Work Text:
“I need the red crayon,” Morgan said.
“You have to wait,” Max said, tucking the red crayon under his elbow. “I’m using it.”
"No, you're not!" Morgan protested. "You're hiding it. And I need it. Peter’s suit is red and blue, and I’ve done all the blue.”
Max peered at her picture. “What are you drawing?”
“It’s Peter. He’s my brother. He wears a red and blue suit when he’s doing his special job.”
Max’s lips pressed into a thin line. “How come you’ve got a brother?”
Morgan frowned. “What do you mean, how come? He’s Peter.”
"Yeah, but I got a brother, and he came to my birthday party. He's the one that puked because he ate too much cake. He's bigger than me by this much." He held up three fingers. "But I was at your birthday party, and there was no other boy there apart from us here. So, how come you got a brother that didn't come to your party. Doesn't he like you enough to come?"
A lump formed in Morgan’s throat. “No. He likes me. Daddy says he loves me so much.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, her chest feeling tight and sore. “But I don’t see him.”
"What kind of brother is it that you don't see?" Max asked, his brows knitted together. "I see my brother all the time. His bedroom is right next to mine, and we share the bathroom. I see him all the time.”
Morgan’s lip trembled. “I don’t know. I just don’t see him.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Morgan cried. “Peter is my brother and he loves me, and I don’t care that your brother lives with you because it doesn’t matter.”
Max glowered. “I don’t think you have a brother. I think you’re making it up.”
Morgan jumped to her feet and stamped her foot. “I am not! Peter is real, my real brother!”
Tears spilled down her cheeks, and her breaths came too quick, burning her throat. She ran away from the table to Miss Becky, who looked after them, and she threw herself into her arms.
“I wanna go home,” she sobbed. “Call my mommy and make her take me home. I wanna go home!”
“Okay, Morgan,” Miss Becky said, stroking her back as she heaved with sobs. “I’ll call your mommy. Do you want to tell me why you’re upset? Do you not feel well?”
Morgan drew a shaky breath. "I just want to see my Daddy. He's going to take me to Peter."
Miss Becky pulled back to look at her, her eyes a little worried. “Who’s Peter?”
“He’s my brother!” Morgan howled. “He’s my brother, and he loves me, and my Daddy is going to take me to see him because he is real, and he loves me because I'm his sister!"
"Okay, okay," Miss Becky said, her voice soothing. "Come with me to the story corner. We'll get you a blanket and something to cuddle while I call your mommy."
Still gasping and crying, Morgan allowed herself to be towed to sit on one of the beanbags in the story corner. Miss Becky wrapped a blanket around her and handed her one of the teddies they kept there for when people were sad. Morgan wasn’t sad, not really. She was just crying because she was angry. There was nothing to be sad about.
Max was stupid, and Miss Becky just didn't know. But Mommy was going to come and take her to Daddy, and Daddy would take her to Peter, and then it would be okay.
Max had a brother, and they lived together. Melinda had a sister that didn't live with them because she had a different mommy to her. Peter was like that. He had a different mommy, maybe, but Morgan was going to see him. Daddy said Peter loved her, which meant he would want to see Morgan as much as she wanted to see him.
Miss Becky came back and said, “Morgan, Mommy is on her way to pick you up now. Shall we go get your coat?"
Morgan wiped at her face and nodded, shedding the blanket and taking Miss Becky’s hand as she led her to her cubby to get her coat and bag.
She still sobbed occasionally, she couldn’t stop it, and when their car appeared outside, Morgan ran from under Miss Becky's arm before she could stop her and threw herself into her mother's arms before she was all the way out of the car.
“Morgan,” Mommy said, shocked and sad. “What’s wrong, honey?”
"I want Peter!" Morgan said, sobbing again. "I want Daddy to take me to Peter, because he's my brother and he loves me, and Max is stupid and wrong."
Mommy took a shaky breath and said, "Okay, honey, we're going to go home to Daddy, and we'll all talk."
“Will I see Peter?” Morgan asked.
Mommy didn’t answer; she just stroked a finger under Morgan’s eyes, wiping away her tears, and kissed her cheek.
xXx
Tony was sitting on the porch, waiting for Pepper to get back with Morgan. She’d rushed off after getting a call from Morgan’s pre-school without explaining what was happening.
Tony hoped Morgan wasn’t sick again. A couple months ago, she'd had strep throat, and he'd hated seeing his daughter in pain. He was her father, it was his job to protect her from things that would hurt her, but he’d been helpless.
He heard the SUV coming up the drive, and he got to his feet and went to meet them. He saw Pepper’s face through the windshield and noted it was strained. He gave her a quizzical look and then went to open the back door and get Morgan out of her car seat. She'd been crying, he could tell, but she smiled when she saw him, and there seemed to be some steely glint in her eyes that he couldn't place.
“Hey, Maguna,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“I want to see Peter,” she stated.
Tony’s heart jumped to his throat, and he blinked quickly to banish the prickling in his eyes that appeared at the request.
“We need to talk,” Pepper said behind him.
Tony nodded, unsnapped Morgan’s seatbelt, and lifted her out of the car, balancing her on his hip as he carried her to the chairs on the porch. He sat down and positioned her on his lap.
“What’s going on, honey?” he asked. “You know we don’t get to see Peter.”
“I know, but I want to,” she said, her eyes bright with determination. “He’s my brother, and that means I get to see him.”
Pepper shot Tony a look and sat down beside them, her hand on Morgan’s back.
“Where’s this coming from, honey?” she asked. “What happened at school?”
“Max said I don’t have a brother because I don’t see him.” Her lip trembled. “But that’s not true, is it?”
Tony closed his eyes, willed the tears not to fall, opened them, and said, "It's not true, you do have a brother, but we can't see Peter because he went away before you were born."
“Where did he go?”
Tony opened his mouth to answer then snapped it shut when the words failed to come.
From the very beginning, they’d told Morgan about Peter, how he was her brother, that Tony was his Daddy, too, and he loved her but that he had gone away.
The story of her big brother was the first story he’d told Morgan, as she lay cradled in his arms, hours old. Morgan heard stories of Peter and Spider-Man the same way other children heard fairy tales. He was an active part of her life, even in his absence. She’d never questioned why she couldn’t see him as it had been that way since the beginning. Now, thanks to that asshole kid Max, they were going to have to break her heart.
“Do you remember when Flipper went away?” he asked.
Pepper’s eyes widened and then narrowed, a warning not to continue on that track clear on her face, but Tony could think of no other way to explain this.
“He died,” Morgan said. “And you wanted to flush him down the toilet, but Mommy said we could give him a funeral because even guppies are loved.”
Tony nodded. “Yes, well… Peter died, too.”
Morgan's mouth dropped open, and her eyes filled with tears. Tony couldn't resist hugging her closer to him as he battled to keep his own tears at bay.
“But died means you don’t ever come back,” Morgan said, voice choked as she buried her face in his shirt. “Never ever.”
“That’s right,” Pepper said, voice sad. “And Peter won’t come back either. But that doesn’t mean he’s not your brother. Max was wrong. Peter is always going to be your brother, even though you can never see him.”
“Is he buried in a hole like Flipper?”
Tony swallowed hard. “No, it was different when Peter died. There wasn’t anything to bury. He went away.”
“Why’d he have to go away?”
Pepper answered before Tony could, for which he was grateful. "You know Peter was Spider-Man like Daddy was Iron Man. They were superheroes together. They were doing something very important and very brave a long way away when Peter died. Something very bad happened, something that will never happen again, and a lot of people died. But Uncle Rhodey and Daddy’s friends stopped the man that made it happen, so nothing like that will ever happen again.”
Morgan raised her face from Tony's chest, stared at her mother a moment, and then said, "So we won't die?"
Pepper shook her head. “Not because of a bad man, no.”
Tony was glad she was choosing her words carefully. Morgan was far too young to know about her own mortality—or his and Pepper’s. However she was one of the generations of children who would learn about The Vanished in school and know what had happened to half the world’s population, so mortality was going to be a little more real to her.
Morgan nodded and bit her lip. "How does Peter love me?" When Pepper didn't answer, she went on, sounding annoyed. "You and Daddy always say Peter loves me, and I'm his sister, but how can he love me if he went away before I was born? He didn't see me. He might not like me at all."
Tony laughed softly despite himself. “Maguna, Peter would love you more than anything because you’re his little sister, and Peter loved everyone in his family with all his heart. I know for a fact that he would love you and he would be the best big brother in the world. Just because he didn’t meet you, it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t love you, because he would.”
Morgan wiped at her face. “Can I love him, even though I never see him either?”
Tony swallowed hard, choked by emotion for a moment, and Pepper answered. "You can love him because he's your brother. It doesn't matter that you never saw each other; you're still family."
Morgan considered a moment. "So, Max was wrong? Peter is still my brother?"
"Yes," Tony said, voice constricted. "Peter is and always will be your brother. You can love him, and he would love you. Nothing can ever change that."
Morgan considered a long moment, eyes thoughtful, and then she nodded. “Can I hear a story about Spider-Peter now?”
“You can do something even better than that,” Tony said, deciding the time was right at last for him to do this for her.
He’d never shown Morgan any of the footage he had from Peter’s suit or his own, none of Peter’s Spider-Man videos on YouTube, not even the footage Friday recorded of them in the workshop together. He’d not watched it either as it was too painful.
“Would you like to see some videos of Peter?”
She sat bolt upright, and her eyes sparked with excitement. "See him swing like you said he did?"
“Yes,” Tony said. “I’ve got videos of him swinging and working with me in the workshop.”
Morgan clapped her hands, sadness forgotten. “Yes!”
“Come on through to the garage then. Friday’s got all the videos of him, and I’ve got some of his stuff.”
Morgan slid off his lap and held out a hand to him to take. When he rose, she tugged him through the house and into the garage, where she jumped onto a stool and clapped her hands.
“I’m ready. Show me my brother.”
Tony smiled and asked Friday to pull up the first video of Peter he’d ever saved, the one of him stopping a speeding car, and he braced himself. He wasn’t sure he was ready to do this, but he thought it was time to face it regardless. Morgan needed this, and in a way, so did he.
It was time to see his son again.