Title: The Lies We Tell Ourselves

Pairing: Pepper/Tony (Come on, as hilarious as it is saying Pepperony is just so weird)

Summary: The art of Them and Us and the maybes that bridge gaps.

Note: …The comic spawns IDEAS. It's a disease. Something I don't understand though; when did the Happy thing take place in the Invincible Ironman shpiel? Or did it not happen at all? Ah well, I'm new to comic books so help would be much appreciated!

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"All you need is; love is a lie, 'cause we had a love but we still said goodbye."

~Split Screen Sadness, FM.

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There is a funny sort of silence between them, like a mutual agreement to never speak of it again.

Instead their routine is returned to with a delicate manifestation of understanding and the vague hope that there is a light- if not just a little less murky –place at the end of the tunnel for them.

Not the separate them, the them that are separate entities of Anthony Edward Stark and Virginia Potts. No, it is the them of Mr. Stark (sometimes Tony) and Pepper (just Pepper). The them that was a team of two taking on a universe.

She is amazed and worried, not at all envious and a million other things, at what he does.

He is horrified and guilty, not at all, but maybe just a little more light and a million other rather new and interesting things at what has happened to her.

They wonder how it came to the point where they are now strangers to each other, cobbled together pieces of past and habit and wants. They think that although their initial need to know that it isn't just desserts; it isn't fair that such things should be justified.

Their chance is lost. There is a separation of a lifetime and lives (for there is distinction between the two) and people and faces; too many to count. Where there was once physical distance there is now emptiness and neither knows how it got there.

There is a space between them that keeps filling up with all the things that they don't say to each other.

Pepper and Tony. The them that is each other and both of them. The them that once meant friendship holds no understanding anymore.

Pepper and Tony are worlds and lifetimes, leaps and bounds apart.

How do two people who once knew the other like the lines of their palm or face, grow to be strangers?

It's sad, they know.

But there are miracles, as once in a while the world- as it often tends to do –reminds us. And the familiarity falls into place, followed not long after; a building. And she survives.

Pepper Potts survived a 50 story building collapse.

That was when Tony Stark chose to give his heart to her.

She is a walking, breathing miracle and he holds her hands as tightly as he can, scarred as they are. They are beautiful to him, and warm. And proof that she is there. She's floating above him, gown billowing, there's laughter and smiles; the knowledge that he is what is keeping her alive.

All it took was a miracle to bridge the gap.