Part Four

Tony found himself standing in the ruin of what had once been the Avengers complex before Thanos had blasted it into rubble. How he had gotten to where he stood was a blur, possibly explained by the blood caked against his head. He wiped at it, frowning, and heard a scream just off to his side. He spun and as the dust cleared he saw the Titan himself standing just a few yards away. The purple giant had Pepper by the throat, her suit beaten and her boots dangled off the floor as she struggled. In his other hand, caught by the back of her pajama top, hung Morgan.

Pepper's eyes met Tony's and she screamed his name just before Thanos threw her. She landed hard at his feet - somehow more bloodied than the motion should have left her - and her eyes stared vacantly up at him.

"Daddy!" Morgan cried, but he felt like someone had locked his boots in place.

"You tried, Tony," Thanos told him, almost as if he were acknowledging a child's effort on a project. "You just weren't strong enough to save them."

"Daddy! Daddy you-"

"No!" Tony screamed as Thanos lifted Morgan high into the air.

"Daddy, wake up!"

Tony jolted awake, sweat dampening his face and hair rather than blood, and a set of wide, dark eyes were peering at him. "Daddy, you had a bad dream?" Morgan asked.

Her father swallowed hard and reached up and tucked an unruly strand of hair back. "Yeah, kiddo. Yeah I did," he breathed.

"It's okay," she promised, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I'll protect you from the bad guys."

A soft chuckle managed to break free and he reached up to pull her closer, feeling himself relax as she buried her face in his left shoulder. Nightmares were nothing new in the Stark household, but having her here and proving to himself she was okay made them bearable.

She sat up. "Know what, know what makes me feel better?"

"If you say juice pops for breakfast…" he teased, the smile he gave her only partially forced.

Morgan grinned. "No, silly! Not for breakfast!"

The smile turned a little more real. "Okay, so what makes you feel better?"

"Pancakes in eggs!"

Tony snorted a laugh. "What, like a pancake omelet?"

"Yeah."

"That's weird, little miss," he chuckled and started to sit up to kiss her cheek.

She moved too quickly, though, and before he knew it she had piled on top of him and was bouncing with excitement. "Pancakes in eggs, please, Daddy? Please?"

He sucked in a sharp breath, the pain intensifying with every bounce. Morgan stopped, confused by the reaction to what had been a relatively normal wake up call more mornings than not. Her dark brows pulled together and her little nose scrunched up, a question looking like it was forming as the door pushed open.

"Sweetie, Daddy's not feeling well," Pepper said and suddenly Morgan was being pulled away as gently as she could manage.

"He had a bad dream. Wanted to make it better," their little girl pouted and Tony reached for her with his left hand, his right clutching at the wound in his side.

"It's okay, kiddo. You did." He swallowed hard and tried to will some of the strength back into his voice. "You did. Give me a few minutes and we'll try breakfast, huh?"

She nodded slowly, still looking put out. Pepper leaned down and kissed the top of her head before inching her towards the door.

Tony half expected her to follow, but a wave of relief washed through him as she turned back. It didn't last as she swatted his hand away to see if any damage had been done. Her fingers worked back his t-shirt, brushing along skin, and if he hadn't been in so much pain - and anticipating more the moment she started tugging on the dressings - he would have managed a remark that would have gotten him hit. As it stood, all he could think about was how much he missed Cho and her portable nano-molecular regeneration cradle that had stitched all of them up at one point or another while they had been working out of Avengers Tower to round up what was left of Hydra and their stolen tech. That seemed like a lifetime ago now. In a way it was.

The dressing stuck where Pepper hadn't expected it and a hiss of pain escaped him. "Sorry," she said softly, and when he finally pried one eye open he found her looking at him instead of the wound.

He tried for a smile. "Hey."

"Hi," she greeted back and turned back to her project, pulling a steadying breath in. "It looks better than I expected with the way she was using you like a trampoline. Not great, but better than I expected. I should probably—"

He reached out, fingers circling her wrist and she stopped at the touch. Tony swallowed hard as she finally met his eyes again and he offered a ghost of a smile. "Don't go," he pleaded softly. "I've missed you, Miss Potts."

All at once he could see the crack in her carefully constructed mask and he loosed his grip as she tugged away. In hurried, clipped movements she pulled the dressing back into place and tugged his shirt down, trying to move away even before she was done. She started to sit up and he felt his chest tighten. "What'd I do?" She didn't answer and he started to sit up. It hurt - of course it hurt - but that didn't matter nearly as much as where he knew this was going. He'd watched her walk away too many times before. Sooner or later it was going to stick, and he wasn't going to risk that being now. "Pep, hon, please. I know this is is… I know it's… I don't know, complicated? But when hasn't it been complicated?"

"This is so far past complicated," she whispered. "My husband died. You lived. That's not -"

Tony grit his teeth, forcing himself all the way to sitting and he started to tug monitors and IV's from place.

"What are you doing?"

"Detangling," he answered offhandedly and turned a look on her as he reached to throw the blankets off. He had some adrenaline going. Good. He was going to need it.

"Tony, stop."

He hated that tone. That hurt, cautious tone. He'd earned it over and over again during the years, but not here. He hadn't earned it here. He'd fought and he'd struggled and somehow, someway, he'd made it back to her.

"I know I died here. Cap told me, but in my timeline you died. You and Morgan and everybody. We won, but we didn't. I was willing to give up my own life, but you? You and Morgan are the ones I gotta protect and I failed."

"Tony…"

"It's not…" He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the emotions bubbling over. He couldn't stop them. The dam had broken now and there was no stopping the flood, so he swung his legs over the side of the bed and forced himself up to look her in the eye. "Do you know the odds of jumping from a timeline where my whole family is dead to one where I'm the only one who died? I can't even calculate them."

"Are you trying to say it was fate or something like that?"

"I'm saying there's a reason. I'm trying to say I'm not going to waste it," Tony snapped back. "You are everything to me. Nothing else matters to me. My family is everything to me, and I got you back. I can't waste that. I can't waste it."

And just like that he felt the adrenaline begin to fade, almost like a balloon losing air. He sagged against the bed and Pepper called his name, reaching for him. He focused on her voice, on her hands against him as she tried to shift him back into the bed. She was holding him up, easing him where he needed to go, and Tony felt hot, pained tears work their way down the sides of his face that had nothing to do with the physical pain. "I can't lose you again," he whispered, his voice a little more desperate than he was sure he'd given it permission to be.

"I'm not your Pepper." Her voice was strained, like she was reliving his death again and again every time she looked at him. She was too scared to get it. Scared of being wrong.

"It's always been you," he said quietly. He could go into the science, into the fact that their timelines didn't have enough of a difference to actually be two different versions with the exception of one major event that mirrored the other's loss. Somehow it fit. In some twisted, bizarre way it fit. He'd lost her and she'd lost him, and then he'd found his way home to her. He stared up at her from where she'd eased him back onto the pillows, desperate to convey everything raging through his head. Her expression was hurt. Conflicted. He swallowed hard and reached blindly for her hand pressed against the mattress. His fingers curled around hers and Pepper leaned forward, their foreheads touched lightly in an unexpectedly intimate moment.

"I've lost you so many times," she confessed quietly. "I can't… it was everything I could do to let you go this time, but you were in so much pain and you..." Her voice trailed off and he reached up to brush a thumb along her cheek, wiping the tear with it.

"I'm right here," Tony promised. "I fought to be right here. With you. With Morgan. Pep, look at me. I'm —"

She leaned in as the nickname left his lips, the kiss cutting him off and he felt her deepen it immediately. Her hand brushed the side of his face, fingers toying with his short, dark hair, and he pulled her down so that she was halfway lying on top of him. Pepper jerked back and he blinked the question that wouldn't quite form. "I don't want to hurt you," she said quickly and relief washed through him. Okay. He could handle that.

"I'm okay," he promised with a suggestive smile and pulled her close again.

Pepper snorted, but instead of kissing him again she settled down at his side, carefully draping her arm across him to avoid aggravating his injury. Tony pushed back the momentary disappointment to focus on how close she was. The smell of her shampoo, the way her fingers toyed with the hem of his t-shirt. Maybe she wasn't quite relaxed, but there was no question that she was less wary than she had been just a few minutes before. She knew him. She knew that she knew him. The all-consuming fear that he had gotten them back just to lose them again started to melt away, leaving him instead with a peace he had been worried he couldn't find again. She always brought it with her though. Always had and always would. She was his home and the one he would fight the entire universe to protect. To come home to.

"I love you," he said softly, turning to press a kiss to her red hair.

She tightened her grip, but they both tensed at the sound of Happy calling after what had to be Morgan. "No, no! Come back here. I can make you… cereal? You love cereal!"

"Daddy promised pancakes in eggs!" Morgan yelled back from the bedroom doorway and her father had to choke down the laugh.

Pepper didn't bother to. "You promised her a pancake omelet? Seriously?"

"What can I say? She's convincing. Like her mom."

His wife shot him a withering look. "Like you've never gotten your way."

"Never. I'm outnumbered and I know it, right, sweet-?" There was no stopping the laugh that escaped him when he looked past his daughter to Happy. He was covered in what looked like lipstick and… blush? Maybe blush.

"Happy, what happened?" Pepper asked, only slightly more composed than Tony was managing.

"She got bored," their head of security grumbled.

Morgan turned an accusing look on her father. "You promised pancakes in eggs forever ago!"

"Got that stuck on that one, didn't ya?" She grinned at him and he made a face at her. "Your mom's been in here ten minutes. Tops."

"But I'm huuuuunnnnngry!" she wailed between giggles.

"Uh huh. Sure. The giggles are a dead giveaway that you're a starving, neglected kid. What terrible parents we are." He started to get up again and Pepper reached forward.

"I'll make it. You need to get some rest."

"I need to stretch my legs," he countered and offered a lopsided grin in response to the look she gave him. "It's fine. I'm fine. Trust me?"

She hesitated, but Tony saw her relent just before she finally nodded and moved out of his way. He winked at Morgan, receiving another giggle for it, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. She was there, offering to help steady him, and he didn't deny her that. Getting up was one thing, but staying up could be another if a few minutes before was anything to go by. "Gotta give the princess what she wants or she'll put Happy in a tutu."

"A tutu!" Morgan squealed.

Happy looked horrified. "Please don't give her ideas, boss."

He was moving slow but relatively steady. Tony had always been the stubborn one to force himself to his feet, determined not to let an injury slow him down any more than it had to, and Pepper had seen nearly all of them. Even when they had been apart she had kept up with him. Somewhere along the way worrying about him had ceased to be an option for her. She loved him. She would always worry, but she had learned over the years that the best way to protect him wasn't to fight him tooth and nail, it was to offer support. As she stood there and watched him ease his way around their kitchen she knew. She wasn't sure how, or even when her brain and finally decided to accept it. His voice, the kiss, or maybe the way he was with Morgan. He was hers. She thought she could accept that, but she'd never been one to go into something blindly.

"Tell me what happened in your timeline?" she asked softly as she joined him at the stove. Morgan was busy at the table trying to beat an egg into submission - and getting it everywhere for her efforts, but that was to be expected - and this might be the best chance she had to take to hear the full story.

Tony's expression immediately hardened, his gaze fixed on the frying pan in front of him. He reached over without a word to grab for some of the ingredients and Pepper touched his hand. "Hey." She waited until he heaved a deep breath and met her gaze. "It's you, isn't it?"

"Just a few hours difference," he confirmed.

"They're important hours. For both of us." She leaned in, her forehead resting on his shoulder. "Tony, I need to know. We need to know. If it's better, I can start."

It took a moment but she looked up and he nodded, tossing what he needed into the skillet and turned the burner down to give them time. He kept his gaze focused on the food as she spoke, telling him about how another version of him hadn't had the chance to walk away and how just a man in a can, as he'd once called himself when faced with gods and aliens, had taken on a Titan and won. He'd given everything, but he'd also protected everything. He listened, putting together their daughter's pancake omelet, and when she was done he walked her through everything he had been through in each painful detail.

"I didn't think I'd get more than a goodbye, if that," he confessed softly. "I had to try."

"Rhodey was right."

"Bout what?" He dumped the contents onto a plate. "Breakfast."

"Not done," Morgan grumbled, still smashing away at her eggs.

"Well if we waited on you it'd be dinner," Tony teased. He held the plate up as if he were going to take it away from her. "But if you're not hungry…."

"Mean!" Morgan announced and launched herself out of her chair, jumping for the plate.

Her father grinned, holding it just out of her reach and she giggled and jumped.

Pepper stood watching the whole exchange. It wasn't new, but it was perfect. "That you're the only one stubborn enough not to let anything stop you from coming home," she said as he finally relented, handing the plate over.

Tony turned, brown eyes meeting blue, and she met him halfway in the kiss. She felt his hand trail down her arm and he took her hand, pulling her a little closer. "Last surprise," she murmured against him.

"Last surprise," he promised.

"Eeeeww!"

They broke at the loud, pancake-omelet filled squeal, Pepper laughing and leaning into her husband. He widened his stance a little, steadying himself, and wrapped an arm around her as Morgan grinned. In one way or another he always came home to her and this time was no different. He might not be invincible, but he sure as hell was stubborn, and she would take that any day.

End.

Notes: Well that was a blast to write. So much so that I'm seriously considering starting a series of Pepperony one-shots that take place in those five years between Tony coming back from Space and Steve and Co asking for his help with time travel. Keep an eye out for a series called Five Years of Peace that will likely be horribly misnamed at points.

So, when I started writing this story I wanted to end it with Steve heading to return the Infinity Stones. While it was always a Pepperony story, it really zeroed in on an Iron Family story and the Steve scene at the end didn't fit. So just know that Steve goes to return the Infinity Stones and promises Tony that he 'won't be gone long'... and returns with Peggy. And possibly Howard who managed to follow them after helping Steve develop a suit for Peggy. I don't think it's something that I'll actually write, but I'll leave you with that fun, chaotic idea :P