Chapter 6: Shutting Down

You just get used to living in fear,
Or give up when you can't even picture your future.

She stood in the rain, holding her unopened umbrella limply in her hand, watching as the cab driver loaded her bags into the trunk. She'd promised to come back for the rest of it, but Tony would just have it sent to her. She knew he never wanted to see her again. And she didn't blame him.

This hadn't been what she wanted. She loved Tony. She loved him with everything she had, with every bone in her body. But over the past few months, she had come to terms with something she'd never had the bravery to face.

Tony Stark was broken. He was broken beyond repair, and she'd been trying to fix him since the day he'd hired her. She hadn't understood why she was always so exhausted, and why she cried whenever she knew he wasn't around. Now it all made sense.

She had run herself into the ground, trying to convince him that he was worthy of love and that he was truly a good man. But the wounds his father had left behind had cut him too deep. And no matter how many times she tried to bandage them up, they just keep bleeding.

These were things she truly hadn't realized she was doing—attempting to save Tony Stark had become an unconscious action, a daily ritual. But then she met Daniel, and the fog lifted and she saw what her life had become.

He was handsome, sweet, and incredibly charismatic. He made her laugh and had exceptional taste in clothing and wine. She felt so light around him, which had made her realize how incredibly heavy her heart had become over the past few years.

And as she spent more time with this new man, she'd realized something else: it wasn't just how broken Tony was. It was also the fact that she'd had to become accustomed to the possibility of him not waking up one morning. Of him not returning from a mission. She'd had to prepare herself everyday to lose him.

That shouldn't be her life. She wasn't strong enough to live that day in and day out. Not anymore. She couldn't save him, physically or mentally. She wasn't enough—he needed more.

So she chose to leave him. There was no other option. She'd been brief, saying she'd met someone else during the conference and was moving to Massachusetts to be with him. She spared him the details (like how she'd actually been seeing Daniel for months and had just made up the conference as an excuse to go visit him) but made sure she was firm, and that he knew she wasn't coming back.

It had been the hardest thing she'd ever done, especially because of what Steve had said to her that morning. Tony had said that she'd set up a meeting with Peggy Carter, the woman Steve had loved. But she hadn't done it. She hadn't even known the woman was still alive, and she knew Tony well enough to know that he'd only lied to cover up the fact that he'd done it. He'd done an unbelievably and uncharacteristically sweet thing for Steve, who he could hardly stand. It was just another thing she loved about Tony—he always chose the most unpredictable moments to do something good.

Everything would have been so much easier if he'd been an asshole. If he screamed at her, or swore at her, or even hit her. But he didn't. He didn't look at her. He didn't say a word. He didn't even ask why.

She hated herself. She should have said more. She should have explained. But it seemed that Pepper Potts, the brilliant wordsmith that had won over 30 poetry competitions back in high school, was at a loss for what to say. How could she possibly explain it to him, anyway? How could she find the words to say how much of herself she had lost from loving him? There weren't enough words in the world.

There was only one thing she could say to him, to try to make him understand. She had scrawled it on a note before she left, leaving it on the desk in his lab where she was sure he'd find it. Maybe someday, what she had written would make sense to him.

The cabbie had finished loading her things, so she climbed into the backseat and took out her cellphone. Each number she pressed physically pained her, but she dialed anyway.

It was only after she'd told Daniel she was on her way and hung up the phone that she let herself cry.

He was shutting down. The darkness that haunted him at night was enclosing around him on all sides and he was losing his breath.

She'd always been there to hold him when this happened. Her warm breath in his ear whispering "I'm here," had been the only force able to dissipate the blackness. The blinding memory flashes of a dark cave, the stinging pain in his chest—all of it disappeared the second he felt her arms wrap around him.

But now she was gone, and he was consumed by the nightmares in a way he'd never been before. And as he closed his eyes, his breath growing shorter and shakier by the second, he wanted nothing more than to just go to sleep and never wake up.

It still remained a mystery how exactly Steve had known. He still couldn't explain it, even to himself.

He'd been sitting on the highest fire escape he'd been able to find, trying to sort out his thoughts. The fact that it was raining torrentially was of no consequence to him. He was too upset with himself to even care.

But suddenly, with no visible explanation, he was hit with a jarring onslaught of panic that completely scrambled the various apologies he had been rehearsing in his head, and before he knew it he was hopping off of the fire escape and jumping 100 feet down to the pavement. An alarm was going off in his head, an alarm that he didn't understand but nonetheless obeyed as he practically ripped the door to Tony's garage off its hinges.

Something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. His first instinct was to head to Tony's apartment, but his super soldier speed changed direction at the last minute and ended up practically flying him to his lab. The door was locked, as he had expected, so he reached out a hand and shattered the glass. Once inside, he began looking around the room frantically, searching for a clue to explain the desperate alarm sounding in his head.

And then he saw the note lying on Tony's work desk.

Tony-

I know there isn't anything I can say to make you forgive me, but I hope someday you'll understand that you deserve more than me. I want you to have the chance to find the person that can give you what I couldn't.

I wish you every happiness.

Always,

Pepper

No. This couldn't be happening. Pepper had left. Pepper had left, and Tony… Tony!

The realization seeped into Steve's veins and made his blood run cold. He ran up the stairs to Tony's apartment like his life depended on it, and found exactly what he had been dreading.

Tony was sprawled on the floor, limp and unmoving. There was no blue light in the middle of his chest.

And the core to the arc reactor, the only protection Tony Stark had from the shrapnel constantly trying to pierce his heart, was nowhere to be seen.