Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel or any of its characters and lines from the movie used in this story. What is written here is for entertainment purposes only. I do not make any profits from it.

Iron Man stands tall and proud, the gold and red coat twinkling at Morgan from where he stands. His glowing eye slits, which cause some to tremble, do not faze the toddler, but instead produce a delighted cry from him.

"Papa!"

Morgan squirms in his stroller, making grabby hand gestures at the full sized Iron Man statue on display right outside the toy store.

A genuine smile graces Pepper's features and her hand unconsciously flies to the ruby necklace that's back around her neck.

Adult Morgan's visit from the future, aside from giving Pepper the hope she's lost, had also managed to nudge the single mom in the direction she's been avoiding—finally introducing Morgan to his dad.

She hadn't exposed him to any pictures of Tony prior to Adult Morgan's visit, wanting the man to be there himself to do it. But somehow meeting Adult Morgan made her realize how unfair it would be for her son to grow up without the spirit of Tony around him.

Just because Tony isn't around doesn't mean Morgan shouldn't have a dad to look up to. "Yes, that's Papa."

Thomas rounds the stroller and crouches in front of the younger boy. "My daddy's up in heaven, Morgan." He points to the ceiling, "But Iron Man will bring him home!"

Morgan squirms, babbling, "Out, out"

At 1 and 11 months, Morgan had a few words in his vocabulary.

"Pepper, he wants out."

Pepper sighs half-heartedly. They're out Christmas shopping in the mall and she's had to confine Morgan in his stroller twice to prevent him from wandering.

He's already wandered into Victoria's Secret.

Pepper would have blamed that incident on Tony but without him around she teasingly looks to Harley instead.

She allows Thomas to unbuckle Morgan and help him out of the stroller.

Morgan marches up to straight to Iron Man, looking up at the statue three times his height.

The look of awe on Morgan's face does it for Pepper. That's it. When she gets home, she's going to have Friday control an Iron Man suit and have it walk around the house.

Maybe Morgan will listen to it more than he does her.

Harley suddenly comes running out of the toy store, calling Thomas about something cool he needs to see.

The two of them run back inside while Pepper is left with Morgan who is trying to reach Iron Man's hand.

Pepper decides to help him out, giving him a little boost to take the gauntlet in his tiny hand.

"Papa," Morgan says again.

Pepper's reply falls short as a series of screams erupt around the mall.

She whips around, clutching Morgan to her chest.

All around her, dust is materializing and people are beginning to panic.

Dust appearing out of nowhere is never a good sign.

The first thing Pepper thinks is Team Renaissance fudged something up in space. Their last communication was about the team moving in on a possible location. Could it be that they went up against Thanos and in retaliation, the alien had done another Dusting? As if wiping out half of the universe wasn't good enough and they were now going to be saddled with only a quarter?

A hand on her shoulder breaks Pepper out of her thoughts.

She jerks herself away, flashing the owner of the hand a dangerous glare.

The man puts his hands up immediately, a calming gesture. "Miss Potts, we need to move."

Pepper relaxes. It's only Smithson, the bodyguard/driver the state provided for her protection… or rather for Morgan's.

"Harley and Thomas," says Pepper.

Smithson doesn't look too pleased at the idea of leaving her but he makes it quick and in a minute, comes out with the two boys in either hand.

"Pepper! Pepper!" Thomas is scared and thankfully Harley takes care of him.

Smithson begins to move, leading them towards the entrance. They snake around the combination of people with the same idea to leave and the dust still materializing around them.

Pepper wants to ask the man where he's taking them, if the government has some protocol for this. She wants to tell him that running away won't change things, that if Thanos snapped his fingers again and they happened to be the unlucky victims, running was useless.

But she doesn't because she knows she shouldn't panic, not in front of the children at least.

They finally reached the exit when an arm pokes out of the dust.

Pepper screams and so does Morgan.

"Wait!" cries Harley. He pries his hand away from Smithson and inspects the dust and the arm.

Slowly, a shoulder appears.

Pepper looks back and around them, the dust are gathering together, forming limbs and heads.

It isn't a Dusting, she realizes. Or maybe it is, but it's one in reverse.

"Pepper, they're coming back!" Harley cries. "They're coming back!"

The same words start echoing around the mall; people stop panicking and instead they look on, watching half of the Earth's population return.

…

Happy Hogan was pacing in the kitchen when Pepper and the boys got home.

"Oh, thank God, you're here! FRIDAY wouldn't let me leave!"

"Happy!"

Pepper launches herself at her old friend, knees giving in at the last second. Never could she have prepared herself enough to see him back.

And the persistent thought at the back of her mind— "Tony! Where is he?"

Happy shakes his head. "He wasn't where I was. But I could've missed him. Honestly, there were so many of us in there."

"Pepper!" Harley impatiently cuts in. "My mom and my sister!"

"Right!" Pepper gives Happy a quick kiss on the cheek. "I miss you, Happy, but we'll celebrate later. Right now, we have to reunite these boys with their parents."

"Mama!"

Morgan is still crying and Pepper takes him from Smithson's arms.

"Is that—"

"Morgan, Happy. Happy, Morgan. I'll explain later. Friday, locate Thomas' dad and Harley's family."

It takes a few days to find the people in question. For one thing, people didn't reappear exactly right where they disappeared. And for another, everybody was busy trying to find everybody.

But Stark Industries' satellite images located Thomas' dad in Jersey and Harley's mom and sister right outside Tennessee.

It was an early Christmas on the second day of December when every person that disappeared came back.

Every one except Tony Stark and Team Renaissance.

…

Pepper wonders if they're dead.

After all, it's impossible to come back from the dead than to come back from the Other World that Happy told her about.

Harley tells her not to give up.

"Maybe they're just late," he says.

…

Three months later, Thomas and Harley are moving out.

As they should. They're no longer Pepper's children; they have their families back, but it pains her a little to see them go.

It took a while with Pepper having to go through the legalities of returning them to their parents' custody.

They spend their last night out by the poolside in the patio. A giant tent is pitched up on one side while Happy and Thomas are by the grill roasting smores, marshmallows, and hotdogs.

"Stoy time! Stoy time!" Morgan begs Harley who pulls the two year-old off his lap.

"Later. Before night-night."

"Night-night?" asks Morgan.

"Later," Harley replies. "Marshmallows first."

They bother Happy next, with Thomas more than willing to give them half-cooked marshmallows.

Pepper brings out the drinks and reminds them, "Don't give him too much, Harley, or you'll be the one putting him to sleep."

"Well, it's our last night here. I might as well."

Pepper smiles. "You and Thomas will be coming out here every summer, you know. It was one of the deals both of your parents and I talked about."

"Really?" Thomas asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet with a skewered hotdog in one hand.

"Careful with that. And yes, really."

"Yay! Did you hear that, Morgan? I'll be visiting this summer!"

Beside Pepper, Happy starts to chuckle.

"What are you laughing about?"

Happy shakes his head. "It's nothing."

"No, I want to know."

"Alright." He lets Harley take over the grill and moves closer to Pepper while watching the kids interact. "I was just imagining Tony coming home. Can you imagine the look on his face when he sees three kids? He's gonna freak!" He starts chuckling again and Pepper joins him.

She remembers how hard it used to be to smile or laugh at the thought of Tony… But half the universe returned against all odds. She owes it to those people—not just Tony or to the team who most likely fought for that outcome—not to be sad or bitter about their survival.

Night-night arrives for Morgan and Harley sets him and Thomas up inside the tent for their favorite story.

Happy and Pepper stay outside, comfortably drinking wine while in the background, Harley narrates the boys' favorite Iron Man tale.

"…He snapped his fingers like this!" Pepper can hear a faint snap. "And you know what happened next? Lightning struck high in the sky hitting the ground where the mean Thanos stood. And there was an earthquake, a loud ruuuummmbbliiingg and the ground opened up and dust came out!"

"And so did daddy and your mom!"

"And everybody else! The dust went everywhere! To the mall, to the house, to the parking lot, and they slowly became human. And everyone shouted hooray! Because everyone who got lost was found again, like your dad and my mom, but nobody noticed one group of dust floating in the sky. It stayed there for a minute before going up, up, up into the air, straight up to the clouds, never to be seen again. You know what they say?"

"What?"

"That those were Iron Man's dust. He went back to space to get his suit so he can fly back down here, back to you Morgan."

There is a brief pause.

"Do you want to meet your daddy Morgan?" Harley gives him an answer to copy, "Yes!"

"Yes!"

Pepper looks at Happy to see him sporting the same watery eyes she is.

"You want to see him Morgan? Yes!"

"Yes!"

They hear scrambling and the tent flap opens. Harley has Morgan on his hip with one hand and with another he points at the sky.

"Look right there Morgan! Look at the stars!"

"Stars!" says the toddler.

"That's daddy! That's Papa!"

"Papa?"

"Yeeaah," says Harley, "He's a little tiny right now because he's far away. But he'll grow bigger, you'll see. Just wait and see."

…

"You didn't have to do that, you know," Pepper says to Harley when they're putting the leftover food inside the refrigerator.

"Do what?"

"Tell Morgan a story about Tony coming back. He might not."

Harley silently looks at the plate of hotdogs in his hand. Pepper thinks he might be thinking of what to say.

Then, he puts them in the fridge and then turns to Pepper.

"I was mad at him. I was so mad at him for a long time," Harley confesses, his eyes wide and blinking as he tries to stop the tears from coming. Pepper feels her heart ache. She understants the pain and anger, along with the guilt of realizing that Tony really did save them in the end.

"I know he might be dead. But he was a dad to me when my dad wasn't. And you were a mom—are a mom to me, a second one. You guys are my family and that includes Morgan." He wipes a tear across his cheek. "I'll be here to give him some awesome dad stories until he's old enough to look for them himself. And there's a lot of them on YouTube, by the way."

Pepper laughs.

"Who knows? The world might not need Morgan anymore now that everyone's back, but maybe when he grows up… maybe he goes out there and he looks for Tony and… maybe he finds him and brings him back."

Pepper presses her lips together and nods. "That's a wonderful future to hope for."

She hugs Harley and lets her forehead rest on his shoulder because this kid is just too tall for her now.

Adult Morgan's words ring in her head. Keep looking at the stars, mom.

Maybe the answers do lie up there.

…

It is the sound of thrusters that wake Pepper up. She doesn't even have time to figure out what the hell is going on when the sound is followed by a deafening wave of loud engines that begin to die down.

But even amidst the noise, Pepper can still hear Morgan's cries at having been woken up by the sudden, scary sound.

She angrily rises from the reclining chair, about to give the source of the commotion a piece of her mind.

Happy is rising as well and the hair sticking out of his head from different angles tell her that he's upset at being awakened too.

The sound is gone now and there is nothing on the patio where they are, no sign of whatever the hell that was that interrupted their sleep.

Harley is rubbing his eyes as he comes out of the tent, eyes scanning the sky for something to explain what happened.

Pepper is torn between investigating the noise and comforting Morgan. She chooses the latter seeing as three boys were already doing the former job.

She crawls inside the tent and takes Morgan in her arms, resting his head on the space between her shoulder and her neck.

She pats his back, humming him a relaxing song.

It takes a little dancing around the tent, but Morgan slowly falls back to sleep, hands snug around Pepper's neck.

"Uh, Pepper!"

Pepper closes her eyes and scowls. She really needs to teach Happy what volume to use when a kid was asleep.

This time it's Harley who shouts. "Pepper!"

Pepper tiredly goes out of the tent, brows knit together. "What?" she hissed at the three of them who was staring at something behind her. "Morgan is asleep! And you know how cranky he gets when he—"

Pepper had turned around mid-lecture and found herself staring as well, the words stuck in her throat.

Tony stood there right in the doorway connecting the living room and the patio. He isn't wearing his suit, just some plain, dark, loose shirt and baggy pants.

He walks towards them and up close Pepper can see that his jaw is clean-shaven, his hair is slightly salt-and-pepper instead of the dark chestnut brown he dyes it on a regular basis to hide the silver, and his arm is… his left arm is gone.

And faced with all of that, the first thing Pepper says to him is, "You're late." The feeling of Morgan in her arms gives her strength and she goes on, takes one step forward, "Do you have any idea what time of the night it is? What year? Who you woke up?!"

"I—"

"No!" She hisses, cutting him off. Honestly, Pepper isn't even sure why she's angry but that was what came out of her mouth so she's sticking with it. "I'm doing the talking. I waited for you."

"In my defense space travel isn't as efficient as normal travel—"

"—crying and then pining—"

"—we didn't think it'd take months to get home—"

"—fighting Ross, protecting your son—"

"—and speaking of son, yes, I do see a little something going on. Three somethings."

Pepper narrows her eyes at him and Tony smirks a little.

Pepper is unimpressed by that, like she used to be, and she raises a brow.

Tony concedes, like always. His shoulders sag and she can see his chin wrinkle with worry and damn right there's a little guilt in there too.

"What do you want me to say? 'Honey, I'm home?'"

Pepper feels the words stuck in her throat again and she gasps out, "Yes! Yes!" And in one giant stride, Tony has her around one arm, Morgan between them.

Pepper is trying not to cry because she'll wake Morgan up but she fails and she's crying, albeit in silent choked sobs.

She feels Tony press his lips to her head and then murmur, "I'm sorry I'm late. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry about a lot of things."

Pepper sniffs and pulls back slightly. "Not your fault. I'm just so relieved you're alive." She looks at his stump. "You don't have your arm."

"It's a long story."

Morgan chooses that moment to make a fuss, whining a little bit as he adjusts himself in his mother's arms.

Tony turns an inquiring look at Pepper. "And who's this?"

"Morgan."

"Morgan?" There's a knowing look on his face.

"I told you I was pining."

Normally Pepper wouldn't wake her son but she supposes today is an exception. She passes Morgan to Tony, helping him carry the kid with one arm. Thankfully, the toddler is too sleepy to even register the fact that he's being carried by another person.

He goes right back to sleep, arms now around Tony's neck, head rested on his shoulder.

And Pepper breathes easy for the first time ever.

"Um, you should know something…"

"Is that Captain America?!" came Thomas' voice from across the pool.

Tony smiles sheepishly. "Is it okay that Rhodey and the gang are gonna crash in here for a while?"

Pepper looks behind Tony to see Steve, Bucky, Natasha, Rhodey, Bruce, and Sam standing awkwardly by the living room, watching their reunion.

"They're welcome anytime."

Tony gives her a genuine smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the tips and small tears spill out. "I'm so glad I'm home," he whispers.

Pepper knows there's a story still waiting to be told but she files that for the nights when it's just them... when he's ready to tell her everything he did out there with the stars for company.

A/N: Thanks for reading!