Disclaimer: Anything not immediately recognizable as a registered trademark of Marvel and/or Paramount Pictures is probably mine. Anything you do recognize I'm simply borrowing. I seek no monetary gain from this. I wrote it simply for fun (and because I really like these characters).
Author's Note: In my infinite wisdom, I decided one night a few weeks ago that (on top of the long list of other projects I have to tackle this summer) I was going to write a one-shot fic for every song that Tiësto included in his Elements of Life set list (as I loved the tour). This amounts to forty-one fics for forty-one songs. The stories don't really have anything to do with the songs, though (ie - these are definitely not songfics). This is technically the second of the series, though the song was 30th in the set list.
As the stories are not interconnected by anything other than their titles' origins, I have decided not to post them all in a single entry, but to treat them as the separate stories they all are.
Summary: There is but one day a year Tony Stark is completely silent. This year, Pepper has to take over his duties. As it turns out, she is not as good at silence.
Other: Iron Man Movie!verse; mostly gen. One-Shot. Set some indeterminate time after IM2.
Silence
Tony Stark has never been known for his ability to be quiet. Sure, he can go hours without saying a word when he is down in his workshop, wholly absorbed in inventing something, but those times are all but impossible to replicate outside of the lab, so to speak. Give him the opportunity to say something, no matter how small that opportunity may be, and he will.
There is one day a year, though, when he doesn't need to be lost in the creative process for silence to overtake him.
Pepper isn't sure if Tony loses himself to his memories, or if he spends the whole day wondering if he's met his father's high expectations of him. She's never asked, and Tony's never said. But that one day each year, Tony doesn't say a word. They drive to the cemetery in silence and walk to the gravesite in silence. Then Pepper, always standing a few feet back, watches her silent boss have silent conversations with his father's headstone. They've followed this routine for over ten years now.
Today, however, Pepper visits Howard Stark's grave alone.
"You understand, though," she says quietly, gaze falling on the tan-colored granite headstone. "He's off saving the world. You'd be proud of him." Pepper's thoughts suddenly stop. She shifts, suddenly uncomfortable.
Like everyone else in the country, Pepper grew up learning about Howard Stark's contributions to the war effort and his role in the creation of the atomic bomb. She knows him for his weapons and his brilliant mind and his big, idealistic dreams of world peace and world harmony. But she never met the elder Stark in person. She doesn't really know him. So she can't really say whether or not he'd be proud of Tony now, can she? She can't make that assumption.
Pepper corrects herself with the next best thing. With a broad smile, she says, "I'm proud of him. When I'm not worried sick or…or plotting ways to kill him myself for making me worry or cleaning up after the messes he just seems to delight in making…" Pepper pauses, fighting to get her emotions back under control. She glances at the tombstone again, but it, of course, is silent and still. It passes no judgment on her for her loss of control, though Pepper finds herself with the very distinct feeling that someone is…laughing at her good-naturedly. Laughing at her and…praising her for baring the truth here, in a silent, empty section of Arlington National Cemetery. She can't hear it, she knows that – and a quick glance around the cemetery confirms that it is still empty – but she can feel it.
"He's come a long way," she adds, pushing the feeling from her mind. "He thinks about you a lot, you know. He says you're still teaching him."
She opens her mouth to say something more, something about how he showed Tony how to keep himself from dying, but then her phone rings and the easy silence of the cemetery. Pepper doesn't grab for it, but waits, listening. Three rings, and then the call cuts off.
She knows the pattern by heart.
Agent Coulson.
"Looks like another rodeo," Pepper says, smiling sympathetically. She hates to leave – she hasn't been here more than an hour – but when SHIELD calls, you respond. It's the way it is. (Besides, she knows that if she doesn't call Coulson back within the next ten minutes an armed team will descend on her phone's last known signal, and that's a nuisance she doesn't really want to deal with right now.)
So Pepper turns, pulling her phone out of her purse so she'll have it at the ready. She'll call when she gets to the car. As she walks back across the grassy cemetery she gets a slight chill, as though a cool breeze has just kicked up. With it comes a feeling, a sense that she is not alone in being proud of Tony Stark.
Pepper looks back over her shoulder. She expects nothing and, of course, there is nothing. The cemetery continues to sit in silence.