The Secrets of Petra (Parker) Stark

29 (For Real This Time) aka Epilogue

Tony opened his eyes. He blinked the blurriness away and looked around. He did not recognize the room that he was in. What- or rather, who- he did recognize, was his wife, who was sleeping in a chair by the bed that he was in.

"Pep," Tony croaked, his voice rough from disuse. When he received no answer he reached a hand out and shook her shoulder.

Pepper jerked awake and jumped at the sight of him, obviously not used to seeing him conscious. "Tony! Thank goodness!" A tear ran down her right cheek.

"How long?" Tony rasped.

"Here, you need to drink something." Pepper twisted the cap off of a full water bottle and handed it to him. "Try not to down it all at once."

Tony took the bottle, hand only slightly shaking, and took a few gulps of it. "How long?" Tony repeated.

"Six weeks. We weren't sure you would wake up."

Tony nodded in understanding. Starting at the five week mark, he had officially been a coma patient. "Where are we?"

"Wakanda. They have the best medicare in the world. If we hadn't been able to get you here, you wouldn't have made it. It didn't look good in the beginning."

"Did we win?"

Pepper laughed. "Of course you would ask that. Yeah, we won. You saved everyone."

"And Anne, she's..."

"She's here and she's okay. In fact, she's getting her cast off right now, but she'll be here soon. Morgan's with her."

Tony frowned. "I missed their first meeting?"

"Sorry."

"It's alright. Just... Tell me about it."

Pepper smiled as she remembered. "I had asked Stephen if he could bring Morgan and Happy here..."

-

At some point, Tony must have fallen asleep, because the next time he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Petra and Morgan playing pattycake at the foot of his bed. One of Petra's legs was in a brace and was impressively stretched out to the side.

Morgan was the first to notice Tony's awakeness. "Daddy!" Morgan crawled over to the head of the bed and crashed into him, giving Tony a tight hug.

"Hey Maguna."

Petra maneuvered herself so that she was on Tony's other side. Tony wrapped an arm around her and she laid her head on his shoulder. "I heard you woke up, but when I got here, you were sleeping again. Not cool."

"Sorry," Tony said sheepishly. "I didn't even realize I fell asleep."

"That's a horrible excuse," Petra teased.

"Yeah," Morgan chimed in, not knowing exactly what she was agreeing on.

Just then, Pepper entered the room. She immediately brightened at the sight of Tony, awake, with their two girls. She joined them on the bed.

Tony smiled. For the first time in a long time, his family was together, and he felt complete.

The End?

This went... A lot longer than I had expected. This is easily the longest fic I've written... ever. Thanks for sticking with me through this adventure.

But guess what!

It's not really over. This is the happy ending, but I've started a deleted scenes fic to go with this one. I already posted it. It won't be a regular update kind of fic, but it will be open for requests. Just comment/message me!

One again, thank you for all the support and for reading this! It means so much to me!!