#anyway HAPPY NEW YEARS!!! hope everyone stayed safe and got 2023 started right

[edsbacktattoo]

Chapter Seventeen: Ever Chasing Fireflies

OH SHIT!!!! Newest chapter has been born and you can find it right here.

[ironfidus]

Quid Pro Quo - Part II

Summary: Peter survives the Snap, and now it's up to him to bring the Vanished back to life.

Main Pairings: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Peter Parker/Shuri

Read here on AO3 (@a_matter_of_loyalty)

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Chapter 2: The Queen Mother

Chapter Summary: Peter and Shuri go about inventing time travel. Later, Peter has a heart-to-heart with the Queen Mother and comes to a startling realization.

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Earth-199999: October 9, 2023

Kingdom of Wakanda, East Africa

By the time noon passed and the Queen Mother herself ventured into their lab to call them out for lunch, their success rate had crept up to 86.54%. 

Ramonda took one look at them spread throughout the lab, her daughter lying sprawled out on the floor and Peter hanging upside down on the chair, and sighed heavily. “What are you two up to now?” she asked with the voice of a woman who’d seen too much mischief in one lifetime.

“The usual,” Shuri said through a yawn. “Saving the world and all that.”

Ramonda arched an eyebrow. When Peter didn’t contradict Shuri, she gave in and said, “All right, fine. I’ll have your food delivered to you guys. Make sure to eat up—you’ll need the energy if you want to ‘save the world and all that.’”

“Got it,” Peter agreed distractedly. “We’ll do that.”

Ramonda rolled her eyes and left the way she came from. She’d seen the look in her daughter’s eyes—Shuri had stumbled across a new puzzle to be solved. And if she knew her daughter—which she did—then she had no doubt that Shuri wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d figured out this latest problem.

Especially if Peter was encouraging her.

:::

“I don’t understand where we’re going wrong,” Shuri muttered under her breath hours later, their finished lunches pushed to the side. Despite their earlier successes, they seemed to have stagnated, settling at an even 88% successful. 

It was close, but not close enough.

Peter groaned from where he was still draped over the chair, head hung in defeat.

“We’ve figured most of it out,” Shuri continued, “but we just can’t seem to make the last leap.”

Peter mumbled incoherently in agreement.

“Maybe we need to take a break,” Shuri suggested tentatively. “It pains me to say this, but it might benefit us to leave our work for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes.”

Peter sighed, reluctant, but ultimately he knew she was right. Being stubborn wouldn’t do anyone any good, especially considering the stakes on this.

“Yeah,” he agreed sullenly. “I’ll bring the plates up to the kitchen. Why don’t we meet back in the lab in an hour or two?”

“Thanks,” Shuri said absentmindedly, watching Peter scoop up their dirty dishes and walk away. She stayed where she laid for a moment or two longer, before she shook her head to snap herself out of her stupor.

With a tired sigh, she trudged out of the lab and headed outside to visit the farms.

:::

Peter was in the middle of rinsing the plates, mind still fixated on the puzzle that was time travel, when Ramonda’s voice startled him out of his thoughts: “Did my lazy daughter force you to do her dishes for her?” 

Peter bit back a curse, relatively certain that the only reason he hadn’t dropped and broken a plate was his stickiness. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” he joked, switching off the tap and carefully sliding the plates and cutlery into the dryer. Once the dishes were safely secured, he spun around and shot Ramonda a small smile.

Ramonda smiled back. “Is it working?” she teased.

“A little bit,” he laughed. A second later, his mood sobered. “Shuri and I both need a break from tinkering. She’s clearing her head for a while. I needed to do the same, so I figured I might as well do the dishes.”

“What are you two really working on?” Ramonda asked, growing worried. She’d never heard either Peter or Shuri admit to ‘needing a break’ before, not when it came to something they were working on together. She hadn’t thought it was possible. 

Peter bit his lip. “Something important,” he let on. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell her; if they failed, if he failed, then Ramonda would be another person he’d disappointed. He didn’t want to let her down, too.

But Ramonda had become such an important person in his life over the last five years. She’d become someone he trusted, someone he needed. 

She’d become something of a mother figure to him since he’d started dating Shuri and she’d unhesitatingly taken him in. She was his go-to source of advice nowadays; he wanted to be able to confide in her about this, too.

(Ramonda always knew what to say.)

“Shuri wasn’t exaggerating when she said we were trying to save the world,” he said at last, his voice soft and uncertain, timid. “It’s been five years, but... I can’t move on, Umama. I can’t forget. So when Steve Rogers came knocking on my door yesterday, bearing a ghost from the past and the key to a possible solution, I – I said no at first, because it seemed unlikely and I wasn’t ready to break my own heart all over again. But after he left, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Ramonda’s expression was kind, free of judgement and criticism. It gave him the courage to continue speaking.

“I kept wondering, what if I’d made a mistake, turning him away? What if it wasn’t as unlikely as I first assumed? I couldn’t make up my mind.”

“You seem to have made up your mind now,” she said quietly, pulling out a chair and taking a seat. After a second, she pulled out another chair and patted the seat cushion in a wordless invitation for Peter to come join her. She had a feeling this wouldn’t be an easy conversation. 

Peter swallowed and sat down, turning to face her anxiously. “I have,” he confirmed. “I just... I have to at least try. If there’s a chance—even a slim one—I knew I’d never be able to forgive myself if I didn’t try.”

“I don’t know what you’re attempting, but for what it’s worth, Peter, if there’s anyone who can make the impossible possible, it’s you,” she said, smiling openly.

Peter blinked rapidly. “A lot,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That’s – that’s worth a lot, especially coming from you.”

“Can I ask what solution Captain Rogers proposed?” 

Peter stared off into the distance, partly because he didn’t want to see her reaction to his next words, and partly because he couldn’t bear to. “Time travel,” he whispered. “He wants to – to use time travel to bring back everyone we lost to Thanos.”

He couldn’t see her face, but he heard the sharp gasp coming from her. “And – and you and Shuri have been working on it? Time travel?” A hesitant pause, and then—

“After what you two have managed to accomplish so far, do you... do you think it’s truly possible?” Ramonda asked, and she sounded – afraid. She sounded fragile, like Peter had the power to make or break her with a single word.

Sitting across her, one of the most powerful women in the world, and watching her struggle not to break down right in front of him, Peter realized—with terrifying clarity—that it didn’t matter what he thought. It didn’t matter because he would give it his all anyway; it didn’t matter because he had people who were counting on him to do everything he could.

“Yeah,” he said instead, because it was easier to lie and make her smile than to explain the complicated truth. “I think—I believe—Shuri and I really can finish what we started and invent time travel, as long as we don’t give up.” He paused. He didn’t want to shatter her hopes, but...

But she deserved to know the road that loomed ahead of them.

“The difficult part,” he started, “comes after.”

“What do you mean?”

“Messing with time is a dangerous thing to do,” Peter muttered. “We can’t be sure we’ll succeed even if the technical aspect of time travel works out. Or, worse yet, we can’t be sure that we won’t make things worse.”

“Peter,”—Ramonda’s voice was wrecked—“I see where you’re coming from, I do, but...”

(Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, kid.)

(I don’t... I don’t know what’s happening, Petey, I’m so confused. Everything is in chaos. I just had a patient crumble to ash on the operating table. The head surgeon, too, oh god. I just... if this is the end—I need to tell you I larb you, Pete. Never forget that. I love you so, so much. 

You’re – you’re my kid, and I—

Beep.)

(Ms. Potts, I... I’m sorry. I lost Mr. Stark. I lost him. He’s gone—

Peter would never forget the way Pepper Potts’s face crumpled with tears. She caved in on herself and broke down crying, Happy sweeping in and folding her into a crushing hug through his own misery.)

(Hi, Mrs. Leeds. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I just needed to ask—

He’s gone, Peter. Ned’s gone. I’m sorry.)

(Nobody told him MJ vanished. Her entire family had disappeared with her.)

“How can things be worse than this?” Ramonda whispered.

Peter slumped back in his seat, speechless. He’d been fretting for so long, racking his brain for all the ways they could ruin things more than even Thanos did—he’d worried that if things went awry, they could lose even the few things they’d gained since the war.

But in a way, Ramonda had a point. After everything he’d already lost, everything they’d lost, maybe Ramonda was right: they were already at rock bottom.

Peter swallowed. “You’re right,” he admitted. It was impossible to forget the lives they’d led before. “I – you’re completely right. I need to...” He shook his head, leaping up to his feet and crossing the room in a few swift strides. “I need to get back to the lab.”

“Peter!” Ramonda called out.

He stilled, looked back.

She was smiling at him, an expression forged from the beginnings of a tentative hope. “Good luck.”

He hesitated. 

“Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, kid.” 

He’d lost Mr. Stark. 

Ramonda had lost her son. She’d had to bury him, had to live without him for five horrible years, and yet still she was willing to put her faith in Peter and trust that he would fix their broken reality.

She was willing to take a chance. And at the end of the day, so was he.

He smiled back. “I’m sure I’ll need it,” he said. Thank you for believing in me, he didn’t say.

(“A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That’s how fucking awful the loss is.”)

:::

When Shuri finally re-entered the lab at the two-hour mark, the first thing she saw was Peter, staring up at the hologram with a dazed expression.

Shuri groaned. “Peter!” she admonished. “What happened to taking a break?”

He didn’t reply.

Shuri’s eye twitched. “I managed to drag myself out of the lab for two whole hours because I thought we’d agreed on giving our minds a rest,” she reminded him sharply. “And yet you’re still here. Do I need to remind you what a ‘break’ means?”

“No, I...” Peter faltered, trailing off into a stunned silence, and Shuri finally snapped out of her annoyance to notice that the look in his eyes was less confused, and more awed.

“Peter?” she raised an eyebrow, walking around the table to come to a stop behind him. She rested her hands on his shoulders and leaned back, peering up at the hologram. “What’s— oh, my god.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, breathless in a good way.

“Is that...” Shuri stared. “99.8% successful?” she read aloud. “Holy shit, Peter, you did it. You did it.”

Peter hesitated. He still couldn’t be certain that things would go smoothly—there were over a million doubts running through his mind, but...

How can things be worse than this? 

“Yeah,” he whispered, again. “Yeah, I did.”

Shuri hugged him close, beaming into his hair, and for a moment—only a moment—Peter let himself forget all of his concerns and just breathe. 

For a moment, faced with Shuri’s hopeful smile, Peter let go. Because in this moment, with Shuri chattering excitedly into his ear, lively in a way she hadn’t been in five years, Peter knew he was doing the right thing.

He looked down at the framed picture of himself and Mr. Stark lying face-up on the worktable, mutual content grins on their faces and an upside-down certificate held between them, and smiled, too. 

(Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, kid—)

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Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3