A/n: Oh, hi there! You may not know me. My name is Invaderk, and I haven't updated this story in almost a year. Well, a few things happened, but nothing really worth noting besides that I stopped writing for a few months and this is the first thing I went back to when I picked up a pencil again. That being said, it's REALLY difficult to crank out something respectable when you take that long of a break!
Holy crap guys, the first draft was GOD AWFUL. So I fixed it a little, then passed it to the pros. Here I must thank the prompt and wonderful cardxiv, who read the entire story all at once, then went over the insane amount of pages of this chapter and got back to me within twenty four hours. So thank you, oh so much! :D
Hopefully the 70-something people who have this on their alert list will find this story and re-connect with it the way I have.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Happy Reading!
Chapter 6, Part I
Pepper stops to pick up Tony's book on her way home, after swinging by the pharmacy for the prescription her doctor thinks will aid in strengthening her healed but sore ribs. Lunch with Rhodey had been a little rougher than she'd anticipated, so the deluge of phone calls that swarms her phone is most welcome. She leans back against the sleek leather seat of Happy's car, arguing with sleazy businessmen between stops to the pharmacy, book store, and, eventually, home. By the time the SUV pulls up the driveway, the air has lost some its warmth, a sign of a cold front moving in. Happy helps her out of the car and bids her goodbye, and within a minute she is quite alone, sitting just inside the front door of the house.
The lights are dimmed overhead in a way that casts the modern-designed hall in a warm, inviting light. Tony is nowhere to be seen—but then again, he rarely leaves his garage unless she is present, and even then his appearances can be both seldom and brief. If she listens through the low hum of the house's generators, Pepper can hear the ocean many feet below, crashing against the rocky base of the cliff. The house is often quiet like this, one of the many perks of its isolated location. She sometimes wonders if her boss has ever stopped to listen to the sounds of the waves, as she does when she's wrapped in the sheets of her bed, drifting through the middle ground between sleep and consciousness. She supposes that he didn't spend many nights alone before she moved in, and those where he was he probably spent in the soundproof garage or passed out in a booze-induced stupor.
"Jarvis?"
"Yes, Miss Potts?"
"Is Tony out with the suit?"
She doesn't like to say it in a way that suggests Tony is fighting and potentially harming himself or others. It's been a while since she had to dab Neosporin on his bleeding shoulders. Maybe ignoring the truth behind his outings will maintain this absence of injury.
The A.I. responds in his familiar accent. "No, Miss Potts. Mr. Stark is currently in his workspace with an affiliate. I have informed him of your arrival, and he has instructed me to place an order for tonight's dinner. Would you like me to relay any messages to him?"
"No, that's all right. Did he make it to the lunch?"
"Indeed. Upon returning home, Mr. Stark reported that the 'office nimrods' continue to annoy him in a manner that may only be remedied by three or more sake bombs."
Pepper sighs up at the ceiling, as if the AI needs to see her exasperated expression. "How drunk is he, Jarvis?"
"Not at all, Miss Potts. I believe his comment was merely speculative."
"Oh! Well… Thank you."
"My pleasure."
Happier in knowing that Tony is safe and not hundreds of miles away, yet decidedly taken aback by his abstinence, Pepper wanders through the house without any particular intention.
The workload for today is largely done, save for a few emails that she's been waiting on since this morning. Otherwise, the night is hers. She would typically symbolize her approval by changing from her pencil skirt and blouse into something a little more casual, but that might be inappropriate with an "affiliate" in the house. To look anything less than professional could lead to uncomfortable questions and comments, or worse, a tabloid publication.
As if the face of Stark Industries isn't under enough pressure already, it makes Pepper's fists clench to think of some of the garbage people have published about her, and that it could actually affect the company. Once in a while she'll Google her own name and look for potential trouble. Mostly there is nothing to be concerned about; maybe a comment by some haughty journalist will strike her as particularly rude, but for the most part, the results are harmless. She did once try searching Tony's name, only to accidentally stumble upon a rabid fan sight dedicated to Tony Stark pornography of all types—drawn, written, manipulated with graphics—fictitious or otherwise. Red-faced, she'd quit the browser before she could see anything she might regret.
Now Pepper wheels up to her desk, unpacks her laptop, and checks her email. The number in the corner of her inbox begins to multiply, and she becomes happily immersed in her work until dinner.
ooo
"What'll ya have? Bourbon, coffee, Hawaiian Punch…?"
"Tea would be great, actually."
"You got it."
Tony heaves himself up and away from the paper-coated desk, where he has spent the last three hours poring over countless sheets of intricate equations, some typed and others scrawled haphazardly on stationary, even a few written on restaurant napkins. Every single number, every decimal point, he's analyzing and examining and tearing apart and reconstructing to perfection. But, luckily for Tony, he is not alone in this exhausting endeavor. He turns away from the garage's "kitchen" counter after a few minutes with a steaming Stark Industries mug in either hand, and passes one to his affiliate and friend as he sits back down.
Taking the mug with a word of thanks, Reed Richards doesn't look up from the envelope upon which Tony has scribbled out a complicated proportion. So far, neither man has found any significant error—no errors at all, actually—in any of the formulas.
Tony's neck aches from leaning over the paperwork so long. He stretches in his chair, arching backwards until his muscles catch and he shivers visibly. Reed has shown no such qualms, but Tony suspects it must be different for him. The guy can stretch however far he wants, whenever he wants. The joy of it probably isn't the same.
"How's Sue and the rest of the fam?" asks Tony, not keen on getting back to the equations after several hours of nonstop reading. A solid five minutes of rest are in order.
"Sue's well. The family's well," Reed says, turning another sheet over on the table. "Sue says I have a tendency to become distant when I'm doing the whole 'save the planet' thing, so I've been trying to spend extra time with them. How's Pepper, aside from what I'm looking at here?" He gestures towards Pepper's medical file with one hand.
Shrugging, Tony sighs. "She's fine, I guess. She'd probably be better if I hadn't almost gotten her killed, but you know… I guess we all have our bad days."
Reed looks up at the tone of spite in Tony's voice, frowning thoughtfully. "Are you still on about that?"
"If you mean being constantly waterboarded with guilt, then yes." Tony takes a gulp of tea with the bitter air of self-loathing that tends to attack him whenever he thinks about the incident. "It's pretty much taken over my life."
"How so?"
Reed sets his pencil down, doesn't react when it falls over the edge of the desk and rolls away. Tony can feel that odd, constricting sensation in his chest, which doesn't make him want to discuss his personal ailments any more than he already does.
"Well, for starters," Tony begins, straightening the unbuttoned collar of his shirt in a most dignified manner, "I haven't had sex in almost three months."
"How does that even relate to Pepper?" asks Reed, taken aback.
"Because—" He pauses, eyebrows furrowing as he tries to put his jumbled thoughts into a coherent line. Having never vocalized his concerns before now, it takes him a few moments to figure out what he's trying to say. "I feel guilty whenever I think about going out and spending the night with someone else. I think of Pepper and I can't even go there."
"Pepper's been injured since July, though. It's November. That means you've been able to get over it at least once, right?"
"Yeah, well, when's the last time you went for three months without getting laid, Reed?"
"Point taken."
"And I felt worse afterwards anyway," Tony adds. He raises the mug to his lips to take a sip, but the scent of lemon tea suddenly results in a wave of nausea. The idea of eating or drinking anything (except maybe a scotch) makes his stomach clench. "And then Pepper's wacky mother kept accusing me of trying to kill her. It was just one of those ugly situations where you know she's wrong, but at the same time you can't convince yourself."
When Reed doesn't offer him any words, Tony keeps going. It almost feels good to talk about it. Rhodey is too close to home to field this kind of verbiage, but Reed has the comfort of a cordial distance from his personal life. What's haunted him for so many months has begun to rise to the surface, threatening to overflow from his mouth in one big outpouring of word-vomit. The scalding porcelain of his coffee mug keeps him from slipping into silence, because if he does, he's not going to be able to talk about it again. Tony confessing his innermost thoughts (without the aid of his liquid courage, no less!) is a rare and strange occurrence. So he tightens his hands around the mug, regardless of how much it burns, and presses onward.
"After the… incident, I spent an entire week in a drunken stupor. I'm surprised that I still have a liver. But when Rhodey told me that she was coming around, I—" He breaks off, shaking his head at the ceiling in disbelief. "It was the single most frightening and wonderful thing I've ever felt. And the first time she tried to stand up and wound up on the floor… I completely freaked out. I had to walk out of the room. It's felt like this since the incident. Constantly. I need to make things right. I can never forgive myself unless I do."
With his eyes cast down into his tea, Tony hears rather than sees Reed heave an audible sigh. He taps a finger against the side of his searing mug, watches the clear ripples spread out over the surface, then hit the barrier and bounce back. And bounce back. And back. He can feel the silence pressing down on him, inside and out.
Finally comes the hesitant response: "This isn't about you forgiving youself, Tony."
Startled, Tony snaps up, nearly knocking over his mug in the process.
"What?"
Suddenly he feels himself standing in the blocked alley with Pepper, feels the weight of the Iron Man on his shoulders as she shouts, frustrated, "Tell me something. Why does it always have to be about you, Tony?" Her flushed cheeks and torn skirt are as vivid in the memory as when the event took place, even if their surroundings have blurred with time. The effect is… well, it's startling.
"I don't mean to offend you, of course," Reed adds hastily, taking the look on Tony's face for one of a man affronted.
"No, no, that's not—" In the midst of his flashback, Tony can barely form a coherent thought. Pepper's words keep ringing in his ears as if he's experienced some sort of epiphany, or found a long-lost connection to the past. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I think your motives are confused. You've spent months slaving over this problem like it's to satisfy a need of your own. But think about it. Even if you are responsible for her injuries—and I'm not saying you are, Tony. That's a completely separate and debatable topic—but even if you were responsible, you could have handled it in so many different ways."
Reed reaches across the room and picks up the escaped pencil without rising from his chair. As he speaks, he turns back to the sheet of paper he had been surveying before Tony's comment.
"You could have left her to the doctors, since they're obviously more experienced in the medical field than you are. You could have funded the project and research, or taken a part in it to a lesser extent. Sooner or later, Pepper probably would be on her feet again."
"Yeah, maybe," Tony interjects, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. "But I don't work with maybies."
"Exactly!"
"I don't get it."
"You took an active role in her recovery. From my perspective, all I see is a guy so determined to help one woman that he moves her into his house and single-handedly spends months on a solution that may or not work, just so she can go back to living a normal life."
Tony doesn't answer. Reed glances up to ensure that Tony is actually listening before he clarifies. "You've changed your living habits because you want her to be comfortable and happy while she's living with you. You've stopped indulging in casual sex because your conscience says it's wrong. All without expecting anything in return. Tony… that doesn't sound like something you would do for just anybody."
"Pepper isn't just anybody."
Tony watches Reed work, taking in his words, considering each of them with the same sort of care he might use while handling active explosives. "She and I have worked together a long time. She's been putting up with my bullshit for years. And even now that I have Iron Man, she's still right beside me, every time I do something stupid. Press conferences, business stuff, whatever. Get this—when I get back from a mission, she brings me ibuprofen and a fucking ice pack."
Reed looks up from the paper, the tip of his pencil hovering over the sheet like a snake poised to strike. "Would you like my honest opinion?"
"Well I didn't bring you all the way from the New York City to be my shrink… but since you're here, you might as well get that session in, too."
"Okay."
There is a pause, in which Tony is certain that he can feel his heartbeat sending waves up through his arms and into the table. Then, after a few moments of pensive thought, comes Reed's statement: "I think that you're giving guilt too much credit for all the work you've done here. This concoction is absolutely brilliant, Tony—" Reed holds up a fistful of papers before letting them fall back onto the mountainous pile on the table. "But I don't think it's the labor of remorse. I think you're confusing guilt with something else, something more powerful."
Tony stares. His brain is whirring at top speed, struggling to process the enormity of Reed's words and eventually coming to one gut-wrenching conclusion. He can't say it aloud, but he understands it the moment he reaches into his mental bank of previously unused words and pulls out the one that fits. The one word that changes everything, from his perspective on the past few months of his life to that horrible moment on the hot city streets, when Pepper was lying on the ground with blood in her hair and he was sure that it meant the end of her, the end of everything.
"Even if it's not for yourself, somehow you always make it personal," she'd snapped. "Why is that, Tony?"
Because, as he's beginning to realize, this time it is personal. It is. And then again, it isn't. Tony Stark, in all his ingenuity, can do nothing when confronted with this life-changing truth but put his face in his hands.
Reed says nothing for the minutes that follow, for which Tony is grateful. After a long, full silence, the former makes a small murmur of recognition and Tony looks up, dazed but curious, at the sound.
"What? What is it?" Tony asks, emerging from the fog.
Reed raises his eyebrows, marks one sheet of notes with his pencil, and then slides the sheet across the table. Tony's hands are sweating as he lifts the page of numbers and finds Reed's notation.
"The six in the hundred-thousandth's place of decimal ninety-eight should actually be a five," says Reed, evidently satisfied with his handiwork because he leans against his seat and arches backwards as Tony had done before—only when Reed does it, his arms reach the ceiling. "I guess it's a good day for revelations all around."
"I knew they called you Mr. Fantastic for a reason." Tony's already wiping his hands on his jeans and rising from the table. Reed follows suit a moment later, pushing his chair neatly into place, and the men head upstairs together.
"Sometimes you can be pretty smart, when you put the effort into it," says Tony.
"You're hilarious."
ooo
The boy who drops off dinner isn't too happy to see Pepper when she opens the door of the mansion and wheels on to the front step with her wallet open on her lap. For one, he's wearing an apron, and has a smear of what looks like pasta sauce all over the side of one sleeve. Coupled with the distinct frown pasted on his face, Pepper finds him to be both alarming and amusing.
"I didn't know Bianchi's had a delivery service," she says with genuine interest when she reads the print on the boy's apron.
The annoyed response is, "We don't. I'm a dishwasher. Your butler said you'd pay double for delivery.
"Oh! I'm sorry about that. Jarvis—the, uh, butler—he's not always tactful."
"Seventy-seven dollars and eleven cents."
Only Tony would have his automated butler bully a restaurant into delivering calzones and garlic bread. She passes the cash to the would-be delivery boy, then as an afterthought takes two fifty-dollar bills from her purse and presses them into his hand. The boy leaves in higher spirits and Pepper feels less snobbish for making him drive all this way so that she can eat.
On her way to the kitchen, Pepper nearly plows someone over as he appears unexpectedly at the top of the staircase, and the only way she manages not to crash into him with her wheelchair is by grabbing the wheels in both hands and allowing the box of food to topple from her lap. She gasps in surprise and mingled horror as the box, as if in slow motion, flies towards the ground. But before it reaches its untimely doom, the man reaches out with one arm and snatches her dinner from mid-air.
"Careful, Pepper!" says the man, cheerfully.
Pepper needs a moment to register the man's blue full-body spandex and gray-streaked hair before she exclaims, surprised, "Reed! How are you?"
She accepts the box from his outstretched hand with a word of thanks. Tony emerges from the staircase next, and in her initial, pleasant surprise at seeing Reed (who, unlike in the case of Spider-Man, she's met on multiple occasions), does not notice the curious manner in which Tony looks at her. For some time they stand in the foyer and make small talk, about Reed's workings up in the Big City, of Sue, of Pepper's adaptations and how she's been dealing with her ailments. Before long Reed makes his exit, politely turning down the invitation to stay for dinner with the explanation that he needs to get home to his wife, who "will likely strangle me if I'm not home for supper."
And on that note, he shakes their hands one last time and leaves through the front door, where Happy is waiting with the car. Together Pepper and Tony watch through the newly-repaired window until Happy's sleek SUV begins to pull around the drive.
Pepper cranes her neck to put Tony in her line of sight. He's standing directly behind her with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking so unsettled that she becomes sure that Reed's visit must have brought bad news.
"How'd it go?" she asks, anxious behind her façade of calm.
"Marvelously," he replies, his voice deliberately even.
She turns back to the window, where the driveway is now dark and empty. His sneaker-clad footsteps echo off the wall as he approaches the back of her wheelchair.
"Oh, well that's… good," she says. "Are you hungry?"
Tony pulls a hand from his pocket and rests it on her shoulder. She almost jumps at the touch, but manages to halt any reaction by tightening her grip on the heavenly-smelling box of food that sits on her knees. Her breath falters, chest tightening. His other hand finds her other shoulder.
"Are you alright?" she says, at his silence.
"Never better. A little hungry. You?"
When she doesn't shoo him away, he squeezes her shoulders, digging his fingers in, lightly. The chill washes over immediately—Pepper hadn't even known her shoulders were tense until this exact moment—and though her logical side urges her to maintain at least some semblance of professionalism, instead she lets her chin fall against her chest and sighs. Taking this as permission, Tony rubs the tension out along her neck, rubs little circles into the muscles with his thumbs.
"What do you think about a movie while we eat?" he asks casually, as if he isn't giving his PA the greatest shoulder massage she has ever felt, and as if she wasn't cognizant of her accepting it. "I'll have Jarvis put a cult classic up on the big flat screen and we can throw popcorn at the TV whenever someone says a stupid line."
Pepper smiles, tipping her chin back to look up at him. "Sounds like a date."
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Potts. Dates aren't dates unless they end with your clothes on my bedroom floor."
"Or on your ceiling fan, more likely," she jests, shrugging his hands off so that she can unlock the wheels of her chair. "Besides, my new prescription would knock me out long before the point where clothes are usually thrown around. We can watch a movie as long as the state of my clothing isn't put into jeopardy."
"I'm sure I could wake you up," says Tony as she begins to move from her spot in front of the window. "Even the strongest prescriptions are no match for my—ach!"
In the process of backing up, Pepper 'accidentally' lets the wheel of her chair roll over Tony's foot. Grinning, she heads back to the kitchen, the scent of fresh Italian food following her down the stretch of hallway. Tony hops on one foot briefly, cursing under his breath, before following his triumphant PA out of the foyer.
ooo
They do end up watching a movie with dinner, a black-and-white French film called "La Grande Illusion". At first Tony objects to watching a movie in French, claiming that having to read subtitles takes away from the experience (he speaks French, but finds subtitles distracting), but Pepper shushes him and soon enough he's so absorbed in the movie that he misses his mouth when trying to finish his garlic bread and drops the crumbs all down the front of his shirt.
Tony's feet are propped up on the coffee table, while Pepper keeps her hands folded on her lap so that she can't accidentally brush her boss's leg when she moves around. Fresh from her ominously introspective lunch date, she seems that she is in somewhat dangerous territory now. Not the predatory kind, but the much worse "complacent" kind. The kind where she's willing and eager and really hopes that he doesn't ask, because she is at risk for saying yes. The couch shifts beneath her as Tony, swearing at his own inattention, tells Jarvis to pause the movie so that he can pour himself a drink.
"What'll it be, Pep?" he asks as he strides over to a mini-fridge disguised as a cabinet.
Though Pepper, who hasn't had anything stronger than a glass of wine in the last five months, would very much like to indulge in a nice drink before bedtime, the labels of her countless prescriptions flash before her eyes and she has to decline. Plus, she feels now more than ever that she is at risk for making poor choices. When she tells Tony that she'll just have an ice water, he calls her a buzz kill and pours two glasses. She tries not to look impressed.
"Tony, I'm fairly certain that if you were ever gravely wounded, you wouldn't make it a week," she sighs, accepting the glass he offers her before he plops back onto the couch. Pepper, without the stability of her lower half, bumps against Tony and almost spills both of their drinks again. "Not from the injuries, but from the combination of prescription medicine and alcohol."
"Well then let's hope it never comes to that," he says dismissively, taking a sip without glancing at his frowning assistant. Then, turning his attention to the flat screen: "Jarvis, rewind to the beginning of the play scene. I have no idea what just happened."
The movie resumes and Pepper does her best to get into it, but she has a difficult time regaining her focus now that it's been disrupted. She can feel his every movement, every time he fidgets (which suddenly seems like a lot). She leans away from him, propping her elbow on the armrest of the couch, but can still feel his low laughter as he watches the soldiers on screen dance and sing. In her struggle to pay as little attention to him as possible, she doesn't see when Tony glances at her, eyes her profile for a few seconds, and then sets his drink to the side.
Just before the end of the movie, Jarvis announces that there's been an altercation in the Middle East, one potentially involving salvaged S.I. weaponry. Tony's on his feet so fast that this time Pepper does topple sideways into his empty seat, unable to stabilize herself fast enough against the armrest of the couch.
"How long ago, Jarvis?" demands Tony, checking his watch.
"Only a few minutes, Sir. No journalists broadcasting from that location. If you hurry you can get there before the situation reaches the media."
"Get the suit ready. I'll be down in literally thirty seconds."
The hem of Pepper's skirt has slipped up her thigh and she pulls it back down, feeling that sense of detachment from her own body that comes from not feeling; she might as well be tugging someone else's skirt back into place, for she does not experience the sensation of the fabric sliding over her skin. This unpleasant thought does nothing to make her feel any better about Tony and his situation. Quite the opposite, it only furthers the looming sense of desperate fear in the pit of her stomach. It makes her think of that annoying dream, the dream that Tony does come back from his mission, but so damaged that she can do nothing but panic at his side while he slips away.
Tony turns to where Pepper has just heaved herself back into a sitting position and adjusted her rumpled clothes.
"I'll be back soon."
He always says that, and usually when he does return, it's hours later and he's so battered and exhausted that he doesn't make a single lewd comment while she tends to his wounds. But what can she say? That she doesn't want him to go because she had a dream that he was injured more than usual?
Because Tony does not belong to her, and because Pepper does not feel entitled to voice the selfish desire that he abandon his duty and stay home, stay safe with her, all she can say is, "Okay."
"Don't wait up for me, Pepper."
"Please be careful, Tony."
Tony offers Pepper the false half-smile that he reserves for reassuring the media, then tears his eyes away from where she sits, looking as small as she feels, and heads downstairs.
Pepper turns to the window, where outside it has begun to rain. The clouds drop pinpricks onto the window, and the drops of water bead up and roll down until they drip, drip, drip their way down to the ocean. She watches from the couch until she hears the unmistakable sound of the garage door and sees a brief streak of red and gold strike fire across the overcast sky.
Silence again.
ooo
ooo
Chapter 6, Part II
The nighttime finds Pepper lying in her queen-sized bed with her hair spread over the pillow like a red cloud, watching the flashes of lightning flicker across her ceiling. Her efforts to get some rest prove futile, for though the label on her prescription warns her against operating any heavy machinery, she cannot close her eyes long enough to even begin to feel the side effects. Tony departed hours ago, left her sitting awkwardly on the couch to finish the movie by herself and clean up their leftovers. But her restlessness doesn't stem from resent—washing the dishes is one of the less offensive jobs he's put in her hands over the past years. She wills herself not to think of Tony, not to connect him with this storm because it is irrational and it's probably not raining wherever he is, a thousand miles away in a windswept desert, blowing things up…
"I can't do this."
Frustrated and sighing, Pepper heaves herself upright, grabs her bathrobe from where it hangs on the bedpost, and pulls it on over her t-shirt before somehow blindly maneuvering into her wheelchair without toppling to the ground in a heap of entangled limbs and blankets. If she's going to be awake, she might as well sit somewhere where she can watch the storm to its fullest extent. So she goes into the living room and parks herself in front of the wall that is actually a window, pulling her robe more tightly around her shoulders to protect against the windless chill.
Tony departed hours ago. Pepper sits and watches for a sign—a streak of color, the sound of the garage again, any indicator, really. But there is nothing for it. There is only the sound of the waves and the hum of the house's generators and her own quivering sigh as she rubs her temples and wonders Why am I so worried this time? The sleepy effects of the medicine pull her in one direction, and the weather and its secret messages tug her in the other. Pepper finds herself trapped, exhausted, suffocating under the pressure of deadly potential.
Twisting her fingers in her lap, she wonders why she's never been this concerned. Sure, she used to bite her lip and fear for Tony while he went on his missions, but this time it's different. When she closes her eyes, Pepper thinks of Tony in the desert, lying in a scrap of a suit as she had lain amidst the rubble of a broken building, staring up at the hot sun and thinking, as she had thought, 'I am going to die—'
"Pepper?"
She twists around in her chair so fast that the chair whips around, too. At first she's not sure whether the figure silhouetted at the top of the stairs is actually a person or just a figment of her exhausted, heavily-medicated imagination. She thus spends a good ten seconds staring with her mouth hanging open in surprise before she decides that it—that he—must be real.
The sensation is a new one. Pepper thinks she's been kicked in the stomach. She wants to shout at him for daring to be gone for so long, and for coming back without warning. She would also like to burst into tears, and to find her blackberry and start lecturing him about tomorrow's meetings, and to listen to every blood-spattered detail about his supposed battle against evil. All this, all these emotions, rise up as if they're filling a balloon in her chest, and yet she can do nothing but stare. Tony takes the step from the stairwell into the room, squinting at where she sits silently in the dark with her eyes as round as his arc reactor and her hand over her heart.
Slowly moving forward, approaching her as one approaches a wounded animal, he asks, "What's the matter?"
"The matter?" she repeats.
He's wearing the pair of navy sweatpants that he likes to don whenever he returns from the Middle East, and nothing else. The arc reactor glows soft and blue in the darkness of the room, his hair is damp with sweat and sticking in all directions. A towel hangs around his neck, white and—dare she believe it?—free of the usual scarlet stains. He looks like he might have just finished enjoying a pleasant, warm shower.
"Pepper, it's four in the morning. Are you nuts?"
"I was—just—" Pepper tears her eyes from their business of wound-searching and sets them on her reflection in the window. "Watching the storm."
Pepper feels herself tense up as Tony approaches, and immediately forces herself to calm down again. It's going to be all right. There's no need to get worked up—there was never any need to get worked up, for whatever reason… She was just worried and, now that Tony's back home, unscathed, she can relax. She'll excuse herself now, climb into bed, and pass out as she should have done when he left her to finish La Grande Illusion by herself.
In those moments that follow, while they wait in darkness punctuated only by occasional white flashes from outside and Tony's permanent night light, they regard one another in a solemn silence. Outside, the storm is already beginning to move out across the water, fading as her panic fades, blurring…
"How did it go?" she says quietly, turning to get a good glimpse at her boss and frowning when she catches sight of an all too familiar glass in his hand.
Tony shrugs in response, ignoring her look of disapproval.
"You seem all right," she observes in a murmur, and is glad to find that she means it.
"It was nothing." Tony takes a sip and glowers down at the contents of the glass, as if it has offended him somehow. "Although I suspect that the worst has yet to happen."
"Meaning?"
"They had some weapons, but not even close to the number or manpower I'd predicted. I'll have it figured out in a few days."
She'll take his words for it this time, for now that the adrenaline has begun to ebb out of her system, the pills are starting to take over. Pepper allows herself to feel relief, sleepiness, Tony's low voice rolling over her head and shoulders.
"I used to be afraid of thunder," Tony mutters, almost inaudibly. Pepper makes a thoughtful, drowsy 'hmm' in response.
What he doesn't mention is that he actually feared storms until he was twenty, when he was caught in a nasty one while trying to drive home drunk on his parents' death day anniversary. It had been one of his more dangerous moves, though admittedly he hadn't planned the storm to start up as he was leaving the bar after a night of binge drinking by himself. He'd almost gotten himself killed—had probably only survived because he pulled over on the highway to throw up. He'd toppled out of the car and, after his body rejected the countless beers all over the grass, crawled away until he tumbled into a muddy ditch. All he can remember is the amazement he'd felt while staring up into the downpour, the sensation of being so close to destruction but never quite reaching it. Even now he can see the bolts of lightning, can feel the ground rattling his ribs, threatening to kill him but never coming close.
"Not anymore, though."
He's faced worse fears by now. When put up against death, torture, and being shot at from all sides, the fear of nature takes a back seat on his list of worries. Thunderstorms seem more like a pleasant, structured interlude in a chaotic universe. The enormity is stunning, and seeing lightning strike across the ocean, as he does now, renders him speechless. A tremulous but distant rumble echoes off the mansion's sturdy walls, and at the sound he cannot help but think of his own troubles, of Reed's pointed comments down in the garage. Tony scratches at a healing scab behind his ear and sighs.
Whether he hasn't yet recuperated from his flight across the world, or if the rainfall has simply put him in a state of resignation, he begins to feel overwhelmed by the need to know.
"Pepper. I need to ask you someth—"
He turns to face her, to make his statement and expose his heart for the first time, and finds that somewhere along the line, Pepper finally let it go and allowed exhaustion to overcome her. Tony can't help but let a trace of a smile curl on his mouth at the sight of her asleep in her chair, her head rolling on her shoulder and the red of her bathrobe clashing magnificently with her long, loose hair.
It can wait. It's probably for the better is he doesn't spring his feelings on her all at once, as much of a pain in the ass—among other places—it is to repress them. Especially since neither of them has had enough sleep, and Pepper's never been impulsive like him.
Wordlessly, Tony stands beside Pepper and finishes off the last of his water in small sips. Ten minutes later, once the storm has moved out over the ocean beyond his vision, he sets the crystal on the nearest table and grasps the handles of Pepper's wheelchair. She doesn't stir as he wheels her down the hall and into her bedroom.
Tony pulls back the covers before lifting Pepper up from her seat. She shifts against him, and for one terrible moment he's afraid she'll wake up and freak out, until instead she sighs and grumbles something unintelligible. Her weight in his arms stands as a reassurance that she will still be here tomorrow, the same Pepper, the same… Gently, he sets her down in bed—bathrobe and all—and pulls the covers over her. Tonight, she can sleep. As for tomorrow—who knows, really?
ooo
Tony trips and falls while running up the stairs the next morning. This slip-up he attributes to sheer excitement, though it might rather have something to do with the little fact that he hasn't slept in over twenty-four hours and is borderline insane with tired. But those are just details—largely unimportant, and he doesn't bother reflecting on it as he picks himself off the stairs and half runs, half limps towards Pepper's room.
"Pepper!"
Without regard to his usual respect for her privacy, he runs straight into her bedroom, bent over and rubbing the spot on his shin that tangled with the staircase. He straightens up, takes a look around the room, and realizes that she's not in here. The bed has been made up already, the white sheets tucked, impeccably neat, under the bottom of her mattress. In a sleep-deprived tizzy, Tony doesn't stop to look around as he might normally do, to admire the little touches of herself that Pepper has added to the room. Instead he heads straight for her private bathroom, from where the pattering sound of running water drifts in an a-patterned hum. Not thinking about the possible consequences of his actions, Tony grabs the door handle and twists.
It's locked, of course. Tony knocks with the side of his fist, calling her name through the door. The A.I. is the one to respond.
"How might I help you, Sir?"
Dumbly, and realizing how stupid he sounds after the words leave his mouth, he asks, "Can I come in?"
"Sir, Ms. Potts is currently in the shower, and has instated a strict 'no-Stark-entry' protocol. Only in the case of nuclear warfare or her personal injury, i.e. a fall, may you enter this room, as per her specific orders—"
"Okay, okay! Can it, Jarvis. Agh—" Tony paces away from the door and then marches back, tugging at the shorter hairs on the back of his head. "Okay. Just—tell her—that I need to talk to her asap, got it?"
A pause follows, then: "Ms. Potts agrees to your request, and will contact you promptly."
"Good. Thank you, Jarvis."
"Certainly."
ooo
Pepper is scrubbing shampoo into her hair when there's a knock on the door, and Jarvis's pleasant voice addresses her from invisible speakers.
"Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark would like permission to enter."
The sudden voice startles her into letting a blob of lather drip into her eye, where it stings like hell, momentarily blinding her. As she attempts to scrub the offending soap out, she manages a sharp, "He what?"
Jarvis repeats the message, to which Pepper responds with a blank stare before ultimately telling the A.I. to respond with her usual shower policy. In the silence that ensues, she gingerly rubs the soap out of her eye and waits for the follow-up with a mix of confusion and curiosity. Tony's never gone as far as entering her bedroom before, and the thought that he just tried to gain entry to her in the shower makes for an interesting situation. When eventually Jarvis returns with an answer, she's not sure what to make with it.
"Mr. Stark requests that you speak with him as soon as possible."
Well, that answer is simple enough, though it creates more questions than it answers. Instead of rushing to finish her shower, though, as she would do in any other situation, she slows down, her fingers still entangled in the red clump of hair that sits atop her head. It's probably the booster again, or that he has to be across the world in two hours and needs her to cancel today's important meeting with PR from China. In either scenario, she maintains some level of doubt. If it's a scheduling conflict, she'll sigh and tell him to be careful and follow her orders like a good assistant, then jump right into her inbox and battle the board members with figurative sword and shield. After that it simply becomes the process of waiting around again, worried sick from feelings she's not altogether ready to face.
If it's the booster...
"Fine, I'll be right out."
Pepper sighs, dropping her hands and tilting her head back under the spigot. If it's the booster, then there's that cumbersome combination of hopefulness, apprehension, and downright dread to deal with. The knowing look on Jim Rhodes's face stands as ever-clear in her mind as the nagging sensation in her gut. Pepper sits under the showerhead designed to simulate rainfall and lets the water run over her like the real thing.
As soon as she's toweled off and slipped into her bathrobe (which reminds her that she woke up in her bed this morning, still wearing the robe and uncertain of how she'd gotten there), Pepper pages Tony over the intercom. When she asks what he needs, he asks if she's still naked.
"Am I still—? Well I'm not dressed, but you said you needed to talk—"
"I'll be there in about five seconds."
Pepper reasons that she probably shouldn't be caught off guard like she is, not with all the surprises Tony's sprung on her during their many years. But there it is. Same countless years later and he can still make her eyebrows shoot almost clear off her forehead.
Alarmed by his response, she only has time to pull the towel from the top of her head before her bedroom door opens and in he strides, with telltale circles beneath his eyes. Tony allows himself a moment to appreciate the sight of his lovely, scowling PA, all skin but for the bathrobe she's wrapped around herself in order to salvage the last threads of her dignity. Pepper wonders at what point exactly they crossed this line. It's definitely been crossed, but usually she is the witness to unseemliness… though he seems to mind seeing her in her bathrobe far less than she minded when she walked in on him in the hot tub with the Maxim cover twins.
"What is it, Tony?" she says, a little tartly because she's trying to hold the top of her bathrobe shut while simultaneously fumbling around for the Blackberry that's slipped between the side of the wheelchair and the seat cushion.
"I've got it, Pepper," he replies, and at his tone she looks up from her search and realizes that he's practically dancing in place with excitement. It's a bit like seeing a toddler on Christmas, only this toddler has a goatee and towers over her.
Tony's enthusiasm begins to spread across the gap between them, but still she finds herself holding her breath against the contagion.
Don't hope too much now, Pepper, she warns herself. It has the potential to be a very damaging hope, if she believes in it too much and it fails. Or, if it succeeds. She feels like she's poised at the top step with her wheelchair edging precariously over, waiting for that one slip.
Rather than further explore these fears, Pepper looks up at her boss through a curtain of tangled hair and says, serene, "That's great! When do you want to implement it?"
"Right now. We're gonna do it right now. I need you to call Rhodey for me while I start setting up."
As if on cue, her hand finally closes on her escaped phone and she starts dialing before it even hits the light. But just as she raises the receiver to her ear, Jarvis interrupts their prospective conversation with the announcement that the remainder of the pilfered S.I. weapons has been traced to the coast of North Korea. Tony's grin melts away so quickly that it might never have been there. He pulls his hands from where they've been stuffed in his grease-smeared jeans and rubs the sides of his face. His fingers find their way into his hair and tug, frustrated.
Pepper, sensing danger, jumps in before he can begin pulling out his hair. "Tony, it's fine. I can wait. Iron Man can't."
"I know, I know, it's…fine," he groans, spitting the last word. "I'll just get it over with and be back in a few hours."
"Are you sure you're okay, because you don't look like—"
"I'm okay."
Tony drops his hands, takes a breath, surveys her a second time. Pepper, ready to work even before she's gotten dressed, with her Blackberry poised to strike at his command. He sighs.
"Jarvis, prep the suit for launch. Pepper, I need to you push all my appointments back until later tonight. Don't move a muscle."
He's turning away already, but even so, Pepper can't help but marvel that Tony actually still plans on going to these meetings. She means to ask him about a time estimate, but he's gone by the time she looks up from finding PR in her address book. Out the door without a backwards glance or a goodbye.
Ah well, it's still an improvement.
ooo
That old score again.
Pepper intends to spend the afternoon on the phone with the board for an hour, followed by what her doctor calls "therapeutic" sudoku—as if she hasn't got enough to worry about!—to calm what will inevitably be frazzled nerves. Afterward, she has to call PR again to make sure Tony's up to date on the record workings before his video conference with the head of the Chinese S.I. branch, whose name she spent twenty minutes repeating to herself in the bathroom mirror this morning, just to make sure she's got it right. Her home office is as crisp and tidy as her freshly-pressed business suit and she's ready to go. She's the one pulling the strings on the business puppets and no one, she knows, can turn a situation like Virginia Potts.
Except once she completes her sudoku at exactly 4:30 and sets down her pen, it occurs to her that when Tony had left her this morning, he hadn't dictated exactly when he plans on returning for work. And he can be just about anywhere—literally on mars if he felt the need to be there. If he's not on that video conference by six… well, Pepper supposes that she's smoothed over worse, but this is China, and he knows better than to screw up their negotiations.
He's in Korea today. She probably should have just sent him straight to China—it is closer than Malibu, after all.
Pepper scoops her phone up off the edge of her desk and dials his number, and is for some reason not surprised when he doesn't answer, even though he always answers when she calls, no matter what (or who) he's doing at the moment, if just to spite her for calling. Call it instinct or just that she knows him better than anyone, but she's already upset with herself for taking his departure so easily. After last night, when she was a wreck, this time she just smiled and nodded and let him limp out the door (why had he been limping, anyway? Pepper wonders. He was fine last night…)
That voicemail message—the one with Tony saying that he's either away from his phone or doesn't want to talk to you—is not normal, nor is that chill that shoots up her back as she makes the fleeting connection to a certain nightmare she'd had not so long ago. Before she has time to realize, or to pick up her phone from where she's discarded it on her lap, everything falls to madness.
First there's the noise. It's loud and clear and she doesn't even need to turn around and look because she already knows what it means. The sweat on her palms is the same as it was in her nightmare, slick on the armrests of her chair. Her hesitation is the same, as split-second as it is, before she turns around and rolls into the living room with her heart's pounding deafening her ears.
Tony's sprawled out on the back porch, face-down and helmeted against the solid concrete of his patio. He's not in pieces as he had been in her dream—Thank God, oh thank God—but rather in one scratched, battered lump. One of his arms is twisted up about his head in a way that turns her stomach over. Stopping her chair just at the door, Pepper slides the glass panel sideways with the effort of both hands and calls out his name.
No response comes, though this isn't much of a shock. She shouts for Jarvis to call Jim and get him here right away, then almost jumps in surprise when the automated butler responds in acquiescence. So far, so good. Quietly she turns back to her boss.
"Tony?"
Pepper hears the extent of his trauma before she sees it. Tony does not move beneath his helmet and twisted-up armor, but somehow he has the strength to let a long, broken groan run from his mouth, to her prickling ears, down past the collar of her blouse and down the back of her neck.
What strikes her as uncanny in all of this is not that he sounds as if his mouth is filled with blood, or that she's seen all of this before in her own head, but that his cry holds likeness to his enraptured moan—which Pepper has heard on numerous occurrences, all accidental and all ending with her blushing and backing out of the room with her hand shielding her eyes. The only difference in these two sounds is the presence of agony, that his sound of pleasure is distorted and strange, as if sliced by broken glass. This is what shakes her more than anything, paralyzes her for fleeting but costly seconds at the top of the ramp leading to the patio and the cliffside pool.
She hadn't been in control in her nightmare, but Pepper feels the adrenaline rush of danger and need—Tony's need, her own need. Without a further wasted second, she rolls down to the patio, locks the brakes on her wheelchair and lifts herself from it with both arms. Pepper maneuvers herself up and out and onto the ground, pulling herself along the last few feet until she has dragged her good-for-nothing legs over to her boss. It's easier to reach him from the ground.
"Tony."
Controlling her panic, Pepper seizes his helmet with shaking fingers and eases it away from his head—it disengages at once, as though it knows her touch. Tony gasps when he hits the air, spitting out the expected mouthful of blood; Pepper winces as a molar bounces across the ground.
She doesn't say anything at first, too overwhelmed by her boss to form coherent phrases. Rather than attempt to speak, she heaves herself into the most comfortable sitting position that she can manage, and watches as Tony takes a few deep, easing breaths. The mansion, the water below, even the clouds seem to stop to watch until, at last, he relaxes his neck and lets his forehead rest on the ground. A pregnant pause follows. A barrage of questions rises to Pepper's tongue and she has to press her lips together to stop them. And then, after traveling hundreds of miles in what is essentially broken hardware, Tony gathers the strength to sum up his trip:
"Fuck!"
Pepper can hold back the inevitable outburst no longer. "Tony, what the hell happened?" she demands, as a mix of relief and anger rush over to take the place of fear. She feared that he might have become brain dead or unresponsive during his ride home. "How did you get like this? Did you finish the mission and—destroy everything?"
"Of course I did," he responds in a monotone, not lifting his head to meet her wide and frightened eyes. "Wasn't pretty, though."
"Your arm—"
"Broken, yeah. Don't sweat it. The suit injects me with painkillers."
"But Tony—"
"Pepper, please, stop asking me things! Let me breathe for just one second…"
She allows him his 'one second' of about a minute, surveying the rest of his suit for damage as he continues to spit stringy lines of saliva and blood at regular intervals. His red and gold suit has been dented and scraped gray by God knows what, but doesn't seem beyond repair on the outside. Tony stinks like sweat, is likely just as covered in bruises as he is in perspiration, and is apparently in enough pain to warrant not doing anything. His snappish responses mean nothing to Pepper, who is just glad to see him alive—at least, from the neck up.
"I had Jarvis call Jim and tell him to get over here as soon as he can," she says, softly.
"Good." Tony's voice sounds more like a sigh. "I need him to get me something from the garage as soon as he gets here."
"Do you want me to get it?"
"No, you won't be able to get to it from the chair."
Pepper sighs, rubbing her temples and cursing her handicap for rendering her so useless in a time like this. "Well, can't I do something?"
"Water… hose is fine, I don't care."
She's scrambling for the hose attached to the side of the house before he finishes his sentence, and he drinks from the steady fountain, ignoring her warnings to slow down until she has to pry the hose from his hand. Pepper bites her tongue as Tony asks her to take the armor off of his broken arm. She doesn't want to touch him, doesn't want to hurt him any more than he already hurts, but in the end must clench her teeth and follow his directions. The damage doesn't look as bad as she'd imagined—the skin is still intact, at least—but the heavy bruising and an awkward, unnatural curve in his forearm still give her a nauseating chill.
Pepper wants to ask if she can have Happy drive over here and take him to the hospital, but she already knows that he won't hear a word of it, no matter how busted up he is. Still, Pepper can't see how he intends to fix a broken arm, especially since it's his dominant arm. He may be working on her medical problems, but he's no doctor.
From his spot on the ground, Tony mumbles feebly to her that he's hot with all of his armor on but no functional cooling system. Pepper looks down at his motionless form and feels her throat tighten. Whether it is out of fear or relief, however, she cannot be certain. She picks up the still-running hose and tells him to turn his head so he doesn't drown.
When Rhodey arrives ten minutes later, he finds Tony and Pepper on the back porch, Tony still motionless on the ground while Pepper rinses the sweat and blood out of his hair with the garden hose. She has to more or less prod him into consciousness, for he doesn't move when she says his name, and only shifts a little when she stops scratching the filth out of his hair with her sharp but gentle fingernails. Rhodey seems less perturbed by the entire ordeal than Pepper feels, though she gives herself a little credit here. He, after all, hadn't heard the metal-on-concrete sound of Tony hitting the floor. Now that she thinks about it, she's surprised that he didn't just fall right through to the basement.
Tony lifts his head only long enough to explain what he needs from the garage.
"On my desk, there's a bunch of vials in a test tube rack," he dictates, looking up from behind his drenched hair. "Get the green one, and a syringe. Those are in the top shelf in that kitchen cabinet on the far left of the room."
Rhodey leaves and returns about two minutes later with the needed materials, and then both he and Pepper help roll Tony over and sit him up. Tony seems to do a little better once he's no longer lying on his face, and even goes as far as clambering to his ironclad knees to prepare the dose of—Pepper looks at the needle of the syringe and cringes—whatever that stuff is. He sticks the needle into the vial, fills the syringe with a yellow-tinted fluid, then taps out the air bubbles.
"What is that?" Rhodey asks, voicing the very question that Pepper had just opened her mouth to ask.
Pepper has to reach out an arm and steady Tony as he sways a little and sits back on his knees, cradling his broken arm between his legs. He wipes dry a spot on his forearm with the thumb of the hand that holds the needle, and before anyone can stop him, presses the needle into his skin. A nauseated tingle in Pepper's stomach threatens to expel her lunch.
"It's essentially user-friendly morphine. To take the edge off until I can fix it," he says casually, as if he hasn't just stuck himself like a well-practiced druggie. He shoots Rhodey a quick glance. "Until you can fix it, that is. I'm going to need you to reset the bone."
"Are you serious, Tony? I'm not a doctor!"
"Sure you are, anyone can be a doctor. Help me up—"
Rhodey steps forward to help Tony to his feet, protesting all the while. He keeps trying to reason with his injured friend as he leads him away from Pepper, up the flight of stairs, and into the mansion without telling Pepper what she should do now. She listens until his objections and Tony's reassurances fade away, and only once she is alone does she look around the bloody patio and ask aloud to nobody in particular, "Why do I do this to myself?"