Pulling a Steve Rogers: a reference to my Strange Midgard Things series, in which Steve is prone to fainting. Quite a lot.
Emily: A reference to Mileage, one of my other works.
Schwellenangst: Fear of embarking on something new; fear of crossing a threshold.
Tony is in the middle of an important afternoon business meeting involving some very important members of the Russian political party (the man at the foot of the table had introduced himself as Mikhail Anasenko, although Tony was at least 87% sure that that man was actually Vladimir Putin, sans bear and AK-47) when his assistant came running in, looking harried. His brow creases in irritation; he'd told her this was a very important meeting, and surely nothing could be so important as to -
"Sir, Mr. Stark, sir, the baby, Miss Pepper, I mean, Mrs., I, she, this morning -" His assistant trips over her words, but Tony is still able to deduce her meaning.
"I'm quite sorry, gentlemen," he says, feeling the stirrings of panic in the pit of his stomach as he stands up and gathers up his files. "I believe we'll have to adjourn this meeting to a later date, I have some rather pressing family obligations at the present moment."
Tony swears he can hear not-Putin twisting off the top to a bottle of vodka before he leaves the room.
There is a snarl of traffic in downtown Manhattan, and Tony gnaws on his fingernails, biting them to the quick, his toes wriggling into the carpet of his car as he eyes the traffic anxiously.
Approximately ten minutes pass before he darts out of the car, ignoring his driver's shouts and protests, and runs the last mile to the hospital.
At the actual hospital, upon being signed in and shooed into the delivery room, Tony pulls a Steve Rogers* and passes out the instant he sees Pepper, white gown and all, squeezing a stress ball, her face bright red as she screams at him that it's about damn time he got there.
Three minutes later, after being slapped and doused with a glass of cold water, Tony sits up, dazed, and manages to tug on the surgical mask and gloves before crawling over to Pepper's bedside, wobbling the whole way.
"Good God, Anthony," she says, huffing and puffing in between syllables, "Vladimir Putin just couldn't wait, could he?"
"Actually, you see, that's a bit of a funny story," he says, clasping one of her hands in his, "the guy looked a lot like Vlad, but -" The rest of his words are drowned out in another frenzy of grunts and strained noises.
When she relaxes back into her reclined position, the nurses and doctor telling her that it's almost over, she fixes Tony with a glare. "And what was that fainting business about, hmm? One would never peg you for a superhero."
Clint pops his head into the delivery room to ask how it's going, and Pepper promptly throws her stress ball at him, nailing him straight in the forehead. Tony is rather impressed.
"Bruce carried me here," she snarls at him, "Hulked out and all. When there was a traffic jam in downtown and a certain someone was entertaining Communist comrades."
"Oh, so that's what the gaping hole in the lobby is -" Tony starts, but his words are drowned out yet again as Pepper clutches his hand in a death grip and screams.
Twenty minutes later, Tony watches the doctor hold up a baby - his baby, he realises with a start - bright red and wrinkly. In fact, if Tony did say so himself, she looked like a rather bloody potato. With hair.
His heart drops when he realises that she isn't crying. They were supposed to cry, weren't they? - and he realises with a start that, despite all his joking and playfulness, he still cares - deeply - for this little being that he hasn't had the chance to know yet. He holds his breath.
The doctor spanks her, only once, before she unhinges that little mouth and begins to wail, displaying a perfect set of lungs with an impressive capacity. Tony falls back in his seat, and is surprised to find that he is crying.
After she has been weighed and measured and cleaned, she lies wrapped up in a little white blanket in Tony's arms, glaring furiously up at him.
He looks into her angry blue eyes, determined, intelligent, confident, thinks about all the names he and Pepper have come up with over the past few months, and is surprised to find that none of them seem to fit her. Paige. Lily. Katherine. He frowns, thinks for a moment, and asks Pepper what she thinks about the name Emily.*
She agrees.