Chapter 34

"What?" Tony was not sure what he was more shocked about: seeing Pepper standing there, willingly talking to him, or hearing her admitting that she had been in the wrong.

The redhead nodded again, her resolve and need to finally come clean with everyone pouring out of her in waves. "Samantha's right, Tony. I'm not who you think I am."

"What do you mean, Pep? I… I know you. I know you."

"This should be interesting," Samantha said with a smug look before she took a step back to allow for Pepper and Tony to be able to see one another, even if they were several feet away from each other.

"I…" Pepper inhaled deeply; words momentarily leaving her before rushing back to her. "I'm everything Samantha says. I tried to convince myself that I wasn't, but I am. I've finally accepted it. The last few days – they've been hard. I almost didn't say anything again, but I have to. I have to be the person you think I am – the person you think you know. I want to be that person, for me, too."

"I don't understand, Pepper."

The redhead wiped more tears from her face before she nodded towards Tony, silently letting him know that he would soon understand; warning him, in an unspoken way, that he would soon learn more about her than he had probably wanted to know.

Heck! She did not even want to know this much about herself! Yet, the denial had to finally come to a bitter end.

Tonight.

In the end, as much as she hated shattering the image that he had of her in his mind, he had a right to know the truth. He had an absolute right to know the kind of person he had been trying to protect. He needed to know who he had tried to take a bullet for by tricking Samantha into what the redhead had witnessed between them on the roof, just seconds ago.

Seeing Tony trying to push Samantha to undo all the damage she had caused to her own sister had been the final wake up call for Pepper. The exchange between the fake couple before her had been the last cue that it was time to come clean with both – that the time to beg for forgiveness from both had arrived.

Pepper inwardly scoffed, chastising herself for allowing this charade to go this far and for this long, and for allowing Tony to be dragged through the mud with it, too.

Of all the things that she had thought she would see on her way up here, Tony still standing up for her despite everything that had gone south between them had not been at the top of the list. Tony's actions since their breakup finally made sense to her.

Too little, too late, perhaps?

Maybe. Maybe not. And she would never know until she carried on with what she knew was the right thing to do.

"I came here," the redhead continued, "Thinking that I could go on pretending that I was innocent in all this. But seeing you with her, and seeing how happy she was for just a minute… Knowing how she probably hasn't been this happy in years… I just need to own up to what I did. Please, just… let me own up to it."

"You're not making any sense, babe."

"I will. It will. Just… her me out, OK? Please?"

"Of course. Tell me everything."

xxxXXXxxx

The news had rattled the small suburb where the Potts family lived. Everyone that knew them were in shock. Everyone that did not know them, were disgusted. Cleaning up Virgil Potts' name had been an ordeal in and of itself. Any attempt from the FBI agent to fight for custody of his girls had been halted until the officers had cleared him of the wrongdoing his soon-to-be ex-wife had accused him of. It had been weeks since the news had broken that someone in the Potts household had been physically abusing the oldest child in the family. It had been just weeks since Pepper herself had known what it was not to earn hidden bruises simply for breathing wrong.

To the adults, the case had been going on for weeks. For Pepper and Samantha Potts, the case had been going on all their lives.

"Is mamma gonna stop now, Peppy?" Four-year-old Samantha Potts asked her big sister.

"Daddy says that she will." Six-year-old Pepper Potts told her sister. "Daddy said that if I tell the truth to the people in the room, they will make it so that mommy can't scare us anymore."

Samantha looked unsure. "But what if they don't believe you, Peppy? Mamma is so mean to you."

That, she was. The Potts matriarch was everything but kind to her oldest daughter. Thankfully, for the younger child, Ellen Potts had a grudge only against Pepper. In all the years that the sisters had been alive, the mother had never laid a hand on Samantha. All her anger had always been directed at the little redhead, instead. It was, to some degree, as if Ellen did not even feel like acknowledging the existence of the youngest child.

Today, however, that same little redhead had the chance to make it right for her and her baby sister. Today, with just a few words, she could make it so that police took her mamma away to a place where she would never hurt her again. Neither her nor Samantha wanted to be without a mother. Yet, being with one had been scary and hurtful and had made their daddy cry when he had found out what Pepper had been through all her life.

It was a great responsibility, but if she said the right words, everything would be safe again.

"Peppy? Peppy, you're sleeping with your eyes open again. Daddy is calling you."

The redhead suddenly felt like she was already failing at her one job when she realized that her father had been calling her name for a while now. She had not even opened her mouth and she was already doing the wrong thing.

This was going to be hard.

Pepper gave her sister a hug before she got up from the bench and walked towards the courtroom. The social worker that stayed with Samantha reassured her that she was going to be OK, and that the two of them would be here when she came back. Her daddy had told her that she would not have to talk long this time around. He had told her that she did not have to tell all these people what her mother had done to her. That part was over. This was something different, but as important as what she had said before.

The little ginger snickered when she saw that the step had been laid for her again to reach the bench where confessions happened. It was funny because there was an older lady that she had seen here earlier that had needed to use it too. She had not known that there were adults that needed kid help, too.

Pepper rested her tiny hands on her lap and then made the mistake of staring towards her right – straight into the cold eyes of her mother. They were the same cold eyes that had told her many times before that if she said anything bad about her mother, her father would pay the price. Pepper loved her dad and her sister. She had loved her mother, too. But now she was not sure she loved her mom as much as she used to love her before she had realized being hit was not love.

"Pepper, are you ready?" the voice of the man her daddy had called their 'lawyer' took her attention away from her mother. However, Pepper did not have to look at her mother directly to know that Ellen was still watching her. She did not even need for her mother to speak to know what she planned to do if she spoke badly of her. Years of abuse had beat it into her.

"Uh-huh," Pepper nodded as she twiddled her fingers on her lap. "I'm ready."

"OK. We're gonna ask you a few questions. Just yes or no questions, OK? All we need from you is a yes or a no. But always tell the truth, OK?"

"OK. Always tell the truth."

"Good girl."

The questions were not hard. She had practiced them before, too. She had almost memorized the order of the questions. She still paid attention, though. She knew it was important for the people in the room to believe her that she was telling the truth.

Everything was going OK. It was almost over, in fact. She only had one more question to go. One more yes to say… but then something she had not expected happened: Ellen Potts started crying.

Even after all the bad things her mamma had done to her, Pepper Potts still felt her belly hurt seeing her mamma cry. Ellen Potts did not cry often. So, when she did, it was like a dagger straight to Pepper's heart.

"They're my babies!" her mother screamed from her side of the room, tears running down her cheeks as if they were eternal waterfalls, all the while her lawyer tried to keep her in her seat. "Please don't take my babies away!"

"Order, Mrs. Potts!" the judge demanded.

"But my babies! I'd be alone without them. I need them! I don't want to be alone!"

"Mr. Craven, control your client or I will hold her in contempt."

"Yes, of course, your Honor. Ellen, please!"

A few more times of the hammer hitting the judge's table was all it took for the room to be silent again. And, for Pepper, all it took was for her mother's sudden outburst for her to seriously doubt the validity of what she was about to say next.

All this time, she had been so sure about her answer. The nice lady that had been watching over her and her sister for weeks had told her that telling the truth was always the right thing to do, even if it made people that we loved feel bad. She had said, and Pepper could agree that the idea made sense, that making people think something that was a lie was the truth for a long time was not nice, and that it would only make it worse later when they found out the truth.

This was what had happened to her father, had it not? He had thought that her mamma was a good person all this time – incapable of hurting her own babies as much as she had. Finding out the truth after all these years had broken him in ways that she had never thought her father could. It had broken him in a way she had never seen before; not even when his own mamma had died last year. It had even almost cost him his job!

Her father did not deserve to be lied to or get in trouble like that; especially for things he had never done. Pepper did not want to be the person who made people think something was true when it was not. Her and her little sister deserved to be with adults that really loved them – or so that caretaker lady had said. Both Samantha and she deserved to live with their dad, far away from their mom, in a place where their mom would never hurt them again.

Yes. All these things were true. Pepper believed them all. She genuinely believed them all. She did not think any of the people that had talked to her were telling her lies, either. She was doing the right thing by telling the truth. She needed to continue telling the truth and she would then be done.

Her father and her sister and she herself deserved happiness, right?

Right?

They did. She knew they did.

But, what about her mom?

Yes, Ellen was always mean to her and she loved to scream and throw things at her. Her mother had always hurt her and had made her feel bad and cry. She was a bad person that needed help to learn that what she had done was wrong.

She deserved what was coming… or at least this was what Pepper had overheard.

However, no matter how sure she was of her next answer, after watching her mother cry for the first time ever in her short life, and despite all the mean things her mother had done to her, she also did not want her mamma to hurt the way she had been hurt.

Alone, Ellen had said. Her mamma was afraid of being alone.

Being alone was not something Pepper wanted anyone else to be, regardless of how mean that person had been to her. Pepper knew how it felt to be alone. Her mother had taught her that feeling time and time again when she had been locked up in the pantry or the shed in the back for hours, in the middle of the bitter cold, sometimes.

Alone. She had always hated that feeling. How could she be the one to make her mamma feel alone?

Pepper's musings came to a halt when the judge spoke again.

"You may proceed, Mr. Chapman."

"Thank you, your Honor," Mr. Chapman said, confident and ready to leave this trial behind by asking the final question to the child. The man cleared his throat and stood in front of Pepper, eager to give the abusing mother the final blow. As someone who had grown up in foster care himself and had worked his butt off to become a lawyer on his own, Mr. Chapman knew the kind of life these two children would avoid by answering one more question in the affirmative.

So close. So close.

"Pepper, by answering yes or no, do you think that your mom, if she had the chance, would hurt your sister the same way she hurt you?"

The tiny redhead opened her mouth, ready to answer with the truth – a truth that was easy to say because, well, it was the truth, but the word 'yes' refused to come out. Instead, she snapped her mouth closed and looked down at her lap, her eyes prickling as she heard Mr. Chapman ask the question again.

Yes: the word that she had practiced saying a dozen times got stuck in her throat. Yes. It was true. Ellen would absolutely hurt Sammy if she were not around. She had even told her so. She had told her that if she did not take the beatings and stayed quiet, her sister would be next.

Yes. Her mother would hurt Sammy, if no one were there to stop her but, if Sammy were not around, her mother would be alone. How could she live with herself if she knew she was the reason her mother would be all alone? Would she not be the same as her mother if she hurt her like her mother had hurt her?

No. She could not let her mother be all alone. And Sammy… she would be sad to not be with her mom. She had always wanted their mother to pay attention to her. Sammy had said so. Maybe, just maybe, Ellen would not hurt Sammy. Maybe Sammy would get lucky and Ellen would never touch her.

"Pepper," the judge gently tapped the girl's shoulder. "Please answer the question."

Her eyes glistened even more when she realized what she was about to do. She did not want to lie, but she had to. If she told the truth, her mom would be by herself and maybe she would get so mad about it that she would come after her and her dad. Sammy would be all right. She had been OK all this time. She would continue to be OK, right?

"Pepper, you have to answer. Do you understand the question?" the judge asked, one last time.

"Yes. I understand," the redhead replied before taking a deep breath."

"And? What do you think? Would your mom hurt your little sister, if she could?"

Pepper swallowed hard and shook her head from side to side.

"No. She would never hurt Sammy. Sammy would be OK."

The gasp coming from the crowd that followed her statement would haunt her for the rest of her life.

A/N: Hi! Yes! I deserve all the flames and the hate in the world, for many, many reasons. Mostly, for making you wait a few more months for this update. If you want to know why there was such a delay, it all came down to two main things: 1) my health is still touch and go; and 2) we moved to a new place and we just finished settling down. However, I have some days off coming soon, in a week or so, and I plan to use them to wrap this up. If you're still here, thank you SO MUCH for your undying patience with me. If you hate me, I understand and I deserve every bit of it for making you wait this long :(

Anyone feel bad for Sam yet?