"It think it's time we tell her."
Nights at the Stark house usually followed a similar pattern, they would eat supper, have dessert, Tony and Morgan would feed the animals, come inside and Morgan would go to bed, Tony would spend time in the lab and Pepper would read, then they'd stay and watch a movie before they went to bed.
They always seemed to follow this routine, unless there were guests over or they were on vacations.
And the occasional time when Morgan snuck into the lab to work with her dad.
This night was different. The three of them had been curled up on the couch, Morgan fast asleep between her parents while Brave played in the background.
"Do you think we really should?"
"Tony, it's been five years, I think we should."
Tony took a deep breath, and looked down at his daughter, before looking back at his wife. "You're right. Pep." Tony said as he stood up and headed towards the staircase. leading upstairs.
"Tones where are you going?" Pepper asked as she watched him walk up the stairs, she heard the sound of things crashing and moving boxes from upstairs. Pepper waited a few minutes before she watched Tony haul down a clearly overfilled box from the attic.
As she took Morgan's head off her leg she walked over and looked at the box Tony was unpacking.
She picked up one of the albums that was disregarded on the table.
Mechanical Misshapes
2009-2018
She flipped through a couple pages of pictures of the many explosions in the lab, found the photo of Peter accidently setting May's hair on fire, she pulled it out of the sleeve and flashed it over to Tony.
"Remind me to send this to May and Happy's Apartment." Pepper chuckled.
"Oh god," Tony sighed as he grabbed it from her hands taking a closer look at it. "I'm fairly sure she still hates me to this day, even after all these years." Tony said passing it back to Pepper as he shook her head at him.
Pepper stared out at the wide spread of albums across their table. "How many of these do you think we have?" Pepper asked.
"In this box, about fifthteen full ones, F.R.I.D.A.Y.S Database, Thousands of albums that took to long to sort through."
He finally pulled the last two out of the box and these were the ones he was looking for out of all of them. He set down the box and pulled out and held them up to show his wife. Each was labeled on a notepad in a different set of handwriting that made him smile to see.
Harley Jonah Keener-Stark & Peter Benjamin Parker-Stark
May 7th 2002 August 10th 2003
Pepper grabbed Peter's album and looked closely at the writing and she flipped throughout the book and the labeled cards that looked like they were written on note
cards used in a lab back in the day.
"Is this Mary's handwriting?" Tony nodded off at his wife.
"We were in the lab write before she gave birth and she was still trying to figure out names and she was writing all over her empty notepads and she finally decided on Peter being his first name since she knew she want his middle name to be Ben. So when we decided to make a photo album I thought it'd be better if it was labeled in her writing."
Pepper leaned over and gave him a kiss on a cheek. "That's too sweet. How many are we going to show her?" Pepper asked.
"As many as we can tomorrow." Tony said as he looked over to see Morgan lying facedown on the couch. He chuckled and walked over and picked her up. "I'm going to go put her to bed, i'll be back in a minute."
When he came back downstairs, the couple spent the rest of the evening looking threw the books.
Morgan awoke near 10:44 the next morning. She came downstairs to see the spread out books on the dinner table and her parents drinking coffee on the couch while her mom was on the computer and her dad was scrolling through his phone.
She snuck around to her dad's side of the couch and leaped on to him and gave him a hug. "Boo!"
Tony wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her temple. "Morning Morgana."
"Hi daddy what's all over the table?" Morgan asked as she flopped over to the other couch cushion beside him.
Tony looked over to his wife and the two shared a gaze and a nod of agreement. "Let us show you Morges." He said as he picked his daughter up and brought her over to the table as Pepper followed suit and sat beside Morgan and Tony.
Morgan sat beside her dad and stared out at all the scattered binders on the table. Tony finally picked up a binder from pile that had a label she couldn't read.
Tony sighed and held it for a moment before Pepper rubbed a hand on his shoulder. "All of these binders are full of photos of people me and mommy kept very close to our hearts and we think it's time who you know who them are." He opened it up and she looked over to see to kids in a pair of torn up jeans and matching red flannel sitting side by side on a log.
"Who are they?" Morgan asked as she took a closer look at the boys.
"This is Harley, he just turned seventeen when he died and the other boy his name is Peter he was still only fifthteen when the snap happened." Tony said. "These boys were your older brothers."
"I have brothers!" Morgan said in a happy voice, before it turned into a slightly saddened one. "Why didn't you tell me about them?"
"Oh honey." Pepper started as she came down to her daughters level. "It was hard for Mommy and Daddy to talk about them because we didn't know how you would react to the news, so we put it off until we thought you would be old enough to understand." Morgan nodded along to what Pepper said. "So do you get why we didn't tell you." Pepper said.
"Yeah mommy I get it. How old would they be now?" Morgan asked as a wave of relief washed over Tony and Pepper's faces.
"Well Harley would be about 22 and Pete would be 20, almost 21." Tony explained. "They would have loved you so much kiddo."
"You wanna see some more pictures of them?" Pepper asked as Morgan nodded. Pepper took a seat beside her daughter and her and Tony started pointing out pictures of the two and sharing stories about them, There where many laugh, tears and other emotions shared, but overall it left Tony and Pepper feeling better knowing that they had finally told Morgan about Harley and Peter, and Morgan wasn't sure how to feel. She liked knowing that she had brother but she was sad she had never gotten to meet them.
After finishing looking through the binders Morgan ran outside to go play while Tony placed all the binder on a shelf in his office. All while Pepper took some business calls in the living room.
It was nice to have life, even though it hurt not having Harley and Peter.
Tony walked towards the forest behind his house after finishing feeding Gerald and the other Llamas.
He sat down in front of a little tent and clapped his hands. "Chow time! Morgoona? Morgan H. Stark. Want some lunch?"
Morgan stepped out wearing a blue and silver helmet. " Define lunch or be disintegrated."
Tony sighed. "You should not be wearing that, okay? That is part of a special anniversary gift I'm making for Mom." Tony took the helmet off of her head to be met with mischievous smile.
"Okay."
"There you go. Are you thinking about lunch? Want a handful of crickets?"
Morgan whined. "No."
"That's what you want. How did you find this?" Tony asked staring at the mask.
"Garage."
"Really? Were you looking for it?"
"No. I found it though." Morgan smiled.
"You like going to the garage, huh? So does daddy. It's fine, actually. Your mom never wears anything I buy her." Tony smiled as he picked her up and walked towards the house. As they approached it Tony saw Steve, Natasha and Scott exit a black SUV. He locked eyes with Steve but brushed it off as Morgan laid her head in her dad shoulder before walking into the house and dropping her off at the kitchen counter.
Tony returned outside to discuss why they were there, Scott explained what happened and how they think they could pull it off again.
"No, you accidentally survived. It's a billion to one cosmic fluke. And now you wanna pull off a... What do you call it?" Tony asked as he took a side of his drink.
"A time heist?" Scott shrugged.
They argued for a few more minutes until Natasha finally piped up. "Tony... We have to take a stand."
"We did stand. And yet, here we are."
"I know you got a lot on the line. You got a wife, a daughter. But I lost someone very important to me. A lot of people did. And now, now we have a chance to bring her back. Bring everyone back. And you're telling me that won't even..."
"Scott I lost both my boys, and now i've her." Tony faltered but turned to a smile as he picked up Morgan who had ran outside.
"Mommy told me to come and save you" Morgan said as she looked at Steve and the others.
"Thank Morges, I'm saved. Look I wish you guys would have come here for something else, but I missed you guys, look tables set for six." Tony said as he stood up, Morgan still in his arms.
"Tony this could be a second chance." Steve explained.
"I got my second chance right here, Cap. I can't roll the dice again and lose another one of my kids. If you don't talk shop, you can stay for lunch." Tony said but it was met with the others waving goodbye and walking away.
He had stumbled upon the photo as he finished washing the dishes after dessert, Morgan had been asleep for awhile now and Pepper had been in the living room reading.
Even after they had left the thought of time travel still appeared in his mind, he had been running over equations in his head all afternoon and seeing the photo of Harley and Peter had further spiked his interest in trying to crack time travel.
He was going to find the answer to this and bring back his boys.
Even if it killed him to do it.