The Tower: Happily Ever After

Angela's Request

The passage of time is strange for even the most normal people. The way it speeds up as you get older. The way some things seem to drag on forever, but others fly by in the blink of an eye.

For me and the Avengers aging so slowly - things seemed to be moving in spirals. We watched as our kids grew and then seemed to stop, looking not much younger than we still looked. Our friends all aged and then began to die and we all were still acting like we were still in our thirties. It's a strange phenomenon that not even Thor had experience with - and as we watched people pass and the world move on from needing us, we began to discuss returning to Asgard.

The thing that kept stopping us was the kids. We ended up having a lot in the end. Joining Pietro, Riley, Rose, Rebecca, Sarah, and Edwin were five more. Wanda decided she wanted to do the whole baby thing again two years after her twins were born and she asked Clint to father her next baby. It was a boy we named William Ian, though everyone just called him Billy. Three years later Natasha and Clint asked if we could add another and Thomas Paul joined the family, making Clint the only one of the men to have biological children with each of us. We thought we were all definitely done after that, and then nine years later Bruce came to me saying that he had been missing having little kids in the house and that he wondered if I'd make a baby with him. Thus Marya Alexandra was born. Each child had their own set of powers, sometimes, like with Billy and Marya, the power mimicked one of their biological parents. Other times, like with Eddie's technopathy, or Riley's command of the winds, it was just their own unique thing. Pietro - who was born before we had bonded - was the only one that had ended up being a normal human child.

Once again, we thought we were done having children after Marya, but thirty-five years after the first incident of Thor's powers going a little haywire it happened again with me. So with most of our children grown and living their own lives, I was expecting twins again. This time Steve and Thor were the unwitting fathers and perhaps a little strangely; we were all excited about it. It made me wonder if we would ever really be done. Maybe we would end up being the seed family for a planet of people. Maybe one day we could call everyone on Earth a relative.

You see, it wasn't just us having kids, most of our kids were grown and things like starting a family were in their goals too. Pietro and Riley were still generally what you would consider single. They had moved to Asgard at the age of twenty and were considered children there, and with the new frame of reference, they were in no hurry to start families of their own. Rebecca seemed happy being single and kid-free, she worked with SHIELD as an agent and quickly climbed the ladder. She reminded me of Hill in a lot of ways. Rose got married when she was twenty-five and had twins too, and they were now almost ten years old. Ziggy and Anna were their names - and god, did I love becoming a grandma. Sarah and Billy also had little ones though neither were married and while Billy was happy living with the man he had decided to start a family with, no one actually knew who Sarah had Zak with given when she did date, it was exclusively women. Eddie, who took after Tony in so many ways, had done the playboy life as he ran Stark Industries until just recently and now was living with a guy and a girl and they were talking about having kids of their own. Even Tommy was starting to talk about finding someone and we wondered if the speed that Earth moved was not the best for them. Maybe we needed to convince as many of them as we could to come to Asgard with us so that we could try and curb this need to keep up with what was happening on Earth.

We had started visiting Asgard more often. Everyone was all but retired from the superhero life - the world moved on and there were people that could do more than we ever could, and now they all just acted in an advisory capacity or if something really big happened. With the impending birth of the twins, we knew it was probably time. Then Angela showed up and took the option off the table.