who lives, who dies, who tells your story

Three things: Endgame spoilers, angst, and Hamilton

“I lost the kid.”

This is the first thing Tony says when he gets back from space. Pepper can hear the tiredness of his voice, the guilt, coupled with disbelief and anger at everything that’s happened in the past few days. Peter Parker was under his protection - Peter Parker was recruited by him, and now he’s back from space and the kid isn’t.

It never quite goes away, the guilt and the anger. They get married, and she sees him glance at the names of all the people who weren’t able to show up, not out of any fault of their own. His gaze lingers a little too long at Peter’s name and his eyes gloss over and he says nothing. Eventually, when he comes back from wherever he’d gotten lost in, in his own head, he smiles at her like he’s putting on a show even when she’s asked nothing, said nothing. 

She never does. She doesn’t know the first thing to say. She’s never lost a child before, but her husband has. 

Five years later, Steve Rogers rolls up to their front porch. 

Tony catches sight of one of the photos he has of Peter and himself, sits down to run a simulation, and tucks Morgan into bed.

Pepper’s already prepared herself for the conversation before Tony even starts it. She doesn’t stop him. The last five years of their lives have been the most peaceful, the most lucky - while everyone else had lost families and loves, they’d found each other and they’d had a little oasis in the midst of the chaos that was the world, halved in dust. 

But her husband has never really been able to shake off that dust. He screams in his sleep, sometimes. He stares off into space and Pepper says nothing but she knows what he’s thinking about. 

So she doesn’t stop him. 

Five years later, after Tony says, “I lost the kid,” Peter Parker is kneeling in front of him, but Tony can’t quite see him. Half of him is burnt, the power of the stones having burned through his feeble human body like flames through paper. 

Peter is crying, pleading, and the guilt has latched onto him this time. Tony knows that his sacrifice has sealed the end of Thanos and peace for earth, at least, for however long it lasts, but in this absolution, guilt will eat at Peter Parker alive. 

So Pepper puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder and pushes him aside, gently. Tony had done it for him. She loves him too much not to honor this. 

“Pep…” Tony breathes, wheezes, through the pain and the cloudiness of his gaze. One of his eyes look empty, and she realizes he’s probably blind there, retinas and optical nerves shot from the power of the infinity stones. 

Pepper smiles. She will not let her husband go out seeing her heartbroken, seeing her cry. She will let him know that he’s done it, he’s saved them all, he’s made sure that Morgan and Peter and Rhodey and Happy and her can live. 

Absolution.

“You can rest now,” she says. 

She sees the hint of a smile pull at one side of his face, the part where the muscle hasn’t completely been fried, before the light of the arc reactor and his eyes go out.

-

Peter Parker is inconsolable.

Rhodey is the one holding him, saying nothing to placate him because he’s got nothing to say. His best friend is dead, has just died in order to save the entirety of not only the human race, but the universe. 

When people die, others say They’re in a better place now. When people die, others say They’re never really gone.

Those who are actually affected by the loss stand numb and speechless and unable to comprehend the oxymoron of the absence given to them by fate. Why and why them, is often what they say, why them and not me? 

So Rhodey says nothing and just holds Peter. He squeezes the kid tight, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He can’t march up to Thanos’ dust and demand his friend back. He can’t even take the gaunlet to snap Tony back to life because the gaunlet has been fried by the second surge of power it’s been used for.

He watches Pepper as she walks over to him, shoulders squared, expression schooled. She looks fine. Her eyes tell him she’s barely holding herself together.

She stops in front of him, glancing at Peter, who’s buried his face in Rhodey’s chestplate and is sobbing himself hoarse. She says nothing too. She’s just lost her husband, and more than anyone else here, she’d known that one day, this would kill Tony. By whatever war that would befall Earth, if he stood on the field, he would die on it. 

Rhodey holds out an arm.

Pepper breaks. He holds her and the kid both. The only reason the three of them remain standing is because of the armor.

-

Peter passes out pretty quickly once he’s exhausted his tears, the fatigue of the battle and the stress of his emotions making him crash quickly, so while everyone else is being brought to Wakanda for treatment, they take him home with them. They’ll contact his aunt in the morning. Pepper knows about May from all the times Tony had recounted to her how he’d been stupid enough to recruit the kid, and Tony had given her more than enough financial support to live comfortably for the rest of her days during the last five years, out of guilt and as a way of penance for an imagined sin.

Morgan opens the door for them and excitement lights up on her face as she sees her mother, still decked out in her Rescue armor. Pepper does not have the heart to tell her that out of all the people crowded by the door, her father is not there.

“Uncle Rhodey!” She’s bouncing up and down at the sight of the man, who smiles down at her tiredly, but sadly can’t hug her because he’s carrying Peter in his arms.

Peter, who Morgan immediately notices and recognizes from all the photographs her father had kept of him in the house.

She’d asked both Pepper and Tony about him more than once, after she’d noticed them. She hadn’t, at first, paid them much thought given that the photographs had been around even before she’d been born, but eventually, she’d walked into the kitchen and handed them the photo of Tony and Peter posing for the camera and asked who the boy in all the photos was and why he was all over the house.

Tony had retreated into his own head for the moment. Pepper had patiently waited and sat her daughter on her lap.

“Is that Peter?” Morgan climbs on to the sofa and stands on her tiptoes to try and see the unconscious boy in her uncle’s arms. Unfortunately, she’s still too short to get a good look.

“Yes,” Rhodey says, surprised for a moment, but it passes. 

“You got him back,” Morgan says, a grin spreading across her face at the sight of someone who’s been a staple in her bedtime stories that she’d felt like he’d been right there while she’d grown up. Then she looks up, as if she’s realized something. “Daddy must be so happy!”

The silence that drops in the room is so cold that Pepper thinks she actually shivers, even with her temperature-regulated suit.

Neither of them answer. Peter is still asleep.

Morgan’s smile falters at the look on her uncle’s face. She’s the smart child of two overachieving parents, so it doesn’t take her long to realize something is wrong, and for a moment, just for a moment, Pepper thinks, no. 

She’s too young to learn what a loss is. 

She’s too young to realize this is how the world works.

She’s too young to know what grief is. 

Morgan leans to the left, to look past Rhodey, and sees nothing but empty space behind him. 

“Mommy,” she says, “Where’s daddy?”

Pepper closes her eyes. She takes in a breath. She will have to teach her child her first lesson about death.

-

Morgan doesn’t quite understand it, whether in the way most children do not often understand the permanence of death or out of sheer denial of the fact that her father is never coming back. Pepper is almost thankful, really, because she doesn’t know what she would do if her child would have to be broken by grief at such a young age. 

The girl only nods and looks thoughtful as her mother explains to her exactly what had happened on the battlefield. Maybe in a few years, she will ask again as the story fades from her memory, and she will understand then - that her father hadn’t just died. Her father had died to save everyone, the man who had been given the tasteless, spiteful, angry moniker of Merchant of Death had been the protector of life and had given up his own so everyone else could have theirs. Maybe she will mourn and feel the loss in its entirety, stripped of the shield of childhood naivete, maybe she will regret that she never had more time to spend with her father and watch him be proud of her as she’d grown up.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But that’s in the future. For now, Morgan is a little girl who hasn’t quite grappled what loss means, and Pepper lets her be, because she’s got enough grief to go around. 

She lets her daughter totter up to Peter Parker, who’s risen out of bed early from a nightmare for the third night in a row (the kid had insisted he’d stay and wait for Tony’s funeral and had taken to calling his aunt around four times a day) and hand him a glass of orange juice. She watches Peter, shoulders stiff from tension and eyes reddened from crying, gently take the glass from Morgan, gaze softening the way doting big brothers do during the tender moments when they’re not afraid to admit they love their little sisters, and say, “Thank you.”

Peter takes Morgan’s little hand in his and they make their way to the kitchen counter, where he helps her up the high stool, and she asks him about another one of his exploits as Queens’ friendly neighborhood Spiderman. 

Pepper smiles. She turns around and gets her laptop to continue making arrangements for Tony’s funeral.

-

Tony’s funeral is a quiet affair. The man had been loud and boisterous and larger than life, which, as far as coping mechanisms and fake fronts go, isn’t all that uncommon; but his relationships are quiet, personal, steady. The glitz and glam are taken away, replaced only with, well, Tony.

Tony’s funeral is a quiet affair, but not for the lack of guests. In fact, quite a lot of people come. Pepper goes through Tony’s will and invites everyone listed that she doesn’t already know is his friend to attend.

This is how she invites Harley Keener.

She’s heard about him before. Tony on morphine had quite a lot of stories to tell after his shrapnel removal operation. She’d  been the one to arrange the delivery of gifts to the kid’s home. In the haze and the mess of the last few years, however, she’d forgotten about the kid who’d picked Tony up in the middle of a frozen night and helped him.

Harley Keener is part of the automatic budget that Tony has set up to be given away on a monthly basis. The money goes to various charities and foundations. A part of that money goes to one little boy who’s been abandoned by his father and neglected by his mother, as financial aid for his schooling and so he doesn’t starve.

Pepper feels her heart warm as she reads the will of the aid being continued even after Tony’s death. He was always looking after others. He’d made Peter his suit that had a custom A.I. to help him around, equipped it with an instant kill mode so that it preserved Peter’s life above all else. He’d made Pepper Rescue. He’d made insurance to make sure nothing ever happened to her or to Morgan.

Tony didn’t have to die to prove he had a heart. He proved it with everything he made. He proved it with every person he helped. He proved it with how he treated his daughter, how he treated Peter, how he treated Harley. 

Pepper wipes the tears from her eyes and straightens her dress. Right behind her, Morgan has made Peter sit so she can lopsidedly do his tie. He lets her. A few minutes later, Happy comes up and escorts a harried-looking young man with the bloodshot eyes of someone who couldn’t quite believe the news they’d gotten, and a young woman who Pepper knows had worked with the Avengers to pull the whole time-travelling stunt.

Tony had told her all about her too. A young girl, a daughter of Thanos, who had nearly every part of her body be replaced by machinery. They shared calls every now and then in the last five years.

“Harley, Nebula,” Pepper greets as she turns. 

They both give her a nod in acknowledgement. Morgan looks to them with curious eyes. Peter gives them a small wave.

Not much conversation passes between them as they wait for the visitors. Introductions are made, hands are shaken, but overall, the atmosphere of the room is sullen and somber. Harley doesn’t seem to register what has happened until they’re all sitting in the living room and watching Tony’s last messages play out for everyone. Then he shakes, curling in on himself, and Peter has to steady him so he doesn’t collapse. 

They listen to Tony’s recorded words, watch the hologram move and sit and pace around like Tony’s still around and Tony’s still alive, and Pepper knows she’s going to be keeping these recordings for the sake of the kids, if not for Rhodey and Happy and herself. 

When all of the recordings have been played, they go outside and watch as Tony’s old arc reactor is sent to float out into the lake, like a viking funeral of old. Warriors go to Valhalla, Pepper had read once, just out of curiousity of Norse Mythology, which no one can blame her for considering her husband worked with Thor, of all people. 

Wherever he is, she hopes he finds peace. 

She watches the arc reactor float until it’s nothing but a speck in the distance, and then later, indistinguishable from the lake’s dark water. She stands with everyone, stands with her daughter, and then something very strange happens.

In the midst of her grief and her fatigue, she feels...calm, watching the vastness of the lake and the darkening sky. The hurt is still there. The disbelief is still there. In fact, she can even feel the anger stemming from the perception of unfairness already beginning to stir in her gut, but she feels calm. 

She misses her husband dearly. She wishes he’s here with her. But she feels like something has finished, as that arc reactor disappear into the horizon. It’s not the calmness of someone comforted, but the calmness that comes with the sense that something is done. 

After the funeral, everyone leaves one by one, giving Pepper their condolences once again before they pile into their cars and drive off to their own homes, to rebuild and reconnect with what they have been given back. The part of the world that has been taken five years ago has been slotted back in place, in exchange for the life of two people. 

One of them had been Tony Stark.

On the shore, Morgan is standing with Peter, Harley and Nebula, watching the lake. 

Morgan is Pepper and Tony’s daughter, but the other three are also Tony’s children as much as she is, and that’s the reason why they’re all here, to watch the man they’d loved and respected be put to rest.

This is what he’s left, Pepper thinks, suddenly. Tears gather at the edges of her eyes as she watches the children sit down, slowly. This is his legacy.

Not weapons of war. Not cutting-edge technology. But a chance for a new generation to be able to see the world and discover the wonders of it. 

Pepper lets her tears fall. Tomorrow, she will rise, and she will face the day. But for now, she watches her husband’s children talk and catch up and get to know each other, and swap stories of how good of a man their father was.

-

Peter Parker goes back to his aunt, Harley Keener goes home, Nebula goes to look for her sister. 

All three of them never really leave.

Peter being Spiderman means he’s being assisted by Happy every now and then, and Pepper does routine checks to make sure he’s not going around in a busted suit he’s just holding together through superglue and sheer stubborness. The lab is open for any of them who want to putter around in it, although Morgan needs supervision and assistance since she’s too small to climb up to the tables yet. 

Harley calls in every now and then and sets up a chatroom that everyone logs in nearly every day, since Morgan expresses that she misses everyone when they’re not around the house. Nebula figures out a way to make the transmissions from the Guardians’ ship reach Earth in realtime. She gives them updates on how the search for her sister is going.

Morgan sits in front of her laptop listening to all of their stories and asks about their exploits. Every now and then, she asks about stories of her dad. They tell her, first in quiet tones and teary eyes, and as the months pass by, with a little more life and pride in their voices. 

Pepper often has to wrestle her daughter away from her laptop and say goodnight to the others just to put her to bed.

On Tony’s birthday, Peter bullies Dr. Strange into opening a portal for Nebula to visit Earth, and everyone who can drives to the Stark household to celebrate. They have pizza, a few videos, and a lot of tears. It’s fun. 

Morgan is starting to understand exactly what dead means, although she’s not quite there yet, and Pepper is trying to ease her into it. Every time her daughter forgets and asks where her father is or when he’s coming home, Pepper patiently says that he can’t. Every time her daughter expects her father to say something he’s always said, or to tuck her to bed, Pepper watches as the memory of what she’s been told has told her catches up with her and reality drives itself a little deeper into her young mind. 

Once, and only once, Morgan screams and cries as she asks for her father and mother tells her he can’t anymore, he can’t ever again. 

The next day, her daughter is quiet and sullen and Pepper calls her in sick for school. She lets her be when she calls the others and basks in the knowledge that yes, her father is gone-gone, her first true understanding of what death really is.

The only thing Pepper can do is console and hold her daughter as she wraps her mind around this, around the permanence and the unfairness of it, and let her know she is not alone. 

She isn’t. None of them are.

Tony has gone, but he’s left Pepper with four kids who are trouble all on their own and a force to be reckoned with when they’re all together. He’s left her with a massive network made to help and aid those who need it. He’s left her with all the machinery that goes around the house and makes funny noises because they’re all prototypes that Tony’s never really gotten rid of.

She sees him in the grafitti of the streets. She sees him on the news, when there’s a flood of people in the dark holding up candles and singing in his honor. She sees him on the anniversary of the day they’d vanquished Thanos and the day is declared an official holiday and everyone marches around with shirts and flags and placards with his face, among the faces of his other colleagues, on it. 

She sees him on an earth still whole and standing because he’d died for it.

“Look at what you’ve done, Tony,” she whispers, standing in the Avengers Tower in New York, looking out over the balcony and down at the night city skyline. 

On the walls of buildings are spray paints of the faceplate of the Iron Man armor. On the streets are candles and wreaths still burning and left even so long after the graffiti of his face has faded. On the buildings are linings of red and gold, designed deliberately as tribute for his sacrifice.

Somewhere in the upper living quarters is Morgan Stark, sleeping soundly with an Iron Man plush one of her siblings had won for her held close. Somewhere in Queens is Peter Parker, swinging around in his new suit, keeping watch over his neighborhood. Somewhere in a quaint little house in the middle of the woods is Harley Keener, building his next science project that’s going to show exactly why he’s at the top of his class. Somewhere in space is Nebula, relearning the truth that she isn’t made of failures and unlearning years of trauma Thanos has given her. 

And in New York is Pepper Potts-Stark, looking at a world her husband has made sure will be around for her.

“Oh, Tony,” she smiles, “We love you 3000 too.”