In Which There is "Me Time"

Tony had some guts, Catherine decided as she dragged herself into a Stark Industries elevator at 9 am on a Saturday.

First of all, it was 9 am on a Saturday.

Secondly, it had been four days since Peter had "recovered" from Venom.

After the two Parkers had regained some sense, she had finally gotten a chance to properly treat Peter. The wounds were healing rapidly. The edges were pink and healthy. Venom was gone.

Catherine had tried to go back to her apartment after that, only to remember it didn't exist anymore. Pepper had the civility to get someone in to pack up the remaining items while she was playing "undercover agent". They wouldn't even let her into the building. It was structurally unsound.

She had slept in a hotel room for over 48 hours in new pjs without waking often, only getting up for the necessities. Food was brought to her door. She changed the dressing on her own wounds in the hum of the bathroom lights. The "do not disturb" sign never left the doorknob.

The quiet was beautiful. The only interruption was her phone which she sent it right to voicemail. The only reason it was on was because Peter might call.

He didn't call.

She was fine with that.

Venom had been transported to a tube from the Iron Man suit. Tony hadn't decided if he was going to bury it or burn it or blast it into space.

Any option was great.

For her, the thing needed to be gone.

She checked her phone as the elevator ticked away. The worst part of this was that movers were moving the remains of her apartment into a new place in less than three hours. This man was surely asking for a punch in the face.

The levels continued upwards as she waited to go into Stark's office. According to Pepper, the pressure had finally gotten to him and he was raging drunk in his office. She wanted her here to make sure he didn't choke on his own tongue when he passed out.

After Catherine had said to call in another nurse, Pepper told her that Tony was drunkly recounting the last couple days in full detail to anyone who would listen.

Her days in the hotel ended when Catherine could stand the outside world again. She had finally made it into the office to find twenty three cases of food poisoning, two broken fingers, a man with terrible allergies who wasn't taking his medicine, a scheduled meeting with the cook to talk about proper food sanitation and strong temptation to quit again.

Everything was sore. Her back ached still from holding onto the stress for so long. It felt worse than her nightmare shifts in an E.R. Those only lasted ten to twelve hours. From Peter falling into her apartment bleeding on the floor to the defeat of Venom, it had only been two days. It had felt like a week.

The hallway was quiet as she walked to Tony's office. She needed to see how bad it was so she could get the appropriate medicine. All the desk chairs looked her, empty and neatly pushed in for the weekend. The weekend, she wished, that she could enjoy. Instead she had to deal with a drunk boss and an apartment full of boxes that she didn't even get to pack.

Rock came pounding in from the office. The glass walls were black. It had been a while since he had done this.

She took one deep breath, trying to remember that was goodness somewhere in Tony, and opened the door.

The sight was not what she expected.

Older employees used to say there were strippers. Pepper had nixed that. Her experience had been large pieces of machinery careening around on half written protocols. Catherine would have preferred the women. Neither of those options were in the room.

Instead Tony sat at his desk leaning over a board game, cards in one hand and a drink in the other. Peter was in one of the guest chairs, pulled to the side. Cards were spread before him. It was clear that he was trying to teach Tony the game and it was not going well.

"Kid, you've got all the sheep," Tony was saying, "I need sheep. How did you get all the small hairy animals?"

"It's called a monopoly sir." Peter crossed his legs in his chair. A bottle of lemonade sweated on the table next to him.

Stark's voice neared on annoyed. "You don't need to educate me on monopolies. I used to own one. A real one. Not one built on small annoying animal cards that you need to build a city-"

"A settlement."

"A settlement. Do they slaughter the sheep or something?"

She stared at them openly. It was her first day that didn't require Stark and he had to call her in for absolutely no reason. When she thought that Tony had tested all the ways that he could make her mad, he found a new one.

"You are clearly not 'raging drunk', why the hell am I here?" Catherine snapped.

They turned in their chairs. The music had covered her entrance. Peter tried to hide the mischief on his face by taking a drink.

"Do you know anything about this game, Kathy?" Tony pointed at it. "I'm calling implausibility and foul play all over the place."

"Since you are clearly not raging drunk, I'm going back to figuring out the shambles of my life. Alright?"

"No," he turned, "Your plane is waiting on you. You're going on a little adventure."

Catherine put on her nurse smile. "My life has been threatened on multiple occasions, I'm homeless, managed to extract an alien and in the process didn't sleep for two days. Now I'm moving into a new place in a few hours. I want nothing to do with another adventure."

"I'm really sorry, Ms. Catherine. About the alien part." Peter pressed his cards against the table.

"And I told you, Peter, that it wasn't your fault. You were taken over by an…entity." She felt herself frown at her own words. The science didn't bend this way.

Tony got up.

"No, you sit back down." Catherine snapped at him. She didn't want him close to her. The man had an annoying way of being more convincing by proximity.

Tony paused, looked at Peter, who shrugged and then slowly lowered himself back down into his chair. A real smiled came over her face.

It was the little things in life.

"Now go back to your game and forget about all of this."

He waved a hand. "There's a nice little place in Cape Hatteras, on the beach, two bedrooms, lots of wine, and just one private drive away from a full team at the local spa who are ready for your arrival."

"What?" Those words didn't make any sense to her.

This clearly ruined Tony's plans. He waved his hand more frantically. "A spa day. A 'me' day. A pamper you day."

"No." Catherine put her hand on the doorknob.

Tony half rose but another look from her forced himself back down.

"Peter wanted to do something nice for you and that's what I do for Pepper. It was a good idea. Right kid?"

He shrugged, "You've been really stressed lately so-"

Tony jabbed him. "Pipsqueak. Don't say that."

"What?"

"Women don't like to hear that they've been 'really stressed'."

"Oh." The realization on his face was so innocent.

"This is going terribly. You realize that right?" She clutched onto the knob, trying to leave but couldn't. Her voice was higher than she intended it to be.

While Tony stayed put, Peter didn't seem to notice that the rule might apply to him. He sprung up and walked over to her. A small part of her still flinched away. The kid wasn't dangerous but her chest still stung from the attack. Her grip tightened on the knob.

"Ms. Catherine, we wanted to do something nice for you-"

"I completely disown responsibility for this-" Tony said and Peter glanced back at him before a wry grin came over his face.

"We want to give you a day off, like you did for me."

"That's…sweet but going somewhere where strangers are employed to force me to relax sounds like hell. Even worse, I'm moving today."

"That was the idea. We'd get you away and the movers would handle everything."

She held her breath for a moment and the let it out slowly. "I appreciate the idea but no, no more adventures for a little bit."

Even the idea of trying to sit still tried her patience further than she cared to admit.

Peter nodded. "Okay…what can we do then?"

Catherine felt her head turn as she stared at the two of them. "You want to help me with something?"

"It'll be better than this game." Tony pushed the board away from him. "It is a terrible way to pass the time. False advertisements."

Peter shrugged. "Yeah. If that's what you want."

The idea was crazy but she latched onto it.

"Well. Let's go then."

Peter had no problems. In fact, he seemed to embrace the challenge.

Tony, on the other hand, complained constantly. Because she was the one inflicting it on him, Catherine loved every second of it.

Her response was simple. Since Iron Man had broken and misplaced everything in her last apartment, it was perfect justice that Tony and Peter should help her move into the new place.

Pepper had pulled a few strings a couple of days ago and helped her find a new place. She should have donated her "me" day to her.

Not that there were that many boxes to unpack.

After Catherine put her decorative pot back on her new stove, she leaned against the counter to watch Tony. He was puzzling over her one remaining fancy pillow. He couldn't figure out which way was up. He rotated it left, put it on the couch, picked it up and spun to the right. He repeated this process several times. He still wasn't happy when he noticed her.

He turned towards her. "Don't look so smug."

"I am very smug."

"Stop it." He punched the pillow.

She just leaned further against the counter and raised her eyebrows. Ah yes, masculinity in its finest hour.

Peter walked in, balancing four large boxes on one hand and her mini Christmas tree under the other. "Where do these go Ms Catherine?"

She pointed to a door. "The guest room closet."

Tony was still making a face at her as the kid passed by completely unaware.

She was indeed smug.

Each room only had a few boxes. There wasn't too much left of her life. Thankfully, she wasn't sentimental. Things could be bought again. The only real problem was that Iron Man burned through her art final. Even that, she could have done better so it wasn't much of a lost.

What she couldn't replace were the two boys in her new living room.

She slapped the counter and pushed off, what the hell, when was she turning into a cheesy sop? Disgusting. God, she couldn't stand herself sometimes.

"Hey Tony," she said with a smile, "I saw four more boxes that need to go in my bedroom. Get on it."

From a strictly writer's perspective, this chapter has no business existing. It serves no purpose but I love so many little things about it: Catherine keeping her phone on for Peter, Peter teaching Tony Settlers of Catan, Tony punching the pillow and Catherine restoring that pot (yes, that is the pot she knocked out Venom with).

Next week is the last chapter for In Pieces and the true epilogue. I can't believe that this is almost over. What a ride.

I am excited to tell you what my next project is. It's a good one. :)

What do you think? Are you happy I included this chapter?

Thank you for reading as always.

Quin