Hello all! I'd like to welcome you to my silly little MCU story. For those of you who have been reading my other work, you know I mentioned that the MCU was pretty much taking over my life, and here are the fruits of that labor.
Just a quick note. I'm not a scientist. I couldn't tell you anything about time theories or advanced trigonometry. I CAN tell you about the pythagorean theorem, but I doubt that's going to come into play in this story. The point is, I can use the words to make myself sound intelligent in that regard, but I'm not going for super accuracy here. This story stars a wizard after all.
Also, I don't know if all the Avengers are going to have a big role in this story. This idea, while sounding large, is a personal, family oriented story focusing on love and loss, as well as an exploration of a world after Thanos. But they all should appear at some point or another.
PLEASE READ: Regardless of their state in Endgame, Pepper and Nathaniel Barton survived the snap in this story.
Anywho, enough blabbering. Enjoy!
Across the ages
Every living soul comes to know the same truths:
Pain is inescapable
Loss is inevitable
But love makes all things bearable
Prologue
Avengers Tower
Eight years after the Decimation
"Dad, why is the sky blue?"
"Because molecules in the air scatter blue light waves from the sun."
"But the sun isn't blue."
"And you should be grateful for that, because if it was, we'd all be burnt to a crisp. Actually, we wouldn't exist at all. The conditions to form the Earth wouldn't have been up to snuff, and even if it somehow happened, the atmosphere would have practically evaporated, exposing us to dangerous amounts of radiation and-"
Tony turned around to a tiny form seated on a stool. Red hair in pigtails, shoes half tied, and bandages on her knees, Morgan was the perfect picture of a typical young and boisterous child. She even swung her legs in the air like she was glued to the seat and needed the momentum to achieve freedom. Her blue eyes had taken to roaming the workshop, interest in his rambling long gone.
"You know what, ask your mother."
Morgan's gaze found its way back to him. "Mom says that can't be your answer to everything."
Tony turned back to his work. "Yeah, well, she doesn't like my other answers either."
With a wave of his hand, the various equations and charts that were projected disappeared, revealing a new set that, to the untrained eye, looked like a continuation of the technobabble he'd just had up. But this was a completely unrelated segment.
What was it Clint had said? He stopped paying attention once they added letters?
Snorting, Tony proceeded to expand a certain segment of the equation. It was supposed to measure the speed of time in relation to an external point. If he could physically step out of time at that very moment and look at the time line as an actual object versus an abstract theory, how fast would it be moving? Would he perceive each moment as he did now, or would it be faster? Slower? Would he have to throw himself back in and hope for the best or could he possess the ability to manipulate the temporal construct?
This was getting ridiculous, but every path he took led to the same thing: theories so impossibly obscure that it was pure science fiction. Worse, science fantasy. Star Wars, not Star Trek. He'd be better off discovering the Force than an actual, stable scientific method to go back and fix everything.
But he had to go back. They had no choice. None of this was supposed to happen.
There was no other way.
Why would Stephen Strange save him if not for this?
"If the sun was blue, would the sky be yellow?"
He minimized the projection. "What?"
"Well, the sky is blue now, and the sun is yellow, so if the sun was blue, wouldn't they switch?"
"No, that…no, that's not how it works," Tony replied, opening another screen. Images of a machine appeared, simple in nature, a half-formed idea really. The lines had been scrapped and redrawn multiple times, and even now there were more than a few question marks surrounding the design details. This was nowhere near the final product, or even a prototype.
"Why not?"
"Because a blue sun is too hot," he continued, writing notes about a stress test needed for the materials he'd gathered. The kind of heat this thing was going to put out would have made NASA nervous, had they still existed.
"It would evaporate the atmosphere," he said, waving his arm behind him in what he thought was her general direction. "There wouldn't be any sky. Just the ground and space."
"But that doesn't make sense."
"Not everything has to make sense, sweetheart."
Like how his daughter even got into the lab. She should have been in school by now. Wasn't like she had to go far. They had a private facility near the ground floor of the tower.
Being a self-powered structure, it had been one of the few places unaffected by the grid failures. People had flocked over, and Pepper had let them all in. Some stayed. Most of the businesses inside no longer existed, so they turned into homes, and suddenly Avengers Tower had its own little community.
He couldn't name a single resident, but that was what FRIDAY was for.
Friday. Yesterday was Friday.
So today was Saturday.
No school Saturdays. Some things were still the same.
"That's what people say when they don't want to tell you," Morgan argued.
"Yeah, you're right about that."
He waited, bracing for another round of questions.
Silence. Good. Just what he needed. Now he could work on that differential equa-
"Is the ocean blue because of the sky or the sun?"
Tony whirled around, locking eyes with his daughter. "Do all kids come preloaded with annoying questions, or is it just you?"
Shit.
Morgan jumped, as if physically smacked by the words, and her eyes opened wide. He would have ventured to say comically so if it weren't for the sadness that immediately followed. Her blue eyes darkened as her lip began to tremble.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
"Morgan, honey, I didn't-"
But the damage was done.
His daughter leapt off the stool and bolted across the lab, making a beeline for the elevators. She moved faster than he thought she could have, barely giving him time to react, and definitely not enough time to catch her as the doors to the lift opened wide.
"FRIDAY, stop the elevator!" Tony shouted as he jogged across the room. He just caught the sound of her sniffing as the doors closed shut. He slammed against them, pounding the metal and pushing on the control panel like it would change anything. "FRIDAY, stop the elevator. Bring it back. Bring it back!"
He punched the door one last time as he heard the sounds of the elevator car grow distant. Morgan was heading up, to their home, to her mother.
"I'm sorry, boss," FRIDAY's voice chimed from overhead, programming almost making her sound sympathetic. "But I don't believe Miss Morgan would like that."
Tony leaned against the wall beside the elevator, running his hands over his face.
"Since when do you take her side over mine?" he asked, voice calming but still very much on edge.
"Since Miss Potts told me to."
Tony gave himself a few minutes to cool down before he wandered upstairs in search of his wayward daughter.
The elevator brought him to the main Avengers floor. It had been destroyed several times in the past, so the build had begun to look different year after year, and after half the world disappeared, every inch of the place had been covered in people, talking, crying, covered in blankets he didn't know they had kind of people. He hadn't recognized the space for months, but the layout had slowly come back to him. There was the entertainment section with the bar, while further down the hallway were more homey rooms, like bathrooms and the kitchen.
Clint was currently occupying the latter. Sitting on the island, he had an orange clutched between his hands and a look on his face that said Tony should have been grateful that he wasn't currently armed.
"From the glare I'm currently receiving, I take it my daughter has been through here," Tony said, sounding as casual as he could given the situation.
The archer nodded once. "You screwed up."
"Yeah, I know."
"Do you?" Clint asked, jumping down. He didn't move as well as he used to, even had a limp, but Tony knew he could still have his ass on the ground in seconds. "Or is this one of those temporary apologies you're so well known for? Cause I tell you what, Tony, I don't wanna see that girl of yours crying again because her father can't get his shit together."
Tony opened his mouth, one of his trademark comebacks right there on this tip of his tongue, but he stopped himself. Clint was right – he usually was, but he wasn't about to admit that – and if he said anything to the contrary, not only was he actually going to get his ass kicked, he was going to deserve it.
So, he walked away.
There were stairs in the back that led to upstairs bedrooms. It was where the Avengers had lived after the New York incident, from time to time that was. Thor had his whole other realm thing going on, and Steve was out doing his captaining all across the country, but somehow the group wound up all together more often than not.
Nowadays, it was just Clint, and occasionally Natasha. Rhodey was currently serving as the Secretary of Defense in Washington, Thor had taken what remained of his people and relocated them to Norway before disappearing back into space, Bruce had stayed in Wakanda for unspecified reasons, and no one had seen Steve in years. There were rumors, but for the most part, the man was a ghost.
The last door on the left, that was where he and Pepper lived. Morgan took the room across from them – it was currently several horrendous shades of pink – though she usually wound up in their room most nights, either because he was out working late or she'd had another bad dream.
Their daughter had a lot of those.
She wasn't alone, that was for sure.
Sure enough, Pepper was lying on their bed with Morgan tucked under her arm. They were looking at a tablet together, the screen lighting up their faces. She'd probably been working on development plans – Pepper Potts had become the poster girl for rebuilding society – but she had undoubtedly tossed it all aside as soon as Morgan came running in. All of their daughter's favorite movies were on that thing. He bet they were watching Alice in Wonderland.
For a moment, neither noticed him, so Tony took a second to lean against the doorway and just watch them.
He blamed the Extremis for their daughter turning out to be a redhead just like her mother, making Pepper's genes utterly unstoppable. Not that he minded, of course. Morgan was better off looking like her. She was better off being like her in every possible way, yet Pepper insisted their daughter was more like him than he could see. Maybe he just didn't want to see it; maybe it scared the hell out of him. He knew how much of a wreck he was, even before Thanos arrived.
Pepper had to ruin the moment by looking over. Her eyes narrowed and what little courage that had followed him out of the lab fled at the sight.
Still, he took a reluctant step inside.
"May I speak with her?"
Morgan didn't move, though he knew she heard him. She was choosing to focus on the movie.
"Your father's come to apologize," Pepper spoke, gently shaking their daughter's shoulder. "Should we let him?"
An eternity passed, and then Morgan nodded.
Pepper sighed, wiggling out of her grip, leaving Morgan propped up on the pillows, eyes still glued to the tablet. She walked over to him, placing a hand on his chest before he could step further into the room.
"All she wants to do is be with you, Tony," Pepper hissed, glancing back at the bed. "And at this point, I don't know why. You seem to be doing everything in your power to be the worst father."
Yeah, he would know a thing or two about how to do that.
"I know," he replied. "I…I know."
"Do you?"
She was starting to sound like Clint. Those two probably spent more time together than he did with her.
That thought was leading somewhere he didn't like.
"I always do," he said, stepping around her. Tony Stark had always been good at knowing things. Acting on them was something entirely different.
Kneeling beside the bed, Tony watched as his daughter continued to ignore him.
"Can we talk?"
Morgan blinked, but otherwise didn't move as she stared the screen before her. He watched the colors on her skin rapidly change as the movie went through one of its weirder parts, not that the whole thing wasn't one big acid trip.
"Do you mind putting that down? Maybe pausing the movie?"
Nothing.
"Fair enough," Tony said, giving up as he got comfortable on the floor. "You know, I guess I never really told you what I've been working on all these years. This, uh, little project of mine predates even you, though not by much.
"See, the world is…a lot different than it used to be, and I know that you know that, but we never told you that we were at the center of it."
He saw her eyes flick over in his direction. The colors stopped moving; the movie must have been paused.
"The Avengers, we had a chance to stop it, and we screwed up pretty badly. I screwed up pretty badly, and because of that, people died. So, for all these years, I've been trying to fix that. All that crazy math stuff I've been working on, it's a way to go back and undo everything."
Morgan put the tablet down and sat up, never taking her eyes off of him. Tony could see her thinking, piecing together everything he had told her. She was a smart kid, smarter than the others her age; she'd probably end up in advanced classes in no time.
Pepper was right. She was just like him.
"If you go back and fix everything, does that mean I won't happen?"
Something broke inside of him, and in an instant, Tony had scooped his daughter up in his arms, holding her tightly, as if someone had come to take her from him at that very moment.
"No. No no no no no," he murmured over and over again, burying his head into her shoulder. He felt her arms wrapping tightly around his neck. "That's not going to happen, Morgan, okay? That's never going to happen."
He stood up, groaning as he sat them both down on the bed.
God, when had she gotten so big? She used to barely fit in his arms, and now he was threatening to throw out his back just by lifting her. Had he really missed so much?
"How do you know?"
Tony glanced up over his daughter's head to see Pepper holding a hand over her mouth. She was barely keeping it together.
"You were always going to happen, kid, alright?" Tony asked, holding Morgan back so she could look at him. She wasn't crying, and seemed oddly calm for a kid talking about the erasure of her existence. "You existed before all the bad stuff went down, and no matter what I do, you will always exist, I promise."
"And other people will exist too?"
"A lot of other people," he replied with a nod. "Like Nathaniel's brother and sister, and his mom."
"So Uncle Clint won't be lonely."
"Exactly," Tony said, not sure how much he liked the archer being called 'uncle.' "And so many other people. There's this kid named Peter. You'd, uh…you'd like him. He likes all the same stupid movies that you do."
Morgan stuck her tongue out at him. "They aren't stupid."
"Sure they aren't." Tony pulled her back in again, missing holding her. He never held her enough. "Look, kid, I haven't been the best, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for a lot of things, including everything I forgot, and I know your mother will tell me all about those soon enough.
"There is nothing in this world that I want more than you; there will never be anything in this world that I want more than you, and as long as you need me, I'll be here."
The Sanctum Sanctorum
2018
She stood at the bottom of the staircase, wringing her hands, watching the gateway that Stephen had conjured in the entryway. She knew who he was talking to on the other side, could hear their voices, but his cloak was blocking the view. Two steps to the side, and she would be able to see them clearly, but her feet were frozen in place, heavy as concrete and just as willing to move.
All this time, and she just wasn't ready.
Wong placed his hand on her shoulder. "Don't forget to breathe."
She giggled. It wasn't funny at all. In fact, it was solid advice, because she had most certainly forgotten to breathe, but her nerves were so wound up that all of her reactions were not only guaranteed to be wrong, but entirely inappropriate to the situation.
The sorcerer, however, seemed to understand her entirely, and squeezed her shoulder before stepping aside.
Stephen turned around, stepping back into the Sanctum. His eyes found hers immediately, watching her as he walked inside. She felt his arm brush against hers, but couldn't bring herself to look at him.
"You going to be alright?" she heard him whisper. He was leaning close, back to the portal he'd conjured.
She thought she said 'no,' but couldn't remember moving her mouth.
Bruce had already stepped back through the gateway, but Tony was saying a quick, last goodbye to Pepper. She looked to be arguing, and he was desperately apologizing, kissing her quickly before stepping over the threshold.
The gateway closed before Pepper could get another word in.
Tony looked at the space where it had once been, no longer a park in his view, but double doors instead.
"Well that's a…thing."
Then he looked at her.
Time froze.
It was him; it was Tony Stark. He looked so much younger than any of her memories of him; he looked happier, healthier, practically stress-free next to the man she had called her father. She could see him lining up another crack, his classic antagonizing humor that everyone hated, but secretly appreciated, because if he wasn't doing it, then something was completely wrong.
She missed that; she missed him.
"So," he started, "are you supposed to be the Hermione of this get up, or are you more of a Weasley? You know with the…red hair and all."
I'm your daughter.
I'm the greatest thing that happened to you.
I'm the only one who can stop this.
I'm-
She felt Stephen squeeze her hand.
"No sorcery here," she said, feeling the fake smile stretch across her face.
"I'm just Morgan."
Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! And please please please let me know if any of the canon characters are ever off. It is my goal first and foremost to give the story an accurate portrayal of the canon characters.
Thanks again!
