Story: Florence Pepper Nightingale
Author: saichick
Challenge: Pepperony 100
Theme: 088 Nurse
Rating: PG-13

Timeline: between IM1 and IM2

Preview: Pepper has a soft spot for wounded warriors. At reader request, a continuation of the "seeing what makes the other one respond" theme first explored in Tickle and React.

She hated it when he was out on a mission.

Ever since the night she had gone down to the basement to find him surrounded by robotic aids, she had been a wreck. Tony brushed off her concerns about the bullet holes pock marking his suit, but all she could think of whenever she saw the suit was that he was going to get himself killed. All Tony did was tinker with it, work on it, improve, test fly, and improve it some more. Ever since he had learned Obediah was secretly double-dealing his weapons to the bad guys, Tony was obsessed with hunting them down and destroying with them. Stane was dead now, but the obsession was not.

The old Tony Stark was a maddeningly immature, self-destructive, womanizing, self-absorbed asshole. Despite secretly nursing a crush for him for over a decade, through sheer force of will she had avoided becoming a notch on his bedpost, just another assistant he bedded and transferred to a distant branch of the company. Tony had his endearing traits, of course, or she wouldn't have been able to endure working for him all these years, but Pepper was a pragmatist. She had no illusions about Tony Stark forming a meaningful emotional connection with an ordinary girl such as herself.

Ever since Afghanistan, however, things had changed. The Tony Stark who had walked down the tarmac of the C5 was a markedly different person than the one who had disappeared 3 months before. He was still impulsive … and maddening … perhaps even more so than before because the new Tony Stark didn't seem to know who the heck he was. The transition into the new Tony Stark was not a seamless one. Tony had lots of issues he had never dealt with, lots of ghosts. Watching him try on different personas and vacillate between the old and the various new versions of Tony Stark as he tried to figure out who he –was- was a roller coaster ride she could have done without. He was driving her nuts!

For the first time in the 10 years that she had known him, Pepper was seeing how emotionally vulnerable he really was. She had caught glimpses of that vulnerability before. The way he sank into a deep depression on the anniversary of his parents' death. The way he pushed his friends away, even Rhodey, who he had known since college. The way he drank himself into oblivion or retreated into his Stark cave to tinker with his robots whenever things got rough. Pepper had figured out within weeks of becoming his assistant that she was dealing with an emotionally damaged 9-year-old boy living in a man's body. Becoming involved with such a … child … would have been almost incestuous.

Now, however, 3 months in a cave had ripped the band aid of illusion off his eyes and forced him to look at the ugly reality of his life. Tony had finally been forced to grow up … fast. He was still emotionally very young, she knew … but since he had come back it was as though she were dealing with an angst-ridden teenager. Tony had definite ideas about the direction he wanted his life to go in, but he still hadn't developed all of the emotional skills he needed to cope with his new reality. Normal teenagers don't have billions of dollars at their disposal, own multinational corporations, or fly around in high tech suits blowing up terrorists. It was an improvement, but he still had a long way to go. That was the thought in her head as she had reined in her impulse to kiss him the night of the dance and pulled away from him.

Tony's Iron Man obsession had even driven her to quit. She initially misconstrued his interest in the suit as just another one of his passing fancies. It wasn't until she saw the cold determination in his face when he told her the only thing that mattered to him was the next mission that she realized this Tony Stark, the one who had come back from Afghanistan, was actually a little scary. Whereas before he had built weapons because he enjoyed pretty explosions and Obie and the Pentagon loved him for it, now, she realized, he built weapons because he was a man possessed by demons. Pepper couldn't fathom what he had seen in Afghanistan to drive him to this madness, but she absolutely could not bear to see him get himself killed!

But then Tony did something he had never done in before. He dropped his guard and gave her a glimpse straight into his soul. Choking up, he explained he shouldn't be alive, he wasn't crazy, and he knew in his heart that helping the people he had put in harms' way was the right thing to do. This wasn't Tony Stark the asshole playboy, Tony Stark the angsty teenager, or Tony Stark the CEO of Stark Industries. For the first time since she had met him, Pepper had looked straight into his soul and seen Tony Stark the man, and what she had seen had taken her breath away.

She had to admit that, despite the additional stress it created, she liked the new Tony Stark. In fact … more than liked. The crush she had firmly held in check all these years had blossomed into … something more. Tony now constantly hinted he wanted more from her than just an employer/employee relationship, and she knew he wasn't talking about a quick roll in the hay. The question wasn't whether or not Pepper was in love with her boss. She was. Thinking back to how miserable she was when he was in captivity, she realized she probably always had been, but his emotional immaturity had allowed her to keep those feelings in check. No … the big question now was whether or not Tony had matured enough in the past few months to actually love her back? Not need… Not desire… Not a crush... Not even puppy love... If Pepper allowed herself to drop her guard, to get involved with him, would he commit to her heart and soul the way she was willing, had always had been willing, to commit to him? Or would he break her heart? Maintaining the status quo was preferable until that question had been firmly resolved one way or the other in her mind.

Which left her where she was right now. Pacing the floors of the mansion waiting for him to get back from his latest mission. Systematically, one by one, Tony was combing through the records of weapons sales Obediah Stane had made before he died, hiring intelligence experts to track down where those weapons were now, and was flying out in the Iron Man suit to destroy any weapons caches sold to buyers he wouldn't have approved of. Black market sales were illegal, so nobody was going to stop him if he deprived Al Quaida, Kim Jong Il, or some ruthless African dictator of advanced Stark technology. Tony refused to allow the government to commander his weapons, or to even allow himself to come under the umbrella of a guiding agency such as SHIELD. It was his name on the weapons and they were his responsibility, he had told her. From now on nobody was going to decide who would have his weapons except for him.

For some reason, Pepper was the only person he trusted. If she didn't hang around and wait for Iron Man got back from the latest mission, Tony would fly back into an empty house, alone, banged up, exhausted, and frequently wounded. JARVIS would fly the suit home on autopilot no matter what happened, but Pepper was afraid that one of these days his injuries would be so severe that he would just collapse upon his return and die, alone, trapped in his suit. After she had found him one morning, collapsed on the floor still in his suit after having forbidden JARVIS to alert her to the fact he needed help, she had finally managed to impress upon him the wisdom of letting her know when he was about to fly out on a mission.

"Mr. Stark is approaching the western seaboard, Miss Potts," JARVIS informed her. "My readings of his vital signs indicate he is wounded."

"What is the nature of his injuries, JARVIS," she asked, catching her breath as JARVIS paused to synchronize with the uploaded version of himself in the suit before giving her the status report. A minor concussion, broken collar bone, two cracked ribs, as well as the inevitable lacerations and contusions he always sported after every mission. Tony refused to go to a hospital, so it was left to her, the only person he trusted, to patch him up. Although she had always known basic first aid, Pepper had finally been forced to convince him to have someone from the Stark Medical Research division come in for an afternoon and teach her basic First Responder training.

"JARVIS," she said, "could you please research the Stark Industries personnel connections and find out if we have somebody on staff who teaches basic Paramedic Training?"

"A wise course of action, Miss Potts," JARVIS replied. "Mr. Starks' current injuries exceed the parameters of your First Responder training. Shall I call an ambulance?"

"Do the injuries appear to be life-threatening?" she asked.

"No, Miss Potts," JARVIS replied. "Serious, but his vitals are relatively stable."

"We both know he'll refuse to go to the hospital," Pepper stated. "JARVIS, please wake Dr. Farraday from the medical research lab and ask her to come to the mansion right away. Maybe he'll let her look him over if it's one of his own employees."

"Yes, Miss Potts." JARVIS replied.

"And I want you to do a complete injury scan as soon as we get the armor off," she added. "Look for signs of damage to his brain that might not be picked up by the suit scanners. I don't want him falling asleep and not waking back up."

"Yes, Miss Potts," JARVIS said. "Prudent as always."

Pepper resolved to herself that, if necessary, she would slip sleeping pills into his cocoa and drug him so Dr. Farraday could patch him up. She paced some more as she waited. The doctor returned JARVIS's page and Pepper explained the situation to her. She was primarily a research physician, not a practicing one, but she could be out to the mansion within an hour. It was better than nothing, Pepper mused. It would have to do.

Tony cried out in pain as the robotic aids removed his armor. Quite a bit of blood was seeping out of a wound in his head, probably the one that had caused the concussion. His right arm was useless at the moment due to the broken collarbone. He stepped forward off the assembly platform and immediately collapsed into her arms, unconscious, nearly carrying the both of them to the floor and getting blood all over her clothes.

Since he was too heavy for her to carry, the best she could do was gingerly lower him to the floor and check his ABC's (airway, bleeding and circulation) before going to retrieve pillows and blankets. His breathing was a bit labored, but okay. The head wound was seeping a lot of blood, but didn't appear to be arterial in nature. She would need to attend to that right away. Checking his pulse against the second hand in her wrist watch, she saw his heart rate was far too rapid. His skin was clammy and pale. Lifting his eyelids and peering in, his pupils were dilated and slow to respond to the light. He was going into shock. She promptly went to retrieve pillows and blankets to elevate his feet above his head and keep him warm.

"JARVIS," she ordered, "ask Happy to come into work right away, please. He's going to have to help me carry Mr. Stark up to his room."

"Yes, Miss Potts," JARVIS replied.

"And fire up the scanner," she continued. "You're going to have to scan him here because there's no way I can get him over to the scanner by myself."

"Right away, Miss Potts," JARVIS replied. "I'll have Dummy and Butterfingers maneuver the device over to where he is now so we don't have to move him."

Thank god for JARVIS, she thought. And Dummy and Butterfingers. Since Tony didn't trust anybody but her, she had come to rely very heavily on his robotic friends over the course of the past several months. Now she understood why Tony often preferred them to human company. No matter what happened, she could always rely on them to be there for her. For him. Since she already had the medical kit out and waiting, she promptly began to minister his wounds until Dr. Farraday got there.

Pepper dabbed the gauze in sterile water and began to gingerly dab at the spot on the side of his head where the blood was oozing out at an alarming rate. Head wounds were always nasty, but this one looked particularly deep. He would need, at minimum, stitches. She went through an entire stack of sterile gauze pads staunching the bleeding until she finally cleared away enough of his drying, clotted mass of hair to see the wound itself. Yup … stitches. She applied pressure to the wound with one hand while she dug scissors out of the medical kit to cut enough hair away from the jagged cut that the doctor would be able to give him stitches. Carefully lifting a few strands of hair at a time, she gingerly snipped the hair off as close to his scalp as she could without tugging on the edges of the head wound.

Tony would be upset if she removed more hair than was absolutely necessary, so she only clipped an inch or so on either side of the jagged tear. Blood kept seeping out of the wound at a fairly fast clip, so she had to alternate snips with the scissors with dabs with the sterile gauze. Finally, she had the wound cleared away enough that the doctor could give stitches. Grabbing a stack of gauze with one hand and pressing it into his scalp to slow the bleeding, Pepper carefully gathered the bloody hair she had just clipped with her other hand and carefully folded it into a clean square of gauze, folding it neatly around the lock of hair like a little envelope. Cursing herself for her sentimentality, she slipped the tiny packet into her pocket.

As she waited for the doctor and Happy to arrive, Pepper just knelt there on the floor beside him, watching his chest move up and down with his breath. The neoprene suit still covered him up to his neck, but Pepper feared removing it until she had help. There were things she could do to stabilize the broken bones, but rolling him to remove the under-suit and stabilize ribcage and arm without help could exacerbate his broken ribs and collarbone. Although his pulse rate had quieted down somewhat and his skin felt less clammy, his goatee and hair appeared to be coal-black against the contrast of his too-pale skin. She absent-mindedly ran the palm of her hand down his cheek to his funny little beard, her fingers registering the contrast between his soft skin and rough razor stubble. Tony didn't know it, but Pepper often stole intimate little moments like this whenever she patched him up, whenever he was unconscious or too injured to notice her ministrations had taken on a level of caring no doctor would ever give. When he was unconscious like this, something that was beginning to happen with alarming regularity, she often found herself telling him things she would never admit to while he was awake.

"Got yourself all banged up again, Mr. Stark," she murmured, caressing his face, "and left me to patch up your sorry ass." She watched his facial muscles register a slight grimace as he moved slightly in his sleep and registered pain. Gently touching her fingers to the side of his mouth, she smoothed away the grimace until his facial muscles twitched into a slight smile. She couldn't take away his injuries, but she found some small consolation in giving him what little comfort she could.

"It scares me when you fly off like this," she whispered to her unconscious boss. "What if you don't come back? You have no idea what it was like when you were missing." Pepper recalled the number of nights she had climbed into his bed, crying, curled up with the last greasy sweaty shirt he had worn before going missing. Long after the others had given him up for dead, she had shamed them into continuing the search.

"If anything were to happen to you," she continued, choking back tears, "I don't think I could go on. You – you have no idea how I feel…" Gently, she bent down and gave him a kiss, not the first kiss she had ever given him while he was unconscious … she had kissed his forehead, his cheek, or above an injured part of his body many times, but this was the first time she had indulged the impulse to bend in and touch her lips to his. Gently rubbing her nose along his cheek to his ear, she whispered barely audibly, "I'm in love with you, you know?"

Pepper straightened out, maintaining pressure to the head wound, and waited for the cavalry to arrive.