Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Marvel Comics, Fairview Entertainment, Dark Blades Films, NBC, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, especially Cedric, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any.

Many thanks to Cincoflex and Laura27md, whose advice I appreciate even though I don't always follow it.



It was past midnight by the time he got home. Tony let the 'bots strip his armor away and trudged to the garage shower, weary to the bone and bitterly aware of the fact that no one had called him to tell him Pepper had been found.

He would have preferred to fly straight back out to the search base camp, but no one would be looking in the dark, and the long score up the back of his armor--and the accompanying damage to its stability--had to be dealt with before he could go out again.

You barely made it home in one piece and you know it, he told himself as he turned the water on as hot as he could stand. Gotta do something about the stress points on the leg pieces...

It had been something of a freak accident--an explosion had smacked him with a steel girder at just the right angle and force to actually do more than scratch the paint--but the fact remained that there were probably several hours of repair work ahead, not to mention redesign.

The upgrades can wait. Tony tapped the little touchscreen he'd installed in the shower and used its virtual keyboard to instruct Jarvis to start repairs.

At least the mission had been fairly successful. There had been a minimum of civilian casualties, and none of them children, and there had even been a couple of adults practical enough to take charge of their fellow hostages, which saved Tony from having to try to communicate with them himself or finding someone in authority to handle them. Jarvis did his best to translate, but dialect and idiom were always tricky prospects.

When he was clean, Tony toweled off and dressed in a pair of old shorts and one of the sleeveless tees he kept on hand for such occasions, and limped upstairs.

The faint snore coming from the couch alerted him to the fact that his best friend was stretched out on the cushions, sound asleep. Tony regarded him through the dimness with a mixture of exasperation and affection, and finally tiptoed over to scoop up the blanket from the back of the long sofa and drape it over Rhodey's motionless form.

He's got to be almost as worried as I am. Pepper was Rhodey's friend too; Tony always liked to watch them tease each other and laugh at shared jokes, even when said joke was on him.

I'm a damned lucky bastard to have them both.

Tony moved silently away and went to find something to eat.

In the end he had to take a bottle to bed with him to be able to sleep. Tony sipped slowly, staring blankly at the windows on the far side of the room, all dark with night.

He hadn't quite had the heart to wake Rhodey, and anyway Tony knew that the news he most desired wasn't there to be heard. So he drank Scotch and waited for his body to give into sleep, and wondered bleakly what sort of bed Pepper had out in the darkness.

If any.

His sleep was uneasy, and Tony searched for her in his dreams as well, wandering around a forest inexplicably full of people, then returning to the base camp only to be told that Pepper had returned hours before, and had just left again. As dreams often went, Tony pursued his goal but never quite caught up to her, constantly diverted by distractions and problems.

Rhodey's hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake, was actually a relief. The sky was barely lightening, but Tony hadn't shut the lamps off the night before and the room was golden with light.

"You said you wanted an early start," Rhodey said as Tony sat up and scrubbed at his face with both hands. "When did you get back?"

"I dunno. Two?" Tony yawned. "Something wrong with my guest rooms?"

Rhodey yawned in turn. "What are you talking about?"

"You always sleep on the couch." Tony slid out of bed and headed for his closet. "I've got how many rooms in this place, and you take over the living room instead..."

"I was waiting for you to get home," Rhodey said, looking unusually scruffy with his need for a shave. "Speaking of which, I gotta run home and change. Can you stay put until I get back?"

"Jarvis? How long until repairs are finished?"

"Estimated time to completion is ninety-three minutes," the AI replied, and Tony pulled on a shirt and stuck his head out of the closet.

"There you go. As soon as the suit's fixed, I'm out of here."

Rhodey narrowed his eyes. "I'll ask later," he said. "Breakfast is your problem today."

"Yeah, yeah." Tony stepped into a fresh pair of jeans and fastened them up. By the time he left the closet, Rhodey was gone, and Tony went to find something to make for breakfast.

Fried egg sandwiches were easy enough, and could be eaten while driving, which meant they were perfect for Rhodey. Tony ate his on the spot, however, taking bites in between gulps of coffee and trying to convince his body that it wanted to be awake.

Pepper...

He left Rhodey's share of the food in the kitchen and went downstairs to start working on the upgrades. They would at least keep his mind occupied until the colonel got back.

The day was pretty much a repeat of the previous one; the searchers spread out from the base point, moving faster at first as they passed over ground already covered, then slowing. Progress was slower due to the wider area to cover.

Tony ranged overhead, letting Jarvis do most of the scanning work. He was surprised at just how much wildlife there was; the heat signatures of deer were almost the same as humans, and more than once he dipped down to investigate, only to have a large tan shape bolt out of whatever hiding place it had found and bound frantically away.

There was only a small reassurance in the fact that he'd found no predators larger than the bobcats.

Late in the afternoon, however, the searchers were recalled over the radio frequency kept for them. When no reason was given, Tony frowned at his HUD. "Jarvis? What's up?"

"A group of preadolescent campers has been reported missing in the Sespe Wilderness. All searchers who are not volunteers are being reassigned to the Sespe effort."

Fury hardened Tony's muscles, and he inhaled to curse--and froze as Pepper appeared in his mind's eye, hands on her hips and her most forbidding glare directed straight at him. "Anthony Stark, don't you dare. They're children. They need help a lot more than I do."

She was just a figment of his imagination, but she was right. Tony squeezed his eyes shut, said the bad word anyway, and shut off the thermographic scan.

He gave himself twenty seconds to sulk, and then cleared his throat. "Back to base, Jarvis." It was hard to speak loud enough for the microphone to pick him up.

The AI said nothing, which was a mercy. Tony let the world slide past beneath him, and felt his heart clench tighter with every mile.

You chose this. His conscience--so long muffled, until his eyes had been opened--spoke sternly. You chose to be a superhero, and say so in front of the world.

And a superhero, much as he might rage against the thought, was honor-bound to go help with the new search.

Pepper, I'll come back, I promise.

As soon as I can.

The only comfort was the image of her approving smile.


The skunk woke Virginia just before dawn. She wasn't sure how, since it didn't seem to be making any noise, but she opened her eyes to see the black-and-white shape hesitating at the entrance to the restroom.

For an instant Virginia held still, all the cautionary tales about skunks running through her head, but then she sat up slowly. I don't want to be trapped in here by that thing.

The skunk sensed her, no doubt of it. The creature raised its head, sniffing busily, and she realized that it must have scented the food she'd eaten for supper; she'd thrown a candy wrapper in the trash can.

"It's all gone," she told the skunk, and stood, unkinking muscles displeased with the hard floor.

The skunk hunched, eyed her for a moment, and then retreated out the door without haste. Virginia let out a long breath, relieved at its decision, and stretched.

By the time she was done using the facilities and filling her water bottles, it was just light enough outside to distinguish shapes. She examined her blisters carefully. They're better this morning, but I'll bet they'll pop right back up after an hour or two.

Still, there was no helping that. She wished for cotton to cushion them and pulled her socks back on, lacing up the shoes tightly. Shrugging into her pack, she exited the restroom cautiously, but the skunk had apparently left.

Virginia hesitated as she looked towards the road, wondering if she shouldn't stay put after all. But it could be days before someone stops here. At least on the road I have a better chance of finding someone.

As long as it wasn't her kidnappers. Well, her stolen clothes made her look like a hiker; perhaps it would let her go unnoticed. She opened a packet of candied pineapple and set off down the road again, nibbling.

The morning rolled slowly away, counted off in steps and rest breaks. Twice Virginia thought she heard someone, or something, in the forest bordering the road, but each time when she halted and listened she could make out nothing. At noon, however, she heard the unmistakable hum of a car engine.

It was coming from behind her. She turned, peering back up the curving road, adrenaline making her pulse quicken. The car came into view quickly, moving at a speed that proved her sense in walking on the shoulder.

Virginia waved her arms frantically and even found herself shouting, but the car--an older-model sedan--zoomed past her without even slowing. She caught a glimpse of the interior, but just enough to know that there was only the driver. As she watched, still waving, the vehicle swept around the next curve and was gone.

She stared after it in open-mouthed disbelief. She had been so focused on finding someone, anyone, that it hadn't actually occurred to her that she might be ignored.

"Well, hell." Virginia threw up her hands and glared in the direction of the vanished car. "Just great."

There was nothing else to do but keep walking. She did, fuming at the driver, even though she knew her appearance was hardly likely to inspire confidence.

I've been trying to get out of here for two days, and they just zipped by like I wasn't even there...

It was such a small thing, she knew; sooner or later there would be another car. But it still galled.

It was early afternoon when she reached another gravel turnoff. Virginia hesitated, then decided she couldn't afford to miss the chance that there might be someone at this one. As she trudged down the short driveway, she caught a glimpse of color through the trees, and felt her heart rise again.

It was an SUV, bright red, and beyond it were two dome tents and a clutter of gear. She hurried forward, but as she neared it was clear that whoever was camping in that spot was absent.

Still-- She actually patted the SUV as she passed it. This one isn't abandoned. The gear bore smears of dirt, but it was the grubbiness of use.

It seemed a little rude to sit at the picnic table that was part of the campsite--an intrusion into the unknown campers' space--but there wasn't anything else available and she didn't feel like sitting on the ground. Virginia put her pack on the bench next to her and used a handful of water to splash her hot face, then settled in to wait.

It wasn't easy. All the exercise notwithstanding, she was quickly bored, and at the same time she felt antsy, waiting for the campers--whoever they were--to return.

She knew it was irrational to fear that they too had abandoned their site, but she couldn't help the thought. Tony would laugh at you, she scolded herself.

In her imagination he lay down on the bench opposite, one arm beneath his head and one leg crossed over the other knee as he stared up at the trees and sky overhead, smirking. What, you think Bigfoot ate 'em, Potts? They'll be back.

It made her scoff, because if there was one person worse than her at handling boredom it was Tony Stark. If he were really here I'd have to hog-tie him to keep him from hot-wiring the SUV or something equally obnoxious.

Sighing, she turned around so she could lean back against the table, and looked up herself. The leaves and branches overhead made a lacy pattern against the bright sky, subtly changing as a high breeze played tag with the trees. Virginia felt a measure of her impatience drain away as she watched; the motion was hypnotic.

Her imaginary Tony persisted behind her, comfortable in the outdoors as he probably would never be in real life, caught in a contemplative moment. Her eyes followed the leaves, but in her mind he spoke again, words that she hadn't put in his mouth.

I miss you, Pepper.

That made her blink and shake her head, and the vision shattered. Virginia swallowed hard, and told her subconscious it needed to get a hobby.

She was still watching the leaves when voices reached her ears, the high-pitched tones of children shouting to each other. She drew in a breath and straightened, looking around eagerly.

Out of the forest on the opposite side of the campground came two little girls, running ahead of a pair of adults. Virginia's hands met in her lap and, in lieu of a BlackBerry, clasped each other tightly.

The children spotted her at the same time, but where the younger one halted, the older girl bounced forward. "Hi! Who are you? This is our camping spot!"

"Dinah!" her father called, but the girl was too eager to pay attention, instead halting at the end of the table with a huge grin.

"Are you camping too? We've been hiking all day."

Virginia put Dinah's age at about eight. She smiled back at the girl, feeling her eyes prickle at this unqualified acceptance, the first friendly human contact she'd had in days. "I'm kind of camping, yes."

"Dinah." The adults hurried up, the smaller girl in tow, and their stares raked over Virginia suspiciously. "What have we said about talking to strangers?" her father scolded.

"You're right here," Dinah argued. "And she looks nice."

The parents were her own age, Virginia guessed, both slender if not overly tall. She smiled at them as well. "I'm sorry to, um, intrude on you. I'm...kind of lost."

The woman's face softened as she took in Virginia's appearance, though she didn't let go of her younger daughter's hand. "You look lost," she agreed, cautiously polite.

The man stepped forward to lay hands on Dinah's shoulders. "Are you out here alone?" His expression was mingled suspicion and concern.

Virginia glanced down at her hands, grubby and chapped; she'd run out of lotion the day before. "Yes. I--I was wondering if I could just borrow your cellphone to make a call."

"We didn't bring our phones," the woman said, smiling a little. "When we go on vacation we want to really get away from it all."

"We've been here five days," Dinah informed her proudly. "Today's our last day, though."

"You're going home tomorrow?" Virginia asked her absently, struggling to mask her disappointment at the lack of communications equipment.

"Tonight, actually," the man said, letting go of Dinah and ruffling her hair fondly. He glanced at his wife, who tightened her lips thoughtfully and then raised both brows. "How long have you been lost?"

"Three days," Virginia sighed. Looking at their expressions, still slightly wary, she made the instinctive decision to keep the details of her circumstances to herself. Her abduction might have made the news, depending on Happy and how Tony had reacted, but these people clearly knew nothing of it, and years of honing her ability to read people told her that claiming to be Iron Man's kidnapped personal assistant would not go over well. "I got lost hiking." Which was fairly close to the truth, after all.

"Well, we're about to start packing up." The man glanced at his wife again. "We could drop you off at the ranger station on the way out."

Virginia's fingers trembled in their tight knot, and she had to blink. "That would be...great. Thank you."

The man smiled suddenly, and held out a hand. "I'm Mike, and this is my wife Trish." Virginia met his hand with hers; he had a firm grip but not a hard one. "You've met Dinah, and the little one is Helena."

"I'm Virginia." She shook hands with an eager Dinah, relief making her dizzy. "And I'm very glad to meet you all."


She tried to help the Franklins break camp, but Trish gave her a sharply assessing look and then made her sit down again. She dug a bottle of sports drink out of their supply box and set it in front of Virginia. "Here. You're looking a little peaked."

Relief had left Virginia feeling drained, and she didn't argue. She sipped the warm liquid slowly and watched the family as they carried bundles and bags to the SUV and took the tents apart. Even little Helena, who was--as she'd told Virginia shyly--four, trotted back and forth from site to truck, handing items up to her mother.

Dinah and her father wrestled the tents into submission, Dinah chattering non-stop. Virginia had to smile at the girl's energy, undimmed even after a morning out on the trails. I'll bet Tony was a lot like that as a kid.

She wondered briefly what his parents had been like at home, and how they'd coped. She hadn't met Tony until several years after their deaths, and he rarely spoke of them, so she knew little beyond what was public history.

But she got the feeling that his life with them had been happy, though if pressed she could not have articulated how she knew. Maybe it was just the sense of a kindred spirit, for while Virginia had no family any longer, she'd grown up secure in the knowledge that she was loved.

"Where are you from?" she asked Mike as he paused for a break and a drink himself.

He dropped onto the seat opposite. "Santa Monica. We try to get up here at least a couple of times a year." Mike took a swig of water. "You?"

"Malibu," Virginia said. "I work as a personal assistant."

Mike nodded thoughtfully. "The CEO where I work has one of those. He's got twice the brains of his boss and he needs all of 'em."

She laughed. "I have days like that, yeah. Where do you work?"

She led him to ramble on a bit, avoiding the question of her own employer, and before long Mike was on his feet again, taking apart tent poles. Trish climbed out of the SUV and began handing out sandwiches, managing to include Virginia in her distribution without making it seem as though she were the uninvited guest that she was.

The sandwiches were nothing spectacular--peanut butter and jam on store bread--but to Virginia they tasted wonderful.

Real food. I'm never going to insult Skippy again.

When the last piece was loaded, Mike strapped Helena into her booster seat and climbed in after her, with Dinah on the other side, leaving the front passenger seat for Virginia. The cushion felt oddly soft after days of dirt and rocks--and tile--but she wasn't about to protest.

As the SUV pulled out of its spot, Trish glanced over at Virginia. "The ranger station's at the gate to the park--about five miles down."

Virginia hesitated, then spoke. "I'd like to stop there and make that call, but afterward would--would it be possible for me to ride back to Santa Monica with you? I can pay for gas," she added hastily. Santa Monica was much closer to home than-- Virginia realized she still didn't actually know where she was.

Trish frowned. "What about your stuff? I'm sure the rangers can help you find it."

Virginia bit her lip. "At this point all I want to do is get home," she confessed, and Trish smiled sympathetically.

"I can understand that." She glanced in the rear-view mirror, and apparently her husband consented, because she nodded. "Sure, we can do that. Is there someone who can give you a lift to Malibu?"

"Yeah." Virginia let out a breath, relieved again. "Thank you."

Trish reached over and patted her arm. "It's not a problem."

Mike activated the overhead DVD system, and the soundtrack to My Neighbor Totoro filled the truck, enthralling the children. Virginia leaned her head back against the headrest, and whether it was exhaustion, days of stress, or simply relief, fell asleep.


Normally Tony would have enjoyed the search and rescue operation. Good press for Iron Man was always valuable, and there was no denying he got a kick out of actually being a hero, whether in a war-torn country or in his own proverbial backyard.

And, unlike the past frustrating days, the Sespe search proved ridiculously easy. Of course, it was simpler to look for a group of nine people rather than one alone, but it still took so little time that Tony told Jarvis to start a file about converting the suit's thermographic sensors for use by aircraft. The first group of heat signatures Tony zeroed in on was a bunch of campers who were not lost, though they were quite forgiving of the startlement once he explained why he'd fallen out of the sky in their midst.

The second group proved to be a flock of vultures working on a deer carcass, and Tony didn't even have to land. The third signature was the jackpot--seven small hikers and two counselors, one with a broken leg--and it almost made Tony smile to see the glee in the kids' eyes when he appeared.

After that it was a simple matter to alert the other searchers and guide a couple of rescue helicopters in to a nearby clearing. Tony carried the injured man to the aircraft himself, tossing off vaguely polite replies to everyone's exclamations and questions. But it was late in the day before he was able to leave the situation behind.

The base point for Pepper's search still had a few people around--a couple of reporters, and a few people who had volunteered support services for the searchers who were still out looking. It had both surprised and touched Tony when quite a number of Stark Industries employees had turned up to help with the search. Even Happy had put in an appearance.

Donovan's team was still on the job as well, but Tony didn't see any of them as he came in for a landing. He flipped up his visor, heading for the main building. He wanted to talk to Rhodey before he went back out, and Jarvis had told him that the colonel was currently at the base point.

"Anything?" Tony asked as Rhodey loped out.

Rhodes shook his head. His mouth was set in a grim line. "It's like she just vanished into thin air. I actually heard someone talking about alien abduction, if you can believe it."

Tony snorted bitterly. "Doesn't surprise me."

Rhodey sighed. "Maybe she made it to the road after all, and hitched out of here."

"She would have called," Tony countered. "You know she would have called as soon as she could."

Rhodey winced, and Tony knew what he was thinking. What if she caught a ride with the wrong person?

He shoved the thought away. "She's alive, Rhodey. I know she is."

"I want to believe that too, but Tony..." Rhodey ran a hand over his scalp. "You have to start preparing yourself for the possibility that she won't be found."

The surge of anger was huge, and Tony crushed it back, raising his chin and meeting his old friend's eyes directly. "I was gone three months, Rhodey. She didn't give up on me, and neither did you." He glared. "Don't you turn your back on her."

Rhodey raised both hands. "I'm not gonna, Tony. Truly." His gaze was serious, and Tony knew he was telling the truth. "But not everybody is going to see it that way. We're not going to be able to keep this many searchers for long."

Tony let out a long breath, the fury ebbing somewhat. "Yeah, I suppose so. I'll look into hiring some professional trackers tomorrow."

"You do that." Rhodey grimaced. "In the meantime, it's getting dark and they're all headed back in."

Tony glanced up at the sky, which was still a clear blue despite the shadows starting to gather under the trees. "I'm going to make one more pass."

If Rhodey argued, Tony didn't hear it. He snapped down his faceplate and walked far enough away to put Rhodey outside blast range, and took off.

He made three. The dogs had found no trace of Pepper anywhere along the road either, and Tony didn't think she'd doubled back to it. No, she'd gotten as far as the stream, and vanished.

Tony wondered, not for the first time, whether the abductors had managed to shoot Pepper after all. Her body could have been carried downstream--

But then he reminded himself that the searchers had long since checked the stream's banks for a corpse. The watercourse was too shallow to truly hide a body, or to float one for long without its getting hung up somewhere.

She's alive. She has to be.

Finally it was Jarvis who made him quit, scolding him austerely until he returned home. Rhodey followed him faithfully in his truck, but Tony waved him off when they reached the mansion. "Go home," he told his friend over the cell connection. "Sleep in your own bed instead of on my couch. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I'm too tired to argue," Rhodey admitted. "All right, but no taking off before I get here, you hear me?"

"Do my best," Tony answered, carefully not promising anything. He bid goodbye and flew down into his workshop to let his robots peel him free.

His head ached with fatigue and strain, and the hot shower did nothing to alleviate it. Tony went upstairs, threw himself down on his bed, and tried to sleep.

But Pepper intruded, filling his head with memories. From the first time he'd seen her dimpling smile to the last argument they'd had, she was all he could think of.

He recreated all the most precious moments--her hand on his forehead when he'd last run a fever, her soft-voiced prodding when he was late for something, her trembling smile when he'd walked off the plane back from captivity. Pepper asleep in the corner of the limo, worn out by a long day; Pepper in his kitchen, dancing to the music pouring out of the speakers and unaware that he was watching; Pepper laughing as she chatted with an SI board member old enough to be her father.

Pepper leaning into him, just inches away, a kiss hovering between them that he knew somehow would be sweeter than any he'd ever tasted.

Sleep would not come.

Finally Tony sat up, contemplating the bottle of Scotch, still half-full where it sat on his bedside table.

That won't help.

The idea that appeared was ridiculous, far too similar to one of his old stunts, something sure to annoy if anyone found out about it. But Tony was beyond caring. Methodically he rose and dressed, and returned to the garage.

The keys were right where he'd left them, tossed into a tangle of wire on one of his workbenches. Tony plucked them free.

"Jarvis," he said to the air, "route any calls concerning Pepper to my cell. Block the rest of 'em."

"Will do, sir," the AI replied quietly as Tony swung himself into the Tesla.

The drive was short. Tony parked in the garage--Jarvis had to beep the gate open for him--and rode up the elevator to the sixth floor. The hall beyond was cool and well-carpeted, even quiet, but he was in no mood to appreciate that. Instead, he paced down to the door numbered 614, and unlocked it.

He'd been to Pepper's apartment once, during his last stalker scare; he'd insisted on seeing it so he could design a better security system. The upside to that was that Tony knew the master code to bypass the alarm, and did so, closing and locking her door behind him.

The hallway was lit, but the rooms beyond were dark; the air was a little stale, undisturbed for too long, but it still carried a hint of her scent, sweet and enticing. Tony walked slowly down the hall, extending his senses to catch every trace of her.

He didn't bother with the light in her bedroom. Tony toed off his sneakers and kicked them aside, then stretched out on the neatly made bed. The comforter was cool at first touch but quickly warmed against his skin, and Tony scrabbled at its top edge until he had pulled it far enough back to work a pillow free.

The pillow definitely smelled of Pepper, a rich and drowsy perfume. Tony tucked it under his head and lay still, curled on his side.

The tears that wetted the cotton were silent, and he was asleep before they dried.