Chapter Eleven

"So, you're saying Tony thinks he can see Pepper's ghost?"

Happy didn't blame Rhodey for the scepticism in his tone, he knew how he felt. "Yes."

Rhodey sighed heavily. "This isn't good, Happy."

"I know," said Happy as he pulled up in front of Tony's house, "but I got him to eat something today and I think I may have gotten through to him that he needs to start dealing with this."

"Dealing with things isn't exactly Tony's strong suite," Rhodey noticed.

"I know, but there is no way round this one. Look, it's only been a week since Pepper was killed, we've got to give the guy some time."

"I understand that, but I'm worried what he's doing with that time," said Rhodey grimly, "drinking himself into stupor all day and ends up hallucinating."

"I'm going to stay over for a few nights," said Happy. "Tony has vetoed it before this, but I think he needs the company, despite what he says."

"Are we doing the right thing, keeping this stuff to ourselves?" Rhodey worried. "It sounds like Tony needs real help, professional help."

"Do you want to tell the guy he needs to be committed?" asked Happy. "Because I sure as hell don't. I think we just need to give him a few more days to see if he can pull out of this tailspin."

"And if in a couple of days there is no change?"

Happy grimaced. "Then I guess we'll talk about it then."

"I'm back state-side in two days," said Rhodey. "I'll come straight over and see what kind of shape he's in."

"Okay," said Happy, "hopefully he's turned a corner by then."

"Mm," said Rhodey, but he didn't sound convinced.

The two men said their goodbyes and then Happy climbed out of the car, retrieving two armfuls of groceries from the trunk of the limo. He carried the overflowing brown paper bags up the front steps and into the house, coming to an abrupt halt when he saw what awaited him. Happy took in the gaping hole in the living room wall and the mass of cables and wires running through it, along the lounge floor and disappearing down the stairs to Tony's lab. "Well," said Happy slowly, "this isn't concerning at all." He put down the bags of groceries and headed down the stairs to Tony's lab, carefully stepping over all the cables and wires. Happy walked into Tony's lab, taking in the flurry of activity.

Tony was bouncing all around the place, pulling out cables and insulated tubing from all over while the metal drones whirred about, stacking up sheets of metal and other bits and pieces as Tony shouted instructions at them. Tony waved a screwdriver at the closest metal arm. "No, Dumbie, over there, not there and I wanted three of them, not two." The mechanoid dutifully picked up its cargo and deposited it where Tony was pointing and then went off to retrieve the third item. Tony had a mouthful of wires in his mouth as he pulled frantically at a circuit box. "Jarvis!" he called out, voice muffled around his mouthful of circuitry. "Have you got it yet?"

"Just accessing the required information now, sir," said Jarvis. "May I just say again, sir, that this is not the safest way to go about retrieving the information. It will leave an easily detectable trail that will allow-"

"I don't care," said Tony curtly, "it's the fastest way and I want fast right now, got it?"

"Very good, sir, uploading it now."

"Throw it on the screen," said Tony, still apparently not having noticed Happy's presence yet.

Suddenly the room was lit up with a 3D holographic representation of what looked like some kind of schematic to Happy, along with a lot of complicated mathematic formulas which made no sense to him. Tony however seemed instantly engrossed. He went and stood in the middle of the whole thing, face intent as he absorbed the information dancing all around him. Happy had seen this expression before, the way Tony's eyes would burn with ideas as he worked to solve a problem. This was not the man he'd left three short hours ago. This man was on fire, burning with energy and purpose.

Happy cleared his throat and looked around tentatively. "Something going on, boss?"

Tony's head snapped around at the sound of his voice and his face lit up at seeing Happy. "You're back, excellent, I need some help and I can't trust Clampy McCock Up over there." The mechanical arm that tried so hard to please him drooped in disappointment at Tony's lack of faith in him. Tony waved its apparent hurt feelings away. "It's not personal, I need opposable thumbs." He looked over at Happy. "Show him your thumbs."

Without thinking Happy held up his thumbs to the machine, his attention still very much on Tony. "Don't get me wrong, Tony, I'm glad to see you up and about, but what's going on exactly?"

Tony grinned at him, joy bubbling out of him. "Pepper's not dead."

Happy's heart sank. "Oh, boss."

"Don't oh boss me," said Tony determinedly, "Pepper's not dead." He hurried over to his desk and picked up a handful of pictures. "Look."

Happy took the offered pictures and blanched at seeing what they were of. "Where did you get these?" he asked in distress, knowing right away they were Pepper's autopsy pictures. "Tony, you shouldn't have these."

"I broke into the police department's main computer and downloaded them," he said blithely.

"Tony," Happy groaned, "that's incredibly illegal. You could go to jail for that."

"Don't care," he said, "look at them."

Happy made a pained expression. "I really don't want to."

Tony grabbed out the top picture and waved it in front of Happy's face. "Look at the hand, Happy, look at it."

Happy stole a look at the gruesome picture and then looked back at Tony. "I looked, so?"

"So?" Tony repeated excitedly. "Don't you see?"

"See what?"

Tony tapped the picture impatiently. "Her hand, her hand, there isn't a cut on it."

Happy looked at him uncertainly. "Is that important?"

"Of course it is!" Tony exploded. "The last time I saw Pepper she cut her hand really badly on some broken glass. It was the palm of her left hand." He shoved the picture in Happy's face. "Do you see any cut on that hand, well, do you?" Happy opened his mouth to reply but Tony didn't give him a chance, rushing on in his excitement. "There is no way Pepper's hand could have healed up in two days and not left any kind of a mark." Tony gave him a triumphant look. "This hand doesn't belong to Pepper, it must belong to that Chloe woman I saw on the video feed."

Happy grimaced, hating what he was about to say next. "Okay, maybe that's true, Tony, but they never found Weismann's body, he was vapourised on the spot from the intensity of the explosion when his device malfunctioned. Don't you think that if this isn't Pepper, that she was vapourised as well?"

Tony's enthusiasm didn't seemed dampened by Happy's pessimism. "I would have except for this." He grabbed a pair of goggles off his work bench and handed them to Happy. "Put them on."

Happy shrugged and did as he was told. They looked like normal welding goggles but when he put them on he saw that the world looked very different now. Everything was blurry as bright pinpoints of white light surrounded everything he looked at.

"They've got special lenses in them," Tony explained. "They pick up different frequencies of light. I use them when I'm trying to differentiate between different kinds of energy so I can isolate them for a series of experiments I was running a couple of months back."

Happy blinked, trying not to get dizzy from the weird effect they were having on his eyes. "Okay, but I don't see what that has to do with Pepper."

"It has everything to do with Pepper," said Tony in satisfaction. He held up his arm, the one with the Pepper's necklace wrapped around his wrist. "Look, look at the necklace."

Happy looked at Tony's arm and was amazed to see trails of blue light streaking all around the other man's arm, buzzing around it like millions of little fire flies. Tony swept his arm back and forth and they blue energy trails raced to keep up with him. "Do you see it?" Tony asked eagerly.

"I see something, but I have no idea what it is," said Happy honestly. He took the goggles off. "And even less idea what it means."

"What you saw was ionic energy," explained Tony, looking like he was about to leap out of his own skin with excitement. "Weismann's device operated on the principle of ionic energy being able to dissolve matter and relocate it somewhere else."

"But that isn't what happened," Happy pointed out. "It just destroyed everything around it."

"That was just what happened in the end. What if Weismann's device actually worked, just not the way he thought it was going to?"

Happy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, what if the Seraphim device did move matter through space, but just not our space." Tony stared at him with wide-eyed with expectant anticipation for Happy to share in his revelation.

Happy looked at him blankly. "Let's pretend one of us in this room isn't a genius and break that down a bit, boss."

Tony whirled around and started collecting up more tools and bits and pieces, words spitting out of his mouth in rapid succession as his massive brain surged into action mode. "It's simple, I don't know why I didn't see it the first time Pepper appeared to me. I'm so stupid, it's so obvious."

"It's not that obvious," Happy informed him.

"Pepper only started appearing to me once I started wearing the necklace." Tony shook his hand at Happy so he could see the necklace wrapped around his wrist. "And when she'd appear to me I couldn't hear or touch her and she wouldn't register on any of the recording devices and I know why now." Tony's voice was getting louder with his rising enthusiasm. "The Seraphim device blew Pepper into a different space continuum and she's been stuck there ever since."

"You mean like another dimension?" asked Happy hesitantly.

"No, yes, close enough," said Tony impatiently, clearly not wanting to get caught up on semantics right then. "The Seraphim device opened a rift between this space and one in another dimension. It pulled Pepper in just before the explosion but in doing so it left a trail of ionic energy. I'm guessing the other woman took the necklace from Pepper and was wearing it, that's how it ended up on her body, but because the chain is gold, it was like a conduit for the ionic energy."

"So, you're saying the necklace is like a link to wherever Pepper has ended up?" asked Happy uncertainly.

Tony nodded emphatically, still talking a mile a minute. "Yes, the rift between the two spaces isn't completely closed over and the ionic energy creates this kind of bridge where energy can be exchanged. This link was happening on a frequency that a normal recording device couldn't pick up, that's why I couldn't see Pepper when I'd try and play back our encounters."

It was hard not to get swept up in Tony's enthusiasm, but all of this seemed to be beyond the realms of possibility to Happy. "Tony, don't you think you might be grasping at straws here? I mean, it sounds great, confusing but great, but do you really believe what you're saying?"

Tony was in the middle of the 3D display circling around the lab, intently looking at all of the calculation. "Every single word," he said without hesitation. "I just need to study Weismann's plans for a bit and work out how to reconstruct what he built but better."

"Where did you get these plans?" asked Happy, coming to stand by Tony and taking in the confusing symbols that he had no way of understanding.

"Jarvis hacked into the government main frame and retrieved them," said Tony casually. "They would have never figured them out anyway."

Happy groaned. "I've only been gone three hours, just how many federal and state laws did you manage to break in that time?"

Tony waved a distracted hand at him. "I don't know, seven maybe, no more than ten at the outside, but that's not important right now." He looked at Happy, voice brimming with the confidence Happy knew all too well. This was the Tony where nothing was impossible. "I'm going to get Pepper back," he said with absolute certainty, the biggest smile breaking out on his face. "I'm bringing our girl home."

Even though it was crazy, or maybe because it was, Happy believed him in that moment, and felt the first glimmer of happiness he'd known all week...

A/N: Okay, so, are you all more confused than ever or did that make some kind of sense to you all? LOL The next chapter should hopefully fill in some more blanks. Stay tuned...