She grows up surrounded by love and wealth.
She has her mother. She has Uncle Rhodey, her Aunts Carol and Maria, and Happy.
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When she's seven, Miss Nebula begins her lessons in fighting; Miss Gamora joins sometimes. (Once, she sees what looks to be a tear in Miss Nebula's eye. When Morgan asks, in her almost-eight child's voice, why she's sad, the two sisters share a look she can't quite decipher.
"I think your mother should be here for this conversation," Miss Gamora says. Morgan's confused, but she nods and asks FRIDAY to call her. When she arrives, the sisters sit her down and share a quiet narrative, the story of children facing each other and of loyalty tested. They summarize the events before and after that final battle.
She knows most of the characters in this tale, of course. But not many of the dead ones.)
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Peter Parker tells her he's Spider-Man when she's eight, not long after he starts at NYU and she starts middle school. He assures her that their tutoring sessions will not stop.
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She's nine and she doesn't think she'll ever understand the superhero "life." Her family and their friends say that's fine.
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She's twelve and she knows she doesn't ever want to be a superhero, just like she doesn't ever want to date or hold hands. The very idea of kissing a boy- or girl, for that matter- is uncomfortable beyond discussion, and she doesn't like the idea of faking an attraction that isn't there. There's nothing wrong with not liking anybody. And anyway, why would she want to? There's a whole world out there, books of history and politics to read, and so much to learn.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to know all she can.
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(And there's a whole lot wrong with wanting to die for no reason but glory. She knows all too well the price paid by heroism.)
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The Young Avengers are going strong, and Lila Barton is its biggest star. Morgan is invited, at age thirteen.
"Why on earth would I join a superhero group?" she asks, incredulous. "I don't have any powers."
"Well, your dad-"
"I am my own person. And I'd rather get into a group on my own merit than somebody else's."
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She graduates high school at fourteen, just like her father.
(She remembers little of her father, now.)
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Clinging to his memory isn't difficult, especially now at MIT; there are many who remember him, here. There are many who knew him, or at least say they did, and she's been schooled in the politics of business her whole life and so it's easy to determine who is and isn't lying. Most of the people who knew him only barely are brimming with comparisons, constantly mentioning how surprising it is that she wouldn't be a scientist like him.
But she isn't. She's a historian, and she strives above all to understand why a human would want to be a hero.
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Somebody leaves a note under her door. She gets out a lighter, lets the paper turn to ash. Threats are nothing, and whoever left it will reveal themselves soon enough.
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She's well aware of the history of Stark Industries. Weapons and death, exploitation and capitalism, until her father changed it. Some people want SI to make weapons again, or to donate less, or to change their well-known political policies; others want it disbanded completely, removed from the stain of its beginning until there's nothing left. Enemies are everywhere, but she doesn't completely disagree with all of them.
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The first time she's kidnapped, by the same people who left that note, she slits their throats and escapes. She's not charged, of course; self-defense.
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Enemies are everywhere, she knows this well.
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She transfers to NYU. There are less ghosts there.
She hangs up two flags on the wall: one in purple, one in green.
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The world is changing; it's changed since Uncle Bucky was born, since her own parents were born, since the Avengers formed. The earth is being killed by corporations so much like the one she's due to inherit, and everything seems so hopeless sometimes.
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Monica Rambeau sings We Shall Overcome. Lila and Cassie hold hands. Peter, practically her brother at this point, is clad not in the suit but in a scarf drawn over his face. The NYPD are a swarm, mosquitos sucking the blood of the world, and Uncle Rhodey is dead for the sin of being a black superhero.
Captain America ("call me Sam") attends Uncle Rhodey's funeral, unmoving and silent.
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Morgan Stark attends her first protest when she's sixteen. There's a mask on her face, her hair is tied back, and the world may be ending- everyone says it is, after all- but maybe her generation can change that.
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She is eighteen and there's a hole in the ozone, larger by the day. California is halfway covered in seawater, and Coney Island is almost gone. There's smoke in the air when she comes home for spring break to visit her mother.
("Once, we could see the stars. Now it's just like Manhattan here," says the still-formidable Pepper Potts. "Morgan, it's up to your generation to fix what mine couldn't.")
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Lila calls her. They're creating a task force, to fix their planet.
For the record, Morgan only joins because she knows Groot's gonna be there.
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"YEET!" The Avengers scream as they launch Deadpool into the sky. The meteor blows up, and the Avengers have saved the day.
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Just to be clear: Morgan Stark is not an Avenger. She is merely a temporary acting member and long-term consultant.
So was her father, she's told. Look how that ended, she replies.
She's twenty years old, and she refuses to die like a superhero.
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She's twenty-one, and genetically predisposed to alcoholism. Like all things, she weighs outcomes before any decision, and the decision to never ever ever drink alone is an easy one.
She doesn't need sobriety, not quite, but she won't let chemicals ruin her mind.
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There's a shapeshifter on the Avengers named Orpheus. She asks him one day if he's the same figure out of myth.
"Only as much as you are."
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She thinks a lot about myth, these days. Everyone has always had an idea of who she should be, an idea that she inevitably crushes under her feet.
Her father died for the superhero gig- why should she? She's twenty-three, in the prime of her life, and will inherit Stark Industries when her mother retires. She's rich, even if they aren't billionaires anymore, even if they no longer exploit and steal from their workers. She has a life to live for, and it's not meant to be squandered fighting for others.
(Just before her twenty-fourth birthday, she's arrested at a protest over immigration rights.)
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See, saving the world isn't what she has a problem with. It's everything that comes with it.
Nevertheless, she joins the Avengers.
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She'd like a happy ending. A long life, full of peace and quiet, and death in a hospital bed at age ninety surrounded by adopted children. She's twenty-five and not sure if she'll get that, or if tragedy can be inherited, if there's a superhero gene that inevitably causes ruin for everyone it dwells in. Like the mutant gene, but evil, self-destructive. Maybe that's why her father died like that, because he couldn't help it.
She doesn't like to think about the possibility that it was simply selflessness, simply the desire to help everyone else. If it was selflessness, then it could get to her too.
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Who knows, in the end? Maybe Morgan Stark leaves the Avengers, or maybe she leaves SI, or maybe both. Maybe Peter Parker takes over the company. Maybe there's a law rounding up superheroes and mutants, and maybe she protests that and gets shot. Maybe she's arrested on false charges, and maybe Nelson & Murdock disband again or Daredevil gets killed for real, and maybe she dies in prison. Maybe there's a hit placed out on her. Maybe she looks down at her phone while crossing the street and doesn't see the truck about to hit her. Everybody dies.
Maybe she dons an Iron Man suit of her own and stops an alien massacre. Maybe she breaks out of mind control on willpower alone. Maybe she flies through the air and stops a meteorite from landing on a building, and maybe that meteorite explodes in her face. Maybe it hurts, and maybe it doesn't. Does it matter? Everyone dies, whether she likes it or not-
But maybe, just maybe, things change. Maybe the world heals and there are solar panels on every building and a revolution comes. Maybe it's a new world, with free hospital care and no cops, and the Avengers aren't needed anymore. Maybe Peter and Harley Keener get married, and Peter hangs trans pride flags everywhere and she hangs aro and ace ones next to them.
Maybe she quits the Avengers. The superhero gig isn't the only way the world can be helped, she tells Barton. Brunnhilde, the Great Valkyrie Queen of Asgard, invites her for talks opening up a trade route between Asgard's new planet and Earth.
Maybe she adopts four children, and dies beloved and known to all as a great benefactor.
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If this possibility is what goes to be truth, she will look up at the stars and wonder if her barely-remembered father is proud.