You guys are probably not going to like me for this one, but I couldn't help it. I'm going through some rough times right now, and my experiences have inspired, as my friend Katy Faraday says, some "wonderfully dark fics". Yep. That's what this is.
I don't own Iron Man, so please don't sue me. I'm not doing this for the money. :P
Death
He hasn't been to a funeral since 1995, when both of his parents were killed in a car accident. He had found Obadiah's stash of expensive alcohol and spent most of the service behind the building, lying on the cold pavement, wrinkling his best suit, and getting ridiculously drunk. He had never been very close to his parents, but he was only 21 years old and left with nobody, only his father's money to comfort him. Money never did fill that gap left by his parents.
And now he's 46, and he's lost the one person who did fill that gap. When he was lost and hopeless, she was there to pull him back together. His mother had always said that it would take a strong woman to put Anthony Edward Stark into line. She couldn't have been more right. Pepper was strong-minded and persistant, smart and beautiful, and completely perfect. He never knew what devotion was until he fell in love with her.
Tony can see her lying there across the room, shimmering hair flowing around her now pale face. She looks peaceful, as if she were simply sleeping, the look Tony loves to observe late at night while she sleeps beside him. It's hard to believe that he'll never wake next to her again, never be able to watch her eyelids flutter open to reveal her sky blue eyes.
He feels numb, hollow, like his soul is aching for a part of him that isn't there. All of these people come to talk with him and offer their sympathy, but he hardly hears them. Tony's too busy remembering her, the smell of her when she rests in his arms, the bell-like peal of her laughter when he whispers something in her ear. He remembers the day they spent on the beach last summer. She had been so surprised to find that Tony knew all of the names of the shells that spread across the sand. He had picked out the most beautiful one for Pepper, and had earned an intense kiss as a reward. There are hundreds, thousands of days like those. Now he struggles to maintain a grip on those memories. Tony is struggling to collect the scraps of her, clinging to them as if they are his only sustenance.
They'll be burying her later. Lowering her into the ground forever, for no one to look upon again. This wasn't supposed to happen, it was all too soon. Tony replays the event over and over in his head, searching for a way that she could have been saved, but there is none. He doesn't know where to go from here. His life has grown intertwined with Pepper's, and now that she's gone, he feels like half of himself is missing. And, in a way, it is. Pepper completed him in a way that no one else ever has.
He really wishes that he could leave and get drunk somewhere, just like last time, but he knows Pepper wouldn't like that. It's just that the crushing grief of losing her is too much for him to handle. It was too soon for her, too soon. Tony's genius mind is moving at an exceptionally fast pace, and he wonders if he's going crazy. Probably. Pepper was a stabilizing force in his life, his anchor, and now that she's gone, life doesn't seem worth living. Pepper was The One. There will never be anyone else for him.
This will probably be the last long drabble I do for a bit. I've been averaging around 500 words for each of these, and that word count will probably drop to around 200 or 300 in the following drabbles. But I promise they will still be good!