Chapter Text

Field Trip - Part 1

“Did you really meet Iron Man?” 

Eva internally sighed. It had been nearly four months since the world found out about Eva Moore, former homeless thief, manipulated by supervillain Cole Graves who was caught trying to frame the Avengers. By now she had gotten her story straight and most people were over her fifteen minutes of fame, but there were still a couple kids who mustered up enough courage to come and ask her about that night. 

“Only for a second,” she told them. “It’s not as exciting as it sounds.”

This usually deterred them, but this freshman was particularly curious. “But you worked with Spider-Man to get the bad guy to confess.” His eyes lit up at the idea of working with Spider-Man, and Eva saw Peter blush out of the corner of her eye. 

She continued with her usual story. “Spider-Man had been dealing with one of his lackeys and came to find the man running the operation. He found me, and I just played the part in his plan.” Eva couldn’t help adding a little more as Peter pretended not to listen. “Spider-Man was really cool, though.”

“Of course he was!” the freshman exclaimed, losing the last bit of restraint. “How fast did he web that guy up? Was he upside down on the ceiling the whole time? What was his–”

He stopped talking abruptly. MJ had lowered her book and was now staring daggers into this kid. Eva managed to muster up a little pity for this Spider-Man fan and told him. “You should get going, but maybe if you’re lucky you’ll see Spider-Man at Stark Industries when the freshmen go tomorrow.”

“You think?” the kid asked excitedly, suddenly forgetting MJ’s deathly glare. 

MJ slammed the book on the table and the kid scurried away. She turned her frown toward Eva. “Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get the attention off yourself?” she chided. “Not encouraging these freaks?”

Eva shrugged with a glance at Peter. “Sorry, it was too tempting.”

“Especially today,” MJ continued. “I don’t trust that Stark won’t pop out of nowhere just to see how far he can push you. Or send in one of his minions to do something.”

Eva snorted. “Don’t let any of them hear you call them Tony’s minions.”

It was at that moment that the school buses started to pull up to the side of the school and teachers began to herd the sophomores away from the rest of the school’s population that was heading into the building to start a normal day. “None of the Avengers even know we’ll be there and they’ll be upstate. I made Tony swear on DUM-E’s life that he will not interfere,” Eva promised as they followed the crowd. “Plus, we’ve all heard from the seniors and juniors that we’re just touring the lower floors. I don’t think Tony knows what’s on the lower floors.”

“MJ, I thought you’d be excited,” Ned spoke up. “You’ve never been to the lower floors either. Don’t you want to see what Ms. Potts has built?”

MJ hesitated, unwilling to admit her excitement. “Yeah, I guess it’ll be cool.”

Eva grinned at her and wiggled her eyebrows. “You probably know more than us. Maybe you should take over for whatever poor tour guide is assigned to us.”

Just as they started to line up for the buses and go through attendance with the teachers, Eva heard a grating voice behind them. “Hey Parker! I guess we’ll finally see if you’re a Stark intern.” They turned to see Flash with a couple of his friends lined up behind them. “Do you think they’ll arrest him for impersonating a Stark Industries employee?”

“Leave him alone, Flash,” Eva told him sternly and took Peter’s hand when he started to look ashamed, which effectively shut Flash up.

They turned back around and started to file onto the bus when Peter ducked his head down and whispered to Eva, “Do you think we’ll run into anyone from R&D?”

Eva’s eyes widened. She hadn’t thought of that possibility, but as she thought about it, her anxiety cooled. “We’ll be on the lower floors, so we shouldn’t, right?”

“Right,” Peter agreed but looked a little disappointed. 

Eva frowned. “Did you want to run into someone?” she asked. 

“No,” Peter said too quickly. 

“If you want Flash to know about it, I could see if I could get someone to come down,” Eva offered, trying to think of a way to do that without involving Tony who would take it too far. “Or just solve some hard equation for anyone we come across using your login.”

Peter squeezed her hand and gave her a more believable smile. “Really, Eva, it’s okay. I don’t need anyone to know. I’m happy that it’s something I share just with you.” Eva smiled back at him, slipping her fingers in between his as they found a seat.  

About a month ago, it was announced at the school that they had been given a very rare and unprecedented opportunity to do a field trip to Stark Industries. While the entire school lost it, Eva nearly had a heart attack. She remembered Pepper saying something last year when signing her permission slip for Oscorp that she would put something together, but Eva figured that she would forget. It would be the last time Eva would underestimate Pepper’s memory and determination. 

That morning, she made Tony promise for the hundredth time to not show up or interfere. Even with his hundred promises and Pepper’s assurance that none of the Avengers knew about her trip, Eva was still on edge. There were so many things that could go wrong and expose her secret today. She lived in the penthouse at the top of the Tower that her entire school would be visiting, but if she just kept her head down, no one would suspect a thing.

The ride to the Tower went way too quickly. Before she knew it, Eva was standing in front of her home with a couple hundred of her peers. She felt someone squeeze her hand and looked over to find Peter giving her an encouraging smile. “It’ll be okay,” he promised. “We’re going to have fun.”

Eva felt her shoulders relax a little as they got sorted into groups outside of the building, still holding onto Peter’s hand. They were put in a group with the other students on the Engineering track, which fortunately meant Eva was with Peter, but unfortunately meant that MJ and Ned weren’t with them and Flash was. 

Pulling Peter with her, Eva made her way to the back of the line when their group was called into the foyer away from Flash who was pushing his way to the front. Everyone in their group was ogling the high ceilings and sleek design of the room, but Eva and Peter entered through this room every week. It was the one thing Eva knew about the lower floors. 

“Engineering track, this way!” A young woman in business casual attire and the signature Stark Industries name tag called for their group to gather in the side of the large foyer. Once they were close enough, she introduced herself. “Hello, Midtown School of Science and Technology Engineering sophomores! Welcome to Stark Industries. My name is Jamila Ahmad and I’ll be showing you around today.” There were a few shy hellos in return. “I fought all the other tour guides for your group because the engineering group gets to do all the fun stuff.” Eva and Peter shared a questioning look. “Let’s get started then! Boring stuff first.” She pulled up a StarkTab that she had been holding. “I’ll be calling you up one by one to get your visitor badges and once you get them, you can head through security and wait for the rest of us. As you can see,” she directed their attention to security, “we don’t use the traditional security measures like metal detectors or bag searches as other places do. Tony Stark’s personal AI, FRIDAY, helps with our security. She keeps an eye on everything at all times. Just make sure you stick with me and we’ll all have a great time.” Eva had to bite the inside of her cheek. Jamila made threats sound so fun. 

Eva’s name was called in the middle of the pack and she went up to Jamila. “Oh.” Eva’s heart dropped as Jamila frowned and scrolled through her tablet. “You’re already in the system as an intern.”

Luckily Mrs. Warren, who was acting as their group’s chaperone, was the only one close enough to hear. “An intern at Stark Industries?” she asked in disbelief. 

As Eva internally screamed, Jamila was busy confirming. “The system is never wrong.” She looked up at Eva with a smile. “Do you have your badge with you?”

“Yes,” Eva said as she dug into her bag. Mrs. Warren was still staring in disbelief. “Um, Peter and I got an offer over the summer after our science fair project last year,” Eva explained as she showed her badge to Jamila. “I’m sorry. We won’t cause any more disruptions.”

“Not a problem,” Jamila said cheerily. “Just happy to have another intern along. That science fair project must have been something incredible for you to get an internship here in high school.” Eva tried to shrug it off as Jamila handed her badge back. “Did you say there was someone else that is an intern?”

“Yes, Peter. Peter Parker,” Eva added as Jamila began to scroll through the names. 

“Yup, he is,” Jamila confirmed. “Okay, Evangeline, you can head through and we’ll see you on the other side.”

“Thanks,” Eva said quickly, heading through security. Luckily because Jamila already knew, Peter got through without issue a few minutes later. 

“Okay, everyone has a badge.” Their class was looking at their shiny silver badges that clearly said ‘VISITOR’ under the Stark Industries logo. “You’re welcome to keep these as a memento, but don’t expect to get back in with them. FRIDAY has only given you clearance for today.” 

Eva thought they were in the clear until Flash noticed that their badges were different. “Why do they have different badges?” he asked loudly, pointing at her and Peter. His shit-eating grin indicated that he thought they were in trouble or on some kind of list, but that expression fell almost immediately. 

“They have different clearance with their internship badges,” Jamila told him and Eva just tried to focus on her breathing, trying to anticipate any way that anyone could figure out any of her secrets from this. “It’s the protocol that they wear those when they’re here, even for a field trip.” Jamila either didn’t notice Eva’s panic and Peter’s embarrassment or decided to ignore it. “You should thank them because I bet it’s their project that got your school a field trip here. There haven’t been any other high schools allowed to visit that I know of.”

Their entire class just gaped at them. “You actually have an internship here, Peter?” Jason asked. “And you too, Eva?”

“Yeah, from our science fair project last year… like Jamila said,” Peter admitted, while Eva stood stock still next to him. 

“We just get coffees for people and try to stay out of the way,” Eva said quickly. Eva’s heart rate skyrocketed as she carefully studied her classmates’ expressions, trying to gauge if someone was reading too far into two high schoolers getting the most sought after internship in the country. 

Jamila apparently finally took pity on them and took the attention back. “Alright! Let’s get to our tour. We’re going to start off with learning about the famous Arc Reactor, which as engineering students I’m sure you’ll have plenty of amazing questions. After that, we’ll check out the museum where we will learn more about Stark Industries’ history. Then after lunch there’s a special surprise just for the engineering students.” Everyone started talking excitedly about the surprise, thankfully moving on from the news about Eva and Peter’s internship, and allowing Eva to let out a long breath. However, Flash was still staring daggers at them. 

“Is it so bad that people at school know about it?” Peter asked her quietly as they followed Jamila to the elevators. “You made sure Mr. Stark saw our project and liked it fair and square. He even used it in discussions with the UN.” 

“I know,” Eva agreed in a hushed whisper as they followed their group into the elevator, avoiding Flash as best as they could. “I’m just nervous to have any connection to this place. I just… I just really want to keep these secrets for as long as I can.” 

Peter stepped closer to her, using the crowded elevator as an excuse, and subtly wrapped an arm around her. “I understand, but I think you’re overestimating how smart Flash is.” 

The elevator doors swished open and Eva turned her face upward to smile at Peter. “I guess you’re right.” She felt much better as they entered a room with two arc reactors that were much larger than the ones Eva was used to seeing.

Jamila lit up in excitement. “I have to admit that this is my favorite part because the arc reactors are what I have the privilege to work on here at Stark Industries,” she told them. “So you’ll forgive me if we take a little extra time to focus on it, but I figured the engineering students wouldn’t mind.” She led them forward onto a platform that suspended over one of the arc reactors so they could get a better view. “These arc reactors power the entire building,” Jamila told them, her voice echoing around the cavernous room. “Actually only one does, but we have two so that if one goes down or needs repair, the other will pick up the slack.”

“There’s no way these need to be this big,” Eva whispered to Peter in the back of the group. “Tony has built some just as powerful at a third the size.”

“Probably doesn’t want them to be stolen,” Peter smartly pointed out. 

“Ah, yeah, you’re probably right.” Jamila began to show them some of the intricacies of the design, and Eva noticed something else. “Also, this is an old design by at least three generations. He’s actually been working on a new one that’s completely triangular with three levels of vibranium to power the new nano suit.”

“That’s so cool,” Peter gasped. “And a genius idea. It makes complete sense.”

“Of course it makes sense to you,” Eva told him. “I have no doubt you’ll make something even better before we graduate.”

“There’s no way,” Peter objected. 

Eva nudged him affectionately. “There’s no way you won’t.”

Once Jamila had answered their questions, including a few from Peter about the mechanics and Eva about how the company was integrating the technology around the world, they went back up the elevator to the third floor that was entirely used as a museum. Eva had no idea that something like this existed in the Tower. 

“Welcome to the Stark Industries and Avengers official museum,” Jamila told them as they entered. “I’m going to guide you through a few important exhibits that apply to your engineering interests and then I’ll give you an hour to look around on your own.”

They passed by another group from their school that was just leaving the museum. Ned waved to them. “This was so amazing!” he stage-whispered to them, not bothering to lower the volume of his voice at all. “Did you know this was here?”

“Not at all!” Peter responded in the same way, making Eva smile. 

They waved goodbye as Ned was ushered to continue with his group. Unfortunately, Flash had witnessed the entire thing and sidled up next to them with a scowl. “There’s no way you two nerds have even been in this building before. You have to be tricking the system somehow.”

“Tricking Tony Stark’s AI?” Eva asked with skepticism. He opened his mouth to argue but clearly didn’t have a retort. 

They moved ahead with the group, leaving a fuming Flash behind. Peter leaned over as they rounded the corner, “I didn’t realize you were so good at lying.”

Eva gave him an innocent smile. “I didn’t lie. We can’t bypass FRIDAY, but we know someone who can.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve seen you trick FRIDAY a few times.”

“I have a good relationship with FRIDAY and can sometimes convince her to help me out even if it’s against Tony’s orders,” Eva explained quietly, watching Flash carefully as he joined his friends on the other side of the group. “Ned can actually hack into FRIDAY. There’s a difference.”

Jamila brought them first to a wall of pictures of scary looking weapons. “As most people know, Stark Industries began with Tony Stark’s father, Howard Stark, in 1939 as a weapon manufacturing company to aid the US Government in World War II.” Jamila pointed to a photo of a young Howard Stark speaking to someone in the military. “After his death in 1991, Obadiah Stone took over the company until Tony Stark was ready to become CEO. As we all now know, Obadiah Stone was not an honest business man and was selling weapons to both sides of wars around the world. In 2008, he had an independent terrorist group kidnap Tony Stark.” 

Jamila waved them forward to look at a very familiar object. Their classmates started to push forward to get a better look. Jamila’s very practiced speech fell away into something more genuine. “This is when Tony Stark recreated his father’s arc reactor but in a much smaller form. I wanted you to see how rough this first design is. It’s a bit of an extreme example, but as you work hard to become whatever engineer or scientist you choose, remember that even some of the most important inventions in the world started out rough. A design is never perfect, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. Keep pushing to improve your designs and one day you’ll look up and you’ve changed the world,” she finished as they all stared in reverence at the arc reactor. 

Everyone stared in awe at the series of arc reactors, moved by Jamila’s speech. It was kind of weird for Eva to think of Tony in this way. Of course she knew that he was famous for a reason. There were plenty of reasons, but his work in science and technology was so inspiring to everyone in the field. Sometimes she forgot about that part of him and his life. Usually she just thought of him as Tony, her dad, or Tony Stark, Iron Man, not Tony Stark, innovator genius leading the world of technology. It was another really cool part of his life and legacy.

Jamila straightened and gave them all a big smile. “Go ahead and explore the rest of the museum and we’ll meet back here in an hour,” she told them cheerily.

The group scattered but Eva and Peter stayed to look at the other arc reactors a little closer. “That’s not the real one, right?” Peter asked when they stepped closer to the original arc reactor. 

Eva pointed to one of the plaques that said ‘All arc reactors are detailed models of the originals.’ “I was confused for a second too.”

Peter leaned a little closer and took her hand. “I’ve seen the real one in a much cooler place,” he whispered. 

“Much cooler,” Eva said sarcastically, bumping into his shoulder affectionately. 

Peter didn’t let her get far away and pulled her closer with their interconnected hands. “My girlfriend is much cooler than this museum.” With a quick glance around the darkened room, Peter apparently confirmed that they were the only ones there and ducked his head down until their lips met. Eva was more than okay with it and her unoccupied hand clasped Peter’s shirt and tugged him closer, while he put his hand in her hair the way she liked it.

When they came up for air a few moments later, Eva’s eye caught onto something behind Peter’s shoulder.  “Am I cooler than Captain America’s first costume?”

Peter’s eyes widened, but he still said, “Obviously.”

Eva grinned at him. “I’m pretty sure that’s not a replica. It’s the real one.”

She was being dragged across to the next room before she could say anything else. “Are you serious?” Peter breathed in awe. 

Eva bent down to read the plaque. “Nothing about replicas here. Do you think he had to get it out of here for those school PSAs?”

“I bet he did!” Peter sounded completely awestruck by the idea of Steve putting this cheesy propaganda costume back on. With a silly smile on her face, Eva watched as Peter dove into every fun fact he knew about the original costume. Eva actually learned a couple things and tucked a few tidbits away to ask Steve. 

As Peter animatedly explained the elements of Steve’s original shield, Eva became aware of someone watching them. She ducked down, pretending to get a closer look at the boots Peter was talking about, and covertly glanced behind them. A tall man was sitting on a bench facing the original suit and wall of wartime pictures. He wore a nondescript blue t-shirt and jeans, but the black baseball cap was angled low on his face. She couldn’t make out any features, and Eva guessed that he had done that on purpose. 

Eva slowly rose to a standing position. Now Peter was on alert too but kept talking as Eva rounded to the other side of the costume display to try to get a better angle on the stranger’s face. When she could see him again, he looked up at her, pushed his hat back to reveal his face for a split second, and returned his hat to its former position. Eva’s heartbeat accelerated for a different reason as she quickly closed the space between them and sat on the bench with Peter close on her heels. 

“Steve!” she hissed. “What are you doing here? Did Tony send you?” Peter covered his mouth when a squeak escaped his mouth and sat on the other side of Eva. 

“I’m sorry I was talking about you Mr. Rogers,” Peter gasped and Eva elbowed him in the side, shushing him as some of their classmates moved onto the next exhibit. 

Steve shot him a little smile. “I’m impressed you knew about how my shoe size didn’t change after the serum.”

Eva thought Peter might pass out. “Peter, can you be on lookout for a second?” she asked, giving his hand a quick squeeze. He absently stood and walked back over to the Captain America exhibit.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” Steve asked her, still staring straight ahead.

Eva covertly gauged his expression and decided he really hadn’t expected to see her. “We’re here on a field trip today,” she explained, turning away from him, pulling out her phone to pretend she was talking on it. “Aren’t you supposed to be upstate?” she asked. 

Steve was quiet for a minute, as a few students came in. Peter had recovered enough to jump into his Captain America speech. They briefly waved at Eva but moved on quickly when they saw she was on the phone. Once Eva was sure no one was looking at them, she took the chance to study Steve’s face more. She was alarmed to see that he looked genuinely sad. “Steve, what’s wrong?” she asked. 

He took a breath and noticed she was looking, plastering a fake smile on his face. “You know, it’s been almost five years since I woke up here.” His voice was so quiet that she had to lean toward him to hear. “But it feels like yesterday in some ways. I like to come here sometimes to remember what it was like when things get hard.”

It was so hard not to look at him, but Eva kept her head down. “Are things hard right now for any particular reason?” she asked gently. As far as she knew, things were going smoothly with the public after Graves was exposed, and Steve was focusing most of his efforts with training the newer Avengers recruits. 

Steve let out a long breath. “Not like that,” he assured her. “It’s more of my personal stuff. Nothing you need to worry about.”

“If it’s got you playing hooky from the Avengers’ Campus, then I’m worried.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Eva saw Steve’s hand twitch toward her before he rested it on his knee again. “I don’t want to worry you any more than I already have, Eva.”

Eva kept herself from shrugging. “I worry about everyone. It’s what family does.” He didn’t respond right away, so Eva took a guess. “Is it about Bucky being frozen again?”

Steve quietly chuckled. “I guess you know me more than I thought. That’s a big part of it.” His tone darkened. “It wasn’t easy to see him like that. I’m so angry that I wasn’t there to get him out of HYDRA’s hands for decades.”

“You’re helping him now,” she reminded him.

“Maybe.” Eva was about to list all the ways he’s helpful, when Steve continued. “I’ve been thinking more about you and Tony too.”

“About me and Tony?” she repeated in confusion.

Steve leaned back on the bench. “A while ago, Tony told me that he didn’t want to be a hero anymore, that he’d rather just be safe with his family.” 

Eva’s heart swelled. “He said that?” 

“He did,” Steve confirmed. “At first I was confused why he would want that when he’s so good at so many aspects of being a hero, but the more I thought about it and saw how much he loves you and how much you love and respect him, I found myself… jealous.”

Eva’s head involuntarily turned toward Steve. “Jealous? Of me and Tony?” She heard Peter start talking a little louder and noticed Jason was watching her. “Yeah, mom, I promise I left it on the counter,” Eva said quickly, loud enough for them to hear. 

When Jason was fully distracted by Peter’s explanation about Captain America’s shoe size, Steve responded to her. “Are you surprised? You and Tony have a great relationship despite everything that happened.”

“Well, yeah,” Eva agreed. “But I didn’t realize that’s something you want. Do you want to have your own kids? I mean I’m sure Peter would gladly welcome an adoption offer. The Captain America and Spider-Man duo would be pretty amazing.” 

Steve chuckled under his breath watching Peter give the performance of a lifetime to continue to distract everyone. “He’s a good kid for sure, but I think I want my own family.”

Eva nodded slowly. “Then would you give up the Avengers when you find the right person?”

Silence stretched between them and Eva could sense the pain radiating off of Steve, his posture wilting next to her. “The thing is, I already found the right person.”

Steve had told Eva a lot about Peggy Carter. Eva had even gone with him to meet her once before she died. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around how Steve could cope with watching the love of his life die of old age after only spending a few months together decades prior. That had played into some of Steve’s decisions last summer. Apparently, he was still struggling. 

“There’s no one else that you could see yourself with?” she asked tentatively. 

“I’ve tried, but there’s really only one woman for me.” Steve leaned forward. “I’ll let you get back to your field trip.” He stood up and stretched his arms over his head briefly. “Since I’m here, do you want to make dinner together tonight?”

Eva could tell that he was still feeling down, so she agreed quickly. “Of course.”

“Is that Captain America?” Jason cried suddenly, making Eva and Steve jump. Before they could react, Peter and three of her classmates were gathered around him. “It is!” Jason confirmed and turned to Eva. “Eva, did you know you were sitting next to Captain America?”

Eva attempted to put on a shocked expression that didn’t convey how much dread she was feeling. “Oh my god!” Her voice being at least two octaves higher than usual, helped the believability of her performance. “I knew he looked familiar.” She shot up from the bench and threw Steve an apologetic look. 

Steve recovered much faster than she did and plastered the signature Captain America smile on his face. “You caught me. I was here to take a break from my duties, but I didn’t realize I would run into such amazing kids.”

Eva’s classmates squealed. “Did you really stay asleep in ice for decades?” one asked. 

“Where did you hide out over the summer?” Another spoke up.

“Can you really jump out of a plane without a parachute?” Peter asked, earning an exasperated look from Eva. 

“Only into water,” Steve told him, his smile faltering slightly. 

“Are you supposed to be here, sir?” Eva asked pointedly. 

“No, so I’m counting on you brave citizens to keep it a secret for me,” Steve caught on quickly and shot them a wink. “Keep up the good work!” He used those super soldier legs to book it around the corner before anyone else could get another word in.

They all stared after him for a moment before everyone broke out into excited discussion. Eva was able to take a step back from the group to suck in a few deep breaths before her heart rate went down. They talked about Captain America and speculated about why he was in the museum all the way back to the front of the museum where they met up with the rest of the group. Jason immediately broke his promise to Steve and told anyone who would listen that they saw Captain America, which the rest of the group didn’t really believe and kept telling them that they probably saw someone who looked a lot like him. 

Eva was distracted as her class hung onto Jason’s every exaggerated word. She knew Steve had trouble adjusting to the twenty-first century initially, but she thought he’d been doing okay. He’d made new friends and found Bucky, but apparently he was still struggling and she wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.

Chapter Text

Field Trip - Part 2

Jamila and Mrs. Warren counted up their group, and they piled back into an elevator to go to the cafeteria. Eva wasn’t aware that there was a cafeteria in the Tower, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was a no-brainer. However, when they stepped out of the elevator, it was nothing like any other cafeteria she had ever seen. 

It was as if they stepped through a portal that led into a rural jungle. The sun was shining from somewhere above, but ahead of them was a dense canopy of trees. There were all sorts of vegetation with big green leaves that flowed in a light breeze that didn’t make sense indoors, and it felt warmer than Eva recalled it being outside in the New York early spring weather. Plenty of people were wandering around but there was so much space that Eva barely noticed.

Jamila cleared her throat in front of them. “Welcome to the cafeteria!” Eva hadn’t realized that she had stopped just outside of the elevator in shock, but she wasn’t the only one. “It’s a bit of a surprise isn’t it? But a good surprise, I hope.” There were a lot of mumbled agreements. “Pepper Potts herself spearheaded the design and construction of this space. After taking over the company, she noticed the need for more work-life balance in all the employees. There is plenty of research indicating the need for people to interact with nature, and I think we all know that’s hard to come by in the city. So she came up with this space along with our designers, engineers, and construction teams. I hear Tony Stark himself contributed to certain aspects of the space.” 

Leading them through the jungle, Jamila ushered the group out into a more open area that had different little clearings in between smaller copses of trees. In the clearings sat small buildings that fit much better into the rest of the Tower’s decor. The buildings were modern and sleek serving foods of all different kinds, but for some reason they still made sense in the forest. In other meadows were various types of seating, some with tables or surfaces for eating and others designed more for relaxing. 

“I know you’re hungry,” Jamila said, gaining their attention again, just as Eva’s stomach responded to the savory smells wafting toward them from one of the closest restaurants. “But just hang on for a few more minutes while I show you the other biomes.”

Eva shared a look of shock and excitement with Peter at the idea. Sure enough, as they moved through the jungle, Jamila led them through a door in a photon shield. They came through the other side and Eva immediately felt the difference, shading her eyes from a much more intense sun. It was hot, not unpleasantly so, but the rocks, sand, brush, and cacti around them made a perfect desert. 

“This one is my favorite because someone in my office loves to crank up the AC,” Jamila told them as she led them toward the other side. The shops in this area made sense with the climate, offering mostly cool foods and nicely shaded seating. There were even a few people putting their feet in a creek nearby as they sipped on something chilled.

Jamila took them into the next biome that made Eva sigh with relief. It was full of pine trees with meadows full of lupine flowers and somehow in the distance was a snow capped mountain. The air was cool, and there were hot drinks and food being served. “Looks like rain,” Jamila said, pointing up. Sure enough, there was a blanket of clouds above them, and Eva felt a raindrop hit her shoulder. Eva and a few of her classmates started to duck for cover, but Jamila stopped them. “Don’t worry! It’s not real rain. It’s a simulation meant to smell, sound, and feel like rain without the unpleasant consequences. Just listen.”

They quieted down and listened to the beautiful sound of rain for a few minutes until it passed and the sun started to shine once again. “We’ve got one more to see, and I saved the best for last.” 

When they walked through the final photon shield, Eva’s nose told her where they were before her eyes could adjust. The smell of salt and sand and a little hint of sunscreen was enough to tip her off, but the sound of gentle waves was the biggest clue until her eyes could take the more intense light. They had stepped onto a perfect beach, complete with soft white sand, palm trees, vibrant verdant mountains with waterfalls, and crystal clear turquoise water. Eva’s mouth watered at the fruit and spicy food being served. 

“Okay! You have an hour to eat and enjoy the cafeteria before we move on to our special engineering surprise,” Jamila told them. She held up her badge. “Your visitor badges will get you one meal and one drink, so choose carefully. Of course, you’re welcome to buy anything extra, but make sure you eat everything before it’s time to move on. Enjoy!”

Once they were left to their own devices, Peter turned to Eva with his eyes nearly popping out of his head. “Did you know this was here?”

“No!” Eva gasped. “I would be living down here if I knew about it. Do you think Tony can make my room into this beach?” 

“I think you should ask,” Peter breathed. “Where do we go?”

They went from one biome to the next, until they had been through each three times. In the end they found MJ and Ned in the mountain biome where they all got their food and sat on the grass in the flowers, gazing at a fake mountain that looked far too real. They told MJ and Ned about running into Steve. Ned and Peter geeked out about Captain America while MJ and Eva guessed the likelihood that he was actually sent by Tony to keep an eye on her. Eva decided not to share what Steve had told her. It seemed like something that Steve barely wanted to tell Eva, so it didn’t feel right sharing with anyone else. 

By the time they finished their food, they still had ten minutes. They decided to go back to the beach biome and sit in the sand. “I’ve never been to a beach like this,” Peter admitted. 

“I’ve never been to a beach,” MJ followed. 

Ned and Eva looked at them in shock. “Man, I wish I could show you guys the Philippines where my family lives. It’s a lot like this but with loud cousins running around,” Ned said wistfully. 

“That sounds worth it,” Peter agreed. He turned to Eva. “Have you been to a beach like this?”

She nodded slowly. “I went to Florida once with my parents and Vic. I remember it a little bit but not much. And I’ve been to Tony’s Malibu house just before I was adopted and again this past summer. It’s really nice there.”

“I bet it’s incredible!” Ned exclaimed. “That’s where he made the first real Iron Man.”

“It does sound nice,” MJ said quietly, staring out at the fake waves in front of them.

“Maybe I can convince Tony to take us over the summer,” Eva suggested. “It would be a lot of fun going with you guys.”

“Seriously?” Ned asked.

Eva shrugged. “Tony will probably suggest something more exciting, but I don’t know if your parents would approve of something out of the country.”

“I’m in,” MJ agreed so suddenly and forcefully that it took Eva by surprise. 

Eva smiled. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”

After they said their goodbyes to MJ and Ned, Eva and Peter found their engineering peers gathering around the elevators with Jamila and Mrs. Warren. As the chaperones were counting up the students and Eva was happily listening to Peter’s ideas for a beach vacation, Flash suddenly appeared behind them. 

“I talked to some other Stark Industries interns at lunch and they said that only college students get internships,” he told them with a smug look. “I’m going to tell someone that you’re lying and you’re going to get thrown out of here.”

Eva looked at him with a straight face. “Okay.”

Flash was taken aback for a moment before he recovered. A few other classmates were now listening in and Flash thrived with an audience. “You asked for it.” They watched as he marched up to Jamila and started talking to her while pointing in their direction. 

Peter sighed. “I don’t think this is going to end well for Flash.”

“He’s the one doing this to himself,” Eva pointed out. “We’re in the system as interns, and FRIDAY doesn’t lie. We’ll finish the tour and everyone will just think we carry coffees around.”

“I think I’ll start carrying coffees if it means that I can come back here,” Peter added, taking one more look around the amazing cafeteria space. 

“We’ll have to come down here much more often,” Eva agreed. 

Jamila finally sent Flash back to the group, but she did not look very happy. Eva gave her an apologetic smile when Jamila glanced toward her and Peter, and she returned it with a little shrug and a thumbs up. They just needed to get through whatever engineering activity Jamila had planned for them, and then they would all finally be done here and her secrets would be safe. 

They piled in the elevator again and the doors opened to a more familiar floor. “Welcome to one of the many Research and Development floors,” Jamila told them. 

Excitement traveled through the students like electricity while Eva looked at Peter with dread. “Even if they learn this secret, no one will figure anything else out,” Peter reassured her. “Let’s just have fun with whatever happens.”

Eva swallowed hard. “Okay,” she agreed. 

Jamila led them through a thankfully quiet hallway and ushered them into a workroom. Once everyone was inside and trying to show some self-restraint to not touch the computer systems and 3D printers at the two workstations set up in the room, Jamila spoke up. “Alright! Now that you’ve been inspired by all the amazing technology you’ve seen, it’s time to get some hands-on experience.” A tinge of anticipation and nerves added to the excitement in the room. “I’m going to split you into two groups and you’ll have an hour to design and print a bridge. When you’re finished, we’ll put them to the test.” She indicated two distinct pillars near the back of the room. “You’ll place your bridge here and we’ll add weight until it breaks. Whichever team’s bridge holds the most weight before breaking will get thirty dollars each to use at the company store.” Her classmates started to mutter to each other about what they would buy. 

“Now before we get into groups, I have one more surprise.” Jamila raised her voice to get their attention back. “There will be a very special guest coming in to help judge your bridge designs. He’ll stick around for a Q&A afterward. You’ll want to make a good impression, so do your best!” 

“Are we going to get to meet Tony Stark?” Betty asked with comically wide eyes and Eva’s heart nearly stopped. 

Jamila laughed. “Oh no, not that special of a guest, but still someone very important in the R&D department.” Eva met Peter’s eye. “Now I’ll randomize your names into groups, and we’ll get started.”

Of course Peter and Eva were split up, and Eva was stuck with Flash. Eva decided to just hang in the back of the group and let them debate what kind of bridge to emulate, but in only a few minutes, they were having trouble getting any ideas into the design system on the computer. 

“If you work here, can’t you fix this?” Flash asked her angrily after someone deleted the work a second time. 

“Yeah, Eva, can you help us out?” Betty begged. 

“Sure,” she said with a smile to Betty and a glare to Flash. Eva stepped up in front of the computer and easily restored their work. Before she knew it, Eva was leading the group through designing their bridge, taking ideas and implementing them into the program. Flash even got over his annoyance of Eva for a moment to add some actually helpful suggestions as the time started to tick down. 

Eva glanced up at the other side of the room where the other team was also finalizing their design. Peter was mirroring her position, bent over the computer and taking suggestions. A competitive urge took over suddenly. “Okay, this looks good,” she told her group as she zoomed out on their design. “But it’s not going to win against the other group.”

“Yeah, Peter is over there designing the next Brooklyn Bridge,” Betty said, defeated. “We need to reinforce ours somehow.”

“How can we do that with just 3D printing plastic?” Flash asked.

A light turned on in Eva’s head. “Exactly!” She turned back around and saw Peter listening. “Stop listening!”

“I’m not!” Peter lied. 

“Liar,” Eva said under her breath and saw Peter smile. “Okay, watch this,” she told her group as she turned back to the computer. “If I do this…” She selected certain aspects of the bridge’s structure and highlighted them, dragging them into a different window. After doing it two more times, Flash understood. 

“Then we print it–”

Eva shushed him, looking over at the other group. “Exactly.” With a few more tweaks and a last minute addition to secure their bridge on the two pillars, Eva started sending the separate pieces to the printer. While the parts started to print, Eva searched through the drawers of the work station until she found what she was looking for. 

“Can I use this?” Eva asked Jamila.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Jamila warned. “The pieces will probably break.”

“Is it against the rules though?” Eva confirmed. 

“I’ll allow soldering irons,” Jamila announced to the room. “You can find them in the workbenches, but I’ll warn you to be careful with your delicate bridges. You won’t have time to reprint anything.”

“Eva, are you sure?” Flash asked skeptically as Eva gingerly picked up their first two pieces. 

“Yes,” she said with confidence. “And this is something Peter can’t do.”

They designed each piece to connect with the next using various interlocking designs, but Eva knew in order to beat Peter’s team, they would need to be stronger. Very carefully, Eva reinforced the connections with the soldering iron, changing the settings and distance frequently to make sure it wouldn’t break. She was so focused that she almost didn’t hear the one minute warning. 

“Hurry up,” Flash hissed. 

“Shut up, Flash and let her do it,” Betty scolded him. 

Thirty seconds later, Eva finished the last connection and put the soldering iron down just in time. “Is it good enough?” Flash asked. 

They all looked up to see an impeccably designed suspension bridge sitting on the workbench in front of the other team. It was much taller and more detailed than theirs, but Eva did see a clear mistake. “What happened there?” she asked as Peter and his team came over to inspect her team’s bridge. 

Peter frowned. “Someone tried to solder it like you and it broke.” He bent down to get a closer look at her own soldering techniques. “Will you show me how you do that later?”

“Sure,” she told him. “As long as you tell me all the genius math you did to build that. Did you add little people?” she asked, noticing tiny people and cars printed onto the bridge. 

“We had extra time,” Peter bragged with a shrug. 

“Oh, here’s our special guest, right on time.” Jamila’s voice was not as peppy as Eva expected it to be. When she turned around to see who it was, Eva knew why. 

“Why are you two here?” Richard asked without a hello or acknowledgement of anyone in the room, making both Eva and Peter jump into rod-straight standing positions. 

“Um,” Eva stuttered, looking at Peter in a panic. 

“We’re on a field trip, sir,” Peter told him. Richard’s frown intensified. “I mean, not sir!”

Richard gave them both an appraising look and turned sharply back to Jamila, who was watching the conversation between Richard and the two high school students with a slightly agape mouth. It was a good thing that Jamila picked up quickly on Richard’s annoyance and jumped right into an introduction. “Everyone, this is Richard Clark, one of the heads of the Research and Development department here at Stark Industries. Richard, you have the honor of judging Midtown’s engineering sophomores in a bridge building competition. Let’s have each of the teams–”

Eva felt bad for Jamila, who obviously hadn’t worked with Richard very much. He ignored her and walked into the room. Eva and Peter knew what that meant and ushered their groups to stand behind their workbenches. Richard stood between their bridges and studied each carefully. The room was completely silent. No one moved. Even Flash was completely still behind Eva as Richard turned toward them. 

“Present,” he told Eva. 

Eva jumped into an impromptu presentation, automatically doing what she usually did in the R&D labs. She didn’t notice everyone’s eyes widened when she put the computer into the 3D holographic mode to better show their pieced together design. Betty was brave enough to speak up about her ideas about the design and connection points, but no one else said anything. 

 At the end, Richard leaned in, his nose nearly touching the bridge, to see her soldering closer. “You soldered this I assume?”

“Yes.”

Richard looked from their work to the 3D hologram and narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been holding back on me, and I don’t appreciate it.”

Eva physically took a step back in surprise, nearly stepping on Flash’s toes. “What?”

He gestured to the holographic design and her soldering. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

Finally realizing her mistake of using Tony’s signature holographic programming. “Oh I just… picked this up from someone during our rotations in the internship,” Eva tried to explain quickly, but she could tell Richard didn’t believe her. 

Luckily, he just moved past that lie and nodded toward the soldering. “And that? If you can do that, you can do more than what I’ve been giving you so far. What can you do?”

Eva nervously scanned the room. Everyone was watching her carefully. “You know,” she said quietly. “MIG and arc welding.”

“I’ve seen that.” Eva could tell that he was putting the clues together in his mind now. “What else?”

She had no idea how to deter him and she was honestly very intimidated by Richard, so she mumbled, “Plasma arc and laser too.”

Richard glared at her for what seemed like an endless amount of time before he gave their work one more look. “You’re on the satellite team starting tomorrow and you have to clean the fridge.” Eva looked up at him in surprise. “Don’t keep anything else to yourself.” He spun on the spot and Peter snapped into focus. “Present.”

Launching into his own explanation with far more equations and words that Eva didn’t understand, Peter also pulled up the holographic system to show his team’s work. Of course Richard was impressed. It was nearly impossible to tell, but Eva saw the way he gave a few sharp nods during Peter’s explanation. 

“Good,” was all he said at the end of Peter’s presentation. “You first.”

Peter and his team very carefully placed their bridge on the two podiums. Jamila was able to take over again and slowly added weights to the bridge. The entire class gathered around and watched with careful, silent attention, holding their breath as each weight was placed. It started to bow when there was over eighty pounds on it, making Eva and her team sweat. Finally, it snapped in half and the weights fell into a net below. 

“Eighty six pounds!” Jamila announced. 

Peter’s team cheered and high-fived each other while Eva and her team clapped politely. Once everything was cleaned up, they placed their bridge on the podium instead. Eva squeezed her hands tightly together as they watched Jamila place the weights on their bridge. Eva’s eyes were glued to those soldered pieces, hoping that they would at least get to seventy-five pounds so it wouldn’t be an embarrassing defeat in front of Richard. Once they reached seventy, Eva began to relax, but the nerves returned in a new way when they reached eighty pounds. She could see the strain on the connection points, but it held. 

When it snapped, Eva’s mouth was hanging open in disbelief. “Eighty-nine pounds!” Jamila cried. “This team wins!”

Eva’s team erupted next to her. When they finally calmed down from their excitement, Richard spoke up, “Sometimes the better design can’t win against the better construction.” Jamila handed out their gift cards and Eva was about to give hers to Peter when Richard stepped into her line of sight. “A word?”

“O-okay,” she agreed hesitantly, unsure what to make of his request. Eva gave Peter a little shrug at his questioning look as she followed Richard into the hallway. No one else really noticed her departure in the excitement of their unexpected win. 

She followed him halfway down the hallway until he turned on her. “Who are you working with?” he asked. 

“Wh-what?” she stuttered. “I mean a lot of people. You know that we float around.”

Richard narrowed his eyes. “There are far too many unanswered questions surrounding you and the other kid. I was told about you only a few days before you showed up, two high schoolers, young high schoolers at that, with this extremely desirable and complex ‘science fair project’.” He even threw up air quotations to emphasize his point. Eva had never seen him talk so passionately about anything other than a project before. “It was one thing to have one of you be a certified genius. It was more believable that way, but now you tell me you have experience with laser and plasma arc welding?”

“Like I said,” Eva tried to interject to get him to stop thinking in the direction he was going. “We float-”

“That’s where you lost me,” Richard interrupted. “Our floor is the only one with that equipment. You can’t learn how to use that equipment on any other floor.”

Eva swallowed hard, trying to think of anything else to say. “I learned that at home,” she tried, but even as it came out of her mouth, she knew it wouldn’t make sense. “I work with my dad.”

Richard’s eyebrows traveled up his forehead. “Your dad has a plasma arc welder? Where? In a New York City apartment?”

“Um…” She was screwed. What was she supposed to tell him? What would he do when she couldn’t answer these questions?

“Oh khakis.”

The new voice in the hallway made Eva jump. She saw Richard’s eyes widen in disbelief, an emotion she had never seen on his face.

“You just had to go and ask those questions.”

Eva spun around to find Tony striding up to them in his casual clothes from the elevator. “Tony!” she exclaimed and was about to tell him off for breaking his promise, until she remembered Richard standing next to her. “Oh my god! It’s– It’s Tony Stark!” Eva tried her best to look like a stunned teenager. 

Tony stopped in his tracks and laughed. Eva dropped the act and doubled over in panic. “Oh shit, I can’t do it.” 

“At least I’ll never have to worry about you wanting to have an acting career.” Tony continued walking toward them, still chuckling. “FRIDAY, save that clip for me in the Newt file.”

“Of course, Boss.”

Once he reached them, Eva tried to push him back toward the elevator. “Tony, get out of here!” she hissed at him, looking down the hallway with wild eyes to make sure that no one from her class had come out of the room. 

“Relax, Newt,” Tony reassured her in a less-than-reassuring tone. “All your little friends are watching a promotional video about the company. I think your problem is in this hallway.”

Eva turned back to a still dumbstruck Richard who was looking between them with wide eyes. She sighed deeply. “So the internship is over,” she concluded. “Can Peter at least keep his? I think we can all agree that he’s earned his place.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Tony told her as he ruffled her hair. “I’d fire the detective over here before you have to give up this precious internship.”

“You can’t fire Richard,” Eva objected. “That’s absurd, plus Pepper would never let you.” 

“There was a rumor that she’s Colonel Rhodes’ goddaughter,” Richard mumbled. 

Tony turned to him. “She is,” he told him bluntly. “But she’s my daughter first.”

Eva squeezed her temples as a stress headache began to form behind her eyes. “Tony,” she whined. “That doesn’t help with the nepotism thing.”

“Look, Newt, you’re going to have to get over that at some point,” Tony told her. “Yes, you probably would never be as good at constructing complex technology as you are now without having spent hundreds of hours in the lab with me, but the Safety Nets were completely your idea, and you and Sticky made that first prototype without any of my help.” He turned back to Richard. “I’d much rather have her in my lab if you don’t want her, but for whatever reason, she wanted to see how a ‘real’ lab runs.”

“Your lab is run by a robot you named DUM-E,” Eva pointed out. 

“The only thing DUM-E runs is a fire extinguisher and it took him years to get that right.” Tony’s expression turned deadly serious as he looked Richard in the eye. “Newt’s identity is a secret for her protection. I take her protection very seriously, and though I don’t want to bring them into it, I also know a team of superheroes that are also very invested in her safety.”

“Tony,” Eva complained. “Tone down the threats.”

“I’m afraid the threats are necessary, Newt,” Tony disagreed without looking away from Richard. “Do we have an understanding?”

“I have no intention of telling anyone, Mr. Stark,” Richard promised, impressively level-headed. “As long as she can keep up with the work and doesn’t hide any more talents from me, I don’t have any problem keeping her as an intern.” 

Raising his eyebrows, Tony glanced at Eva. “Well, she has many kinds of talents, Richard. You’ll have to be more specific about what you want her to share.”

Before Eva could chide Tony for indicating anything about certain gravitational powers, Eva heard the door down the hall open. Her heart nearly stopped and before she could think, Eva reached out, touched Tony, and sent him flying through the open doorway next to them and into an empty lab. Luckily, he grabbed onto the doorframe and caught himself before he fell thirty feet into the far wall of the room.

Eva collected herself as best as she could and turned to face Jamila who was approaching them with a hesitant smile. Without looking, Eva slowly turned Tony’s gravitational pull one hundred and eighty degrees so that he could rest safely on the wall just inside the door. “Hi Jamila,” Eva said quickly. “Richard just wanted to talk to me about something for the R&D team, but we’re almost done.”

Jamila looked between them with some level of concern. Eva knew it was probably weird that Eva was the one providing the explanation, but with just one glance at Richard’s shocked face, Eva knew she was probably the only one able to talk right now. 

“Okay, well I just came out to see if Richard was ready to answer a few questions about the R&D team before we finish up,” Jamila said slowly. 

Eva let out a small breath of relief when Richard turned around with a calm demeanor. “Yes, I will be back momentarily.”

Jamila gave them one more look before giving her signature smile. “Great!” 

As she walked back down the hallway, Eva made sure to keep talking. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the laser welding. I just didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

Once Jamila closed the door behind her, Eva lept around the corner to confirm Tony was okay. He was lounging comfortably on a shelving unit while sitting on the wall. “I guess this cat is out of the bag too.”

“Can you please go back upstairs,” Eva begged as she slowly changed his gravity back to normal and he landed on the ground. “Where I assume you’ve been watching the security cameras with a bag of popcorn.”

“Please, Newt,” Tony scoffed as he walked back into the hallway. “Pizza is a much better food to eat while watching your kid’s field trip. Nice job beating Sticky with that bridge by the way. I expect to see you come home wearing a Stark Industries hat.” Tony turned to Richard on his way to the elevators. “No, she can’t use the gravity thing on the R&D floor, and yes it’s very useful.”

“Okay, okay, we all know that’s why you really adopted me.” Eva began physically pushing Tony toward the elevators. “Time to go.”

“Pepper and I will talk to you in her office at the end of the day, khakis,” Tony told Richard as he finally entered the elevators. “I’ll be watching,” he told Eva with a very annoying smirk. 

Eva let out a long breath once the doors closed behind him. “Sorry about that Richard.”

Richard gave her one long look until he finally said, “Can you convince him to let you do the gravity thing on a few projects?”

Laughing, she responded, “I should have known that would be your first question.” They began to walk back toward where her class was waiting. “I’m afraid not. It’s all a pretty big secret right now.”

Peter waved her over when they reentered the classroom. To his credit, Richard recovered instantly and began to give a quick and precise overview of the R&D team and what they do in the company. Eva and Peter were near the back of the group and were able to talk. “He figured out who my dad is,” Eva whispered.

“What?” Peter began to panic. 

“It’s okay,” Eva assured him. “Tony showed up and we worked it out. Richard won’t be asking too much more about what we do after the internship, but I don’t think he’ll go easy on me anymore either.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing. You’ll get more challenged that way,” Peter pointed out. 

She smiled at him. “As usual, you’re right.”

“I wasn’t right about our bridge,” Peter frowned. 

Eva elbowed him in the side. “Everyone said it was a better design.”

“But not as well built and that’s what mattered in the end. I should get better at building. I’ve been relying on you too much.”

“Peter,” Eva stopped his spiral, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward her until their shoulders bumped. “That’s the point. We work better as a team. If we worked on a bridge together, it would have held a hundred pounds.”

He grinned down at her. “Easy.”

A buzz at her wrist distracted her and she looked down at a text. 

Tony: I thought you respected Richard and now you’re just ignoring him.

Eva rolled her eyes, making sure to angle her head toward the ceiling so Tony could see. 

Eva: I thought you were some important superhero billionaire but I guess you just spend your day watching security footage. 

Tony: Just living up to the helicopter parent accusations

Eva: I know you’re doing this for your own entertainment 

Tony: I do not find you and Sticky flirting very entertaining. 

Eva threw up a well placed middle finger behind Peter’s back so that only FRIDAY would be able to pick it up. 

Tony: Full of all sorts of disrespect today.

Eva put her watch down. “Sorry,” she told Peter who was glancing at her curiously. “Apparently, Tony has been watching all day for fun.”

Peter blanched. “Really?” he squeaked, taking a very obvious step away from Eva. 

Her watch buzzed again. Tony: Good Sticky.

Eva pulled Peter back toward her, sticking her tongue out toward the cameras. 

Tony: I guess you need a good lesson about respect. 

Eva frowned as she looked at the message, and Peter slid away from her again, glancing around the ceilings at the cameras. Before Eva could ask about what he meant, the wall behind Richard suddenly lit up. Richard was just wrapping up his explanation when he was interrupted by an image of Captain America spinning his chair around and taking a seat. 

“So, you got detention. You screwed up.”

A snort of laughter escaped Eva’s mouth, which wasn’t really noticed by anyone else as the entire class erupted into confused laughter. Jamila stepped up with her StarkTab and frantically tried to turn it off. Eva took pity on her and whispered into her watch, “FRIDAY, go ahead and turn it off for her.”

The projection died and Jamila visibly sighed with relief. “I’m so sorry Mr. Clark. I have no idea why that happened.” Richard gave her a withering stare and Jamila quickly turned to the group. “Any questions about the R&D department before Mr. Clark has to go?”

Flash’s hand shot up into the air and Richard reluctantly nodded in his direction. “How can we get an internship here?”

“Get noticed for the right reasons,” Richard told him bluntly. “Usually that means through research or development of a specific project in college or a PhD program.”

Flash didn’t like that answer. “How did they get internships then?”

Richard narrowed his eyes at Flash who did not understand the danger he was getting into. “Their Safety Net project got the attention of some very important people. It combined the interests and values of the company as well as the Avengers, making it a very valuable idea. Internships were offered in exchange for the idea, but they would not have remained on my floor if they didn’t continually prove themselves. That is why they are here.” Flash was clearly fuming, but had the common sense to shut up. Richard turned toward Eva and Peter in the back of the group. “And they better keep proving themselves if they want to keep it.”

“Yes sir!” Peter agreed quickly, earning a glare from Richard. 

“Drop the formalities.”

Eva smiled and couldn’t help herself as she clicked her heels together and saluted Richard. “Yes, captain!” Richard’s glare intensified, but Eva could have sworn there was a glimmer of a smile as he turned on his heel and left the room. 

Eva and Peter were swarmed with their classmates’ prying questions about their internships as they headed back to the ground floor. Jamila led them to the gift shop where most of the other sophomore classes had gathered. Eva and Peter managed to tear themselves away from the other Engineering students and found MJ and Ned. They explained their exciting day to them as they pursued the various Stark merch. Peter got a t-shirt that had an Iron Man pun with an iron on it. Eva managed to find the absolute worst model of Tony’s original arc reactor to buy. She texted a picture of it to Clint, asking what havoc they could cause with it. Clint immediately had ideas of replacing Iron Man’s arc reactor or wearing it under his own shirt during the next press junket. 

It was kind of annoying to take a bus all the way back to school and then ride all the way home again, but when she finally got back to the top of the Tower, Eva was surprised to find Steve already there. 

“Welcome home!” he said, apparently in a much better mood than when she saw him earlier that day. He was in the kitchen. “Tony and Ms. Potts are apparently in a meeting,” he informed her. 

Eva grimaced. “I think that’s my fault,” she told him as she swung her back onto the couch and joined him in the kitchen. “The head of the floor I work on in my internship found out about Tony. I think they’re making him sign some super scary contract to not tell anyone else.”

Steve stopped mid-chopping an onion and turned toward her. “Are you going to lose your internship?”

“No.” Eva found washed mushrooms on the counter and joined Steve in the chopping. “I don’t think this guy cares too much.”

The sound of their knives hitting the wooden cutting boards filled the room as they worked, until Steve spoke up again. “Is what Tony does something you want to keep doing? Making things, that is.”

Eva shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think I’m good enough to live up to the family name,” she admitted quietly. 

“What do you mean? Of course you are.”

She shook her head. “I guess I have a pretty steady hand and a good sense for building things and putting them together, but I’m not a genius by any measure. I can’t really come up with amazing ideas and figure out all the science behind it and stuff. Not like Tony… or Peter.” She sighed and grabbed another mushroom. “I guess I wouldn’t mind just continuing to build for them. It’s really fun and I am good at it. The gravity thing definitely helps a lot, but…”

Steve had stopped chopping and was now watching her. “You want to do something on your own,” he finished her thought. 

Eva made one more slice before putting her knife down. “Yeah,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t think I would feel… accomplished if I just built all of their ideas and that’s it.”

“There’s all sorts of things you’d be great at,” Steve encouraged her, but she didn’t feel much better. If she was being completely honest with herself, it sometimes made her sad to be sitting in the lab while Tony and Peter talked science and she just put little pieces together in the corner. Not all the time, but when she was already feeling down or disconnected, it didn’t help. 

This pity party probably wasn’t helping Steve, so she smiled up at him and changed the subject. “What would you want to do if you weren’t Captain America?”

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed. Eva could tell that he wanted to stay on the last topic, but he obliged and answered. “I’m not sure. I don’t think I’d do too well in an office.”

Eva snorted at the idea. “Yeah, I can’t imagine that.”

“Maybe something with sports?”

“You’d be a great coach,” Eva suggested. “But I guess that’s pretty close to leading the Avengers, just on a smaller level.”

“You’re right,” Steve chuckled. 

Eva pinched her chin, deep in thought. “Hmm, you’re a good leader and love helping people, which makes me think of a politician.” Steve grimaced. “Right, no politics. So maybe a therapist or social worker or doctor?” She turned to him. “Were you good at school?”

“Pretty average,” he admitted. “But I think we’re getting closer.” Eva tried thinking of anything else, but Steve beat her to it. “Before the war, I was too poor to go to college, but if I could have, I think I would have become a teacher.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I’d always been good with kids and I knew I could be a good leader. I just didn’t have the other skills at the time to do any physical leading.”

Eva smiled at him. “You’d be a great teacher,” she told him genuinely. “Maybe it’s because of the whole frozen for sixty years thing, but I could see you being a high school history teacher and football coach or something like that.”

Steve grinned back at her and returned to chopping, but there was a sadness in his eyes. “Maybe in another life.”

Eyebrows furrowing together, Eva said, “Or maybe once you put the shield down. You know, Tony has been talking about retiring for a while. You could do the same thing. There are new heroes popping up all over the place lately.”

He shrugged without looking at her. “I’ve heard and I’ve thought about it.” Before Eva could ask more, he moved on. “You’re also a leader who wants to help people. Is that something you’d want to make into a career?”

“Probably,” she admitted. “I’m not sure if I have much experience being a leader, but I do think about helping people in ways other than being a hero a lot.”

“One of the first things Tony told me about you was that you were a good leader at twelve years old in that homeless encampment. I think you’re a great hero to them.”

Eva shrugged. “That was when I was so young. I don’t know that I had any idea what I was doing. I just wanted to make sure everyone was safe and comfortable.”

“Sounds like a good leader to me.” He bumped her gently with his elbow after he scraped the chopped onions into the pot. “You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out, but I have no doubt that you’ll be just as successful as Tony for much better reasons before we know it.”

The ding of the elevator interrupted them and Tony and Pepper got off. Eva jumped into a play-by-play retelling of her day as she continued to help Steve with dinner. Pepper briefly asked Steve why he wasn’t at the compound and Steve gave a vague excuse, so Eva didn’t mention running into him at the museum. However, she noticed that Tony didn’t look too surprised to see Steve. 

Later that night, Eva and Tony were in the lab working on their own when she brought it up again. “Did you know that Steve goes to that museum a lot?” 

Tony glanced up briefly. “I did.”

She paused, wondering if it was breaking Steve’s trust by continuing, but she wanted to know if Tony had figured out why Steve was sitting down there so often. “Do you know why?”

“I have my guesses.”

Eva just nodded and went back to her work, as did Tony, until she had to bring up something that was bothering her. “He told me that he’s jealous of us.”

That made Tony stop and look up at her. “Jealous of us?”

“Jealous of our relationship,” she clarified. “Me and you.”

Tony stared at her, baffled for a moment, before a smug smile appeared on his face. “Makes sense.”

“Does it?” Eva asked. 

Tony leaned back in his chair. “Who wouldn’t want to be my kid?”

“Tony,” Eva moaned, exasperated. 

He chuckled and scrolled through something on his computer. “Seriously kid, I think anyone would be jealous of us. We’ve got a good thing going.”

Eva smiled at him. He was right of course. She trusted him implicitly, and she knew that he’d tear down the world for her. “I guess you’re right.”

Chapter Text

Endgame - Part 1

Tony felt strangely warm. 

It was strange because he had been cold for twenty-two days. That probably should have scared him because it was a sign that the end was coming quickly, but he was done feeling scared… and angry… and guilty. He was done feeling. 

Despite his lack of feeling, Tony’s mind wandered freely. That morning twenty-two days ago had started so strangely. He’d had an incredibly vivid dream of Pepper being pregnant, picking out a name, and telling Newt. He joked with Pepper about it on their run, but Tony was being serious. He was so sure that she was pregnant. It wasn’t impossible. They had been trying. It had taken a few days for Tony to muster up the courage to talk with Newt about it, but he was worried for nothing. She was just as excited about the idea as they were. Pepper brushed him off and Tony was ready to go into a bodega that moment to get a pregnancy test when Strange appeared and ruined everything. Now he’ll never know if he was right, and that was maybe the worst part.

At least Newt would be happy that Bruce was back. It was good to see him again, even if it was for a brief moment and mostly to hear probably the worst news he could have brought with him from space. Once Strange’s magic friend explained the Infinity Stones, Tony knew it was exactly what he had been preparing for this entire time, and they were wildly unprepared.

The worst part of it all was how Newt played into it. Clearly she had gotten her powers from the Space Stone, probably in utero. Her parents were pretty ingrained in the astrophysics community, well before Tony cared about it, and most likely they had been shown the Tesseract by SHIELD for whatever reason. In the end, it didn’t matter how. Newt was one of the few beings in the universe that could touch one of these things which put her in unimaginable danger… again.

So when she called him as the spaceship descended on Midtown, Tony told her to stay away and not to get involved. He could tell she was worried, but after what they had been through with Graves almost a year ago, Tony knew that she would stay away. Sticky on the other hand swung into action without a care in the world. The kid had definitely proven himself. The whole point of getting the team back together and building a training program was for these circumstances. Of course when they called Cap for backup, he was in Europe with a few other Avengers. They were about to leave when a spaceship came for Vision and his Stone. Tony had no idea what happened to them after that. He lost all contact with Earth when they left the atmosphere. 

What followed was one insane event after another. Sending a crazy alien into the vacuum of space, crash landing a spaceship, meeting a group of eclectic allies, and facing off against Thanos himself. They were so close to getting those Stones off his hand, but in the end Strange gave up the Time Stone for him. 

Tony played that moment in his head over and over without gleaming any other information. Why did Strange want him to live? Did it have something to do with Newt? The wizard was definitely concerned with the possibility of the kid going off the deep end and ending the world with the Space Stone, but if he saw the future with his Stone, wouldn’t he have seen Tony dying here? Why would it matter if he lived another twenty-two days? 

It didn’t matter. They had lost. Thanos had won. Half of the population of the universe was gone with a snap, deteriorating into dust. Who knows what was left for him on Earth. Maybe nothing. Maybe Pepper and Newt were gone too. It was a fifty-fifty chance, so how would he know? One thing he did know was that Sticky was gone. 

If Tony had any capacity to feel anything, he would have been drowning in despair and guilt over the kid still. Watching that kid cling onto him desperately as he felt him disintegrate was maybe the worst thing that has ever happened to Tony. Maybe it was best that he met the end here so he would never have to witness the absolute devastation on Newt’s face when he told her what happened to him.

Tony rolled over and saw his helmet. He had recorded messages for Pepper and Newt every day. Even if it was pointless, either because he was about to die lightyears away from Earth or they were already gone, it made him feel like he could maybe say goodbye. He couldn’t feel much now, but the need for a dramatic ending instead of rolling over and dying forced him into a sitting position for one last message. 

His message was mostly explaining how his end would be peaceful and then some jokes to make Newt laugh, but he had to add a bit of truth at the end. 

“It’s always you – both of you.”

He couldn’t remember much past that. There was a point where he was on the floor and then someone moved him to a chair. He saw a bright light outside of the ship, which didn’t make much sense, but the next thing he knew, they were landing on Earth and the murderous robot was helping him onto the lawn of the Avengers’ complex. He couldn’t quite believe it when Cap strolled up to him looking completely unharmed. Strangely, one of the first things out of his mouth was admitting that he lost the kid. The next was to ask about his family. 

Pepper was there, beautiful and alive and embracing him. He used every ounce of strength he had left to hug her back. But all the strength left him when she pulled back and he could see her expression. That was all he needed to know that Newt was gone. 

Someone helped him into a wheelchair and he registered that Rhodey was there. It was almost like he was back in that spaceship. There were no feelings or thoughts in his head. It was empty. 

It remained empty as the surviving Avengers moped around him. It remained empty as they told him about what useless bullshit they had been doing for three weeks. It remained empty as he watched the faces of the dead flash by on the screen. Cap was asking him if he had any ideas when Newt’s face flashed by with the rest, like she was just one of the others and not the most important one. 

Suddenly he was feeling everything for the first time in weeks. Rage, disbelief, despair, confusion, and guilt coursed through his veins. And he took it out on everyone around him. Rhodey tried to make him sit back down but Tony stood onto his unsteady feet and let them all know exactly what kind of ideas he had. He knew, as his voice raised and he ripped the IV out of his arm, that it was only making everyone feel worse, but he didn’t care, so he kept going.

“I told you that we needed to put a shield around Earth years ago, but it interfered with everyone’s precious freedoms. And where did that get us? We lost! We lost everything and we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

“Tony–” 

“No!” He pushed Rhodey away and stumbled over to get in Cap’s face. “No. There’s no hope. There’s no magical solution that I’ll come up with at the last minute this time. It’s over. We wasted an entire year so that I could recover our reputation because of your mistakes while you sat around in a palace. A precious year we could have spent coming up with a way to prepare for this and that’s on you. So you deal with it. I’m done.” He tore the arc reactor off his chest and shoved it into Cap’s hand. “Take this and if you see that purple asshole again, put this on and hide because you didn’t win this time and you won’t win the next.”

Tony felt a wave of fatigue hit him and turned back to a chair, but Cap just had to speak up again. “Tony, don’t do this.”

Spinning on the spot, Tony’s fury radiated out of every pore. “She’s gone!” The room was impossibly quiet as the reality set in. “There’s no point anymore. They’re a–all gone.” Breathing was getting hard, and Tony wasn’t sure if it was the starvation or the grief. “She’s gone.” Tony fell to his knees and people rushed toward him. “I’m fine.” He tried to wave them off and get up, but everything went black. He welcomed it.

Trees flashed by on either side. Tony was never a particularly patient driver, but he thought he had gotten better in the last few years with Morgan in the back seat. Today was different. Morgan wasn’t in the backseat, and Tony had made a decision. 

He knew those idiots would show up one day with some impossible idea to fix everything. Honestly, he thought it would have been much sooner, and if it had been sooner, he wouldn’t have hesitated to give it a try. But now, it was a much more complicated decision. 

Only a week after he returned from space, Pepper gave him the news that she was pregnant. On one hand, he was ecstatic to become a father again and to be able to watch a child grow from birth and see them become their own person. On the other hand, it felt like he was fully betraying Newt by moving on. So instead of figuring it out, Tony didn’t do anything. 

It was difficult to think back to that time. Tony was less than proud of how he acted. Pepper was independent and smart and figured it out, but she was mourning Newt just as much as he was. Despite that, he had trouble looking at her growing stomach and the ticking clock of when he would have to officially move on and pull himself together. He avoided it by finding the lake house, moving them out of the Tower, and settling into their new home far away from everyone else. 

Tony thought that being alone in that house would help him get over it, but it was still hard to face the new reality. Moving out of the Tower was like saying goodbye to Newt and all the memories of her. Moving into a new place made him think about all the things Newt would like and imagining her there with them. There was simply no escape. She haunted his dreams so he wasn’t sleeping, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to make anything as a distraction because she and Sticky haunted the lab. Thoughts of Sticky only made him feel more guilty about failing the kid but also being with him in that moment instead of Newt. She had died alone. 

Everything was quiet during the pregnancy and Tony thought that once Morgan was born, a switch would flip and he would move on to being a father again. 

It didn’t. He was just as depressed. 

Of course the day of her birth was one of the best days of his life. Getting to hold her and seeing just how small she was changed his perspective on the world. Taking her home and discovering the intricacies of taking care of a baby was exciting, but at the same time, he just wanted to know how Newt would react, how she would step up as an older sister, how she would have looked holding Morgan for the first time. 

It got harder as time went on and Pepper stepped up in ways that Tony couldn’t. At first she was understanding and told Tony that she knew he still needed to heal, but a few months in, she snapped. 

Tony would never forget what she told him the night that Morgan had spit up on Pepper’s face and the dishes hadn’t been done and Tony hadn’t finished the laundry. Pepper stormed onto the porch where Tony did most of his wallowing and threatened to leave him. 

“Tony, I understand how absolutely devastated you are. You had such a special relationship with her. But I was her mother as much as you were her father. I am feeling the same crushing pain that you are.” Tears streamed down Pepper’s face. “Every time I look at Morgan I think of her and how everything would be better if she was here, but the difference is that I am not giving up. You have another daughter who needs her father and you are failing her.”

He could fill in the unspoken words: you are failing her like you failed Newt. 

But now he had another chance. Morgan was still here and he needed to step up. From that moment on, Tony was fully committed. The pain was still there. He felt it every day for five years, but it became bearable, or at least manageable in the day to day. 

As Morgan grew up, Tony made sure she had everything she could ever want. Instead of designing Iron Man suits, he helped design doll houses. Instead of attending boring meetings with world leaders, he attended tea parties with a stuffed bunny and a weird looking frog Happy gave Morgan. Instead of constructing new gadgets for the Avengers, he designed toy cars that drove across any surface. Other than the unique gifts that no other kid would ever get, Morgan lived a very normal life. 

That’s why when Uncle Sam, Pym’s experiment gone wrong, and Bruce showed up with a time travel idea, he brushed them off. He had worked so hard to be a stable presence for Morgan, and he was finally starting to feel happy again. A half-baked plan wasn’t worth risking it all and sending him spiraling when it inevitably failed. 

 However, that night when his brain started solving equations on its own, Tony couldn’t help but try to figure it out, and he did. Tony told Pepper and suggested that he throw the solution into the lake and let it rot, but she was the voice of reason as she always was. 

“If there’s even a chance of bringing her back, everyone back, you’ll never rest Tony.”

Now as the Avengers Complex peeked through the treetops while he sped toward the gates, Tony was fully dedicated. This was the last chance to bring her back and complete their family. He would succeed, no matter the cost.

Chapter Text

Endgame - Part 2

The last thing Peter remembered was feeling like his insides were falling apart. He stumbled over to Mr. Stark who seemed uncharacteristically worried and then everything got fuzzy. He was still on that weird planet where they fought Thanos, but Mr. Stark wasn’t there. The pain was gone, but his spidey sense was telling him that something was off. He just couldn’t place what it was. 

Jumping up off the ground, Peter saw Dr. Strange about a hundred feet away and webbed his way to him. “Dr. Strange! What’s going on? Where’s Mr. Stark?”

He helped the wizard guy to his feet as someone came up over the rubble behind them. Peter was ready to engage, but when he saw it was some of the Guardians of the Galaxy, he lowered his web shooters. Dr. Strange spoke up before anyone could say anything else. 

“We don’t have much time,” Dr. Strange told them, floating onto a nearby rock to get a look at all of them. “I need you to listen carefully.”

“Did we lose the battle?” the big gray guy asked. 

“We definitely didn’t win,” the star god said. 

“Where is everyone else who was here?” Peter asked again, noticing that the racoon and the angry blue lady also weren’t there.

“Listen!” Dr. Strange interrupted, annoyed by their questions. “I will explain if you just shut up.” Peter snapped his mouth shut and saw that the others did the same with varying levels of enthusiasm. “I am about to tell you things that are going to sound unbelievable, but I need you to just accept it if we’re going to defeat Thanos. Do you understand?”

“Yes!” Peter agreed quickly, getting anxious to hear what was happening and wishing he would just get to it. His spidey sense was still tickling the back of his mind, and he couldn’t help glancing around like Thanos was about to pop out of somewhere. 

“We’ve dealt with things your tiny human brain couldn’t imagine,” the gray guy bragged. 

The bug lady nodded her agreement. “Yes, your brains are surprisingly smooth.”

“It’s been five years,” Dr. Strange told them without a preamble. “Thanos got all the stones and did what he was planning to do: get rid of fifty percent of all life in the universe. And we were part of that fifty percent.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment while that sunk in. The star god spoke up first. “Well that’s something we haven’t dealt with before.”

Peter felt his brain short-circuit. “Five years? Like since we fought him?”

“Yes,” Dr. Strange confirmed, already waving his hands around to do his crazy magic stuff.

“Where have we been for five years?” the bug lady asked.

“Dead,” Dr. Strange said matter-of-factly. 

About a hundred thoughts flew through Peter’s head at once, but it was so much he couldn’t latch onto a single one. “If we were dead, how are we here?” the star guy asked.

Dr. Strange stopped waving his hands and turned back to them. “That’s not important right now. Right now, I need you to listen to me very carefully.” Peter unintentionally leaned forward to make sure he caught every word. “We have one chance to defeat Thanos once and for all. And I mean that: one chance. So much has to go right for it to work.”

“What do we need to do?” the star guy asked, now completely serious. 

“I’m going to gather all our allies and when a portal opens here, I need you to go through and be ready to fight. During the fight, I will open another portal in front of you, Starlord.” Dr. Strange pointed directly at him. “When that happens, you need to get the Power Stone at all costs.”

The Starlord looked surprised. “You want me to get the Power Stone? I don’t know if you heard but that didn’t go well last time without help from the other Guardians.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Strange agreed. “You and your group have proven that when a being unable to wield a stone on their own teams up with others, they can wield it together. You can wield the Power Stone, but you wouldn’t be able to handle the full strength of all six stones.”

“Who’s to say I can’t,” Starlord shrugged.

“Me,” Dr. Strange told him with finality. “If we want to snap Thanos away for good, we have to do it together.”

“Who’s we?” Peter asked hesitantly, a bad feeling he knew the answer. 

“There are only a few among us that have proven they can handle certain stones,” Dr. Strange explained. “Starlord has wielded the Power Stone. I have kept the Time Stone for years. Wanda is connected to the Mind Stone. Hawkeye has earned the Soul Stone. Thor is familiar with the Reality Stone.” Dr. Strange looked directly at Peter. “And Eva has used the Space Stone multiple times.”

Peter’s heart sank. “She’s going to be here? In front of Thanos? But Mr. Stark wanted her to stay away.”

“Because he knew that the stones were involved,” Dr. Strange waved it off. “Her role is essential for this to work. And you have to make sure that when she gets the stone, she keeps it.”

“Who is this Eefa?” the bug lady asked. 

Dr. Strange didn’t answer, not breaking eye contact with Peter. Peter did not like the idea of Eva going up against Thanos. He was really, really strong, and so was Eva, but she also didn’t have enhanced healing or an enhanced body. If Thanos got to her, he could kill her easily. Of course, she was smart and powerful enough to avoid Thanos, but Dr. Strange was telling him that she would be directly in the middle of everything. Finally, Peter nodded his understanding. 

“Eva or Freefall is Tony Stark’s daughter,” Dr. Strange told the Guardians and moved on so quickly that they didn’t have time to ask further questions. “Everyone else’s job is to make sure those people get the right stones when those portals appear and get them together so they can wield them and destroy Thanos. Got it?” He didn’t give them a chance to agree and turned away, a sparkling portal opening in front of him. “Be ready.” He disappeared into it and the portal evaporated, leaving them alone again. 

The Guardians of the Galaxy started talking to each other about the plan, but Peter had to sit down on a nearby rock to gather his thoughts. It was difficult to land on one thing to think about. Had it really been five years? What did that mean? What would it mean if he was dead for five years and Aunt May was alive? What if Eva had been alive for the past five years and she was five years older than him? 

Dr. Strange was right. They couldn’t afford to think about that right now. That Thanos guy was really strong and fast and smart, even when he had just one or two of the stones. Eva and Mr. Stark were going to go up against him to get the Stones away from him. Peter needed to focus and make sure he was there to help them in any way he could. He wasn’t going to let anyone else die.

When did it start raining?

Eva turned her face toward the sky and felt a few raindrops splatter across her cheeks and forehead. She always liked when it rained in the city, but for some reason it felt even more amazing to breathe in the damp air and feel the rain on her skin today. 

“Eva?”

She turned and saw MJ. It took her a second to remember what they were doing, which was strange, but once the memories came back, she snapped back into focus. 

“MJ, where did you go?” she asked. 

MJ frowned and opened her mouth to say something but closed it again. She looked around the street. “I don’t know.”

Now Eva was on high alert. Peter had jumped out of the school bus when a spaceship descended on the city and swung toward the commotion. Just as Eva was about to do the same, she got a call from Tony. He told her to stay put and not to come under any circumstance. She reluctantly agreed and stayed on the school bus. When they got back to school, the news was reporting that the spaceship left earth after a brief fight in the streets with two unnamed aliens, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange. There was no report of deaths or injuries among the heroes, so Eva began to relax a little bit. 

They got back to school, made some excuses for Peter’s absence, and got ready to end the day after their field trip to the MOMA. Eva did her best to focus on her work for the last hour of school and not think of what may have happened to any of the Avengers. Despite her best efforts, when the bell rang and Peter still hadn’t returned or texted her, Eva was barely holding it together. MJ suggested that they go to a nearby bodega with Ned. 

Her friends did their best to distract her, and she did her best to relax. No news was good news, right? They were halfway to the bodega when things got strange. A bike with no rider swerved off the road and right in front of MJ. Eva pulled her out of the way to avoid a collision. Before she could even ask MJ if she was okay, a car crashed head on into another next to them. Eva pulled MJ and Ned toward a building to take cover from anything else. 

Once they were under an awning, Eva turned to check on MJ when she felt her arm disintegrate in her fingers. When her eyes caught up, MJ wasn’t there. Instead this weird dust coated her hands. Eva searched the surrounding area but didn’t see MJ anywhere. 

“Ned, where did–” 

Ned wasn’t there either, even though she had just been holding onto him too. Dread started to pool in her stomach as she stepped out from the awning to get a better look at where they went. It wasn’t dread she was feeling in her stomach, though. It hurt too much. The last thing she thought was that she hoped Tony and Peter were okay. 

Now she was in the same spot. Her stomach felt fine and MJ, and Ned were right where she remembered pulling them to, but she was standing a few feet away. “What happened?” Ned asked. 

Eva scanned the street again. It was unmistakable. Things were different. She clearly remembered a serious car crash just happening, but there were barely any cars in the street. In fact, there were a few confused people sitting in the middle of the road. A lone car passing by honked at them and they slowly stood and moved to the sidewalk. 

“I don’t know,” Eva admitted. “But something is definitely wrong.”

She thought about pressing her panic button, but decided against it. They weren’t in danger. It was just… off. No reason to panic everyone until she knew what was going on. 

“Let’s just get to the bodega and then we can figure out what’s happening,” Eva suggested, but before they could agree, her phone started ringing. Digging it out of her pocket, she felt relief when she saw who was calling. “Hold on. It’s Pepper. Maybe she knows what’s happening.”

Ned and MJ nodded, still looking uneasy as Eva answered the call. “Hi Pepper,” Eva spoke into the phone. “I’m glad you called. Something weird happened here but I can’t quite explain it.” They watched as someone sprinted past them. “Are you okay? Have you heard from Tony or Peter?”

There was a strange silence on the other end of the call and then a strangled sob. Eva yanked the phone away from her ear to confirm it was really Pepper on the other end. “Pepper, what’s wrong?” she asked, beginning to panic. “Are you okay? Is Tony okay?”

Eva heard a shaky breath on the other end and then she finally spoke. “I’m so-sorry, sweetheart. I’m just so happy… so so happy to hear your voice ag–”

The sound became muffled, but Eva could tell that Pepper was fully crying. Eva walked back under the awning outside of a dentist that Eva could have sworn had just been open but was now boarded up. MJ and Ned were watching her anxiously as she continued to try to get answers. “Pepper, what’s wrong?”

Pepper took another breath and spoke again with a stronger voice. “Honey, I don’t want you to freak out too much, but something pretty big happened.”

Eva’s stomach dropped. “What happened?”

“There was a big fight with aliens that Tony and Peter were a part of on that day.” Eva frowned at her wording. “And they lost.”

“They lost?” Eva gasped, she felt her knees buckle and she had to hold onto the wall to keep from falling over. “Are they– are they…?” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. 

“No, no. They are both okay as far as I know,” Pepper reassured her, but something in her tone told Eva that Pepper wasn’t being completely truthful. “But we lost you after the fight.”

Eva’s eyebrows furrowed and she shook her head, trying to understand. “What do you mean? I’m right here. MJ and Ned are with me too.”

Pepper’s voice broke again. “They’re bo-both with you?”

“Yeah, we were going to the bodega by school when there was this car crash…” Eva’s words trailed off as she heard Pepper crying again. 

“Darling, you’ve been gone for five years.”

Eva froze. Did she hear her right? What did she mean by that? That can’t be true. How could she have been gone for any amount of time? She remembered everything. 

“Pepper, what do you mean? We didn’t go anywhere.”

“I can’t imagine how confused you must be.” There was a scream from a nearby building and other people in the streets were on the phone looking just as confused as Eva. “But Tony and the Avengers went up against this alien who wanted to get rid of half of all life and…” Pepper trailed off for a minute and Eva took the chance to think about what she was saying. Get rid of half of all life? Like kill half of the world? “And, well, he did it.”

Now Eva’s head was fully spiraling. “Eva, what is she saying?” MJ asked, but Eva couldn’t form a single thought, let alone speak. 

“Eva, sweetie, listen. I’m going to come to you right now, okay?” Pepper told her, sounding stronger and more determined now. “I’ll come get you and I’ll explain everything, okay? You just stay exactly where you are and keep yourself and your friends safe. Okay?”

Eva opened her mouth to respond but nothing came out. There were more people running around now. People were either very confused or weeping openly. Her brain understood what Pepper had said and there were things happening that connected with her story, but it just didn’t compute for Eva. 

Before she could get her thoughts under control, a familiar golden sparkle filled the air in front of her. Dr. Strange stepped out of the portal, looking very serious. “Put the phone down,” he told her. “We don’t have much time.”

Eva just gaped at him until Pepper spoke up. “Who’s that Eva?”

“Dr. Strange,” Eva managed. 

“Tell Ms. Potts I’m going to talk to her next and to get in a suit,” Dr. Strange instructed. “Hang up.”

“Pepper-”

“I heard,” Pepper told her. “I trust Dr. Strange, so just follow his instructions and I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Eva?” Eva paused before ending the call. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Eva told her. 

Dr. Strange barely waited until she pressed the end call button before he reached out and took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look directly at him. “There’s a lot happening, but I need you to listen to me right now. Can you do that?”

“Ye-yeah.” She was struggling to form any thoughts, but she agreed. Apparently Dr. Strange could tell she wasn’t really listening. 

He shook her shoulders a little. “You are the only one who can save Tony Stark from dying.”

Eva snapped her attention to Dr. Strange. “What?”

“Good.” He was apparently pleased with her newfound focus and continued. “If you want to save his life, I need you to listen to me.”

“How do you know he’s going to die?” she asked. 

“Like I said, there’s not enough time for a full explanation,” he told her. “So I need you to listen and do as I say.”

Eva swallowed and nodded her head. “Okay.”

He let go of her shoulders and took a step back. “In about fifteen minutes, I’m going to open another portal for you. When I do, I need you to get through it as fast as you can and get the Space Stone away from Tony Stark.”

“Space Stone?” 

“The Tesseract contained an ancient stone with unimaginable power. I can’t explain it all right now. All you need to know is that you need to get to it and hold off Thanos for as long as you can while the other Avengers do the rest.”

Eva tried to put together exactly what he was asking her to do. “I get the Tesseract, or what was in the Tesseract, away from Tony and hold off… who?”

Dr. Strange sighed in frustration. “Thanos is the guy who killed us for five years. If he gets the Stones, including the one from the Tesseract, he’ll do it again. Or worse – end all life. Make sense?”

“What does he look like?”

“Big, purple, angry.”

“Okay, okay,” Eva voiced her understanding, trying to satisfy him enough to leave her alone so that she could try to comprehend it all when he left. “In fifteen minutes, a portal opens, I fly through, get the Tesseract, and hold off the bad purple guy.”

“Yes.” Dr. Strange held her shoulders again and bent down to her level to look her right in the eyes. “It’s not going to be easy, but if you focus on saving Tony, everything will work out in the end.”

Eva studied Dr. Strange more closely for the first time since he came through the portal. All the sounds of people yelling and crying around them faded into the background. Something about his eyes told her that he knew a lot more than he was letting on and he seemed… afraid. This was serious and dangerous, and he wasn’t exaggerating any of his story. 

“You can count on me,” she promised. 

“Be ready,” he told her and disappeared into a spiral of gold. 

Eva stared at where the portal had just been for a second and then turned to MJ and Ned with a new wave of determination. They were both standing stock-still and wide-eyed at her. “Will you help me find a place to get changed?” she asked, swinging her bag onto her back.

They snapped into action and rushed with her around the corner. MJ burst into the first open establishment they could find. “We need the changing rooms,” she announced to a woman in her early twenties who was talking on the phone to someone. Eva barely looked at her, and the employee barely looked at them, engrossed in the phone call. MJ and Ned stood guard as she changed into her Freefall costume, using the mirror to make sure everything was in place before stepping out. 

“We have five minutes,” MJ told her. “Should we go back to the corner?”

“Let’s stay here.” Eva glanced at the employee who was crying into the phone and unaware of the superhero in her store. “Strange will open the portal wherever I am.”

Eva began to pace while MJ stood nearby with her arms crossed and Ned sat stiffly on the side of a table full of clothes on display. They remained in a tense silence for a few minutes until MJ spoke up. “This is serious, Eva.”

“I know.”

“It’ll be dangerous.”

“I know.”

“Strange was scared.”

Eva paused and looked right at MJ, who was reflecting everything Eva was feeling in her expression. “I know,” Eva repeated quietly. “He was sure Tony would die, so I’m not going to let him.”

“What about the whole thing about all of life ending?” Ned pointed out, his voice squeaking halfway through. 

“That too.” Eva resumed her pacing. “I have to focus on Tony right now though.”

It was quiet for a few more seconds and Eva felt her nerves build in her throat. “This is the longest fifteen minutes of my life.”

“Eva,” Ned spoke up hesitantly, leaning forward from his precarious seat on the table. “If Iron Man lost to this purple guy before, how are you going to hold him off by yourself?”

Her eyes fell to the floor and she stopped pacing. Eva knew exactly how she would hold him back and she knew that Strange had the same idea. If she was being completely honest with herself, the butterflies in her stomach weren’t completely made up of nervousness but excitement to get to touch the Tesseract again. 

“If Strange is sending her in like this, I’m sure he knows that she can hold him off,” MJ suggested sending Eva concerned looks when Eva didn’t respond. 

Eva pulled herself together and smiled at them. “Yeah, I’ve got this.”

Ned stood from the table. “Eva, the world needs Iron Man,” he told her with a serious tone she rarely heard from him. 

“And I need Tony,” she told him with certainty. 

At that moment, the portal appeared. Beyond was a blackened sky, sounds of the Avengers yelling and aliens growling, and the smell of smoke. Without sparing a glance back, Eva didn’t waste a second and let herself fall through.

Chapter Text

Endgame - Part 3

Eva felt it before she saw it. 

It was like a glowing beacon in the middle of a sea of aliens. Its call was intoxicating. Eva wouldn’t have been able to avoid it if she tried. 

Aliens clawed at her as she gained speed above them, and somewhere in her brain she registered seeing many familiar faces: Sam flying nearby, Thor calling lightning and thunder, Black Panther sinking his claws into something, and for some reason a raccoon with a gun. But none of that felt important. The call of the thing in the Tesseract was too strong, and she let herself continue to accelerate as she fell toward it. As she burst through a plume of smoke, Tony and the purple guy appeared. 

They were in the middle of the battlefield, grappling for something on the purple guy’s hand. When she was still a few hundred feet away, Tony’s body was flung across the clearing. She could now see that the Iron Man armor was badly damaged, barely holding power and Tony’s face was exposed, his helmet gone. As he hit the ground, Eva’s heart stopped, thinking she was too late until Tony moved and struggled into a kneeling position. She was getting close as the villain looked at his own hand confused. 

When Tony lifted his Iron Man gauntlet, Eva’s eyes snapped to his hand. There were six glowing things on the back of the gauntlet, but her vision was only focused on the blue gem just below his middle finger. It was screaming for her. Only the jerk of Tony’s body and his arm visibly burning under his ruined armor distracted her from the stone’s allure. Something was wrong. In a split second of understanding, Eva knew that Tony was not supposed to be holding her stone, and she needed to take it now or he’d die. 

He was saying something, but Eva didn’t hear as she flew closer and closer. Tony’s hand was up, and it seemed like the entire universe had stopped to see what he would do. His middle finger and thumb met. 

She was so close now. Reaching out her hand as far as it could go, finally the blue stone flew into her hand like a magnet. When it connected to her skin, everything exploded. 

There she was. 

His kid, his Newt, was alive. 

… for the moment. 

She was now lying thirty feet away, writhing on the ground with that godforsaken Space Stone in her hand. Tony was fighting unconsciousness. His entire right arm was fried. He was so close– so close to finishing it all. And he was ready to do whatever it took, but now…

Tony felt his back hit the ground as Thanos’ big hand made a grab for the other stones on his nano gauntlet. He sent a useless blast of his repulsor from his left hand at Thanos’ chest that bounced off without a scratch. Suddenly, two glowing hands wrapped around Thanos’ neck and yanked him back. Tony struggled to a sitting position as Captain Marvel pummeled Thanos into the ground in the opposite direction giving Tony a moment of respite he thought he’d never get. 

His brain was going a mile a minute teetering between needing to get to his kid and getting the Stones away from Thanos, but his body wasn’t responding anymore. “Newt.” His voice was raspy from all the smoke in the air. She was now lying completely still on the ground, her body curled up as she held the Stone close to her chest. “Newt!” he called out stronger now. She didn’t respond or move at all. 

Before he could panic, the air around him filled with golden circles. Strange was in front of him, blocking Tony’s view of Newt. “Stark, the Stones!”

Tony clocked the very specific group of people around him, not quite understanding what Strange had planned, but he didn’t like how it involved his newly alive kid. Lifting up his right hand with a grimace, Tony presented the Stones. Strange snatched up the Time Stone and stepped to the side. The star idiot stepped up next and took the Power Stone, purple energy surged through him and Strange grabbed his hand. Thor was next and took the Reality Stone from Tony. With a determined but devastated expression, Clint reached down and took the Soul Stone without difficulty, joining the others in their linked line. As they took each one, Tony felt the burning pain subside and exhaustion replace it. 

Wanda stepped up to take the final stone, the Mind Stone, from Tony’s gauntlet with silent tears making tracks in her soot covered face. She reached down, but just as her fingers brushed it, she disappeared, thrown to the side across the clearing. Thanos plucked it from Tony’s hand. 

Tony went to grab it back from him, but his hand moved through the air like molasses. He felt his body leave the ground. With the darkness of the smoke layer in the sky and unrecognizable rubble beneath them, there was a moment when Tony thought they were back in space. They were still on Earth but gravity had changed. 

Eyes snapping back to his kid, Newt was no longer lying on the ground. She was floating behind Thanos, her eye sockets full of bright blue light. When her mouth opened, the same blue light poured out. “Hands off my dad.”

Everything was dark, but only for a moment. Then everything exploded into light and color around Eva. It was even better than she remembered: glowing gaseous clouds in every color and some colors she couldn’t name, swirling black holes eating stars, glittering galaxies whirling through space, and life everywhere, celebrating the return of all of its members.

More than anything, Eva could feel the Space Stone. It filled her body with hot, raw power, but she could feel its will more than before. It wanted her to use it, to see the universe and understand it. It wanted her to use its power however she liked. It trusted her. It loved her. 

Then it was the best part. The orange net of gravity appeared, holding everything together. Eva expected it to zoom in like it had before, but instead the Stone zoomed out even further. Their universe was getting smaller and Eva was floating above it until it was a small sphere. Then another sphere appeared next to it, and another, and another until all she could see were glowing spheres. They were connected like a web, some in a line, some branching off of others, and some forming groups on their own. 

Eva felt herself falling back into one of the spheres below until she was back in her own universe, zooming toward Earth. Finally she was back in her own body, curled into a fetal position in a pile of rubble, cradling the Space Stone in her hand. Gravity was glowing beneath her, ready to be bent and manipulated. 

Rising from the ground, Eva floated above the battlefield. Just below her, she sensed the other Stones, but she didn’t care about them because her Stone didn’t care. Instead she saw the large purple alien grabbing Tony. Sensing that this alien had held her Stone before and Strange had told her to hold him off to save Tony, Eva’s anger flared. 

“Hands off my dad.”

She sent the purple guy falling backward into the horde of aliens. There were shouts behind her, but she barely registered them as her gaze traveled upward. Those centipede-like ships that were there the day her parents died were flying through the sky, shooting down on Wakandans. Raising her hands, mostly to help with her own focus, Eva pointed at two of them and changed their gravity. They veered out of control and crashed into the ground right onto where she had let the purple guy land. 

Turning her attention to the wormholes behind the army that was allowing endless hordes of alien soldiers into the battle, Eva easily closed them with a twist of her hands. Using her index finger, she pointed at a spot where the wormhole had just closed. It was almost too easy to push gravity in on a single point forming a black hole behind the army. The hive-minded aliens ignored their imminent demise as they continued to surge toward the fray, only to make it a few steps before being sucked into the hole and crushed in the perfect darkness. 

“Newt!”

A voice finally broke through her perfect focus. Head snapping around, Eva found Tony below her. “Close the black hole!”

Eva frowned. The Stone didn’t like that. It wanted her to use her powers more, do bigger things. It thought that she could make even bigger black holes. “It’s going to hurt the Avengers out there,” he shouted to her. 

Before the Stone could convince her otherwise, Eva yanked the gravity of the black hole back to normal. “Bring back Thanos,” Tony told her next. “We need the other Stone.”

Eva thought she had heard that name before, but didn’t really know what he was asking. Apparently, Strange saw her confusion and yelled from nearby, “The bad purple alien!”

That she could do. Her Stone zeroed in on him. He was in the middle of the battlefield, somehow still alive and nearly out of the crater she had created with the spaceship crash. Raising her hand, he fell upward and then back toward them. When he was close enough, she let him plummet into the sky and then down into the earth, sending rubble flying when he connected with the ground. Just to make sure he’d stay still, Eva pulled his gravity downward, cracking the stone beneath him and crunching him into a crater sized perfectly for him. 

Eva could tell that he was trying to move and yanked him farther down. The Avengers near her started sliding toward his increased gravity and she was forced to let up, making the Space Stone groan in complaint. Without the extreme force of gravity, the purple guy raised his fist toward her. 

Silence fell so suddenly it made Eva stumble backward. Her eyes burned. The sudden white space she was now standing in was such a stark contrast to the smoky battlefield. Once she adjusted, Eva saw that it wasn’t just a white room but a white void. She couldn’t see the ground she was standing on and she didn’t have a shadow. It was all just white. 

“That’s better.”

Her head snapped up and she saw she wasn’t alone. The purple guy was there, standing casually studying her from across the space. “Where are we?” she asked, taking a few steps back and trying to feel for his gravity. But she couldn’t feel it like she had been able to with the Space Stone moments before. She couldn’t even feel her own gravity. “Who are you?”

He didn’t follow her, but he also didn’t answer her question. “We’ve never met before in any timeline that I can see.” Eva narrowed her eyes, unsure what he meant by that. “I’m Thanos.” The corner of his mouth twitched upward, and her sense of danger pinged in her head but not as strong as it should have. “No need to introduce yourself Evangeline Moore-Stark.” He looked around the blank space. “You’ve had a lot happen in your short life. Where to begin?” 

The white void melted like wet paint and twisted into a familiar scene. They were clearly in Manhattan and Chitauri were raining from the sky, but Eva’s eyes were glued to a man’s figure retreating away from them and into a building he would never leave alive. “The last time you saw your parents,” Thanos narrated. “It only got worse from there.”

The scene around her transformed into something she had buried very deep down. Just below her were her parents’ bodies, uncovered for her to identify. She couldn’t look away, and the longer she looked, the more grotesque their crushed bodies became. “Humans are so fragile,” he commented like he was learning about a long extinct species in a museum. “In the end, this is what always becomes of humans.” 

In any other circumstance, Eva would have been furious at that comment, but she wasn’t thinking much past what was in front of her. “Their faces aren’t clear,” he continued. She noticed he was right. Every time she tried to look directly at their faces she couldn’t focus on any details. “You can’t remember their faces.”

Her breath hitched involuntarily, and tears sprung to the corners of her eyes. She didn’t have a moment to fully comprehend the weight of that realization as the scene changed and her sister’s crumpled body was down below. “So much would have been different if you had just gone to check on her.” 

Then Eva was seeing Vic’s face twisted in hatred, a gun pointed at her. Eva felt the sharp ghost pain of being stabbed in the shoulder that accompanied that look on her sister’s face. Vic transitioned into a more recent version of herself, watching Eva from afar with uncertainty. “Now you can’t mend that relationship. Is it worse to have her alive and hating you instead of dead?”

Again, it moved on too quickly for her to think, only to feel the pain and loneliness. The next image was Graves smiling down at her, then laughing with her, then patting her head to help her fall back asleep after the nightmares. Gary was there too, handing her a book, nudging her affectionately after Eva threw a particularly good punch, handing her a tomato with his hands covered in soil. 

That made the next scene of his eyes blank, lying in a pool of blood at her feet that much more painful. She stumbled back from it but it somehow stayed just at her feet.

“That’s your fault.” Eva looked up. Graves was there, pointing the gun at her, expression devastated and conflicted. “You made him do that.”

Everything faded to white around her again. Eva’s thousand-yard stare turned slowly toward Thanos. “But that’s all okay because you have a new family, right? You can just forget about all of them and move on easily.”

A figure appeared behind Thanos. Tony was smiling at her, one of those rare genuine smiles that made Eva feel truly special. “A new father.” Pepper stepped up next to him. “And mother.” Tony took Pepper’s hand and they gazed at each other lovingly. “A complete family.”

Then a different person appeared, a much smaller one. “You thought it was complete,” Thanos told her, voice low. “But you’ve been gone for five years and they moved on.” A girl with Pepper’s strawberry blonde hair and Tony’s dark eyes ran up. Tony scooped her up in his arms and Pepper pushed her hair out of her face. “A real daughter.”

Tears streamed out of her wide and disbelieving eyes. “You’re lying!” she screamed at him. There was no way this was true. He was tricking her. She needed to escape whatever dream he had her trapped in.

For a split second she felt his gravity, but it wasn’t where he was standing a few feet from her, watching Tony’s new family. She felt him farther away, but as quickly as that feeling came, it left. “I’m not lying.”

Thanos stepped away from her side and waved his hand to reveal a different scene that Eva didn’t recognize at all. They were in a dark room with a blue lady. On closer inspection this blue alien was some kind of cyborg with aspects of her body removed and replaced with completely mechanical parts. A projection was coming out of her eye. 

“This is my daughter, Nebula,” Thanos told her. “I understand you, Eva. My daughters betrayed me for a new family too. Nebula became awfully close to your former family, including Tony Stark.” As Eva stepped up, she could see an image of Tony being projected from Nebula’s eyes. “I’ll let you hear it from his mouth.”

A gravelly voice spoke in the footage from somewhere behind the camera. “I heard you got that daughter you dreamed of, Stark.”

Tony was donning some kind of suit Eva didn’t recognize. “I did,” he told her, with that soft smile that Eva had just seen on his face, the one reserved for her. “My dream came true.” Tony looked up at Nebula. “That’s why this has to work, no matter the cost.” 

The projection faded and then the image of Nebula faded as well, leaving Eva in the void with Thanos watching Tony’s new family. He had an actual kid. One that he would try to die for. One that replaced Eva completely. 

“She looks pretty old,” Thanos observed, watching Tony, Pepper, and the girl still acting like the perfect family off to the side. “Seems like you were barely gone by the time she arrived.” He was right. She must have been four at least. “Five years is a long time for humans. A lot has changed. Maybe there’s no room for you anymore, no one left to love you.”

Eva forced her gaze away from Tony and his happy new family. Thanos turned to look down at her, his expression focused and unphased by her tears and pain. He seemed indifferent about the entire thing. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m simply showing you the truth,” Thanos told her. “So you can understand why it’s important to end half of life. People will be so much happier with half of life and twice the resources. Your family was able to grow faster and happier without you and all of your emotional baggage. I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened if they had to spend so much time keeping you safe and dealing with your emotions.” His expression did not hold any sympathy for the words he was saying. He simply stared at her with focus, which somehow made his words make more sense, hold more weight. “There’s no way they would have had a child while dealing with you. They had to wait until you were gone. You were holding them back.”

She turned back to Tony. He did seem so much happier, so much more relaxed. Everything she did stressed him out. Even stuff she couldn’t control, the stuff she tried so hard to avoid like HYDRA and Graves, caused him so much strife. Without her there, was he really finally able to retire? Was he finally able to relax?

It was like there was a hole carved out of her chest. She knew Tony and Pepper loved her, and she knew they must have been sad when she was gone, but they were free without her. Having their own kid was enough proof of that. She was happy with them, but she’d never really considered if they were happy to have her or she was just holding them back. 

“What do I do?” Her voice was raspy and dry. She knew the answer.

“Give me the Stone and let me set it right.” He held out his hand. Suddenly, Eva could feel her Stone in her left hand. “It would be the kind thing to do, for everyone.”

Fresh tears wet her cheeks. He was right. That would be the kind thing to do. She should free them of her burdens. The thought of everything ending made her body bend in half with sobs, but it already happened once and it was okay. She could do it again if it meant happiness for those she loved the most. 

Just as she began to raise her hand toward Thanos, Eva felt someone’s hands on her cheeks. Peter’s face appeared in front of her, the smokey sky and yells of battle filtered through like he was talking through a phone with a bad connection. “Eva,” he shouted but it sounded like he was miles away. “Keep fighting!” His thumbs brushed the tears away. “You can do it. Everyone’s rooting for you.” He looked down at something. “But maybe hurry up a little.”

Eva’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion and then anger, as Peter jumped down and she was back in the white void. 

“You think he loves you? You think that mutated human will stay by your side?” Thanos yelled before she could react. Their surroundings changed again and she was back in the HYDRA facility, the Tesseract on the ground and twenty dead men around her in a ghastly display. It flashed into Peter’s decimated apartment where HYDRA agents lay dead with knives in their chests. Then her foster dad was crumpled at an unnatural angle in that terrible apartment. “How many have you killed?” Thanos yelled at her as she held onto her head, trying to get her thoughts under control and hold onto Peter’s words. “Who are you murdering right now?” The scene around them became the battlefield as she left it, but now it was surrounded by black holes. Aliens, Avengers, and bystanders alike were being sucked into their painful deaths. “You are a murderer. Who would love a killer?”

Eva reached out and tried to close the black holes but she couldn’t. She couldn’t feel them at all. “Who could ever love a monster like you?” Panic started to set in and she was desperately trying to remember what Peter just told her. 

She didn’t get a breath of relief as the surroundings disappeared and turned into something completely new. Scene after scene appeared in front of her, flashing by almost too fast for her to think. Every time Peter was turning away from her, putting his Spider-Man mask on or jumping out the window or flipping over a wall. Just before he turned, his expression was disappointed and angry. 

“He’s a good hero. He has a good heart, pure, untainted.” Thanos stepped up next to her, looking down on her as Peter left her again and again. “You can’t keep up. You’re holding him back. In fact…” They were on a bus and everyone was looking at the spaceship descending on Midtown. Peter was crawling out of the bus window on the other side. “On that day, he left you behind and fought beside your dad while you stayed back and did nothing. They lost because you weren’t there, and he will never forgive you for that.”

Suddenly the fog in Eva’s brain that she hadn’t quite realized was so effectively confusing her thoughts dissipated like smoke in the wind. Her mind snapped back into focus. She and Peter had spent a year working hard to figure out their relationship and how to be heroing partners. That day was so clear in her mind, like it was only a few hours ago. Peter would never be angry at her for staying behind. He never had been in the past. In fact, she remembered exactly what he said right before hopping out the window of the moving bus. 

“Count on me.”

Then images began to flash before her eyes, but instead of death and betrayal it was warmth and love: Peter beaming at her while holding her hands on their favorite roof, hiding from the rain over the Queensboro bridge, laughing with her over a pile of Legos while Ned slept nearby, floating together in her room in the middle of the starlights, walking with Ned and MJ through school hallways. 

Her family was there too: Clint with a mischievous grin telling her about the next prank over breakfast, Nat handing her water after a particularly brutal workout, Thor throwing her up in the air, Bruce welcoming her into his lab, Steve chopping vegetables next to her in the kitchen, Pepper pulling her into an embrace, and finally Tony swinging his arm over her shoulders and attempting to rustle her hair as they walked toward the lab. 

That love filled that empty hole in her chest that Thanos had so carefully carved out. It was now perfectly clear to her that he had manipulated her into nearly giving up her own life as well as the lives of trillions of others. 

Thanos opened his mouth to say something else, but she reached out her mind and found his gravity farther away than she was seeing him. “Nice try.” She sent him careening downward and increased his gravity ten fold. “But you have no understanding of love.”

The white void was gone as quickly as it appeared and everything snapped into focus. Thanos was in the bottom of a fresh crater that was cracking and pushing further into the earth as he got crushed with gravity. Eva could see and control gravity again and carefully made sure no one else would get dragged in with him. Someone flew by and snatched the Stone on the back of his hand. 

Eva kept her focus on keeping Thanos down until she felt something touch her hand. She spun around in the air to see who was attacking next, but it was Tony, reaching up to her from the ground, suit falling apart and soot covering his face. “Newt.” 

Without hesitation, Eva fell into his arms. Tony squeezed her into his chest so fiercely that any thought of his resentment toward her flew from her mind. In that moment, the war waging around them faded away. “You’re here,” he whispered. “You’re really here.” 

Eva buried her face into his armored chest, wishing they were anywhere else. She still didn’t understand exactly how and why she had been gone so long, but at that moment, Eva felt like she hadn’t seen him for years. 

“Tony!”

The shout shook them out of the moment and Eva looked up to see all of the Avengers in a line, holding hands. When she was fighting Thanos in her mind, apparently more of the Avengers had gathered and were now all in a line, holding hands and slightly glowing with palpable power. Pepper landed next to Eva in a full Iron Man suit and held out her hand as she took someone else’s. “Time to end it,” she told Eva and her mask fell open to reveal her determined face and gentle smile. 

Eva took Pepper’s hand without question and she felt a surge of power through her and through her Stone that was still in her left palm. Tony took her hand on the other side. Everything burned through her like when she had first held the Space Stone, but it wasn’t quite as strong now. It felt more like a warm strength beating through her and everyone she was connected to. She felt unstoppable. They felt unstoppable.

They all watched Thanos who was straightening in the crater. Eva was about to push him back into it, but he didn’t make a move to stop them as all the connected Avengers started to float off the ground. They collectively looked down on him as Tony spoke next to her. 

“We live up to the name.” Tony lifted his right hand. “Time to avenge the universe.”

A white hot pain shot through her right hand, through her body, and into her left hand like her body was just a wire funneling power. It was short lived as her focus turned onto the battlefield. All around them, aliens began to dissipate into flakes of dust, blowing away with the wind. Even the spaceships and weapons disappeared without a trace. Turning her gaze down, Eva looked on as Thanos watched his allies dissolve. His expression was more sad and disappointed than angry as his face raised toward them. Slowly, he too faded away. 

For a moment everything was blissfully quiet and the Avengers remained connected to each other, momentarily aware of the sheer amount of power they held together. Breaking the trance, Tony let go of Eva’s hand and she let go of Pepper’s, focusing on letting everyone down to the ground safely. 

Once she and the rest of the team were on the ground, Tony turned to her. Eva immediately noticed how he was holding his right arm into his side awkwardly. “Tony, your arm,” she started, but he shook his head. 

“Time for that later, Newt. Let go of the Space Stone and let someone else take care of it.” He gestured to her hand. Eva felt the Stone object to the idea, and she took an involuntary step away from him. She saw his eyebrows furrow, but he tried again with a forced smile. “The glowing eyes are getting a little too Godzilla for me.”

Eva turned her eyes downward to her hand. When she opened it, the Space Stone glowed back at her, alluring and tempting. It wanted her to do more. It wanted her to fly up into space and use it to reshape their universe or visit another. Eva knew Tony was right. She needed to put it down. She didn’t really want to use it anymore. Everyone was safe. The bad guy was gone. It was time to go and get Tony to a hospital. 

Using every ounce of her focus, Eva lifted her hand out. “Good Newt,” Tony coaxed her. “Just drop it on the ground.”

Eva’s entire arm began to shake as she fought the will of the Space Stone. With one final push, Eva turned her palm over. 

Bright, angry pain surged through her hand and entire arm, as the Stone rebelled and burrowed into the skin of her hand, unwilling to drop to the ground. Eva cried out and crumpled at Tony’s feet. She registered that there was yelling around her but she couldn’t focus on anything other than fighting against the Space Stone. “Tony,” she managed, hoping he was nearby. “It won’t l-let go.” A scream ripped through her throat. The Stone was going to get its way, and soon. It would make her do exactly what Thanos said she would. “End it,” was all she managed to get out before all of her senses were consumed with the Space Stone. 

Just as the Stone took her over, unbelievable agony shot through her left arm, and she lost consciousness.

Chapter Text

Endgame - Part 4

Eva was floating through space, completely relaxed. The stars sang her lullabies and galaxies blanketed her in warmth. She was content to stay there forever, but something was tugging at the back of her mind. Trying to ignore it, Eva waved her hand and planets flew to her command, creating a colorful display like a mobile for a baby. It was distracting for a moment, but that feeling kept interrupting her peaceful thoughts. 

You’re not supposed to be here.

Everything came flooding back in a wave: the fight, Tony’s arm, the Space Stone not letting go. Eva looked down at her left hand and it was on fire. 

She sat up in a panic, trying to get back to Earth as quickly as possible. That wish came true far quicker than she thought possible. With one blink she was in a completely different place. White walls, sterile smell, itchy sheets. It didn’t take long to figure out she was in a hospital room. 

“Newt.”

Eva’s head spun around. Tony was there, sitting in a chair next to her bed with his right arm in a sling covered in bandages. His expression was tired, but mostly worried. It was hard to tell through the healing cuts and bruises. That alone told her that not much time had passed. 

“It’s okay,” he told her with an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “You’re in the hospital. You’re safe.”

She was less worried about her own safety, but when she went to tell him that, her voice gave out. “T-ton–”

Tony leaned over and held a cup of water with a straw up to her mouth and she drank deeply. Once she had her voice back, she felt a little calmer and could actually form a thought. “Tony, are you okay? Is everyone okay?” her voice was raspy, but she could tell her urgency was coming across clearly. “What happened to the Space Stone?”

After he placed the cup back on a nearby surface, he gently pushed her back into her bed with his left arm. “Relax, Newt. Everyone is safe.” Eva felt a small amount of relief. She could tell he was being careful with his words, which meant something was ultimately wrong. “The Space Stone is in a safe place and is about to be returned to where it belongs in the timeline.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Eva shook her head, trying to understand. “Timeline?”

Tony sat back heavily in the chair and let out a long sigh. “I’ll explain the details later, but all you need to know is that it’s far away from you.”

Eva tried to sort through the vastly different feelings bouncing around her brain at the idea of never seeing the Space Stone again. When she looked back up at Tony, her thoughts focused once again. She studied him carefully. There were definitely more lines around his eyes and more grays in his hair. Something about him seemed more sure of himself under the tired exterior but something was also off. He was worn down in some way. He was just… different. 

She stared at him and he just let her, staring right back. Finally she whispered, “Is this real?”

Eva was surprised when Tony’s eyes became cloudy with emotion and he didn’t even attempt to hide it. “I sure hope so, Newt.”

“That’s not the definitive answer I was hoping for.” Her attempt at humor was awarded with a smile. 

“It’s just hard to believe you’re here,” he admitted. 

Breaking eye contact, Eva looked around the room, unable to take in all the emotions he was showing on his face. “So it’s really been five years?”

Tony took a shaky breath. “It has.”

Without even looking at him, she knew he was having a hard time keeping it under control. “I guess I’m pretty behind at school then,” she joked. 

“A little bit.” He didn’t hit her back with a jab about finally graduating early or homeschooling like he’d always wanted. 

“Tony-” Eva started to call him out for being so sad, lifting her hand to try to push hair out of her face, but her hand didn’t connect with her face. Her arm flew by her head and a stab of pain went through her left hand. 

Eva’s blood ran cold. She stared down at her left hand. She could feel it. It was there and in so much pain, but her eyes were telling her it wasn’t there. Her arm ended in a stump at the wrist. There was no left hand there. 

She stared down at it, her brain short circuiting, for what felt like an eternity, but her hand didn’t magically appear and the pain didn’t go away. Tony spoke but her eyes didn’t leave the spot where her hand should be. 

“The Space Stone was taking you over. It was digging into your hand. No one could touch it, so we… we detached it from you.”

“Detached…” Eva parroted absently. 

“I’m sorry, Newt.” His voice was full of devastation. “It was selfish of me, but I wasn’t about to lose you again.”

Eva tore her eyes away from her incomplete arm at the tone of Tony’s voice. She remembered the moment clearly now. “It didn’t want me to stop,” she recalled. “It was trying to control me completely.” The memory of the power surging through her was painful. It would have killed her in the process surely. That is after she ended Earth. “I would have killed everyone.” Her eyes fell back to the blank spot on her lap. “Or you would have had to kill me.”

The room was silent as she processed it. After Thanos brought up her worst memories and mistakes, the idea of destroying planets and galaxies with black holes and altered gravity didn’t seem too far outside of the realm of what could have happened. She would have rather died than become that, so she was beyond thankful that Tony helped her avoid that fate, but she could feel the guilt coming off of Tony in waves. “Thank you for making sure I didn’t become a… monster,” she whispered, looking him straight in his eye. “You did what you had to do and you didn’t kill me to do it.”

Tony just stared back at her, conflicted. Finally, he looked away. “You have Thor to thank for his thousand years of practice. The doctors were impressed with his precise cut.”

The end of her arm was wrapped in fresh gauze and she nearly gagged thinking about what it might look like without it. “I’ll make sure to send a thank you card.” She forced her eyes up to the ceiling to avoid throwing up and took a few deep breaths. Eva needed to talk about anything else, but Tony didn’t respond to her joke like he usually would. She didn’t like how weird he was being. 

Looking back at him again, Eva noticed that he was sitting in a chair next to her with an IV and various wires hooked up to a beeping machine. “Tony, shouldn’t you be in a bed too?” she asked. 

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’d rather be here.”

She frowned. “Do the doctors agree?”

“There’s not a lot they can do for me right now,” he told her. “I’m better off here.”

Eva could tell that this had been an ongoing argument and left it for now. Clearly he needed to tell her something and she was pretty sure she knew what it was. It was the last thing she wanted to unpack but if it meant getting Tony to get some medical care, she would dive into it. “So…” she started but her words faltered. 

How could she even get into this? How is it possible that she missed five whole years in the span of seconds? How did she even know this wasn’t another one of Thanos’ tricks? What if he was right and Tony didn’t want her anymore?

Tears sprung into her eyes in frustration. Tony leaned forward again and reached out with his free arm to rest his hand on her shoulder. “Newt, talk to me. Just tell me what you’re thinking and I’ll help.”

Completely overwhelmed and crying freely now, Eva just started word-vomiting every thought flying through her head. “You and Peter left to fight some guy in a spaceship and I was freaking out about losing you both and suddenly Pepper tells me it's been five years and then Dr. Strange tells me you’re about to die. Then I meet the evilest guy in the universe and he messes around in my mind. And the Space Stone was so amazing and so powerful and made me feel invincible, but it betrayed me in the worst way. And now I don’t know how to even talk to you because you have a real kid and you’ve moved on, which makes sense,” she added quickly. “But in a blink of an eye, I don’t have a family anymore… or a hand! But the worst part of all of this is I don’t know if it’s even real! Is Thanos still fucking around in my head? How can I trust my own mind any– anymore?”

By the end of it, Eva’s voice had risen an octave and sobs had taken over her breathing that she was forced to end her rant. Tony rose from his chair, pulled over his scary machine, and sat on the edge of the bed, wrapping his free arm around her shoulders. Eva happily returned the hug and buried her face in his chest, letting the tears flow. He rubbed her back and let her cry. Eva felt some tears hit the top of her head, which only made her cry more. 

Once her blubbering had turned into wet sniffles, Tony spoke up again. “I think I’d like to kill Thanos over again.”

Eva let out a broken chuckle. “I only knew the guy for fifteen minutes and I agree.”

“He didn’t die painfully enough.” Tony’s voice darkened. He pulled back and studied her as she wiped her face as best as she could. “Let’s deal with the most important thing first. If you can’t trust your own mind, we’re not going to get too far.” She nodded in agreement. “Can you tell me what he did with the Mind Stone?”

Taking a deep breath to make sure she didn’t start crying again, Eva did her best without getting into too many details to avoid making Tony sad again. “He just showed me a lot of my worst memories.” She frowned, recalling more of the specifics. “But he made them even scarier, even worse somehow. He was trying to convince me to give him the Space Stone.”

Tony was quiet for a moment and she noticed his thousand-yard stare. When he caught her watching him, he asked, “And how did you break out of it?”

Eva replayed the memories in her head. “He showed me a memory of Peter that I knew was wrong.”

He hugged her into his side a little more. “Then it’s an easy fix, Newt.” She gave him a disbelieving look. “Thanos only used your memories, right?” Eva nodded slowly, gathering where he was going with it. “He couldn’t use the future or other people’s thoughts, so is this moment a memory to you?”

Slowly dropping her gaze to her missing hand and feeling a sense of relief wash over her, Eva responded, “This is definitely a new experience.”

“Then I think it’s safe to say that Thanos doesn’t have any control over you right now,” Tony told her with a sense of certainty. “Also I personally made sure he would never bother us again.”

“I think I helped too,” she reminded him. 

“You did.” His voice became quieter and he kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get into the other part.” Tony pulled her back and looked her right in the eye, expression serious. “Pepper and I love you, and you have not lost your family. We were…” Eva’s heart ached when Tony’s face crumpled. “I was broken without you, Newt. I almost didn’t make it. It was only because of Morgan that I stuck around at all.”

It didn’t take much to figure out who Morgan was. Eva tried to ask, but the words wouldn’t form. Tony kept going before she could gather herself. “You are my kid, forever. Nothing, no weird time jump or other kids or even death will change that.”

The tears came unbidden yet again. She believed him. She always had. Thanos had gotten to her, but he was gone and Tony was still her father. Tony pulled her into his side again, and Eva happily let him. He patiently waited for her cries to abate until they were able to sit in a content silence. “I think we’ve used up a couple years of emotional moments,” Eva commented as she wiped her face uselessly. She’d need a bath towel to wipe up the tears at this point.

“We’ve missed five years worth, and I might need to cash in a few extra.”

Eva raised her eyebrows. “Have you become less emotionally stunted in the last five years?”

She felt him shrug next to her. “Maybe.”

After a deep breath, Eva finally asked the question she needed to ask. “So… Morgan then?”

“Morgan.”

“Is that her real name or have you come up with some sick nickname?” Eva asked, only half kidding. 

“Why would she need a nickname when I named her in the first place?” Tony pointed out. 

Eva rolled her eyes. “Then I guess that burden falls on me.”

After a minute of awkward silence, Eva quietly asked, “How old is she?”

“Four,” Tony told her. “Five in a few months.” Eva did the math in her head but Tony spoke up before she could fully understand. “Pepper was pregnant when you… left. We had told you that we were going to start trying.”

“Right…” Eva said slowly, remembering the conversation and being so excited and happy for them. It was strange to separate what Thanos had convinced her and what she was hearing. They had always wanted her to be a part of them having a real kid. She found herself more upset that she had missed so much of them becoming parents.

Tony interrupted her spiralling thoughts. “Do you want to meet her?”

“Right now?” Eva sat up a little straighter, wondering if she was ready. She probably looked like a mess, tearstained and hand missing. 

“Pepper left to get her this morning, so they should be here in about an hour.”

Eva’s eyebrows furrowed. “Where are we?”

“In a hospital in Manhattan,” Tony explained. “The wizard teleported us into it after…” Tony trailed off but shook it off quickly. “I guess he used to work here because he has been particularly insufferable here.”

“Then why would it take them so long to get here?” Eva asked. 

Tony froze next to her and Eva’s heart sank. “We moved upstate,” he told her slowly, as if talking to a scared animal. “I just couldn’t be in the city anymore… in the Tower.” She understood, but it was still heartbreaking. He quelled some of her fears immediately. “It’s still there. All of your stuff is untouched, covered in five years worth of dust, but still there. Pepper and I have already started talking about how to make the move back. It might take some time to transition Morgan, but we know that your entire life is here.”

“And what about your life?” Eva didn’t want to question it, but she also didn’t want to uproot everything just for her. “You don’t need to mess everything up for me. I can get used to…” She trailed off realizing just how hard it would be for her to live anywhere other than New York. 

Tony chuckled. “That was a valiant effort, Newt, but there’s no way we’re moving you away from your school and all your friends and that sticky boyfriend. It’s probably for the best that Pepper and I are more involved in the company again. I’m guessing things will be pretty busy for a while.”

“Will Morgan like it?” she asked timidly.

“I thought you’d be the first to say that she’d need to grow up in the city and that you’d never have some upstate kid in the family.” Eva opened her mouth to object, but he was right. “That’s what I thought. She’ll like it, but we might need to redecorate a little.”

“Make sure to get her a door to slam,” Eva reminded him. 

“First thing on the list.” He took a deep breath. “Are you ready for the next piece of news?”

Eva’s heartbeat accelerated again. “What? There’s more?”

“A lot more,” Tony revealed. “But let’s just stick to family matters right now. You have another sister.”

“Tony, we just went over that,” Eva said carefully. “I’m going to meet Morgan in an hour. Did Thanos scramble your head too?”

Tony knocked his shoulder into hers gently. “I mean another sister.”

Eva wrenched her head back to get a better look at his face and immediately regretted it when her hand, or ghost hand, twinged in objection. “What? You have another kid?”

“No, not that.”

“Pepper’s pregnant?”

“No.”

Eva didn’t hide her confusion. “How-?”

“There’s another way you can get a sister.”

It took Eva far too long to figure it out. “Vic got… married?” Eva was doing math in her head to figure out how old her sister was while Tony just watched her with a smile. 

“Almost,” he told her. “They’re getting married in a few months. I’m not invited, obviously, but Scary Spice has kept me in the loop.”

Eva’s brain fully short circuited. “Scary– Wha–...? Chloe?”

“You must have picked up on some of that tension even before.” Eva’s expression was enough to tell him that she definitely had not. “Man, you really are oblivious. Grief has a funny way of making people accelerate the timeline,” Tony mused. “But I know they’ll be battering down that door to make sure you’re ready to be there for them.”

“Married…?” Eva still couldn’t wrap her head around it. “Vic and Chloe.” Her face broke into a huge smile. “That’s amazing. They’re perfect for each other.”

“Apparently they agree.” 

There was a knock at the door and a familiar face poked into the room. “I thought I heard you talking in here.”

It took a moment for Eva to comprehend why the face was green, but once she understood, she leapt up from the bed. “Bruce?”

He fully entered the room and revealed that he was in his Hulk form. Eva probably should have been scared, but just one look at his face told her everything she needed to know. Once he had squeezed through the door frame, Eva nearly flew into his arms before Tony reached over to yank her back down. “Don’t pull your IV out,” he warned, pointing to the tube that was nearly taut in her right arm. 

Bruce came over to her instead and gave her a long hug. Eva thought surely there weren’t any more tears, but she was proven wrong. “I can’t believe you’re back.”

“I could say the same about you.” He patted her shoulder as he straightened and Eva thought she may have sunk into the tiles on the floor by the sheer weight of his hands. Bruce smiled down at her. “How are you feeling?”

“So much better,” she told him. “Where have you been? How did you get back?”

After convincing an overbearing Tony that she needed a distraction, Bruce settled in a chair that looked like it could snap at any moment and told her the story of what he had been up to in space. Apparently, Tony hadn’t heard the full story either and listened intently, adding some quips with Eva especially about the fight between the Hulk and Thor, which Eva said needed to be recreated for them. Eva was so wrapped up in the stories and the reunion with Bruce that she forgot about everything else. That is until there was another knock on the door and Pepper appeared. 

Eva was in her arms before she had time to remember why Pepper was crying about seeing her again. Bruce awkwardly excused himself, and Eva happily hugged Pepper back. Eva tried to pull away to talk to her, but Pepper had her in a vice grip. She decided to sink into the embrace instead, and Pepper cried softly into her hair. 

“Our family is finally complete,” Pepper whispered, squeezing even harder. That started a fresh round of tears for Eva and she hugged her back just as hard, at least as much as she could without one of her hands. 

Once Pepper pulled back but did not let go of Eva, she checked her over and asked about thirty times about how she was feeling. “How is your…”

Pepper looked down at Eva’s arm, which Eva was trying not to think about. “It’s okay,” Eva tried to assure her. At that moment, it twinged in pain and Eva could tell she didn’t hide it well. “I guess it hurts some. Like my brain thinks my hand is still there and freaks out when it isn’t.”

With a compassionate expression, Pepper guided Eva back into her bed next to Tony. “The doctors told us that is expected for a while and they’ll be sending you to some different therapies to learn how to use a prosthetic which should help,” she explained. 

“You won’t need that for very long,” Tony interrupted. “I’ve already started working on a prosthetic that will be better than anything they have here.” Eva wasn’t surprised that he was already working on something, but her whole body relaxed at the idea of having something like a hand again. If Tony was making it, then it would be as close to having the real thing that she could get. “I’ve spent the morning learning about nerves,” he continued. “But I’m afraid we might need to recruit Harry Potter to help us with some of the medical technical jargon.”

Eva sighed once she figured out who Harry Potter was. “Can’t we just work with Bruce instead?”

Tony smirked at her. “You really do hate the wizard, don’t you? It’ll make the building process much more fun.”

“I’m glad you’ll be having fun.”

“We’ll get Bruce and Sticky involved too,” Tony promised. “We’ll need all hands on deck since we’re missing two.”

Eva frowned. “Two?”

Pepper tried to wave him off, but Eva leaned forward to get a better look at Tony’s arm in the sling. She remembered noticing that it was blackened after the snap, but now that she could see it better up close, it was clearly burnt to a crisp. “Don’t worry,” Tony began. “It won’t look like the aftermath of a forest fire forever.”

“Tony, that’s not funny,” Pepper chided. 

Eva could tell that there was more to it. “You can’t use your arm anymore?” she asked. 

Tony shrugged asymmetrically. “I couldn’t let you show me up.”

Staring blankly at his unmoving arm, Eva tried to comprehend just how much had changed in the blink of an eye. She knew he would prioritize her prosthetic, but she would make sure he would do the same for himself. Tony and Pepper were watching her carefully, ready to mitigate any more tears she might have, but she didn’t want to cry anymore. “Thank god I got my hand cut off or you would have been so annoying.”

Pepper smiled and Tony openly laughed, instantly making Eva feel better. “Oh, I plan on milking this for the rest of my life.”

Eva shook her handless arm in front of his face. “Not when I’m missing a hand!”

“At least you can use your arm,” Tony countered with a devious smirk.

Before Eva could retaliate, Pepper intervened, “You’ll have plenty of time to decide who has suffered more later.” She turned to Eva with a soft smile. “Morgan is here. Would you like to meet her?”

Complaints about Tony’s arm died in her throat and she swallowed hard, looking between Tony and Pepper timidly. “Does she know who I am?”

Tony nodded. “Of course, Newt.”

“She’s very excited to meet you,” Pepper added. 

Eva held up her arm. “Is this going to freak her out?”

Pepper reached out and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. “She’s going to love you no matter how you look. I told her that you and Tony got into an accident, and that’s why you’re in the hospital.”

“Okay,” Eva said absently, unsure how she should even act around a four year old.

“It doesn’t have to be right now,” Pepper tried to reassure her. “I know we’re asking a lot.”

“No,” Eva said quickly. “No, I want to meet her and I’m sure she wants to see Tony.”

“Are you sure?” Pepper asked again. 

With a deep breath, Eva sat up straighter in the bed and hid her arm under the covers. “Yes,” she said with more certainty. “I’m ready.”

Throwing one last glance at Tony, Pepper nodded and started toward the door. “We’ll be right back.”

Once she closed the door, Eva felt the nerves starting to build. “Relax, Newt.” Tony bumped her shoulder. “Even if she hates you, you’ll have plenty of time to win her over. Candy is a shoe-in.”

Eva looked around the room. “They need more candy in hospitals.”

The door flew open and Eva only saw a small blur as something barreled toward the bed and into Tony’s arms. She heard a soft “oof” from Tony when Morgan launched herself at him but he was already smiling. Pepper rushed over and attempted to put some space between them. “Morgan, darling, remember Daddy is hurt. We have to be gentle.”

Tony just shook his head and pulled Morgan in tighter. “Don’t listen to her. I’m never so hurt that I can’t get a hug from you.” Morgan buried her head into Tony’s chest defiantly, and Tony rubbed her back with his left hand. 

As Eva watched Tony and Pepper look tenderly at this little girl, she was overwhelmed by so many emotions she had to look away. Eva was so incredibly happy for them and their beautiful family they had created. There was a sharp pang in her heart seeing just how old this girl was, representing how much time she had missed and how many important milestones she hadn’t been there for. She felt outside of the scene because of it. Then she felt a wave of fury for how unfair it is that she felt that way for something that wasn’t her fault.

“Newt.”

Eva turned back to find Tony with a concerned expression that was mirrored in Pepper’s eyes. Under Tony’s left arm, Eva could see two big brown eyes watching her too. 

In a flash, all of her anger and disappointment melted away. This moment was far too important. All that mattered was this little girl next to her. 

Bending down slightly, Eva smiled at Morgan. “Hi.”

She heard a very quiet, “Hi.”

“My name is Eva. What’s your name?”

“Morgan.” She was still watching her from under Tony’s arm.

“Do you have a nickname, Morgan?” Eva saw her shake her head. “Well I’ve been put in charge of giving you one,” Eva told her and put her finger to her chin dramatically. “Hmm, I’ve got it! Bob.”

Morgan popped up. “No!”

Eva feigned a gasp. “No?” She couldn’t help but notice that Thanos had gotten Morgan completely wrong. She had dark hair and big eyes. A part of her that was still wary of Thanos’ tricks quieted. This was real. 

“Okay, let’s see.” Eva went back to her exaggerated performance. “What about… pretty pink princess?”

“No!” Morgan objected louder but was now giggling along. 

“You’re right. That’s not it.” Eva agreed. “Okay, okay.” Eva’s eyes lit up. “How about the Bloodthirsty Overlord of Bones?” Eva wiggled her fingers to emphasize it. 

Morgan stared at her wide-eyed, and Eva was about to backtrack thinking she had definitely gone too far, until Morgan jumped up and thrust her fists into the air. “Bloodthirsty Overlord!”

Eva started laughing at Tony and Pepper’s expressions. “Of Bones,” Eva completed for her. “Bob for short.”

“Bob!” Morgan shouted. 

“Technically it would be–” Pepper elbowed Tony in the side before he could finish what Bloodthirsty Overlord of Bones would actually shorten to. “I wasn’t aware of how bad you are at nicknames, Newt.”

“I’ve learned from the worst,” she shot back.

Morgan suddenly plopped down on Eva’s lap, completely forgetting the timid display from a minute ago. “Can you make me fly?”

Eva was about to agree when Tony and Pepper began to object. “I don’t know about–” “Eva has been through enough–”

With an eye roll, Eva turned to Morgan. “Hey, Bob, do you know about the sad eyes yet?”

Morgan leaned in with rapt attention. “Sad eyes?”

Shooting a devious grin at Tony, she explained. “Yes, the sad eyes technique is essential for you to master, so listen carefully.” Morgan’s eyes were glued on Eva. “Okay, whenever dad says no to something, here’s what you need to do. First, put your head down a little.” Eva tilted her chin down and Morgan put her chin all the way to her chest. Lifting it a little to correct it, Eva nodded her approval. “Right there. Next, you look up at him and make your eyes as big as possible.” Morgan didn’t need any adjustment with that one. Her eyes were already huge. “Ooo, that’s perfect,” Eva complimented. “Now raise your eyebrows a little.”

Eva raised her eyebrows and Morgan tried but couldn’t and instead raised her head all the way up. “Like this?”

Swallowing her laughs, Eva guided her head back down. “Forget the eyebrows and let your eyes do all the work.” Morgan nodded dutifully. “Okay, now we turn it on him.” Eva led the way. “Don’t you think it’s okay to do a little zero gravity?”

Morgan turned to Tony with her eyes nearly crossed in focus. “Yeah, zero grav-gravtee.” 

It was the quickest she had ever seen Tony fold. “This is going to be a problem,” he muttered to Pepper. “Okay, only a little zero grav-tee, Newt.”

Morgan turned to Eva with a smile that would stop traffic. Eva lifted her right hand up for a high five. “Nice work! You’re a pro.” Morgan wound up far and smacked Eva’s hand as hard as she could. “And you’re strong, Bloodthirsty Overlord.”

With a gasp, Morgan started to float above the bed. She grasped Eva’s hand in surprise. “Too scary?” Eva asked quickly, worried it was the wrong move, but Morgan shook her head and looked down at her feet as they floated out behind her. “You’re a natural.”

Morgan gave her a shaky smile and with a glance at Tony, she slowly increased Morgan’s gravity until her feet were firmly on the bed again. After a moment still holding Eva’s hand in a vice grip, Morgan looked at Eva and then Tony and then Pepper before a smile lit up her face. “Woah! Do it again!”

After two more short flights with Eva holding her hand, Tony cut off Morgan before she could ask for another one. “Alright, Bob, I think that’s enough flying for today. Newt needs to rest.” 

Morgan was a quick learner and started the sad eyes immediately, but Eva stepped in to save Tony. “He’s right, Bob,” she said sadly. “But we’ll have lots more time to do even cooler tricks later.”

“Okay, I think it’s time we let Eva rest and get Tony to his own room,” Pepper suggested.

Morgan started to object and use the sad eyes on Pepper, but Eva stopped her. “The sad eyes don’t work on Mom,” she told her. “We’ll have to figure something else out together.”

Suddenly, Eva felt two small arms wrap around her neck and a mess of dark hair was covering her vision. “I don’t want to leave yet.”

Eva felt her eyes widen at the sudden hug, but her arms reacted almost automatically and she hugged Morgan back, all anger and sadness and jealousy completely gone. “Don’t worry, Bob. I’ll see you again soon. We’ll get to live together too. We’ll see each other all the time.” Morgan squealed with delight in Eva’s ear. 

She spotted Tony around Morgan’s hair and was about to ask for a rescue, but she stopped short. He was smiling in a way she had never seen before. Like everything was finally right in the world. Like the weight of the world had finally lifted off of his shoulders. He was blissfully content. 

“Come on, darling.” Pepper swept Morgan up into her arms. “I bet we can find some ice cream around here.”

Eva let Tony ruffle her hair as he stood from the bed. “I’ll be back soon, Newt.”

As Morgan and Pepper left through the door and Tony gathered his IV and machinery hooked up to him, Eva suddenly became overwhelmed with emotions, good emotions. Reaching out with her hand, she stopped him short. “Tony.” He turned back to her. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

Eva shrugged, thinking about everything they had been through that had led them to this moment. It was too much to express. “For everything, I guess.”

Tony smiled at her, and she could tell that he understood. “It was worth it.”