Rhodey had always dreamed of flying. Some of his earliest memories were of sitting with his grandmother (a former plane test pilot for the army) and listening to her talk about what it had felt like to soar above the clouds. Sometimes she showed him photos from the physical albums she had stockpiled under her bed. Rhodey had been fascinated by those stories, and by those photos.
Very few people had physical photos when he was growing up. Gran was the only person in the entire neighbourhood. According to Gran, when she'd been little it had already been going out of style with the majority.
'For most people it was just easier and cheaper to store your stuff online.' Gran's voice was deep and powerful, and if you had never had her speak before you'd be caught by surprise. She was small now, bent forward with age, but she was always very neat. Her fluffy gray hair was always pulled back nice and tight in a bun, and her clothes were always ironed and straight. 'My wing woman was a rich girl, her mother loved making albums. Nice lady but a bit wasteful. She gave these to us our first anniversary of working together.'
Rhodey knew that Gran kept a picture of the her and her partner in the locket around her neck. It was the only picture she made sure to always have somewhere on her person. His grandmother was wearing her old flight suit, dark green and baggy, done up neatly to her neck. Her hair was braided and pulled back, the very picture of order. Her partner stood beside her with her flight suit open to her waist, the arms tied around her waist, so that it rested just under her tank top. The lady was slightly darker than his gran, though her hair was more finely textured, falling in sleek ringlets around her oval shaped face. They were turned slightly towards each other in the photo, eyes sparkling as they laughed at an inside joke.
He was a quiet kid, small but stocky. His best friend, apart from his Gran, had been Virgina 'Ginny' Potts at school. She was about a year younger than him but she was tall for her age so they were always looking at each other eye-to-eye. Ginny was the very confident kind of little girl took the lead when they were paired in class projects or deciding what to play. When Rhodey told his Gran about her and the things they did at school, she would chuckle in her deep, smooth voice and say, 'Now there's a girl who could run for President. What a pepper pot!' (When Rhodey was 12 and the two of them met face-to-face at his birthday Ginny would smile small and bright when his gran repeated this verbatim).
She also knew about how he felt about flying. She felt almost the exact opposite, Ginny liked to keep her feet on the ground. But Ginny also liked to keep an eye out for the things her friends were interested in. Despite her confidence Ginny wasn't great at showing physical affection or giving comfort, so she made sure to show an interest in her friends' hobbies, whether that was looking out for shells for Valerie to scrimshaw with her mother when she was at the beach or trying to find the newest, best model plane to buy for Rhodey's birthday.
When Rhodey was 15 and his grandmother's health took a turn for the worse, Ginny (who had been spending all her time looking up new aerospace videos on YouTube to distract Rhodey with) heard about the documentary series being released about the space exploration ships. The series sought to investigate the research and theories behind the new biological ships, the future avenues that research could take and the viability of producing such ships for Earth-bound travel. She spent a year saving her allowance so that she could buy the last episode of the series when it came out on holo-disc. Rhodey and his Gran spent her last afternoon awake, sitting together in her hospital room, while a see-through man in a nice suit pointed to the birds superimposed upon their surroundings and explained the possible designs for Earth-bound bio-ships and how each was one was based on a particular species of bird. The consensus at the end of the episode was that even discounting the expense of building the ships, the gravity and atmosphere of Earth just did not make those ships a solid option.
Ginny, who hadn't known about this until Rhodey told her the afternoon his Gran passed away in her sleep, opened her mouth to apologize before Rhodey had swept her into a tight hug.
'My Gran said to say thanks pepper pot. It was the best thing she'd ever watched.' Her returned hug had been a bit stiff but he understood enough to feel the warmth in it anyway. Rhodey started referring to her as Pepper pot whenever she did anything that made him feel fond, eventually he dropped the pot altogether. By the time he was leaving for the institute everyone was calling her Pepper.
A/N: Went through this and fixed up some silly errors as well as filled in a bit more detail