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Coming home after the battle was something they had all looked forward to.
They had only wished to leave the battle camp the moment they had been sure Thanos had been finally defeated, but they hadn’t been able to.
They had had to check that everything was fine, that all their enemies were indeed dead, and that all the injured received proper treatment of their wounds.
In a particular case, that had required the cooperation of two highly skilled mages who couldn’t stand each other, but who had done their very best to solve all the damage made by the Infinity Stones.
Loki would have liked to be the only one to take care of Tony, to take him in his arms and make all those nasty burns disappear, to heal all the internal damage, but he had agreed to stand back for a while when Strange had stopped his shaking hands with his own.
Loki had sat there for a few minutes, realising only after a moment that Peter was crying against his shoulder, and in that moment he had finally came back to himself.
Tony needed him, he would have had time for his own shock and panic later.
So he had gently pushed Peter off, and had joined Strange in healing the damage that was taking Tony away from them.
In the end, they had done it.
Tony had come back to them gasping for air, and the first thing he had done had been grasping for Loki’s hand, and Loki had immediately drew him in a hug.
They had remained there for another hour, waiting for Fury and the UN to give them the permission to leave, but in the end they had made it back home.
When they had finally been back to the Tower, no one had been able to hold it together any longer.
Morgan had jumped in Tony’s arms the moment they had crossed the threshold, and had immediately started crying her eyes out when she had been able to curl against her dad, her big tears falling on Tony’s still reddened skin.
No one had explained to the little girl what had happened, but she had just needed a look at the still shaken expressions on the adults’ faces to understand that the situation had indeed been dire.
That had been all that had taken her to start crying as if her father wasn’t even there to soothe her.
It was in that moment that Loki had felt the reality of the previous hours crash on his shoulders, and he had felt the urgent need to add to that embrace, and to start reproaching Tony for how little care he was showing for his own health.
So now they were finally sitting on the huge couch in the living room of the penthouse, with the other members of the Avengers – old and new – scattered messily on both the armchairs present there and the floor.
“Everything is fine, little bird,” Tony said yet another time, placing a kiss on Morgan’s brown hair; it hurt a bit to do so, but seeing his daughter cry hurt much more.
“Indeed, Morgan,” Loki added, gently stroking her back. She was sitting in Tony’s lap, and since Loki was currently nestled under the man’s left arm, he had a privileged position to do so, “No need to cry now.”
She sniffled a bit, sagging against Loki’s hand, and her sobs became quieter.
“You want me to take her?” Pepper whispered from her armchair, worried that the girl’s weight may have worsened the situation of Tony’s injures, but Tony shook his head.
He was fine.
A little sore indeed, but he had thought he would have died, so he really had nothing to complain about.
Saving the universe at the cost of his own life had already seemed like a fair price, having done so with the only result of some irritated skin and a dull pain in the right side of his body that both Loki and Strange had promised would have faded, well, that almost didn’t seem real.
“So,” Tony patted his hand on his thigh, and immediately regretted it when that made him wince and everyone in the room flinch. Morgan looked up at him with scared eyes, Loki had his hands immediately glow green, a healing spell already on his lips, Peter had sat up with eyes as scared as Morgan’s, and basically anyone else had been ready to jump up and do something.
Not that they would have been able to do much had Tony’s injures really gotten worse, the only ones able to do so would have been Loki and Strange, whose magic reserves were already quite low after their strenuous efforts for keeping him in the land of the living, but it was nice to see them all so concerned.
Even after all the bad blood between them, they had all jumped up at his smallest sign of discomfort.
“I’m fine,” he raised his hand, the other one still around Loki, “I just made the wrong call, that’s it,” he added, looking especially at the three people around him.
Morgan sniffled and snuggled back against his chest, Loki nodded and allowed his magic a break – even though Tony was quite sure Loki wouldn’t have slept for the next few days and would have had his sei∂r constantly focused on him to register any variation in his health – and placed a kiss on his cheek, and Peter… well, Peter still didn’t really look fine.
It was only in that moment that Tony realised the kid’s eyes were red.
He had barely registered Peter’s presence after he had snapped his fingers; he remembered how he had looked scared and how his voice had sounded broken, but in that moment Tony’s mind hadn’t really been able to focus on that.
He remembered the flash of green light that had made his already aching head feel like it was about to split in half, but that heinous flash had been followed by gentle hands and a pair of green eyes he knew very well.
In all that, he had kind of forgot that Peter had been there to witness his almost death.
Peter, who had already had his fair share of trauma with parental figures, and Tony couldn’t but admit that he had indeed become a parental figure for Peter.
“Hey, kid,” he said, lightly resting his right hand on the boy’s shoulder; he was careful with the strength he used, trying to avoid the choral reaction from before, “It’s alright, okay?”
Peter swallowed and nodded, a knot in his throat clearly preventing him from speaking.
“Peter,” Tony shifted in order to be able to look the boy in the eyes, and Loki silently slipped from under his arm, taking Morgan with him in the process.
Tony only barely registered how everyone looked surprised at the lack of complaints from the child, but many of them didn’t know how Morgan simply adored Loki and how she could spend whole hours just listening to him read.
“Peter, listen. Everything is fine now. I know that things got scary out there, but now everything is fine. Lolo and False Mage there solved everything.”
“False Mage here saved your life,” Strange commented from the armchair on which he was resting; he didn’t want to show it, but all the energy he had used to save Tony had drained him too.
“If I call you a mage, I get to sleep on the couch for a week, and at the moment my back can’t take it.”
Loki snorted, “I wouldn’t make you sleep on the couch now,” he said, the pale hand that wasn’t busy keeping Morgan close sliding in Tony’s hair, “I’d wait for you to feel better.”
The small banter managed to ease the tension in the room, but Peter still looked too shaken to Tony’s taste.
“Peter,” he repeated, “We won. We did it, and nothing bad happened. That’s the important thing, okay? We’re all here, and we’re all sort of fine.”
Peter nodded, but this time he couldn’t do it and he was forced to swallow his pride and allow the hug that Tony was finally offering.
“So, cheeseburgers for everyone?” he asked, obtaining an happy squeal from his daughter who crawled back in his lap, only slightly kicking both Loki and him in the process.
“I’ll place the usual order, Boss,” Happy smiled, already typing on his phone.