I'm sorry it took so long to get this posted! We took a spontaneous adventure today (which ended in me turning this interesting shade of red. I hurt everywhereeee). There'll be on more shot before we move onto the team's view of Tony, but without further ado, here is the much waited for addition. I hope it lives up to expectations :)
Pepper thought S.H.I.E.L.D had allowed her back in here because the war was over. If the noises were any indication though, it was still in full swing.
"What the hell?" a male voice was yelling. "He was fine and now he's just…not!"
"Is he still breathing? How am I supposed to check for a pulse with all his armor on?" another male voice contributed to the yelling.
"That is not normal, yes? He does not look good…"
"Please, if you would all remain calm I-"
"He has to have extras around here somewhere. I'm going down to the lab." That voice Pepper recognized—Natasha. Pepper stepped out of the doorway. Steve was trying to pry the armor off of an unconscious Tony, Thor was standing in the background, a worried look on his face. Hawkeye was standing next to him, looking like he was torn between poking Tony with his bow or calling for help. Bruce stood with a hand on Steve's shoulder, trying to pull him back, a frustrated look on his face.
"What-what's going on here?" Pepper said. She was surprised they even looked up. Her voice was soft enough that it could have easily gotten lost in their panic.
"He just collapsed!" Steve said, pointing to Tony, like she couldn't see her boyfriend lying on the floor in the red armor. She had never met any of these men before, but yet they all seemed to react to her voice. Of course, Pepper could recognize all of them (not that Tony had told her about the Avengers Initiative).
"I apologize Ms. Potts. I was trying to warn them, but Mr. Stark muted me. The arc reactor has sustained too much damage to function," Jarvis' voice came over in the silence. "I recommend an immediate change of reactors."
Pepper looked at Tony's chest to see the light was dead. Not good then. Tony had apparently escaped one life-or-death situation, just to get himself into another one. Pepper didn't know whether she should roll her eyes or cry. She shook her head and ran to the stairs. There was no time for either.
"Have the lab open for me when I get down there Jarvis," she instructed. She had gotten into the habit of not wearing shoes in this tower, which helped her slide down the stairs at top speed.
"Of course Ms. Potts. Agent Romanoff is currently in the lab, looking for another reactor. Shall I tell her where they are?"
"Yes. Wait, no." Tony would kill her if she just gave away secrets like that. He guarded his Iron Man technology fiercely. "Did she hack the system again?"
"I'm afraid it was nothing quite as high tech," Jarvis said. Pepper had always enjoyed his dry humor, even now. "She shot one of the glass windows with an energized weapon."
"I told him glass was a stupid idea," Pepper muttered as she slid around the corner, jumped through the window, and hurried to his desk. Natasha was nowhere near the right place. Of course, Tony's desk probably seemed like too obvious an idea. She reached under the desk, felt for the latch, and slid an arc reactor out.
"Come on, we have to go bring Tony back to life. Again," Pepper said as Natasha turned to look at her. "How are his vitals Jarvis?"
"I estimate another minute before serious complications arise. However, pulse rate and blood pressure are dropping."
"Hang on Tony." She wasn't sure if it was a prayer or a command.
When she entered what used to be their living room again, Bruce had managed to pull Steve off to the side and was instructing them on everything that he knew about the technology, which was a pitiful amount considering what a brilliant man he was.
"Jarvis, release the armor," she commanded as she slid down next to him.
"Right away Ms. Potts."
There was a second's pause, then the armor jumped into action, neatly folding itself away from Tony's body until pieces of the armor littered the ground. Without any hesitation, Pepper ripped open his shirt, pulled the dead reactor from his chest, and hooked the new one up.
"What the hell?" she heard the man with the bow say again, apparently unable to state exactly what he was confused about. Instead, he opted to just point at Tony and look helplessly at Bruce.
With a gasp, Tony came to. "Guh! Did I die again?"
"Nearly!" Pepper accused, torn between crying and yelling.
"Oh this is much better than last time. Please tell me you kissed me," Tony said, managing to wrangle himself into a sitting position.
"Don't push your luck," Pepper warned. Tony looked down at his shirt.
"Did you tear my shirt? You've been waiting to do that since you started working for me, haven't you?"
Oh, Pepper had a good idea that Tony was going to be just fine. Some things, however, needed to change around here, starting with the panicked looks Tony's team was still giving him.
(|o_o|) |)_(| (|0_0|) (You've just been peekaboo-ed)
"Explain to me why we're doing this again?" Tony complained. To anyone else, it might look like he was only half paying attention to the conversation while he messed with the helmet of his suit in his workshop. In reality, it the suit he was only half paying attention to. He had made these repairs more times than he cared to count.
"Because," Pepper said patiently. "Your team is still worried about you. You really scared them when you collapsed and since then, I've been called in to change the reactor twice."
"So? You solved everything."
"Tony, I'm not always going to conveniently be there."
"Banner and Natasha would have gotten it eventually. Or called you. Or asked Jarvis."
"Tony, Banner and Natasha would not have gotten it. You keep the extra reactors locked in your workshop where only you, Rhodey, and I can get to them and Banner barely knows anything about the technology. And while you teach them about this today," she said, tapping the source of light that bled through his shirt, "you should teach them about Jarvis too. Only Natasha, Clint, and Bruce have really seen this kind of technology."
"So what you're really saying is you want me to teach the two most technology-impaired people some of the highest forms of technology out there."
"I wouldn't say they're the highest forms of technology-" Pepper started, a small smirk on her face.
"Hey, I built them, didn't I?"
"-but you don't need to teach them how Jarvis works, just how to use him."
"I don't share well with others," Tony said, immediately turning back to the argument at hand. Pepper sighed, exasperated.
"Tony, you're acting like a child. I'm not asking you to share every design you've ever made. I'm asking you to teach them enough about the technology to save your life."
Something in her "you're going to be sleeping on the couch soon" tone must have gotten through to him. "Fine."
"Would you like me to run the usual tests on the helmet sir?" Jarvis asked as Tony set down the tools.
"Go for it," Tony said with an absent-minded wave at the helmet sitting on the bench. "Just out of curiosity, what would have been my punishment if I kept acting like a child?"
Pepper rolled her eyes. "Nothing that you're imagining, I can promise you that."
"Oh come on. Not even a little spanking? Maybe a time out with you?" he asked as she exited the shop.
"They're all waiting upstairs for you Tony!" she called back to him, choosing to ignore his comment. Still, she couldn't keep the smile from her face. It was just so…Tony.
"Alright listen up. Since someone thinks this is important and I want a bed to sleep in tonight, I'm apparently teaching you how to keep me alive," Tony said, shooting glares at Pepper, who kindly shot them right back. He had received those glares on numerous occasions, the ones that said "straighten up. Don't make me come up there."
Sitting in the living room was the Avengers team, sprawled out over the entire room. Natasha opened her mouth, looking like she was about to say something, then closed it after a jab from Clint.
"I have no doubt that S.H.I.E.L.D, when they so kindly decided to hack my systems, downloaded all of the data about the arc reactor," Tony said, a hint of anger pushing past the light banter tone of his voice.
"Didn't you also hack into S.H.I.E.L.D's systems?" Steve asked with a raised eyebrow. Tony waved his remarks away.
"Not the point. Anyway, the reason this is in here," he said, tapping the reactor in his chest, "is because I have shrapnel too close to my heart for the doctors to remove." Steve opened his mouth to ask a question but Tony beat him to it. "I got that from when I was kidnapped in Afghanistan." If S.H.I.E.L.D hadn't shown Steve the file they had on him, they gave out less information then he thought. "Basically, the arc reactor is a tiny electromagnet. It can't pull the shrapnel out, but it does stop it from moving closer to my heart."
"What powers it?" Steve again. Tony could already tell this was going to take forever.
"Originally it was palladium. Now it's this new element that—you know, I still haven't named it yet." Tony looked back at Pepper, ready to start spitting out more ideas for a name, but she gave him a sharp look and he immediately turned back to Rogers. "It's more stable than the palladium. And it doesn't, you know, slowly poison me. Anyway," Tony said as Steve opened his mouth again, "there's two parts to the arc reactor; the reactor and the element that powers it." With another glare, he pulled out one of the extras he had to show them. He flipped it over to the back and showed them the slot where the element went in. "Usually when the reactor fails, it's because of the case. But if the element ever runs out of energy, it just needs a new core. If you push these two sides together, it'll release it." A slot slid out, the new element sending out pulses of energy.
"Doesn't that exhaust the power supply?" Rogers. Again.
"Normally, if he just used it to power the magnet, he would only need one core in his entire life time," Banner filled in helpfully. He had far more patience than Tony. "So the energy that it's losing now is so minimal that it doesn't make a difference."
"Yes! Thank you. Glad someone else knows what's going on around here," Tony said. "The problem comes when I hook my suit up to the arc reactor. This little thing is what powers everything in my suit. It exhausts the energy supply in the reactor. Usually I have warning when it's going to fail."
"But you do not always have this luxury in mid-battle, yes?" Thor asked.
"Right. I can't exactly carry these things around with me. The element is stable, yes, but fragile." He slid the element back into the reactor, which lit up again. "If the reactor goes dead, it could also have sustained too much damage to function properly. In that case, the entire reactor has to be changed. Now comes Pepper's favorite part, where I have to take off my shirt." He flashed a smirk at Pepper, who did not return said smirk. Not that it stopped Tony from maintaining his. He pulled his shirt off, exposing the arc reactor. It gave off a slight hum as it worked. "This is fairly easy. Just give it a twist to pull it out, hook these wires up to the new reactor, and pop it in. I'll usually wake up right after the new one gets put in."
"That's it?" Steve asked. "Don't you think that there should be more precautions to pulling out the device that's keeping you alive?"
Tony stared at him. "What for?"
"So, you know, people can't just take it out when you're down and leave you for dead."
"Well, if I was weak enough for them to take the reactor, there are surer was to kill me," Tony said, still looking at Steve like he was crazy.
"Captain," Pepper said from the back, speaking for the first time. "Most people don't even know what the arc reactor is. On the off chance that someone has seen it, they think it's a fancy piece of metal. Out of the people who actually know what it does, very few people know that it can fail, or that it's removable."
"Yes, the stunning woman in the back makes a valid point as well. Anyway, on the off chance that you need to change either part of the device and Pepper doesn't happen to be around…" Tony quickly mentally went through all of the checks he had put in place on the devices before he finally forced himself to continue. "There are extras in several places. I keep two reactors and two element cartridges wherever there are suits. On the ship, they're contained in the room where my suits are. If you need one from there, enter and ask Jarvis for it. I keep several here, down in my workshop. You have to ask Jarvis for permission into the lab, but they'll be underneath the counter of my work desk. The majority of the extras are out in California. Those ones are kept within one of the robots. Jarvis has to power him on. Then there is a catch at the back of his base. And I know exactly how many reactors and element cartridges are in each location," Tony said with a glare at the two agents.
"You still don't trust S.H.I.E.L.D," Natasha accused.
"No I don't. And hacking Jarvis isn't an option anymore; I've upgraded his systems. Jarvis is also hooked up to the arc reactor. If he knows the reactor doesn't need changing, he won't give you access to these areas." He didn't mention the numerous other traps he had put in Jarvis' system so that he knew exactly who tried to access what. Even on the off chance that they hacked into Jarvis, the data would be stored on a hidden drive. The hacker would have to sort through the whole system to find it.
"Tony, maybe you should tell them how to use Jarvis?" Pepper said pointedly.
"Oh, right. If you haven't figured it out by now, Jarvis is everywhere. If you ever need something, just say his name and what you need. If he can't help you, he'll call Pepper or I. That's all I have for you. Now get out of my house!"
"You do know that you made this our house as well, right?" Natasha asked as she pulled Clint to his feet. Tony had no doubt they were going to go report to Fury and tell him everything, including the upgraded systems and Tony's little faith in S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Then get off my floor!" Natasha gave a mocking two finger salute as the two agents left the room.
"Your technology is so very strange. Do you not have people who could do the same thing?" Thor asked.
"People are unreliable. Plus technology doesn't talk back."
"I would have to beg to differ sir. You programmed me to-"
"Mute. And see? I can shut him up whenever I want to." He figured Thor was a lost cause anyway. At least Rogers had a basic knowledge of technology. Thor didn't even have that.
"Perhaps you could give me a more…in-depth analysis of your arc reactor technology some time," Bruce said, cordial as always. No doubt he had been bored through the 1st grade level lecture. Pepper was giving him another pointed look.
"Tell Jarvis if you're ever interested. At least one person here should probably understand the details." Bruce nodded and followed Thor out and leaving Steve as the last member left.
"Tony…thank you. For telling us about the arc reactor. I know that you're…that you don't like to share information like that."
"Paranoid is the word you were looking for," Tony said casually.
"Careful is actually the word I was going for. I read the file S.H.I.E.L.D has on you. The shrapnel in your heart is from your own missile. You don't want it happening again."
"It won't," Tony said, picking up the reactor from where he had left it on the table. "I'll make sure of that, even if I have to fight S.H.I.E.L.D for it. Good night Steve. I think I earned my bed tonight, wouldn't you Ms. Potts?" He hooked his arm around her, heading back off to the lab. She smiled, so he knew he had done something right.
"I would agree Mr. Stark." She tilted her head up to catch his lips against hers. "Thank you for doing that. It means a lot to me."
"A lot to you? You already knew all of that, and more."
"Now I have one less thing to worry about when you're away. I won't be constantly waiting for the phone call from Steve that your arc reactor failed and they don't know what to do."
"Anything for you." It was the first time he had told a woman that and actually meant it. For some reason it felt right. "Anything for you."