Mirror, Mirror
Chapter Two: Something Familiar
Pepper didn't make it home. That is, her counterpart in this reality had a condo in Los Angeles, but she was not permitted to live there. Though SHIELD had let her go, her virtual arrest continued. Her place of holding had simply changed to wherever Tony dictated. He put her up in the mansion, most likely for monitoring purposes. The official line came from Natalie: allowing her to live at the condo would be an invasion of the "real" Pepper's privacy. Whether this came down from SHIELD or Tony, Pepper didn't know, but she didn't argue the point. She wouldn't have wanted to let a stranger pick through her life, either. She was curious about this Pepper, but she would have to make due with learning about her through other means. More selfishly, Pepper wasn't sure she was ready to take on LA again. The mansion had very strict security, watched over by an intelligent system called JARVIS and it suitably shielded her from the city. The security system also meant that she didn't have access to the vast majority of the house. It was the explicit lack of trust that kept her from pretending that this wasn't just another place that she had been dragged to by the Tony she knew.
None of her needs were seen to by this world's Tony. Spare sets of clothes were provided by SHIELD and in the brief moments before opening the duffle bag she'd been given, Pepper had been afraid that it would be just a few sets of that awful blue jumpsuit. In all of her time with SHIELD back home, she had gotten away without ever wearing one. When he was director, sometimes Tony had worn a more dignified slacks and jacket combo that served as a version of the usual uniform. Something like that would have been passible. Of course, Tony had also worn the skintight jumpsuit on occasion, but he was an exhibitionist. As near as Pepper could tell, that trait seemed to be a requirement for a career at SHIELD.
Pepper spent the majority of her time watching television and surfing the internet. She learned a lot of little things about this world that most people took for granted in this way. The world she had left was mid-way through 2010. In this universe, 2009 had just begun, which meant there was a time difference of about a year and a half. The past year and a half had been, without question, the worst period of her life. To wake up and discover that it had all been some sort of crazy dream would have been a blessing of unimaginable proportions. But even though life worked in mysterious and often unfathomable ways, that was not what had happened to her. Pepper was in a different reality in a space that should be occupied by a different person. Maybe that woman had a rough year and a half ahead of her, maybe not. This world was an undeniably different place and Pepper didn't think it too hard to hope that maybe the things that had happened in her world would not come to pass in this one. This hope didn't lessen the pain for her or make it more bearable or anything crazy like that. It was just a selfish dream that maybe somewhere, there was a reality that was a little bit happier.
She caught glimpses of Happy now and then. He was working for Tony as a chauffeur, but he never spoke to her. He skirted around eye contact, so Tony had probably told him something was up. Pepper had questions she wanted to ask him. Things she would love to learn about. Part of her wanted to latch on to him and never let go while the rest of her knew that he wasn't her husband miraculously returned to her. He was a stranger. Tony and Natalie were strangers, too, but at least Natalie was becoming a familiar stranger. She was recognizable and helpful and grew more accepting of the situation as the days past. Happy popped in when Tony needed to leave for some appointment right now and vanished just as quickly. He had been the person who drove them from Sacramento to Malibu, but it was days before she knew that. She'd never seen the driver's face. She wondered what sort of relationship he had with this world's Pepper.
She told herself that they probably weren't close.
Pepper spent one afternoon pondering this, and then she started Googling people.
At first, Pepper thought if she could find a few of the super-scientists counterparts, they might be able to make some headway in getting her home. Sure, SHIELD didn't know anything, that but didn't rule out the likes of Reed Richards or Henry Pym. The accomplishments of this world's Tony Stark were somewhat unimpressive compared to the man she knew and the pattern held true. Richards was trying to scare up funding for a space mission. Pym worked out of his garage in New Jersey.
She looked for them first because that was the useful thing to do. But...if Happy was alive, and it was a year and a half ago...who else might be alive? Her first searches were practical. They yielded no results, but now she was free to indulge her curiosity about other people.
Henry Hellrung. Washed up actor whose career couldn't survive his alcoholism. He got sober and was now a spokesperson in Hollywood for Alcoholics Anonymous. He'd never starred in anything important and with everything else actors got up to these days, drinking wasn't anyone's hot button but his. Henry was virtually invisible. His claim to fame in her world was playing Tony Stark on the Avengers television show. In a world without Avengers, Henry's resume was no where near as impressive.
Up until this point, Michael Fields' life progressed more or less the way Pepper was familiar with it. Becky Ryan, as well. But without the 50 State Initiative turning them into superheroes, they would probably never meet each other. Paralyzed soldier and former teen beauty queen was an odd fit in any universe. Magdalena Marie was just the same as well-actress, model, philanthropist. No kids. James Wa was a successful and famous engineer, giving hope to millions of people across the world with his medical prosthetics. Mulholland Black was the most famous ward of the state of California, alive, kicking and causing all sorts of trouble.
Dennis Michael Murray was dead. Plenty of his history was the same. Did three volunteer tours with the Navy, went to college on Uncle Sam's dime, turned around and became a career military man. He went as far as a warrant officer before he stopped taking promotions. When he got an offer to be a civilian VIP escort, he took it. In the world where Pepper came from, the escort job ended with two dead and two profound injuries. Dennis Murray spent nearly two decades in an iron lung at a veterans' hospital before an alternative was found. In this world, the escort was larger and so was the body count. Dennis died and one person walked away three months later with injuries and experiences that would change his life.
She cried.
She cried for Dennis, for Holly, for Happy, for herself and everything else that she'd lost in this nightmarish year and a half. She cried because she wanted to have faith that she's going to go home, that Tony will be coming to get her any day now, but as usual, all of the power lied out of her hands. It was supposed to be different. She had gotten her Replusor Tech rig back. She was going to be a hero again. She was going to take the power back. Her life was supposed to belong to her now, not fate or stupid choices or the past. This was supposed to be her time.
Pepper wasn't stupid. She knew the moment she typed in Dennis' name that it would likely coincided with Tony's ordeal in Afghanistan. And she knew that he was monitoring everything she did. She was an Unknown Quantity to him, and Tony's answer to the unknown had always been to figure it out. He was going to know what she found out about his trip, and that was going to be a problem. She couldn't work up much concern for his problems, in light of all of her own.
He appeared at the top of the steps, the staircase that led from the living room down to the basement workshop, incensed and just a bit tipsy. But he was fairly well defused by the sight before him. Crying in a SHIELD issue sweatsuit while curled up on his couch presented a much smaller, more vulnerable picture of Pepper Potts than he was used to seeing. It was the little details that did him in. The way her feet were bare. The way errant strands of her red hair stuck to the wetness on her cheeks. All of the accusations on his tongue died and he gathered her into his arms.
She wept into his shoulder for about twenty minutes before JARVIS breaks the moment - SHIELD is requesting the involvement of Iron Man in an operation that is heading south in the mid-west.
Pepper pulled back and wiped her tears. With steel in her eyes, she said, "Go. I'll hold the fort down here."
Tony never had a workshop in Oklahoma. There was a warehouse where did some simple things, but where he was really outfitted was New York City. He had a high-rise in Manhattan that was mostly rented out to other businesses as office space, but the top floors were all his. That was where the good workshop was found. The official name of the building was Stark Tower, but seeing as it was also the headquarters of his team of Avengers, it was generally referred to as Avengers Tower. Despite the fact that he didn't live there, or even in the same time zone, it was regarded by most to be his home. It was a good home for him. Large, spacious and beautiful. The workshop was there and that alone made it his favorite place to hole up and ignore the world for a while. Pepper had noticed that if he can get away with it, Tony won't emerge from the workshop for days at a time. Her boyfriend had a couch and entertainment center in his basement laboratory, but as far as she knew, he didn't regularly sleep there. This one had a cot, and he did. Thanks to the status of headquarters, it was also hub for a lot of people important to him. But Stark Resilient's meager employees didn't live there. They just traveled back and forth a lot.
Pepper loved the penthouse. It was so elegant and refined. And, all right, it was a little self-absorbed. Whoever Tony hired to decorate really took the Avengers theme to heart. But the it was the sort of environment that was suited to a multi-billionaire and it helped her pretend that her life is what it was supposed to be. In addition to everything else that was wrong with the picture, this Tony was broke. He could afford to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs, but he couldn't do much more than that. The existence of the penthouse and laboratory were an extremely notable blip in his story, but Tony never gave her an acceptable explanation for them. When he was back on his feet, he promised, there would be back pay. As long as she was in this world, Pepper had no choice but to stick by him, pay or no. Legally, she didn't exist, which made it impossible to go anywhere else. It would be a bad idea to run out on him, anyway. He was the person who was searching for her true reality. Leaving him would be thankless behavior on her part. She absolutely wanted to know immediately when he found her world, so she had to be near by. And of course, he was Tony. A different Tony, yes, but a Tony that was growing more familiar as time went by.
The part where she didn't legally exist did keep her from getting another job, though. It would be nice if someone in the household was pulling in a little income.
Still, Pepper found walking into Tony's workshop with files he needed to sign and steaming cups of coffee kept her grounded. She couldn't do that in Oklahoma, so it was just another reason to love the trips to New York. It was a shame they had to waste so much time in transit, but she considered it a worthwhile price to pay. Trips to California would be better, but even the Tony she was used to had to head to New York on occasion for board meetings.
Entering the workshop was often dicey. She was used to walking in on her Tony about to blow something up in his mad scientist lair, and this Tony certainly did that as well, but there was also always the possibility that she'd find him asleep on his cot. If she was lucky, he'd still be wearing his briefs. It wasn't the nudity or near-nudity that bothered Pepper, it was the vulnerability. A man who needed armor so badly he put it inside of his body probably didn't welcome people walking in on him while he slept. She may have been given access to the workshop, but she didn't always belong there.
He wasn't asleep when she entered the workshop to discuss the formation of a Legal Department for Stark Resilient. Pepper had managed to take a few meetings with a lawyer in the superhuman community who refused to come on retainer pro bono but had written up a vague outline of what the fledgling company was going to need to protect its patents and combat the monopoly accusations that were already being thrown at them from other companies with a vested interest in green energy.
He wasn't asleep. He'd just woken up. Tony blinked at her twice, watching her in the doorway from where he sat, naked on the cot. He reached behind himself, grabbed his pillow, covered his crotch with it and said, "Hey." He smiled tightly, like it was a strain to do so. "What?"
Pepper looked away, her eyes focusing on one of the many Iron Man suits that stood idly by, took a few deep breathes to center herself - she felt like an invader of some sort, an alien being, maybe - and let her annoyance bleed away. "It's three in the afternoon and you need to think about protecting your company's interests if you intend to accomplish anything."
He had the audacity to lean over to look at the alarm clock on the floor, as though he needed to verify what she said. The clock said 3:07. "In the afternoon? Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Pepper stood by silently and waited while he rubbed his face with his hands. "In the afternoon?"
"Yes."
He scratched the back of his head, scowling, as though his own head had offended him somehow. "What about my interests?"
"There are a lot of legal issues with what you want to do with your replusor batteries and we don't have a legal department to take care of it for you."
"Call Jennifer Walters."
"She already called me," Pepper told him.
"And?"
"And she's not willing to come on for free, but she did have some ideas about what Stark Resilient is going to need."
By this point, Tony had taken to brushing his hair back with his fingers. "Did you tell her I can pay her later?"
"She said its not about money."
"Then what's the problem?"
"She doesn't like you that much."
Tony cupped the back of his head, right below the hairline. "Yeah, we had a falling out about...something? I keep forgetting about that. See if you can get Matt Murdock's number from somewhere. I need to take a shower. You can turn around if you want." Pepper turned and listened. The legs of the cot scrapped against the floor as he stood up. His bare feet slapped against the tile - fire resistant flooring, of course - as he padded to the bathroom. It was not until Pepper heard the door of the adjoined bathroom click shut that she walked over to Tony's desk to deposit what Ms. Walters had written up for them. She heard the water running.
The desk was a cluttered mess of drawings and schematics. Most of them, she couldn't make heads or tails of, but a few pages were quite clearly drawings of Iron Man. The tools, at least, were organized. He'd been building armors. Other things, too, for the company, but it was clear to Pepper that Tony had been building armors. Every time she came in here, there were more Iron Men standing at attention, or more pieces of them.
When he came out of the bathroom - he spent more time in there than she did in her own bathroom this morning - he's in a t-shirt and jeans and he's shaved his goatee off. The mustache was still there, but the beard was gone. The absence made Pepper puzzle for a long moment before she was able to shake the oddity off as not really mattering. The light that shone through his shirt was yellow rather than blue, solid rather than a pattern of shapes, and somehow that struck her as more natural than his smooth chin. The shirt, like all of his clothing, is a product of his body, just like his armor. Looking at him, Pepper realized that it actually made no sense at all for Tony to be building all of these armors, given that the one inside of his body could out perform anything he had to put on, based on the convenience alone.
"Why did you make all of these?" she asked, gesturing at the collection of robotic fixtures.
Tony shrugged. "It helps me relax. I think better while I make one of these."
Pepper quirked her eyebrows. "Don't you need to be concentrating on the actual building?"
"Not really." He reached out and rapped on the chest of the closest one. "These are all old models, completely obsolete. I just remake them for sentimental value. Nothing in there is innovative anymore."
The admission of sentimentality made her smile a small, private smile. It made a lump risk in her throat as well, because she'd had always known that, regardless of what he had said.
She cleared her throat and asked "So, how did this all start? The superhero thing, I mean, not anything that would be hard to talk about." Afghanistan - or whatever experience he had was a long time ago, but that didn't mean it was something he was okay talking about.
"My fiancee talked me into it," Tony told her. He walked circles around one of the armors, gazing at it with distinct pride. "She thought I needed something after all the," Tony stopped and gestured to his chest. Pepper nodded, understanding what he meant. He shrugged. "Good call, Joanna."
"Your fiancee?" Pepper asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. She had never known a Tony Stark who was willing to try to make a relationship last longer than a weekend before she was willing to give him a shot. Giving him that shot was scary. She knew he loved her, but she still thought she was just asking to have her heart broken. "You're married?" In all the time she had been here, there had been no indication whatsoever of a woman in his life other than herself or Maria and the other female Avengers.
"No...it ended right after that. She talked me into being a superhero, but she did not want to marry a superhero. Said I couldn't give her what she wanted and can't fault her for that. She was right about that, too."
"You're...surprisingly okay with this," Pepper told him. Tony certainly didn't sound bitter or resentful about these events. His tone was dull, as thought he was more bored with the thought of this woman than anything else. That, at least, fit in with the Tony she knew, but none of his old lovers had known him at all, never mind well enough to figure out his life path for him.
"Pepper, it was a long time ago. I don't even remember her last name. She married someone else, popped out a couple of kids and I'm over it. In retrospect, it's a good thing it didn't happen because I didn't know what I was talking about until..." Tony trailed off, turning to her and staring at her with a slight frown. "Hey, that's the origin story, right? You're all set with the spectacular beginnings of the Invincible Iron Man?"
"I'm just surprised. Really very surprised. I mean, not that you - the Tony I know! He's more of a -"
"Playboy?"
"Yes. That is what he was. Is. Yeah." Pepper shook her head, trying to dispel the mental images of Tony Stark at the alter. It seemed laughable, for starters. The idea of him dating at all was a little bizarre. The absolute last thing she needed was to get visions of weddings. If what was happening between them was going to work out - and she wanted it to work out, but she could hardly believe it to be guaranteed - diamond rings were still a long, long, long longlonglong way away. "It's hard to picture him engaged."
"That's smart. My second fiancee tried to kill me. Which is sadly not as rare as one would like to hope."
"Fiancees?" Pepper squeaked hopefully. Visions of weddings were sounding better and better, comparatively speaking.
"Women trying to kill me."
"Oh. Wow."
Suddenly, the workshop doors trilled as they opened with an automated flourish. Rhodey walked in. He waved and Pepper looked at him helplessly. Having no idea what he had just walked into, Rhodey just shrugged at her.
"Yeah," Tony continued, removing an Iron Man's helmet and upending it, "the relationship is pretty much over when they're out for your blood."
Between Tony's words and Pepper's expression - it was something between horrified and mystified, Rhodey could only interpret the conversation he had walked in on one way: "Are you telling this poor girl about Whitney Frost?" he asked.
"What?" Tony asked, now his turn to be mystified. "No." And horrified.
"Because I distinctly remember you not letting go of that after she tried to kill you several times," Rhodey said.
With the upside down helmet in his hands, Tony glared at Rhodey. "That was a bout of desperation induced insanity. Won't happen again." Tony turned to Pepper, "Long story short, I was crippled. Thought the girl whose face melted off might have a bit of compassion for the disabled. Not so much. She disconnected her phone and faked her own death. But at least I got the fun of identifying the body. Three times." He peered inside the helmet, muttering something that was mostly unintelligible but there was something about 'always liking the visual displays in this one' in there. He turned back to Pepper after a moment, "In case you're wondering, I was crippled because I shot in the spine by a woman trying to kill me."
Dazed, Pepper asked, "Do they ever...NOT want to kill you?"
Rhodey raised his hand, "I kind of want to kill him."
"We both know you'd be lost without me," Tony chirped.
"I'm just saying, you've been an ass lately and I know for a fact I don't get any the really cool stuff until you're dead," Rhodey replied with a grin.
"You already got the cool stuff and you broke it. All of it. My new will bequeaths some Fisher-Price toys to you because I know I can trust you with them."
Between the mess when she got here regarding his mansion in California and this conversation about Rhodey already receiving the items left for him in Tony's will, Pepper had to ask, "Why do people keep thinking you've died?"
"Next time, I'll let your cousin and Ultimo destroy the world," Rhodey told Tony. "Does that sit better with you?"
"Morgan was involved?" Tony spat.
"He didn't want me to tell you," Rhodey admitted with some shame, thought it was hard to tell if he was ashamed for breaking this third man's confidence or for taking so long to mention it to Tony.
"What, did he think that was going to lower my opinion of him?" Tony asked, sounding skeptical. "It can't get lower. It's already bottomed out."
"Wait," Pepper cried, holding her hands up. Information overload was making her head spin. "Who's Morgan?"
"Tony's cousin," Rhodey supplied.
"He thinks I have to put up with his shit because I don't have any other family," Tony added.
Pepper had never heard of Tony mentioning any family. His parents were dead, that was common knowledge. The family was famous enough that she was surprised to have not heard of another Stark. This Tony clearly couldn't stand his cousin. Maybe the Tony in her world didn't like him any better and just didn't bother with him. Or maybe Morgan was dead there as well. Or, he could have never existed at all. So far, everyone she had met had distinct similarities with the people she was familiar with, but somewhere along the time, the differences had to be large enough to produce things like different marriages or different children. It was actually miraculous that things were as familiar as they were. "What's he like?"
"He'd be dangerous if he wasn't incompetent," Tony drawled.
"He's just kind of-" Rhodey was cut off by Tony deliberately coughing, "-very slimy. Irresponsible, only looking out for himself."
"But he usually fails at that, so I have to save him," Tony finished up. "Who else was there?"
"Osborn."
"A given. I mean, with you. Or were you doing the lone gunman thing? Because that's kind of my trademark."
"Beth Cabe."
"She never tried to kill me," Tony interrupted, telling Pepper. She got the distinct impression that Tony found this somewhat admirable.
"Suzi Endo."
"She's still around?"
"She was on the Iowa Initiative team!"
"Hey, amnesia! Help me out here."
"You have amnesia?" Pepper yelped. The boys continued talking about whatever it was they were going on about as though they had not even heard her. Lots of unfamiliar names and insane scenarios were playing out in their conversation. Robots. Aliens. Possibly aliens that were robots. Robots that could spawn other robots. Whatever it was, it was well outside the realm of things that Pepper could wrap her brain around. Memory loss was little more than a cheap dramatic device where she was from, but it was at least conceptually familiar to her. It was something she could understand. It also more immediately pertinent to what they, as Stark Resilient, were trying to build. "You have amnesia?" Pepper repeated, louder.
"Kind of," Tony answered at the same time as Rhodey said, "Yes."
"It's not a problem," the so-called invincible one added.
"It's a huge problem," Rhodey corrected.
"I read up on everything I missed."
"Everyone can tell that you're only pretending to know what you're talking about," Rhodey told him.
Tony glared at his friend. "That's bull. I know exactly what I'm doing."
"They hate you, man. I know you're good with Cap and Thor, but you have got to make good with the rest of them."
"That's why I live half a continent away. Glad we settled that."
"What's going on? What are you talking about? Do you have amnesia or not?" Pepper's head was spinning trying to follow the back and forth between the two men. Even if one of them had amnesia, they were both infinitely more informed than she was.
"Technically, no. I just deleted the contents of my brain and downloaded an old backup version of me. Everything works fine, don't worry about it."
Pepper took a long time processing the various responses that flew through her brain. How was his mind going to affect her getting home? Who hated him? There were so many people around him all the time. Aside from Ms. Walters, they all seemed to like him well enough. They were a team, though, so maybe they were just putting up with him for the greater good. Finally, that sentence made a lot of sentence if it were in the context of repairing a virus-ridden PC, but on a human being? "You aren't a computer."
"I'm," he paused, "fairly computer-like. Wanna see my download ports?"
"No!"
He turned around anyway, and ran his fingers through his hair again, this time brushing the hair that laid against his neck upwards. At the base of his skull, three holes dilated, opening up. Pepper had the same sort of sick fascination creep up her gut the way she had the first time she saw the arc reactor in her Tony's hands. This Tony seemed to anticipate that. "Don't touch them," he said. "They're sensitive. Kind of have to be, since I can't see what I'm doing back there."
"Legal." Pepper forced out, "you have things to look over for the legal department - we don't have a legal department, I mean. You are going to look at them and I am going to go now." She didn't care what she needed to do to find something that would distract her enough that she would never think about those holes again. She was going to find it, do it and hopefully not vomit in front of anyone. As she walked away, Pepper heard Rhodey lecturing Tony on how to not sicken someone.
"I can laugh about it or I can cry," she heard Tony say to Rhodey as the doors shut behind her. "I don't know what you want from me here."
Down in the basement, Tony had a womb room. That had been James Wa's nickname for her workstation at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Order. Pepper hadn't cared for the name nor seen how it made a lot of sense. It was a station surrounded by computers and machinery. It perpetually gave off a faint buzzing, a faint light and surrounded the user completely. It was sort of womb-like in that regard, but she thought of a womb primarily as a place for new life to grow and thrive. Her womb room was a place to work, nothing more. The title made her think of babies and pregnancies and things like that were off-limits to her. She had always felt a little bit of camaraderie with the similarly childless, and not by choice, Maggie, but Magdalena never knew that Pepper had that kind of access to her files, so it remained an unspoken, one-sided bond.
Down in the basement, Tony had a womb room. In a darkly lit corner of his workshop, there was a car surrounded by screens. It was a place completely surrounded by the buzzing of machinery, the light of the computer monitors and the comfort of the interior of a car. When she finally entered the workshop, she zeroed in on this corner and got to work.
Priority One was Tony, out in the field about to face God only knew what and with an unquantifiable amount of information. This world's technology was less impressive than what she was used to dealing with, but it should probably be enough to relay any information she uncovered to Iron Man. She was pleased to note that he had already hacked himself into SHIELD's network. Pepper could have done it herself, but this was going to save her a lot of time. Finding out what SHIELD knew and how much they told Tony would be a simple matter thanks to his understandable skepticism. From there, she would know where to begin in her own research and then relay any new information.
Priority Two was the company. Iron Man was popular among the public and Stark Industries stock had risen as a result, but the corporation itself was in disarray and the military was only a hair away from seriously coming down on them. Untangling the knots was the easiest thing on her plate at the moment and whenever another lead on what Iron Man was up to frustrated her, she'd dial another vice president of this that or head of whosit and get the ball rolling on where they were versus where they needed to be.
Doing all of this sitting in a car was very cozy. Womb room was definitely a good name for it, even if it was not actually a room in and of itself.
Pepper was still down there when Iron Man returned, a good 16 hours after he'd left. The work day for Stark Industries had ended and a new one begun in that time. She would never have been able to work through the night like that without the RT unit, but come opening bell, she was still energized when calling people. It didn't hurt that she'd had the entire night to dissect problems, either. She was infinitely more knowledgeable later in her stint down here than in the first few hours.
The suit was smoking a little when the robotic arms descended from the ceiling to remove it from Tony. Pepper winced, wishing she had been able to find something to help him out. Still, she made a lot of headway on the company side of things, so she didn't feel too shabby about what she'd done.
"How did you get down here?" he asked. He was tired and sore and only newly freed from a battered hunk of machinery that was once bleeding edge technology.
"I called Rhodey, told him I needed an access code."
"JARVIS-"
"-doesn't understand that I'm someone different." Admitting that JARVIS was unable to process the fact that this Pepper and the Pepper who had worked in this mansion for a decade were not the same entity was going to bite her in the future, she was sure. But while JARVIS was capable of theorizing on the existence of the multiverse, he could not tell the difference between versions of a single person. He seemed very human in a lot of ways, but he was still not human. Her fingerprints held up.
"Why are you down here?" Tony rubbed his face, exhausted and clearly not wanting to deal with her or her invasion of his space.
"To help."
"To help," he repeated.
"I would have called you in the suit if I found any useful intell about what you were up against."
"You hate talking to me while I'm in the suit."
"No, I call you in the suit all the time." Pepper let herself out of the car. This man had no idea what to make of her and he didn't seem at all interested in finding out. As far as he was concerned, she was The Enemy and there wasn't anything she could do to convince him otherwise. For a scientist, he wasn't very curious. Well, actually, he did watch her in a very curious manner as she walked across the workshop, past him and towards the glass doors. She tried not to let his gaze bother her, but it was a little heavy. Still, she was an expert at holding her head up high in trying situations. On the scale of Tony Stark's Unacceptable Behavior, this guy ranked pretty low, but she'd seen worse.
Pepper was past him a few steps and thinking that she would not have to deal with any more consequences of coming down to the workshop uninvited until at least tomorrow when Tony grabbed her by her wrist and halted her. She turned. He was out of the armored suit now, but still in his cloth bodysuit. It is pretty tight, but a lot more modest than the gold bodysuit that her Tony wore underneath his armor. She looked at him defiantly, questioning.
"What is that?" he asked.
"What's what?" Pepper puzzled.
"That," he said, gesturing at her. Tony wasn't being specific enough for Pepper to really gauge what he was talking about and she didn't answer. With the hand that had been gesturing, he unzipped her SHIELD-issue sweatshirt down past her breasts with one quick tug. "That."
The glow of the Replusor Tech rig in her chest was not permanent. It only lit up when she was thinking about it or using it in some manner. This particular magnet is brand new, but the glow itself was something she's used to and so was the weight of having this item in her body. The RT is the reason she hasn't crashed yet. Tony hadn't seen it before. Pepper took a breath, the calming sort of deep breath that gave her a chance to think about what she was going to say before just going by instinct and slapping the bastard across the face. She zipped her sweatshirt back up to a more modest height, aware that it was glowing through.
"That's my Replusor Tech rig."
He called the contraption inside of his own chest the Arc Reactor and knowing Tony, the two devices probably served the same purpose. The technology behind them was likely different, though Pepper's only familiarity with the Arc Reactor back home ended with the press kits she had handed out to reporters when her Tony unveiled the thing a few years back. "Repulsors are proprietary Stark technology," he said.
"Um. This one was actually made in a joint effort with Rand Industries. I don't know if you've heard of them?"
"Why's it there?"
Lord help her, Pepper laughed. Mildly hysteria tinged, but a real guffaw. She and her Tony had had enough heated discussions about her elective surgery that it was almost funny that all the Anthony Starks of the multiverse had not had it burned into their brains. When she calmed herself, she said, "That's...that's hard to answer." The answer was actually pretty simple. It was there because she wanted it there. Trying to explain the history of the device - that would be difficult. "I like it. That's the bottom line."
Tony's fingers around her wrist loosened and eventually his hand fell away. "You aren't hurt."
She didn't know what to make of the statement. She didn't want to read any concern for her that was not there, but he was definitely interested in her implant and she was sure his mind had already zeroed in on the real reason she would get something like that installed in the first place. "Not anymore, no."
She wasn't hurt. She had been, but that was months ago and there had been many upgrades and surgeries since then. But then again, it was never about her. It's always been about the other her.
"Tony," Pepper said, realizing she should have said this on day one, "she's gonna be fine. Tony - my - the Tony from my world, I mean, he's going to find her and bring her home. I promise."
Next: Networking
Disclaimers: Double dose of disclaimers on this one, true believers! Marvel Movie Studios and Fairview Entertainment, meet Marvel's publishing branch!
Author Notes: This story is being written as a response to the Tony/Pepper kink meme found on LJ. The prompt in question is Movie!Verse Pepper (post IM2) and Comic!Verse Pepper (anytime after Stark: Disassembled) switch places via magic/portal/whatever you can think of, and how they deal with this and more importantly, the Tony in each other's universe. This will be at least 4 chapters. I am going to try very hard to not be 5, but this is the kind of story where you can write for 15 pages and only hit two items on your outline.
I am getting fairly heavy on the comic info dump in this story, I know. I think if the characters are going to learn about each other, then they have to share their histories and points of view. Citing all of my references would take a while. Some history-related things I am purposely leaving up in the air for now to resolve later on. If you have a specific question, I'll answer it if it is not a plot point.