Keep going. That was the hardest thing to pick, wasn't it? How many times had they all picked keep going even when stop was the alternative head and heart and body were begging for. A rest, or some kind of solace, or just an end. And they always picked keep going anyway, they always did, because even when it was a choice, it was still never really an option. There were things you had to know, things you had to see through once you'd started. It would have spared neither of them anything, in the end, not really, because Tony was crying and shaking and going through these fucking photos was slamming it into Natasha, suddenly, in a way she hadn't expected: she hadn't expected this to be a reminder of what she had lost, too.
Maybe it hadn't been much of a life, for awhile, maybe it had gotten heavy and the bad had inched in front of the good, but it had still been hers. She'd done what she had to do. She'd chosen stop, but stop so everyone else can keep going, which - differentiated it a little, at least, but oh God, it suddenly felt so screamingly unfair that she could open this text chain, reread it, browse through the attachments, but she would never again be able to send a message that anyone on the other side would read.
She pressed herself closer to Tony in the beat that he curled into her, let her mouth thin out into a hard line for a moment, pushing past it. And she swiped her thumb to the left, scrolling through the other shots Pepper had sent - sunrise over the lake, the cover of a book she'd recommended, a close-up of the label on a wine bottle, a gif of glitter exploding, the kind of miscellany found in any text chain between old friends and nothing she minded Tony seeing - until she came to the next one: Tony, asleep on the couch, Morgan splayed out on his chest and both of them with one fist curled up and tucked under their chin, a mirror of each other's sleeping position.
God, that one was so fucking cute. She hadn't shown that one to Steve when it came through, specifically because it was so fucking cute. Shoes, another book, chocolate croissants on a cooling rack - and the next swipe was a close-up of Morgan's chubby little face, a Play button superimposed over it. A video. She'd forgotten about the video, and she pressed her thumb over it to deploy it. It was quick - Tony wasn't in the shot, but his disembodied voice was clear as bells in the background. "Look, this is your literal only job as the kid. Occasionally Mom needs you to be cute on command, Maguna, and also, clearly neither of us is getting french toast until she's satisfied with this recording so please. Dad's so hungry. For the love of God, please?"
"Fiiiiiiiine," Morgan sighed, but she smiled at the camera, and it was genuine, mischievous, like she'd always planned to deliver the goods but had only been waiting to be begged. "Merry Christmas, Aunt Natasha! I love you one hundred and two."
The video ended. Natasha's hand at Tony's neck tightened. "She does this thing," she explained, her voice - strained, heavy. "She assigns a numerical value to how much she loves everybody, she wants everyone to know where they stood. I never ranked higher than 158, she was extremely discerning. I think last time I talked to Pepper, she was in the high 800s and you'd cracked the low thousands. In case you were wondering about the scale."