A/N: Happy B-Day,ebbs-imagination! ^_^

Epilogue

He held her limp left hand in both of his and pressed his lips against her skin. He had been staring at her still form for hours now, ever since he had returned from killing Rhona and he had been allowed to come inside the room. To anyone who was not privy of her real state, the ginger looked as if she was just sleeping peacefully, with no care in the world, but Tony Stark knew better than that.

"I'm sorry," he said with unshed tears. "I should've been here with you. I should've never left you, Pepper."

He had been holding back his tears for too long, so they were now threatening to drown him alive. Even though a birth was a cause for celebration, he could not force himself to pull away from her bedside to meet the perfectly healthy little guy that had been born hours ago. Even if he had not intended to, even if the baby had not plotted against his mother, the birth had been very complicated and Pepper had almost lost the chance to ever meet him at all.

And he, Tony, had almost lost his fiancée.

He closed his eyes, rested his head on her now flat stomach and inhaled slowly. He remembered the last time he had been like this with her – her unconscious body under his head, her hand in his. It seemed like a bad dream now, but he knew very well that it had been true. It had happened, long ago, and when she had woken up from it, she had left him for good. He trusted that, this time, history would not repeat itself.

Wake up, baby. Wake up, I need you.

Dr. Adler had given Pepper a muscle relaxant after the birth so that she could repose, and they had been reducing the dose every hour, but she was yet to even stir at all ever since she had heard the cries of her son after he was born. According to Nurse Owen, Pepper had taken one good look at her son when she had brought him over to the redhead; she had smiled at him and she had then passed out in tiredness almost immediately.

"She went on for a long time, Tony," Dr. Ross had told the inventor when he had arrived, and the doctor had then added with a smile: "She's going to need a lot of rest and pampering. I'm sure you can do that for her."

He could. He would. But only if she woke up. He could not do any of the things he wanted to do for her if she did not wake up.

Tony was growing anxious – fearful – that this time she would not wake up at all even if everyone said that she was doing fine and that she was only asleep and not in a coma. It was overdue for her, actually; one had only so many chances to escape a precarious situation, unscathed. Maybe Pepper had finally reached her limit; maybe her free pass at surviving the unthinkable had finally expired.

"Pepper," he began as he lifted his head from her stomach and then pressed their foreheads together. "Please, open your eyes, Pep. Please, please open your eyes. I just want to know you're alright."

He waited for a minute or so and hoped to hear her voice calling his name, but when all he heard was the door behind him opening and Happy's voice telling him everyone else had already met the baby and that it was his turn, Tony exhaled in defeat.

"She's not going to wake up for a few more hours, you know?" Happy reasoned. "She was pretty tired after being in labor for so long. She needs to rest, and you do too."

"I can't leave, Hap. I need to know she's going to be OK."

"She IS going to be OK, Tony. She's going to be just…"

Happy's reassurance became pointless when the redhead groaned in her chemically induced sleep and her head moved slightly to the right. Tony froze where he stood, eyes wide and spirit hopeful, and waited for her to show any other movement that would give him a better indication of how she felt. When her breathing evened out again and the hand that had suddenly tightened around his own went limp once more, he knew that she had fallen asleep again.

"Did you see that?" Happy began. "She's fine. She just needs to sleep it off."

"Pepper?" Tony insisted, as if he had not heard Happy speak. "Pepper, I'm right here. It's me: Tony."

Her soft breathing and the rhythmic rising and lowering of her chest were her only response. Tony sighed, shook his head, kissed the back of her hand, placed it on her stomach and then stood from the chair. His eyes traveled up and down her form, just to make sure that she was still just asleep and not on the verge of death. After he observed her for another long moment, he sighed again, this time in resignation.

"Fine," the genius said before he leaned down at kissed the redhead's forehead. "I'll go meet the baby, but I'm coming back here right after."

"That's fine," Happy agreed. "Let's make it quick. The newborn ward is about to close for the day."

"OK. We'll go right now, then," Tony kissed the crown of Pepper's head and then whispered to her. "I'll be back soon, Pep. I'm just going to meet the baby and I'll be back in a flash."

He walked in reverse to give his fiancée a final glance and, once he reached the door, he turned in place, stared at Happy and followed him out of the room, down the hall, around the corner and to the newborn area where Baby Boy Potts was being kept for now. The walk to the baby ward was quiet, and Tony's eyes did not leave the floor until they reached the small area where all the other newborns were being monitored.

The glass wall was not very long in comparison to the room it held inside, but it served the purpose of providing a view of the little creatures that remained isolated from everyone else while their tiny bodies got ready to face the world. The bottom half of the wall was made of concrete, like the rest of the hospital, and the upper half was made of glass.

Happy and Tony stood by the glass wall. Happy's arms were crossed over his chest and Tony's hands were dug inside his pockets. If he did not know any better, he would have thought that he was not as excited to meet the baby as he actually was, but he just could not bring himself to look excited when Pepper was yet to open her eyes again.

We should've been here together right now, the blue-eyed boy thought with sadness. It should've been the both of us meeting him at the same time.

"Hey, Tony! There he is!"

Tony lifted his eyes to stare at Nurse Owen waving at him before she pointed down at the baby before her and gave Tony a thumbs-up. The gesture brought a smirk to the genius' face than only grew wider once the nurse picked the baby up from the crib and slowly walked closer to the glass wall with the little bundle in her arms. The inventor's eyes landed on the baby's face that looked as tired as Pepper's, and when the baby made a scrunching face in his sleep, he could not help but laugh.

"He's cute, isn't he?" Happy asked with a smile of his own.

"He is," Tony agreed, not able to remove the smile from his face. The baby boy was tiny and his facial features not yet truly defined, but Tony could already see the proof that this was the ginger's baby as it was evident in the light brown/blonde/reddish hair he could already see on his head. It was not as red as Pepper's, and it was not brown like his own, but it was a combination of hair color he had seen on Scott Summers, especially when the sun had hit the jock's hair.

Yup, Tony thought with a hint of bitterness, he is his father's…

"Hey!" Happy interrupted the inventor's thoughts. "He's opening his eyes!"

The nurse also noticed that the baby was waking up and, even though she prepared for the little boy to scream bloody murder for being so rudely interrupted in his slumber, she was surprised to see that he was as calm as he had been since being born. He slowly blinked his eyes as he looked all around until his eyes landed on the two men standing outside. The baby stared at Happy and at Tony in a perplexed way, and if Tony was not aware that the baby was just, well, a baby, he could have sworn that he was studying them as if they were specimens of another species. Then again, Tony did not have much time to dwell on the inquisitive stare when something other than the appearance of confusion on the baby's face caught the billionaire's attention.

"Wow!" Tony said with surprise. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rested his palms on the glass wall to get a better look at the baby. Nurse Owen noticed the inventor's attempt at getting as close as he could to the baby, so she took the last two steps needed to stand right in front of the window so that Tony could be inches away from the baby boy.

"Look at those baby blues, Happy!"

"I know," Happy said as he stared at Tony from the corner of his eye. "Look familiar, don't they?"

"Yeah," Tony chuckled. "He's got Virgil's eyes!" Tony added, but then shook his head at his own comment when he remembered a very important piece of information he had seen in one of the pregnancy books he had read.

"Wait, that's stupid. All babies are born with blue eyes until melanin sets in."

"Maybe," Happy shrugged. "But even if they didn't, those can't be Virgil's eyes. Pepper's adopted."

"Oh," Tony's furrowed his brow and scoffed at his own foolishness. "You're right. I always forget that part. Still, those are some freaking, bright blue eyes this kiddo has!"

"Yeah," Happy continued. "He's got his father's eyes."

It took Tony a second to repeat Happy's words in his mind, and when he did, his brow knitted even more.

"His father's eyes? I thought Scott had brown eyes."

"He does," Happy replied without missing a beat.

"Then, why did you say that he… has… his…"

His voice died on him.

Air left his lungs.

His heart halted.

His eyes opened wide.

The world stopped.

And Tony Stark finally understood what Happy had just implied with his words. What Happy Hogan himself already knew.

The baby's electric blue eyes stared back at the genius, as if understanding what had just transpired, and as the inventor's eyes lost focus on the baby's form until it was only his own reflection he saw in the glass, he was hit with the realization that the little pair of eyes currently staring at him through the glass wall, the ones he had just seen on the baby boy, were a mirror image of his very own eyes staring back at himself in shock.

The End

A/N: You're welcome. ^_^