Title: We Couldn't Bring The Columns Down
Author: A.j.
Spoilers: For IIM #3.
Rating: PG
Notes: I have no idea what the hell this is. Also, Irene Adler is basically the woman that got away for Sherlock Holmes. It's kind of... a thing.

Summary: Pepper Potts is not a woman in a refrigerator.

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Pepper never liked the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. There was something that always bothered her about how a man could see every tiny detail about other people's lives and seem completely ignorant of his own.

It took her years to figure out that irony.

&

She remembers having a crush on Tony. Remembers how her heart used to do that little-girl flip and how she used to blush and dream about happy-ever-afters. She tries to forgive herself for some of the sappier ones, but it never quite works.

Somewhere along the line, she stopped dreaming of weddings and babies - I was allowed to be young, she keeps telling (but not believing) herself - and started dreaming in numbers and people and business.

Waking up in her bed, alone, she realizes that both paths probably would have lead her right here. To a perfectly kept apartment, amazing clothing, and an empty bed.

She wonders when she stopped being a romantic. (She'll never admit that she misses it.)

&

The first time she ever saw Tony in the Extremis suit, she wanted to vomit. She'd gone through a classical sci-fi kick in junior high. Read everything she could get her hands on, from Heinlein (god, what an asshole) to Asimov and all points in between.

Watching the gold wrap around him, spill out of him like water, she can think of nothing but the cautionary tales of robots and AI's gone horribly wrong. It's worse, somehow, because Tony is the most human person she's ever met. Full of anger and aggression and fear, but dominated by a desire to do better. Potential he can't quite grasp.

When the undersuit had finished and he was shining and gold in front of her, she'd smiled at him. Eyes blank she'd mouthed words she hadn't meant and didn't remember. Watched his attention wander to something in the distance, far away in the world.

It had only been then that she'd found some familiarity.

&

I can see through satellites now, Pepper.

You've never seen me, she doesn't say.

&

Her last thoughts before millions of tons of glass, steel, and stone fall down around her aren't of her family or her friends. They're of Tony, who was still on the top floor. Tony who was probably already dead.

She doesn't actually feel the beam that knocks her under a shelter of rubble, just wakes up to red and gold metal and pain.

Goddamn, she thinks, but says "My hero."

&

She wakes up to his hand in hers and him asking her a question.

Holds the reactor up and out to her. Explains everything in as much detail as he thinks she can handle.

She watches him, the world around her fuzzy and out of sorts because of pain and drugs and the surreal aspect of this evening. His words buzz around her, familiar and soothing in the stark white of the hospital room, but all she can think is that she should be in her hotel by now, not here.

"Yes," she says, finally. "Yes."

&

The day he'd asked her to come work for him again (it had been a Tuesday) she'd watched a dog get hit by a car. It'd been from a distance while on her way to work. The poor thing had gotten spooked by something and dashed out into the street, heedless of it's owner's cries. She remembered the crunch of metal and that long, sharp yelp all day. Replayed it in her mind.

She hadn't been surprised when Tony'd appeared in front of her, eyes dark and posture bent.

It'd been a kick to the gut, seeing him. Remembering his 'coming out' and remembering her baby (the one that never was) and remembering everything and how much she missed him.

That was the day that she'd finally given in.

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One day, Pepper Potts wakes up with a reactor in her chest strong enough to blow most of New York City off the map.

It's only when she's finally off all of the drugs that she realizes how incredibly funny that is. She laughs about it so hard she starts crying. She never tells anyone why.

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"You know," Pepper finally tells Tony. They're both spread out in the Helicarrier's smallest conference room with PDA's and paperwork and files that are starting to make absolutely no sense. "I've always hated the name Irene."

"What?" He'd asked, blinking owlishly at her while still brain-deep in a reverse-engineered schematic. "What are you even talking about?"

He's staring at her like he thinks she's insane, and it takes her a few seconds to start laughing. When she does, it's loud and deep, and she can feel it all the way past her scars and the years between them.

"Never mind," she giggles, and goes back to her work.

She knows his eyes stay on her.

&

She still doesn't like the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

-fin-