Iron Man: It's A Wonderful Life
Chapter Thirteen
December 24, -:-
Stark Mansion shown like a jewel box in the night, every light ablaze in the flat, three-story, square building that had been Tony's childhood home. Pregnant with memories of his past, haunted by the ghosts of people long past caring, Tony still found that he could not get rid of the place. It sat across from Central Park unoccupied, like a beautiful tomb in which his parents spirits were undoubtedly enshrined.
Only this house was not his home. It belonged to Obadiah Stane, and the thought of that vermin burrowing within the walls of Tony's parents' monument, seemed an even greater sin than letting it remain forgotten. It enraged him.
A steady stream of people trickled out of limos, taxis, and expensive cars, flowing up to the front door where an unfamiliar butler let the tide sweep in. Pleased to note that there was no receiving line, Tony joined course, mid-surge. He was not as smartly dressed as the other guest, in their black-tie tuxedos. His suit was classy enough that while Tony didn't stick out like a sore thumb, he did appear to have dressed down for the occasion. Fortunately, he noted wryly, he had plenty of experience carrying off in flair what he didn't in style.
Directions were obtained from the raised eyebrows and inclined head of the dubious butler, who gave him a long and distinctly disapproving look before offering only the most rudimentary of answers to Tony's inquiry after the hosts' locations. Following the unhelpful gesture into the center of the main floor, Tony revolved slowly, taking it all in.
When he was a boy, there had been parties on this scale. Tables around the perimeter were piled high with food, and a bar occupied a place of honor at the head of the room. Among the guests, Tony recognized a few senators who held their seats in his reality, too. Actors, businesspersons, politicians, people who were famous for no discernable reason, and plenty he didn't recognize, as well. He did not see Sunset, which was just as well. Tony would have had a difficult time explaining himself to her if she'd seen him, but it said quite a lot to him, not about her, but about Stane, that the Senator's personal assistant was not in attendance.
In the throng, it took Tony some time to find the true objects of his search but finally, he spotted Obadiah Stane holding court at the foot of the staircase. The senator looked pleased with himself, master of his domain, and as confident as Tony had ever known him to be. For some reason, this pissed Tony off even more.
Tony hadn't thought this far ahead and glaring across the room at the man he was torn by the equally strong urges to confront him, avoid him, and hit him. His feet moved without urging, and Tony was crossing the floor. Energy coiled within him, like the strength of a tiger stalking its prey, and he was thirty feet away when, like a turn of the tap, the anger vanished and Tony stopped dead.
He'd heard her laugh. Tony looked, and ten feet to his left, sipping a glass of white wine, a woman stood chatting politely with Senator Stern.
Pepper never drank wine. It gave her a headache.
Tony stared at the changeling in the silver sequined gown, that did nothing for her, and the matching kitten heels on her feet. Her hair fell softly to her neck in medium-sized curls, a style evoking the 1950s. She had the figure, complexion, and nicotine stained fingers of a smoker, and looked five years older than he knew her to be.
Exhaustion haunted eyes that Pepper's smile never reached; worse - unhappiness.
A slow walk became a run, and Tony was beside Pepper (no, Virginia, not Pepper) and Senator Stern before he'd even realized he was moving.
"Excuse me, Pops." Tony scrambled for something to say. "I… was hoping our hostess would honor me with a dance?"
"Pops?" The Senator's eyes bulged, and Tony was certain it was worth it.
He did not miss the flicker of fear in Virginia's eyes, nor the swift glance toward her husband, but ever the good hostess, she simply smiled and gave Tony a short nod. "I'd be delighted."
Leaving Senator Stern sputtering after them and holding the wine glass Tony had taken from her, he offered Virginia his hand and drew her to the center of the room and into his arms. It was like dancing at a junior high school dance; the distance between them was awkwardly formal, but just intimate enough that she was conscious of his boldness, and startled by it. Tony guessed that no one presumed to make even the slightest advances toward Mrs. Obadiah Stane, and her darting eyes told him he right about where her true concern lay.
"I can handle him," he murmured. "Just dance."
Virginia couldn't have looked more shocked than if he'd opened with the truth about his identity. Fear lurked in her eyes, but only for a moment before her guard fell back into place, and her gaze raked his face intently for something familiar.
"Have we met?" The voice had resumed the tone of the perfect hostess, but her figure was tense beneath his hands.
Tony's throat thickened with grief that settled heavily in his gut. It took effort to speak, and he could see in her face, by the soft catch of breath, that she could see that somehow she'd caused him pain. "You should have," he rasped. Grasping for something to say to draw attention from his distress, Tony swallowed. "How's your head?"
Still focused on his inexplicable display of sorrow, Tony's non sequitur confused her. "My… head?"
"The wine. You always…" he made a vague gesture to his head as his voice trailed.
She stopped dancing. Darting a glance in Obadiah's direction, where he stood now with Senator Stern, watching them, Virginia lowered her voice. "This is ridiculous. What does he think I'm going to do? I know the rules, and I know what will happen if I-"
It was said with such decorum that no one near them noticed that anything was amiss. Tony took her wrist before she could finish to pull her back into the dance. "I don't work for him," Tony murmured. "I'd never work for him. I'm here for you." He met her eyes. "I'm a friend," he said earnestly.
He could count the heartbeats it took her to decide if she believed him. In fact, Tony was sure she still hadn't decided when she began to dance again.
"I don't have any friends," she murmured, eyes continually searching for something unnamed.
"You do," he insisted. "I know all about Stane. I know he's dirty, and I know he's not good to you." The last made him somber, and Tony asked, "Does he hurt you? He doesn't…" He couldn't even give voice to his fears.
Virginia stopped looking for her husband's security men and then looked this stranger in the eye. His concern was baldly written on his face, so much that she knew if anyone saw it, they'd be suspicious. "Not anymore." The words came out on an exhaled breath. "Mostly, he just leaves me alone, now."
Interpreting the words properly, Tony clarified, "You're trapped here."
She bit her lip, but nodded, once and curtly.
He fought not to pull her closer, behavior that would have been as much possessive as comforting. Virginia was still tense in his arms, but she no longer eyed Tony with concern, her eyes darting instead to the people around them like prey anticipating the predator. She was a lamb amid lions, even in her own den.
"I knew a Ms. Potts once." There had to be a way to capture her attention and hold it, and Tony was grasping blindly. As luck would have it, Virginia looked at him in surprise. "She was very intelligent. Competent; motivated; a bit of a temper," he smiled with wicked pleasure. "She was one of the most capable people I knew. I can't understand how she would end up married to someone like Stane."
Something stirred in her eyes. The ghost of the woman she used to be flared to life, and the reminder of the Virginia she'd lost, visibly changed her. For a devastatingly brief moment, she went loose in Tony's arms and the walls behind her too-wide eyes crumbled. In a soft voice he did not know she asked, "Who are you?"
The song ended, and Tony spun her into dip. Applause rose to mark the dance's end and through the din, above her fluttery gasp, he whispered, "Someone who'll be waiting in the greenhouse to talk with you, after you placate the snake you're married to, then excuse yourself for a smoke."
Without waiting for an answer, Tony wandered away through the crowd, pausing to chat with other guests as he went, in case he was being watched on his way toward the hallway that would take him towards one of the restrooms.
Benefitted by having grown up in the house, Tony took a roundabout route to the greenhouse, deciding it would be better if Obie didn't see Virginia following in his footsteps. Tony had no doubt she would come to him, it was merely a question of when.
The mansion's interior was not the same as he remembered it, and Tony tried not to look closely at the changes to his parents home. That was one sacrilege too many. Instead, he passed through a pair of glass doors out into a deep, rich, overgrowth of greenery through which the lights from the party shone in dappled patterns across the floor.
Soft colored lights lit the paths through the maze of plants, providing dim illumination, and Tony wandered only a bit, not wanting to stray too far. This, at least, looked the same, and he felt at home here. His mother had loved the greenhouse.
Soft noises nearby drew his attention, and Tony straightened from where he'd pressed his back against one of the many planter boxes, this one filled with vivacious birds of paradise, and came forward to greet whom he hoped was Virginia.
She stepped through a cascade of elephant ear, the sheen of her dress catching the variegated color of the leaves as the light bleeding from within the house caressed her. Virginia watched him from a short distance, not wary, but curious.
"Who are you?" she asked again, circling around the lily pond toward him.
He didn't have an easy answer. Traveling in the opposite direction, he said, "You'd never believe me if I told you."
She was quiet. "I'm the wife of a senator, I've heard a few unbelievable stories in my time."
This was undoubtedly true, and a response much more in keeping with the version of her he knew. It elicited a faint smile, and the truth. "My name is Tony Stark. I should have been the son of Howard and Maria Stark, only in this reality, I was never born."
He waited for her reaction, and it was a long time coming. Her face was impenetrable, and as equally familiar as it was foreign in its guardedness.
Finally, "The Starks. As in, the Howard that was Obie's business partner, before he died? They owned this house." At Tony's nod, she continued. "You do look like the portrait of him in the library. I thought you seemed familiar." Virginia considered him more closely.
She didn't deny his claim outright, and with anyone else, Tony might have been surprised. With Virginia, he felt a sense of pride. As different as she was, this woman was still discerning enough to not discount things out of hand because they seemed unreasonable. "So you were never born." She repeated, only a hair of skepticism coloring her words.
Tony breathed out a sigh through his nose, seeking the best, most simple, explanation. He began to pace. "I made a mistake. I made a lot of mistakes, and a lot of people I care about were hurt because of it. I thought that if I hadn't been born, they would have been better off."
Tony hadn't connected the dots for her, but waiting in silence for her next question, he could see her do the math on her own, as he'd known she would. Or hoped. It was a lot to digest, yet she did not treat him as though he'd lost his mind. In fact, without Obadiah standing over her shoulder like some grim spectre, Virginia seemed less cagey, more self-possessed, and not at all afraid of him.
She was thinking carefully, Tony could see the familiar wrinkle of skin at the bridge of her nose, and the lowering of her eyes that marked her underestimated analytical abilities. "You said you were here for me." Slowly, she began trying to piece things together. "You said I should know you."
He had come to see her. Did he need to tell her why? Just looking at her, he knew this wasn't Pepper, Virginia had none of her vitality. Most of the spirit she might have shared with his Pepper had been beaten and cowed out of Virginia, and he couldn't help the impotence of anger, because she should have fought harder. His Pepper would have. The woman who had stormed into his office in a fit of pique, then refused to let him push her round for the next thirteen years - she would have fought. Why hadn't Virginia?
"How did it happen?" He stepped forward, as much in passion, as in an attempt to quell the mounting volume in his voice. "How did a strong, intelligent woman get to be like this?"
Virginia's chest rose, her shoulders drawing back with the insult. Tony watched the color rise in her skin – one of his favorite past times. It wasn't as pale as Pepper's due to her smoking, but thinner and more delicate, like a layer of velum; she was worn.
"Who the hell do you think-" Her breath was coming fast, and the control it took to bite down on what could be agreed was a stupid question, Tony thought was admirable. Virginia was furious, but her eyes swam with unrelieved pain and frustration. She was a wounded animal who had never been allowed expression.
"Virginia. I just want to know what he did."
In her eyes, Tony saw the battle. The certainty that his insinuation was true – that she had let Stane win, and had been diminished by his victory. She was a wraith now, and had let it happen; Tony's willingness to shift the blame onto its proper source opened something inside her.
Pepper was an expert at maintaining the placid shell that made her appear inscrutable, and that kept her emotions firmly under control. Tony took considerable pleasure in finding chinks in her armor, even finding her anger sexy as hell. He could not, though, imagine the iron will it required Virginia to retain control of all the guilt, the anger, the despair that welled to the surface once the floodgates came ajar.
A shaky hand drifted up her thigh, to distracting heights and emerged with the lighter and cigarette case secured in a band there. The nervous laugh that rolled from her made it further difficult to provide the steady pressure necessary to create a spark, so Tony stepped forward and took the lighter from her.
Virginia watched him through her eyelashes as she pulled the first breath of nicotine into her lungs, then nodded her thanks. Returning the stare, Tony had to admit that the sight was damned seductive.
"Will he come looking for you?" The voices, even the music, from the party was entirely muffled. Encapsulated in this Eden, they would have no idea if anyone were coming until he or she was already inside.
Virginia nodded, but unreservedly. The array of emotions the answer created, from sorry to anger, were reflected in her expression, though only in the most minute detail. Had Tony not the experience in recognizing the same in Pepper, he would have missed it.
"Eventually. I told him I needed to lie down, that I had a headache. He expects me to return, but would rather I appear to be at my best." Virginia drew on her cigarette, weighing Tony. Perhaps still judging just how much she could safely tell him.
"Quid pro quo." Leaning against a box bearing a display of orchids, Virginia's challenge was as much implied as verbal. "I'll answer your questions, if you answer mine."
The smart, questioning arch of her brow was so like Pepper, Tony's heart constricted. He wondered if Virginia ever had the opportunity to negotiate in this way. "Done deal," he agreed. Remembering her question from earlier, he exhaled heavily.
"You wanted to know how I know you and why I was here. There are people I care about - people I love…" he rubbed the back of his neck. "One in particular. I'm here because I thought they'd be happier if I'd never been born, and now I've been given the opportunity to see…"
"...if… my life is better without you," Virginia finished for him, haltingly, eyes widening as she assembled the pieces. Digesting the information, she walked the path around the pool of water lilies, watching for the fish darting beneath the broad green pads. She must have had questions. When she looked at him again, her eyes were full of them, but she merely folded her arms and returned the courtesy, sighing and diverting her gaze back to the fish as though she were unable to look him in the eye.
"What happened." Her voice was flat and lifeless, and she took the time to finish her cigarette before answering, fishing out a new one as she did. "How did I let him take control of me, you mean." It was a rueful statement Tony instinctively wanted to protest, except he could tell it was true, even from her perspective. "I believe it was Shakespeare who coined the phrase, 'death by inches'. Obadiah killed me by inches, until there was nothing left but what he found useful. He did it with smiles, with charm, and with subtlety. By the time I realized he was not the man I thought I had married, he had not only taken from me everything I took pride in, he had also anticipated my reaction and blocked all my avenues of escape. By the time he first resorted to violence-"
"He did hit you." Tony's nostrils flared and his fists clenched, and he forcibly had to unclench them to avoid doing something rash.
"That's two, but I'll let it pass." She regarded him the way Pepper sometimes did when he was being purposefully dense. "Always as a last resort," she answered him, "And never anywhere anyone would see. Only once did it really hurt." Her face darkened, and she turned her face away.
He couldn't refrain from asking a third. "Why did you marry him?" Tony's incredulity caused the set of Virginia's shoulders to drop another inch, tension he hadn't noticed before. He was demonstrably aware of her husband's monstrousness, and that increased her comfort with him by the minute.
Virginia reached to touch the back of her neck in an achingly familiar gesture, then realized it would disturb her precisely arranged hair and dropped her hand. "He was charming. He admired – or at least he said he admired, my abilities. He was intelligent, and his age didn't matter; he's even attractive, in his way. It was his mind, and the way I thought he valued my mind; and how I felt as though I was the only person who mattered when I was with him."
It occurred to Tony just then that he had never asked Pepper why she loved him. He knew, with perfect perception and complete navel-gazing clarity, that his past misdeeds had put him squarely in the minus column, and that he should have seen the back of her years ago. He could not recall when it had happened, but at some point, Tony would not have failed to attempt any test of knighthood chivalry for her, but how he'd earned the chance to prove it, he would never know.
Hearing Virginia's reasoning, Tony had a window into Pepper's mind. A small glimpse at what she valued and might have found appealing in him, in spite of his obvious character flaws. Even at his worst, Tony had always valued Pepper's mind; her efforts on his behalf; and when she was there, with few exceptions (usually the pursuit of things that were bad for him), she was the most important thing in the room.
"Tell me about her. Me." During his reverie, Virginia had taken the time to consider how best to frame this question. "If this is me without you, how am I – how is she with you?" Silence passed between them, although he had anticipated this most obvious question.
Not a wisp of music flew in to reach them from the party within, but Tony held out his hand in invitation, and with only a moment's pause, Virginia took it. This time his embrace was less cautious, and more tender. The gentleness made her stiffen, but then suddenly, shyly, she moved closer. Tony could imagine her loneliness.
"One day, a genuine Fury with red hair and green eyes stormed into my office. She'd spotted an error I'd made in the budget, and as no one would listen to her, she brought the problem to me directly." This, of all his memories of Pepper, was his favorite. Those indignant, flashing eyes growing wide with shock at the impromptu job offer. "I hired her on the spot, and spent the next ten years driving her nuts before telling her I'd fallen in love with her. "
Virginia hung on his every word. "That's similar to how I met Obadiah. There was an accounting error, and everyone was willing to let it go – I think now that he might have, had I not made such a fuss. He called me into his office the next morning and offered me the job as his assistant."
Tony hadn't been there, and Obie knew quality when he saw it. He wouldn't pass up a good thing when he could utilize it to its fullest.
"What's she like?" Virginia pressed.
"Smart. Witty. Strong. I'm not the easiest person to deal with, I could never keep a personal assistant before her; of course, I slept with most of them. Okay, all of them, but not her - and she never gave up." 'On me,' he thought. 'She never gave up on me.' "She has the patience of a saint – she'd have to. Not just because of me, it's tough for women to be taken seriously in the business world. I've always made it clear she was my right hand, but she was the one who got them to believe she was not some girl I was sleeping with.
"People give me credit for being a genius, but no one knows how much of my success depended on her. I don't know-" He broke off. "I don't know what I would have done without her. I don't know what I'd do without her."
Virginia wasn't looking at him, and he wasn't looking at her, but a light caught a glimmer in her eyes, and Tony could have sworn it was the gleam of unshed tears. Her voice was soft. "Maybe without her, you would have turned out something like me."
Lonely, miserable, bitter and alone. Yeah, he could see it.
"Maybe," Virginia said, hesitantly. "We really do make a difference. Maybe she made you a better person, and maybe you made her strong." Her eyes turned up to his, any tears that might have been there, gone. "And happy."
There was a beat. A breathless moment that hung in the air while his eyes roamed her face, and hers held his, naked with more vulnerability than he'd seen on her face all night – or ever, on Pepper's. Excruciatingly slowly, Tony brought his mouth down over hers, drawn to that familiar place like birds returning home in the spring.
Virginia's lips parted in a gasp, inviting him deeper. As her arms laced around his neck in vague reverie, Tony cupped her head, heedless of what it might do to her hair. A soft noise deep in her throat pleaded for more, and he anchored her against him, arm around her waist. In the honey sweet, cigarette rough, taste of her, Tony gave what she needed, and sought absolution for himself.
When he pulled away, his hand moved to her cheek, thumb caressing her as she struggled to control the breath that came too fast and her heart pounding frantically beneath her ribs. She looked up, and the tears she'd valiantly held back earlier, began to flow.
"It is you," she whispered. "It should have been you."
Tony rested his forehead against hers. His heart had constricted so tightly, he thought it might burst within him. If he was never sure of anything else in his life, Virginia's words proved one thing – he belonged with Pepper.
In spite of the kiss, Virginia saw that in his face. Even affectionate, Tony was not affected the same way she was.
She understood. "I'm not her, am I?" Her smile was soft, wistful, and resigned.
Brushing his lips against hers one more time, he shook his head. "You're close."
This time, when they resumed dancing, it was a slow dance. Tony pulled her against his chest, her head tucked beneath his chin. "You can't stay with him."
She breathed a sharp, darkly amused, note of laughter. "I've tried. Don't you think I've tried? I don't know how, but he's found me, each time. He's cut me off from everyone so that I don't have anywhere to go. The last time I tried-"
He waited, thinking she'd finish, but she didn't. "What?" he prompted.
Again, she hesitated, but finally continued in a lower voice. "He has people who track me down and bring me back. The last time, we fought about my leaving, which wasn't new, only this time, he knocked me down the stairs." Tony's arms reflexively tightened around her, so tightly, she grunted softly and slipped her hands beneath his jacket to press them more closely against his back.
"I was pregnant." Feeling his body tense for a fight over a long-dead issue, she rushed to speak again. "It was a good thing. I would never want Obadiah to be the father of my child, and as a result of that, I can't have more. I told him from my hospital bed that it would be the last time he laid a hand on me, and for some reason, maybe out of guilt, it has been."
Tony could only hold her, suffering from his own guilt. "In my world, he's dead," he told her. Virginia looked up, eyes widening with surprise. "I killed him. Actually, Pepper and I did."
"Pepper?" A crease appeared between her eyebrows.
"Oh." In the entire night, this had never come up. "That's what I call her. You. A nickname. First day I met her."
She thought. Then, "Why?"
The half-grin he gave her was fond with reminiscence. "She's a spitfire. Seemed to fit."
Upon consideration, Virginia allowed it, if not entirely approving, and bade him continue with the more important story.
"He tried to kill me so he could steal some tech I'd designed. He replicated it, and attacked Pepper with it. I had to fight him off, and with her help, we…"
For a split-second before it was gone, Tony saw the hunger that lurked in her eyes. A fierce and gnawing longing, and it was, he thought, yet another way in which Virginia and Pepper were different.
"Is that why you think she'd be better off without you?"
"No…" And as he thought about it, "Well, in some respects. That isn't the only time she's found herself in trouble because of me. I'm kind of an impulse guy, and in my line of work, that tends to be a liability."
Virginia cocked her head, looking at the house. "Are you Stane- sorry, Stark Industries, C.E.O.?"
Tony winced, and Virginia couldn't help smirking sympathetically. "I am, but I'm also the big brain on campus, in charge of all things creative and innovative-" he flashed his most self-important grin. "And I also fly around in a metal suit saving people's lives, do-gooding, and battling the forces of evil."
She waited for the punchline, and when he didn't give it, Virginia settled into a position of healthy skepticism. She never stopped looking at him, though she did extract herself from his arms and fold her own across her chest in the same position Pepper assumed when puzzling over something troubling.
"I was kidnapped in Afghanistan," he offered the information freely, having a sudden need for her to believe him. "Some shrapnel got embedded in my heart, and I built this thing to replace the car battery that was keeping the shards from killing me." Tony rubbed his chest. "It's not there now, of course, I guess it doesn't exist because I don't, technically, but it's basically a high tech battery, and I use it to fly this suit of armor I built to escape. Then I built subsequent models, destroyed their cell, and have gone on to superhero fame."
Her skepticism began to fade, and as she slowly started nodding, something unknotted in his stomach.
"That's what Obadiah tried to steal?"
"The arc reactor." The absence of the sound of his fingers tapping the casing was disorienting. "He built his own suit. Too big. Kind of garish."
Virginia laughed. "You were in the war?"
They were long past trading questions now, but it didn't matter. "No. I was there giving a demonstration. That was back when S.I. made weapons in addition to its interests in aeronautics, robotics, micro-tech, and the fringe stuff. After what happened to me there I stopped production, and eventually we practically cornered the market on clean energy. There's no war there like there is here, although now the government has its panties in a twist that there's going to be one. That's really what this is about. I won't make weapons for them, so they want to sue me. It's hurting everyone I love, even my employees are suffering, and now there's a baby-"
He didn't see the slap coming. His attention had drifted as he rambled, to a bloom of star shaped blossoms in purple, each the size of his face, when her palm connected hard enough to snap his head to one side.
Touching his hand to the tender skin, Tony looked at Virginia in confusion, and there – there, finally, stood Pepper. Eyes sparking, hands on her hips, she was still too thin and prematurely aged, but her spirit had at last arisen from wherever it had lain dormant all these years. He could not suppress a grin.
"You're telling me," she said, voice low and threatening, and completely ignoring his pleased expression. "That you're the reason there's no war; that you stopped Obadiah from hurting who knows how many others; that you saves lives regularly in a flying metal suit you built." She poked him in the chest, forcing him to step back. "You're telling me that your company traded weapons for clean energy; that you actually care that your employees are affected by what happens to you."
The light died, just a little, and some of the frailty draped over her shoulders again, like a shawl. "You're telling me that there's a Virginia out there who was given the opportunity to succeed, who is trusted and – loved. Who loves you."
He saw it. For the first time, Tony saw it, not in terms of what would be lost without him, but what had been gained with him. Oh yes, this was Pepper. Not his Pepper, but she was still teaching him, making him strong.
With epiphany, his smile had faded, and facing this ghost of his wronged love, it was Tony's turn to bear the marks of desperation on his face and in his eyes.
"A baby?" she asked.
Tony nodded. "I can't be a father," he croaked.
"Why not?"
So many reasons. So damn many. "My father was…"
She scowled again. Pepper. "Not you. Your father made weapons. You don't. If you can change that, why not other things? You can't be here and not believe you don't get to shape your own destiny."
Tony wanted to believe her. More than anything, he wanted to believe that he wouldn't let Pepper, or their child, down, the way his father had let him down. If he couldn't succeed in that most important task, he would rather never go back than return to fail them both.
Virginia saw it, saw his hesitation, and placed a hand on his chest. "You said that- that Pepper never gives up on you. Do you think she would stop supporting you now, when you need her most? When you need each other?"
Of course she wouldn't. As ever, she would be his anchor. Pepper wouldn't change him. She wouldn't expect him to change. But she would hold him accountable, as she had always done, and it fell upon Tony with a staggering weight. His mother had done that; he remembered her suggesting that his father step away from his work so that he could spend time with his son. Tony remembered the annoyance in his father's voice, matched by the frustration on his mother's face, when Howard called for his son's removal from his workshop to a more convenient playtime location.
That would never be him. Not it a million years, he knew that as sure as he drew breath. There would be long nights and sleep filled days, there would be Iron Man and the Avengers, there would be times he became so involved in a project that he eschewed daylight for more than a week. But there would never be a time when any child of his would be pushed aside in favor of those things. He knew this because he practiced it with Pepper, and had, even before they'd become a couple. A child would be more involved, but could he handle that?
Maybe he could. He thought he could.
For the first time in days, Tony drew a full and easy breath.
Virginia smiled. "Go home. Make things right. You'll figure out what to do."
Cupping her cheek again, Tony kissed her forehead. "Thank you." He smiled. "Pepper."
This made her absurdly happy and she beamed at him, but pushed him away, somewhat reluctantly. "Through the back. I don't want them to see you again when I go in. And…" She paused, and he turned around. "Thank you for coming." They were the words of the perfect hostess, but said in the voice of a woman who'd been thrown a lifeline.
Tony was at the door when he heard her behind him again, and stopped.
"If… for some reason you can't get home… come back." Virginia studied her feet, embarrassed by her knowingly vain entreaty, but needing to try. "I know I'm not her, but – I could be close."
He turned back, joining her again. Tony pulled her into a hug and let her cling to him one last time. "Can you prove he's dirty?"
Virginia bit her lip, then nodded. A bit of Obie's conditioning kicking in to keep her restrained.
"Get out of here. Take what proof you can find to the press and tell them what you know; about how he's treated you, too. Get yourself over to Colonel Rhodes. He's stationed at Fort Hamilton, but you can probably find him at the Induction Center downtown, just above the Financial District." He rattled off the address. "Captain America is there, too. I'm sure Stane will have some contingency worked out for this, but if you have enough proof with you and can get those guys to believe you - tell him who you are. What's happened before. Ask for help finding work"
Trepidation mingled with hope that continued to bloom inside her, and she asked, "More of your friends?"
Tony nodded. "Maybe you'll help each other." He kissed her forehead. "Make your own destiny."
It was not something he ever imagined he would say, but tonight, as he left her watching him from the doorway, Tony did believe it was possible.