I honestly have no idea how it happened or where I was going with any of this, but...

You are all I have and all I need
And all I am is what
You've made of me
"Everything Good" by Ashes Remain

There isn't a day for the first five years that Pepper doesn't want to quit. In fact, it's a miracle if it doesn't happen 50 times before lunch. She even has a two-week notice drafted and only a click away for when it gets too much – it's her safe blanket of sorts, the only thing that actually stops her from stomping out of Tony's office and slamming the door hard enough to make the windows rattle.

She doesn't know what she expected when Tony Stark asked her to be his assistant. She thought she'd be scheduling his meetings (and not making up excuses for his absence), making him coffee (at regular hours and not at 4am on Sunday), and telling his visitors to please wait, Mr. Stark will be with them shortly (instead of arranging cab rides for the endless string of his one night stands at the break of dawn, come hell or high water).

On the rare nights when she's lucky to sleep in her own bed and not her office chair, she wants to scream into the pillow, but she's usually too exhausted to bother.

He's nothing like what she expected. Sure, he's arrogant, obnoxious and so full of himself she's surprised he hasn't burst like an over-inflated balloon yet, but on the day when she plans to finally tell him she's leaving (because it's too much, and it was a mistake, and she can't deal with his girlfriends, and his midnight demands to bring him tacos, and replacing the windows in his house every bloody week because either his inventions or his guests manage to break every single one of them), something happens.

She finds him in his office – which is shocking enough, all things considered – and he looks tired and world-weary and like he hasn't slept in a week, but there is no whiff of whiskey in the air, and for a moment she doesn't know what to think of it. She has a whole speech prepared, but before she can say anything, before she can so much as open her mouth, for heaven's sake, Tony thanks her. He thanks her for putting up with him and for everything she's done for him and the company in the past few months, and there's so much earnestness to his voice and the way he looks at her that Pepper can't take a proper breath for a solid minute.

Her resolve fades away and the words she was going to say freeze on her tongue. She has never seen Tony Stark look so lost, and she doesn't know what to do about it. But before she makes up her mind, he asks if there was anything she wanted from him. Pepper gives him some papers to sign and leaves. She can quit any time, she tells herself even though she knows she probably won't. She keeps her two-week notice in her personal folder for several more years. Just in case.

x00x

He's a mess. Always has been. Probably always will be. His work, his life – he doesn't know where to begin to untangle it. Not that it matters. Not that he wants to.

She is everything he is not, and it's confusing. He doesn't know how to deal with it.

She walks in, leaves his coffee on the table, collects the folders she's left for him to flip through earlier and leaves, humming something under her breath. She's professional and efficient, and it takes him a week to find out that he can't function without her. One week is all it takes to make him start wondering how on Earth has he been doing it without her all these years.

And so he keeps pushing her, testing her limits, wondering how long it will take Pepper to give up on him because, let's face it, it's always been the case. He's seldom wrong about people, but he wants to be wrong about her. He expects her to leave and he doesn't want her to. He wants her to see that he is not worth the effort because it's what he really thinks, and he's scared that she will at the same time. Just once, he wants to lose the bet he has with himself. She is the reason he wants to be a better person, but most of the time he simply doesn't know how.

x00x

Pepper knows he thinks he's a mess, but so is she, just in a much less obvious way. There are broken parts inside of her that she can hold together with a smile on her face because it's what she does, it's who she is. Always one day at a time. Eventually, all those pieces will click together, she knows it, but for now being broken is okay, and so she carries on, breath after breath until it's not even an effort anymore.

She ignores his half-hearted fliting and tells him the truth to his face. She doesn't shy away from letting him know that he's being stupid and awful and reckless and irresponsible and I don't care that it's YOUR company, Tony. She yells at him when he skips the meetings and she has to lie about his 'emergencies' which usually turn out being long-legged and blonde, and it's not jealousy but simple practicality – she wants this whole thing to work, she wants to break through to the parts of him he thinks don't exist, and she can't do it alone.

She's often mad and pissed and exasperated beyond belief (and rightfully so because apparently it's a package deal – you can't have Tony Stark in your life and not feel all those things on a daily basis), but she doesn't cry until that horrid midnight call from Rhodey comes in - about the ambush and Tony's disappearance. He's just her boss, she tells herself, even though she knows it's not true, even though there is no definition for what they are. Gone, she hears Rhodey tell her. We're looking. She stops listening to him. It takes too much effort to simply keep on breathing, until she can't do it anymore and her face is pressed in the pillow and her body shakes because not knowing what they are is twice as bad when she thinks she might never have a chance to find out for sure.

x00x

The truth is Tony is terrified of Pepper. Well, it may be a bit of an overstatement, but she's always known how to keep him on the toes and that's a big deal. He's got to give her that. What scares him most though is the effect she has on him, the dull ache in his chest whenever he sees her. He writes it off to the fact that, unlike everyone else in his life, she's never afraid of speaking her mind in his presence. When was the last time that happened? She's fascinating, and immune to his bullshit which he respects more than anything else.

She's the light.

And he is a fucking cliché hiding behind his bad habits and a never-ending parade of women whose names he doesn't bother to remember because it's simpler and easier and less frightening than facing the fact that he's falling in love with his goddamn assistant. He's a cliché and it's embarrassing, to say the least, and many other things, too.

That's what he thinks when he's trapped in the cave and there's only darkness and fear around him. It's so cold he's chilled to his very bones 24/7. Everything hurts and he just wants to sleep for a thousand years and wake up in a better world. He closes his eyes and sees her face and hears her voice in his head. Everything and nothing, Yinsen tells him, and Tony refuses to admit how right he is.

He dreams of Pepper every night for 3 months.

She is the light….

x00x

She is squeamish, and she can't stand the sight of blood, and she almost failed her home ec class because she couldn't get the stitches on the goddamn skirt right, so how is she supposed to stitch up a human being? She wishes she was strong enough to lock him up in the trunk of her car and drive him to a hospital and make him someone else's problem because she's about half a minute away from passing out, and this is definitely not in her job description.

She doesn't say any of this. Instead, she tells him she will personally hurt him in some very creative way if he ever touches the coffee maker again because he might be a genius in his workshop, and many other things outside of it, but, god help them all, his coffee is the worst ever and she almost burned a hole in her stomach the last time she drank it.

He cracks a tired smile and holds her hand until the painkillers kick in and he doesn't need an anchor anymore. Or maybe 10 minutes past that moment. Whatever. She'll never know.

Except she does.

x00x

The nightmares start 2 weeks after he comes back home, the never-ending dreams full of blood and death and fear. He wakes up screaming and drenched in cold sweat night after night after night. They feel so real he has to turn on the light, to touch the sheets he's sleeping on, to make sure he's actually back and not still in Afghanistan. It's not easy – not after he convinced himself that the cave he was kept in would be his grave.

He wants to call Pepper, needs to hear her voice, but it's 3 in the morning, and it's never been a problem before, but now everything is different. He is different. And so his finger hovers over the dial button without pressing it as he stares at her caller ID in the corner of the screen willing his heart to slow down. It's not like he can afford to have a nightmare-induced heart attack. That would be just pathetic.

Until one night it's not enough, that is.

She picks up after the second ring. "Tony? Is everything okay?" She's worried, and he feels guilty.

"Yes. Sorry." He takes a breath. Closes his eyes. "Dialed you by mistake."

She doesn't believe him and he knows it. "I'll see you in the morning."

He hangs up without saying goodbye. He doesn't want her to pity him, he pities himself enough for both of them, but he doesn't know how to be strong anymore. Sleep is evasive and he's exhausted beyond imaginable.

They never speak about it again, but a couple of weeks later he notices that she starts finding excuses to stay in his house overnight. There's a contract for them to discuss, a pending issue with the Board of Directors, a press-release, and would he please stop playing with the remote when she is talking to him?

It's nothing, Tony tells himself. There's no trace of her in the house – no clothes left behind, no books on the nightstand, only her toothbrush in the guest bathroom (he checks when he knows she's not around and won't be back any time soon). It's not like she's moved in with him, he reminds himself, and the thought it both sobering and sad. He lets it be that elephant in the room they both choose to ignore. Should I call you a cab? Happy could take you home. But there's always later, always don't worry, always we need to finish something or another first.

This doesn't change much – his sleeping patterns are as messed up as ever, and half the time he wants to stab himself in the eye with a pencil because his brain just can't function on pure enthusiasm anymore (those days are long gone and he doesn't miss them…. much). But knowing that she's somewhere in the house more often than not fills him with the kind of peace he hasn't felt in too long. Maybe ever. It's too alien, too out of place, and it makes everything right. And he doesn't want it to end, even if it means poring over contracts and spread sheets with her – all the things he couldn't care less about.

"Your heart rate is 40% higher than normal, sir," JARVIS tells him now and then (the number varies, but he never really listens). "Would you like me to contact Miss Potts?"

"Is she here?"

"Yes, sir."

No, I'm good, Tony responds in his mind, forgetting to actually say the words out loud as he falls back on his pillow and takes slow measures breaths. I'm good.

And he is grateful. He is fucking ecstatic. And there's a huge Thank you blooming in his chest that no words could ever express. So he makes her pancakes (because they both know that his omelets are a disaster and you don't have to be a genius to add milk to a pancake mix), and she laughs because this is so not Tony Stark as the world knows him, or maybe because he almost set the kitchen on fire, and he feels elated. And whatever. And so what?

x00x

On the day he asks he to "pick up the goddamn screwdriver already, Pepper!" and help him out of his bent and dented suit, she ends up yelling at him for a solid 40 minutes. Seeing him so broken and vulnerable makes her want to cry (which is – ha! – not happening), or grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him (which she can't do either because he probably has a million internal bleedings and God only knows what else, and she sure doesn't want to think about THAT).

She is mad at him for doing this to himself, to her, to them, and it doesn't really make much sense because there is no 'them'. There's only him and his missions, and her standing on the sidelines and hoping that every time she sees him is not the last. She doesn't miss the fact that he avoids looking at her when he says goodbye, and it's not like it matters, it's not like he owes her anything…

And so she picks up the screwdriver (so what if her hands are trembling?) and helps him out of the suit because there really isn't anyone else to do it. Except for maybe Butterfingers, but he's bad with small objects and Tony can't live like some kind of half robot forever.

"Do I look like a Terminator?"

"No, you do not."

It's weird and wrong and somehow even worse than stitching up his cuts. It's like she's actually taking him apart, piece by charred and bloody piece. And none of them knows how to put him back together. He jokes halfheartedly about doing the exact same thing to his father's car once, when he was 9, although Pepper doubts if can even remotely be qualified as 'the same'.

The glow of the arc rector in his chest is transfixing. She forgets sometimes that it's basically his heart.

x00x

He is dying, and then he is not, and his mind is reeling. He wants to die, and he wants to live forever, and because of Pepper, he will and he won't. It doesn't make any sense. Nothing does, really.

When he finally kisses her, it feels like Thank God. Like finally. Like What do I do now? He knows he's only got once shot at this and he can't screw it up because if he does, he will lose everything. He will think about it but maybe not now because now he is alive, and so is she, and it's both weird and right, and he feels like he is going to soar. Kissing Pepper is exactly what he imagined it would be, and so much more. His head is spinning, but in a good way. Always in a good way from now on.

Rhodey laughs, "You two were so obvious!" Tony blinks. Were they, really? He probably wouldn't know.

x00x

They're not the opposites so much as two parts of a whole. She is just as messed up, but in different ways, and maybe she's better at not letting it show, but not by much. And maybe it's the fact that she is just as messed up as he is that makes this whole thing work. Or maybe not, maybe it was simply meant to be – not that Pepper believes in any such thing.

She's not better than him, even though Tony keeps telling her that and she lets him because it matters so damn much to him. So what if she knows better? She's just as impossible and insufferable sometimes, and just as stubborn and scared, and she knows which buttons to push, but then so does he, and maybe THIS is what it's all about. They're a mirror image of each other on more levels than they can understand. And it's all right. And it's perfect.

x00x

Nothing has changed and yet everything is different.

Pepper drags him out of his workshop when he loses track of time, and they watch something ridiculous on TV, and order pizza, and talk about everything and nothing, all that matters and all the doesn't. He's never been this much in peace with himself and the feeling never ceases to amaze him.

They play chess at crazy hours of the night. Because why not? Because who cares? She lets him win most of the time, and he lets her. He wants her to do it and he doesn't, and he wishes they could both win, and then he realizes that they already have. She a good person, a good human being, and if he was half as good as she is, if he was a decent man, he would let her go because she deserves so much more than his messy life and all the empty spaces that only she can fill. That would be a right and noble thing to do.

But he is selfish and there's no denying it. Everyone knows it. He is selfish and he wants her all for himself, and maybe his reasons are all wrong, and maybe he'll destroy the best thing that happened to him in the end, but he doesn't care. She makes him want to be a better man—hell, she makes him a better man just by being Pepper, and the feeling is intoxicating, and he never knew it was even possible to be drunk on a person, and yet here they are, and there's no way he can give it up. Not for anything in the world. He is selfish and he is not going to pretend that he is not.

x00x

Tony tells her that he loves her and leaves out the part about never saying it to anyone before. Except to Rhodey maybe. Once. But it wasn't like that, and they were really drunk, and it's not something you mention to a girl anyway. Pepper laughs and kisses him, and he can swear she whispers I love you, too against his mouth, but he is not sure because his heart is singing and he can't hear anything else.

Not that it matters.

He didn't say it to hear it back. He said it because he wanted her to know (in case she didn't already). And now that the words are out, he wants to repeat them over and over again. He wants to shout them from the rooftops, although this is exactly the kind of behavior Pepper doesn't approve of, press involvement-wise. So he saves them for every morning, and every night, and a million times in-between. Somehow, they never get old.

She never asked him for anything, and maybe it's the reason he wants to give her everything. His company, his heart, his soul. He can't give her the world (although there's no harm in trying), or the moon, or the starts, so he settles for the next best thing.

"Another bracelet, Tony? Really?" And there's the smile again, the one that makes him weak in the knees. "How many earrings do you think I can wear at once?"

None of this is important though. He's trying, and it's the only thing she cares about. The only thing you can't put in a box and stick a ribbon to it. It's never easy – it never was and it never will be, but some days, effort is all that counts. Some days, effort is enough.

x00x

Pepper rests her forehead on his collarbone and Tony promises to make her happy, and she believes him, and he believes he can do it, too. It will be a bumpy ride (when wasn't it?), and she will swear more than once to kill him if he ever dies on her (You know it doesn't make any sense, don't you?), or lock away his suits and throw the key into the ocean.

Are you crazy? What were you thinking? she will ask, and Don't you dare do this to me, don't you dare leave me, Tony. You promised, remember? will be left hanging in the air between them. But she never asks him to quit because she knows he wouldn't know how. And she probably wouldn't either. And also because she knows that he would – in a heartbeat, really – and she can't be the one to take it from him. Who are they kidding, anyway?

It's complicated.

Pepper takes to wearing his shirts in the house when they're not expecting anyone. She ties her hair in sloppy buns, securing them with random pencils, with loose strands falling in curls down her neck. He's seen her in business suits and cocktail dresses, but nothing looks better on her than his old MIT jersey. (Not better than nothing at all, but it's a close second.)

She sleeps with her arm folded under her head and Tony knows the exact number of freckles on her face – he's counted them a million times, and will do it a million times more, imagining them to be tiny constellations.

She is his salvation and the end of him, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

She is the light.

Thanks for making it this far! Comments are always appreciated! :)