Disclaimer: I don't own Iron Man, or Marvel Comics, or any factions affiliated with said entities. I do wish I owned full rights over Tony/Pepper. oh! The plans I have.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Caught in between an endless cycle of sleeping, waking up and planning, Tony always takes five minutes to think about Pepper.
He was 20 the first time he met her, a burgeoning weapons mafia boss, the Harry Truman of his time, the Einstein of his generation - and she was a young Mary. She walked in for the interview in blue tights, a black dress and a red clutch. Her hair had been plaited back and her eyes beamed spots of blue out at him from under kohl-rimmed eye lids. She had smiled self-assuredly but flexed her fingers, and looking her up and down, he had almost known, even then, that she was the one.
Because everyone else had been vapid, or too cocky, or too busy looking him up the crotch. She had an otherworldy presence; he didn't know if it was the halo of red enveloping her like morning dewdrops to a fresh leaf, or the effervescent glow on her skin.
He had leaned over a little on his side, cufflinks hitting his glass desk with a little clink that he noticed caused her back to arch (a yet-unused file he had then filed away for future reference), and given her just a hint of a smile.
She had smiled back then, and the rest, as they say, was history. He didn't know what it was - the fact that she could tell him what Abraham Lincoln's son's name was, or the way she crossed her legs everytime she got excited about something.
Her hair fell over her eyes, those twin beams of cerulean looking up at him; that, when he thought about it, had been what Tony missed most those three months in the desert.
He was tired, he was dirty; but even when his mind failed to work, and his body betrayed him, he could think of Pepper, and he was rejuvenated. He realized it only then, but she was like a cleansing solution. A coy, hard-to-get one that played on the edge of reason, taunting him as she ran running through the dark recesses of his mind.
Sometimes, if he was lucky, he would go fishing and catch a particularly bright gem - a memory of the two laughing over a cup of cofee, the first time she walked in on him in the bedroom, the way she looked when he got just that little bit closer. He fed off of it, he thrived on it.
Because when the earth fell apart, and the skies shattered as he finally rose up in his Iron Man suit towards freedom, her name was on his lips.
When he finally came crashing back down, he was a changed man.