The Keeper of Infinity

Infinite Universes; Infinite Anthonys; One Atheileisia

July 25, 2025; 10.20 am; Stark Lake House

"This isn't funny!" Pepper took a threateningly furious step forward, eyes no doubt flashing with anger. She didn't care that she was losing composure in front of a woman whom she barely knew, who could very well be an enemy if Spiderman's own reaction to her was anything to go by. She didn't care that she was showing emotions to this Morgenstern lady who was probably just another version of Wanda Maximoff.

She didn't care! All she saw at that moment was red, and if not for Rhodey's firm grip on her shoulder, she would have definitely done something she wouldn't even come to regret later on, she was sure.

"I never said it was," she calmly responded; too calmly.

Pepper's jaw clenched. "Tony is dead! He laid his life down to save this Universe! Two years ago!"

Morgenstern's expression remained largely the same but something shifted in her gaze. There was a quiet sense of grief in her violet eyes before she blinked it away. "I am aware." Her voice was flat.

"Necromancy is illegal, just to remind you," Spiderman crossed his arms, his mask's eye sockets still narrowed on Morgenstern. "Are you planning on some witchy voodoo to bring him back from the dead?" Now he just sounded wary.

Pepper was ashamed to admit that for a second, for one very brief and selfish second, she was taken in by the allure of the idea; the mere thought that she could see her Tony again, that Morgan would be able to talk to her father again was far too appealing to be dismissed instantly.

However, she regained her bearings soon enough.

"I am not going to do any of that." Morgenstern didn't roll her eyes but her tone conveyed the emotion well enough nonetheless. "Do you think if I could do that, I wouldn't have done it already?"

Rhodey's brows jetted up. "I have no idea how to feel about that."

Morgenstern sighed, striding back to the middle of the room and resuming her pose against the dining table with hands crossed demurely in the front as she looked each of them in the eyes. "What do you know of the multiverse?"

"That nothing good ever comes out of it," Spiderman's response was immediate, and felt to be personal than just a mere distant observation.

Morgenstern nodded. "That is, in some ways, correct. When mortals dwell with matters they know little of, they more oft than not end up complicating the results to the point of no return."

"You're speaking like you're not a mortal."

Morgenstern turned her steady gaze on Rhodey. "That is because I am not."

"Everybody is a mortal." Pepper frowned. "You might not be a human but everyone, sooner or later, dies."

"Yes, but you see, I can not die." Morgenstern's eyes were very intense, they made Pepper want to look away like a coward. "For I am Death."

Pepper bristled in the uncomfortable silence that followed. Her jaw had dropped open in a rare moment of loss of composure, her eyes were constantly darting from Rhodey to Spiderman to Morgenstern and then, back on Rhodey. Her brain was getting tangled within itself the more she thought about it.

"I don't understand," she whispered.

Spiderman was the one to answer her instead of Morgenstern. "She's apparently Mistress Death, amongst a bunch of other things." He spared a furtive glance at the woman. "She has something to do with the stones as well."

Those fucking stones! Everything always came back to those stones!

"I...used to look after the stones once upon a time."