Tony spent a long time just staring at the manila folder lying on his desk. Too long. Or at least, if there had been anyone observing him or waiting for him to be somewhere or to do something, then it would have been too long. But his taskmaster is gone…after conveniently transferring her case of nerves to him.

When he'd first found the file last night, he'd been desperate to read it. Had actually gotten through the first two paragraphs before he'd slammed the file shut and practically run from the garage.

He'd actually driven from the garage, taking his bike out for a ride. The speed wasn't the same as when he's in the suit, but he never flew this low anyway and there was something soothing about the repetition of the scenery whizzing by his peripheral vision. He'd come back calm enough to put the file away and tell himself that if Pepper wanted anyone to see it, he – Turbo – would be the first to know.

He hadn't expected this, hadn't expected honesty in return from Pepper. At least not this soon. If he'd expected anything, it'd been that Turbo and Fanny would talk this out for a couple of chats before Pepper made a move.

The folder in front of him is a hell of a move.

If the rest of the letter is anything like those two paragraphs he'd read, then Fanny's about to unload on his ass, and Tony's not sure he's ready.

But then that's only fair, isn't it? Pepper hadn't been anything like ready yesterday afternoon when he'd finally confronted her in his garage. Those big blue eyes of hers had been filled with an expression that "deer in the headlights" didn't even begin to cover. He was pretty sure it was some sort of instinctive expression coded into the female genome, passed down from the days when cavemen went around clubbing mates.

It'd actually almost made him feel guilty.

But everything he'd said had needed to be said – at least from his end of things. His cards were now laid out on the table. They needed the air cleared between them, both needed an understanding of stakes now before them.

With a deep breath, Tony steels himself and opens the folder.

There'd been glass fragments in my hairbrush once I finally stopped long enough to brush my hair out. From tempered safety glass yes, but reduced to rubble nonetheless. Those little pebbles felt as if they MEANT something. As if they were a metaphor for us.

Those last few, desperate days hadn't left either of us room for introspection. I hadn't understood at the time what exactly you were facing; all I could see, could understand, was that you were hurtling towards some sort of collision and that the outcome was undecided. And it scared me.

Have you ever considered the events of that night from my perspective? Not just fear, but guilt that I lied so badly that I put you in further danger? Regret that I wasn't persuasive enough to make SHIELD act more quickly on the evidence I had.

There is still a foolish part of me that insists that if I had only…scheduled something, or…or…I don't know. But that there was something I had failed to do that led to…

But we made it. We made it. And by the time we were getting ready for that press conference I hadn't slept in over thirty hours. Which was okay because exhaustion lent the last twenty-four hours a dreamy haze that kept reality containable. As long as I could focus on one rudimentary task after another – whether that was adhering heat packs to your shoulders and back, making you picture perfect for the camera, or seeing off Agent Coulson – those small, mindless steps were guided by habit, requiring no thought and no contemplation.

We met that collision, and we lived through it, but we were both still in shock. No matter how smooth you managed to be or how efficiently I managed you, we had no idea what the hell was going on around us. At least I didn't. Maybe you felt better to have the confrontation done with, but I was still racing to catch up. There were so MANY things I had to leave by the wayside in order to go on.

I don't know if your brain really works so differently than mine, or if you needed to focus on your own inane details to keep from going insane, but from the moment Agent Coulson left us alone, you…you just managed to say everything in EXACTLY the wrong way. Right off the bat.

Your comment that not even you believed you were Iron Man, meant yeah you did, which you couldn't be, because that would mean that all of this was permanent, that you – that I – will have to do all of this AGAIN. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum until there really is nothing to us but the next mission and our own robotic movements. And I hadn't slept well in days, and wasn't ready to face you being Iron Man. Because I have always been by definition the woman who does anything and everything you require. And if you were Iron Man, a man I didn't know, that meant I wasn't me any longer. If you WERE Iron Man that meant I was no longer ME.

I made you presentable, hands smoothing out wrinkles in your jacket, able to feel the regular shapes of the adhesive warming pads beneath. There'd been no pain in your voice, but it'd been there only hours before, which I knew because hours before I was the one healing you, saving you, replacing that goddamn reactor for you again after I swore I wouldn't.

I was the one enabling you when all common sense said not to and all my fears said I couldn't start cleaning up your messes in this arena because you'd take that as a sign of my blessing, and then you'd start getting ideas…

You've never needed my help getting ideas.

If you've never thought about that endless day from my perspective, then you've never thought about how I could have interpreted your words. Your tone of voice certainly didn't help, the one that comes just fast enough to be understood but too quickly to be interrupted. The one that tries to sell me on something against my best judgment.

Believe me, Tony Stark in truly charming mode was the LAST thing I need.

Before I go any further, I need to confess. Part of me knew what you meant. I could see your face becoming softer as you talked about that night at the benefit. I could see that the memory brought you happiness. And I could see your absolute belief that you were offering me something…priceless.

And my response was to plunge the knife in and pull it out as quickly as possible, hoping to cause the least amount of pain. I tried to shut you down the fastest way I knew how, and it wasn't fast enough. I could hear the pain in your grunted affirmation, could see how I just devastated all the castles beginning to be spun by your fantasies.

Just like that. Finished. Fire snuffed before it ever really registered heat.

And you skulked off to the podium, and you outted yourself. Blew things even more to near microscopic smithereens.

I went home after that…not to repay you for leaving me at the benefit, not because I couldn't deal with your chaos a second longer, but because if I didn't, I was going to either explode or shatter and from what you offered me, and I didn't see that there would be anyone there to put me back together. You'd already imploded our lives enough. I saw no need to help.

If you're still reading, this is where I explain myself. Yes, part of me knew what you were offering to me. But the bigger, more controlling, more cautious part of me – the part of me that waited for three months against all hope for you to return, and who handled one seeming catastrophe after another once you did – had a different interpretation of your offer.

I believed that the offer you made me was likely genuine and that at the time it was the best you had to give. That doesn't change the fact that is was far, far too little for me to accept.

I looked at you and I saw this man, who admittedly was far evolved past the man who used to occupy your skin, but who had still not grown enough to handle more than he already had on his plate. It was in the offer. "If I had a girlfriend…" she would do this, and this, and this, and she would stay at home and worry (do you understand the pain that entails?) while I'm off being a superhero. Nowhere was there any mention of reciprocity.

Do you understand now why bringing up the incident at benefit immediately afterwards – a night where you romanced me and then left me without a word as if my worry is trivial – was a mistake? I almost think that if you had instead referenced your return home and our arrival at Edwards, I might have relented – at least a little. That day I WAS proud of you, SO proud…despite the worry, and so damn glad to see you back.

I think on that day – for a couple of seconds of least – I was more than just the cookie cutter damsel in distress girlfriend waiting back at home for you. Can you see the difference? Can you grasp how the first leaves me passive – and when in your life have I been passive? – while the second at least brings me into the story?

Can you see how being made into a Noun – the 'girlfriend' – instead of me was outright insulting? Especially after everything we'd just been through.

Honestly, you would have grown bored with the girlfriend Pepper Potts deluxe edition bimbette inside of a month. Because she has no depths. Her sole purpose is to worry when you're away and preen when you're here. I've seen you with those girls, and they don't even last the night anymore, much less the month.

Are you still reading?

Because here is where I return your honesty in what I want, for myself, and for…us.

Did you hear how I deflected your offer without actually turning you down? Because I WAS proud, and I WAS conflicted, and I thought that if I lowered my defenses I could be crazy about you.

But I deserved more than you were offering at the time. And so did you. We both deserved something more than the caricature you had described to me that afternoon.

I never wanted some tropist hero stereotype. I'd be dating you, the whole three-dimensional, multilayered, complicated enchilada.

And that man has grown. Grown into a man I am still proud of, and yes, still conflicted over. But I think you see me as more now than the cookie cutter Pepper Potts facsimile who may have had a lot of features, but wasn't real.

Which is for the best, because she couldn't ever really love you.

And I think that the Pepper who's grown up at your side since then is ready to take that risk…because I do. Love you, that is.

He…really doesn't know how he feels at the moment. Elated. Bummed. Numb. Maybe a little overwhelmed.

Seriously, it might be easier if his damn gut would just pick and stick with one. There's just…so much. In the letter. To digest.

He'd wanted honesty about their circumstances…about Pepper's reactions. And Fanny…no, they were one person. So Fanny/Pepper/Virginia/Whoever the hell she was today…had finally given it to him.

Full bore. No holds barred.

There is nothing here that he can misunderstand, or claim was too vague. Pepper has come straight out and said, "Here is what I expect." Yet he doesn't understand, and it's frustrating. But then that's typical. He's come to realize lately that short of physics and most sub-schools of engineering, Tony Stark has never really understood much of anything.

He understands now what Pepper expects in a relationship, and that she sees a relationship as being achievable between them. But she hasn't said when. Her letter makes it sound as if she doesn't think he's ready. Her behavior says she's more than.

Fanny says she wishes he'd just jump her already.

Okay, maybe Fanny hadn't actually said that, but the implication had been there.

Of course that implication might have been…bent…a little, by the fact she hadn't known he was him.

'Do I trust her actions over her words, or her words over her actions?' Fanny or Pepper? Except in the end it was only one person.

He doesn't know, has noclue, how to proceed forward from this.

If Pepper were anyone else, he'd let charm and sex soften her up before implementing some scheme to get her to date him without her realizing they were dating.

But in light of this letter that just seems…skeezy. It'd make him less than the kind of man she needed him to be.

Not that he isn't already living down to the role. He is pursuer and fake prey, providing her a safe place to hide from him. He'd excused it before as curiosity, as a way to get honesty. But now?

Tony stares down at the innocuous manila folder that hides the document that's just blown his mind. Who'd've thought Pepper had this in her?

He should have. Known, that is. How long has he been reading her letters to him, even if she had chosen to write them anonymously and send them in a third person kind of way?

Pepper hadn't posted this online. This is the same, gut-wrenchingly honest, deep secret self, emotionally fraught stuff that Fanny writes. Except this one is to him. Her audience hadn't blunted her honesty.

He groans and leans back in his chair.

If only that helped. It only made it appear that Pepper was as clueless as he was. He'd thought, until now, that solving this was a matter of getting the right information from Pepper/Fanny. Of encouraging her to write without fear until she'd reached the point in her narrative where she revealed the final secret. The chapter where she told him what to do to make him and her into a 'they.' Only apparently, she doesn't know that road any better than he does.

She loves him. She said it out loud. (Well okay out-loud on paper.) She said it out loud and she left it for him.

It's vulnerability…and if he knows anything at all now, it's that it needs to be equal for equal. Not because that's the answer so much as the first paver on the road to the answer for both of them. If he can't do anything else, for once he can give her an equal truth for a truth.

He opens a Word document. Stares at it a moment. Tries to decide where to even begin.

Settles on one sentence, the mother of all one liners he's ever used.

"I know this fixes nothing, but for the record, I love you too."

She is drunk. No, not drunk. But too incapacitated to return to the office? Yes, to Rhodey's amusement. He'd dropped her off at home after calling Tony to inform him that his personal assistant needed some personal time. And Tony had not protested.

Has Tony read her letter? Is Tony indeed Turbo? Does she care if he is? Does she want him to be? The thoughts circle through her head in the way she wants to pace her apartment, but she'd had too much to drink and pacing makes her dizzy.

She's about seventy percent sure she's having an active nervous breakdown.

Well okay, that estimation might be slightly hysterical. Fifty percent was probably more accurate – after all, she has never, in her entire career…no, in her entire life, ever had so much to drink over lunch that she couldn't go back to work afterwards. But then again, she has never in her entire life made such a potential fool of herself either.

Lunch had been good. The wine had been better. Maybe not up to snuff when compared to the stuff in Tony's wine cellar, but really, what is? And now? It provides the added benefit of leaving everything around her just the slightest bit hazy.

Which is a good thing, which is a giant fucking relief. Because what she needs to do is take an objective, critical survey of her situation. Something that's about as desired as a root canal right. Honestly, she was seeing some serious merits to a quick and admittedly gory death via some kind of old fashioned Harikari.

At least if she were dead she could finally. Stop. Thinking.

About the letter she'd written to Tony.

About his as of yet undetermined response to it.

About her lunch date with Rhodes that had started out embarrassing and then become enlightening and then sort of just exploded her entire fucking life like an Indian Flavored variant on Nagasaki.

Once again she had forgotten the first, the most basic principle in dealing with the chaos principle that was Tony Stark: Never, ever, ever, ever assume that he wouldn't do, or know about, anything.

It's far too late to go back. If Tony is Turbo, if Turbo is Tony, then they both (Turbo/Tony, Tony/Pepper) know too much to go back. Somehow, in the midst of leaving out the big details of her life, she'd let all the little ones spill only to discover that the little details weren't so little. Like the moon, information was inconsequential without context. But Tony is context. Tony is the horizon that makes the moon ten times bigger than the expanse of the empty sky.

She has two questions she has to deal with now. The first being, does Tony (if he is Turbo) know who Fanny is? And secondly, if Tony is Turbo, how does she, Pepper, feel about that? After all, she is not the only one that has spilled her inner secrets to a (possibly) nameless, (hopefully) faceless stranger.

She may have been so very, very, foolish but Turbo (whoever he is) has reciprocated.

Of course, the hurdle to the answers to those questions is whether or not Turbo in fact Tony. Sometimes she's sure, but other times, honestly? She has no fucking clue. There's as much evidence to the idea that he isn't as there is to the fact that he may be.

Turbo is…gentle. Patient. And let's be honest, a flirt. But Turbo seems to know and for the most part recognize boundaries, and he takes only as much as she's ready to give. He apologizes when he thinks he might have offended her, for fuck sake, and seems aware and concerned about her day to day mental state.

And that? That isn't Tony. At least not the one she knows.

Well, okay, maybe now more recently, but when did all that start to change anyway?

She tries to think back – to identify a clear moment. Except there isn't one, not really. There's been the personal growth since Iron Man and that damn press conference where he'd outted himself.

But as for growth between them? Nothing. After her perceived rejection he'd outright retreated…not just respected the 'no' that she'd given him but maybe, to a certain level, even pulled back. They hadn't really interacted much, as much as they saw each other almost every single day.

Maybe it's to be expected. The intensity of their connection in those mad weeks, both of them confessing that there was little in their lives to rival whatever it was that they had together, couldn't possibly be sustained. The ease between them had been shattered by the way she'd blocked his attempt to poke at the status of their relationship. It'd driven him onto more missions and into the shop in his free time.

But maybe that's where her writing had come from, she realizes. The spark had been lit when he'd backed away from her, and nature abhors a vacuum. Even he had admitted to going online for company, the same as she had.

She wants to use her remote access to Jarvis to go poking through Tony's personal files. Does he have the picture of Nicole Kidman in her strawberry blonde heyday that Fanny had jokingly used? Would she find narratives instead of haiku? Photos of a long ago auto show?

Pepper is aware that following that particular temptation would be a betrayal of just about everything there is between them. Now, at least. She has a panicky, alcohol spiked mind playing tricks on her. Her suspicions are insubstantial. If she wants to go poking through someone's files, she ought to go poking through her own archived chats to see if there is anything besides hope and horror bolstering her belief that the man she's falling in love with and the man she vents to about him are one and the same.

If he's known…if he's been playing with her…she's not sure she'll ever be able to forgive him.

'If this was a game Potts, it would already be over.' She's been talking to Turbo for weeks and there's no way, no way at all Tony would have been as…open…as he has been. About just about everything. He didn't have the temperament to stroke somebody's ego for that long in hopes of it spurring a roll – even literary – in the hay.

Tentacle Sex aside Turbo had never seemed like a actual predator as he did a guy who was…out of his depth with a woman.

She groans aloud. "Thank you, Rhodes, for making this still more complicated." Hell, she knew the colonel was right about Tony's awkwardness when it came to interacting with a woman beyond the goal of a fun night. And she had shot him down once.

She ought to be flattered that he was still willing to pursue her at all. And wouldn't it be entirely in his character to, having failed to learned how to do something the right way, to charge into doing it the wrong way? Two steps forward, one back, was still forward motion.

Granted, if he is Turbo, and he's known she's Fanny all this time, and they can find a way to make any of this soap opera less hideous rom-com by the end of things, she's going to make it absolutely, one hundred percent, knife to the balls type of clear that if he ever pulls this kind of crap on her again she's going to castrate him.

Of course, this brings her back to the dilemma of discovering who Turbo is. And the easiest way to do that will be to meet him…which is the sort of thing she should probably set up while still under the influence of intoxicants.

Pepper glances at her clock. It'll be hours still before she can expect Turbo to be online (considering she'd taken an early lunch and gone home immediately after). Sighing, she drops down on her couch and grabs her laptop. There's those archives to go through until then. Now that she knows the impossible is possible…hell, she might notice something.

Since he's not entirely sure that seeing Pepper Potts drunk isn't some sort of portent of doom, James Rhodes figures he might as well give Tony a piece of his mind before the world ends, or a solar flare turns the planet into a pre-industrial wasteland, or whatever the current chic doomsday scenario is. So after dropping Pepper off at her apartment (and seeing her upstairs to her front door), he heads back downtown through LA traffic. He figures that Tony's probably hanging around at loose ends without Pepper around to prompt him to whatever is the next item on his schedule.

He's not disappointed. He finds Tony, sitting in his office, a distant, blank look in his eyes. Which if he thinks about it, is terrifying, because he just spent an hour keeping that look off of Pepper's face.

He slams the door behind him, making Tony jump in his seat.

"Man, she was a nice girl. I really liked her. Now she's just as crazy as you." He may not be ready to give this…relationship…his blessing, but he's starting to understand that he's going to get flattened by it if he stands in the way. "Crazier maybe. But you never heard me say that."

Tony turns a single baleful eye in Rhodey's direction

"Seriously. When is the last time Pepper went to lunch and came back incapacitated? I haven't heard a woman moan over you this much since my mother found out what my roommate's last name actually was." Of course, that hadn't happened until after they'd graduated and Tony started getting a reputation. He doesn't know how many times he'd had to sit and listen to her grumble about "that Stark boy."

"Give her a break, Jim. Her life's been…stressful…lately.

"Life? I don't think so. You. You've had her stressed." Rhodey throws himself into a chair in front of Tony's desk studying him critically. "Not that you're much better off from where I'm sitting. You look like a redneck that's just lost his dog and his pickup."

Tony groans. "And you sound like a bad country song. Just how much did Pepper have to drink, and how much did you match?"

"Bad country music and heartbreak go hand in hand." Rhodey sidesteps the issue of how much he'd had to drink. That conversation with Pepper wasn't one that anyone could have without a beer in hand. The Dalai Lama himself would have ordered something dark and bitter. "I didn't come back here to hear the other side of all the bitching."

Tony gives his reply with one finger of his right hand.

"Pithy. Look, what are you going to do?"

Tony's look is one step removed from being absolutely tragic. "You're asking like I know. Which, I assure you, I do not. Because if I did, I would have done that instead of this. Because this is a farce."

Rhodes snorts. "You know what? I'm starting to think you should have just let her kiss you."

"She was…tipsy. That would have been taking advantage. Which I know, because you've hammered that much into my head." Tony sounds downright pissy about that.

Rhodes shakes his head, expression wry. "I know…who'd have thought it'd suck so much to say I'm proud of you."

They fall silent for a few moments before Rhodey says again, "What are you going to do?"

"I…don't know yet." Tony makes a face. "I'd prefer something that doesn't make me feel or look like a B Movie heroine. Though I'm not above standing outside her window with a boom box."

"Creeper. Look, as the person who just watched Pepper Potts get drunk over you, here's my suggestion: just do something. Doesn't matter if it's the right thing. You can apologize later if it is. But you gotta do something."

"I know. I'm just trying to figure out which route is least likely to end in death or heart attack."

"Chocolate."

Tony raises an eyebrow.

"I'm serious, Stark. Sometimes that fixes…well pretty much everything. Or at least settles the dust long enough for a better idea to appear." Now Tony just looks bewildered.

Rhodey sighs. They've gone over the basic steps of dating before. Of course, Tony'd been like, ten then. "Chocolates, flowers, double features. Any of this sounding familiar? Smooth guy moves, not get-her-into-bed moves. Otherwise known as dating." Rhodes cocks his head, "It tends to work better than making half-assed passes at her because she's cute."

"You want me to…to…" Tony can't think of an appropriate word to express his disbelief. "I think Pepper and I have moved past the dating stage." Surely they're in much more trouble than that. A few daisies are not going to smooth this over.

"Yeah, listening to you bitch about it on Saturday, and her bitching about it today, I don't think you have. Seriously, when was the last time you got together outside the office? Including your house, since she works there."

"Uhmmm." Never pretty much. There'd been the Fireman's fundraiser, but then, Pepper probably considered that a work event. Tony fights the urge to shoot himself in the head as Rhodes leans back in his chair, smiling smugly. But the thing about Pepper is that she never turns work off. And he doesn't know how to make her.

"Look, it doesn't take a genius to figure this one out, Tony. It's not as if you don't have decades of convention to fall back on if all else fails. Since you're a beginner though, I'd start with just getting her out of the office and onto neutral ground." Rhodes chews his lip a moment, trying to think how Tony could manage to screw up instructions even that simple. "Though not somewhere overly public…at least for now." He shrugs, "You know…find a big group setting where you can put on a hat and disappear into the crowd like you and I used to back in the day."

"And what happens when Pepper figures out I don't have a fucking clue about what I'm doing? Which should happen approximately 10 seconds after we exhaust the topic of what nice weather we're having."

"Oh, don't worry about that." Rhodey grins. "I already told her you're more idiot and less savant when it comes to traditional dating techniques. I'm fairly certain with a little encouragement she can be persuaded to take the lead." Rhode's eyes actually twinkle as he leans forward a little. "New sentence for you, Stark: What would you like to do today?"

Tony finds he's actually strangely relieved. After all, if Pepper's expectations are already low… "How drunk was she?" If his assistant has bailed on him, Tony sees no reason to stick around for the rest of the day. He has far better things to do.

"Considering she kept muttering about chat rooms and web comics, pretty damn drunk."

Tony chuckles and makes sure that the file folder with Pepper's letter in it is out of sight. He's going to take that sucker home and frame it. But that doesn't mean he wants anyone else to see it.

"You know…I think I'm calling it a day. I've got plenty in the shop to keep me busy this afternoon and tonight."