Peter Parker has only been back for two days when he has his first panic attack. There was a group of girls in his gym class, talking loudly and excitedly. That’s how everyone’s been talking these days. And then one of them mentions how their brother came back. And then their conversation turns to the battle, the one everyone’s heard of, but no one’s seen. Before any of them can even mention the sacrifice made, Peter is running to the nearest bathroom.
His breath is ragged, his heart is racing as the panic grabs him. He slides down the wall, searching his contacts. He skips over May’s name, skips over Happy and Ned and MJ until he reaches the one he wants. The only person he knows that will understand what’s happening to him. It’s at the fifth ring when he realizes that Tony Stark isn’t answering the phone. Tears flood his eyes as the hand holding the phone drops.
He’s sobbing as the realization hits and overcomes the panic. Because Mr. Stark, Tony, is gone and dead. And no one will ever answer the phone again.
Except there’s a voice coming out of the phone now.
“Peter? Peeeeeeeter? Are ya there?”
Little Morgan Stark’s voice makes it’s way to his ears as Peter looks down at the phone, at the clock that’s slowly counting the seconds of the call. He lifts the phone up to his ear, not wanting to look at that name any longer.
“H-Hey Morgan,” Peter says, his voice raspy and low. He sounds like he’s been crying, but he’s trying to keep it together. He doesn’t wanna break down on the phone with a five-year-old.
“Are you okay?” Morgan asks him, her tone reminding him of Pepper, like she knows he’s not, but is letting him decide how much he tells her.
“I’m-I mean I’m fi-It’s o-I’m,” Peter stumbles, not sure what to say. He wanted to lie, to tell her that it was fine, and he accidentally called this number. But he was also sick of having to repeat the same phrases, ‘I’m fine’ ‘It’s okay’ ‘I’m alright’.
“Daddy got them too,” Morgan says after a few seconds.
“He didn’t want me or Mommy to know…But one night I went downstairs and I saw him on the floor. He was breathing hard. So I went and gave him a big hug. He seemed kinda better then, but we still sat on the floor. And he told me lots of stories. Bout you.”
Peter had been listening to the little girl speak, trying to control his heartbeat down to its normal pattern. His heart stopped again though at her last sentence.
“Yeah. Daddy always told me about Spider-Man and all the cool stuff you would do to help everyone. He showed me videos too.”
Peter was crying more now, softly, tears rolling down his cheeks, but still crying.
“Peter? Are you still there?”
“Ye-Yeah. I’m here…Tell me more about these stories.”
So Peter Parker sat in the school bathroom, clutching his phone to his ear, listening as Morgan told him all about the superhero stories. She tried her best to replicate Tony’s tone, but she didn’t even need too. Peter could hear Tony, hear him in her laugh and the way she’d make a sarcastic or witty comment, too smart with a five-year-old.
And that’s the way it was for a while. It happened a lot for a bad few weeks until people realized something was up. Most people noticed how Peter dashed towards the bathroom whenever anyone mentioned Thanos or the Space Donut. They stopped talking about it, stopped mentioning it.
Peter kept calling Morgan though. Kept searching for Stark in his contacts, ignoring the first name. And Morgan would tell him stories. Whether they be old ones Tony told her from his superhero days, new ones about her day, or the fictional ones filled with the craziest thing a five-year-old could come up with.
And eventually, Peter starts telling Morgan stories too. After his breathing is back to normal and the floor stops spinning, he tells Morgan about her dad. He tells her about how Tony would pretend to be mad when he did something bravely stupid just to seem responsible. He tells her how much Tony tried to hide how big of a geek he really was, but just couldn’t. He told her everything he could, even when the tears rolled down his face and he had to stop for a minute or two.
Once Pepper found Morgan up at one o’clock in the morning, Tony’s old phone that went missing, in her hand. Her first reaction was to get mad because Morgan was up hours past her bedtime and she had Tony’s phone and there was just too much stress. But then she heard Peter’s shaky voice coming out of the phone, talking about a time that Tony spilled chocolate on his shirt and tried to play it off as a fashion choice rather than get a new one. And she looks at Morgan who’s crying too, but so quiet you could never tell. And she understands.
Because Pepper’s got Happy and Rhodes, Tony’s friends. She’s got the rest of the Avengers, what’s left of them. They all know what happened, she doesn’t need to explain it. But Peter doesn’t have anybody. He’s got an aunt who lived five years without her nephew, only to have him come back a new person. He’s got a friend who can’t even imagine what happened to him. And Morgan’s got a whole crew of people. But no one who will talk to her like a person. No one who will cry in front of her, let her know that it’s okay. So they’ve got each other, Tony’s kids.
