How often would you forget how to breathe? Peter struggled to inhale and exhale and his vison went blurry around the edges. He could feel the building collapsing on top of him, being crushed under the falling rubble. He could feel Mr. Stark's hands pressing against his arms, cradling his head. He could feel the agony of having his body turned to dust. He could remember each different reality trapped in the soul stone. Watching Tony die over and over again.

"Peter are you alright?" Somebody may have said. It was like the sound was traveling underwater.

Rubble and dust. Peter's vision got fuzzier and he had stopped trying to breathe. Peter felt himself sliding sideways off the stool he was sitting on. His head hit the ground and he blacked out.

"Peter? Peter! Oh my god FRIDAY get Mr. Stark" A girl's voice rang distantly in Peter's ears. Wait, he knew that girl. Michelle. MJ. MJ's voice.

"Peter? Shit, Peter what happened?" Another voice. Strong hands lifted him onto something soft. The same hands ran though his hair softly in slow, repetitive motions. "FRIDAY dim the lights." A man's voice. Peter's eyes gradually opened a tiny bit. Peter didn't want them to open, he wanted to lie in the darkness and have Tony's hand run though his hair. Wait, Mr. Stark? Peter's eyes flew fully open and he saw Michelle Jones and Tony Stark staring at him in the relative darkness, their faces full of worry. Tony's hand jumped from Peter's hair.

"Hey, Pete." Tony said softly. He sat down next to Peter and put a hesitant hand on his shoulder. Peter struggled to get up and MJ eased him back down, crouching slightly at Peter's eye level next to the couch.

"Peter, please calm down. What just happened?" She looked so worried, Tony looked even more worried, if that was even possible. Peter felt horrible at causing them to be worried, he felt that he wasn't worth worrying about.

"I'm sorry." Peter's voice broke. "I'm so sorry-" Peter started apologising put MJ cut him off.

"Don't apologise, Pete, you haven't done anything wrong. You can tell us what happened, though."

MJ noticed that Peter's leg was bouncing so she but a hand on it and sat down next to him, sandwiching Peter in-between herself and Tony.

"I-" Peter started but then seemed to get caught on his own tongue. He swallowed and tried again.

"It's um-" Peter's eyes burned and his chest was tight. He couldn't talk about this in front of MJ. She'd think he was weak and then she'd never like him, just like Tony did when he took away the suit.

Michelle seemed to realize this and gave an excuse to leave the room.

"Peter do you want some water?" Without waiting for a response, she got up abruptly and turned to the kitchen. "I'm gonna get Peter some water." MJ said to no-one in particular as she speed-walked towards the kitchen and they heard her footprints grow quieter and fade. Tony watched her leave and Peter stared at his hands.

"Peter." Tony's voice was quiet. The hand on Peter's shoulder squeezed a little and he turned Peter towards him slightly. Peter looked up at him. Tony's heart broke slightly to see how terrified Peter looked.

"I- I don't know. I keep on thinking about- about things…" Peter trailed off because he didn't want to think about those things. The building with the Vulture was nothing new, he had panicked about those for a while, and then it fell back a bit. But the others… those were new. And much more terrifying. Tony's eyebrows knitted together. He didn't know. He didn't know about the thousands of futures in which he died, in which Peter had watch him die. Over and over, trapped in the stone.

"What things? Is this the building?" Tony's expression hardened and he but his whole arm around Peter, hugging Peter to the side of his body. Peter sighed and unconsciously leant into Tony's half embrace, seeking comfort in the steady rise and fall of the man's chest.

"Well, it started with the building." Peter was beginning to calm down, the side hug from Tony was really helping; it proved to Peter that Tony was actually alive, not dying helplessly on a battlefield.

"It? What's it supposed to mean? I'm not an Idiot, Peter. I know what an anxiety attack looks like."

Peter froze. Peter knew that he was getting a panicked about the flashbacks he was getting, but 'anxiety attack' was a description he refused to give them. Saying that it's a one-off panic is better than acknowledging that you've had anxiety attacks almost daily for a whole month.

"It's-" Peter cut himself off and he realized that Tony was trying to help him, and if Tony was trying to help him it meant that he cared. He was trying to help Peter, and he was repaying Tony by attempting to lie to him, to brush him off. Peter could at least try to talk.

"I've- yeah. I wouldn't call them panic attacks though because-" Tony's eyebrows knitted together even further but his eyes only showed concern as he cut Peter off mid-sentence.

"Sorry for cutting in Pete, but them? You've had more than one?" Peter hid his face in Tony's neck.

"Pete…" Tony lifted his free arm and pressed it firmly against Peter's back, rubbing it slightly. Peter wrapped his arms around Tony like a vice.

"How long have you had them for?" Tony's voice was muffled slightly by Peter's curls. Peter hesitated slightly before answering, wondering if Tony would make the connection.

"A month." Peter mumbled into Tony's t-shirt, hoping half-heartedly that he wouldn't hear.

"A whole month? Kid that's… oh." Peter's hands closed into fists and he gripped the fabric of the shirt. "Is this about the battle?" Tony's voice was only concern, no pity or contempt. Something about that made a dam burst in Peter.

"N-no it wasn't the battle. I mean, it-it kind of was the battle, but not only the battle. You almost dying is in there almost all of the time. But you actually dying is- is in there all the time…" Peter stumbled over his words from talking too fast at the start but his words trailed off at the end, something in his brain putting up a blockade. Tony didn't understand at first.

"But I didn't die, Pete. I'm right here. We're in the reality where we won Pete, we did it." Tony tried to console Peter, but somehow just made him grip Tony tighter, ripping his shirt slightly.

"No. That's exactly it. You- you know how Mr. Doctor Strange saw all the possible futures?"

Tony supressed a smile when he heard the butchering of honorifics that Peter had managed to conjoin, but kept serious for Peter. Tony knew that Peter wouldn't tell him this for nothing.

"Yeah I do kiddo, but what's Strange got to do with it?" Tony was a bit concerned. Did Dr. Strange tell Peter about the other futures? The thought made him unreasonably angry. A kid shouldn't have to deal with that.

"Well… He- he wasn't the only one who…" Peter trailed off but Tony guessed at what Peter couldn't finish.

"You- you saw the futures? How?" Tony's voice was so quiet that only a certain spider-kid with super hearing would be able to hear. It was also seized with worry and had an edge that Peter was surprised to be able to hear.

"When I was in the stone. It's- my senses, I don't know how, but they let- they made me see them. I couldn't not see them, Tony! And- and in so many of them you die- and everyone dies and it's real because it could have happened! It did happen! Because it was a future that could have happened!" Peter pulled back at looked at Tony with tears in his eyes, begging him to understand. "And I didn't want to lose you after everyone else! But I did! You died and Pepper and Rhodey and I were there and I watched you d-die and there was n-nothing I c-could do! I'm sup-supposed to be Spider-man! B-but I couldn't do anything!" Peter's hiccupped sentences broke down into tears and he sobbed into Tony's shirt while Tony made quiet soothing noises and rubbed Peter's back. Tony couldn't really do anything else, he was too busy trying to process that a 15 year old kid who died and came back to life spent 5 years trapped in a stone watching every possible outcome of the battle against Thanos. He remembered something from 5 years ago, a brief exchange.

"How many do we win?"

"One."

Tony guessed that they were in the one that Dr. Strange considered winning, because in all other ones he had died. And Peter had watched that. 14,000,605 times.

Tony realised that Peter had stopped sobbing. He had stopped moving entirely, actually. Frozen with panic for a second and thinking that Peter died or something, he frantically grabbed Peter's wrist and checked his pulse. Yep, still alive, just passed out. The movement wasn't enough to wake Peter, so Tony moved him gently so he was lying down on the couch. Tony placed a throw pillow under Peter's head and pulled a blanket up over his shoulders. Sighing, Tony turned and walked out of the living room into the kitchen, he whispered: "FRI, soundproof the living room and mute alarms in there." Tony ran a hand down his face and turned to see Michelle standing next to the fridge holding a glass of water.

MJ's face was pale and her mouth was half-open in shock. The ice cubes she had put in the water were tiny, like they had been melting for a while.

"How much did you hear?" Tony immediately went on defensive mode, but he had no clue as to what to do next. If the girl heard any of the conversation then she'd probably figure it out pretty quick, Peter told him that she was very observant. MJ swallowed and stared Tony down.

"Enough." There was a fire in her eyes that Tony was a little weary to see there.

"Enough? What does that mean?" Tony tried to sound gentle with her, but that was an obvious mistake.

"Well Mr. Stark it means that I heard the whole damn thing! Who do you think you are to take a 15 year old with anxiety out to a battle in space to fight Thanos huh?"

Tony flinched at the name but it just seemed to set MJ of even more.

"And he's fucking Spider-man too! I already knew that but Jesus Christ isn't the weight of thinking you're responsible for the crime rate of an entire area enough for a 15 year old to handle?" The water spilt out of the glass as she almost threw it across the room. Michelle didn't give it a second look. Tony was shocked. "Peter thinks he's responsible for the whole of Queens?"

"Yeah he does! But is that enough for him to handle? No apparently not! So now he's had the possible outcomes of a million futures play though his mind! Do you know how he's doing at school? Huh? He gets panic attacks every single day! Once he even fucking started asking for you! Begging for his 'dad'! You know he called you dad?" Michelle seemed to trail off and looked like she thought she'd said too much.

Tony went pale. Peter had asked for him?

"You know he called you dad?"

The thought of Peter calling him dad warmed his chest. But he had more pressing things to think about, mainly the scarily angry 16 year old girl standing in front of him.

"Michelle…" Tony looked directly into the girl's eyes, trying to convey some sort of sincerity, "I really care about Peter and I want to help him through this. However, I won't be able to do that if I've been stabbed through the heart with a broken glass by an angry 16 year old girl."

Michelle looked down at the glass in her hand and the water all over the floor and seemed to realize something.

"Oh. Yeah sorry about that." She placed the glass on the counter and turned to face Tony, prodding him in the chest.

"You better look after him, Stark, because I care about him too." She swiped at something in her eye and then walked into the elevator without a second glance back.