Chapter Text
The first time Morgan remembers hearing about Peter, she’s four.
It’s a warm spring day, one of the first in a long time where she hasn’t needed a coat or a sweater. After preschool, Daddy goes inside to make lunch and she begins to rummage around the garage, looking for the box of toys that Mommy had put away for the winter, with her jump ropes, bubbles, chalk, and tent.
She locates the correct box quickly, and she pulls a smaller box over so that she can stand on top of it and reach inside of the toy box. But a flash of bright blue from inside the box she’s standing on catches her eye. She pulls her tent out and tosses it to the side. Then she hops off the smaller box, opening it fully and looking inside.
The blue that she’d admired turns out to be part of a familiar blue and red mask. “Spider-Man!” She whispers to herself, grinning happily at her find. “Cool!”
She’s heard of Spider-Man before, of course. Her classroom has a poster with different superheroes on it, and her friend Savannah has a Spider-Man lunch box. She’s always admired how Spider-Man could use his webs to practically fly, easily swinging and flipping through the air in the few video clips she’d seen.
She isn’t sure if Spider-Man knew her daddy or not. Daddy has never mentioned him before, but Mommy says that it makes him sad to talk about the superheroes who blipped.
(She still doesn’t quite understand the blip, and every time she asks an adult for clarification, their eyes crinkle in concern, and they say annoying things like, “Maybe when you’re a little older, we can talk about that…”)
She pulls the Spider-Man mask over her face, pleased when it shrinks to fit her head perfectly.
“Hello, Peter,” a friendly voice chirps before pausing for a moment. “You are not Peter,” the voice continues. It kind of reminds Morgan of FRIDAY.
“No,” Morgan says. “I’m Morgan.”
“Access to Spider-Man suit denied, Morgan,” the woman’s voice informs her.
Morgan thinks that’s a little rude, but she won’t let an AI spoil her fun. “Mute, please,” she instructs the voice.
Looking through the mask’s eyes, she rummages through the rest of the box curiously. Most of it doesn’t look too interesting—a few notebooks full of mathematical formulas, several pairs of strange-looking black things that look like the wrist brace Mommy has to wear when she plays tennis, a Lego kit from some boring Star Wars movie, and a few shirts and pants that are way bigger than Morgan’s size.
Then she carries her tent out to the backyard and carefully sets it up, just like Daddy had shown her last summer—hammering the stakes into the mud, hooking the tent loops onto the stakes, and pulling them taut so that the tent stands up.
“You have the engineering touch, Morguna,” Daddy had said when they’d finished last year, his smile warm and his hands smelling like dirt when he hugged her proudly.
Now that she’s four, she’s big enough to set the whole thing up by herself. She’s just finished when she hears Daddy coming out with lunch. With a gasp, she unzips the tent and quickly dives inside, zipping it back up just as Daddy comes into view.
“Now, where did my Morguna go?” Daddy asks in his silly joking voice.
Morgan giggles and rustles the walls of her tent a little bit, familiar with this routine.
“Oh no!” Daddy exclaims. “It seems like a monster has gotten inside Morgan’s tent! Oh, please, Ms. Monster. Tell me you didn’t eat my Morguna!”
With a flourish, Morgan unzips the tent and leaps out, her shoulders hunched and her hands held up like giant claws. She thinks the mask adds a nice touch to the whole affair. She glares ferociously and makes a growling noise, pretending she’s an angry dragon.
This is the part where Daddy usually puts down the tray and chases her around, trying to tickle her in order to subdue the monster.
But...Daddy isn’t doing anything today. Instead, he freezes in place and stares at her, a funny look on his face, like he’s trying not to cry.
“Daddy?” She questions, frowning. It hasn’t been that long since they’ve played this game. “Don’t you remember? You’re supposed to chase me!”
Daddy doesn’t say anything. The tray slips from his hands and lands in the grass with a loud noise. Morgan looks at her dirty peanut butter and jelly sandwich and apple slices in dismay.
“Daddy?” She asks, feeling scared now. She walks closer to him, and he drops to his knees, breathing like he’s just run a million miles. She pulls off her mask so that she can see him better.
When he looks up again and sees her face, something seems to change. His eyes get clearer, and he gets a determined look on his face. He starts taking long, deep breaths, like the lady on her “Yoga For Kids” video does sometimes.
She puts a hand on her daddy’s strong shoulder, feeling small and uncertain.
“Should I go get Mommy?” She asks, and her voice comes out unexpectedly quiet.
“No, baby. I’m fine. I’m okay.” Daddy smiles at her, but it’s not one of his best smiles. It’s the kind of smiles adults do when someone asks them about the blip.
She hates it.
“I’m not a baby, Daddy,” she exclaims, stamping one foot. “You’re not okay!”
Daddy is quiet for a moment, and then he sighs. “You’re right, Morguna. I was just surprised to see you with one of Peter’s masks.”
“Peter?” She asks. “Who’s Peter?”
Daddy takes a deep breath. “Peter is—Peter was Spider-Man. And he was your brother.”
***
They clean up the spilled food together. Even though Morgan’s stomach is rumbling hungrily, she knows better than to whine about it at a moment like this.
Daddy scoops her up and carries her into the house, and she doesn’t protest, even though she’s four now, and she’s declared multiple times that she’s too big to be carried everywhere.
He brings her to the kitchen, and then he sits her down on top of the counter, even though Mommy usually doesn’t let her sit up here. Then he grabs a framed picture off the shelf near the sink—one that she’s seen a million times before, but never paid much attention to. It’s at the back of the shelf, anyway, so she’s never thought twice about the boy standing next to Daddy, a Stark Industries logo behind them.
“This is Peter,” Daddy says, handing her the picture.
Her stomach twists nervously. She’s not sure if she likes what Daddy is telling her.
“But...I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” she says slowly, because that’s what she’s known up until this point. She’d once asked Mommy if they could have another baby so she could have a brother or sister, and Mommy had just done a sad smile and told her not to ask Daddy that question.
Daddy looks faraway, like he’s daydreaming or remembering something. “He’s not your brother by blood, Morguna,” he explains gently. “I didn’t meet him until he was fourteen. But his mom and dad died when he was little, and he lived with his aunt and uncle. Then his uncle died. Peter and I grew really close. He wasn’t my kid, but I—I cared about him like he was.”
Morgan definitely doesn’t like that. She doesn’t want to share her dad with some random boy! Besides, Peter is practically a grown-up in the picture Daddy had given her. Surely he doesn’t need parents anymore! He’d already had his own dad.
Why should he get to have hers, too?
Plus, she’s not sure how she feels about older brothers. Savannah’s older brother, Cole, who’s seven, had stolen their dolls and dropped them in the pool when she went over to their house after school last month. And he’d told them a scary story about Slenderman, a tall skinny man who lives in the woods and hunts children. And now the forest that she’d always loved so much seems scary, and she doesn’t like that.
“But he’s—he’s gone in the blip, right?” She’s careful not to sound hopeful, since Daddy looks sadder than she’s ever seen him look before.
“Yes, Morguna,” Daddy says softly. “He’s gone.”
It’s not hard for her to put a sad expression on her face, even though she’s not sad for the reason Daddy thinks she is.
She’d heard the way he’d said, He wasn’t my kid, but I—I cared about him like he was.
He’d paused before saying “cared.” She recognizes that tone of voice and knows from personal experience that the word he’d meant to use there instead was “loved.”
He wasn’t my kid, but I loved him like he was.
What if Daddy loves Peter 3,000 too? That’s just supposed to be her thing. She’s supposed to be the only person in the universe that her daddy loves 3,000.
Or even worse, what if Daddy loves Peter more than 3,000?
Fortunately, she’s never going to have to find out.
***
Except Daddy just has to go and invent time travel so that he can bring Peter back to life.
Her preschool teacher, Ms. Aguilar, tells the class that Tony Stark is a hero because he’d saved half of the world. Now their missing brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents are back.
But Morgan knows better. Daddy hadn’t invented time travel and snapped with the gauntlet to save Ms. Aguilar’s boyfriend or Savannah’s oldest brother, Jackson. He’d done it to save Peter.
He’d almost died doing it, too. She spends most of that spring in the Med Bay at the Tower, just waiting for Daddy to wake up.
That’s when she meets Peter.
He’s shorter than she’d expected a superhero to be. Younger-looking, too. Much younger than the other superheroes she knows, like Uncle Rhodey and Mr. Steve and Dr. Bruce.
He slinks nervously into the hospital room after Daddy gets out of surgery. Daddy is in a coma, according to Mommy, which means that he might not wake up for a long time.
Dr. Helen had taken Daddy’s arm away. Morgan is busy inspecting the bandages and wondering if he’ll still be able to pick her up and carry her around. She feels a little sad now when she thinks about all the times she’d told him to put her down so she could walk or run on her own.
Peter’s hair is wet, like he’s just taken a shower. He pats it down anxiously when he steps into the room and they turn to look at him.
“Peter!” Mommy exclaims when she sees him. “It’s so good to see you!” She smiles fondly at him and pulls him into a long hug. Morgan’s eyes narrow.
Now her mom loves this guy too?
Peter looks over Mommy’s shoulder and sees her sitting next to Daddy on the bed. His eyes widen and flit between Morgan and her dad.
“Is that—” He starts to say, before he abruptly cuts himself off.
Mommy follows the direction of his gaze and smiles.
“That’s Morgan,” she tells Peter. “Our daughter. She’ll be five next month.”
Something sad passes over Peter’s face, and then he smiles. “Hi,” he says simply.
She nods, not bothering to smile, even though Mommy is giving her a Warning Look. “Hi,” she greets him reluctantly.
“I can go,” Peter says. “I just—just came to peek in here and see how he was doing.”
“Nonsense,” Mommy says, and Morgan’s annoyance only grows. “Come sit down. We have a lot to catch up on.”
From that point on, Peter is pretty much glued to Daddy’s hospital room. He lives with Aunt May, who Morgan has known for years, but only as Uncle Happy’s girlfriend. She’d never known May was Peter’s aunt, too.
But he might as well live at the Tower with all the time he spends there.
He makes several attempts to talk to Morgan and to ask if he can play with her, but she always politely declines if Mommy or another adult is in the room, or completely ignores him if they’re alone together.
Morgan feels a little bad about it, especially the times when she ignores him. Peter gets this look on his face that’s half-sad and half-nervous, and his eyes always stray to the door, as if wondering whether he should leave.
But then Morgan remembers that she hasn’t gotten to talk to her dad for weeks, and that he might never wake up, and that he’s lost one of his arms. And she remembers that all of that is Peter’s fault.
And she turns back to her toys, ignoring the quiet voice inside of her that says she’s being mean.
***
The icing on the cake is when Daddy wakes up.
It’s June, and Morgan’s fifth birthday has come and gone. Daddy had slept through it.
He wakes up a few days later, on a perfectly normal Tuesday afternoon when she and Mommy and Peter all happen to be in the room.
Morgan notices it first.
“I think Daddy made a noise!” She shouts, dropping her box of markers and running over to the bed because she could’ve sworn that she heard him make a little groaning sound, like the kind he sometimes used to make when his back hurt.
Mommy looks skeptical, but to her surprise, Peter nods.
“I heard it, too,” he says excitedly.
Mommy seems to believe it when Peter says it, for some reason.
“Let’s give him a minute and see what happens,” Mommy tells them cautiously. “It could’ve been nothing.”
But sure enough, Daddy moves his hand a few seconds later. And then he starts shifting around a little bit.
Morgan finds herself holding her breath, as though she’s just jumped off the diving board and she’s hoping she’ll break the surface of the water and see her dad in front of her, awake and whole.
Daddy opens his eyes a little bit, then, and she lets out a delighted gasp.
“Daddy!” She shouts, waiting for him to turn to her and lift his good arm for her to snuggle under.
But…
Daddy’s first word when he wakes up is “Peter,” not “Morgan.”
“Peter,” he mumbles. “Where’s Peter?”
Peter and Mommy both have tears in their eyes.
“I’m here, Tony,” Peter says, his voice wobbly. He reaches out and holds Daddy’s remaining hand, even though that’s supposed to be her job.
Daddy’s eyes open wider, and he finds Peter’s face.
“This is real?” Daddy asks raspily, and his voice is shaky in a way that she’s never heard before. “You’re actually here, Pete?”
“I’m here,” Peter says, and then he dives forward and throws an arm around Daddy in a tight hug.
This is more than Morgan can handle.
“Get off of him!” She shouts. “He’s my daddy!”
Peter instantly lets go of Daddy and backs away, his face paling.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammers.
Mommy’s eyes flash in a way that means Morgan is in Big Trouble.
“Morgan H. Stark,” she says, taking Morgan’s hand and pulling her towards the door. “You’re coming with me.”
Then she leads Morgan into the hallway, kneels down, and puts her hands on Morgan’s shoulders.
Morgan abruptly bursts into tears.
Mommy’s expression softens, and she hugs Morgan tight. “I know, honey. It’s a lot, I know. You’re not used to Peter being around, and you’re worried about Daddy. I’m sorry that you felt overlooked.”
“I didn’t mean to yell,” Morgan admits, beginning to feel ashamed. She’s been waiting for Daddy to wake up for weeks, and now she’s gone and ruined the moment!
“It’s okay if it takes time for you to get to know Peter, and it’s okay if you’re sad that things are changing. But it’s not okay to be mean to Peter. Daddy hasn’t seen him for over five years, baby. That’s the only reason why he asked about Peter first.”
“Does he love Peter more than he loves me now?” Morgan asks, scuffing her shoe against the ground and not looking at Mommy.
“Oh, Morgan,” Mommy says. “Of course not! He loves you both equally. Just like how Savannah’s parents love her and Cole and Jackson equally.”
Morgan knows that this is supposed to make her feel better, but her heart sinks. This isn’t the news she wanted to receive. She wanted Mommy to say that Daddy loves Morgan the most out of anybody in the world.
When they go back in the room, Morgan contritely apologizes to Peter, although she’s not entirely sure if she actually means it or not.
Then she jumps onto Daddy’s bed, curls up under his arm just like she’d been imagining, hiding her face and doing her best to forget about how mad and sad she’s felt inside for the past few weeks.
Daddy’s awake now, she assures herself. Everything is going to get better.
***
Except, as it turns out, Daddy waking up doesn’t mean that they see Peter less. It actually means that they see him more.
She’d been imagining that he’d go back to living with Aunt May and stop bothering them every day. She’s glad when they move back to the lake house, thinking that they’ll never see Peter now, since he lives three hours away and he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet.
But as it turns out, Uncle Happy gives Peter a ride to the lake house practically every single weekend, and then they’re stuck with him for forty-eight hours straight each week.
It’s torture, and school is going to let out for the summer soon. Morgan can only imagine how often Peter will visit then.
Mommy and Daddy are always thrilled to see him, and Mommy cooks Peter’s favorite dinners and Daddy spends hours talking to Peter, and they tell old stories about people she doesn’t know and discuss science that’s beyond her understanding.
She’s not outright hostile anymore, since she knows Mommy won’t tolerate it. And she knows, worst of all, that Daddy will be sad if he finds out she doesn’t like Peter. So she’s quieter than usual during family board game nights and movie nights, not laughing at Peter’s jokes or letting herself be pulled into the fun.
As the days go by, Daddy is able to stay awake for longer and longer. He builds himself a rudimentary prosthetic arm, and he begins to get back to the lab more. He even cooks a few meals, although he looks exhausted every time he finishes, and Mommy has to wash the dishes.
As Daddy gets better, he also seems to notice that Morgan is quieter and sadder than usual.
She’s surprised when Daddy comes in to wake her up one Thursday morning. He usually sleeps late now, since he’s still not feeling very strong.
“Want to skip school today? Have a tea party in the woods?” He asks, a familiar grin on his face. Were it not for his metallic arm, this could’ve been any morning before the battle against Thanos.
Morgan feels a smile break out over her face. “Just you and me?” She asks. She knows Peter is at home in the city, but she wants to be certain.
“Just you and me, Little Miss,” he confirms.
She lets out a whoop and practically sets a world record for how fast she gets dressed and brushes her teeth.
Things are a little different than how they used to be. Daddy can’t lift the picnic basket with their supplies, so she does it, even though it’s heavy. He can’t carry her or give her a piggyback or chase her around, but they still have a great morning. The best one she can remember in ages.
After a tea party breakfast, with donuts that Daddy had picked up from her favorite bakery in town before he woke her up, they walk to the creek and spend time looking for minnows and building little rafts out of twigs and racing them.
“That’s my little engineer,” Daddy says when her raft is the fastest.
They head back to the house for lunch. Daddy is too tired to make anything more than simple sandwiches, but Morgan is so happy that she couldn’t care less. Then they pop a bag of popcorn and curl up on the couch together to watch Mulan. At some point towards the end of the movie, they both fall asleep, cuddled up together, and when Morgan wakes up, she doesn’t even bother with her usual protest that she’s too old for naps.
She’s just setting things up for a round of Clue Junior, her favorite board game, when FRIDAY interrupts.
“Message from Karen, boss.”
Daddy’s whole demeanor changes from relaxed to tense in a split second.
“Spider-Man has just been stabbed,” an oddly familiar voice announces, and it takes Morgan a minute to remember the voice in the Spider-Man mask she’d tried on months ago.
“Can you patch me through to him? Is the knife still in there?” Daddy asks, already jumping to his feet and grabbing his emergency gauntlet.
“No exit wound—” Karen says, but Peter’s voice interrupts her.
“I’m fine, Tony,” Peter yells breathlessly. There’s a loud noise in the background, like the sounds of a brawl. “It’s just a scratch.”
“That’s not what Karen said, bud, and I think I trust her word over yours. I’m on my way.”
“Seriously, Tony—” Peter says, and then there’s the sound of fists connecting with skin, and the answering thwip! sound of what Morgan realizes must be Spider-Man’s signature webshooters.
Daddy’s hands clench around the back of the couch, and his face goes absolutely white, like her classmate Avery’s face had gotten right before she threw up during reading time last month.
“—I’m fine!” Peter shouts a minute later, and Daddy’s hands relax slightly. “Everyone’s webbed up now. I’ll just call Dr. Cho and ask if she’s at the Tower right now.”
“She’s at a conference in Australia,” Daddy says. “But Bruce should be around. I’ll call him.” He puts on his gauntlet but then looks at Morgan, frowning in consideration, as if he’s just remembered that she’s here and Mommy isn’t.
“Pep’s in California right now, and I’ve got Morgan with me. We’re going to have to drive. I’ll see you in a few hours, okay, kiddo?”
Peter sighs on the other line. “Tony,” he complains. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll basically be fully healed by the time you get here.”
For once, Morgan heartily agrees with Peter about something.
But Daddy has a stubborn look on his face, and it doesn’t help that they hear a soft thud a moment later.
“Peter has passed out,” Karen reports helpfully. Daddy says a bad word and demands that she call Bruce, and then he springs into action, ripping off the gauntlet and grabbing his car keys and shepherding Morgan out the door.
That’s how Morgan finds herself spending her night. Instead of playing board games and eating pasta made with Nonna’s old recipe, she sits in the Med Bay and colors by herself while Daddy paces around Peter’s hospital room, his fists clenched and his expression pained.
She sighs before turning the page in her coloring book. The day had been going so well, too.
She dozes off at some point, and when she wakes up, she’s nestled on Daddy’s lap, which is nice. She hears voices talking softly above her, and she crawls back toward consciousness.
“—told you I was fine, Tony,” Peter is insisting. “It was nothing. It’s ridiculous for you to come all this way. And Morgan—”
“You were unconscious in an alleyway full of criminals, bud. That’s hardly ‘nothing.’ And...let me take care of you, okay? It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do this.”
“Aww, Tony,” Peter responds, his voice teasing. “Are you saying that you missed me getting injured on patrol? Because I could do it more often, if you want.”
She cracks one eye open just in time to see Daddy flick Peter on the forehead. She wants to laugh a little at that, but then Daddy’s hand stays on Peter’s head, and he begins to smooth the hair back from Peter’s face, just like he always does for Morgan when she’s sick or she can’t sleep, and she suddenly feels so sad that tears burn her eyes.
“Listen, Underoos. About Morgan—she’ll come around. I’m sorry you’ve gotten off on a rough start. Just give her a little more time, okay?”
Morgan squirms a little, uncomfortable to hear Daddy mention her dislike of Peter. He hasn’t said anything to her about it, so a part of her had hoped that maybe he just hadn’t noticed.
She should’ve known better. Her dad knows her better than anyone else on the entire planet.
“Of course,” Peter says instantly. “I understand. Seriously. I’d be upset, too, if I was her age. I’m not—I don’t want her to feel like I’m trying to take her place, or something. I can back off for awhile if you want—”
“Pete,” Daddy interrupts, sounding stern. “We’ve talked about this already. You’re not going anywhere, okay? I won’t allow it.”
Peter shrugs, picking at a loose string on his blanket. Sitting in the hospital bed, wearing a gown that’s too big for him, he looks...he looks like a kid. Just like her. Not like an almost-adult, like she’d thought before she met him.
“Tony,” Peter says. “She needs some normalcy right now, and I’m anything but ‘normal’ in her life. Trust me. I know from experience when I was that age.”
Morgan isn’t sure what “experience” Peter is referencing, but Daddy winces.
“Let me worry about that, Pete.”
“Look, May will be here any minute now. Why don’t you go tuck her in bed?”
“She seems pretty comfortable where she is. And so do you, come to think of it. I’m actually guessing that I’ll have two sleeping kiddos here before Aunt May arrives. What do you think, Pete?”
Peter grumbles something tiredly. Morgan feels herself slipping closer to sleep as well, lulled by the beating of her dad’s heart in her ear and the familiar smell of his cologne.
The last thing she hears before she drifts off is Daddy chuckling at whatever Peter had said.
The vibrations of his voice are warm and comforting, but she still wishes he was laughing with her and not with Peter.
***
After the final battle against Thanos, Morgan starts having bad dreams.
She dreams that Daddy is dead, or that Daddy is missing. Sometimes, she dreams that she’s being chased by a monster in the woods, and the closer she runs to the safety of the lake house, the further away the house gets.
Once, she even dreams that Mommy and Daddy tell her she needs to give Peter her bedroom and start sleeping in the basement.
Mommy and Daddy are already stressed and tired, so she doesn’t tell them. Besides, it only happens once a week or so, and she tells herself that it’s really not that bad. Instead, she falls into a pattern: sleep, wake up, and go sit in front of Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom door until she’s calm enough to sleep again.
She can’t hear Mommy or Daddy breathe, but she can sometimes hear one of them shift or roll over, and it’s enough to make her feel safe.
She’s sitting in her usual spot, playing Paper Mario on her Nintendo Switch and enjoying the peaceful glow of the hallway nightlight, when the sound of footsteps interrupts her.
She instantly sits up straighter, terrified that Slenderman is here to get her. But the figure that rounds the corner is shorter than Slenderman.
Peter stops abruptly when he sees Morgan sitting in front of her parents’ door.
“Morgan?” He whispers, brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you doing out here?”
She frowns at him. “What are you doing out here?”
Peter shuffles his feet and shrugs. “I...sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I come and check that Tony is okay. You too?”
Morgan’s eyes widen in surprise. Peter has nightmares about Daddy dying as well?
For some reason, this makes her feel a little better. But she stubbornly clings to her pattern of usual behavior towards Peter.
“No,” she lies. “I need the nightlight to play my Switch.”
“Oh,” Peter replies with a nod, politely not mentioning that she has plenty of lights she could turn on in her room if this were really the truth. “Cool. Do you—would you mind if I sat with you?”
Morgan considers it for a minute. On the one hand, it gets kind of lonely sitting out here late at night. But on the other hand, this is her spot. Daddy is her dad, not Peter’s.
“I’d rather be by myself,” she says, ignoring the little stab of guilt that accompanies these words.
“Oh,” Peter says. His eyes flit towards Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom door for a second, a longing expression flashing across his face. “Yeah, okay. Sorry to bug you. Good night.”
He turns and leaves then. Morgan tries to settle back into playing her game, but she finds that she can’t concentrate anymore.
She huffs in frustration. “Thanks a lot, Peter,” she mutters to herself, tossing the Switch aside and pillowing her head on her knees. It takes her longer than usual to feel safe enough to go back to sleep, but she eventually manages it.
When Peter stumbles down to breakfast the next morning, dark circles under his eyes and looking like he hadn’t slept a wink, Morgan buries her head in her cereal so she doesn’t have to look at him and feel bad.