The fusion is gone, and none of us move.
Smoke drifts low across the wreck of the pier, catching the wash of red and blue light that hasn't reached us yet, just close enough now that I can hear the sirens over my own pulse. Jessica's still on the ground where she rolled clear. Peter's half sitting against a chunk of broken railing, mask torn, breathing like he ran here from Queens. Gwen hasn't put her Digivice down. Nobody says the first word.
I don't either. My legs are done arguing, and for once I let them win.
I count heads instead. Jessica, upright but wrong around the ribs. Peter, the cut along his jaw still bleeding slow. Gwen, unhurt as far as I can tell, though she'd never admit otherwise if she wasn't. Tony's a shape further out, armor dim, one arm hanging the way an arm shouldn't hang. Nobody's down for good. Nobody's fine either. It's the kind of math where the answer is we made it and barely both at once, and I'm too tired to pick which one matters more right now.
Gwen crosses to Jessica first, kneels, and touches two fingers to her side without asking permission.
Jessica hisses through her teeth. "Okay, that's a bruise talking."
"That's what I'm worried about." Gwen presses again, lighter this time, watching her face instead of her side. "It could be cracked under there, and I'm not exactly qualified to tell the difference by poking you."
"I've had worse."
"Sure you have. Doesn't mean you shouldn't let an actual doctor look at it before you decide that."
Jessica doesn't argue back. She just lets Gwen keep a hand there a second longer than the check-up requires, and that alone tells me more than the wince did. She's letting herself be looked after. That's new tonight, and I don't say anything about it, because saying something about it would be the fastest way to make her stop.
Peter prods at the cut on his jaw and winces theatrically, like it's the funniest injury he's ever sustained.
"On the bright side," he says, "I think this one's gonna scar cool. Very rugged. Very 'I fought a dinosaur robot and lived to talk about it.'"
Gwen doesn't laugh, but she crouches next to him anyway, tilting his chin with one finger to actually look at the cut instead of just reacting to the joke.
"It's not that deep," she says, turning his face slightly toward what's left of the light. "You'll live. Unfortunately for the rest of us, since that means we have to keep listening to you."
"Wow. Devastating bedside manner. Ten out of ten, would get maimed again."
"Please don't. I'm saving the good bedside manner for people who don't almost die on purpose."
Peter grins around the sting of it, and for a second the whole pier feels a little less like a battlefield and a little more like four exhausted kids who happen to also be superheroes.
Tony settles a few feet off instead of holding court the way he usually does. No quips about the save, no lecture waiting to happen. Just the low hum of the suit powering down around him, and the particular quiet of a man who spent the last hour finding out exactly how much he had left and using every bit of it.
I sit down next to him without deciding to.
Neither of us says anything about earlier. About the door shutting harder than it needed to, about I've got it and fine, I'll take the meeting myself. It's all still there, folded up somewhere behind his ribs and mine, and tonight isn't the night to unfold it.
"You good?" I ask.
"Ask me again once the arm decides it still works." He shifts, testing it, and doesn't quite hide the wince. "For now let's just say I'm vertical, and leave it at that."
"Vertical's not nothing."
"No." He looks out at the water instead of at me. "It's really not."
For a second I think that's the whole conversation. Then he adds, quieter, like it costs him something to say it plain, "You did good work tonight, kid."
I don't have a joke ready for that one, so I let it sit there instead of covering it up with something easier.
Gatomon's still on my shoulder, claws hooked into my jacket like she never fully let go. BlackGatomon drops down beside us, tail curling loose against the concrete for the first time in an hour.
"The tin man really did save us," she says, quieter than her usual jab. "I hate that I have to admit that out loud."
"You already admitted it. An hour ago. Twice."
"I know. I'm saying it again because it's still annoying, and repetition helps me process my feelings."
Gatomon's ear flicks toward her. "You're allowed to just be glad, you know. Nobody's grading you on the delivery."
"I'm allowed to be glad and annoyed at the same time. It's called nuance, and you clearly haven't heard of it."
Gatomon doesn't answer that. She just presses her head against my jaw for a second, and BlackGatomon lets the silence sit instead of filling it with another line, which from her is basically a hug.
A dark sedan rolls up along the access road before the ambulances make it to us, no siren, no rush, just a car that clearly doesn't answer to the same chain of command as everyone else pulling in tonight. A man in a plain suit steps out, unremarkable in every way that turns out to be the point, calm the way people get when panic stopped being useful for them a long time ago.
"Agent Coulson," he says, to nobody in particular, like the introduction is a formality he's performed a thousand times and expects to perform a thousand more. "S.H.I.E.L.D. I'll be taking Mr. Vanko off your hands, if nobody objects."
Tony pushes himself up slower than he'd like anyone to notice. "Took you long enough."
"We like to let the fighting finish before we show up. Saves everyone a lot of paperwork, and a lot of collateral liability."
He doesn't wait for a response to that. Two more agents move past him toward where Vanko's still lying, still unconscious, wires trailing off his shoulder like something the fight left behind rather than something he built.
Coulson glances my way while they work. "He say anything before he went under? Anything at all?"
"Not since he passed out."
"Good. Makes the ride back a lot less complicated."
He watches them load Vanko onto a gurney with the same flat attention he'd probably give a delivery form, then looks back at the six of us scattered across the wreckage like we're something he's mildly curious about and entirely unsurprised by.
"You'll want that arm looked at," he tells Tony. "Tonight, not tomorrow." He looks at the rest of us. "And I'll need statements from everybody, but that can wait until morning. Nothing about tonight needs deciding right now."
"That's it?" I ask. "No debrief, no twenty questions?"
"Not tonight." He's already turning back toward the car. "Go home. Sleep. Somebody will be in touch."
Then he's gone, the sedan pulling away as quiet as it arrived, and Vanko with it.
Nobody moves right away even after the taillights disappear. Then Peter groans and starts hauling himself upright, and that's apparently the signal everyone else needed, because Gwen's up next, offering Jessica a hand she actually takes.
I help Tony to his feet. He doesn't say thanks, just leans into it for a second longer than he needs to, and I let him.
By the time we're walking off the pier the sky's gone from black to something closer to gray, that first thin edge of morning nobody in New York ever really gets to see. Jessica's half asleep on her feet, stumbling once against Gwen's shoulder and not bothering to apologize for it. Peter's already talking about breakfast in a tone that suggests he means it seriously, something about how he's earned a diner platter the size of his own head.
I don't say anything. I just walk, Gatomon a warm weight against my collar, the city waking up slow around a fight it never even knew happened, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, there's nothing left to brace for.
***
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