not mine, no profit garnered. Title and opening quote from J.P. Dancing Bear's Beach with Telephone for Edwin Van De Grift. Thanks to A for beta help, all mistakes mine.
all that remains between the mountains and the eye: is glassy coldness: even the snails are climbing up the phone receiver: trying to dial out: the air is so thin: full of tension: as if everything is pressing: against the seams: one bolder by the lip: of the lake looks: like the long lost Madonna: —shhhh: don't tell anyone: people you don't know will be lining up: for a miracle: her reflection: has a deep gash along one side: blood and tears: as if the lake wants a line: of true believers: anyway: you can almost believe: that the lake has a mind: of its own: but a cold and cunning one: at dawn you can hear it: whispering wisps of mists: saying come dive: come bath: come cannonball
"Let's go to Venice," Tony said. It was a shot in the dark, a silly hope.
Pepper looked at him with a softness in her face. He thought of a 100 ways to tell her everything, from his soon to be death to his longstanding wish to spend the rest of his life with her. Nothing was really coming out of his mouth, though.
Pepper said, "Okay. Okay, let's do it."
"Excellent plan, excellent, I'm thrilled," Tony said. Things had snapped into place. He felt much better besides the usual excruciating pain.
Tony had a so so place in Venice, it needed a lot of work. It wasn't the place they'd stayed in last time, their one day of fun. He'd bought the place in Venice after that visit because he loved her.
He catalogued all of it, made a list, turned on JARVIS in this house. "Pepper," Tony said, turning to her. She was standing in the entryway, still, with her bag and her still soft face. "So, fun story. I'm dying. Literally, not in the we're all dying because we're not immortal Super Soldiers, but you know, 3 to 4 months before the end. Possibly sooner."
"That's why you gave away our art," she said. "And made me CEO."
"Making you CEO was just a smart move, whether I'm terminal or not. You're perfect for the job, you should have it. You should have had it years ago," Tony said.
"Thank you," she said. "You're really dying? What do you mean, you're dying?"
"The metal in this." Tony patted his chest. "It's killing me. Poisoning me. I can't figure out how to fix it. But I'd like to move on to the second reason I wanted to be here. Which is I love you. You are absolutely gorgeous, just amazingly brilliant, I love you this much. Imagine I'm throwing my arms pretty wide here. Right now I'm kinda fatigued and don't have the flexibility."
"Move along to the second part?" Pepper took off her heels and sat down on the floor without any of her usual grace. So she was taking it in. Thankfully, even if the place did need a ton of remodeling, Tony paid well for good cleaners. Really, Pepper probably did that. "You're really dying? Why can't you, I assume you've tried different metal. Or elements. Why not get that thing removed? We can afford, Tony, we can get anyone. You choose. We get that thing taken out of your chest. And you don't die. And then we can talk about the second thing."
"It's not a simple surgery, Pepper," Tony said. "Don't you think I thought of that?"
"Did you? Did you just fixate on the arc reactor in my chest is killing me and not why don't I get that reactor taken out?"
"I don't think it's possible," Tony said.
"When did you look into it? Did you really look into it?" Pepper stood up and grabbed her bag. She pulled her tablet out of it. "You're a genius but you don't have an MD, Tony. You don't work on these things, actual bodies and hearts. We're Stark Industries, we're insanely wealthy. If someone on this planet can take that thing out, we can find them and pay them and get that thing out."
"That wasn't really what I was focused on," Tony said, suddenly wondering if he had explored all his options. Had he? Now Pepper was marching around the living room which had been lovingly restored and only needed a little rewiring, if Tony remembered correctly.
But clearly, Pepper was already getting a signal since she was already on the phone. He listened to her talk for five minutes and then she said, "No, get me that guy. The best. We were talking about this two weeks ago, that guy."
"Pepper, are we going to talk about this?"
"No," Pepper said. She held up a single finger to him to shush him and he realized the no was to whomever she was speaking to. "JARVIS?"
"Yes, Miss Potts?"
"I need you to send the schematics, or the x-rays, everything you have on Tony's heart and the shrapnel, send it to these two addresses." She rattled off two addresses, one in China, one in Switzerland. "I need to hear back as soon as possible."
She turned on him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I didn't tell you because, because I'm me, Pepper. It took me a while to give up on fixing it myself. I did think about the surgery, I promise you."
"Not for very long, sir," JARVIS said.
"Thanks, thank you very much, that's very helpful," Tony said.
"See, even JARVIS says you had tunnel vision. This is you, Tony, you all over. You get this idea, you have one idea and you think that's the only idea but you're wrong. You don't need to invent the wheel," Pepper said. "Or create fire."
"I'm not trying to create fire. I'm trying to, did I mention I love you?"
"Yes," Pepper said. "I heard you. But first we make sure you're not going to die." She was still on the phone and he was suddenly exhausted. He'd gotten everything off his chest, maybe he'd lost his rush to do when he'd decided to share it.
Tony went to sleep or think or pretend to think and fall asleep. He asked JARVIS if JARVIS had any time between stabbing him in the back to Pepper and doing whatever Pepper wanted to get Tony's suits and some other equipment sent here. Pepper came upstairs to the bedroom, which also needed a lot of work and said, "Why are you being mean to JARVIS?"
"I didn't appreciate the not for very long comment," Tony said. "Not for very long, not for very long, my ass. I'm not attached to this thing in my chest, it's terrifying, it's shrapnel, Pepper, trying to rip my heart into pieces. It's a feature of my nightmares, pretty much all of them. The ones that aren't you dying or my mother yelling at me or that one thing with the octopus that broke out of the aquarium. And being tortured. That list got long, but I do know why I need this thing."
She sat on the bed next to him, almost on his lap. "You have nightmares about me?"
"I have dreams about you, too, can we act those out?"
"I'm not wearing whatever you're picturing right now," Pepper said.
"Not wearing anything in this one," Tony said, leaning in to pull her closer.
She touched his neck. "This rash, Tony. I'm going to talk to doctors." She sat back and then stood up. "There's a doctor in Korea, a Helen Cho, the work she's doing has tremendous potential, she's a genius. We've been watching her for years. She's been working on a kind of process, we might be able to reduce the scarring when the chest piece is gone with her work. I'm going to call her, set that up." She left and Tony did fall asleep.
He woke up in darkness. Pepper was on the other side of the bed, which made him happy. Happiest he'd been in months. If he wasn't going to die in the near future, he wanted to make sure this relationship with Pepper, having a relationship, it needed a solid foundation. He was thinking about a solid foundation and how little of an idea he had of what that meant when he saw someone coming in. He was lurching up, weak and unready thinking only protect Pepper when that someone stepped into the light. "Natalie?"
She stood respectfully at the foot of the bed while Tony did manage to get up and pull on a shirt. She walked out of the bedroom and he followed her. Finally she said, "Pepper called me to help set up the surgery. Or surgeries. But I think it might help you to see another consultant."
"I love a consultant whose hours are so fucking early in the morning that everyone is asleep, I feel so safe right now in this moment."
He went into the living room anyway. "Nick Fury," Tony said. He sat down on the couch across from the one Fury had commandeered. He looked past Fury to Natalie whose entire stance and attitude had shifted. "Not Natalie."
"This is Agent Natasha Romanov," Fury said, some kind of perplexing fatherly pride in his voice. "We assigned her to you when we first realized you were ill."
"And now she's fired," Tony said.
"No, I'm not," Natasha said. "I'm here to help Pepper."
Fury ran through his spiel about Vanko and Tony's father, the loving man who built SHIELD. Tony'd known about SHIELD since he was very young but always pretended not to since his father had never actually told him. Fury stomped off with a not very witty remark about the mystery of his heart, leaving Tony with random boxes and reels of film.
"I can't tell Pepper who you really are?"
"Define real," Natasha said.
"Not Natalie Rushman," Tony said.
"I'll tell her myself, don't worry," Natasha said.
"Yeah, why would I worry," Tony said, hauling himself back to bed.
When he woke up, Pepper had showered and gotten dressed in her version of casual. She smiled at him as he woke up. "Good morning."
"Good morning, Pepper."
"You're not going to die," she said. "I talked to both surgeons and Dr. Cho. I think we're going to make this work."
"When do I go under the knife? Is it in a few hours?"
"Even I can't do that," Pepper said. "Three days."
"There's a lot I can do in three days," Tony said.
"You don't have to," she said. "I love you."
"Can we do that before I get this thing taken out and have a hideously deformed chest?"
"Tonight we can," she said. "Happy birthday."
"It is now," he said.
The house was deserted. Pepper went somewhere to arrange more things for the surgery, Natasha disappeared and all Tony had were his father's films. It was still illuminating. It took him an hour to figure out the layout of the Expo and his dad's new element.
He looked around. He could do that here. If he weren't dying much faster than he'd anticipated. He'd make it to the surgery but not if he put on the suit and went into remodel mode. He called Rhodey.
"You're dying," Rhodey said.
"Probably not now," Tony said. "Pepper's on it, I have an idea, but yes, in this present moment my death is looming on the horizon instead of just the usual far off certainty."
"Maybe if you'd said something earlier, Pepper and I could have helped sooner," Rhodey said.
"Does that sound like me? You two know me best, you can't be surprised when I'm stubborn," Tony said.
"I would say stupid." Rhodey still had that almost tender look in his eye and Tony leaned into the hug he knew he was getting.
"You always smell good," Tony said.
"Ha, ha, we're not doing that anymore," Rhodey said, walking to the just delivered boxes from California.
"What if it's you and me and Pepper? It is my birthday," Tony said.
"Let's save it for when you turn 50," Rhodey said.
"You're not ruling it out," Tony said. "Well, I'm going upstairs. Don't knock if you hear lube in use."
Rhodey said, "Save it. What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to put on the suit and help me build a Hadron Collider here in the living room," Tony said.
He got the expected amount of lip but once Rhodey put on the suit, he quieted down. He loved that suit. Tony was going to tell him later he'd been working on that one just for Rhodey, a way to protect his legacy when he died. Even now that he wasn't probably dying, he'd let Rhodey have a suit. In a world of people Tony had no trust in, he knew for certain Rhodey would always do the right thing.
Rhodey even took direction well. By the time Pepper came in and nearly passed out from the renovations, the collider was nearly done. Pepper said, "I guess we're definitely buying this property."
"That was always going to happen, honey," Tony said.
Rhodey guided everything perfectly and they had their new element. Tony, Rhodey, Howard, and Pepper. Tony said, "You know I could just pop this puppy into my chest and I'd be fine."
"Until the next crisis, sure," Pepper said. "It won't be poisoning, but it will be something. You know that as well as I do."
"It's always something," Rhodey said. "Pepper's right."
"I know she's right, I just wanted to get out of the recovery time. They're calling us a lot of names on the news."
"I can handle it," Pepper said.
"And I got this nice suit," Rhodey said.
"Oh no, you don't," Pepper said. "It's a rental. That's Stark Industries property."
"I only made it for you in the case of my death," Tony said.
"You made one for Rhodey?" Pepper looked a little hurt though he couldn't figure out why.
"My suit can be keyed to you," Tony said to Pepper. "Just in case."
"Oh," Pepper said. He couldn't read her face at all.
JARVIS said something, always trying to horn in on the conversation, and Tony blinked and felt hot in a disgusting leaden blood way.
The next time he opened his eyes, he was back in bed. When he started to move, he noticed that the reactor in his chest felt different. Natalshie-a sat down next to him. "We replaced the palladium core with the new element after you passed out. There's still some poison in your system, of course. I wouldn't worry about doing anything too physical until after your heart surgery."
"Stop telling me what to do," he said, feebly. He feebly reached out his hand to push her away. He feebly realized he wasn't going to get to fuck Pepper tonight. "This isn't palladium poisoning."
"No, it's a counteracting agent combined with a sedative," she said. Natasha said. She added, "There are things you need to do before the surgery."
"I already wrote my will," Tony said. "You're getting nothing."
"I'll survive somehow." She walked out and he watched her ass. She had a great ass. Good thing Pepper was the whole package of everything he wanted or he'd be tempted.
Pepper came in next. She said, "You really should sleep."
"I'm trapped in bed, basically," Tony said. The new chest piece was actually pretty fantastic. He could feel the difference. It even overwhelmed the usual background pain from the chest piece, the constant adjustments his body made to the metal shoved in his heart.
Tony was indeed effectively trapped in his bed, but he had his tablet and therefore he could do anything. He checked the stats on the new piece. He made modifications to the suit to accommodate the new piece and the increased energy. He started sketching out other uses for his new element. Clean energy was the thing, he thought. Power, real power that reached everyone. Generators that could travel anywhere and make sure weather and earthquakes couldn't take out a hospital or fire department. He typed and mimed schematics. He said, "JARVIS? What are the odds on this surgery tomorrow?"
"The odds of your survival look to be about 54.87 per cent, sir. That is simple survival, not accounting for the possibility of a stroke during the surgery or other complications."
"That's, that's fantastic," Tony said. "How am I getting there?"
"We're flying," Pepper said. "Happy's here, by the way. I told him about your imminent death, he wasn't pleased."
"No longer imminent. New element in my chest piece means no more encroaching death," Tony said.
"Especially since we're taking the chest piece out," Pepper said.
"I would have told Happy," Tony said. "I told you first."
"Yes, thank you," Pepper said. "Because it's a contest. Is Natalie really a SHIELD agent?"
"Seems so," Tony said. "She's actually a pretty great assistant, pity to lose her to her actual job of, I don't know, killing people with her pinky."
Pepper took his tablet out of his hands. She waved away the schematics. She said, "Go to sleep. You have surgery."
"Kiss me goodnight," Tony said. He closed his eyes and felt her lips on his forehead.