Hi! This is my first FanFiction, so bear with me. I've been playing around with this idea for a while, and wanted to put it into writing! A little background on this story- It is set in 2025, which in my fabricated timeline, is seven years after the Decimation happened and two years after the Avengers beat Thanos. I retained most things from Endgame, so there is some spoilers. In my version of Endgame, Natasha and Tony did not die and Steve came back (the same age) from returning the stones. Also, this makes no sense, but the only Avengers that are still on the team in my story are the original six: Natasha, Thor, Clint, Tony, Bruce, and Steve. The other Avengers, like Wanda, Sam, Rhodey, and so on exist but are not on the team anymore for various reasons. Mostly because I just wanted to write about the original team *shrug*. Heros like T'Challa, Strange, Bucky, Scott, Carol, and so on exist but are off having their own adventures and are not closely associated with the team, though some of them might show up at different points (: The Avengers are living in the Avengers compound and S.H.I.E.L.D. has been reinstated. I plan to try and update this story on a weekly basis. think that's all you guys need to know, so enjoy!

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The last cool breezes of autumn wafted in through a set of French Doors at the Paillettes. Though Tony had booked, or rather demanded, them a room on the 60th floor, Pepper Potts could still hear the sirens and honking horns of New York City far below her. Pepper climbed out of the unrealistically soft bed, careful not to disturb sleeping Tony, and padded across the carpet. She pushed the two doors open wider, letting the morning light into the room, and walked out onto the small balcony that jutted out from the side of the hotel. Pepper gazed at the hundreds of yellow, orange, and red trees dotting Central Park, and joggers that seemed much like ants from where she was standing, so high above everything else. Since her and Tony's hotel room was facing the giant patch of nature, there were no other buildings in front of it, just a wide open expanse of sky. It was a windy day, and Pepper's hair and pajamas whipped around her as she sucked in a breath of air through her nose. At that moment, Tony Stark awoke with a start.

"Pepper? Pepper, where are you?" Tony frantically whipped his head around, realizing his wife was not in the room with him. He clenched his fists while his heart rate rocketed. "Pepper?"

"Tony?" Pepper backtracked from the stone of the balcony to the carpet, and finally to the bed. "I'm right here." As soon as he saw her, Tony visibly relaxed. He let go of the sheets he was clutching, and as his heart rate returned to normal, he attempted to hide the fact that his mind had jumped to the worst possibilities six seconds ago. "Out gazing at the commoners?"

Pepper just rolled her eyes, knowing his asinine remarks were a product of his paranoia. "We're not royalty."

"Well, I consider you my queen." Tony pulled her down next to him, Pepper snickering as she came.

"That was as cheesy as they come! 'You're my queen' that's all you could come up with?" She teased as they both fell back onto the bed. They were both chuckling, and while Tony would normally shoot back a retort, he simply seemed... happy. Happy with to be with her and only her. This thought consoled Pepper, until, right on cue, he picked up the remote.

Tony sat up and grabbed the remote for the wide flatscreen TV across the room from them. He flipped through four channels before he came to CNN, and then set the remote on the comforter. Pepper, lying down, couldn't see what the news was displaying, but could hear what the anchors were spouting. The usual of course: murders, sexual assault, bombings, shootings, politics. But not forgetting the resident feel good story, a dog being rescued from the wilderness, a baby beating all odds of survival, and so on. She sighed. Every time, Pepper thought, every time I think he's content. She knew the drill. When her husband wasn't around the Avengers, or one of his Stark pads, or phones, or especially FRIDAY, Tony would require some direct connection to the world. A link to keep him informed in the event of something cataclysmic happening. Tony was never at ease, no matter how hard Pepper tried to provide a relaxing environment when they were together, and he disliked being unable to predict when the Avengers would be needed. Pepper understood this, in light of the things he had experienced before. He had, after all, watched his friends die, not to mention the closest person he had to a son literally crumbled in his arms. Well, at the time anyways. Now they had Morgan.

Morgan Stark. Morgan Petra Stark. Tony had insisted that Morgan's middle name be after Peter Parker. Pepper didn't mind, she liked it. She loved Peter, and even if she hadn't of wanted Petra as a middle name, she wouldn't have pushed it. Tony had grown extremely protective of Peter after they were able to reverse the Decimation, and this extended to Morgan. Tony did everything to protect them, and she could tell now that Peter was at MIT, he was especially apprehensive. She had begged Tony before to put away his suits, to take out his nanotech housing unit, if not only for Morgan's safety, but he was stubborn. He argued that he was protecting Morgan by keeping the Iron Man moniker, but Pepper felt that Tony being an Avenger just kept inching him closer to death and away from his her and his daughter. She had experienced, over the years, that being a superhero was not the glorified position that people made it out to be, but rather facing dangerous people everyday that were hell bent on your destruction. Even in her brief stint as Rescue, a companion to Tony's Iron Man during the period of years they had spent trying to revive the Decimated, she had come close to death more than a few times. Eventually, she had retired that identity, or as Tony liked to call it, her "super special superhero name", and dove full time into the role of 'mom'.

Morgan had been born on January 15th, 2019. Ironically, mere hours after Pepper had assured Tony that his dream that she was pregnant was false, she had come to find out that his premonition was correct. Being told she was pregnant was an interesting memory for Pepper. Her emotions had been on steroids. She had gone to the doctor after feeling a little too fatigued from a run, a run where a wizard (who she now knew as Dr. Strange) had appeared out of a hole in Central Park with Bruce Banner. Then, Tony had disappeared into a spaceship to god knew where, with little to no information on what was happening. Pepper had been hysterical, to say the least. Aliens had descended on New York City once again. Her soon to be husband had flown away. He might have been dead for all she knew, and she was carrying his child.

Later, the unthinkable started to happen. Pepper had watched as her assistant was reduced to a pile of ash, and held a woman on the street as she scattered in the wind. She had witnessed a plane crash into the side of a building, and dozens of cars ram into each other in the road, driverless. All the while, her and some select others had stood by, wanting to be useful but having no idea how, as their world fell to the ground.

When Pepper finally got a hold of reality, she did the first thing she thought of- 'head to the compound'. She arrived to find the front gates unmanned, and only a few others wandering around the grounds aimlessly. She didn't recognize any of them, most were janitorial staff or security personnel. Pepper holed herself up in the Avengers' private commons area and waited. For what, she didn't know. Some sort of answer?

Eventually, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Bruce Banner, and Rhodey trudged into the room she was in, all looking disheveled. Pepper jumped up, hoping to see Tony behind them, but he wasn't there. Nor were a large chunk of the other Avengers, or the wizard and Peter Parker. Pepper practically flew over to Steve and grabbed his arm. No matter that she hadn't seen him in two years, what was in the past was in the past, what mattered was what was happening now. She frantically bombarded him with questions. What was happening, where had they been, where was Tony, why had people turned to dust, why were there aliens in New York again? Steve had looked at her with utter despair through her barrage, and Pepper almost felt bad, but she didn't have mind space for that. If anything, his expression just left her with more questions. Did Steve look upset because he had lost? Because the Avengers lost a fight? Lost? No. That wasn't possible.

Was it?

When Pepper ran out of inquiries, she looked past Steve who was still not talking, to the others in the room. They looked equally as depressed. But, standing in the middle of the sullen group was... a raccoon? Was that a raccoon? Standing up? Even more surprising, when she stared for just a bit longer, the raccoon looked up at her and asked, "What're you looking at blondie? Haven't ya ever seen a raccoon before?" Pepper's eyes bulged out of her head. It talked, too!

In time, Pepper learned about what would later be known as the Decimation, the purge of half the universe by Thanos. Steve told her that Thanos was a titan who had spent his life working towards the goal of 'balancing the universe'. No one knew where Thanos had gone, as he had teleported out of Wakanda using the Space Infinity Stone as soon as he had erased half the population of the universe, just by snapping. Bruce explained the Infinity Stones, cosmic forms that were the most powerful things in the world. He said that one of them, the Power Stone, could destroy an entire planet or person just by touching it, and that there were no restraints on events when you had the Time Stone to turn back the clock. He also told her Vision had possessed an Infinity Stone in his head, the Mind Stone. Natasha told Pepper who they knew was dead so far, showed her the list. The others that had come back to the compound did their best to tolerate all of her questions, but were off-put and discouraged every time one of them had to describe something that had happened. When Steve told her that Thanos had ripped the Mind Stone right out of Vision, Thor left the room. She then learned that Thor had come extremely close to killing Thanos before the snap, but fell short of his goal and was feeling extremely guilty. The others had told him that it wasn't his fault, that they would have assumed stabbing Thanos through the heart would have been enough too, but he was taking it hard. Pepper also learned who the Guardians of the Galaxy were, and that the humanoid raccoon sitting a few feet away from her on sofa was a part of that team. His name was Rocket. Like many of the Avengers, his best friend, Groot, had died and he didn't know the status of the rest of his teammates.

For the most part, the Avengers answered all of Pepper's questions, but there was one that none of them knew the answer to. Where was Tony? No one knew his location, and after the first few days of no Tony, or Peter, who had reportedly gone up in the Spaceship with him, Pepper started to break down. She was pregnant, living in a post-apocalyptic world, and her husband was missing. But, she knew that if Tony was able to get back to the compound, back to her, he would show up at some point. She consoled herself in knowing that he was in space, and space travel sometimes took awhile. All she could do was wait.

Another new face Pepper would get to know was Carol Danvers. The woman had shown up shortly after the Decimation had ended, claiming Fury's hyped up pager that Steve and Natasha had tracked down was a device that she gave to Fury in case of an emergency. She said it had called her to Earth, and that she had known Fury back in the 90s. No one knew whether or not to believe her, though the symbol on the pager did match the one on her uniform. She explained that she was known mostly as Captain Marvel, and demonstrated her powers for the Avengers. She possessed extraordinary abilities, being able to fly, having super strength, and being able to shoot photon blasts out of her hands and sometimes her entire body. After that demonstration, the Avengers decided to initiate Carol onto the team.

Sometime around six hours into the first day after the snap, Natasha took a Quinjet to Clint Barton's farmhouse, where he had been on house arrest for the past two years. Steve had offered to accompany her, but she told everyone she wanted to go by herself. Again, all the rest of them could do was wait.

The Avengers and Pepper bit their nails and kneaded their hands, sitting, standing, or pacing in anticipation of the results of Natasha's search. When Natasha got back, she walked through the doorway of the commons with no Clint, Laura, Lila, Cooper, or Nathaniel. Everyone's tense shoulders dropped. The Black Widow simply shook her head, dropped her eyes, and whispered, "No one was there." Her voice was steady, but her eyes were swollen, and she walked down the hallway, shutting the door to her quarters.

Besides sleeping or going to the bathroom, Pepper spent all her time in the commons. She did this because the airfield was right outside the floor to ceiling window panels, and she hoped that if Tony came down in a spaceship, he would land there, and she would see him arrive.

The next three years were a collection of stop-and-start memories for Pepper. She remembered Tony eventually coming back to her. It had taken a few weeks, but he arrived from the sky in the Benatar, the Guardians' old ship, half-dead, with the last remaining member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, a robotic woman named Nebula.

She remembered Clint Barton returning to the compound after six weeks of absence with a dark new look and depression in his eyes. She remembered the tearful reunion between him and the others.

She remembered being incapacitated by pregnancy in the first year after the Decimation while everyone else was formulating plans and fighting to bring back the fallen.

She remembered having her baby, a large eyed girl she and Tony named Morgan Petra. Tony insisted that Morgan's middle name be after Peter Parker, and even if pepper hadn't agreed, she wouldn't have pushed it.

They were constantly extremely tired as new parents. It was hard for Tony to be all hands on deck with Morgan while also pushing the rest of the Avengers and himself to do their duty to the world, though this did not take away from his complete adoration of his daughter. Because of this, Pepper did most of the diaper changes, the bottles, the late night rocking chair sessions. In the first few weeks of having a newborn, she and Tony would often wake Clint up if they were confused to ask him questions. 'Why wouldn't Morgan stop crying? What did she want?' Clint was the perfect person to ask, with already having been through the wringer of possessing a newborn three times with his own kids. Pepper felt bad at first, waking him up from the little sleep he got to start with, but Clint brushed off her guilt, saying that helping Tony and her with their baby helped fill the hole in his heart left by the deaths of his own children, though Morgan could never replace them.

That remark by Clint further fueled her and Tony's fury towards Thanos and what he had done. Pepper confessed to Tony that she felt like there was more she could be doing, more that she needed to be doing. She wanted to be like Tony, Steve, Natasha, Clint, Bruce, Thor, and all the others, striving to avenge the fallen. Tony took her comments to heart, realizing that with the Avengers cut down by half, and with plan after plan failing, they could use all the help they could get. It had been almost a year and a half since the Decimation and the Avengers weren't getting anywhere, they hadn't even found Thanos yet.

Pepper was ecstatic when Tony surprised her with her very own super suit. It was basically a purple version of the Iron Man suit, with the latest upgrades and some more feminine touches. As the suit assembled itself around her, Pepper realized what it meant. She was an Avenger now. Tony demonstrated how to shoot blasts out of the repulsors in her hands, and Pepper felt a twinge a guilt in her heart. No, it had been more like a stab. Then it was September of 2019, and Morgan was only eight months old. She was beginning to become less dependent on her mother and father, less than she used to be, anyways. Still, that didn't mean that Morgan could live without her parents. The worst possibilities had raced through Pepper's mind, multiple scenarios where her and Tony both died in battle and Morgan had to grow up without both parents. When she considered things like this though, she tried to see the flip side. If they didn't at least try, could they live with themselves? Would they be okay with their child growing up in a world ravaged by grief? Or would it be better if Morgan got to grow up with the world as it should be, despite both their deaths?

Pepper ultimately decided on the second option. She would do whatever it took for Morgan's sake, and especially for all the innocent people that didn't deserve death, that had crumbled to dust in seconds. Tony dubbed her superhero name 'Rescue'.

The next three and a half years were full to the brim with dozens of failed plans, so many foiled attempts. Pepper could remember everything that the Avengers had tried, and every moment of crushing disappointment when nothing ever worked.

But, eventually, the final moment came. Their final destination. The Avengers found Thanos and brought the fight back to him. They had learned from their mistakes, and instead of being spread out over multiple galaxies and planets, they gathered in one spot and were able to overwhelm Thanos. Multiple Avengers held Thanos down while Tony ripped the Infinity Gauntlet holding all the stones off of Thanos's hand. When he had it in his possession, he slid it on and was able to reverse the Decimation. The gauntlet was not made for a human, though, and Tony's arm was now irreversibly damaged. He wore an electric prosthetic arm similar to Bucky Barnes's, though it went around his arm instead of replacing it. At night, or when he was lounging, Tony would wear a splint. When he slept, his arm rested limply at his side.

Two years after the Decimation had been reversed, life was pretty much back to normal. It was now 2025, Morgan was six, and Tony was still as stubborn as before. The Stark family was living in the Avengers compound, as they had been since 2018, but had plans to move out soon. Pepper had been worried as to how the Avengers would react to having a toddler waddling around, but they all absolutely adored Morgan. Still, as the child grew, she'd need more space, more privacy. It would be easier to change the setting of her life while she was young. Morgan didn't seem too concerned with the move, other than looking for reassurance that he would still see her Uncle Clint, Uncle Bruce, Aunt Natasha, Uncle Thor and Uncle Steve regularly. Pepper assured her that she would. The Starks would still be living in New York, in a custom built home (rather, a mansion, currently under construction,) surrounded by forests and rivers. It was no more than a few minutes away from the compound, as Tony could never be far.

Tony and Pepper were currently on a date. They had enlisted Clint to bring Morgan along with him for his weekend visit to his farmhouse to play with Lila, Nathaniel and Cooper. He nearly exploded with joy when Pepper and Tony told her she would be visiting the Bartons' for a whole weekend, and a grin lit up her face as she frantically waved to her mom and dad through the window of the Quinjet when him and Clint took off on Friday.

This weekend was one of the rare moments that Pepper had alone with Tony. He had promised her that he would be completely present, yet there he was watching the news, waiting for catastrophe to strike. Pepper rolled onto her side on the bed, staring at Tony. She waited for him to notice, holding her gaze until he finally looked over at her.

"What?"

Pepper raised her eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'what'?" She gestured towards the widescreen. "You promised you wouldn't do this."

"I'm just checking-"

"On what? For what? Making sure the world's not coming to an end?"

"Yes!" Tony said defensively.

Pepper sighed. "I just want to be with you. I realize that you have duties as an Avenger, which is why I've allowed that," Pepper pointed at the phone resting on the marble of the bedside table, "to be in the room with us. You know that the Avengers would call you if anything was happening."

"I know." Tony huffed and absently rubbed his bad arm. "I just... it makes me nervous when I don't know what's happening. I woke up from a nightmare, I needed to make sure that it wasn't real."

Pepper sat up and crossed her legs. "What was the nightmare about?"

"I... I had a dream that..." Tony sucked in a breath and let it go slowly. "I had a dream that Morgan was kidnapped by terrorists and they were holding her for my money. She was so- She was so scared."

Pepper frowned and moved closer to him, wrapping her arms around his torso and resting her head on his chest. His arm came up around her shoulders. "Well, that hasn't happened. She's with Clint and Laura, too. You know they'll protect him."

Tony clutched her tighter and Pepper felt a slight tremor travel through his body. "In my dream, they killed Clint and his family. They took Morgan and it was my fault. It was all because of what they wanted from me." Pepper had no answer to that. It was a realistic, though unlikely, situation Tony was describing. She couldn't tell him that there was no possibility of that happening, because that wouldn't be true. Instead, Pepper just gripped Tony tighter. In truth, Pepper had experienced a dozen similar nightmares to what Tony had just described, and she knew that he had, too. She was surprised that Tony told her about this one, seeing as if he woke up startled, he usually just kept the cause to himself. It must have been a particularly terrifying dream. When Pepper whispered, "It's okay. We're okay," she said it for Tony, of course, but also for herself, seeking some form of reassurance.

After a few minutes, Tony jerked sideways to look at her. In a panicked and rushed tone, he started spouting an entire speech. "It's just not fair. To you, I mean. It's not fair to you. You've always been there for me, whatever I needed whenever I needed it, and you just keep getting dragged through the same crap over and over and over again. Nightmare, death, fear, nightmare, death, fear. I want to stop, for you, for Morgan, I want to stop. But I can't, not while the world still needs me, not while my friends are fighting battles that I should be, too. Not while there's still threats, threats that if I don't fight, might engulf our family one day, or take the lives of others. That's why I have to check the news, have to check my phone, because if I'm not there something might go wrong, someone might die and it would be my fault because I could have stopped it-"

"Tony, Tony, woah, just slow down, take a breath!" Pepper placed her hands solidly on his shoulders. "I get it, you want to stop Avenging for our sake, but you can't because you need to protect people. I already know this, and you've told me before, so where is this outburst coming from?"

Tony rubbed the back of his head and sighed. "I was trying to think of some way that I could retire without being restless all the time and I think I've found an option. I wanted to get your opinion. I can tell if it's crazy or not."

"Yes, okay, tell me." Pepper nodded.

"So," Tony started, "the bones of my idea is that each of the Avengers would take an apprentice and train them. To be us. That way, when we retire, we'll have an able team ready to go and the world will still have protection. Of a sort, anyways."

"Oh, um, okay!" Pepper nestled farther into the blankets of the bed. "I guess that's not a terrible idea. It's a bit radical though, don't you think?"

"Well, yes, but the more you consider it, the more sane it becomes. Think about it," Tony raised his hands in front of him, as if framing the future. "The Avengers are known across the universe. We beat Thanos. Aliens, they know it's not in their best interests to mess with us. But once the current team can't perform anymore, Earth will become a prime target, not to mention the crime by humans will probably ramp up. But, if aliens and humans knew that there was another team, it might soften the blows, at least a little bit."

"Hmm," Pepper put a couple of fingers to her lips. "And when you say, 'apprentices', what exactly do you mean by that?"

"Gifted individuals that could be enhanced with training," Tony explained. "They'd be younger than all of the Avengers, of course, because what's the point of having a new team if they won't last much longer than us?"

"Will you choose Peter? As your apprentice, I mean."

"No," Tony waved his hand. "Parker's got other things happening for him. And he's at MIT, so there's no way I'd ever pull him out of that." Pepper nodded in agreement.

"So you'll run this by Clint, Thor, Natasha, Bruce, and Steve? And if they support it then you're going to do it?"

"Yes, I suppose. You think it's a good idea?"

"I think it's great."

"Yes!" Tony exclaimed.

"Now, let's enjoy our weekend."

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Again, my first fanfic, so sorry that it's a little rough! I hope you guys enjoyed it! I plan on posting the next chapter next Sunday. Have an awesome day/night!