to grieve the sea

“Children have no dignity
and I really admire that about them.
I love their ruthless response
to injustices, their desire to feed
birds in the park.
To grieve the sea.
Their right to be tired
in public.

- Megan Fernandes; "Do You Sell Diginity Here?"

“Imaginary friends are extremely common for children of Morgan’s age.”

The doctor’s office is chilly as she plays with the loose thread on the windbreaker her Mom had made her put on before they drove here. It still smells like her dad—a combination of slightly sweet, woodsy spice with just a hint of vanilla and motor oil.

It smells like home.

In retrospect, she thinks she probably should’ve grabbed her coat. Uncle Happy had been right—snow was coming and they’d probably be caught in it on their way home. Idly, she found herself wondering why the doctor chose to keep the office so cold when Winter was already knocking on their door, but she doesn't voice this thought aloud.

Her attention slid back to the conversation at hand, her mom’s voice pulling her back to the present.

“I know, I did my research before bringing her in, it’s just—” her mom’s voice drops to a whisper, so Morgan fiddles with her shoelaces, practicing the rabbit’s ear technique Peter had showed her just a few weeks ago, trying to make it seem like she isn’t listening to their conversation.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the strained smile the doctor puts on. It looks painful; like she’s constipated or something.

“Really, Ms. Stark, it’s very normal for children of Morgan’s age to have imaginary friends, I promise—”

“No, no, I get that. It’s just, Morgan…well, she takes after her dad, you know?” There’s an uncertain edge to her mom’s voice, and Morgan feels her shoulder’s hunch in a bit at it. She still doesn’t look up though, just keeps toying with her shoelaces; tying and untying her them in a never-ending loop.

Not that it matters—neither of the adults pay her any mind.

“I just mean,” her mom pauses, searching for the right words, “she inherited his intellect. And look, Tony was my best friend, and my husband, but his mind…” Morgan could hear the steadying inhale of air, the same one that told her she was fighting to keep from crying.

She’d been doing that a lot, lately.

Ever since they’d set her dad’s arc reactor loose on the water by the lake house. The same lake house they had promptly moved out of in favor of their Manhattan apartment, less than two months later. The same apartment Peter had come over and played with her at, before everyone seemed to forget he existed.

Her mom had smiled a lot more when Peter was around. And now that he was gone…well, the smiles were much fewer and far between. It was an odd change that she’d been trying to adjust to, but it didn’t help that her mom…well, everyone, really, kept telling her Peter wasn’t real.

She frowned harder at her shoelaces with that reminder and ripped the neat bow she’d made apart with nimble fingers.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Her mom’s voice has gotten slightly urgent, and the doctor’s smile is a lot more gentle, now. Morgan watches her rest a soothing hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently.

“I do, Ms. Stark. All I can say, is trauma and grief manifest themselves in different ways for everyone. Morgan is likely creating this imaginary friend as a way to cope with her feelings of loss. It’s not uncommon for these things to rear their heads, a couple of months after the inciting incident. I’m confident that she’ll grow out of it. Every kid does. And if she doesn’t, then you bring her back and we’ll look deeper into it.”

Her mom nodded and Morgan finally raised her head, brushing her bangs out of her eyes as the doctor wheeled closer to her and patted her knee. Her hazel eyes are warm, and her smile is easy—as if this conversation is nothing new to her. Which Morgan figures it must be, if other little girls that come through here also fess up to having memories of older brothers that no one else seems to remember.

Par for the course, she thinks, mildly. It was a phrase she had heard her dad use, and not one she fully understood, but it seemed to fit the current circumstances.

It doesn’t matter either way though, because the doctor doesn’t ask about Peter any more. She just smiles and taps Morgan’s knee lightly.

“Something tells me you could use a lollipop. How does that sound?” 

________________________________________

The older she gets, the more she starts to think everyone else was right.

Peter? No, sorry kiddo, I can’t say that the name rings any bells, Uncle Rhodey tells her.

He’s just a figment of your imagination, something you made up to cope with the loss of your dad, the child therapist assures her.

Did you…run into any old friends today? Her mom asks, with that nervous lilt to her voice that tells her she’s praying the answer will be ‘no’ every time she makes the inquiry.

Eventually, she starts to think that they must be right. So, she slowly talks about him less and less.

Besides, she tries to reason, if Peter were real, he would’ve come back to them by now. The Peter she thought she knew would never, ever let them wonder if he was okay. If he was sick, or injured, or missing—he’d have found some way to tell them.

If he was real, he would have showed up by now.

And though she has Eidetic memory, she lets herself believe that those memories, the ones she’d once held so dearly, were in fact figments of her over-active imagination. Just like her mom, and the therapist, and all of the other specialists her mom makes her visit in her bid to get to the bottom of Morgan's so-called imaginary friend, said. 

It was easier, to let herself forget. To believe that Peter had never really existed.

Everyone told her that was the case, so it must be true. Why would they lie to her?

There was a smaller, more logical part of herself that wouldn't shut up either, running circles in her mind as she played the memories (or were they dreams? She couldn't tell anymore) back. She always wound up at the same conclusion: why would Peter let them forget, if he was real?

________________________________________

By the time she is six, she has learned to stop asking about Peter.

In fact, she stops bringing him up, entirely.

She can see the relief on her mom’s face every time she brings up a new friend from the park and their name isn’t “Peter”. She leans into the idea that Peter was something her mind had conjured; that her memory of looking at his picture with dad was just a way for her to cope with his sudden loss, like her therapist insisted. She hasn’t been able to find that picture in all the time since, which only cements the idea that Peter never really existed.

She goes to her private tutoring lessons, and daydreams her way through the classes, which do little to challenge her. Then, she goes to one of her seemingly never-ending doctors or therapists appointments, mindlessly answering questions and taking silly little routine tests that would have bored her even a year prior and only serve to bore her to tears, now. When she gets home, she sneaks into her dad’s old lab—the one her mom thinks she doesn’t know the code to, despite practically growing up in it back when her dad had still been alive.

Her mom would find them down there together most nights, tinkering on some new device or upgrading FRIDAY’s software. It had gotten so habitual at one point before his death, that most evenings Morgan could be found curled up in some corner of the lab, once her eyes got too heavy to try and keep open. Most of the time, DUM-E would find a spare blanket (and once, a pot of lukewarm coffee, on accident—which had really set her dad off) to drape over her until one of her parent’s eventually carried her to her bed, lulled to sleep by the sound of her dad's tinkering. 

The lab was a safe space. It was comforting, and familiar, and when the world got too loud, or she really just wanted to disappear for a little bit, she hid there.

The third time her mom finds her holed up in it after an argument, she threatens to change the code if Morgan doesn’t tell her the next time she plans on disappearing.

Morgan doesn’t even bother to argue, because she knows, even if her mom does somehow manage to convince FRIDAY to lock her out, she’ll just override FRIDAY’s coding and let herself back in.

“Morgan,” her mom says, running a hand through her red hair, exasperation clear on her face, “you really can’t be coming in here by yourself. Not until you’re older.”

“How old?” She finds herself asking, her tone challenging. Her mom gets down on her hands and knees, leveling herself to Morgan’s height where she's burrowed under a nest of blankets she’s managed to squirrel in when no one was paying attention.

“At least until your twelve.” She says solemnly.

Morgan shoots up from her pile of blankets, crossing her arms stubbornly across her chest.

“Seven.” She argues.

“Eleven.” Her mom counters.

“Eight. And I’m not budging on that.”

“Eleven and only if you’re wearing a hard helmet and you’ve told me in advance.”

“Nine, and no hard helmet, but I will wear the welding mask anytime I need to use the tools.” She offers, earnestly.

“Eleven," her mom insists, her brow furrowing, "and why do you even know where the welding mask is? You’re six. You definitely shouldn’t know where to find that yet.”

“Moooom,” she groans, covering her face in exasperation before stamping her foot childishly. “Fine. Ten, and that’s my best and final offer.”

Her mom boops her nose lightly with her index finger, a wicked glint in the sharp blue of her eyes. “Deal. But you should know, I would’ve caved at nine.” She winks and tugs Morgan into a hug, pressing a long kiss to her hair and taking a deep breath when Morgan stands awkwardly, not returning the hug, her feet shifting uncomfortably.

Her mom lets out a slow breath before squaring her shoulders and loosening her hold on her.

“I love you, Mongoose.” She says earnestly. Morgan’s shoulder rises in a half shrug, and she doesn’t meet her gaze, suddenly uncomfortable for a reason she can't seem to put into words.

“I know.” She says, quietly.

________________________________________

At seven, her mom finally takes her to get tested.

From the first doctor's appointment she'd attended and the litany of others that had followed, she'd known that she didn't like the way doctors looked at her. They inevitably all ended up acting like she was a specimen, or some sort of puzzle to be solved. Part of that, she knew, was because she was the daughter of Tony Stark, a name which held weight, even now, three years after his death. But they also looked at her with…well, she wasn’t sure, what, exactly, but she would almost label it dismay.

She didn’t like talking to those kinds of doctors; the ones that she was fairly certain were just trying to map out her brain, to try and solve her as if she were some sort of enigma.  

She knew she was a little odd. Eccentric, she thinks her dad would’ve called it. But he’d been considered eccentric, once upon a time, too, if the research she'd done was to be believed.

If anything, she was more and more like him every day. According to her mom, at least.

Still, she didn’t think he’d struggled with the little nuances involved in social interactions like she did. Or if he had, he’d been really good at hiding it, because he’d never made her feel anything other than normal.

Other people, namely her doctors, did though.

She couldn’t help that she didn’t like hugs or saying ‘I love you’ when she didn’t mean it. She’d started to understand that people said those kinds of things, even when they didn’t mean it because it was easier than not saying it when they didn’t. And she’d gotten better at saying it, even when she didn’t want to.

She couldn’t help that she found herself people-watching more often than not, taking in the way they said and did things and later mirroring it in her own every-day interactions, to the point that sometimes she’d get stuck on a certain phrase or gesture for a few weeks—and sometimes months. Even when she’d been going to therapy, she’d avoided eye contact whenever she could, and she focused more on the puzzles Dr. Warbritton would put out for her to solve every visit. That had quickly evolved into playing chess, once Dr. Warbritton had figured out she was only pretending to solve the puzzles as slowly as she had in order to pass the time and not talk about her ‘feelings’.

Morgan got really, really good at chess when she’d still been regularly seeing Dr. Warbritton.

But the doctor her mom brings her to this time is different.

Dr. Beausoleil is not like Dr. Warbritton. Dr. Warbritton talked to her as if she was a child—even when Morgan would get a checkmate in three moves—whereas Dr. Beausoleil talked to her like she was an adult. She didn’t try to hide what she was saying, and her tone was always very clear. Her words weren’t flowery, but she didn’t avoid using words that most people would assume a seven year old wouldn’t know, either.

Morgan liked that about her.

“So, Morgan,” she said on their first meeting, “your mom brought you in today because she thinks you might be autistic.”

Morgan tilted her head, turning the word over in her mind.

“What’s autistic?” She finally ventured to ask, her curiosity outweighing her apprehension. And from there, it’s like magic—it’s the first doctor appointment she’s ever had where she doesn’t feel like the adults are going to talk about her like she’s not even there. Not that she necessarily minds that most times, since it usually gives her a chance to listen, observe, and work out how to fit her way into the conversation before someone decides to bring her in before she’s figured out what she’s going to say. But the way Dr. Beausoleil pays full attention to her, completely undistracted and addressing her as if she knows exactly what she means, is an interesting change of pace.

“It’s a fancy way of saying our brains are wired differently than most people’s.” Dr. Beausoleil says simply. “It’s a spectrum, so there are varying symptoms that will help me determine if I think you fall anywhere under the overall umbrella, which is why you’re here today.”

“Hm.” Morgan says, contemplating her words. “Do I get to know the usual symptoms of an autistic person?” A little smile creeps over Dr. Beausoleil’s face at that, and she shakes her head, once, her neatly pinned blonde hair not stirring in the slightest.

“No, not yet. But we can talk about that later. And I promise I’ll answer every question I can; I have a feeling you're going to have a lot of them.”

________________________________________

Life is a little easier, after her diagnosis.

Somewhat.

She still struggles to navigate societal norms, but Dr. Beausoleil gave her mom some homework after her initial assessment, and they start to reach a tentative understanding regarding her diagnosis. Their apartment gets a sudden influx of book shipments and magazine subscriptions with ridiculous titles and bright, proud covers of smiling children in primary colored shirts (usually with glasses, for some reason), with titles that boast their insightful knowledge and proudly proclaim to hold the secrets for the best way to parent an autistic child.

Her mom reads them all, in between meetings for work and fancy galas that she assures Morgan are nothing more than a snooze-fest (not that Morgan would be interested in going to any of them anyway, except to maybe make fun of the overpriced, ridiculous clothes) and things get a little easier.

Her mom tells her that a lot of autistic kids are diagnosed with ADHD first, and that it’s common for autistic kids to have “heavier” (sad, she means sad, Morgan finally determines) feelings. She makes her promise that if she ever starts to feel too sad, that she’ll tell her.

Morgan isn’t sure what ‘too’ sad means, but she makes the promise, nonetheless.

After a while, it’s not as hard to say “I love you,” even when she doesn’t necessarily mean it. In fact, she’s pretty sure she means it most of the time, when she says it, now. Her mom’s eyes always get a little brighter, and kind of glassy when she’s the first one to say it, or when she initiates a hug.

She hardly thinks about her imaginary childhood friend anymore.

________________________________________

At nine, she convinces her mom to revisit their earlier negotiation.

The battle is hard fought, but Morgan’s never been one to back down from a fight.

Five hours, six cups of homemade hot chocolate, a little bit of gaslighting, and promises not to burn their apartment complex down lands her the privilege of unsupervised access to the lab. Only after Uncle Happy clears all the “dangerous” stuff out, first, her mom is quick to clarify.

She finds she can’t even be mad about that one stipulation. Besides, she knows she’ll find a way to sneak it all back in the next time Uncle Happy babysits her on his own and inevitably falls asleep on the couch. So, she doesn’t push her luck.

Instead, she follows up with a request that she knows will surprise her mom.

Five more hours, a lot of groveling, a few tears (all from her mom), and a promise to always be honest about her feelings, and she finally gets the agreement to be enrolled in public school.  

Her entire life has been made up of private tutors and it’s hard to meet anyone even close to her age in the middle of a school day at Central Park, especially when one of her nanny’s is watching her every move like a hawk. And she likes her life. Really, she really does. It’s fun being able to pick up in the middle of the week to fly to Norway, or France, or any of the plethora of places her mom takes her to on business trips or just for fun, but she doesn’t have any friends her age. And it's starting to get lonely. She knows she’s what most of her peers her age would call “weird,” but she feels like she's been hidden away in a tower all her life, protected to the point that it doesn't feel like a safe haven anymore, just a cage. Besides, she reasons to her mom, she can’t stay hidden forever.

Her mom only has three conditions. The first being: the school has to be well accredited; the second: if anyone so much as breathes wrong in her direction, she’s getting pulled out; and the third: she won’t start until she’s ten.

Morgan acquiesces to the demands, so long as her two conditions are met, too. One: her mom is not allowed to assign her a bodyguard, a babysitter, a nanny, or anything in-between to watch her all day; and two: she enrolls under the name Morgan Potts.

If the second request surprises her mom, it never shows on her face.

________________________________________

She is ten years old, and it's the summer right before she’s set to start fifth grade at her first public school when she finds the hidden compartment in her dad’s lab.

In all her years of exploring the lab in her spare time—supervised and unsupervised—she thought she’d found all of his secret hiding places. The hidden safe behind the Van Gough painting (suuuper subtle, Dad, she’d thought the first time she’d found it), the lockbox in the floorboards under the table in the corner, the hidden panic room behind the seemingly innocuous storage shelf—paranoia had been the name and safety protocols had been the game.

Still, she thought she’d found all of his secret hiding spots well before she’d turned ten.

Turns out a genius—even a dead one—had more tricks up his sleeve than even she’d anticipated. She should’ve known though. He had been the one who taught her chess, after all.

She hadn’t even been trying to find the latest hiding place. In fact, she, or rather DUM-E, sort of fell into it.

For nearly a month leading up to her discovery, DUM-E had been acting strange—stranger than his usual behavior, of course—but none of the diagnostics she’d run on him had yielded any unusual readings. She’d decided to monitor him, on the off chance that she’d need to replace a spare part here or there, but aside from that, they’d been business as usual.

He’d been chasing her around the lab with the fire extinguisher for nearly ten minutes when it happened.

She’d been breathless and giggling, looping circles around the slow-moving robot in her socks that slipped against the smooth flooring. At one point, she whipped past DUM-E so fast that when he’d turned to grab her sleeve to steady her, he’d overshot his range of motion and had tipped over on his side, his wheels spinning helplessly.

“Oh, shoot. Sorry Dum-Dum.” Morgan said, skidding to a stop and placing her hands on her hips to observe the upturned robot. His wheels continued to spin, as if searching for traction in the air and she frowned, her mind already whirring through the list of tools she would need to gather in order to right him. He was too heavy for her to lift on her own, and her mom certainly wouldn’t be any help. In fact, she’d be pretty pissed Morgan had been down in the lab without supervision in the first place, since she was technically grounded from unsupervised visits that week since she’d accidentally set off the smoke alarm two days ago while experimenting with a blowtorch.

Not that being grounded had ever stopped her, before.

A basic pulley system would probably do the trick, she decided, pushing her wayward thoughts of her mom’s worry and her subsequent grounding out of her head.

“Hold on Dum-E, let me get some stuff together and we’ll get you fixed up, good as new.” She assured him, eyes already scanning the lab for the tools she’d need. She glanced back towards DUM-E, who chirped helplessly, his little claw clicking and tapping for her attention. “What’s up, bud?” She asked, walking up to him and gently stroking the metal arm. Her gaze dropped to where his wheels continued to aimlessly spin, and that’s when she saw it.

In the mechanisms that housed the wiring for his battery unit, there was a slim crack. Hardly noticeable, especially not when DUM-E was standing upright, but here, now, with him overturned and flailing, she could see it.

Brow furrowing, she dropped to her knees, tracing along the little groove with the tips of her fingers thoughtfully. She could see a faint white line in the crack, barely visible but there, nonetheless. The crack wasn’t large enough for her to see anything else, so she checked the screw types before scurrying to find the appropriate screwdriver to open up DUM-E's base. 

It’s probably just a manual, or something for his maintenance and upkeep, she told herself. Her self-assurances couldn’t stop her heartbeat from thundering in her ears, and the bubble of cautious curiosity that had bloomed in her chest.

Just a manual, just a manual, she reiterated as she unscrewed the tiny screws.

Just a manual, just a manual, she thought when she pulled the lid of the heavy base up.

Just a manual, just a manual, she repeated, even as her eyes landed on the small, velvet-cloth sack nestled between DUM-E’s wiring, right next to the thin manila folder—not a hard drive but an actual physical folder—labelled simply “Underoos,” in her dad’s familiar, blocky handwriting. That was the same handwriting she had on the birthday cards he’d made for her, the ones still on the corkboard above her bed, all these years later. It was as familiar to her as her own. 

Just a manual, she thought again, even though she could no longer deny that whatever she’d found was much, much more than a simple repair manual for DUM-E.

With a trembling hand, she reached for the folder first, some distant memory stirring in her mind.

Ah, yes. That, little Mongoose, is Underoos. They’re standing in the kitchen, and he’s holding a framed photo of him and a teenage boy with bright brown eyes, a mischievous smile on his face as he holds up bunny ears over her dad’s head a “Stark Internship” certificate held up between them.

Underoos? He’d stooped down to pick her up, settling her on his hip and holding the picture with his free hand, where they stare at it together. His eyes look like they’re far away, lost in some place she doesn’t think she can understand.

Yep. He’s…well, he’s kind of a big reason why you exist. She’d wrinkled her nose at that, confused.

How so? Her dad adjusted her on his hip, his expression thoughtful as he wiped at the glass with the paper-towel again.

Well, kiddo. I guess you could consider him your honorary big brother. He’s kinda the whole reason I changed my mind about having kids in the first place. And he was the bravest, kindest, most thoughtful person you’d ever have the honor of knowing.

Can I meet him? He’d sucked his teeth at that question, stopping just short of a whistle, his dark eyes unreadable.

Well…do you remember how I told you Mommy and I used to live in the city?

Before the big snap?

Yeah, before that.

Uh-huh.

Well, a lot of people used to live in the city with us. A lot of good people. Do you remember that memorial Mommy and I took you to last month? She’d burrowed her head in his shoulder, nodding sleepily.

Well, we went because Spider-Man here was one of the people we lost in the big snap.

Oh. She’d said softly. Then: Spider-Man?

He’d laughed, the sound quiet, and kind of sad.

Yeah, I told him he was kind of stealing my thunder, trying to name himself after me.

Morgan had nodded, thoughtfully, hugging him tightly, almost unconsciously.

I want to meet him.

I know, kiddo. I know. I wish you could’ve.

She blinked, the memory fading just as quickly as it had appeared. She pulled the folder out, running her fingers over the familiar handwriting with one hand, and subconsciously biting the nails on her other hand.

“I should tell mom.” She said aloud, when the silence got too loud for even her. There was no response, not even from FRIDAY.

She bit her lip, worrying the skin until it bled. With the taste of copper flooding her mouth, she sat back on her heels, opened the folder, and began to read.