of his hands so hard that they draw blood just to convince himself that they won’t dissolve in front of his eyes.

Instead of crime fighting, he goes out scouting. One night, he climbs a garbage heap near their former apartment and finally finds the old suitcase that holds Ben’s few remaining personal items. He cries a bit then, because it’s the middle of the night with no one to see the tears on his cheeks, and it’s all just a little too much.

May doesn’t ask where he found the suitcase when he hands it to her during breakfast the next morning. She just brushes a finger over the dark rings under his eyes and hugs him tightly before making him the first cup of coffee he’s ever tasted.

Tony’s spent a lot of time in his life ‘recovering’ from something or another. There was the heart surgery he underwent after getting his arc reactor removed, the terrifying weeks in the cave with Yinsen where painkillers were a rarity, blurry periods of rehab in his twenties that he can’t really remember, and the time after Siberia with a cracked sternum that he doesn’t want to. He’s used to dealing with a body that’s held together mostly by morphine and willpower.

So when the doctors tell him that it will take a long time until he will be able to walk again, that blood pressure regulation will likely be an issue for the rest of his life, that the nervous system on his right side is fried, that he is lucky he didn’t lose more than an arm (and technically an ear, since he is almost deaf now on his right side), Tony doesn’t break. No legs for a while then. One ear, one arm. It’s not ideal, but he can work with that.

Tony spends the next week with Pepper and Morgan, eagerly awaiting the day he will be allowed to go home. He is usually exhausted enough by lunch that he has to sleep for a few hours, which annoys him almost more than anything else. The fever keeps coming back in the evenings, but he ignores it the best he can and dials up the morphine enough to be able to think through the pain without getting drowsy. He bullies Rhodey into smuggling a tablet into his hospital room and clumsily starts to draw up schematics for a prosthetic arm with his left hand during the nights when he is alone.

The kid visits one day. He looks tired and sort of nervous, but he is still absolutely alive (which Tony knew, of course, but there are only so many times you can see someone die in a nightmare before you start having doubts), so alive that Tony feels himself tearing up a little.

Peter stops dead in his tracks when he enters the room, his eyes widening at the sight of Tony’s burnt and scarred face. The stump arm is only covered with a light bandage now and Tony’s sunken eyes and hollow cheeks betray the days spent in a feverish haze. Pepper said that the kid visited before, so he must have known what was coming, but Tony guesses that it’s still kind of a shock to realise the permanent nature of all the damage. He himself still avoids mirrors as much as possible.

Sensing that the situation has every potential to slip into the worst levels of awkward, Tony ploughs ahead. “Guess that’s it for the Playboy cover shoots then,” he jokes lightly.

For a moment, the kid looks baffled. Then the corners of his mouth lift and curl into a smile. “I think they would make an exception for the superhero of the year.” He steps fully into the room and carefully settles on the chair next to Tony’s bed before blurting out, “Mr. Stark, I’m so glad you’re not dead!”

Half an hour later, the two have pulled up the schematics for the prosthetic arm and Tony is explaining all the special features to the kid. Tony’s head is aching and the phantom pain is bad today - he knows he was due for more painkillers a while ago. But this is fun, this is what he’s been missing for five goddamn years, and for a moment, it feels like nothing has changed at all.

The kid looks exhausted and Tony makes a mental note to check in with May as soon as he’s more able to make sure that there’s no lasting damage from their involuntary trip to space.

“You’re adding a soldering iron to your own prosthesis?” Peter asks, flabbergasted.

Tony smirks. “Come on, you can’t tell me it’s not cool.”

“It is, but then add some more real-world practical things as well. Like a can opener.”

Tony sputters. “Next Pepper will ask me to integrate a spice grinder for her cooking. And Morgan will want storage space for Alpaca food.”

“You have an alpaca?” Peter’s face screws up and Tony can practically see how he is trying to fit this new information into the mental image he has of his mentor.

“It’s all the kid. Morgan has a very soft spot for animals. Even spiders.” He winks. “But she’s also into race cars and explosives, so don’t worry, I’m pretty sure she’s actually related to me.”

Peter chuckles and Tony is overwhelmed by the urge to take Peter to the lakehouse to meet Gerald and his daughter just as soon as he’s allowed to go home.

“Fireworks,” Peter says eventually. “You should add fireworks to the arm.”

Tony opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again and slowly makes a note on the sketch for the prototype, the letters a bit awkward from writing with his left hand.

“Speaking of special features, I’m gonna make you a suit with the newest tech and then you can go patrolling again,” Tony promises. “I know you can’t wait to get back to your secret identity. Just hold on a few more days before going out, okay?”

“Sure, of course,” Peter says with a nod, visibly happy that Tony has brought up the topic.

Then the nurse comes in and coaxes Tony into taking his meds and drinking water, for which he has to sit up completely. It leaves him dizzy and a bit out of breath. He leans his head back against the headboard and holds onto the sheets with his hand, counting down from ten. When the black fades away, Peter is looking at him with a faraway and slightly sentimental expression on his face.

“Mr. Stark?”

“Make it Tony, will you?” Tony says. “I think we’re past the formalities now.”

Peter swallows. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, Tony. I just...thank you for bringing me back. For saving us all.”

Tony waves his hand dismissively. “Eh, a few more times saving the world and I’ll get a free frozen yogurt.”

Happy comes to pick up the kid and drop a package off for Tony, who passes out as soon as they leave. When he wakes up in the late evening, the nurse informs him that Pepper and Morgan visited for a while but didn’t want to wake him up.

After choking down a tasteless dinner (he really needs to make a hefty donation to the hospital so that they can upgrade the cafeteria) Tony shifts gingerly to the side of the bed and bends down to pick up the cardboard box from where Happy set it. It contains the two pieces of the first prototype for the arm he’s designed over the past week.

It looks almost like a real arm, but he couldn’t resist adding some red and gold around the wrist and on the fingertips. The robotic prosthesis is based on musculoskeletal modelling, is neuro-adaptive, and, of course, powered by a tiny blue arc reactor set into the palm. Tony positions the upper part between his thighs, then takes the lower in his hand and sets out to connect the two pieces and -

It doesn’t fit. He tries again, thinking it was just his shakiness or a stubborn hinge somewhere, but no, it simply doesn’t fit. Upon closer inspection, the lower piece is about three millimeters wider than the upper one. It’s a small error, but enough to make it impossible to connect the pieces into a functioning prosthesis.

“FRIDAY,” Tony asks, trying to drone out the growing panic and the sound of his heart beating loud and fast in his ears. “There must have been an issue with the printer.”

“No, sir,'' the AI replies from the speakers of his phone on the bedside table. “It was printed exactly according to the specifications you entered.”

“Who made those measurements?” Tony asks, his breath quickening. He knows the answer. Of course he knows the answer.

“You did, boss.”

And that’s when Tony breaks.

Of course, the past week he’s been in pain and on drugs and not exactly clear in his head, but he’s worked in much worse states before. High on cocaine and perpetually drunk throughout most of his thirties. In Afghanistan, with a car battery keeping his stuttering heart alive. God, he invented a new element while literally dying. He is Tony Fucking Stark. He doesn’t make mistakes.

Except this time, he did.

The doctors say it will most likely not get worse, but they’re not sure whether it will ever get better. Tony’s brain, his essence, is most likely forever going to be damaged.

He is still cleverer than the majority of the human population, so nobody seems to think much of it. Tony, on the other hand, can’t help but feel like his world has been shaken to its core. Physical impairment is bearable; he has worked with that before. But if he can’t trust his own mind, he’s useless. Worse, he’s a liability.

He nods politely at the doctor whose last sentences are already being swallowed by the rushing in his ears. Then there’s only silence and the long, deep breaths he takes to fight the tightness in his chest.

“We’re gonna figure this out, Tony.” Pepper’s hand comes down on his shoulder. She looks at him as if she’s expecting a panic attack, and the funny thing is, he’s expecting one as well. But that’s the thing about anxiety; it’s anything but predictable. It rarely strikes when you expect it to.

Tony swallows. He doesn’t trust his voice, so he just grabs her hand with his remaining one and squeezes tightly. He once tricked his own heart into functioning again, but this time, it’s the very source of his intelligence that’s bailing on him. He doesn’t admit it to Pepper, but the truth is, he has no idea how to figure this one out.

They let him go a few days later.

“Daddy is crying,” Morgan points out in a stage whisper when Pepper pulls into the garage at the lake house.

“I’m not,” Tony corrects from where he is sitting next to her in the backseat. “My eye is a bit broken, just like when the tap was leaking in the kitchen, remember?” But his voice is suspiciously hoarse and through the rearview mirror Pepper can see him blinking rapidly. She can’t blame him - she’s feeling pretty sappy herself at bringing him home. For a while, neither of them were sure he’d ever see the lakehouse again.

The short walk to the front door and into the living room is tedious. Tony is operating a crutch with his left arm, his stump shoulder supported by Pepper while Morgan is impatiently running ahead of them. By the time they settle down onto the living room couch, all colour has drained from Tony’s face. He is panting and sweating and generally looking about ready to keel over.

“Let’s go and feed Gerald!” Morgan begs, climbing up onto her father’s lap and pulling at the chords of his sweater. “And then I’ll show you the tree house I built with Uncle Rhodey while you were at the hospital, and then we eat dinner, and then you have to read ‘If you give a mouse a cookie’ to me.”

“Sounds good, Morguna,” Tony replies in a slightly choked voice. He pulls her close to his chest and rests his chin lightly on her head, closing his eyes with a tired exhale. “Let me rest my legs for a bit, and then I’ll see what we can do, okay?”

And Pepper can see it, can spot on every inch of his face the frustration over how his body and his mind are betraying him battling with the gratitude for what he still has left. She can see his love for their daughter seeping from every pore of his body, but it is overshadowed by a fear that’s been in him for as long as she’s known him - a deep-sitting worry that he’s not good enough for any of the good things life gives to him.

All she wants is to find a way to make him understand that he deserves every scrap of happiness they can find together. She’s told him, in the early morning hours when nightmares would bar both of them from sleep and they were too tired to keep up their usual snark and banter. But sometimes words are not enough to make someone believe they deserve better.

She settles for bending over the two of them and pressing a long kiss to the top of each of their heads. Then she straightens up, puts on a smile and asks, “So, since it’s a special day, who’s up for cheeseburgers?”

It doesn’t really get easier. Something inside Tony seemed to have expected that things would miraculously improve once he was home, but of course they don’t. He’s still in a wheelchair most of the time. The physical therapist makes him stand up for longer and longer every day, which hurts like a bitch and regularly sends his blood pressure down to his ankles. Tony gets to see the living room from the perspective of the carpet more often than he ever wanted to.

He sleeps a lot. Maybe it’s his age that makes this recovery more difficult than all the previous ones, or the fact that the gauntlet has deep-fried his brain circuitry, but he can’t stay awake for more than half a day. Tony, who has been dealing with insomnia for as long as he can remember, thought he knew how it felt to be tired. But this is a different kind of tiredness, one that seems to stem from an exhausted brain, not body. He hates all the lost hours, hates the fog in his mind when he stays up too long, hates the nightmares that sometimes morph into anxiety attacks. Though it is arguably more bearable now that he wakes up to Morgan next to him playing with her Lego sets rather than a beeping heart monitor and a sterile hospital room.

Tony doesn’t give up on tinkering immediately. He tries to work on his arm again soon after he returns, but this time he can’t remember the exact modifications he'd planned for the dimensions. He hasn’t written them down anywhere and starting again from scratch seems like accepting defeat. So he boxes the arm back up and moves on to Peter’s suit.

He’s 3D-printed a new suit and is halfway through updating the safety systems when he notices the smell of smoke the same moment that FRIDAY starts sounding alarms. By the time the garage sprinklers have extinguished the flames, half of the suit’s fabric is black and charred, the central chest piece melted into the work table. It turns out that Tony configured the charger wrong, putting 2200 instead of 220 volts into it. The wires connecting it to the plug overheated and ignited the fabric.

Tony knows what he should do. He knows that he should replace the wires, correct the charge load, finish the update, and print another model.

But this time, he can’t. It was one failure too many. This time, Tony doesn’t start over. Instead, he keeps staring at the remains of the suit until the spider emblem seems to have burnt itself into his retinas, feeling dumb and useless and old.

Peter got his mentor back, except that he didn’t.

Not today, kid.

He stares at the phone angrily, wondering why he’d ever expected anything else. It’s been the same reply in different variations all week, and he can’t pretend not to be bothered by it anymore. He knows that Tony is still recovering, but he’d said a few days before Peter’s new suit would be ready, and that had been two weeks ago. Many things might have changed in the five preceding years, but Peter can’t believe for the life of him that any version of Tony Stark would be able to resist the challenge of improving his tech.

Enough is enough, Peter decides as he pulls his very first suit out of the cardboard box that contains the few things he’s salvaged from the garbage dump. The empty days are starting to wear him down, and New York is going haywire with crime. With its population suddenly doubled, people are seeking out the houses where they used to live, fighting over homes, life partners, adoption papers, and much more. Peter knows he shouldn’t go out against Tony’s wishes, but then again, the Tony he used to know wouldn’t make him wait for weeks without a suit while sending him nondescript text messages that explain exactly nothing.

Peter needs an aim, and New York needs her Spider-Man.

He puts on the costume and looks at himself in the mirror. The old suit is a bit too short at the ankles and wrists, but it will serve its main purpose of concealing his identity. The one he was wearing during the battle got so damaged that it was practically useless even before they cut it off him at the hospital. And anyway, he wouldn’t want Tony to be alerted of his whereabouts.

Peter climbs out of the window and takes a moment to enjoy the wind on his face before swinging to the top of the opposite building. “Let’s go, Karen,” he declares, and then tries to ignore the ache of disappointment in his chest when he remembers why there is no reply.

It was one of the better days, up until the point when Tony decided to run a bath for Morgan.

Pepper is away for an SI event and Happy was looking after Morgan while Tony’s PT trainer tortured him during the afternoon. Afterwards, they settled in front of the TV, Tony swearing that he was fine and Happy could go home already, only to wake up two hours later to Happy stretched out on the sofa, glancing at him with a knowing smile while getting his fingernails painted green by Morgan.

His driver-turned-bodyguard-turned-forehead-of-security-turned babysitter left after dinner, and Tony practiced walking up and down the stairs for a while with Morgan cheering him on. It was almost like their evenings before, almost, if not for the nagging feeling in the back of Tony’s head that he’d be incapable of protecting her in case something happened.

“I want the blue bubbles,” Morgan decides when he helps her settle into the bathtub. “And the subarins.”

“Submarines,” Tony corrects with a smile. He pours the blue bath foam into the water and brings her the box with all her bath toys.

“Did you take Gerald inside his house?” she asks with a serious frown between her brows.

One evening the previous week, Tony forgot to take their alpaca back into the stable, cuing it to disturb their breakfast by shoving its face through the porch door in the morning and trying to eat Morgan’s cereal. Nothing bad came out of it, but it seems to have left a dent in his kid’s brain because she’s been asking Tony about it every night since then.

“Let’s see. Did I bring Gerald inside, FRIDAY?” Tony addresses the wall.

“Yes, boss,” FRIDAY replies. “However, the porch door is still open.”

“I’ll go and close it,” he says to Morgan. He playfully splashes a bit of water onto her face before pushing himself up with a groan, his back and legs making him very aware of the exercise he did today. His blood pressure isn’t really cooperating with the change in elevation and he has to brace himself against the wall inconspicuously to wait out the headrush before he can continue.

Tony slowly makes it down the stairs, relieved when he finds the wheelchair where he left it downstairs. He rolls out onto the porch. The sun has just set on the lake, and there is something peaceful about the scene. The first stars are appearing, but not enough yet that he has to look away and find something to hold onto so as not to lose his grip on reality.

Or that’s what Tony thinks. But when he blinks, the sky is suddenly pitch black and he is covered in goosebumps. Tony pinches himself and then glances at his stump arm to make sure this isn’t a flashback.

“Shit,” he curses, rolling back into the house. “FRIDAY, how long was I out there?”

“One hour and thirteen minutes, boss.” She seems to hesitate for a moment before adding, “Your vital signs did not indicate any stress, so I did not alert you.”

Tony curses again. He ditches the wheelchair and takes the stairs as fast as he can, black spots dancing in his field of vision. He almost staggers into the wall before shoving his shoulder into the bathroom door and-

“Look, Daddy, my fingers are all wrinkly now!”

Morgan is sitting in the now lukewarm water, surrounded by toys, presenting her hands to Tony with bright excitement on her face. He stops, his heartbeat thudding in his ears and sweat running down his temples, then slowly lets himself sink to the floor.

“Daddy?” Morgan prompts, realising that something is off. “My fingers will be alright, won’t they?”

Tony swallows hard. “Yeah, kiddo,” he replies tonelessly and forces a smile onto his face. “Your fingers will be just fine. Come on, let’s wash your hair and get you dried off.”

Tony manages to keep it together until he has settled Morgan in bed. He reads her her favourite book, his voice and arm shaking only the slightest bit. Morgan stares at him suspiciously, so he flicks her nose and tickles her until she is gasping for breath. He kisses her goodnight, closes the door, supports himself down the stairs to the master bedroom, and only then does he break.

Tony hasn’t had a panic attack this bad since just after he came back from Titan, but the helpless feeling he has now is much the same as then. At that time, he was unable to save the universe, had let Peter die in his arms; now he’s letting down his family, unable to protect those he cares about. Or, even worse, he’s actively putting them in danger by zoning out for an hour.

It’s been years since Tony has thrown up from panicking. He tries to keep it down, but then the nausea gets so overwhelming that he has to scramble for the trash can near the door and heave and retch until all that comes up is burning stomach acid.

Pepper finds him like this twenty minutes later - panting and shaking, still clutching the trash can to his chest. “Tony!” she yelps, then catches herself and lowers her voice. “What’s going on?”

He swallows heavily, searching for words. “I-I forgot Morgan in the bathroom. She, it must have been an hour, and I, I just- I can’t-”

“Shh, calm down. She’s okay, Tony, we’re all okay.” Pepper crouches down next to him and lets her hand rest on his. “Breathe with me, alright?”

He gulps down bile and air and tries to concentrate on sucking in oxygen. It takes a long time until his heart slows down a little. Pepper gently takes the bin away and then settles next to him, wraps an arm around his shoulders, and pulls him close. Tony feels himself go limp. He lets his head fall back against her collarbones, his body heavy with exhaustion and failure.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, huh?” she asks after a while, handing him a tissue that he tries to take with his right arm before remembering he can’t.

“I’m nothing without my brain,” he replies, choked. “My brain, my mind - that’s who I am.”

“No, that’s not true. Who you are is this.” Pepper taps on the scar tissue on his chest, then lets her hand rest there, warm and reassuring. “And this is all that counts. I know it, and so does Morgan.”

And Tony would love to believe her, but he can't any more than he can use his right arm.

Peter is tired and school hasn’t even started yet.

He’s tired from not being able to sleep, from waking up to the ever-same nightmares in the early morning hours. Tired from having the same conversations over and over again, Oh, you got snapped? What about your aunt? Did you get your apartment back? Tell me, where did this bruise come from? He’s even tired of Ned’s and MJ’s subtle concerned looks and May’s not-so-subtle suggestions that he let his secret identity rest for a bit. He’s tired from looking at his phone and wondering whether there’s ever going to be an answer to the texts he keeps sending.

He’s not tired of Spider-Manning, but the crime rates are skyrocketing. Often times, nightly patrols stretch well into the next morning, and despite feeling like he is finally able to do something useful, it starts to wear him out after a while, making him reckless and more prone to mistakes than usual.

A week after he resumes patrolling, a robber breaks his finger and he spends the night shuffling back and forth between the freezer and his bed, replacing the ice again and again. A woman who Returned to find her husband living with a new wife wreaks havoc at their house and hits Peter with a baseball bat when he tries to stop her, giving him a concussion that forces him to bunk over at Ned’s for May not to realise. She does anyway, and lectures him about being more careful while dosing out painkillers into his palm the morning after. Another night, May has to stitch up a slash wound he got from a man trying to blackmail an employee of the insurance company not to revoke his life insurance money.

Then, after a more peaceful patrol when he is already on his way home, Peter finds an elderly woman with dementia trying to enter her old apartment in which a new couple is living now. The woman introduces herself as Mrs. Jackson and offers Peter jellybeans from an ancient-looking package in her handbag, which he politely declines. Peter manages to talk to the two men before they call the police, then tracks down the woman’s daughter and drops the lady off at her new address. He declines the money the daughter tries to give him, but accepts the chocolate bar, munching on it as he one-handedly swings his way back home. The sun is just setting and he watches it go down from one of his favourite viewpoint on top of the Daily Bugle building.

“That was a good day,” he says to himself. Still looking towards the river, he shoots a web over his shoulder to the building he knows is on the other side of the street and lets himself fall backward.

The problem is, Mrs. Jackson is not the only one who sometimes forgets that the city is not what it used to be five years ago. The building on the other side of the street has been demolished. Peter’s web sticks to nothing. He realises this a split second too late. Frantically, he shoots another web into thin air in an attempt to save himself, but it’s fruitless.

While falling, Peter thinks that the integrated parachute in the Iron Spider suit would be really useful just about right now, and that’s when his body crashes into a streetlight. Pain flares up in his stomach. It feels as if he’s being ripped apart from the inside, and that’s the last thing he knows.

The first time he wakes up, everything is blurry and moving in slow-motion. May is there, holding his hand, and he is in much less pain than he remembered. Peter blinks a bit and tries to feel for the boundaries of his body, but he seems to have become one with the hospital bed. He closes his eyes again.

The second time, he’s much more lucid. A worried-looking Happy is sitting at his bedside and explains in a forcibly slow voice that May has “finally” gone to sleep and Tony is on his way to the private hospital they took him to. Peter nods, which seems to set in motion a chain reaction in his body, because ten seconds later he is retching bile into a basin Happy hastily shoved under his chin.

They had to remove his spleen, Peter learns later, when his stomach has calmed down a little and he is sipping Sprite through a straw. From what he can gather, he wasn’t in any mortal danger, but that is mostly due to the fact that his spider powers took the brunt of it.

The cup grows heavy in his hand while the nurse is explaining this, and then Happy takes it from his fingers with an unusually kind gesture, briefly brushing his hand through Peter’s curls before he nudges Peter’s head onto the pillow. “Get some more rest,” he says, and Peter obliges, woozy and relieved that Happy isn’t angry.

Tony, as it turns out, is.

Peter wakes up when he hears the tap, tap of the crutch on the tiles. He is thrown back to the walking cane of his fifth grade math teacher until he hears Tony’s voice ask someone “Is he awake?”. Then his mentor opens the door to the hospital room.

Tony looks better than the last time, but somehow simultaneously worse. His burn injuries are healed - the scars still stand out, though slightly less angrily than Peter remembers. But he’s lost weight, the circles under his eyes are larger than ever, and his usually meticulously shaven beard has become an unkempt mixture of grey and black. All in all, he has the air of someone who isn’t taking care of himself.

“You look kind of bad,” Peter starts, and maybe this isn’t exactly a polite thing to say, but his brain is still a bit messy and a part of him is simply pissed at his mentor.

“You are one to talk, boy-without-a-spleen,” Tony rebutts, the sarcasm sharp, his usual playfulness lacking completely. “So that’s what I get for snapping your ass back and asking you not to play superhero for a while.”

Peter stays silent now and bites his lip. They’ve been here before and there is really nothing new to say about it. He isn’t even scared now - just weary. He feels centuries older than that time he stood at the edge of the city and Tony took his suit away.

“So we’re doing the not-talking thing now?” Tony asks, almost casually. He sits down heavily on the chair that Happy left abandoned, and it doesn’t escape Peter’s notice that a sheen of sweat has already formed on his forehead from the strain it seems to have taken him to come here. “Because, trust me, I’ve got four decades more experience playing that game than you.”

“That’s not it,” Peter protests. “It’s not like I want to go against you, but what was I supposed to do? Sit at home while all this crime is going on in my city and do nothing about it?” He takes a breath, his cheeks burning from anger and embarrassment. “Nobody even hurt me, okay? This just happened because I messed up.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?” Tony demands. “Because it’s literally doing the exact opposite. Fuck, kid - do you realise that this is exactly why I asked you not to go out? You need to get used to the city again, get settled in your new life. I asked you to wait. I wanted to keep you safe -”

“But I don’t want to be safe!” Peter interrupts, exasperated. “Nobody needs a safe Spider-Man! If you’d wanted that, you’d never have taken me to Germany!”

That’s a low blow - Peter can see it. Tony’s tired eyes widen a bit and he takes a deep breath before continuing in a forcibly calm voice, “I was there in Germany with you. I knew what we were dealing with. I was looking after you, something you don’t seem to be capable of doing on your own.”

“I get hurt sometimes, so what?” Peter asks bitterly. “All the Avengers do. You did - you nearly died. So why is it a problem if it’s me? If you think I’m not good enough at what I’m doing, just say it. Because I don’t know what you even see in me.”

Tony sighs and runs his hand through his thinning hair. “What I see is potential, kid,” he says, softer than before. “So much potential. But you would need someone to steer you in the right direction, to make sure you don’t die before you make it through college. And that someone can't be me.”

“Because you have your family, I get it.” Peter tries not to sound too bitter, not to let the nagging, ugly feeling of jealousy take over.

“No, Peter - no that's not -” Tony cuts himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Damnit, kid!” he snaps. “Why do you have to make this so hard?”

There's tears burning in Peters eyes because it's not him who's making it hard, it's his life that won't ever give him a damn thing for free, ever let him keep something beautiful.

“Kid. Look at me,” Tony urges him. “I care about you, a lot, okay? I can't watch you get hurt, not after…” Tony trails off, swallows, looks away. “I realise that I can’t keep you away from patrolling. It was dumb of me to even try, and I won’t do it again. But I can’t - I won’t be involved in this anymore.”

It’s like someone has punched Peter in the gut. He would have been fine with Tony banning him from patrolling or talking May into giving him house arrest. He expected that, almost. That would have easily been worth the crimes he prevented over the last week. But this - this hurts somewhere else, somewhere deeper than his pride and his childish desire to be taken seriously.

Everything he thought was there between Tony and him seems to have dissolved to dust on Titan.

Tony takes out his sunglasses and puts them on, not bothered by the fact that it’s still before sunrise. “You know that bird guy you webbed to the floor during our little tussle in Germany? Calls himself Falcon. I’m not a fan, but I think it might be good for you to meet up with him sometime, practice superheroing. He’s got…” Tony takes a deep breath, his voice shaking a little now. He suddenly looks so, so old. “He’s got Cap’s shield now, I’ve heard. I’ll ask Happy to send him your number.”

He doesn’t want me. I’m a burden.

Any reply burning in Peter’s throat is gone. When he looks up, he thinks he glimpses tears in Tony's good eye, behind the dark glasses.

Peter’s own eyes are stinging. He swallows. “Okay, Mr. Stark,” he says tonelessly.

His legs feel numb when he pushes himself up. There’s a heavy feeling of nausea in his stomach that has nothing to do with his injury. “I’ll go and take a shower,” he adds without looking up at the older man.

“Will you be okay on your own?” Tony asks.

Peter doesn’t even know whether this is about the shower or something bigger. He tries not to care too much. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

He doesn’t look back before shutting the door.

“It’s fine,” Peter told Tony.

But it isn’t. Nothing is fine.

Peter gets out of the hospital the next day, and that same evening, he’s back on the streets. Happy sends him Falcon’s number, and apparently, even sent Falcon Peter’s because he receives a constant thread of texts asking for a meeting. Peter ignores them; the last thing he needs is another person promising to look after him only to quit halfway through. Or, maybe, he thinks when he barely escapes a mugger’s bullet the weekend following, maybe that’s not entirely true. But he doesn’t want one anymore. Spider-Man can just as well work alone.

Happy keeps calling him, but Peter doesn’t answer his calls either. Thinking of Happy makes him think of toys in the backseat and a small girl with Tony’s eyes, and he doesn’t want to remember that because then jealousy boils up, hot and sour in his stomach. He feels infinitely stupid for ever thinking that there could be more between Tony and him than their superhero relationship, for thinking that he was anything more to Tony than Spider-Man.

“I see potential,” he keeps hearing when he tosses and turns at night in his bed, and yeah, that’s all he ever was to Tony, apparently.

School starts again and they finally move into their own apartment, almost an hour away from their old one. And maybe, just maybe, Peter should have been more careful in a neighbourhood he doesn’t know yet. Maybe he should have read the news and followed his suspects for a while before starting to fight. But every time he webs up a criminal, every time he hears a thank you from someone he saved, it feels like he’s proving Tony wrong.

So Peter keeps doing it, studying by day, fighting crime in the evenings, and sometimes he is so exhausted that he actually manages to sleep through the rest of the night without any dreams. He’s tired, and he’s reckless, and he’s doing the exact opposite of what Tony has asked him to. But that’s just one more reason not to pick up Happy’s calls.

Tony doesn’t hear Rhodey approaching from the right with his bad ear, so by the time he realises that his friend has found him, it’s already too late to escape.

Rhodey cuts straight to the point. “When Pep told me she couldn’t find you, I thought you’d have escaped to the workshop or be out flying around with the suit. But this worries me almost more.”

Tony looks up from the box he’s been bent over at an awkward angle from the side of his wheelchair, packing screwdrivers and bolts. It’s a wheelchair day, of course, as were all the days in the past week. And the one before that, as Pepper kindly pointed out this morning.

“Why?” Tony retorts. “Didn’t you all tell me it was a good choice to retire?”

“Retire from being Iron Man, yeah. But Tony Stark not tinkering? What the fuck is going on?”

“Nothing left to tinker with,” he says simply. “And I’ve got more time for Morgan this way.”

“Tony, I’m not buying it,” Rhodey says with a huff. “Just because you got some memory problems? I mean, there’s gotta be an easy way around that. You can programme FRIDAY to remind you of everything important, you can- ”

“I know,” Tony cuts him off. He’s done that, of course - first thing after the bathing incident. He doesn’t leave the house anymore without an earpiece connected to FRIDAY’s server, and has programmed her to alert him of the tiniest things he might forget. But it doesn’t help. He can’t explain the feeling of inadequacy, of constant fear that he’s missed something important, something vital, something that is going to put everyone he loves in danger. He can’t trust his brain, and thus, he can’t trust himself with anything he’ll build.

“What about your arm?” Rhodey asks. “I thought you were making a prosthesis.”

“Not a big loss,” Tony says with a shrug. “One is more than enough for cooking and reading bedtime stories.”

“And the spider kid’s suit?”

Tony stiffens and sticks his chin out slightly. “What about it?”

“I’m not dumb, Tony. The reason we pulled off the whole time heist in the first place was because the only way you could get over your survivor’s guilt was to either bring the kid back or die trying.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Tony scowls.

“Yeah, and now?” Rhodey demands. “You’re just gonna let him get killed by a random thug on the street because he doesn’t have a proper suit?”

“It’s not -” Tony breaks off, inhaling sharply. “I’ve got him monitored, okay? And he’s supposed to get in touch with Cap’s feathery friend. I just - I can’t do this mentoring thing - not anymore. It’s just not feasible.”

“And why would that be? Wouldn’t it be better if you were looking after him as best you can instead of completely shutting yourself off? Wouldn’t it be better if-”

Tony cuts him off, “Maybe it would have been better if I’d just died during the snap.”

There’s a sudden silence. Rhodey’s eyes keep holding Tony’s steadily while he slowly shakes his head, but Tony can see the sadness contained in them. He already regrets that he said it out loud, his stupid mouth running ahead of him and spilling out what nobody was supposed to ever hear, but it’s too late now, always too late.

“Nobody wants that, Tony. And I don’t think you do either.” Rhodey swallows, then goes on in a softer tone. “You think you’re useless like this, but you’re not. Not to anyone. You’re way too absorbed in mourning what you lost to understand what all we gained.”

“I am seeing what I gained,” Tony insists, sounding almost desperate in his own ears. “I’ve got my family. This is what counts, not the tech I build. I am okay, Rhodes - stop giving me that kicked puppy look. I am fine.”

“Yeah,” Rhodey snorts, turning around to leave. “Convince yourself of that first.”

The warehouse is huge, filled with alien tech that definitely shouldn’t be being loaded into a stolen Joey’s Pizza van. There’s only two of them moving the product, and that should have probably made Peter think a bit more before jumping down from the ceiling with a “Boo!” and webbing the two men’s hands to the pillars. The tech they’re stealing is emitting a constant low-pitched hum and that’s messing with Peter’s senses, which probably should have been yet another reason to wait before he engaged.

But it’s been four nights and 20 hours of sleep in total, and the paparazzi published a picture of Morgan Stark’s first day of school today, showing a worn-out looking Tony with sunglasses waving to her out of the open car window. The headline read “Shocking Revelation: Iron Man Too Weak to Walk His Daughter to the Classroom Door?!”

Flash showed Peter the magazine with a raised eyebrow, casually commenting, “Guess that’s it for your Stark internship, huh?” Peter flipped him off, but the rest of the day he just felt empty.

“Resistance is futile!” Peter shouts at the criminals while webbing their feet to the pillars for good measure. Then he fumbles for his phone in the suit pocket in order to call the police, and that’s when his whole body explodes into pain. It feels as if every single one of his cells is individually being hit with a baseball bat. His knees give out under him, and while falling, he can see the sardonic smile of a woman with a taser stepping out of the shadows.

“I’ve never liked spiders,” she announces. Then Peter’s head hits the floor with a thud and he blacks out gratefully.

“Boss.”

“What?” Tony jerks awake at his work desk, his heart hammering up into his throat. “What - What did I miss, Fri? What did I do?”

“You did nothing wrong, boss. But I thought you might want to be informed that Peter Parker hasn’t returned from his nightly patrol. He is four hours past his usual curfew.”

“The kid? What? Where is he?”

“I cannot say this for sure, but security footage saw him entering a warehouse in Brooklyn at 9pm. A Joey’s Pizza van left from there an hour later, which has now reached the following location.” She displays a map with a highlighted area in the upstate region. “This warehouse is not an official Joey’s Pizza property.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Tony mutters. “Are there any security cameras inside the building?”

“Negative, boss. However, I can locate Mr. Parker’s smartphone in a two-mile radius of the warehouse. It makes sense to assume that he is being held inside.”

“Is he injured?”

“I can’t tell from the data I have. It seems that Mr. Parker is not currently using any of the suits you made for him.”

Of course he isn’t. Tony feels a surge of self-hatred rising in his chest, together with the all-too-familiar guilt. He should have known Peter wouldn’t play it safe. He should have checked on him much earlier. There’s a whole laundry list of shoulds and woulds for him to deal with later, but right now, he doesn’t have time for that. He needs to get Peter out of there.

“FRIDAY, inform Rhodey. Get him there ASAP.”

“Doing so as we speak, sir. However, Colonel Rhodes is currently in New Jersey and will take approximately 40 minutes to reach the location.”

“Shit,” Tony mutters. “What about Falcon?”

“Mr. Wilson is on a visit to Wakanda.”

Tony curses under his breath. He scours the map again, then racks his brain for anyone else he might call. But, honestly, who is he kidding? The decision has already been made.

“Boss-” FRIDAY begins when he pushes himself out of the wheelchair and reaches for his crutch, breathing through the headrush that comes with standing up too quickly.

“Save it, FRI. I need a suit.”

The AI directs him to the cabinet where he stores his nano housing units. The Mark 85 would have been a better choice, but he hasn’t even tried locating it since coming home after the battle. For all he knows, its pieces are still lying somewhere on the field of rubble that used to be the Avengers Compound.

The armour envelopes him with a feeling that is both familiar and strange, like coming back to a childhood home. It also hurts. The suit is doing most of the work for him, but the sheer strain of being upright without a crutch is a lot, and the extra weight on his legs and back is enough to have him panting by the time he staggers to the garage exit.

“Fuck,” he breathes when his vision clouds up from the effort. “This is not working.”

“Sir, Colonel Rhodes is already on his way. I advise you to wait -”

“Stop it.” Tony takes a deep breath to drown out the rising panic. “FRIDAY, is there any morphine around?”

“That is not a wise idea, boss.”

“Come on, we’re running out of time!”

The AI silently lights up a path through the cardboard boxes littering the ground to a medicine cabinet on the other end of the garage. Tony finds the morphine and injects himself with a dose as high as he dares without his mind getting fuzzy. He needs to think clearly now.

The relief is instantaneous. The pain is still there, but it’s muted enough that he can walk out of the house and take off relatively steadily.

It takes Tony less than ten minutes to reach the old warehouse. By the time he touches down, he is severely lightheaded, but the adrenaline and morphine are holding him together just enough that he doesn’t fall over. He makes a quick detour to the back of the building and then blasts himself through the front door (“Here’s my plan: attack”) because time is a sensitive factor, and frankly, he doesn’t have any better ideas.

He takes the first guy out before the man even has time to react. The second one jumps behind the van that is parked in the middle of the large hall and starts to shoot at Tony with something that is emitting blue energy sparks and is definitely not legal. Tony takes cover behind a pillar (while definitely not leaning against it) and breathes for a moment, surveilling the scene.

Peter is being held in the back of the warehouse. They put him in a cage - a fucking cage with enhanced security that Tony constructed years ago when they were fighting alien wolves in Central Park, and this fact alone makes his insides burn with rage. The kid is apparently unconscious, chained to the bars with handcuffs way above his head, which appear to be the only thing currently holding him upright. There’s blood on his face that seems to stem from a wound on his head where he must have been beaten, but it’s dried. FRIDAY informs him that the kid is breathing, thank god.

The guy with the electric gun is situated between Tony and the kid, so he’s gotta deal with him first. “FRIDAY, I want a big boom in twenty seconds,” he instructs.

“Timer set, boss,” the AI replies into his good ear.

Tony steps out from his shelter into plain view, ignoring the exhaustion weighing him down. He fires a series of blasts that tear through the walls of the van, causing the vehicle to skid towards the right side of the building. He can hear a curse and then the sound of hasty footsteps as the man runs towards the backdoor, trying not to be crushed by the vehicle, and that’s exactly where Tony wants him to be.

“Hey, asshole!” he shouts. “Come out of your rabbit hole and show your face!”

The man cocks his electric gun. “Iron Man, what a surprise. The papers say you’ve retired? Shouldn’t you -”

Tony never gets to know what it is he should be doing, because that’s when the bomb he planted outside the back door blows up with a satisfactory boom. The man is blown off his feet just as he shoots a blast of light blue energy at Tony, flying a dozen feet through the air. Tony doesn’t hear the thud when he hits the ground because he’s too busy getting out of the line of fire. He almost succeeds, but it’s not enough. The blast catches him at the side, sending him stumbling blindly back into the pillar.

“Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark, please! Can you hear me? Tony!”

Tony isn’t sure at first whether he is actually hearing the kid’s voice or it’s just a memory conjured by his hazy mind. His good ear is ringing, the other one gone completely deaf. There are sparks of white dancing in his field of vision and the suit is pretty much the only thing holding him upright now. He turns slowly, staggering on the spot, and yes, the kid is awake, thank god, though he is barely holding himself upright.

Through the haze, Tony can see that Peter is signalling something to him, frantically nodding his head at something behind Tony. “What?” Tony shouts, his own voice sounding weirdly far away.

“-one more,” he can make out, and then it clicks. Tony raises his gun-arm and spins around, just as the woman crashes into him full force. The impact is more than enough to make him lose his balance completely. He hears shots while they tumble to the ground, feels something hit his helmet, his vision blacking out completely. He fires blindly, repeatedly sending out electroshocks until the body on top of him goes limb.

Then Tony breathes, in, out, pain coursing through his body like acid, his head throbbing as if it’s being hit with a hammer. He can’t really feel his right leg, but the pain in the rest of his body is more than making up for it. It’s not as bad as the snap - nothing ever was as bad as the snap, that was a million on a scale of one to ten - but it’s enough to let him know that any movement in the coming few minutes will most likely result in him passing out.

So Tony listens to his own breaths until he is sure he’ll stay awake. Then he turns, slowly, and rolls over onto his side until the woman’s body slides off him. He opens his eyes. His HUD is obscured with blood, so he opens that as well and finally gets to look at the kid.

Peter is crying, the tears that are running from his eyes slowly mixing with the blood on his cheeks. The moment his gaze meets Tony’s, relief blooms on his face. “You’re alive,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” Tony croaks. He isn’t sure whether his voice is loud enough to travel to the kid, so he says it again, convincing himself. “Yeah, I’m alive. And so are you, kid.”

“Can you -” Peter takes a hitching breath, almost a sob, “Can you get me out, please?” His hands wriggle in the handcuffs. It must be painful, because his expression turns into a grimace and he stops again.

“Yeah,” Tony reassures, then adds, “Just hold on. You’re fine, kid, you’re okay,” because Peter has started to cry again and looks seconds away from a breakdown now.

Tony pushes himself up on his arm. He gets one leg under him, then the next, and kneels there on the floor in his own blood. That’s as far as he gets before his strength leaves him and he slumps back, barely managing to stabilise himself. The world spins around him as if he’s on a fucking merry-go-around, the dizziness so overwhelming that he’s afraid he might throw up. Peter calls his name, and Tony tries again to get up - tries, and tries, and tries - but there’s a rushing in his ears that makes it clear this is a battle he isn’t going to win.

“Sir? Tony, please?” Peter sounds panicked.

And that’s what it comes down to. Tony, on his knees, mere metres away from the kid who is calling out for him, yet unable to reach him. He just isn’t strong enough. And this is it, this is the hard and cold reality, the true reason why he kept away from Peter for so long. Because when it truly counts, he is bound to fail him.

“I, I can’t get up.” Tony’s voice breaks when he finally admits it out loud, “I can’t, kid. I’m sorry.” It feels like he is saying so much more than that, and he wants to tell him, wants to explain how fucking much it hurts to fail him, once all across the universe and now again, and it seems like he can feel the dust coating his fingers once more. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, his cheeks feeling damp. “I am so, so sorry, Peter.”

“It’s - it’s okay,” Peter mumbles through sobs, but Tony knows it is not.

And this is how Rhodey finds them when he storms into the warehouse fifteen minutes later. Tony must have closed his eyes at some point in time, because it takes him a bit to react when his friend shakes his shoulder.

“Tony, thank god,” Rhodey says when Tony blinks up at him, the look on his face somewhere between relief and anger. “Why the fuck didn’t you wait for me?”

“You know why,” is all Tony says. “How’s the kid-”

“Oh god, Mr. Stark, Tony, are you alright?” Peter is walking towards him with an emergency blanket draped around his shoulders. He’s sort of unsteady on his feet and fresh tears are springing from his eyes when he kneels down next to Tony. “You, you sort of faded out, and I was so scared and I couldn’t get out of that cage and then I was thinking of the battlefield again, and -”

“Shh, it’s okay.” Tony didn’t think he’d have the strength to move and get out of the armour, but the sobbing kid in front of him gives him new energy. “FRIDAY, open up,” he murmurs. The nanobots retract and form a shield behind his back. Tony is grateful because he isn’t sure whether he’d be able to sit upright under his own power.

“Come ’ere, kid,” he says softly. Peter gives him a doubtful look, so Tony opens his arm and pulls him towards him. The kid leans his head against Tony’s chest, crying harder now, tears soaking Tony’s shirt.

“You’re okay,” Tony murmurs, just like he would when Morgan would come to him in the middle of the night, scared of monsters. “You’re okay, kid.”

“I f’cked up,” Peter sniffles. “I, I should have listened to you, I’m sorry- ”

“No,” Tony says firmly. “No kid, you didn’t. I fucked up. I fucked this up epically.”

“You saved the whole universe,” Peter protests through his sniffling. “You brought me back from the dead! And then you retired, but you still came here and saved me when I needed you.”

“But I couldn’t save you all the way,” Tony says quietly. He takes a deep breath, feeling his heart beat hard and fast in his chest. Time to be honest.

“Listen, kid. The snap messed up my brain.” He holds up a hand when Peter starts to protest. “No, I mean, quite literally. It doesn’t work as well as before. I...I forget things. I make mistakes - silly mistakes, dangerous mistakes. I didn’t...I didn’t think I could take care of you anymore. And tonight proved me right. But it wasn’t your fault, and I should have made that clear to you. I’m sorry, Peter, I should have told you.”

It feels weird to admit it to the boy what he hasn’t really been able to even acknowledge himself. Saying it out loud gives it an air of finality.

This should be the end, then. Giving up comes almost as a relief.

But then Peter gazes up at him with a look as if Tony had just said something incredibly stupid. “But I don’t want anyone else,” the kid sniffs. “I only want you as my mentor. I don’t care if your brain works or not. You just saved me, you came all the way here, and you - just, please, don’t go away again, okay?”

And sometimes the universe has weird ways of letting you heal. Sometimes it takes months of falling before you hit the ground, hard. And sometimes you need to feel the impact, really feel it, before you can start to pick yourself up again.

Tony looks at the kid in his arms, and he makes a decision.

“Okay,” he whispers. He pulls Peter closer and holds him through the weakness and the pain that encompass them both. “I promise.”

“Again! Do it again!” Morgan giggles.

Peter looks over at Tony, who raises his arm high into the air and gives him a nod, then Peter taps the instructions into the Starkpad. There’s a quiet pop sound from the bionic arm and a moment later sparkling fireworks erupt from it into the night sky, the red and gold reflecting magnificently on the surface of the lake. Morgan cheers and claps, and Peter feels a smile spread over his face.

“Again! Again!” the little girl demands, jumping up and down impatiently.

“Enough for today. Daddy’s tired, Morgan,” Pepper says firmly.

“But-”

Pepper gives her a stern look. “Why don’t we go inside and ask Uncle Happy to read you a story?”

“Okayyyyy,” Morgan pouts.

Peter turns his head towards his mentor. Tony does look exhausted and kind of in pain - Peter knows that the prosthesis hurts him whenever he wears it for too long - but there’s a warm shine to his working eye that Peter hasn’t seen before. He looks… at peace, in a way.

They make to follow Pepper and Morgan back to the house, Tony a little unsteady on his feet. “You okay?” Peter asks quietly so as not to alert Morgan, offering an arm to his mentor.

“Yeah,” Tony reassures, but then, after a moment of hesitation, he takes the arm and leans a bit of weight onto it. “What about you, kid?”

And Peter has to think for a bit, wondering about where his life could have gone and what it has actually turned out to be. He thinks of the battle and the nightmares and the hours in the cage and of Tony on his knees, unable to reach him.

Then he watches the last sparkles sink into the lake, followed by a loud “ohhhhh” from Morgan, and turns back to his mentor.

“Yeah,” he replies firmly, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

__________

All my fics

Taglist: @toomuchtoread33 @yepokokfine

@badthingshappenbingo - This is my prompt fill for the square “Cry into Chest”.

#irondad #spiderson #whump #hurt tony stark #hurt peter parker #fix-it #endgame #morgan stark #pepper potts #bruce banner #rhodey #vomiting #recovery #angst #emotional hurt/comfort #physical hurt/comfort #ironfam #this is the longest thing I've ever written and I am kind of proud

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terresdebrumestories · 8 years ago

Text

Chapter 2/4: Rock bottom

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Digimon Adventure 01/02/Tri RATING: Mature. WORDCOUNT: 10 685 PAIRING(S): Endgame Taito, though the fic is primarily Taichi-centric. Side pairings include Takeru/Hikari and discussion of past Sorato. CHARACTER(S): Taichi Kamiya, Yamato Ishida, Hikari Kamiya, Takeru Takashi, Daisuke Motomiya, Agumon, Veemon, Gabumon, Sora Takenoushi, and mention of the rest of the gang. GENRE: Reaching a breaking point. Also future!fic. TRIGGER WARNING(S): Depression and discussion thereof, including one briefly mentioned suicide attempt in this chapter. SUMMARY: In which Taichi as a questionable way to handle his issues, everyone tries to be nice, and Yamato yells at him a lot. Same old, same old, except for the part where they end up kissing.

OTHER CHAPTERS: [I. Epic Fail] [II. Rock Bottom] [III. Get up] [IV. Start over]

Daisuke leaves for an improvised holiday at his sister’s without saying when he’ll be back, and Taichi buries himself in work, studying textbooks and prospective bills until he can’t see straight and Agumon has to drag him away from his desk and into bed. It’s not the healthiest solution by a long short, but it works, and that’s all Taichi has any right to ask for.

If he hadn’t been so stupid, so stubborn, if he’d listened to everyone’s warning, he wouldn’t have to sit alone in an apartment meant for two and wonder how his maybe-no-t-for-that-much-longer roommate is doing okay. He wouldn’t have to watch Agumon grow concerned and confused in turns, and he definitely wouldn’t have to deal with Yamato calling every day to grill him on his activities.

“I worked,” Taichi half-sighs, half-snaps after a week of that little game, “it’ll be the same tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that—can you please stop stalking my every move?”

“You’re the one who told Ken if I wanted to know how you were doing I should ask you.”

Taichi groans into his cereal bowl at that, and then again when a glance at the clock above the door tells him this is only the start of Yamato’s day. Wonderful, really, that’s exactly what he needed.

“I said it so he’d leave me alone,” he mutters, without any hope of Yamato taking the hint, “I thought that was obvious.”

“It was,” Yamato agrees, “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you alone these days.”

“You’re still convinced I’m depressed,” Taichi snorts without humor, “aren’t you?”

“You still haven’t shown me anything that hints at the contrary.”

“How would you know about that,” Taichi replies, voice intentionally sharp, “you’re on the other side of the planet!”

Yamato, on the other end of the line, falls silent. Taichi’s left hand abandons his spoon to rub at his face, something heavy settling on his shoulders in the blink of an eye. There’s wetness under his fingers, but he ignores it and swallows past the tightness of his throat instead, forcing his back to relax a little while he bends down to rest his forehead on his knees:

“Sorry,” he mumbles after a beat—Yamato doesn’t respond, and Taichi almost curses under his breath. Yet another stunning exploit from the worlds-renowned diplomat. “I know you want to help. It’s just��I’m tired, okay? And the thing with Daisuke put me under the weather. But I’m not sick.”

“I’d believe you,” Yamato replies, “except I also know you wouldn’t tell us if you were.”

“I always tell you when I’m under.”

“Not since the Reboot,” Yamato counters, and Taichi closes his eyes.

It’s not a topic that comes up often between them—as in Yamato and him, of course, but also where the rest of the group is concerned. There are too many things there they haven’t completely digested yet, too many wounds not all of them share, too many bridges none of them has the energy to build.

Too many conversations that, to this day, still hurt too much to be had.

“I know,” Taichi admits, eyes still closed—the darkness, somehow, makes it easier to keep talking, to pretend whatever he says will be gone when he opens his eyes again. “I really flunked out, back then, didn’t I?”

“That’s not what I meant, Taichi.”

“It’s okay,” Taichi promises, and means it—wants to mean it with every inch of his soul—“I know I did. But I’m not doing that this time. I’m not depressed.”

Taichi listens to Yamato sigh after that, splutter for a bit as if considering what to start with. In the background, Gabumon’s voice asks what’s wrong, and Taichi winces because, really, this is the exact opposite of what he wanted.

“What’s wrong is my best friend is being a self-sacrificial idiot,” Yamato replies with more vehemence than Taichi would have expected, “depression is not ‘flunking out’ anymore than a broken leg or a cancer is, you dumbass! Or if it is, you’ve got about ten years worth of yelling to catch up with!”

“That’s different!” Taichi protests, eyes snapping open in surprise, “I’m not going to yell at you for that!”

He’s done a lot of yelling at Yamato over the year—in surprise, in fear, in anger, in reproach, even in encouragement sometimes, but never for failing their friends. Sure, there were times his help was needed and he couldn’t give it, but that wasn’t his fault—you can’t just rewrite your brain chemistry through sheer force of will, not even when you’re the stubbornest butt ever created.

“Then why do you assume I—or any of us, really—would yell at you for the exact same thing?”

“It—I don’t think you’d yell at me,” Taichi replies, scrambling for words in a way that leaves him breathless before he’s even started, “I’m just not—I can’t, okay? I can’t be depressed.”

“You can’t decide that, Taichi,” Yamato says and the softness in his voice reminds Taichi of the way he talked to Takeru sometimes, when the kid was down. “’It’s not like you can rewrite your brain chemistry through sheer force of will’, remember?”

Taichi closes his eyes again, pressing the heel of his palm against burning eyelids, and gritting his teeth when he finds them wet again.

“I can’t,” he repeats, voice pitched high with the despair flooding his veins, “I’m the leader! People count on me—I can’t just—give up!”

“Oh please, like you even know how to give up!” Yamato retorts, hotly enough for Taichi to picture his furious expression as if he were here, “You didn’t give up when we File Island exploded, did you? You were just a kid, and you got us all back together. You didn’t give up then, and you didn’t give up later on, ever, because that’s just not what you do.”

“I gave up after the Reboot,” Taichi points out, ears burning with shame at the memory, “if you hadn’t kicked my butt into action—”

“If you’d really given up,” Yamato counters without waiting for Taichi to finish his sentence, “it wouldn’t have made a damn difference. You’re the bravest person I know, alright? Sometimes you just need to be reminded, but that doesn’t mean you’re failing—do you want me to count all the times you had to kick my ass back into action?”

Taichi chuckles despite himself, and wipes a hint of snot on his wrist before he manages a feeble:

“It’s not a contest,Yamato.”

“No, it’s a demonstration,” Yamato replies, the smile audible in his voice. “You say you’re failing us if you’re depressed but you’re not. You’re just sick, that’s all.”

“Okay, but—”

“I know, I know,” Yamato cuts in, “you’re the leader—believe me, I spent enough time resenting you for it back then to remember. You’re good at it too—better than good, even, you’ve gotten us out of more shit than I can count, and we all know that. There’s a reason we’re so comfortable with relying on you, okay? But a team goes both way. If we’re not capable of picking up the slack when you’re too sick to do your job, we’re the ones failing you.”

Taichi doesn’t have enough words to figure out what the sudden, tight warmth in his chest—his stomach, his hands, hi neck—means, let alone express it, so he scrambles for an excuse to end the conversation before he can embarrass himself.

{ooo}

The second week of January turns into the third, and doesn’t bring any sign of respite on the work front. Taichi is called in to sit as a witness in two different prosecutions—in one case, a man’s dog has been attacking a Tokomon. In the other, a Betamon stands accused of setting a kid on fire. Both of them suck and leave Taichi too drained to give the situation proper thought, condemned to turn the facts in his head over and over and over again without managing to figure out a convincing way to present his arguments which, as he’s come to discover while on the job, pretty much means useless.

“Tell them to ask for a specialist at the stand,” Yamato tells him one night, after Taichi has ranted about the case to hell and back, “Betamons don’t even have fingers, there’s no way any of them could use a match, let alone a flame thrower.”

“I guess,” Taichi says, staring at the the mess of paper sprawled in front of him—maybe Hikari had a point about the whole cleaning up thing—“I still don’t know how to convince them Digimon are good, you know?”

“You don’t,” Yamato replies in short breaths, over the noise of a car engine—he must be jogging then, which means it’s actually earlier than Taichi thought—“we’re trying to convince the world they’re people. It means some of them will suck.”

Taichi grunts at that, unwilling to agree despite the truth of Yamato’s statement. So many things in his life—in all of his friends’ lives, really—would have gone horribly wrong if not for the help of Digimon. Yes, sure, they’re people, and statistically that means one day there will be Digimons on trial for theft, murders, and any number of horrific things the lot of them will shiver about.

That doesn’t mean Taichi has to like the idea though—doesn’t mean he’s ready to just...throw the entire species into an arena they have no way to master, even after seven years of continuous contact between the human and digital world. Every time he thinks of it, he’s reminded of the many things Agumon still fails to grasp, the political and social subtleties he still struggles with after eight years of exposure...and the two of them have an actual, battle-hardened bond. What about the Digimons who don’t have that, or whose families don’t accept or care for them?

“This is such a mess,” Taichi sighs, failing to chase the fatigue away when he rubs a hand over his face, “I don’t even know what good I’m doing—I should just quit.”

“Don’t you dare!” Yamato replies immediately—there’s a pained exclamation then, followed by some form of apology in French, and then he repeats: “don’t you dare resign now, Taichi.”

“I fail to see the difference it’d make, honestly. I mean, I did an okay job back at the beginning, but it’s not like I have that much impact over it.”

“Right,” Yamato replies with undisguised sarcasm, “it’s not like you’re the guy who single-handedly create the Department of Digital Affairs, staffed it, organized it, made sure Digimon got legally treated like people—”

“On surface,” Taichi replies with a sigh, “but they still have almost 90% chances of losing any trial they’re involved in regardless of the case, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg—they can’t even get proper insurance yet!”

“Yeah, there’s still work to do,” Yamato agrees, “but at least if I get a job with the JSA, Gabumon will get on the payroll. The ESA barely acknowledges Digimons exist—did you know they extended the recruitment age last so they could hire a guy who didn’t have a partner instead of someone who did?”

“No,” Taichi admits, “I didn’t.”

“Well now you do. Look, I know you’re tired and you feel like nothing you do makes a difference, but that’s not true. It’s just the depression talking.”

“How many times will I have to tell you I’m not depressed before you believe me?”

“Don’t know,” Yamato retorts, “how long did it take you to believe me after I split up with Sora?”

Snorting really is the only possible response to that,because they both know Taichi never did. Well, he did, eventually, but not until Yamato went through his third round of therapy, put almost five kilos back on, and Taichi nearly hit him in the face twice. The whole thing was a mess, really, and that’s just the part Taichi was actually privy to.

Honestly, even if he is depressed—he still maintains he isn’t, but he might as well indulge the theory if it serves to make a point—he’s nowhere near where Yamato went back then, and the comparison is frankly exaggerated.

It nags at Taichi’s mind though, nudging at his brain and heart until his pulse quickens in his veins and his blood runs cold with the idea. He’s feeling tired now—goes through the motions more than anything else, and it’s easy to tell someone more passionate would do a better job of it. If it’s just a rough patch, well—he’ll just have to grit his teeth and stick it out.

What if it’s more than that though? Suppose, for a moment, that Yamato is right, that things don’t get better, and this is how he feels about his job for the rest of his days, what then? The Digiworld needs somebody who actually cares, not just a guy who’s never bothered to learn to how to do anything else.

Besides, if Taichi keeps pretending he really is depressed and follows the logic, it begs the question of what happens if he doesn’t get better. Does he let things deteriorate until he makes one mistake too many and finally manages to ruin everything? Does he get number and number about everything and accepts things he should fight tooth and nails?

Because if then—if that’s what’s going to happen, then Digimons are definitely better off without him in command.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” he tells Yamato after silence has stretched between them for far too long, “it’s one thing to be a lazy slacker who can’t be bothered to clean his own flat, it’s another to turn incompetent.”

“You won’t turn incompetent,” Yamato dismisses like it’s he’s telling Taichi the Earth isn’t suddenly going to start turning the other way around, “you’re not the kind of guy who’d let himself do that.”

“Was,” Taichi corrects before he thinks better of it.

He remembers being the guy Yamato talks about—for the most part, at least. Sometimes his friends see things he never quite catches in the mirror, but that guy might as well be light years away now, for all the good he does.

“Depression isn’t who you are, Taichi. It’s just something that goes on in your brain.”

“Some people would say that’s what makes it who you are,” Taichi points out, and he’s not surprised to hear Yamato snort.

“People who say that haven’t been depressed. That kind of bullshit only makes it harder to get out of the gutter.”

Taichi has to smile at that—it’s a little stretched, maybe, but it’s sincere, which as far as he’s concerned is another sign he’s clearly not depressed. He knows depressed people can still smile—he’s seen it, after all—but the difference is he means it.

Clearly, things can’t be that bad.

“I guess,” he concedes nonetheless. Then, because it kind of has to be said: “Don’t worry though. I’m not actually thinking of resigning. I can’t do that to Meiko, anyway.”

“Good,” Yamato answers—Taichi thinks he hears something not unlike relief in his voice when he says: “I wouldn’t let you anyway.”

“Right,” Taichi retorts, adding a flippant eye-roll for good measure, even if Yamato can’t see it through the phone, “like you could stop me if I really wanted to.”

“Not directly,” Yamato replies, frightfully matter-of-fact about it, “but I did tell Agumon how bad an idea that would be.”

Taichi’s pen drops out of his hand, and he finds himself actually taking his phone away from his ear just so he can stare at it in disbelief.

What?

“You did not seriously give Agumon instructions on how I should be allowed to give my life.”

“No,” Yamato agrees without the faintest trace of embarrassment, “just a solid explanation on why you quitting would be not only be stupid—because you’re good at what you do—but also extremely damaging to your well being.”

“How dare you—” Taichi starts, only for Yamato to cut him off:

“Look, I didn’t tell him to actually stop you—no one’s going to tie you to a chair until the urge to ruin your life passes. I’m just making sure there’ll be at least one person you listen to that’ll be willing to talk some sense into you.”

“How dare you?” Taichi repeats, not placated in the least by the explanation, “how dare you presume you know better than me how to live my life?”

“Same as you did when I talked about giving up on being an astronaut,” Yamato replies, and Taichi gives up on controlling his volume right then and there to yell:

“You don’t get to direct my life!”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you ruin it because you’re too scared to admit you need help!”

“How would you even know what’s going to ruin my life?” Taichi all but screams, “You’re the one who decided to freaking exit it!”

He hangs up before Yamato can respond to that and throws his phone at the wall hard enough to crack the screen open. Fury batters at his temple, makes his head boil and colors the world red until even the rain outside becomes intolerable and, in a brief flash of concern for his neighbors, Taichi finds himself seizing his Digivice from where it’s resting at the foot of the coffee table, pointing it at his laptop, and transferring himself to the Digiworld without even bothering to check the destination coordinates.

He��s kicking at bushes before he knows it, pouring all the strength of his sudden but seemingly unending rage in the gestures until all that remains is a small mound of vaguely green and blue-ish pieces of smashed leaves.

He swallows against the urge to scream so hard it almost feels like he’s going to choke on it.

{ooo}

He must have dozed off at some point during his improvised relaxation exercises—remembers stomping aimlessly through the forest for a while before the prickling of anger under his skin grew too strong and he had to stop, lie down, and make himself go through every breathing trick he knows of—because when he opens his eyes the sky is definitely darker than it was when he got here. His body aches in all sorts of new and creative ways, including an awkward bruise on his butt from some unidentified object digging into the flesh for too long.

Taichi rubs at his eyes as he sits up, yawning and stretching until it doesn’t feel like he’ll tear a muscle if he tried to get to his feet. It’s still a hassle, but it’s a manageable one, and at least there’s no one to see him wince like an old man. Then, once he stops swaying on his feet, he takes a bleary look around, walks a couple yards farther in the forest...and groans when he realized he’s reached Tramway Lake.

Like he freaking needed that right now.

He sighs, running a hand over his face, and he’s about to turn around when a handful of iridescent butterflies reaches him, fluttering around him until he has to squint to see anything beyond them. He swats at them a couple of time, unsurprised when they don’t back down, and finally resigns to following them to the stupid tramway car.

Taichi hasn’t been there in years—not since he followed the others to retrieve their partners after the Reboot—and the signs of decays are impossible to miss. The tramway itself is covered in flora, for once, vines and grass and flowers growing around, on and inside the old hunk of meta, as if trying to hide it from view, erase it from memory. How did it survive that long, it’s a mystery.

It’s been fifteen years since they came here for the first time—fifteen years full of fighting, erosion, spontaneous data evolution, and one poorly though-out reboot. By all means, the lake—the beach, the tramway, all of it—should have vanished like an old wound scabbing over, and yet here it remains, ugly and sore as an old scar.

Taichi stares at it for a long time—tries to remember what it felt like, to see it the first time, a pristine imitation of the safer, better known world of humans in the middle of a place filled to the brim with creatures that wanted him and his friends gone—or better yet: dead. The wonder—the relief, the childish hope—has faded, washed away by years of more and more hardships thrown at his face, and although Taichi searches his own heart for a fraction of the things he felt, he can’t find anything but emptiness.

“Why do you all keep staring at random things?”

Taichi jumps and turns around fast enough to tear a hole in the grass, only to end up face to face with a very confused-looking Agumon. He doesn’t move as his partner trots up to him, standing by his side to look at the battered, rusty tramway car and its faded yellow paint.

“Hi,” Taichi manages after a beat, unable to prevent awkwardness from leaking in his meek little wave, “Weren’t you supposed to help out at the Tokomon village today?”

“I was on my way home,” Agumon says with a smile and a shrug, “it’s shorter to go through the woods than follow the road.

‘The road’ is actually more of a dirt trail, meant to ease the way for Digimons unfamiliar to the area on their way to File Island. Taichi never quite learned how the pilgrimage started—some kind of legend, from what he heard, sprouting out from heaven-knows-where after they finally managed to get rid of that freaking virus back in 2005.

It’s only Digimons for now—possibly a handful of Chosen Children as well, though considering a bunch of them have refused contact with the Odaiba team since the Reboot, it’s hard to tell—since Digivices are the only way to open a gate to the Digiworld. Taichi has hear talks, though, of what a mane this place could be if one could only get their hands on it. He keeps his association with the people who think like that to a minimum, and thanks whatever deities exist for each year the portal remains closed, but that doesn’t prevent him from hoping the Digimons will hurry up and put proper touristic structures in place, just in case.

If somebody’s going to make money off the Digiworld, it might as well be the people who live in it, and there’s no better way to ensure that than make sure the place is already well occupied when someone barges in with colonization projects.

“Are you going to answer my question?” Agumon asks, and Taichi realizes he got lost in thoughts again.

“What?”

“That thing has been here forever,” Agumon explains with a shrug that tightens around Taichi’s heart, “but every time we walk past it with one of you, you stop and stare.”

“It’s...close to where we met,” Taichi answers, gut constricting as he clasps his hands together, “and easier to find.”

Pregnant silence slips between them, until Agumon’s eyes widen and he comes up to hug Taichi’s waist, child-like spontaneity always bubbling under the surface of his Rookie form. Slowly, a little heavily, Taichi raises a hand to scratch Agumon’s head behind his ears—a soft spot he made good use of after the reboot forced them all to rediscover one another.

“It’s okay,” Agumon mutters somewhere into Taichi’s belly, his head bobbing with a nod, “I’m glad you remember all of me.”

Taichi nods, and turns his gaze back to the damaged tramway car. One day, enough time will have passed for it to fall out of existence altogether, the metal finally succumbing to the red spots already flourishing on its flanks. The thought presses at Taichi’s throat, and he can’t get rid of it no matter how hard he swallows.

One day, no one will remember this anymore—there won’t be any fading paint left, no wheels, not even a pile of rubble to remind passing Digimons that there was something there, once. Time will do its job, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened, like the lake—a third smaller already—was never there, and the seven kids who sought refuge on its bank never even existed.

In a way, it’s already stated.

No one looks at this thing the way he and the others do after all, not even their partners, why would complete strangers be any different? They’ll see a clearing, a cave, something that was once a lake, and they’ll never know how hard it was to pull a little boy and a little girl out of them. They’ll never know seven children could have died there, and in a hundred other places besides.

They’ll never look at the horizon and think ‘one of our friends died on top of this mountain, and then twice afterward’. They’ll never know what it was like to be called here and then leave, come back, leave again, and then lose everything on the third try like some kind of big, cruel cosmic joke. They’ll never know, never imagine—never care—about the day a lost little boy listened to another lost little boy playing harmonica and they somehow started a friendship that took fourteen years and several thousands of miles to start fraying.

Taichi thinks about all that—lets it all churn around in his chest, his guts, his the softest parts of his heart before he clenches his fist, greets his teeth, and starts tearing at the leaves. He pulls at them with all his weight, tears entire chunks of them off the metal, flakes of paint coming along and landing in his hair even as Agumon tries to stop him—Taichi doesn’t listen. He pulls and pulls and tears until he’s soaked with sweat, almost melting in his winter clothes even as he braces himself against a rust-red wheel to pull at a thicker root.

He’s panting—overheated and gross—by the time he’s done, surrounded by the cold silence of a winter night, and he almost doesn’t notice when Agumon sets a clawed paw on his elbow.

“Taichi,” Agumon says in a gentle tone when Taichi fails to react, “you’re crying.”

“Yeah,” Taichi manages as he folds into himself on the sand, “I know.”

It doesn’t stop for quite a while.

{ooo}

It’s long past dinner time when Taichi and Agumon finally make it back to their flat and find Veemon and Daisuke watching TV in the living room, almost as if nothing happened. Two full bowls of noodles wait on the table next to two empty ones, and Taichi’s stomach drops like a stone when he realizes Daisuke and his partner must have been waiting on Agumon and him for a while before they ate.

“Gone for a walk?” Daisuke asks, more concern than awkwardness in his expression.

Taichi nods.

“I needed a break from work,” he says, which isn’t entirely a lie, even if the causes were more complex than that.

He watches Agumon gather the bowls and carry them over to the microwave as he braces himself to ask:

“I didn’t think you’d be back from Jun’s so soon.”

“Neither did I,” Daisuke replies, managing a little smile to go with his shrug, “but we got on each other’s nerves faster than I thought. Do you want us to turn the volume down so you can work?”

Taichi frowns—almost asks what Daisuke is talking about—before he notices the way Veemon nods at the neat stack of paper sitting next to the TV, carefully ordered according to Taichi’s color-coding system. The pile of dust has been swept out from behind the apartment door, and when Taichi glances at the kitchen, the pile of dishes he kept meaning to wash is gone.

“Thank you,” he mutters, ears heating up faster than he thought possible, “but I think just the image would be enough to distract me.”

He bows a little—in thanks and apology both—and hurries to his bedroom before Daisuke’s worried expression and Veemon’s innocent question—‘Why are his eyes so red?’—turn the weird wobbling of his knees into something even more pathetic.

{ooo}

Dinner is a predictably bleak affair, despite a full five minutes spent trying to work the enthusiasm for it. Trues, Taichi hasn’t been enjoying food to its fullest these past few weeks, but then he was living off instant ramen and other junk food items all through Daisuke’s absence, so there’s nothing suspicious about that. Daisuke’s noodles failing to cheer him, on the other hand, is a bit of a different picnic. There’s a reason Taichi volunteered for every round of recipe-testing, and contrary to what Yamato said it most definitely wasn’t a bottomless stomach.

Tonight though, the dish seems to have lost its deliciousness in profit of the bitter tang of knowing he doesn’t deserve his friends.

(Taichi manages a smile when Agumon polishes off the last of the meal, though. At least one of them is properly appreciative of Daisuke’s talent.)

Taichi pulls his textbooks out as soon as he’s done with dinner, shoulders drooping with the gesture, even as his head fills with cotton. He pushes through it, though: if he stopped studying every time it felt beyond his strength, he wouldn’t have gotten anything done for at least a month.

He doesn’t have time to get fully into it though, because he’s barely cracked the first one open when Agumon asks in a pensive voice:

“Do you think you should see a sychatris?”

“Psychiatrist,” Taichi corrects, before he registers the question and turns around with a frown: “where did you even hear that word?”

“I asked Gabumon how Yamato got better,” Agumon replies with infuriating candor, “after he broke up with Sora and got sick in the head. Gabumon said that’s what that type of doctors was called.”

Taichi stays silent—can’t muster the energy for a shrug even as he looks around his room and notices the pieces of his phone lying next to the door. The screen, clearly damaged beyond repair, nicks at his thumb when he tries to slot the parts back in place, and Taichi hisses.

“So,” Agumon asks again after a moment, “do you think you should see a psychiatrist?”

“No,” Taichi replies around his thumb, “because I’m not sick.”

“But you haven’t been very well for a while now,” Agumon protests, more puzzlement than insistence in his tone, “and Yamato said—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Taichi cuts in, “’Taichi’s going to do something stupid again, blah blah blah’—don’t worry, he told me.”

“That’s not what he said,” Agumon starts, but Taichi’s head buzzes too hard for him to register the words before he says:

“I’m not like him—I’m not sick. I don’t need a psychiatrist.”

“I’m just saying,” Agumon, tries again, but Taichi’s patience is coming apart fast and he cuts his partner off again:

“You’re just saying I should do what Yamato said, or what he did, or what he thinks—or whatever, really.”

“But—”

“He’s all I hear about these days!” Taichi continues, anger burning at his temples, “When he’s not calling me you guys keep telling me I should live my life according to him, well guess what—I’m a freaking adult, and I don’t need anyone to babysit me, let alone a guy who stormed off to the other side of the world!”

“But Taichi, he’s trying to help! You’re not—”

“Not what? Mature enough?” Taichi spits, going from anger to rage, to fury, “Adult enough? Brave enough? I’m not enough of a leader? The war’s over, Agumon! Nobody needs me to be these things anymore!”

“Taichi!”

Taichi pushes Agumon’s paws away from him in a brusque gesture that earns him a long scratch on the forearm, blood boiling a fever into his skin as he all but shouts:

“Don’t ‘Taichi’ me! I don’t care what everybody says, I’m fine! And if you think Yamato knows better than me about this then you can fucking go to him instead of bothering me about it!”

Taichi turns away from Agumon with a strangled exclamation of anger, heart racing with it until it feels like he’s about to faint and he has to scream into his pillow before the whole thing becomes too much. He stays like that for a long while, face shoved into the fabric of his bed until his breathing goes back to something vaguely normal and he finally registers the thirst that’s been clawing at his mouth for who knows how long.

With a grunt, he peels himself off the bed—groans again when he realizes it’s almost eight PM—and half-stumbles to his bedroom door. He almost knocks into Daisuke and Veemon when he opens it, and barely has time to wonder how long they’ve been standing there before Daisuke frowns and asks:

“Is everything okay? Agumon left in a hurry. He wouldn’t tell us why.”

Taichi snorts at that, pretty sure he was loud enough for half the building to hear what went on, but he doesn’t have time to speak before Veemon says:

“He looked kind of sick! Kind of like that weekend after Oikawa—”

“He’ll be fine,” Taichi snaps while Veemon slaps a hand over his mouth, “can I go get some water now, or is the interrogation not over yet?”

“Woah,” Daisuke says, face souring, “calm down, we’re just trying to help here!”

“Right,” Taichi replies, “like you’ve got any reason to want to be nice to me right now.”

He pushes past a gobsmacked Daisuke and, instead of the kitchen, head for the bathroom, where he dives under the hot spray as fast as humanly possible. He finds the living room empty and Daisuke’s door firmly shut when he comes out, heart and gut sinking at the sight, and retreats to his room without a sound.

He’s not sure hows he falls asleep despite the biles burning at his stomach.

{ooo}

Loud banging on the door wakes him up some time later, fast enough that he doesn’t even think of checking the time before he grunts into his pillow—most likely manages to make it sound like ‘go away’—but all it does is make the banging louder and closer to the ground, like whoever is on the other side of the door switched from fists to feet.

“Go away,” he yells, stubbornly keeping his eyes closed even as he angles his mouth away from the pillow so there won’t be any mistaking him this time.

“No!” Yamato yells back through the door.

Taichi’s eyes snap open, and he straightens up fast enough to make his head spin with sudden loss of blood, Yamato’s foot still pounding at the door.

“I’m warning you,” Yamato shouts without a pause in his kicking, “I’m not going away until you open the fucking door or it falls down!”

Taichi knows Yamato well enough to realize he’s perfectly capable of putting his threat to execution, and once his head stops spinning he doesn’t waste time in getting to his feet and padding to the door to the dull rhythm of his bedroom walls’ shivers.

He finds Yamato standing there in a gray shirt and and blue boxer briefs, crazy bed hair framing the redness of his face where pillow creases are only just fading. Taichi watches him grip the door, wedge his foot in the threshold, and glare like he’s daring Taichi to try and break his toes to get out of that argument.

“Picture this,” Yamato says, voice tight and knuckles white around the door frame, “It’s one in the morning, I’m finally asleep after the shittiest fucking day I’ve had in a while, and then my grandfather starts hollering about finding a potato-shaped worm with antennae in the kitchen.”

Taichi’s blood freezes in his veins, and he tries to push the door closed but Yamato won’t have it: he pushes back hard enough to send Taichi reeling back, slips into the room, and pushes the door shut before he continues:

“So I make sure my granddad isn’t having a heart attack there and then, get Gabumon to help him back to bed, and when I finally try to get to the so-called rat who do I find?”

“I—“

“Koromon,” Yamato says before Taichi can even really start his sentence, “crying his heart out on the tiles.”

“Of course he rant to y—”

“And then,” Yamato continues, his glare promising fierce retribution should Taichi try to interrupt again, “when I finally get him to calm down and get here, I find Daisuke all but sulking on the couch because apparently being an ass to one person wasn’t enough to fill your daily quota!”

“All I did was tell him to leave me alone!” Taichi protests at that, “he was being intrusive, and Veemon started talking about—”

“What? How terrible you’re acting?”

Yamato still looks ready to chew Taichi’s head off—or, failing that, tear him a new one—at the slightest hint of a dissatisfying answer, and the thought of it—of having to stay polite and calm when Mister Yamato portaled his righteous butt over to Japan just so he could have a good yelling—turns Taichi’s fear to anger, heat flaring all through his head tay polite and calm and deferent just because mister Yamato has decided to get his gracious ass back to Japan solely in order to yell at him—turns his fear to anger, flares up in painful heat between his ears as he explodes:

“You know what? Screw you! It’s none of your business what goes on in my life—”

“It is when your Digimon comes crying into my kitchen at ass o’clock in the morning!”

“And what are you gonna do about it, punch me in the face?”

“Trust me,” Yamato replies, low and utterly serious, “if I thought it’d help I would!”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Taichi hisses, rigid with fury, voice hoarse from how much he still wants to scream, and Yamato sneers:

“Yeah, sure, nothing in life gives me more pleasure!”

“Well you can go be judgmental somewhere else,” Taichi tells him, crossing his arms over his chest—Yamato’s hands tighten into fists, and he grows at least two shades redder—but doesn’t move—as Taichi steps into his personal space: “All I hear these days is ‘Yamato this’ and ‘Yamato that’, even my own freaking Digimon—”

“Is that why you kicked him out?” Yamato cuts off, face going slack with disbelief, “because he dared to remember someone had a similar problem and tried to use the same techniques to help you?”

“No,” Taichi hisses, heart beating impossibly faster when he steps forward again and Yamato still doesn’t give an inch, “it’s because I’m tired of people always shoving you in my face when you fucking left eight years ago!”

Taichi watches Yamato deflate at that—blink a little—and then something seems to click in his demeanor: he straightens up to his full height, towering over Taichi with all the rigidity of a five inches gap, and suddenly Taichi finds himself stepping back and thinking ‘oh shit’.

“Taichi, did you seriously do this to Agumon because you’re pissed at me for leaving?”

“I’m not!” Taichi insists, voice climbing and cracking on the last word, “but it’s high time people understood I can live my life without you!”

“And what are you gonna do next time Hikari offers advice?” Yamato asks, voice still dangerously low, “slap her in the face because she’s got her own life and you can’t stand it?”

“That’s not—”

“They’re trying to help, you moron!” Yamato screams—Taichi hears something falls to the ground in the general direction of the kitchen, but he’s too caught up in the argument to be embarrassed that Daisuke might hear—“Because you’ve been acting like a fucking depressed mess for the past two months now, and you won’t fucking listen to reason, and we’ve all got enough collective experience to know therapy is an important part of the healing process!”

“Then why not talk about Sora?” Taichi replies in the same volume, hands aching with how tight his fists are, voice grating at his throat until it almost feels like it’s about to start bleeding, “Why not talk about Ken, or Iori, or Takeru—”

“Because I’m your best friend! Because you’re being an ass, and because apparently I’m the only one who’s willing to actually try and knock your head out of your fucking ass!”

Yamato takes a step forward in anger, and when Taichi tries to step back he stumbles on his futon falls head over heels on the ground, knocking his head against the floorboard in the process—it doesn’t stop Yamato though, but Taichi refuses to look at him even as he keeps shouting:

“Because when Daisuke came back, he found you living in a fucking mountain of instant ramen and chips bags and Hikari told him you hung up on her the last time she tried to talk about it, because you haven’t called your mother in three weeks—which you’ve never forgotten to do before—and because Koromon was convinced you hated him and never wanted to see him again!”

Taichi screwed his eyes shut at some point of Yamato’s tirade, and he presses a hand against his eyelids now, clammy skin unable to stop the burning there—unable to do anything against the sharp stone lodged in his throat, shattering his breath in some pitiful, fragmented thing he barely gets any oxygen out of.

“I don’t hate him,” he manages eventually, and flinches when the futon dips under Yamato’s weight, “I don’t—I never meant—I’m the leader!”

His voice turns into a whine, and he swallows hard around it, painful and shallow—Yamato’s hand come to rest on his shoulder, fingers pressing into the flesh there, and Taichi has to make an effort not to lean into the touch. Instead, he forces out some kind of pitiful squeak and:

“I can’t just expect you guys to solve my problems for me! I’ve got to deal with it my own way!”

“Aside from the fact that we’ve already established this very idea is bullshit,” Yamato says, voice soft through the hoarseness of too much shouting, “so far your own way includes pushing everyone away from you, saying hurtful things you don’t really mean and—correct me if I’m wrong about that one—hating yourself for doing it.”

Taichi shrugs, but he doesn’t move his hands away from his face as he gulps painful breaths between his wrists. Sometimes, having someone who knows you that well is a real pain in the butt.

“You wanna know who that reminds me of?” Yamato asks after a stretch of silence, and this time Taichi snorts.

“Not really.”

“Too bad, I’m sure you’d know the guy.”

Taichi reaches back to swat at Yamato—ends up knocking against his friend’s knee, hissing in pain and, somehow, laughing about it into his palm.

He wipes at his eyes then, cool wetness collecting on his hands as he does. His backbone pops when he straightens up and sits properly on the futon, staring down at his hands—they’re pale, shining with tears in the thin stripes of city lines that filter in, and Taichi flexes the fingers just to make sure they’re really his.

Outside the room, Veemon’s voice says something, too muffled to hear—either that, or Taichi doesn’t have the brain power required to process the words just now—and then there’s a shush, and silence.

His ears burn.

“Anyway,” Yamato continues without turning, leaning back on his hands, “this guy—let’s say his name is Tamato—”

Taichi snorts again, and gets a light slap on the shoulder for it.

“He did the same thing, and then his best friend punched him in the face—”

“Kicked him in the shin,” Taichi corrects, and Yamato frowns:

“Wasn’t that the second time around? I’m talking about the third. The big one.”

“Whatever,” Taichi shrugs, and while he’s not completely relaxed, he at least manages to unfold his legs from under him, “it doesn’t really matter.”

“It does though,” Yamato replies without missing a beat, “’cause if it wasn’t for the punch Tamato wouldn’t have realized he could—and should—ask for help.”

“You haven’t punched me in the face,” Taichi mumbles for the sake of argument, and Yamato rolls his eyes:

“That can be arranged.”

Taichi turns to stare at Yamato with a shocked look that should, frankly, not be there. It’s not like either of them has ever hesitated to start punching when they felt it was warranted, but the casualty of Yamato’s offer it’s...new. Not bad—nor particularly good—just new. Taichi had forgotten their friendship could still surprise him.

“Seriously though,” Yamato says after a while, “I’m not yelling at you ‘cause I like it. I do it ‘cause—”

“Cause I deserve it,” Taichi admits, gaze shifting from Yamato’s decidedly more awake face to his own knees, “I’ve been a complete asshole these past few months. Especially today.”

“Yeah,” Yamato admits, shifting to sit cross-legged on the futon, “but it’s also because you’re capable of being better than that.”

“Ha. I’m not sure everyone would agree right now.”

Yamato snorts at that, and it takes effort for Taichi not to squirm.

“Yeah,” Yamato says, dripping with sarcasm, “they all hate you. That’s why Daisuke pretty much begged me not to be too hard on you, and Koromon barely even admitted you treated him like crap.”

“I think you got just as hard as I needed,” Taichi mutters.

It takes him a few seconds to catch up when Yamato snorts, and then they’re both laughing at the terrible double entendre, fresh tears flooding Taichi’s face—they don’t burn this time around, though, which is honestly a relief in and of itself.

“Look”, Yamato says a few minutes later, wiping tears of laughter off his cheeks, “people like you enough to forgive your crap. Deal with it.”

Taichi snorts again—it doesn’t devolve into laughter this time, his nerves settled enough not to need the pressure relief anymore—then sighs before he asks:

“What do I do now?”

He’d probably deserve for Daisuke to yell at him for thirty minutes straight, but then he can’t exactly walk up to the guy and ask that favor of him. Sighing again, Taichi brings his knees up to his chest and winds his arms around his legs, while Yamato turns to squint at him:

“You do realize the irony of asking me that just now, right?”

“Shut up,” Taichi mutters at Yamato’s gentle mocking, shrugging the concern off.

As Yamato himself stated, he hasn’t exactly been stellar in the decision-making these days, he might as well take the advice now that he’s finally ready to ask for it.

“I’m still annoyed,” he admits, guts tight with too many things he needs to make amend for, “but clearly you guys were right. I am incapable of dealing with this on my own.”

“Yeah, because depression is a bigger deal than your average cold,” Yamato points out.

“You did it,” Taichi counters, “you were on your own—”

“If you discount the phone calls,” Yamato counters, ticking items off on his fingers, “the emails, the visits, Gabumon’s headbutts, your yelling, my granddad...do I need to keep going?”

“Nah,” Taichi says—it turns into a yawn halfway through, and Yamato answers with one of his own before Taichi finishes: “I think I get it. Gotta be more like you,” he finishes in, only half-joking.

Yamato swears under his breath, closing his eyes and sweeping both hands over his face as if trying to push some patience into himself. To be fair, Taichi definitely had the same reaction to him at various point, so it’s not like this is a shock.

“Let’s go over this one last time,” Yamato groans after a bit, “people aren’t trying to turn you into me, they’re trying to help you with the solutions they know worked for the most similar case we’ve had, which happens to be the way I failed to deal with depression. If you wanted them to take you on beach holidays and jogging trips, you should have done like Sora and gone catatonic.”

“Hey!”

Taichi punches Yamato’s shoulder for that, less than gently, because there are ways to discuss this that don’t make it sound like Sora was just trying to be interesting, dammit!

It doesn’t change the fact that Yamato has a point, though—learning ikebana may have been a life saver for Sora, but it probably wouldn’t have worked as well for Taichi. Certainly, even.

God, but he’s been so stupid.

“Seriously,” he asks, ears burning in shame again, fresh heat prickling at the corner of his eyes when he blinks, “what do I do now?”

“Get some sleep, for starters,” Yamato yawns, “and not just ‘cause I’m tired. You’ll think better once you’ve rested a little. Then, you’re gonna do what you do best: screw your courage to the sticking place and do the right thing, even if it sucks.”

“Will you do the thing where you stay close an pretend you’re not listening in?” Taichi asks, and he’s relieved to see Yamato roll his eyes, as if anything but that was completely unthinkable.

Taichi may be a bone-head, but at least he’s got great friends.

“I missed you,” he admits, the words tumbling from his mouth just as he thinks them, and when Yamato bumps their shoulders together he adds: “I’m sorry I got upset with you. You’ve got a right to live your dream, even if it’s on the other side of the world.”

It’s not even like they haven’t been in contact either, really, it’s just—France is terribly far away, and phoning is just not the same thing as a real sleepover.

“I missed you too,” Yamato says, fondness chasing some of the obvious fatigue out of his features. “You know I didn’t mean you had to start on things tonight, right?”

“Yeah,” Taichi says with an awkward little smile, “but I don’t think Daisuke is asleep, and I’m not going to get any rest until I do this anyway.”

“Okay,” Yamato says with a nods, getting to his feet when Taichi does, “but maybe you should let Koromon sleep on this as well before you talk to him?”

His words are soft, careful, and Taichi nods. He doesn’t like the idea of waiting—was never really good at leaving problems alone, especially when he’s got a solution, or even just the beginning of one. He wants to do this right, however, and right now Yamato is probably in a better position to judge than him.

“I really screwed up,” he sighs, carding a hand through his hair, “didn’t I?”

“Oh, you should have seen me at my lowest,” Yamato says with an easy shrug, “you’re not even close.”

“What did you do?” Taichi asks without bothering to hide his disbelief, “Slap Gabumon in the face?”

“I sent him out so I could lock myself in the bathroom and slice my wrists open in peace.”

Taichi turns back around to face Yamato so fast he almost topples right into the guy. He doesn’t, though, and they stand like that for a long time, Taichi’s hand hanging limply at his side while Yamato shifts from foot to foot, hands moving to his hips like he’s trying to hook his fingers into the belt of his boxers.

When, at last, it appears Yamato isn’t going to provide more detail on his own, Taichi breathes:

“When?”

“Winter after Sora and I broke up, not long after I met Guillaume.”

Taichi has heard the name before—Yamato’s first boyfriend. He didn’t know about the history that came with it, though.

“I...wasn’t ready,” Yamato adds, looking like he’d rather be saying anything else, “things with Sora got—ugly. We got really nasty with each other and then the whole gay thing I—I don’t know. It made sense at the time, but I—”

“Couldn’t explain it if you tried?”

Yamato shrugs at that, and Taichi nods in understanding. He hasn’t given his ‘conversation’ with Agumon proper thought yet, but the motives for it—the things that made him tick and essentially go berserk—seem fuzzy already, like some kind of weird spell came over him and changed him into something he can’t quite recognize.

It’s still him, though, and he’ll have to deal with that soon, but not just now. There’s a more pressing topic, just now.

“No wonder you panicked when I missed that call,” Taichi mutters, the memory of Ken’s anxious face floating at the edge of his mind. Then, barely above a whisper, he asks: “What stopped you?”

“It hurt,” Yamato answers with a grimace that seems to say ‘dumb, uh?’, “and there was a lot of blood. It scared the crap out of me, so I called my granddad. He came home like a freaking hurricane, closed the whole thing up—turns out the cut was too shallow to even work—and then he slapped me in the face so hard I got a headache.”

Yamato half-chuckles, half-snorts at the memory, and Taichi has to bite the inside of his cheek not to scold him for it.

“He made me swear I’d tell my therapist about it—I did, and she referred me to a psychiatrist so I could get some medication. Gabumon refused to talk to me for three weeks straight.”

“Alright,” Taichi manages to say, trying—and failing—to make it sound like a light comment, “clearly, you win.”

“Yeah. Don’t tell Takeru.”

Taichi nods—then, on impulse, he pulls Yamato into a lopsided hug. His friend stiffens a bit at first, but he relaxes quickly enough, and Taichi sighs with relief he didn’t even know he should have felt.

“I’m glad you’re still alive,” he says, the words far too late but important anyway, “and I’m glad you’re enough of a friend to yell at me when I need it.”

“Yeah,” Yamato sighs, head bent to rest on Taichi’s shoulder, “me too. I’m glad I haven’t managed to ruin our friendship yet.”

Taichi snorts, and flicks Yamato’s ear.

{ooo}

Once Yamato has left though the DigiPortal, Taichi takes a look at the golden light slipping out from under Daisuke’s bedroom door, and decides he’s going to need some props.

He ends up standing in front of the door several minutes later, two steamy mugs of hot cocoa in hands, and wondering how he’s going to knock without toppling the frankly obscene amount of whipped cream and mini-marshmallows he managed to stack on top when the door opens, revealing a sleepy Veemon in the middle of a yawn while his free hand scratches idly at his butt.

“Oh,” the Digimon says when he realizes Taichi is there, “hi, Taichi.”

“Hi,” Taichi replies, resisting the urge to squirm or wave, for fear of spilling whipped cream on the floor, “I thought I’d—may I come in?”

Taichi carefully holds the cup out with what he hopes is an appropriately contrite and embarrassed expression, and tries not to look too obviously relieved when Veemon nods. On the bed, Daisuke groans when Veemon shakes him back to awareness, and turns around in the slowest, most sluggish way Taichi has ever witnessed. He doesn’t allow himself to be impatient about it. Veemon waits for Daisuke to blinks at Taichi—for his eyes to widen when he notices the mugs—and hurries out of the room, claws clicking on the floor as he makes his way to the bathroom.

Taichi waits for Daisuke to awaken properly, and hopes the whipped cream doesn’t end up melting on his fingers.

“Hi, Taichi,” Daisuke manages after some more bleary blinking and a lot of squinting, “is that for me?”

“And Veemon,” Taichi confirms, handing one of the mugs over.

Taichi glances at the alarm clock while Daisuke bites half the cream off his drink in one large gulp—nearly nine PM. Hopefully, the neighbors will forgive the noise.

He turns back to Daisuke just in time to see his nose emerge from the ceramic cup, a spot of whipped cream clinging to his nose when he gives Taichi a grin:

“Thanks,” he says, “it’s awesome.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Taichi says, a little too low, while his stomach twists and the distant flush of the toilets punctuates his sentence, “after....”

“It’s forgotten,” Daisuke says, hand swiping at some imaginary speck in the air, “right Veemon?”

“It is if you say it is,” Veemon replies, all but pulling his mug out of Taichi’s hand, “there’s not much I wouldn’t forgive for a treat like that!”

Taichi watches Veemon sit down on the floor and dive into his cocoa with a happy wiggle of his stubby tail, fishing marshmallows out of the drink with delicate swipes of his claws. It makes Taichi smiles, and when he looks back at Daisuke, the latter mouths ‘Tail!’ at him with a fondly mocking expression on his face.

“Seriously,” Veemon says after a bit, “Wormmon explained—it’s like when Ken was the Digimon Emperor. It’s not really you. So it’s okay.”

“It’s more complicated,” Taichi starts, but Daisuke cuts him off:

“You’re sick is what he means. What you did wasn’t nice, but it also wasn’t really your fault, in a way, you know?”

“I pretty much insulted you for trying to help me,” Taichi points out, frustration mounting when Daisuke doesn’t seem to get it, “I called you a bad friend!”

“Yeah, like I said, rude,” Daisuke replies with a shrug,”but also not as bad as you seem to think it is.”

There’s a pause when Taichi tries to figure out how to answer that. If he’d said the same thing to Yamato—when he said the same thing to Yamato, several years ago—he’d have gotten punched in the face. He did, too, once.

Daisuke, on the other hand, seems to have taken it far better than Taichi had any right to expect.

“I treated you like crap,” Taichi manages at last, “even if I’m sick, that doesn’t make it alright!”

“It doesn’t,” Daisuke agrees, “and if you keep acting like I’m not your friend I might think of taking Yamato’s advice and slapping you in the face. But right now, we’re okay.”

“But,” Taichi splutters, unsure why he’s even pressing his luck so far, “I don’t deserve it! Being sick—”

“But Taichi,” Veemon pipes up from his place on the floor, “forgiveness isn’t about what you deserve.”

It takes a long time—and Daisuke’s increasingly amused expression—before Taichi manages to close his mouth after he hears that.

He may or may not have to wipe his eyes again when he leaves the room.

{ooo}

Taichi’s heart beats fast when he follows Yamato into the kitchen of his French apartment the next day. He barely pays attention to the uneven floorboards, the moldings on top of the walls, the authentic baguette discarded on the table. All he’s got eyes for is the way Koromon freezes, and Gabumon waits until the smaller Digimon nods before he exits the room with Yamato.

“Hey,” Taichi tries, mostly because it seemed to work with Veemon last night.

He’s not prepared for the wet note in Koromon’s voice when he says:

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry,” Taichi says, words rushing out of him with the urgency of something absolutely vital, even as he goes to his knees, “I shouldn’t have treated you like that—you were trying to help. It wasn’t right of me to blow up at you, even if I’m not feeling well.”

“I thought you hated me,” Koromon says with a glance at the corridor next to the kitchen.

Evidently, he’s been prepared for the conversation. It doesn’t bother Taichi as much as he would have thought.

“I thought you’d never want to see me again. You swore at me!”

“I’m sorry,” Taichi repeats, “I don’t know why I said the things I said, I never—I’m not even really that upset about being compared to Yamato it’s just—everyone’s leaving. They’re all—I don’t know. Nothing is ever going to be the same again, nothing is, and no one remembers and—and—it doesn’t matter, actually. It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I was cruel, and mean, and wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you either,” Koromon says, “but you can’t do that again. I want to help you, but I can’t do it if you won’t talk to me—or let me ask other people to understand what’s going on.”

“I know,” Taichi says, pulling his head even lower, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry I said something wrong,” Koromon continues, but this time Taichi doesn’t let him finish:

“You didn’t. It’s me. I got—I’m not sure what got over me. But I shouldn’t have let it hurt you. I promise I’ll do my best to answer your questions from now on.”

Koromon gives Taichi a long, quizzical look—Taichi tries not to squirm too much even as he steals a glance up—and then he digivolves to Agumon with a whistling pop, and pulls at Taichi’s shoulders until their eyes are at the same level.

“Good,” Agumon says, and then Taichi is engulfed into a hug.

He hugs back with all the strength he has, breathes the smell of Agumon’s scales as deep as he can as relief floods every inch of him, dragging tears out of him he doesn’t even attempt to wipe off.

“You were right to leave,” he half-whispers, half-whines, tightening the hug when Agumon tries to pull away at the words, “not because I don’t want you around, but because you deserve better. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to let me hurt you. And I don’t want to lose you a second time.”

“Yamato said I was right, too,” Agumon mutters after a brief, tense pause that ends with him melting into the hug again, “and Papy, too. It didn’t feel good.”

“I know,” Taichi tells him, “but you were still right. Sometimes doing the right thing hurts.”

“That fucking sucks.”

Taichi pulls away from Agumon to stare at him in surprise and, before they know it, they’re laughing themselves silly, nerves seeping out of Taichi with every tears leaking on his cheeks. He hugs Agumon again, tears of laughter turning into tears of exhaustion as easy as flipping a switch, and it’s a relief when Agumon pats his back through it all.

“So,” Agumon asks when Taichi is done drying his eyes and blowing his nose several minutes later, “what are you going to do now?”

“First,” Taichi says with a glance at the mechanical clock hanging above the door, “if you’re okay with it, I’d like to go home and get breakfast.”

“Sure!” Agumon says, usual grin back in place over his lips, “I don’t think anyone here will mind.”

“We won’t,” Yamato pipes up from...wherever he is, really, Taichi doesn’t actually care.

“Okay,” he calls back instead, smiling despite himself, “thanks for the input, eavesdropper!”

Agumon hides his laughter behind his paws, and Taichi smiles at the gesture, before he continues:

“Then, I’m going to book an appointment with a therapist—it’s a bit like a psychiatrist,” he explains when Agumon’s face turns interrogative, “and we’ll see how it goes from there. Deal?”

“Of course,” Agumon says.

Taichi hugs him again.

#Digimon #Taichi Kamiya #Yamato Ishida #Taiyama #Digimon Fic #Agumon #Gabumon #Fanfiction #Once more with kissing #Done with wooden queues #omwk #20n

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