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12. Serenity

"Good evening, JARVIS," said Pepper, letting herself into the house.

"Ms. Potts, it's good to see you," he replied with such warmth that she could almost forget that he was a computer. "I don't believe Mr. Stark was expecting you."

"No, I just had some paperwork I needed signed and I wanted to check up on him." She dropped her briefcase and her purse in the foyer. "How is he doing?"

"Quiet," he said, "But it doesn't feel like a bad kind of quiet."

"Good," she said. "I worry."

She glanced around the empty house. All of the rooms on this floor were dark and filled with shadows.

"He's outside," reported JARVIS.

She frowned, crossing the living room – she should be able to see Tony through the window- but as she approached the door she realized that the glass had been darkened. She stepped onto the balcony. The breeze ruffled through her hair making her shiver. Her heels clicked loudly on the concrete.

Tony was easy to find. Seated pressed against the house, he was illuminated by the arc reactor. He stared out into the distance, shadows playing across his face in the ethereal light. He looked like something out of a storybook, too unearthly to be a mere mortal man.

She made a noise and his head turned towards her breaking the effect. When he smiled, he was her Tony again.

"Hey," he said, sounding pleased to see her. He reached a hand up for her. They pulled against each other for a second before she realized that he was pulling her down. "Come on. Sit with me for a bit."

Pepper kicked off her shoes; the concrete was cool against her feet. As she settled gingerly on the hard ground, she hoped she wasn't destroying her outfit. The quiet was peaceful, just the soft crash of waves on the beach below. It was comfortable sitting here with Tony with nothing pressing for their attention but she spent so much of her day rushing to get things done that the nothing was also making her antsy.

"You like it out here?" She meant it as a statement but this was so different from the Tony of Before who had ignored this space unless it was filled with drunken partiers that she couldn't help making it a question.

"It's a good place. I can think here."

"By sitting in the dark?" Pepper couldn't help the worry that crept into her voice.

"Hey, I like the dark," he protested, with a brief leer. "People do fun things in the dark."

They fell into silence again and Pepper began to understand what JARVIS had meant. It was strange sitting with a Tony who wasn't talking a mile a minute, strange for Tony to sit still, but he seemed more contemplative than depressed or angry.

"It reminds me of the caves," said Tony, his voice coming out in a strange lilt that made it seem like he was speaking from afar. "They didn't make us work twenty-four/seven, you know. They would decide that we should be sleeping and they'd shout through the door, telling us to turn off the lights."

Pepper glanced over at Tony, worried that he was bringing up bad memories, but his face was calm.

"It was…it was nice," he said, sounding confused that anything from his experience could be described in the positive. "Not at first. In the beginning, the caves where pitch black and suffocating, the kind of darkness that consumes you until there's nothing left but the fear. But then I built my nightlight," he tapped his chest, "and it was better. We'd just lie there and whisper secrets to each other, like a really fucked up slumber party."

"We?" she asked, because while she knew that Tony had been held captive with another scientist, she had never heard Tony talk about him.

"Yinsen," said Tony fondly. "He was great. He didn't think much of me, especially in the beginning, but he was always patient and kind, at least as much as he could be."

"That sounds…" She tried to find some politely positive words, but she kept getting stuck on the fact that this Yinsen had had the nerve to prejudge Tony in the middle of a situation so awful that she couldn't even imagine what it had been like. Finally, she settled with, "I'm glad you weren't alone."

"He had cause, you know," said Tony, seeing right through her. He gave her hip a bump. "He said he'd met me before at a conference in Bern."

"Wasn't that the one right after…" She couldn't even say the name of that horrible woman.

"That would be the one." Tony made that face he used when a situation went even more spectacularly badly than he had anticipated.

"Ouch."

She winced; because, okay, yeah, she could see how Yinsen would have drawn all the wrong, and a few not-so wrong, conclusions about Tony from that disaster. Everyone had implored Tony to skip the conference but it turned out that Tony was just as stubborn about working when he shouldn't be as he was about not working when he should be.

"You would have liked Yinsen," continued Tony, his voice becoming soft again. "He was brilliant. I couldn't have survived without him."

"Tell me about him." She snuggled down into Tony's side, luxuriating in the warmth.

"He used to tell me about his family. That's mostly what we talked about in the dark: the people that we missed." Tony's voice grew heavier as he spoke. "He said his youngest daughter, Fatima, was smarter than both of us combined. He always swore that she would win the Nobel Peace Prize one day."

Pepper could feel the minute tremors running down Tony's arm. She squeezed his hand tighter.

"He never told me that they were all dead," Tony's voice cracked, "until he was bleeding out right in front of me."

She switched hands so that Tony was holding her left hand and used the free hand to card through his hair. They sat in silence as he breathed heavily beside her.

"You would have liked him," he repeated, quietly, after several long moments.

"I think so, too," she whispered back.

Sitting her so close to Tony with the physical affection that had been missing from him since his return, made her think about what it had been like while he was missing. All of the effort that she had always put into keeping their relationship work-appropriate had suddenly seemed silly when compared to the painfully gaping Tony-shaped hole in her life. She had promised herself to be more open to his advances but then he had come home larger than life but so different. Everything was different now.

"I used to think about this while you were gone," she confessed. "I imagined what we would be like as a couple. For a while, I thought that maybe when you came home we could find out."

"And then I came home all broken," said Tony, sardonically, with a bitter twist of his lips.

She pulled out of his arms and punched him hard in the biceps.

"That wasn't it at all," she said hotly. How dare he even suggest that she would be so superficial?

"Okay, okay!" said Tony, rubbing his arm. "You don't need to beat me up."

She crossed her arms, staring into the darkness, still annoyed with him.

"So what was it?" he asked. "Because as nice as this is," he waved his hand between the two of them, where they were still sharing bodily contact, "we both know that ship has sailed."

"Honestly?" she asked, because she didn't want to hurt him.

He nodded.

"I think it's because you shut everyone out. You were so determined to be independent that you refused to let anyone help you."

"I had help," he said, but it wasn't a real argument.

"From your machines," she retorted. "Not from the people who care about you."

Tony didn't say anything, but he reached over to hold her hand again.

"You were always angry with me," she said, tears coming to her eyes as she remembered how helpless she had felt around him. "I never knew what to do."

Tony squeezed her hand as she sniffled.

"I know I was a mess," he said, and left it at that. His guilty, conciliatory tone of voice was the closest Tony would come to giving an apology.

Pepper snuggled in closer to Tony, laying her head on his shoulder. She could feel the gentle movement of his chest as he breathed. When she inhaled, she was surrounded by the mixture of comforting scents that she'd always associated with Tony.

"For what it's worth," said Tony. "We probably would have been an awful couple – incredibly hot- but awful."

"Really?" she asked, feeling a bit hurt that he'd think so.

"Our relationship's kind of imbalanced," he said. "You take good care of me, better than I deserve, and I take you for granted sometimes."

"A lot of times," she corrected.

"A lot of times," he agreed. "It works for us, and it probably would have still worked for us for a while, but you deserve a relationship of equals, someone who can take care of you in return." Then he added impishly, "And you worry too much; I don't think I could take it if you worried even more."

"If you would take better care of yourself, I wouldn't need to worry."

"See? We're totally not meant for each other." He patted her thigh. "No, we're much better as friends."

"Family," she corrected, pressing a chaste kiss against his neck. Tony made a brief noise and shifted beside her.

"Still," he said wistfully, sounding a bit choked. "We would have been really really hot together. My head between your legs: you screaming my name."

He sighed.

Pepper felt a bit flushed as she pictured the image in her head. For a second she almost considered it, but instead she said, "Maybe in your dreams tonight."

Tony choked, coughing, as his free hand came up to grasp the reactor.

When he spoke, she didn't need to look at him to know that he was grinning, still on the verge of laughing. She could hear it in the shape of his words.

"Don't ever change," he ordered her, bringing up their hands to brush a gentle kiss against her wrist.

"Well, since you asked so nicely." She smirked at him coyly.

This time he did laugh: a light happy sound that she hadn't heard from him since Before. She snuggled back against him, willing to ignore her body's protests against the cold, stiff seat, for more time with this Tony.

She was glad the conversation hadn't taken a different turn. Tonight wasn't the time for farewell flings to what might have been. Tonight was for appreciating what they already had: each other, in all the ways they needed.

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