PERSPECTIVE
Pepper Potts didn't mean to fall into an alternate universe. She really, truly didn't. She had a thousand other priorities. Board meetings to panic over. Emails to respond to. Documents that needed signing. Appointments and meetings that needed to be kept. And her boss.
(That's how she thought of him – one word with a whole dictionary of definitions behind it.)
So it wasn't great that she was thrown – through circumstances entirely beyond her control. (Mutant struggling with new powers stumbles into a coffee shop. Huh. Sounds like the start to a joke. A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE JOKE.)
Pepper wasn't egotistical, but you'd think the world would stop and take note. PA to billionaire inventor, CEO, playboy etc Tony Stark goes missing, sucked into a Shakespeare in the Park-esque world. Boom! Tabloid news.
But the perfectly sickening thing is … nobody notices. Not really. In the real world, Pepper flickered. But to Pepper, she was away for … not a flicker. It was very many flickers.
Words cannot do justice to her experience.
(There. Were. ELVES!)
She stands there – the moment she's flickered back and stares about herself – she's dressed in the same clothes, holding a coffee in one hand, Blackberry in the other. (It wasn't her body that the mutant-in-training sent away. It was her mind. Somehow, that just makes it worse.)
She stands in the coffee shop and hears the indie music playing, hears the hiss of the coffee machine (RUNNING WATER! Her brain screams), sees people – sees humans actual humans oh thank you God - and barely keeps it together.
(The mutant who did this to her has disappeared, scurrying out of the shop like she has monsters on her heels.)
Pepper retreats into the coffee room's bathroom and loses it completely.
She emerges an hour later with red eyes, a cold coffee, and a heart deep feeling of thankfulness for toilets that flush.
Her Blackberry has been having a panic attack, and it's only as she's pushing the door open that she looks down.
Tony Stark was due to attend a development meeting half-an-hour ago. It's kind of a big deal, she remembers dimly. Obi really wanted him to be there.
Strangely, Pepper doesn't feel panicked.
She feels as if she has perspective for the first time in nine years.
(Is he in mortal danger of being slain by weird ninja gremlins? NO. Is he getting attacked by tree climbing elves with bad attitudes and no inside voice? NO. Is the entire world under threat by a horrendous disease that first makes your eyes burst, second makes your toes shrivel and thirdly turns your skin nice and blue and oh! Dead? NO.)
Her phone is ringing and she answers it.
"Where's Tony?" Obi asks her. He sounds unhappy.
(Ogres that sing off-key with lyrics of 'Recipe For Consuming Humans After A Long Marination by Stungsting the Great? NO.)
"Unforeseen circumstances," Pepper says, shocked that she can speak English and be understood. "Leave it with me."
"I have," says Obi. She can feel the thin veneer of civilisation that is disguising the anger bubbling beneath. "Get him here, sweetheart."
Pepper leaves the coffee shop and panics. Because where on earth did she park her car? Oh. There it is. Over there.
She calls Tony as she jogs over to it.
He doesn't answer. Pepper knows that she should feel annoyed. She doesn't. She just feels grateful. (THEY HAVE TELEPHONES HERE! NOT MESSENGER BIRDS! GLORY BE!)
"Tony," she says to the answering machine. "Hi. Hey. Tony. You have a meeting at three o'clock. I've been … erm … uh … ha … delayed … Your suit is (OH SHOOT WHERE DID SHE PUT HIS SUIT?!) where it usually is. Look, Obi sounds angry so um get yourself over there okay bye."
She clicks the unlock button on her car key and … she's got the wrong car.
She stands beside it, stares down at and then it clicks. She doesn't own a Jaguar. She owns an Audi. Or at least, she thinks she does. Oh crap. Where is it?
She looks for far longer than she should do. And finds it right outside the coffee shop.
She climbs inside.
It will be just like riding a bike, she tells herself. Andnosheisnotpanicking.
Perspective.
Is this a horse that she's been expected to ride? No.
She gets to work – Tony's mansion because where is he? – by nothing short of a miracle. She stays in the slow lane and everyone blares their horn at her. Everything is moving so fast. She can't get over it. She was stuck in a horse and cart once. For an entire week.
And now she travels so. Much. Faster and how is she going to take this? Hmm? HOW?
She arrives and marches herself up to the door, looking at her Blackberry because she needs to know what she should have been doing. Or at least, that's what she tells herself. In reality, it's because the thought of seeing Tony Stark unsettles her stomach quite badly.
She missed him.
Nope. Don't think that.
Jarvis opens the door for her and she slips in.
"Jarvis," she asks. "Where is he?"
"At the development meeting scheduled at 15:00 hours," replies Jarvis promptly.
"How late was he?" she asks, because she can't help herself.
"Forty-five minutes. And may I say, Miss Potts, your message was quite bizarre. Are you well?"
She stares around her. At the luxury. At the sleek modernity of it all. She stares around her and stumbles to the couch in the living room, buries her head in her hands and cries.
"Jarvis," she says, finally, which she can control herself once more. "Please tell Mr. Stark that I am having the day off. For menta- for health reasons."
"Might I summon a doctor for you, Miss Potts?"
The door closes behind her before she realises she forgot to say 'no'.
To say that Pepper gets lost on the way home, is to say that the moon is round. Both are facts. Hard, solid facts. Only Pepper's fact is embarrassing – she turns up outside the old foster home which was hell on earth, stares at it and then promptly does not burst into tears.
Sat Nav.
Thank goodness for Sat Nav. She figures it out in the end.
That night, Pepper doesn't sleep. She doesn't sleep at all. No. She sits on her bed, surrounded by diaries from years back and her precious Blackberry and tries to work out who she is and how she is to behave around Tony.
(It's been a long time, even though technically, in this world's time, it was only this morning. Only to her it wasn't. It was a hundred mornings. A hundred hundred mornings even.)
She stays up all night and then – just before dawn – she seats herself on the floor, crosses her legs and tries to work out if what she learned in that Other Place translates into the Real World.
(It doesn't.)
(Damn them all.)
And then she goes to work. Clears out the trash. (She's proud of herself for that line – for the glint in her eye as she says it. Old Pepper has style.)
She doesn't feel put together when she goes downstairs. She manages to get out some drabble about a painting and is a little over eager with over the MIT presentation. (Look, she had to do homework last night. She's trying to fit it all in and sound natural.)
Tony doesn't remember to ask her how she is; Pepper would feel hurt if she doesn't feel so overwhelmed at the fact that holy cow! Running water! Electronics! Life is beautiful!
She controls her wonder and contains a blissful sigh at Tony's face – he doesn't have tusks.
(… yes. Pepper realises she's probably insane.)
But then, wonder of wonders, – just before he leaves – he really looks at her.
"Something wrong?" he asks.
Pepper's mind goes blank.
(YES. PROBABLY EVERYTHING!)
"Yes," she says with a smile. "You. You're late for your plane."
"Come on, Pepper. Trying to get rid of me? Got plans?"
She tries to keep her smile contained. (It feels like an eternity has passed since she last saw him. And she is so glad. Also distraught and traumatised and very, very confused. But so glad.)
"Yes," she says. "With a glass of wine and a book."
"Oh," he says, his smile twisting up a little. "Exciting."
"Very."
(She's forgotten – it's her birthday. She'll remember, later.)
And off he goes, on his plane, to Afghanistan.
And Pepper is left to try and figure out how, what, where, why and OH MY GOSH WHAT ON EARTH HAS HAPPENED TO ME?
… this is interrupted by her boss, being so unhelpful as to go missing.
This is the nail in the coffin. The straw that breaks the camel's back. Pepper does not break down. No. Oh no. She is Virginia 'Pepper' Potts and she'd be damned before she let herself do something as foolish as break down.
No.
She simply closes a few emotional receptors and does her best impression of an emotionless robot. An emotionless robot who refuses to believe that Mr. Stark is dead.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PEPPER POTTS, WHO IS [NOT] BREAKING DOWN:
Wake up. Look at the ceiling.
(Chant: IAMNOTINSANE)
Wash. Brush teeth. Dress. Apply make up. Don killer heels.
(Be mad because for months and months in the Other place she didn't wear heels. Except for her own heels and … the fact that she finds that funny is worrying. Her sense of humour, along with her sanity, has been downgraded.)
Go to work.
(Jarvis, let's be honest here. How sane do you think I am? Actually. Don't answer that. I dreamt of Tony the other night. Actually, don't recall that. Wipe it. I dreamt of a gremlin too. A baby gremlin that tried to chew my finger. It tried to chew my finger OFF. Isn't that WEIRD? How COULD this HAPPEN?!
Miss Potts?
Jarvis. This whole conversation didn't happen.
I've taken the liberty of booking a therapist.
JARVIS I DO NOT NEED A THERAPIST.
…
What time and where?)
Answer emails. Keep the search for her boss going. Because he's not dead. He's not. He. Is. Not.
(She's got a whole world in her head, she survived that, and guess what? Tony Stark is not dead. If she can survive the Other place, Tony Stark. TONY STARK can survive … wherever he is.)
Make phone calls. Make sure the house keeper is maintaining the house to perfection. Make sure that Dum-E is alive. Make conversation with JARVIS. Try a keep an eye on Tony's interests.
(She doesn't like Obadiah. He reminds her of Elnasym.)
(She hated Elnasym.)
Eat. If she remembers.
(Food in the Other place was … delicious. Therefore, she doesn't like delicious food anymore. Yo! Flashbacks, where you at?)
Talk to Happy for a moment. ('He'll be back.' 'I know.')
(Yeah, she knows. Because … because he just is. Okay? Don't doubt her.)
Return home. Sleep.
(… if she can.)
Repeat.
Sometimes, she dreams of Mr. Stark. (It's a side effect from the Other place.) He's in a hard place. In the dark. He is in pain. He is anxious. Determined. He has hatred running through his veins. He is drowning.
Sometimes, she calls to him. Asking him to come back. Around him, her whole world was based. And now he's not here anymore. And she doesn't know how to rebuild. Doesn't know how to start.
(She doesn't love him – anymore than the moon loves the earth. Anymore than plants lean towards the sun. Anymore than zits appear on wedding days. Anymore than brand new shoes hurt. Anymore than tea is better hot than cold. Anymore than … okay. So she's not great at analogies. Pepper doesn't think it's healthy. This dependence. Suddenly, Tony Stark becomes her sole source of sanity.)
(Therefore, she is of course, insane.)
And so she waits. And she dreams.
A month slips by … slowly, she learns to lick her wounds. Slowly, she learns to heal.
She asks JARVIS what's the likelihood of Mr. Stark returning home. ('Based on news reports, Miss Potts? 0.25 percent,' he says. 'You shut your mouth!' Pepper responds.)
Another month.
Hope is not dwindling. But she is coping better. And vaguely aware that in a strange and awful way, she should be grateful that she has an excuse for being this off centre. When he stops by – very briefly - Rhodes doesn't look at her strangely – he looks at her with pity.
But she doesn't give him the opportunity to express it. Instead, she just asks what is he doing to find Tony?
Another month.
And then suddenly, miraculously, amazingly Tony Stark is alive on and on a plane and coming home.
Pepper Potts … waits for him with red eyes and an attempt to conceal her smile. (It doesn't work.) He asks if she misses him.
She says no.
They both know that she's lying.
He's changed. Pepper Potts knows it. Heck, the whole world knows it. The press conference ('shutting down the weapons manufacturing division') proves it. And other things too, smaller, little things that she only notices because yes, he may have been gone months, and she longer, but nine years is a long time to know someone.
And she knows him as well as the back of her hand.
There is something harder about him – a tiny thread of anger. Or perhaps it is purpose. A hard, titanium thread of purpose that is as imbedded in his body (his soul) as the arc reactor is in his chest.
He looks at her differently too.
Says things that makes her wonder 'was this how it was before?' (No. It isn't. She can't put her finger on why it's different. But … it just is.)
And then, when he's calling her to put her hand inside his chest … he says he doesn't have anyone but her. And also, 'Potts, you done this before? You're amazingly calm. Should have been a surgeon.'
(In the Other place, she once had to thrust her hand inside an orc. That was infinitely more gross, and yet this experience was infinitely more terrifying because this is Mr. Stark. He could die.)
Now he's back – even though he asks her to spy for her, to blow up a building for her – she feels centred. Focused.
And when it dawns on her that he is choosing to be a hero. To do good. To be better.
Then she chooses.
In the Other place, they have a tradition – when you find someone who is an Earth Shaker. Who is changing things for the better – you can swear an oath to them. To stand by them when all else falls away. When the world burns around you. When the world is lonely and the way unclear and the storms are strong … you stand by them.
And Pepper looks at her boss and chooses.
Not because she loves him she is attracted to him. Not because she's already dedicated nine years of her life to him. Not because they danced. (She will not think of this.) Not because of the paycheck or anything else.
No.
She looks at him, after he goes and says 'oh by the way I am Iron Man and yeah! I sure do love to make life a living PR hell for Potts' (paraphrase). She looks at him and sees him for who he is.
(Playboy. Billionaire. Philanthropist. Has Daddy issues. Has a kind heart. A wish to do the right thing. A killer sense of humour. An ego the size of Everest.)
And still she chooses.
She'll stand by him. She'll swear an oath. (She does it under her breath, feeling like an insane idiot.) Whatever happens. He'll have her by his side.
Because yes, she loves – loved – her job. It was always a challenge; trying to make Mr. Stark's life as smooth and functioning and as responsible as possible. But that's slipped away a little. And though she'll still be an efficient PA (a damn good PA, even though she says so herself). This is something more.
Because now she sees – a flicker in time here, months and months in the Other place – that in life, you have to pick something. A cause. Truth. Something to believe in. Something better than yourself. And she doesn't think she can change the world herself, or make that much of a difference. (Sure, she can slightly affect the way Stark Industries run. Slightly) But she can help someone who does. Who is in the position to do so much good.
Forget being a nice little PA. She's going to be a damn bodyguard and subtle cheerleader and right-hand woman and the most absolutely amazing assistant the world has ever seen.
Pepper realises that life is all about perspective.
She's just found hers.
I HAVE NO RAGRETS!