Patchwork Road
By Rey

Chapter summary: Between wowing the audience and being adored as a child, which would Tony choose?

59. Children

Tony can only gape in incomprehension, for once utterly silent in mind and mouth, when he witnesses the boobed blue giant pick a suddenly placid Pepper up into its arms and cuddle her like it's the most natural thing in the universe.

Clothed in her blue-and-silver extreme-cold suit, she looks both right and wrong, nestled in the giant's lap beside a now-half-awake blue Loki. Right because she looks so comfy and pleased and relieved and even a little smug, enthroned there. And wrong because… well, she's Pepper, and she was being a badarse just now. Why'd she exchange being a Xena with being a little kid?

`If I were in her place….`

Well, truth be told, if he were ever in her place, right down to the long familiarity she seems to somehow share with the blue giant, he wouldn't want to vacate such a comfy throne, too.