I don't own anything except any original/own characters and any original plot.

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Epilogue

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The years after the Reverse Snap were peaceful. More peaceful than I thought possible. Especially since the hunger for battle had been in my blood since I was a young child. But the years changed me just as they changed Steve. We both matured, separately and together as a couple. That battle-craving blood morphed into something completely new, and who were we to fight it?

We moved to Orveon after saying our final goodbyes to the Avengers and the general public in a small press conference. With promises of returning to stay updated with our friends, and threatening Loki to treat New Asgard right as their co-king, we were gone. Upon arrival, we stayed with my family until the sale for our house went through, and moved there with even more promises to visit my brother and parents, along with the news that they were planning on talking to Madame Teyla about child options.

The first year was the hardest, full of grasping the ropes of normal family life, and trying to recover from our separate and shared traumas. But slowly, we got the hang of it. Just in time to welcome our son into a new era of peace.

"Ejo, I'm home!"

"Where's your brother?" Looking up from my book, I met Elora's innocent gaze as she toed off her shoes at the front door.

"Outside with dad," she shrugged, dropping most her schoolbooks on the table, only keeping the ones she needed, "Something about a project for his Space Studies class. He wants to pick Earth to research."

"That's cheating. He can speak fluent English and visits once a month. He should research a planet he doesn't know as well."

"That's what I said when he told me about it! Now he's trying to get gysk on his side."

Chuckling, I pushed myself off the couch, leaving my book behind, "Your father favors Earth more than any other planet, but he's not one for cheating. Back on Earth he made a bunch of videos for the school systems about how cheating and partying and bla bla bla is bad. It was embarrassing but it paid the bills."

Elora nodded enthusiastically in agreement. Passing by her I stopped in the kitchen, humming to myself as I thought over what I could make for dinner.

"Why isn't gysk cooking tonight?" Elora sat on a barstool at the counter.

"We switched nights to shake things up a bit. Now go work on the homework I know you have so we can hang out later. It's family night, no excuses."

Groaning, Elora slumped off her chair and stalked off to her room upstairs. Rolling my eyes at the eleven-year-olds attitude, I pulled out all the ingredients I would need for the Orveonian dinner I thought of.

An hour north of the Orveonian capitol, in a growing rural town dubbed Klep, was the five-bedroom house I loved so much five years before. When Steve and I bought it, we were pleasantly surprised to find a barn and lake in the spacious backyard. It was under construction at the time the pictures were taken meaning we couldn't see it. That allowed us to keep Orflaks there. I brought Eldia over from the palace, and Steve and the kids got new ones of their own.

Post Reverse-Snap, the decision of where to live was easy enough to make. Earth had many rising young defenders, new heroes, and heroes yet to appear. It didn't need us, hence Steve giving his shield to Sam. Orveon was peaceful, fulfilling. Steve and I wouldn't be tempted to leave the kids at home to go on missions we might not return from.

Even if we did train with the guards whenever we visited the castle.

Our kids would feel more welcome as well. Even if their purple skin and scales would mark them as royal for the rest of their lives, they could only shift into a human form. Like everyone else who could only shift into one other type of being.

Monthly Earth visits and weekly calls kept us all connected to the Avengers and Starks. And weekly visits to the castle created a close relationship between the kids and their grandparents, uncles, and their cousins.

13 years after the formation of the Avengers, 16 since I went to Earth, and 19 since I arrived at Asgard to teach Loki magic.

Time flew by in a fleurie of wars, happiness, change, and pain. That strange concoction created my happy future. One I couldn't imagine for myself until I met Steve and started dating him.

"I have to pick a different planet? But Earth is so easy! Come on gysk!"

Meeting Steve's 'paternally tired' eyes, I didn't bother hiding my amusement as the pair entered the house from the back porch. Lifting his son up by his hips, Steve threw the boy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Alright, alright. Enough arguing. No doing Earth. End of story. Got it? It wouldn't be fair to the other kids."

"Yeah..."

Spinning and dizzying his son, Steve laughed, "What did you say?"

"Okay, okay! Put me down!"

"Anthony Valerian Rogers!" I called, stepping around the counter, "Come say hello to your ejo."

Screech laughing, Anthony nearly fell off Steve's shoulders in his hurry to reach me and give me a hug. Dropping to his feet, Anthony stumbled over, wrapping his little arms around my waist. Smiling contently, I ran my fingers through his light hair.

"An hour until dinner. Go do your homework. It's family night. Oh, and Ton, tomorrow when you're picking planets try Xandar. It had a really interesting history, and an end we can talk to Uncle Thor about."

Ton. Not Tony. Although we moved away from Earth, we wanted to honor Tony when we found out it was a boy. So there was no question what we would name him upon the discovery.

Even then, Tony was Tony— irreplaceable in many, many ways, good and bad. Ton - pronounced tone- not Tony was born from that.

"You're rubbing all of your Earth love off on him," I rapidly cut up vegetables, pointing at the unprepared main dish in front of me, "Spiced and in the oven."

"I'm not doing anything," Steve stated innocently, pulling out the best spices for our main course. He knew cooking well, "It's probably Sam and Bucky whenever we visit Earth. Since he's at that impressionable age."

Shaking my head, I sighed, "They can work well together when they want to, but of course they hate each other any other time. It's a miracle their missions go as well as they do."

In tandem we finished our dinner preparations, sliding it into the oven. With 45 minutes to spare, Steve and I moved from the house to outside. On the side of the barn was a small lake, a pond. The Orflaks liked to graze there. On the barn free side, close to the forest, we put in a cheesy swing seat overlooking the lake and the setting of the sun.

"Moments like this never seem real," Steve informed after we sat down.

He said that every time we sat outside together. And I always asked- "Why?"

He answered, "Before the ice, I wanted to join the army. Towards the end I thought about something like this. Then the ice, and that dream died. Until I met you, and it came back to life."

"Was it love at first sight?"

I adored his answer.

"No. It was love as soon as we were watching Star Wars for the first time and you were critiquing their space travel methods."

Turning, one leg dangling and the other on the bench, I pondered, "Is it true love?"

Steve smiled and pressed a finger to his lips as if instructing me to keep the answer a secret. Even though he never openly gave me one. He didn't need to.

I knew it was.

True love was in the eye of the beholder, much like beauty- so many searching for a 'right answer' when there wasn't one.

Honestly, there were times when I stopped loving Steve. Like when we argued over dishes, or the rare occasions we built a wall of pillows on the bed to be away from each other. But I never stopped loving him. The dishes would always end up washed, and we would move the pillows, because we understood each other, and talked through our unlovable moments.

"Have you thought about names some more? Since Madame Teyla said that this one is a girl?" Steve trailed a hand over my ever growing stomach, receiving a hard kick in return.

Baby number three, the last, most likely. A girl by Madame Teyla's early predictions, but she was never wrong and took pride in that. 6 out of 12 months along. Elora and Anthony had been more than willing to give lists of name suggestions, but my mind was made up as soon as the gender was confirmed- the same way it was with Anthony.

"Natalia."

Nat so desperately wanted a baby named Natasha, but I felt she got that with Nathaniel- even if it wasn't 100% accurate to her name. Nathaniel was named after the two people who saved his father's life. Natalia on the other hand-

"Nat's birth name. What makes you so set on that one?"

My answer was already primed after several sleepless nights thinking it over, "Because she could never claim it for herself. Natalia Romanova died with Natasha Romanoff was born. Then Natasha Romanoff... she could never say Natalia was who she aspired to be because it's what the Red Room made her. This baby is a chance she never had."

Steve sniffles were right in my ear. I turned and cooed, rubbing his cheek against my own to soothe his sadness.

"I miss her," he whispered, clutching me as if I would die as well, "I miss both of them."

"I do too," I ignored the tear rolling down my cheek. No matter how much time passed, the pain never lessened, it was just easier to handle, 'But that's why we need to tell the kids our stories. So they can live on through us, then them, and their kids, and their kids. Legends never die."

"Ejo! Gysk!" Ton and Elora ran out of the house to join us and disturb our peace.

"What happened to finishing your homework?" I questioned with a raised brow.

"We finished fast so we could come out here," Elora plopped down in the grass in front of us while Tony climbed onto Steve's lap, "Thirty minutes left until dinner is ready. I checked the timer before we came out."

"What do you want to do while we wait?" Steve bounced Ton on his leg, smiling when he laughed happily.

"Tell us a story," Anthony all but begged, eyes wide with childish excitement.

"About what?"

"The Avengers," Elora cut in, more excited than her kid brother, "I remember bits and pieces of things that happened when I was like, five."

"Oh, no, no. You came way later in the story. Right at the end, actually," I laughed, "Telling you about all our adventures would take a while."

"Start now, finish later," Anthony ordered, crossing his arms and huffing.

I shrugged, "Only if you promise to pass these stories onto your kids. They're worthy of a movie, maybe several."

Both children nodded enthusiastically at our only terms. Steve cleared his throat and began before I could, "There was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people..."

As the kids scooched in close, I leaned on Steve's shoulder and looked at the falling sun, occasionally cutting in when his side of the story waned a bit from what actually happened. Time altered all our memories.

There, on my alien planet, I sat with my family- my legacy. And I knew, deep down, that no matter how much time passed, or how many heroes rose and fell to protect those who couldn't protect themselves; the Avengers would never be forgotten.