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Marvel || IronFamily || Marvel || The Invincible Iron Family || Marvel || IronFamily || Marvel
Title: The Invincible Iron Family
Fandom: Marvel
Disclaimer: All rights reserved to Marvel Comics for the creation of some of the most awesome heroes ever. This fanfiction on the other hand is entirely mine. No money is made with this, though reviews are more than welcomed.
Warnings: found family, fluff, hurt/comfort
Marvel Characters: Morgan Stark, Nebula
Summary: Tony was a man who calculated for every possibility, including the chance that he might wield the Infinity Gauntlet himself. In the aftermath, he finds himself surrounded by his family.
The Invincible Iron Family
3. Auntie Nebu
Nebula had never been good with children. She actually never had to interact with them, not since she had grown out of that irritating phase of helplessness herself. The only example on how to deal with kids was – her own childhood. And even she knew that that was not a proper example of how to deal with kids. And while she never wanted children of her own, she had vowed that if she ever came close to one so defenseless, she would... she would be better. Better than Thanos, better than what Nebula had gone through as a child. She would be... good.
Yet even with that deeply seated in her mind, she had never truly believed a child could ever... like her. Just, genuinely like her. Not fear her, that had been the great hope, but...
"Auntie Nebu! Auntie Nebu, look!", exclaimed Morgan Stark excitedly.
She was holding up a picture. A crude drawing of two small two-dimensional figures, one was blue and the other was far smaller and with brown hair on her head and a red dress on. The two figures stood amid odd creatures, structures really. Nebula tilted her head.
"It's you and me and Dum-E and Butterfingers and U!", explained Morgan when Nebula took too long to recognize it. "It's all of us, while we were waiting for daddy to be released from the hospital. I'm glad you watched over me while he was not good."
Tony had taken her in, after they had been brought to Earth by Carol Danvers. She had lived with him for months, before they had started going on missions off-world. Even then, she got to live with him whenever she stayed on Earth. She had spent a lot of time with Morgan in those five years. And not just Morgan. The three robotic children of Stark too.
Nebula blinked and took the picture from Morgan. "It is exceptional. We will hang it up."
She turned to show the picture to the robots. They... impressed her. They were pure technology, not like her, nothing biological, and yet they were so very human. They had feelings and expressed them, they had personality – they communicated. Tony, he had figured out how to decipher their chirping and Nebula, far more in tune with electronics, had learned their language too.
"They also like it a lot", assured Nebula as Morgan kept leaning more and more forward.
There was a faint smile on Nebula's face at the happy eagerness now on Morgan's face. She had put that there. She had learned to be kind and soft with the human child to the point that Morgan not just not feared her – Morgan... had repeatedly over the years expressed that she loved Nebula. The first time, it had been too much for Nebula and she had run to deal with her emotions. When Tony had found her, he had hugged her and told her that it was okay. That sometimes, you are not born into the right family, sometimes you're not raised by the right family, sometimes you only find your real family when you're already an adult. He had told her that she had a spot with his family.
"Here seems to be a good place, mh?", asked Nebula as she pinned the picture between one of Morgan with her dad, mom and Happy Hogan and another picture that Morgan had drawn of her new two brothers, Peter and Harley. Morgan nodded very pleased at that before she launched into hugging Nebula. The cyborg easily caught the small child and held her.
"I love you, auntie Nebu", declared Morgan happily. "Can you tell me more stories about what you and Gamora did? All your space-adventures!"
The first time Nebula had done so, Pepper Potts had turned very white. Over the past years, Nebula had mastered the art of censoring her words to make them appropriate for the child. She left out all the worst bits, the bits she wished she had never experienced. What was left was not the truth, but it made Morgan smile and it made Nebula smile, because it made Nebula remember the good she once had with her dead sister. Sitting down among the bots, Nebula pulled Morgan onto her lap.
"One time, my sister did something horrendously stupid by joining a big, human oaf and his band of space-pirates...", started Nebula, looking at the child watching her very closely and eagerly.