Story: Blue-eyed wraith
Author: saichick
Challenge: Pepperony 100
Theme: 005 - Blue
Rating: PG

Although red had always been his favorite color, Tony Stark realized it was a different color he craved in the dank shadows of the cave. Whenever he sank exhausted onto his cot for a few hours sleep before more slavish work on the "Jericho missile" (really an iron suit to aid his excape), he would dream of the things he missed the most. His cyan 1967 Shelby Cobra. The deep azure of the ocean smashing itself upon the cliffs beneath his Malibu mansion. The pale blue of the sky as it teased the ocean racing out to the horizon to embrace it. Most of all, he missed the twinkle in his assistant, Pepper Potts, expressive cerulean blue eyes.

The dreams, no, they were really more hallucinations, had started immediately after ripping open his shirt on the hot desert sand and realizing that his dragon-skin armor had failed to stop shrapnel from piercing his heart. The bright blue sky was the last thing his mind had registered as he lost consciousness, and his captors had only briefly allowed him outside once. To him, blue had come to symbolize freedom from the dark, damp cold of the cave and the acrid scent of smoke. It also symbolized hope, the promise of good things to come.

She had come to him the first time in the desert. He couldn't really see her face, just blue eyes and her bright red hair highlighted by a halo of sun behind her head, frantically shaking him awake. "Tony," she said, "what happened?"

"I … I'm not sure. We were hit."

"Where are you?" she asked, panic in her voice.

"I think I'm dead…" he stated. "My chest … it hurts." It did hurt, but as he looked beyond the halo of her red hair, he saw the sunlight, or was it something else, beckoning to him. As he reached towards it, he felt the pain in his chest fade and he felt at peace. This was good. He wanted to go into the light.

Pepper grabbed his face between her hands and shouted, "Tony, stay with me. Don't you dare leave me!"

That was just like Pepper, always making him do things he didn't want to do. There was nothing for him here. He wanted to go into the light. He thought he saw figures standing behind her, arms open, waiting to embrace him if he would only go into the light.

"Tony, stay with me. I need you. Please don't go!" she cried, taking his face tenderly in her hands. She kissed him then, not a seductive kiss, but the frantic, desperate kiss a wife might give her husband before sending him off to war. "Don't go," she whispered, tears rolling down her face past the freckles to her chin. He felt one tear drip from her chin onto his lips and tasted her salty essence. Hmmm … this was different. Pepper kissing him. For nearly a decade Pepper had held him at bay behind the cold iron mask of her Miss Potts persona. Today, of all days, she was finally giving him the kiss he had pursued for ten years. "Please stay…"

He became aware that somebody was jostling his body, shouting, shoving him into an uncomfortable upright position. In that direction lay nothing but pain. In the other direction was the light. It felt good, peaceful. He saw his parents standing there, waiting for him. But standing between him and the light was Pepper Potts, his face in her hands, her blue eyes pleading with him to stay. In an instant, he made a decision. "Pepper, find me" he stated as some sort of sack was ripped off his head and she faded into the darkness of the cave. "Find me…" he whispered as his mind raced towards consciousness.

His mind registered the acrid stench of unwashed bodies, the dank humidity of dirt and someplace underground. His throat parched, he tasted blood. He was surrounded by machine gun armed men, brightly colored keffiyeh's masking their faces as they made guttural demands into a camera. He looked around, perplexed, searching for Pepper's blue eyes as he realized it had been nothing but a dream.

Half a world away, Pepper jolted out of bed, her heart racing. Something was wrong. She had to find him. She picked up the phone, and dialed …

She came to him many times as he lingered in and out of consciousness, the strange pressure of something foreign, cold, piercing his chest and making it difficult to breathe. As his mind fought off delirium and his body infection, he wished many times he'd chosen to go into the light instead of staying behind for … for this … whatever this was. But then she would come to him and he would feel at peace. She cried … a lot … especially those first few weeks when he wasn't sure he was going to make it. He never saw her clearly, her form always soft and ethereal as though she wasn't really there. But he could feel her hands stroking his face, tenderly holding his hand and pleading with him to stay with her. She was looking for him … his blue-eyed wraith … and he knew she would move heaven and earth to find him.

In the Stark mansion, Pepper reluctantly awoke only to realize she had fallen asleep in Tonys' bed again. The first time it had happened, she hadn't meant to sleep there, but she missed him and felt closer to him there. She had sat down, inhaling his scent from his pillow, and suddenly she was at his side, comforting him, pleading with him to hold on. He was badly injured. She wasn't sure how she knew that, but she just did. If she just kept looking… Although the military had told her his chances of survival were slim, Pepper just knew he was still alive. With that certainty, Pepper continued on…

"I wouldn't do that if I were you" he heard a male voice tell him.

He felt an agonizing pain shoot through his sternum as a pair of cables yanked on the piece of metal impaled into his chest. Panicked, he gradually began to understand that the man speaking to him had done something to save his life. For three weeks he had been in and out of consciousness. Then the terrorists, armed to the teeth with his guns, demanded he build a next-gen Jericho missile capable of wiping out an entire US battalion. He refused. They dragged him into another part of the catacombs and held his head under the water until his lungs felt like they would burst.

It was no surprise when she came. "Tony!" he heard her call. She floated before him like some Madonna, clad in a cerulean blue dress that matched her eyes, white light streaming from her heart, hands and feet like stigmata. As she touched his face, images sparkled into his brain of his arc reactor, miniaturized to fit inside the hole in his chest. Peace overcame him as he realized what it was he needed to do. In her beautiful blue eyes he had found his muse. He would tell the terrorists anything they wanted to hear. He had come up with a plan.

Pepper jolted awake. She had dozed off again at another board meeting. She had been doing that a lot lately. She wasn't sleeping, and when she did, she dreamed of Tony. They weren't pleasant dreams, but this one was more intense than most. He was being tortured. She had to find him!

Although technically she was only Tony's personal assistant, Pepper had amassed many favors over the years acting as the gateway to the great Tony Stark. Everyone from the janitor to the President of the United States owed her favors, and for the first time in her life, Pepper ruthlessly cashed in to force them to keep up the search. She knew he was still alive, she could feel it in her heart, and so long as she kept feeling that way, she would blackmail whoever it took to force them to keep looking

As days blended into weeks, and weeks into months, Tony worked on his masterpiece. The terrorists were deliberately keeping him and Yinsen awake forcing, them to finish the "missile," but for two or three hours every night they would allow him to rest.

She never stayed long, but when she came, she would look into his eyes and kiss him. There was something he'd never felt before in that kiss, a longing older than Adam reaching out to caress the forbidden fruit. He knew it couldn't be real, but he felt, somehow, connected to Pepper in a way he'd never felt connected to anything in his life. Pepper was his muse, his Eve. He reached out to her across the abyss like Adam reaching across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to the hand of the Creator to grant him life. It was ironic that, so close to death, he was tasting life for the very first time.

Keeping his company going while he was gone had been the easy part. She had, in every way except for job title, been pretty much the one handling the day-to-day tasks of running his company for years. Obediah had, of course, been quick (too quick) to accept the military's dismal prognosis and attempted to take over Tony's share of the company, but she had thwarted the hostile takeover. Like a female dragon guarding her clutch, Pepper kept Tony's company alive and out of hostile hands.

The dreams had changed. They were more status updates, not very different from their relationship while he was home, but more intimate. She would momentarily doze off and suddenly she would be there with him, in a cave, watching metal come to life in his hands the way it had often done at his workshop. He would grasp her face in his hands and kiss her like a drowning man, then babble on in technospeak about what it was he was doing. She didn't understand the project he was working on, but she knew it was big and the time of his return was drawing near.

Rhodey had scoffed at her when she had tried to explain it to him, but then he had surprised her and transferred into the air force calvary, riding around the searing Afghan desert in a chopper looking for signs of terrorist outposts close to where Tony had been abducted. A few weeks later, she got the phone call. "Pepper, we've got him."

Every bone in his body ached as the C5 bounced down upon the tarmac and coasted to a stop. He felt so weak, but as the rear gate unfolded, he didn't want her first glimpse of him to be in a wheelchair. Rhodey helped him keep his balance as he squared his shoulders and walked down the tarmac. He knew the visions were delusions, but he was disappointed when she didn't throw her arms around him and kiss him. When she returned his idiotic attempt to breach the awkwardness with humor with her usual standoffish Miss Potts retort, his heart fell. She was still his Pepper, but this was the loyal assistant of reality, not the ethereal wraith of his dreams.

Tony Stark forced hallucinations of his blue-eyed wraith out of his mind until the night he saw Pepper in the opera house, wearing the cerulean blue dress she had worn in his vision, her long red hair haloing her face and brilliant blue eyes like a sun goddess.