Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.
Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com
Title: Pretender
Prompt: #98 – Pretend
Rating: K/G
Length: ~700 words
She tried to avoid the news as much as possible, though it had a horrible tendency of sneaking up on her.
She would be watching a little evening tv and a special report would suddenly jump onto the screen, and always, always she would sit mesmerized for several seconds, hungry for any mention of him even as her brain screamed for her to change the channel.
She would be in her car – the car he had bought her – fingers tapping on the steering wheel as some recent pop song she didn't know drew to an end and the radio host would break in with what songs they would be playing next and oh-by-the-way everyone's favorite hero has done it again. It was much easier to change the station when it was just words and noise and not the temptation of actually seeing him.
She would be out with friends – she actually had friends now – and someone at the next table over would have a newspaper or a copy of one of the fortunate magazines to get an interview with him and they wouldn't be able to resist discussing it loudly with everyone around them. Her friends – colleagues, associates, acquaintances who liked her and carefully ignored the stunning references on her resume – would look away, stare into their drinks, shuffle their feet. They could handle being friends with Virginia, but The Infamous Pepper Potts was something else entirely.
It was worse when someone would recognize her – usually some overzealous reporter, but sometimes it was a businessman who'd known them before, someone she would have smiled at and chatted quietly with at some high-end party or benefit. It was always the same kind of horrible when they would inevitably realize their mistake, realize she wasn't the free backstage pass to Iron Man she once was. The widening of the eyes, the slowly backing away, the looking at her like she might break.
Pepper couldn't help snorting at that idea. She wasn't about to break – she was broken.
Not that she let it show. Or even thought about it much at all. It was really only in little snatches here and there – just before falling asleep in her dark apartment; in the tiny, still moment between pulling her car door shut and turning the key in the ignition; right after switching the tv off on another Iron Man-themed news report. It was in these little bits and pieces that she could admit to the façade of her life, the lie within a lie.
She didn't know anything about the Iron Man suit, no weaknesses, no special features, no insider dirt. Not really a lie, as he'd no doubt made numerous improvements in the long months stretching between them and she didn't really understand much if any of his engineering before anyway.
She didn't know anything about Tony Stark's personal life. A lie, though she wouldn't really admit it. Tony Stark was a grown man with his own life, one that Pepper Potts was no longer a part of. Not that she'd been a part of his personal life before – she was his assistant, not his babysitter, not his mother, not his girlfriend. Certainly not his girlfriend. Professional, and nothing else. It didn't matter that she knew how he liked his day-old pizza in the morning or that she had an all-too intimate knowledge of the scars lacing his body from his many 'heroic' acts.
She wasn't affected every time he blasted off to go save the world again. Her knuckles didn't clench white around her pen for the whole day until she heard he was back home, safe. She didn't have to make a conscious decision every morning to not drive out to his home and see if she could pick things up right where she'd left them, like nothing had ever happened. She didn't dream about his smile or about dancing out on a darkened balcony. She wasn't in love with him.
She'd always been a terrible liar.