A/N Hello! How are you? Welcome to my first Iron man fanfic, I hope you like it.
Pepper Potts stared out of the window, her breath misting the glass slightly at the slowly falling snow that was blanketing the city. It was early morning on a Saturday, normally she would have still been sleeping away but the forecast of snow the previous night had ensured her early awakening. As a child she had loved the way that snow made everything new and exciting. Now she loved the snow because it covered the blood, graffiti and hate making it into something magical. It was hard to believe that she had spent almost a year in team Iron Man and all the things that she had seen.
She still acted like the regular old Pepper for the sake of her parents and friends but inside all she felt like the darkness, fear and hate she had seen when on team ironman slowing rotting away the innocence naivety she had had when she was regular old Pepper. She had had amazing experiences when she was fighting alongside Rhodey and Tony but it had come with the price. Shattering her unrealistic ideals that the good guys always won. Of course she had known that before from her father and through her many hours of hacking the FBI's database. Then it had seemed like fun and games but now everything had its own sick twist. All of it had slowly started to erode away the bubbly and foot in mouth personality that she had had before. Lately she had started to really think about what she was saying and she had recently realised that she was a lot darker. Iron man had started to really affect her in ways that the comics had never shown although she wouldn't give up the last year for anything in the world. But what she would give to forget what had happened in the cave. Pepper quickly gulped and suppressed the memory, concentrating on Iron Man.
Pepper felt a twang, it was hard to imagine her life before Iron Man. Now her life was devoted to the Red suited hero. Did she have a life before all of this, all of Tony? She had known Rhodey, but he had only been a passing figure no one monumental, no one special. Now he felt like one of her limbs, it was unimaginable trying to go through a day without either Tony or Rhodey. Their friendship had grown quickly and strongly, probably due to the circumstances. Before she had gotten to know Tony she had had a slight crush on him, it was totally understandable she now realised. He had been the definition of dark and mysterious stranger. It had helped that he was also good looking, smart and rich. Any other normal girl would have started to fling themselves at him, in actual fact they had, she reminded herself bitterly thinking of Whitney. Anyway, the small flame of like that had resided in her heart slowly flicked out while the somewhat cooler but surer fire of friendship consumed it.
And there was Gene. Her mind was wild before she could stop herself from thinking about what had happened. Gene had replaced Tony for a short time in her heart, she had initially hated the boy who had come between her and her friends but as she got to know him he had seemed like Pepper's other half. Serious and thoughtful, deliciously sarcastic and extremely profound. It was true that she liked as more than a friend and had tried to make several hints about their friendship progressing further and maybe it would have if the several immediate things hadn't stopped Pepper in her tracks. What had happened in the cave a couple of weeks ago still chilled her to her bone. It was stupid to pretend that nothing had happened in the cave with Gene and the dragon and the Mandarin. Pepper had already cried all her tears, let out all her sobs and had pummelled out all her anger into her pillow. What was left was simply a husk that was post-Gene. She had a favourite fantasy that she played through her mind when she fell into the black darkness of depression.
She would be in a green forest coated in snow, all fresh and new. Wondering around there would a small wooden hut and when she opened the door, Gene would be there. Still in his sunglasses, jeans and jacket, curiously not dressed for the weather. He would kiss her mouth and they would sit in front of the crackling fire, not talking, just enjoying each other's company. She had similar dreams where the wooden hut was metal and outside was Summer, instead of winter and it was painfully hot. The metal door of the hut burned but Gene was still inside, he would kiss her but it would be sour and when she resurfaced it would be the Mandarin. The grey mask was terrifying and he would be laughing, a terrible laugh of metal scraping against metal. Suddenly the world was on fire and as Pepper ran out of the hut she would look back to see the Mandarin stuck to the ground, the metal armour slowly melting. The next part was the part she always feared. The Mandarin would open his mouth to scream, but it was not the scream of metal but Gene's own scream.
It was too hard to think about it and the memory vanished. Pepper felt her hand brush away the invisible tears that had already been cried. It was hard sometimes to get out of bed but she still needed to convince her family and friends that she was still old Pepper.
Yawning Pepper un-pressed her nose from the window and got up from her bed, she wrapped herself with her thick nightgown and quietly padded to the kitchen. Her father would be up soon too so she flicked on the coffee maker it replied with a small whistling sound. It was far too cold for cereal so she set to work frying up some eggs and the remaining bacon that she remembered to buy. Pepper's parents were divorced. Her mother lived in England with her stepdad and sometimes visited during the holidays, she called every Sunday afternoon for a quick chat. The separation between her parents had been very messy although at the moment they were on cordial, if chilly terms. Pepper enjoyed living with her dad even though he was very busy; she had once visited her mother and stepfather in England but did not like it. Ok, she liked England just fine; it was her mother's new husband that she hated. He was a well built (Fat) man in his mid forties, who cooked and although it was extremely obvious that he was bald he insisted that he wear an ill fitting, horrible toupee that sat on his head like a small rodent. The first day that Pepper came to stay he had added a pound of pepper to the soup as a pun about her name and then filmed her embarrassing reaction. Her mother had tried to smooth things over by saying that he just had an eccentric humour. Pepper responded to the prank by sneaking into their room late in the night and super gluing the hairpiece to his head. Pepper still loved her mum although her crappy new partner choice and was a bit resentful towards her parents when they split up but overall it was better than before.
As a reconciliation present her mother had given her a new cell in the mail, it was new and shiny and very useful so Pepper took it as a peace offering. She loved her phone in the first few weeks, adding everyone she knew into her contacts and making a point to call people using her new phone over the landline. The novelty of getting a text message had worn off but recently Pepper had been receiving strange text messages from someone who had seemed to be watching her. Nothing scary, just enough to make her suspicious, things like "I like the shirt you're wearing" or "Well done on you Maths test." Just weird stuff like that, Pepper had her suspicions that Whitney was trying to get on her nerves but even that seemed unrealistic. She had replied to the private number, asking who it was but there was no definite reply. Lately the text messages had been erratic, arriving at strange times at night and having strange coding. Some of them were violent threats that Pepper gave hollow laughs at and others were apologies, mostly the most common were teasing texts. Asking if she had figured out who it was. Pepper dimissed the texts as a prank but it was starting to get on her nerves.
The bacon sizzled as she tossed it into the frying pan and the sounds of her father getting up in the other room. Her father was working on a particularly hard case, he had been chasing a criminal named Nettles who had been kidnapping the daughters and sons of the most influential people of the world. Iron man had been chasing the kidnapper many nights but had always lost them. It was frustrating thinking about the villain that was still on the loose. Her dad came to the kitchen and ruffled Pepper's head affectionately and munched on a piece of bacon that was just out of the frying pan. As she sat down next to her father she felt a small vibration and the start of her Neon hitch ring tone singing out of the pocket of her nightgown. As her hand slipped into the plush pocket, she flipped open the phone ignoring the groan of her father pointedly at the phone. She looked at the screen to see that there was a private number, assuming it was Tony calling from the armoury. Pepper smiled at him, pushing the plate of eggs and bacon towards him and mouthing that she was full, she slipped into her room. It was only after the door had shut was when she clicked the little green phone button. Holding it up to her ear she expected the serious tone of Tony instead she heard a voice she had only dreamed of.
"Hello Pepper. I hope you've gotten my text messages. I miss you, do you want to meet up?" Chills ran up and down her spine and as she dropped the phone onto the floor "Don't worry, Patricia, I'll find you." Although the phone lay face down Pepper could still hear Gene clearly. The next sound made her blood run cold and flood her aching head with memories, she heard the unmistakable laugh of Gene rattling through the phone's speakers, mocking Pepper. The call was cut off and the dial tone sounded ominously loud, it was only after a minute that she picked the phone up cautiously, as if it were to burn her. After stabbing the hang up tone she pulled up her knees into her chest and sobbed freely. Rocking back and forth on the floor of her bedroom as outside the snow started to fall softly against the window.
A/N Neon hitch plug, (shes actually a really good singer, I recommend you search her on youtube) This chapter is the first part of five (or four, I haven't decided just yet) charactor bios, this won't really have too much of a plot line, well there will be but not too much, just the lives of the main charactors after the incident of the last episode. I haven't decided the order of the charactors just yet but I have started of Gene's bio...
Also! A question! I want to do five bios, I am already doing the four main charactors but I am stuck on thefifth. Tell me the extra charactor who you want me to write about. Like the extra charactors that don't make it into every episode (e.g. Happy, Whitney...)
Ok Thanks for reading! Please review to tell me if you like this or not.