The characters and situations in this story belong to Marvel Comics, Fairview Entertainment, Dark Blades Films, and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any.
Absurd AU fluff. Completely weird. Stems from the Disney purchase of Marvel and the idea that Tony would like Ariel best because she's a redhead...
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It was time.
The big office was gloomy with the blinds closed; opening them didn't help much. Stane had always favored heavy furnishings and thick carpet, dark woods and decor meant to intimidate. Tony did his best to ignore the slightly oppressive feeling, and propped his hands on his hips, looking around.
"I thought Personnel cleaned this place out," Pepper said, stepping inside and leaving the door open behind her.
"They did. But only SI stuff; personal effects weren't on the list." Tony wasn't looking forward to this exercise, but he was the only one who could do it; personnel had taken the files and the computer, but there was plenty of stuff left over to which they had no right.
Technically, Tony supposed, he didn't either. But Stane's next of kin was his estranged son, apparently off on a five-year tour of the East Indies or something, and he hadn't returned any calls. Tony figured that meant he wasn't interested, and Pepper seemed to agree; at least, she hadn't voiced any objections.
He started with the desk, disdaining the chair and bending to yank open drawers. Two were locked, but a word with the master system gave Tony the override codes, and he slid them out and lifted out folders and papers and various ephemera, dumping it on the desk to be examined.
Pepper circled the room, checking the safe--empty--and going through the cupboards. She came back with a few books and more papers, leaving the awards behind but bringing a couple of knickknacks to deposit carefully on the broad desktop.
When he'd emptied the desk, Tony hitched a hip onto its top and started sorting through the mess. Some of it was work-related, at least peripherally; Tony would hand things to Pepper with a word of instruction, and she stacked up items to be filed, and shoved others into the shredder standing ready. Others were personal.
Nowhere did Tony find evidence of Stane's betrayals, but he didn't expect to. The man had been far too canny to leave hard-copy proof in his own office.
Eventually they finished. Tony swept the decorative pieces into the trash, careless of their value; he didn't want any reminders. Pepper didn't protest as the crystal ashtray shattered against the ebony pen set; her face was grim, as if sharing Tony's own distaste.
"Is that it?" she asked, wiping her palms on her slacks.
Tony gave the room one last glance. "Yeah, I think--no. Let me check the washroom." He hadn't been in the luxurious space more than a few times, but he thought he remembered seeing at least a few books in there. "You can go ahead if you like."
"I think I will," Pepper said. "Are you ready to leave, or shall I wait?"
"No, I'll meet you downstairs in five," Tony answered absently, reaching for the washroom doorknob, and while the carpet was too plush to hear her leave, he knew when she was gone; the room behind him was just that much emptier.
The washroom was much like the one attached to Tony's own office--large and plush. The faint ghost of Obadiah's cologne made Tony wrinkle his nose, and he left the door open again, as if to keep a ghost from materializing.
There were no books. There were a couple of magazines; Tony glanced at them and tossed them in the recycle bin to titillate the janitor.
He found nothing more besides a few grooming articles next to the sink, a pair of cufflinks forgotten in a drawer, and a heavy wooden box on the shelf above the toilet. Tony pocketed the cufflinks--they could go in with the rest of Stane's estate--and carried the box out by the brass handle on its top, setting it down on the desk.
It was an elegant container--cherrywood, Tony estimated--polished to a satin gleam and big enough to hold a loaf of bread. It was also locked, with an old-fashioned key lock, and Tony poked at it for a minute before deciding to just take it home with him. I wonder if that new gadget would work on it.
*****
When they reached the mansion, Tony took the box straight into his workshop, setting it down on one of the workbenches. Pepper, coming in behind him and just finishing a conversation on her BlackBerry, raised her brows. "What's that?"
"Not sure," Tony said, surveying the workbench and trying to remember where he'd left his latest experiment. "It's locked."
"Oh." Pepper seemed to lose interest. "Well, don't take too long breaking it open; you have the Sony gala dinner in two hours, and it's black tie."
"Yeah, yeah." Tony fumbled through a heap of wiring and tools, hearing the familiar click of Pepper texting behind him. "There we go."
The little cylinder was a prototype, crude and hardly more than a proof of concept, but Tony thought it might have some fairly practical applications. He held it out in front of the box's lock and pressed the switch.
Aside from a faint buzzing noise, nothing happened. Frowning, Tony changed angles and tried again.
"You might have better luck with a key," Pepper pointed out absently. Tony smacked the cylinder into one palm and tried once more.
"Don't have a key." The lock clicked audibly. "Ah, got it!"
He tossed the cylinder aside, scarcely noticing as Pepper stepped forward to pick it up. Lifting the lid of the box, he saw nothing more exciting than a manila folder, though it lay on top of something else.
"What is this?" Pepper asked, examining the cylinder.
"I'm trying something new with soundwaves," Tony explained, scooping up the folder to open it. "A kind of wrench or something. You know, versatile."
The contents of the file was actually familiar. Tony skimmed it quickly, then glanced back up at his personal assistant. "Pepper? Any idea why Stane would be keeping your hiring packet in a wooden lockbox in the can?"
"Hmm?" Pepper set the cylinder down and looked up, or started to; her gaze was arrested halfway between the workbench and the folder, and Tony closed it to see what she was staring at.
The rest of the box was taken up with something Tony couldn't immediately identify. Cloth, perhaps; it shimmered blue and green and silver, colors shifting like silk amidst a repeating pattern he couldn't quite make out. Next to him, Pepper pulled in a breath through her teeth.
"Wow." Tony set down the file and picked up the--cloth wasn't the word, Tony realized when he touched it; it felt almost like the most supple of leather, though that was only an approximation. It slipped through his fingers as if alive, and he shook it out carefully.
It almost danced in his hands, larger than he expected and utterly beautiful. Pepper was still staring, her eyes huge and the rest of her face pinched, as if struck by an enormous hunger for what he held. Tony regarded it, baffled; it didn't seem like something Stane would even own, let alone squirrel away under lock and key. "What is this thing?"
Pepper didn't answer; she was holding absolutely still. Slightly uneasy, Tony folded the...stuff...up again, as neatly as he could manage, though it was too slippery to cooperate much, and stuffed it back in the box. "It's pretty, but it's kind of weird. You ever seen anything like it?"
Pepper nodded once, jerkily, then shook her head and blinked, moistening her lips. "Y-you should get ready for the dinner," she said, voice firming. "It's at least an hour's drive."
"Slave driver." Tony didn't bother to close the box. "Guess we'll have to figure this out later."
Pepper hadn't moved. She was staring at the box again, and Tony felt his lips curl. Impulse nudged.
"If you want it it's yours, Potts," he told her. "It'd look great with your hair."
She looked up at him, then back at the box, and then at him once more. And to his complete surprise, leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her smile was strangely wistful. "Thank you."
He was tempted to make more of the kiss, but instead Tony decided a strategic retreat was in order, and gave her a wink instead. Whistling, he trotted upstairs.
It was sheer chance that he happened to glance out his bedroom window a few minutes later. Sunset was illuminating his property's narrow beach beautifully, but what caught his eye was movement. What he saw had him staring in disbelief: his prim and proper assistant was running across the sand barefoot...and completely naked.
And spilling out of her arms was the glorious pile of not-cloth he'd found in the box.
Before he could fully process the scene, either in lust or alarm, Tony saw Pepper dash right into the surf. With a quick motion, she wrapped the blue-green shimmer around her waist, sarong-fashion; but instead of draping, it swirled in tightly, clinging to her legs and hips like a second skin.
She dove forward, straight into the waves. What lifted behind her to propel her forward was not legs, but tail, as gorgeous as the wrap; muscular and lithe and sporting a pair of filmy flukes wider than her shoulders.
The water closed over her, and she was gone.
Tony stared at the water for so long that his eyes began to burn and tear, but she never surfaced.
*****
It was long past dark when he made his way to his workshop, half-wondering if the whole thing hadn't been some kind of weird drug flashback, or if he'd been drinking without noticing it. But stacked on one of the chairs was Pepper's folded clothing, her shoes sitting neatly side by side beneath.
Tony watched the surveillance videos for hours, over and over again, slowing and enhancing until they were nothing but pixels dancing in front of his eyes. The Sony dinner was forgotten; everything was forgotten but the impossibility he'd seen, that was captured in ones and zeros that still told him nothing. The workshop cameras showed her reaching slowly forward to touch the box's contents, biting her lip so hard that a drop of blood appeared; then stripping to her pearly skin in utter haste. The beach cameras merely gave him a better view of what he'd already seen.
He kept turning it all over in his mind, trying to make sense of what had happened. But he couldn't.
There's no such thing.
He was an engineer, for pity's sake; a scientist. It had to be a trick of some kind, a crazy live effect, some prop hidden in the wrap...
When he spoke, Tony was vaguely surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. "Jarvis? Am I nuts?"
"Indubitably, sir," the AI murmured blandly. "But not because of what you observed."
Tony made a restless motion. "Analyze. That had to be--it couldn't be what it looked like, could it?"
Jarvis' response was slow, even careful. "What you saw was unlikely, but as Horatio observed, there are--"
"Screw Shakespeare." Tony made the beach video repeat yet again. "Give me facts."
"Sir, I regret that I cannot. What I can do is theorize from our shared observations."
Tony squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. "All right," he said grudgingly. "Theorize."
"Actually, further data may be useful," Jarvis said. "Perhaps you could examine the box."
Tony blinked. "You really think--all right."
He pushed stiffly to his feet and went to look in the box, not really expecting to find anything. But the dark wood was spattered with a few glints of color, tiny fragments that matched its former contents. Intrigued despite himself, Tony found tweezers and collected a sample, placing it under one of Jarvis' magnifying cameras.
The image that sprung up on the screen above the workstation had Tony's brows going up. "Scales?"
"Confirmed," Jarvis said crisply. "They appear to be piscine in origin, though they do not match any such on file. DNA analysis may prove more fruitful."
Tony stroked his jaw absently, staring at the magnified shapes. "Table it for now," he told Jarvis; he had no systems in place to handle such a biological chore. "What's your theory?"
"That what you saw did happen as it seemed. The oceans are the planet's last unexplored frontier."
Tony threw himself into a chair, damning Jarvis' logic. "Even if...even if mer-whatevers are possible, how do you explain that whole wrap thing? Because I'll tell you, I might be able to accept an undiscovered species, but magic--" He shook his head. Old stories his mother had read to him tumbled through his head, but even as a child he'd never really believed them.
Jarvis sounded thoughtful. "There are parallels in the mythology of several cultures, though the protagonists are more often seals or birds."
"Myths." Tony folded his arms. "Stories."
"Which often have a kernel of truth." Jarvis' voice was firm. "I have analyzed the video files. While the appearance of the tail might be generated by sleight-of-hand or technology, the tail itself clearly bends at an angle no human legs can achieve."
"So what are you saying?" He knew what Jarvis was saying; he just didn't want to admit it.
"To quote one of the most famous figures of modern observation and analysis, 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'. While we do not have the hard evidence to make theory certainty, I would lay long odds that Ms. Potts did indeed transform into a mermaid."
Jarvis, Tony reminded himself reluctantly, was logical, yes, but he was also programmed to be be mostly free of the hampering assumptions of most human minds. People don't believe in magic because...nobody believes in magic. But his AI was unencumbered by such prejudices.
"I'm not accepting, this, necessarily," he said slowly. "But tell me about these myths."
"There is one nearly unifying theme," Jarvis began. "The sea person--almost always a woman--can transform from one shape to the other by means of a...skin. She is kept on shore when a man finds the skin and hides it from her."
Tired and hungry and dazed, Tony considered what he'd found in the box, and concluded that it sounded just like Stane to trap someone against their will. "And?"
"The sea woman stays with the man, often bears him children; they may even be happy. But sooner or later she discovers the skin, and seizing it returns to the ocean, never to return."
Never to return.
The last three words seemed to echo in the silence like pebbles bouncing down into a well. Tony listened to them rattle away, and realized that they were what he'd feared all along.
She's gone.
The pain swelled, and swelled, and Tony put his arms on the nearest workbench and buried his head in them. Mermaids, insanity, impossible magic--none of it mattered. She was gone.
Pepper.
*****
He spent the day in his workshop, not knowing what appointments he was missing and not caring. Tony alternated between coding obsessively and staring blankly at whatever was in his line of sight, and only ate when Butterfingers blocked his path and held out a glass of protein shake. Pepper, his mind said plaintively, over and over. Pepper.
He couldn't blame her for leaving, if everything Jarvis had theorized was true. Stane had trapped her somehow, kept her against her will; given the chance to return home, how could she not take it?
Pepper...
Eventually he fell asleep sitting up, and woke to a stiff neck and Jarvis' voice placidly reciting the morning time, temperature, and wave conditions. Tony sat up slowly, rubbing his kinked muscles and wondering blankly how he was going to get through another day.
Movement in the corner of his eye made him turn. And his jaw dropped.
Pepper was standing next to the chair where she'd left her clothes, stepping delicately back into her slacks. Her blouse was neatly buttoned, but her hair was down, wet tendrils leaving dark trails on the fabric. Draped over the back of the chair was her skin, shimmering and brilliant.
In that instant, Tony realized he didn't care what was myth and what was reality. The only thing that mattered was her.
Slowly he forced himself up, made himself step forward. Pepper fastened her slacks and lifted her chin, regarding him nervously.
Tony opened his mouth, but the only thing that made its way out was idiotic curiosity, stemming from those old tales. "Do they hurt?"
Pepper blinked at him. "What?"
Tony gestured. "Your feet. Do they...hurt?"
Her smile was slow, but definite. "I manage."
Tony nodded, then reached out and gathered up the skin. It was dry, surprising him, and as vibrant in his hands as it had been the first time he touched it. Pepper made no move to stop him, but her own hands clenched into fists.
Tony folded the skin as precisely as he could, trying to be gentle, and then handed it to Pepper. She took it slowly, looking bemused; then she turned and walked over to one of his storage cabinets. The skin fit neatly on the top shelf.
Pepper closed the door on it and looked back at him. Tony let his feet carry him forward until he could lift a hand to touch her cheek. "I thought...the myths said you couldn't come back."
She reached up and laced her fingers with his, lowering both their hands and smiling wider. "All those stories were written by humans, Tony."
It was relief that had him leaning in, relief and joy that lifted his arms to hug her. Pepper laughed, and the feel of her embrace made his heart dance.
Then she was tugging on his hand. "You need to get cleaned up, Mr. Stark," she told him firmly. "You have a meeting at ten."
"Okay," he said obediently, and let her lead him towards the stairwell. At the bottom step, though, he pulled her to a halt. "Pepper..."
"Hm?" She looked back, unaccustomedly rumpled but her eyes bright.
"Will you...are you going to leave again?"
She squeezed his fingers. "My cousins would kill me if I didn't visit once in a while," she said. "But...I like it here."
Tony swallowed. "Good."
Content, he followed her up into the morning.
End.