She doesn't cry.
Pepper knows it's to be expected. That she doesn't understand; that she can't understand, that she doesn't know how. But there's no comfort to be found in the things that are expected, when there's nothing expected about any of this.
She doesn't cry. She eats the food, or she at least picks at the food, poking the grapes around on her plate, and pouting at the "weird stuff" she doesn't like, arugula in the salad, and "the hard bread" that she ends up licking all the toppings off of.
She is her father's daughter, through and through.
There are sliders, but they didn't come with any cheese, so Happy swipes some cheddar off the charcuterie board, stabs a toothpick back through each one and heats them up in the microwave for her.
She asks for ketchup, and Happy looks lost for a moment until Butterfingers unearths some packets from underneath papers at Tony's work station.
"We have no idea how long those have been there," Pepper starts to scold them both, but the anticipation on Morgan's face – and Happy's, too, really, even the robot is tilting its little makeshift head at her – suffice it to say she doesn't go anywhere with the rest of that sentence.
It wedges a small crack in her heart, but only a small one, when Morgan takes her plate of small cheeseburgers and plops herself down on the couch by the fire. Only the smallest of cracks. There isn't much left that hasn't already been broken.
Morgan sits and looks around her, expectant. She's waiting for something, and Happy's trying his best to figure out what, when Pepper gestures at the table. The mask isn't there anymore – it's been replaced by the food, and a very somber Nick Fury who's deep in discussion with Miss Danvers – but this is the last place Morgan had seen her father.
And it would certainly stand to a four-year-old's reasoning that this is the first place he'll come looking for her again. She just has to wait long enough.
Morgan turns to Happy with her untouched plate and says, "I thought you said Daddy liked cheeseburgers too."
Happy's face falls, and he's rushing forward to do damage control while Pepper – Pepper's just trying to breathe, because it's hard suddenly, when her chest feels like it's turned to ice. It was ridiculous to think that she was done breaking after all.
She remembers, at least, how to take one step, then two. In fact, she makes it all the way to the bookcase before completely falling apart.
…
Their life together is on those shelves. Pictures of Morgan, mostly. First breath. First coo. First sneeze, because that was not a battle that Pepper found worth fighting with Tony. First steps, first bite of cake at each of their birthdays. Chocolate for Morgan. Red velvet for Pepper. Anything topped with a disgusting amount of sprinkles for Tony.
Then there were the drawings of them with matching shrapnel hearts that glowed, Pepper's on a necklace, Morgan with her little bracelets. Multiplication tables that Tony had proudly framed even though all of the 3's were written insistently backwards. Crayon portraits of dogs that Pepper always said no to.
She should have let them have a dog.
But it's not any of these things that shatters that last piece of her left still standing.
She's always aimed for cleanliness, but living with a child – make that two, on most days – was not exactly conducive to keeping a place tidy for long.
There are toys scattered here and there, stuffed animals and small handheld robots that were ostensibly made to help with the chores but more often than not got caught up in turf wars with the lions, not to mention one very nefarious hedgehog.
The hedgehog had been borne of a so-called math project of theirs. They'd repurposed a coconut plushy, and then proceeded to cover every inch of it with Pepper's hot glue gun, bits of fabric, and hair – hair from Morgan's toy trolls, her Raggedy Ann dolls, and the My Little Ponys that Bruce had sent her one year for Christmas.
They'd completed the look by jamming in colored paper clips for paws, and adding on black button eyes as an after-thought.
It looks – well, it looks like a little monster, quite frankly, but Morgan adores it, and so had Tony. He'd been beside himself with delight when she christened it "Hairy Ball" – Harry for short, at Pepper's insistence.
…
("I…don't understand this, but I suppose I will have to accept it."
"Potts, it's the hairy ball theorem," said Tony, with Morgan giggling away in his ear as he hoisted her higher and higher. "Simple topology. Take an even-dimensional sphere, and any continuous tangent vector field must have at least one point on the sphere where the vector equals zero."
"I'm sure it does, Tony."
"In essence, if you try to comb a hairy ball flat, there's always going to be that one stubborn tuft that sticks out."
"I see," said Pepper, entirely humoring them. "And this is useful because…?"
"Because it's funny," said Morgan, kissing her hedgehog in the middle of its lumpy forehead.
"Because it's funny," Tony had echoed, like no other explanation mattered more than this one, and they shook their heads at each other with perfectly matching affronted expressions.)
…
Harry the hedgehog is squashed beneath a teetering bookstack, its felt-tipped nose poking out from behind a textbook on origami.
Pepper bends down as if on autopilot, straightening things and dusting down the edge of the shelf. There's a rectangular clearing where PROOF THAT TONY STARK HAS A HEART had so recently occupied space.
She sinks onto her knees for a moment, the hedgehog's paws pressing into her fingers. One of the seams has ripped in the body of the fabric, spilling out stray wisps of cotton, and when she runs her palm over its patchwork of hair, smoothing out some of the tangles, its nose perks up as though trying to sniff at her hand.
…
("Look, Mommy," Morgan demonstrated for her, vigorously brushing back as much hedgehog hair as she could. "It's sticking up here – and see, here – also here—"
"I have an idea where you can try that theory out next," Pepper winked, much to Morgan's slyly growing delight.
"Like…Daddy's head?"
"No, sweetheart," and their little girl giggled again as Tony looked at them both in mock betrayal, "not like Daddy's head.")
…
One of the paper clips comes loose, dangling uselessly before slipping between Pepper's fingers. She watches it fall, blurring together with the rug at her feet.
Her shoulders shake, and then they're only shaking harder as she folds herself up, as small and still as she can make her body so that Morgan doesn't see her cry.
Grief surges up from every corner, so cold it burns everywhere that it touches, and just when she thinks she has nothing left it comes crashing out of all that nowhere again, drowning, drowning, if only it would just let her fucking drown.
…
("That little guy can help predict the weather too, you know."
"Oh, not that hedgehog theory again."
"Theorem, Potts. Theorem. And hear me out – you're looking particularly ravishing today, by the way—"
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but he kissed her neck and it made her feel so very warm all the same.
"—so Earth's atmosphere, right? A spherical surface." He took her face into his hands. "Let's say there's a storm brewing, blowing its wind east to west. There are – guaranteed – at least two spots where everything stands perfectly still. There is no wind." Tony leaned in to kiss her forehead. "Here." He tipped his head down to hover his mouth over hers as she smiled. "And here, too.")
…
Pepper's lost him so many times, but he always found his way back to her in the end. This time shouldn't have been any different.
This time shouldn't have been any different.
Everything's quiet. The music has stopped, even the clinking of silverware, plates, all the small talk. Maybe she's imagined it, but she can't hear anything else beyond the soft raggedness of each breath as it shakes its way in and out of her body.
"Mrs. Stark?" A voice, sounding more distant than it probably is, and then a light awkward tapping on her shoulder. "I mean, Miss Potts. Mi—umm." Peter Parker clears his throat, and she blinks, blinks, blinks until the hand he's held out to her comes into focus. "I think you dropped this."
She takes the paper clip, and manages a watery chuckle when Peter moves his other arm around, into her line of sight, and Morgan's at the other end of it, holding on to his wrist. There's a smear of ketchup on her chin, and Happy close behind her, a crumpled up napkin in hand.
"Oh, my darling girl."
Pepper opens her arms, and Morgan climbs onto her lap, tiny hands already hard at work to wipe away the wetness on her cheeks. Her fingers dance over the smile that Pepper musters for her, and then Harry's face pops back into view, Morgan carefully lifting him up to give Pepper a fuzzy little kiss on the nose.
"I miss Daddy." Morgan's voice is so small – the smallest, most powerful sound that Pepper has ever heard, but now's not the time for her to break anymore.
"I know." Pepper tucks her hair back, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Morgan burrows closer, the weight of her settling like a permanent warmth into Pepper's chest. "I miss him too."
"He's really not coming back?" She's cradling Harry, touching the open seamful of cotton with unsteady fingers.
"No, sweetie. But he loved you so, so much."
Peter's furiously rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, and Pepper beckons him over, patting the spot of rug next to them. He looks uncertain, but it doesn't last long before he's collapsing himself down, shoulders quaking as she puts her arm around him too.
Morgan sniffles into her neck, her whole body tightening as though trying to resist all this sadness she still doesn't know what to do with, how to make it go away. Pepper murmurs soothing things in her hair, and then she closes her eyes, if only for a few blessed seconds, so that the world can stop spinning and just give her daughter a moment to cry.
It almost hurts, not to let herself cry with her.
"Hey, Miss Pepper?" says Peter, after a while. He's dabbing his nose with a clean handkerchief that his Aunt May has just brought him. He points at the hedgehog, its missing paw still clutched in her hand. "What is…that?"
Morgan pipes up, before Pepper has a chance to say otherwise, "This is Hairy Ball." The words come out a bit gargly and hoarse, but she straightens a little, looking pleased that someone is asking.
Happy coughs out a laugh into his hand. At the edge of Pepper's vision, she sees Nick still over by the food, his one good eyebrow nearly shooting right off of his forehead.
Peter, meanwhile, looks simply floored. "As in the theorem? Cool."
"See, Mommy?" Morgan wipes at her eyes, and graciously passes the hedgehog over for Peter's perusal. "Daddy and I told you."
"You most certainly did." Pepper leans back as Morgan points out all of Harry's features, Peter following raptly along and nodding his head at all the right moments. That crack in her chest opens just a bit wider, leaving a hitch in her breath that aches, and aches, and aches.
Her eyes are burning again.
But it's okay, Pepper thinks, because there's no other option. She'd made a promise to Tony that they were going to be okay. She has to believe it will look different from this, someday, but for now—
For now, they can take turns standing still.