Note: Well, I stayed up late last night getting ¾ of this chapter written on scraps of old homework :P. Also, just to clear things up, if some of you aren't sure, this won't be an 18-chapter story...I plan on making it 4, 5, maybe 6 chapters or less. I'm saving a bigger chapter story until after Iron Man 2 comes out...I think. Not sure yet. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: It's not mine...but the story is!
After Pepper finished putting on her snow gear, the three of them walked outside, Tony and Rhodey excited, Pepper feeling rather nauseous.
To think that her boots had been bad enough, her skis were a different story. Pepper accomplished one, making it click in sync with her boot, but when she tried to fasten the other one she ended up sliding all over the place. When she actually did line her boot up with the ski accordingly, it simply would not click. Defeated, she called Tony over for help again, who simply smiled, bent down and fastened the ski to the boot securely. She silently admitted that she felt quite safe now that Tony had fastened her skis...
"Pepper! You coming?" Tony asked.
Reluctantly, all happy thoughts about Tony gone, she followed the two men forward.
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They all got in line for something, and Pepper realized with a twinge or fear that it was a chairlift. When she'd gone in college, they'd had to stop this thing for her. How was she supposed to get on it now?!
Closer and closer the line approached the offending chairs. Pepper wondered whether or not she would start to hyperventilate.
All too soon it was their turn. As soon as the people in front of them loaded, she took a deep breath and pushed off after Tony and Rhodey, gliding up to where they had to load. Tony put his arm in front of her to keep her from gliding off the platform, because she didn't quite remember how to stop herself. She was grateful.
The chair came forward...forward...forward...she looked up ahead for a fraction of a second and the seat of the chair came to bang into her thighs, and she gave a surprised gasp as she was flung backwards into the chair.
"Are you okay?" Tony asked her, a little worried.
Pepper gave a small exasperated sigh. "Yeah, I'm fine," she lied, forcing a smile.
Tony smiled back, and she closed her eyes and leaned back into her chair.
Tony and Rhodey talked about random things, and occasionally Pepper would respond to something they were saying with "mmm" or "yes". She was surprised at how high up they were. One could see the skiers going off jumps and stuff down below, and to their left and right were woods.
One skier flew up a jump, but failed and fell down, landing splat in the snow. Pepper got nervous again. Is that what's going to happen to me?
However, Tony and Rhodey began to snicker.
"Hey! You! With the face! Yeah, you! Can you fall over?!" Tony screamed to a nearby snowboarder down below.
"Yeah, can you wipe out, or something, please?!" Rhodey contributed.
Pepper was mortified and shrunk in her seat. "Tony," she hissed through her teeth, "you can't just...yell at people like that! We're going to get in trouble..."
She was interrupted by shouts of approval from Tony and Rhodey. The snowboarder had jumped off a small hill on the slope below, lost balance halfway through the air, and landed uncomfortably in the snow. Pepper sucked in a breath. Doesn't that hurt?!
"Great job! You're improving!" shouted Tony while Rhodey hollered and clapped. The snowboarder flipped them off, displeased.
"Someone's going to yell at us!" cried Pepper in horror, as she noticed a bunch of staff riding the chair in front of them.
"Nah, they won't mind," Tony said rather nonchalantly. "We do this all the time!"
"Yeah, we're known on this mountain," laughed Rhodey.
Pepper sighed. The yelling continued, however, and occasionally some people would yell back. The ride was silent for a while, until quite suddenly, Tony proceeded to lift the bar on the chair up and back, as Pepper could see the loading station up ahead. They were still quite a few feet from the ground, and a large distance away from the unloading station, in her opinion. Pepper felt her stomach drop a little.
"Guys! Put that back down! We're going to fall!" she nearly shrieked.
"It's not that far of a drop," said Rhodey, while Tony leaned over very far in his seat to accentuate it. "You could sprain or break something, but it's not enough to kill you."
This did not help Pepper's already dwindling confidence. "Tony, get back up! You're going to fall!"
He laughed. "Here, I'll give you a push and then you'll..." started Tony in a teasing way, but Pepper jabbed her pole into his leg and reached back to clutch the supporting bar for dear life.
"Don't you dare!" she yelled.
"I was kidding! You didn't have to hit me for it," he said, rubbing his offending leg.
"Try anything like that again and I will," Pepper replied darkly, but with a slight hint of amusement.
By now, it actually was time to get off, Pepper realized a fraction too late. She landed her skis on the snow, went forward a few feet, then lost her balance and fell into a heap of powdery snow.
Chuckling, Tony helped her up while Pepper blushed furiously.
"Thanks," she mumbled, dusting herself off and trying to maintain what was left of her dignity.
"Where to?" asked Rhodey.
Tony pointed forward, and they were off.
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Pepper struggled to keep up once again, but failed miserably, as Tony and Rhodey were always ahead a few feet. They never got very far without stopping, however, as they would wait for Pepper to catch up with them a little. She was blushing the entire time, and the farther they went the more nervous she became. She took continued deep breaths in an attempt to quell the fear.
She dragged her skis along in the snow, shifting carefully along very slowly, in order not to fall and make more of a fool of herself. This is probably the most humiliated I've felt in a long time, she thought.
Finally they reached the slope, and Pepper discovered with a hint of dread that the trail they were about to tackle was rated with a blue square. She knew enough about skiing to know that a blue square was meant for intermediate skiers.
Pepper was no intermediate skier.
"Ready?" asked Tony, to which Rhodey nodded and so did Pepper, albeit a bit more feebly.
First Tony took off down the slope. Pepper watched, quite impressed. Once Tony was a few feet down, Rhodey pushed off as well. A bunch more skiers went whirring past her. How do they go that fast?! This just added to all the nerves.
She stalled, debating whether or not she should go, until a group of teenage snowboarders knocked into her, causing her skis to glide forward. Pepper took a deep breath. Well, here goes nothing...
Pepper attempted to carefully maneuver down the mountain with limited success. More than once her skis got caught on each other, and just about a quarter of the way down she had fallen a total of eleven times. A lot of small children flew by her once when she fell, with a lesson group. Pepper immediately felt a trifle less confident, but she sighed and got back up anyway. Sometimes, she would find that the little portion of what was her skiing knowledge would return to some extent; she remembered, after seeing a few other people doing it, that in order to stop she would need to get her skis in a "pizza" formation. Pepper did try this a few times, and she seemed to be falling considerably less, because she now had a way to slow down if she was going to fast for her liking.
A lot of the more advanced skiers who used the easier mountains to their advantage were turning rapidly across the slope and down the mountain. Pepper thought it looked rather intimidating.
She eventually found herself at a steeper part of the slope, which looked to Pepper as if it had a tiny bit of ice scattered across it. She briefly considered walking down it, but that wasn't an option when the mountain was so very crowded and the people would have to go around her, which would only annoy them and make them upset.
There was nothing for it, then. Pepper took another deep breath and pushed off from the safety of her stopping point.
Down the hill she flew, and for a brief second Pepper felt so carefree. It was...a lot of fun, actually.
Then she realized that she couldn't stop.
Happiness quickly turned to dread and fear. Pepper tried to move her skis into an acceptable stopping position, but lost her balance once more, and she was sent tumbling quite fast down the icy slope.
Pepper screamed. Why, now of all times, is there no one on this mountain?!
Then again, it was probably better, since there was no one to crash into her.
Pepper tumbled some more, and she made one last attempt in stretching out her legs to make her skis stop. Unfortunately, this only gave her a push into the woods, where Pepper now discovered she was headed.
Since this was a mountain—A terrible place to fall down, some part of her mind pointed out—the woods were now another hill for Pepper to roll down. She rolled this way and that, making pathetic attempts to stop, but she was completely out of control, even managing a backflip once or twice.
A part of her brain eventually alerted her that she needed to stop before she ended up way out of bounds. Pepper reached out her gloved hands and latched onto a nearby tree, finally stopping her continued tumbling.
Pepper steadied her breathing, then checked for damage. No signs of bleeding; her helmet was still on, but she had lost both her poles, and one ski had come off and landed about four feet or so down from where she currently resided. Pepper ached all over, though, from rolling over broken sticks and into trees and over ice. She could move everything, however; that was a good sign. She didn't feel delirious, either.
It suddenly crossed her mind that Tony and Rhodey had probably reached the bottom of the slope ages ago, and were now most likely on their way back up to look for her. She had a silent controversy trying to decide if it would be better if Tony formed a search party or not. What was worse was the fact that Tony was under the impression that she knew how to ski. Which, quite clearly, she didn't...not really, anyway.
She groaned. I should have taken a lesson.
To be continued.
Note: Well, here was a longer chapter...probably the longest thing I've ever written for fanfiction in my entire life! :D Poor Pepper, I'm doing this at her expense... it'll get happier, though, don't worry. I hope this chapter isn't too angsty...actually I hope it isn't angsty at all, because this isn't supposed to be an angsty story. In the following chapters it'll be lighter. ...it's hard to explain!
Anyway, please review! (: and thank you for all your kind words so far, I appreciate it!