Week 5

For once during her years working as a personal assistant does she actually feel like one. Obadiah signs forms on time and goes to meetings while she's told to wait outside and do coffee runs for him, pick up his dry-cleaning, go check the letterbox. Sure it's everything she's signed up for but only now is she beginning to realize how much she absolutely detests it.

One good thing to come out of this is that she doesn't get held back at the office and she can get home before 10pm. It's a refreshing change but it still makes her stomach knot. Obadiah's kind enough to let her take the day off (though technically it is a day off being a Saturday and all) and frankly she's thankful to get away from him.

Rhodey check up on her, though she's half certain that he needs the company as much as she does, the search for Tony's taken it's toll on him as much as it has on her. They sit in silence munching on their respective Subway sandwiches while lounging around on beach chairs on her balcony, staring off at the deep blue sky as if it was just a normal day.

"He'll be okay, you know," Rhodey finally says as if he can sense the tension that Pepper's been building up for the past month.

She swallows thickly and looks over at him for reassurance. He offers it to her in the form of a weak smile that mirrors her feelings exactly. "He always is,"

There's something about the lack of conviction in his voice that makes her eyes sting but she cracks a smile anyway to try and act like she believes it too. She wants to believe it, but it's been a month and no word has been heard since, and Obadiah isn't going to do anything about it not when he's in charge and the power lies in his hands. The thought actually makes her skin crawl, that part of Tony's survival may actually lie in this mans hands while he revels in the power that Tony couldn't care enough for.

When Rhodey leaves something compels her to drive all the way up to his Malibu mansion with a bag of clothes by her side. Within a few minutes of arriving and she's found herself curled up in a fetal position on top of the duvet sheeting Tony's bed. It smells crisp, clean and completely untouched. His pillows hold more of his musky scent and she leans her head into the soft fabric. For a second it nearly feels like he's there, in the house at least, or that she's in the workshop and the thick smell of grease, oil, sweat and coffee is overwhelming her.

And a second later the feeling is gone and she guesses he brings home all those girls because the bed is too large to sleep in alone without feeling like a hermit crab in a tiny shell. The thought that maybe Tony was just lonely had never crossed her mind. Was he lonely now?

It takes her five minutes to fall asleep while her mind swirls with thoughts of him.

Week 6

The flickering fluorescent white light from a second hand lamp has become the only source of light that he's grown used to. He's lost track of time by this point, clocks aren't handed to prisoners, all they get is a deadline and an incentive to reach it. A month and a half and Tony Stark has acknowledged the fact that he's been reduced to that. A prisoner. Imprisoned by his own creations.

Under different circumstances he'd probably laugh over it and find a way to turn it into one of those stories you tell when you're just a little too drunk and surrounded by girls who will coo at anything you say. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those circumstances.

Pieces of his… armor, was he calling it that? May as well. Anyway right, his armor littered the room but without any real assembly the Ten Rings terrorists - or lap dogs as he'd grown used to calling them - couldn't tell the difference. Thankfully.

And it was all going swell until they nearly burned half of Yinsen's face off and Tony had only become once again painfully aware of the value of his life. It hadn't taken long to realize that he was a liability waiting to be taken out once he'd exhausted his purpose, and if they couldn't bring him down, they could always begin with people he invested more care in. More care in than himself at least.

That was what made his fingers shake as he welded the metal pieces together, what made the sweat bead his forehead out of sheer anxiety. The knowledge that they could send one of his pretty pristine pistols down in the direction of Malibu and have it tipped against the strawberry blonde hair of his PA. The screams he imagined.

She was more than family to him, she'd become the reason to survive. It wasn't about him anymore, it wasn't even about his company it was about her. Because there wasn't any sort of happy ending to this otherwise, and giving up so wasn't his style.

That night he dreamed of freckles and a laugh he felt like he was losing touch with.