Hi everyone! For my Christmas gift to the internet this year, I'll be posting a bunch of Iron Man 3 chapters over the next couple of days. Next year, I'll have some fun chapters that focus on Tony and Pepper's lives between Iron Man 3 and Avengers: Age of Ultron, but for now, enjoy some angst with your holiday cheer as Tony tries to deal with life after the events of Avengers. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you again later today with more chapters!

Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel Universe, just feels and fanart. :)

Nightmare

Tony woke up gasping, too breathless to scream. He couldn't breathe, or at least his brain thought he couldn't breathe, because he'd been dreaming about that damn portal again. He'd dreamed about it almost every night, all summer long, and it was strange how, though all the details seemed familiar by then, it was still so horrifying to fly into that void, night after night.

Pepper stirred beside him and opened her eyes. "You okay?" she whispered.

"Yeah," he managed, struggling to get his breath back. "Fine. Just...you know."

"I know," Pepper whispered, sliding her arms around his waist. He was glad: a hug after a bad dream would probably be comforting to most people, but a part of his brain still thought he was suffocating. Pepper knew from experience that arms around his chest would just bring on another thirty seconds of hyperventilating.

The worst part was that she dreamt about it too. He knew she did: sometimes she woke up, shouting for him, and he'd hug her, and feel like shit for scaring her.

"Sorry," he whispered once, after one of the first times it happened.

She'd shaken her head. "I'm sure it was even worse, seeing what you saw."

Tony wondered if that was true. It had been bad, sure, but it wasn't what he'd seen that gave him nightmares. It was the feeling of total helplessness that got to him, every time. He'd built the first suit when he'd been at his most helpless, when most sane people would have given up and died. Part of the suit's appeal was that it made him feel invincible, but that day in New York, he'd been trapped in the thing, powerless. Even back in that cave, he'd never felt powerless.

And it killed him a little that Pepper had seen him—that the whole world had seen the footage by now. People wanted to talk about it sometimes; they were impressed, they admired what he'd done, and Tony knew, objectively, that he'd saved millions of lives. If he had to go back and do it again, he would, but...damn. He didn't want to talk about it. And he hated that it gave Pepper bad dreams too, that video of him just...vanishing.

"Want some water?" she whispered, and Tony nodded. Moving was good, any kind of activity was good. He sat up, and Pepper went to the bathroom to get him a glass of water. By the time she got back, he was pacing at the foot of the bed, because the more he moved, the better his breathing got, and the more sure he became that he wasn't helpless. He was always relieved by this return to rational thought: he was Tony Stark, he was Iron Man, and he was far from powerless. But he still had no interest in trying to go back to sleep.

"Going downstairs?" Pepper whispered.

Tony nodded and took a drink from the glass she handed him. "It helps."

"You need to sleep," Pepper said reasonably.

Tony shrugged. "I still sleep more now than I did before you moved in."

Pepper gave him a look. "That's not exactly comforting."

"Geniuses—need less sleep than most people," Tony said, smiling. "That's a scientific fact."

"Really?" Pepper said skeptically.

"JARVIS, how much do I sleep on average?" Tony said, looking up at the ceiling.

"Approximately four out of every twenty-four hours, sir," JARVIS replied.

"See, that's not healthy," Pepper insisted.

"Too much sleep can also be unhealthy," Tony argued. "Think how much longer Einstein might have lived if he hadn't slept ten hours a night."

"I thought you said geniuses slept less," Pepper said, frowning at him.

"I know you're worried," Tony said quickly, wanting to stop this conversation before it started. "But really, just having you here is...it's helping. I don't know how long it takes, for something like this to get better, but I know that if you weren't here, I wouldn't be sleeping at all."

Pepper smiled and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, I'm glad. Though that's not really a compliment, you saying that I help you sleep."

"I think we've established that you tire me out before I try to sleep," Tony said, stepping forward and kissing her until he felt her shoulders start to relax. She was tense, almost as tense as he was, but what he'd said was true: after New York, he'd asked her to move in because he'd wanted to for a while. And it was fun, living with Pepper, sharing the house in Malibu and waking up together and cooking together and having sex in every room. But Tony knew that her being here was also vital to his sanity. And he'd tell her that, except he was afraid he'd scare her if he put it that way.

"...want me to tire you out some more?" Pepper said, sliding her hands under his shirt.

Tony grinned. "Don't you have an early meeting tomorrow? Aren't you supposed to be the responsible one here?"

"Only during daylight hours," Pepper said firmly, so they went back to bed, and they really did tire each other out. But even after Pepper had dozed off, her breathing slow and even, Tony still couldn't sleep. He lay there for a while, watching her breathe and feeling pleasantly exhausted himself. At moments like this, Tony thought that maybe someday, he might actually enjoy sleeping again. But he knew he wasn't going to tonight, and eventually, he got up and quietly made his way down to the garage.

What made this so hard was that she got it: Pepper really understood what he was trying to deal with...but her understanding didn't make the dreams go away. He'd thought that being honest with her, or at least as honest as he could be, would help. And it did, in a way—four hours of sleep a night was better than zero—except he couldn't tell her everything, couldn't even properly articulate the fear he felt when he was trapped in the middle of the portal dream. That was something he could barely face himself, let alone ask someone else to deal with.

So he had nightmares about a damn space portal: so what? Lots of people had to deal with worse. And Tony was determined to work through it, like he worked through everything. As he sat down and opened the schematics for the Mark IX, Tony smiled grimly. Tony Stark, Iron Man, had saved millions of lives. He would save millions more with these new suits. And someday, he would fall asleep next to Pepper Potts without having to worry about some stupid nightmare.