irondad & spiderson oneshots

lxxxiii. time & time again

ugh, im really sorry, this sucks. i thought it would turn out better in my head, but here, have some trash

Morgan Stark had been around ten the first time she'd thought about time travel, really thought about it.

It was career day at her school, and everyone was probably looking forward to meeting whichever famous adult she took, but Morgan couldn't help but feel a pang of hurt when almost everyone brought their dads.

Other people's dads weren't dead. Other people's dads hadn't sacrificed themselves six years ago to save the universe.

Pepper was busy, always, always busy, and she couldn't find it in herself to bother her aunts and uncles, so when one Peter Parker dropped by, Morgan had hesitantly asked her older brother to come and talk about being Spider-Man.

Of course he'd accepted, he loved her and would do anything for her, but even as she sat in her desk with students awed and listening wholeheartedly to Spider-Man, to her older brother, she was completely and utterly heartbroken.

It should've been her dad up there, not Peter. Dad should be talking about being Iron Man.

He should've been joking and being a bit arrogant and maybe winked at her and said a joke or two, maybe slipped in an embarrassing story from when she was younger.

But he couldn't do that. Not now. Not ever again. Dad was dead. And he was never coming back.

She could never see him again, not without something huge and groundbreaking, not without time travel of all things.

The young girl froze, stilling in her seat as her ears began to ring. She couldn't hear her brother anymore, no, now all she could think about was time travel.

After a moment, though, she shook the thought away. No, it was stupid and she didn't even know how.

Later that night, sitting alone in her room, Morgan quietly asked her dad to pull up footage from the Avengers tower in 2012.

She saw her Dad and her Auntie Tasha and the rest of them happy and laughing and alive, and she cried.

||

The next time Morgan thought about time travel was on her sixteenth birthday, in the middle of the night.

She'd spent the day with her family, Uncle Bucky, Uncle Clint, and even Aunt Wanda had dropped by for a while.

Even with all the people surrounding her that she knew loved her, she couldn't help but feel the empty space where her dad was supposed to be.

She remembered her last birthday with him, her fourth one (Twelve years ago. Had it really been that long?) that she'd spent with her Mom, Dad, and Uncle Rhodey.

She didn't get many presents, she hadn't wanted them. No, instead they went to a secluded restaurant, just the four of them, and they ate cheeseburgers and talked and laughed, and while Morgan hadn't asked for presents, that didn't stop her Dad from spoiling the hell out of her.

She remembered laughing and squirming away from the camera as her dad snapped countless pictures, groaning playfully about how she was growing up too fast, about how he'd blink and she'd be an adult.

He'd never get to see that. Morgan was two years from being an adult now, and her dad would never get to see it.

He wasn't there at her graduation two years ago (staying in school just seemed exhausting, everything was) and he didn't see her get her license or teach her how to drive.