Disclaimer: I have never been to California, so any details have been informed only by the movies and internet research.
Falling asleep wasn't difficult but staying asleep was, with the different bed and everything that had taken up residence in his mind. The first few times he woke he was able to fall asleep again fairly quickly, but as the night dragged on he spent more of it awake than asleep, or so it seemed.
Then Pepper's alarm was going off and she was pulling away to sit up. "Morning," she whispered.
A muffled groan was his reply.
She kissed his temple. "If my schedule doesn't change, I won't be back until after dinner. The spare keys are by the door. Behave yourself and make sure you eat something more than once today."
"Yes, mother," he grumbled, but turned his face out of the pillow to give her a kiss. He watched her with one eye as she efficiently moved around the room in the semi-darkness and softly closed the door as she left.
Tony drifted off after that, then woke with a start from a nightmare, his heart pounding and his skin clammy. The sun had risen fully and the room was almost blindingly bright, so he threw an arm over his eyes while he tried to catch his breath.
When he slowly eased himself off the bed, Friday spoke from his phone. "Boss, your medication."
"Yeah, I know," he said begrudgingly. He dug through his bag until he found the pill bottle Friday had to remind him to pack. Then he sat on the plush carpet, trying to decide whether he would go for a jog later or something. He didn't feel like doing much of anything.
After a long shower, he pulled on some clothes and went in search of coffee. And breakfast. But mostly coffee. Once those immediate needs were addressed, he flopped onto the couch and began flicking through the stuff on his phone that he'd been ignoring.
As expected, most of it was unimportant. There was a message from Natasha about the PA candidates, but she wanted him to actually do something, so it could wait until later. Maybe later he wouldn't feel like his brain was slumbering without notifying the rest of him.
He gave in to the lethargy and closed his eyes for a few minutes that turned into at least thirty.
Then he remembered he needed to check Doc T's schedule. He had Friday project it, adjusting for the time zone difference. In New York it was already afternoon, so he was quickly running out of time if he wanted to avoid the couch for the night. Then again, it was a fairly comfortable couch.
But why risk it when he didn't need to? He'd thought about talking to her before leaving the compound and hadn't on account of time (and also he didn't want her telling him he shouldn't go, but he wasn't quite ready to admit that to himself just yet). Conveniently, she was available in half an hour.
His call was prompt and she picked up the phone just as promptly. "Hey doc," he said.
"Tony," she said warmly. "How's the west coast?"
They fell into comfortable small talk for a few minutes before she deftly brought the conversation around to ask about his abrupt departure. He told her everything that had happened the previous day and what Pepper had said, including their bargain.
"Do you agree that what you said doesn't sound like you?"
"I don't know," he said after a long pause. "Years ago, she would have been right. But so much has happened . . . I'm different now. I thought she knew that."
"How would you describe the way you used to be?"
He chuckled hollowly. "Whatever you've heard is probably true."
"I want to hear it from you," she said encouragingly.
He hesitated. "I . . . once I described myself as a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. I let other people take care of things so I could have fun. I designed weapons because that's what my company did and I never thought twice about it until I got hit by one."
"What has changed?"
"I don't make weapons anymore, that's kind of a big one. I want to make things better, leave the world a better place in whatever way I can after how much I've screwed it up. And I don't do the playboy thing anymore. I try to do right by Pepper, but I'm not always good at it."
"Would you call these changes significant?"
"That's one word for it."
"And Pepper has been with you this entire time?"
"She's been around me the whole time, mostly."
"Would she say that you have changed significantly?"
"I'd like to think so."
"Why aren't you sure?"
"Because I'm not in her head?" he said irritably. "What are you getting at, doc?"
"Are there ways that your behavior hasn't changed? Things that might lead even someone close to you-like Pepper-to think that you aren't as different as you claim?"
The previous night and the way his suit didn't feel quite right came to mind, but he wasn't immediately certain why. He followed the thread, though, and remembered the last time he'd worn a suit, the interview with Christine Everhart. The prep work, the makeup, donning a carefree grin like a mask just before the feed went live. "I'm still mostly the same in public, around other people, for the media," he said slowly.
"Why?"
His answer came out before he could think about it. "There are fewer questions if I act the way people expect me to. I have a reputation, you know."
"What sort of questions do you think would be asked?"
"Like what the fuck is wrong with me. My every move is scrutinized and speculated about; if I do something unexpected, people start talking about how I must be dying or have a secret family or something. When I laid low after Afghanistan, they were sure I had PTSD and was bedridden." He paused, then added, "The dying part was true, once."
"Do you think something is wrong with you?" she asked gently.
He barked a humorless laugh. "What isn't wrong with me? My issues have issues. I am so intricately messed up . . ." He wasn't sure how to complete that thought, but tried anyway. "If I were one of my suits, I'm not even sure there would be anything worth salvaging. Better to melt it down and start over."
"We do not have that option when it comes to our brains, for better or worse," she said. "But some things are improved by wear and tear, like broken-in jeans or a book with pages worn soft by use."
"There are far more things that wear out and break," he objected.
"Our minds are more flexible than that," she said after a pause. "You are more resilient than that, Tony, or you would not still be doing the things you do."
He wanted to believe her, but he wasn't sure he could.
"I'm going to let you go now," she said when he didn't respond. "Are you able to talk again tomorrow at this time?"
He snorted. "I've got nowhere to be."
"Enjoy the rest of your day, and we'll chat more tomorrow."
He hung up and checked his watch. It was getting to be lunchtime; he wasn't hungry yet, but he was feeling restless. He got up and did a few bodyweight exercises, then decided what he needed was a walk.
The street was pleasantly crowded. It was easiest to evade notice when there were some people around but not so many that he felt trapped in the throng. Tony wandered the area around Pepper's condo for a while, stopping at a little deli to grab a sandwich when he was hungry. It was nice to be out and about like a normal person, though part of him was always monitoring his surroundings while Friday kept an eye on things, feeding him a stream of data along the edge of his sunglasses with occasional comments into his earpiece.
He didn't wander back indoors until almost mid afternoon. He whiled away the hours somewhat aimlessly, tweaking Rhodey's suit and his suit and tinkering with the stealth tech programming to determine how to sense its presence. He even watched the videos Natasha sent from the assistant interviews, deciding within a few seconds of seeing each candidate and listening to them speak that he didn't care for most of them, though one might be tolerable.
Pepper let him know she wouldn't be back until after seven, so he waited until seven to scrounge something to eat. He was stretched out on the couch again when she returned.
"Are you trying to tell me something?" she teased lightly, bending over to kiss his forehead as she passed on her way to the bedroom to change.
He rolled off the couch and followed her. "Nope. The couch is much nicer to my old bones than the floor, that's all."
She gave him a skeptical look, then disappeared into the walk-in closet.
"Do you want to see my call history?" he asked with more irritation than was strictly warranted.
"You don't think I know you can make computers say whatever you want them to say?" she said as she reappeared in her pajamas. She stood in front of him and cupped his face in her hands. "Was it a good talk?"
"I think so."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No. How was your day?"
She let go of him and caught him up while he also changed. He thought it seemed early for her to go to bed but he didn't mind. For him it was after eleven, and she'd been up with the birds.
They ended up back in the living room after Pepper decided she wanted some tea, and they chatted about everything and nothing for a while. It was comfortable in a way that being around the others wasn't, and yet . . .
He watched his beautiful, brilliant Pepper as she talked animatedly about something that he'd lost track of and he wondered, not for the first time, if he could ever be the man she deserved.
The thought broke his heart a little. More than a little. He loved her, always had, but he wasn't good at showing it.
"Tony? You look like you're a million miles away." She didn't sound angry. Yet.
"Sorry," he said reflexively. "Are you happy?"
"What?"
"Are you happy?" he repeated. "With work, with life, with . . . us?" he gestured inarticulately, needing something to do with his hands. "I was thinking about how I'm not the, ah, romantic type and how I've never done as well by you as I should, as you deserve, and so maybe it would be better, for you, if we weren't, you know, a thing. If I weren't holding you back." The words tumbled out and as soon as they had he wished he could take them back. Pepper looked thunderstruck.
After a moment of silence, she gave him the look that he'd always thought of as her 'I'm onto you' look. "Tony, are you trying to break up with me?"
He really, really needed something to do with his hands other than roll his empty water glass between his palms, something to look at other than the strange expression marring her pretty face. "No! But, um, maybe yes, if you think that would be best. If you're not happy. I want you to be happy." He sounded like he was pleading with her by the end, and maybe he was.
Pepper's expression was one he couldn't interpret, even with their long years of association. "Oh, Tony," she said sadly. "No, we're not breaking up, not right now, not like this. You don't get to break up with me so soon after insisting we try again."
"But are you happy?" he persisted. "You don't seem happy."
"I think I'd know better than you whether I'm happy. And right now I'm not happy because you're not yourself and I don't understand what's going on."
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and he stared down at his toes digging into the carpet. He was very aware of a temptation to say something snappy, grin, and brush the whole thing off, but she deserved better, deserved his honesty. "Me neither," he admitted.
Pepper moved from her armchair to sit next to him on the couch and gently took the tumbler from his hands. "It's late. Maybe you're just tired." As if they both weren't aware that he regularly saw the wee hours of morning when he was in a good groove.
"Maybe," he echoed, knowing that wasn't the problem even though he didn't know what was.
She leaned against his side and rested her head briefly on his shoulder. "Come on, let's go to bed."
He nodded jerkily. She got up and took their cups to the kitchen. He watched her go, knowing there was a time that those words, this situation, would have thrilled him to the core, but now he felt nothing but a strange sense of weary resignation. Simply rising from the couch seemed like more effort than it was worth.
But, Pepper. If he didn't get up, he wouldn't get to sleep alongside the lovely lady of his life, and for now that reasoning was enough to spur him into motion.
She took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom as if afraid he'd lose his way otherwise. He followed her lead in climbing into bed and settled on his pillow with a sigh. He faced Pepper and she faced him, and her concerned gaze was the last thing he saw before she turned out the light.
His dreams were dark and foreboding, though nothing lingered in his consciousness except a vague sense of unease. He woke early and found he could not sleep again; he wasn't sure what time Pepper was due to rise but thought he should make her breakfast.
It went badly-so badly that the smoke detector is what roused Pepper from bed and she stumbled into the kitchen, wild-eyed and hair everywhere, to find out what was wrong. Tony froze in the act of trying to wave away the smoke from what was supposed to be a crepe that was now charcoal in the pan.
Pepper took in the scene, then shook her head and fetched a chair so she could reach the smoke detector. Once the piercing noise had stopped, she returned the chair to its rightful place and turned to face him over the kitchen island. "Did you just ruin my pan?"
He glanced down at it. "It's possible," he said sheepishly. "I'll have to clean it to find out."
"You do that. I'm taking a shower."
She left without another word and he surveyed the damage. The smoke was already dissipating, but he switched on the fan over the stove to help it along. Then he turned back to the sink and began cleaning up his mess.
It wasn't a very good pan anyway, he had much better ones, he should give her a new one whether this one was ruined or not. He could give her a whole new set. It's not like he couldn't afford it. He was trying to buy an island, after all, and it's not like funding a team of superheroes was cheap, with the facilities, the equipment, the vehicles, and all the support staff, not to mention the hazard pay. Pepper probably ought to get hazard pay when he was around her. But cookware might do.
The pan remained usable once the burned bits were scraped off, but it would never look quite the same. A new one was definitely in order. For now, though, breakfast still needed to happen. He dumped out the rest of the batter (no way was Pepper going to let him try again) and started over.
By the time Pepper returned, fully dressed and impeccably coiffed, the smoke had faded to a barely noticeable haze, sausages were sizzling in the slightly discolored pan, and he was stirring scrambled eggs in a larger skillet. "Morning," he said cautiously. She didn't look angry, but she had an excellent poker face. She had to, having worked under him all those years and now running a multinational tech conglomerate.
"Morning," she replied, setting her shoes beside her chair at the table before stepping into the kitchen. "No more mishaps?"
"No more mishaps," he confirmed. "Just breakfast."
"Thank you, Tony. Did you sleep well?"
They settled into small talk as he dished out the eggs and sausage and they each took some of the fruit he had been getting out when the crepe had gone so horribly wrong. Pepper seemed to be watching him more closely than usual, which made him self-conscious. He blustered his way through, as was his habit, and Pepper appeared satisfied. At least, she didn't comment about their conversation the night before.
She kissed him chastely and bustled off to work. He cleaned up, then changed out of his pajamas. He had a mind to go for a jog in the canyon and it seemed a nice enough day for it.
He had no trouble with traffic, as he was traveling in the opposite direction of the commuters, and arrived before the temperature had risen along with the sun. His phone in one pocket, his keys in the other, and a bottle of water in hand, he started along the route he used to take what felt like a lifetime ago.
The familiar surroundings and the familiar route were reassuring, even as he noticed small changes here and there thanks to the passage of years since he'd last been there. Of course, there were a few changes to him, too; no arc reactor, for instance, and he never used to jog with his AI scanning the vicinity.
Not that there was anything to warn him about. The pair of blonde young women jogging back out to the parking lot as he jogged in-he'd nodded to them, they pretended he didn't exist-were the only other living souls he encountered as he traversed the loop path that wasn't overly long but had some nice views. He would probably never admit to appreciating views of nature rather than (or in addition to) views of lovely people, but there was a reason he'd built his mansion where he did.
At one or two of the trail crossings he considered going further, but decided it was best not to overdo it. Dr. Mann would kill him if he had to call for help because he'd wandered a little too far into a park that, by rights, he should've been nowhere near. At least he was playing it safe by walking as much as he was jogging, and his heart seemed to be cooperating.
When he got back to his car, he decided to go for a drive north up the highway, just because he could. He still had more than an hour before he'd be talking to the doc.
His thoughts wandered somewhat as he considered what she might want to discuss. Their conversations hadn't followed a predictable pattern, and he found it a little unnerving that he didn't know what to expect.
He turned around where the highway bent inland and headed back toward Malibu. He had enough time to get there, but not enough time to be back at Pepper's place before his appointment and he knew it probably wasn't a good idea to have this sort of conversation while driving.
It was either habit or instinct that took him back to where the mansion had been, and he settled in a nook between two large chunks of concrete, out of direct sunlight and overlooking the water.
"Hey doc."
"Hello, Tony. How are you?"
He told her about his morning, how it started poorly but was getting better, and they talked about cookware for a few minutes before he could tell she was preparing to start the serious part of the conversation. He beat her to it. "I tried to break up with Pepper last night. She wouldn't let me," he said in a rush.
There was a palpable pause. "Tell me why you tried to break up with her."
He tried to explain about holding her back, not being as good as she deserved, but the words came reluctantly, if at all, and he couldn't tell if Doc T understood. After that she asked why they'd taken a break before, then what had brought them together in the first place, which turned into recounting the experiences he thought had most changed him and how. Pepper was the only wholly good thing on that list, and he thought that summed up his life fairly accurately. She was an island of goodness in his ocean of shit and the odds that she would emerge untainted grew infinitely smaller by the day.
The last experiences he mentioned were, of course, the disagreement around the Accords and . . . that other thing. If Pepper was an island, the Avengers were a cobbled-together ship that hit the Accords iceberg and they still weren't sure if it would sink or not. He didn't know what metaphor could properly describe what had happened in that silo.
It was easy enough to tell her about the divisions, the fight, his disgust at his teammates-turned-opponents' imprisonment, his decision to follow Rogers to help however he could even if it meant dying alongside him. And then . . .
"Tony, take a deep breath for me," a voice said into his ear. She talked him through a few breaths, then asked abruptly, "How well have you been sleeping?"
Her change of subject completely threw him off. "What?"
"The first time we met you hadn't slept and said you'd been having trouble with insomnia. Is that still a problem for you?"
"Yes," he said shortly.
"You also mentioned having 'anxiety things'. Is that what you were experiencing a few moments ago?"
When he answered in the affirmative, she asked him to describe what happened, how he felt when he experienced such episodes, and how often they'd been occurring. Only after that did she ask gently, "Do you think you can finish your story now?"
He took a deep, bracing breath and tried to ignore the anxious flutter of his heart. "I'll try," he said firmly. Remembering that conversation with Wilson, he carefully, methodically, told her exactly what had happened or at least what he remembered; he wasn't going to claim that there weren't details he left off that he either hadn't noticed or had forgotten.
From the moment they stepped into that missile silo until his rescue, all of it spilled out in more or less chronological order, though some bits were hazy and blurred together. He wasn't sure if that was an effect of his rage or the blows to his head or both.
When he reached the end and lapsed into silence, he felt a little lighter for having told her the whole story. She was one of very few people who might know how the hell he should be dealing with the whole mess.
"Thank you for telling me this," Doc T said gravely after a few breaths of silence. "How does it make you feel?"
"Guilty," was his primary response, then he added, "Angry. Betrayed."
"How do you feel when you see Steve while these memories are on your mind?"
"Hurt," he said slowly, then hesitated. He could feel his breathing accelerate as he tried to evade the name of the gut wrenching sensation associated with the sight of the shield brandished over him. "Afraid," he said on an exhale before he could think better of it.
There was no immediate response from the other end of the line and he felt ashamed of his admission, then was irritated with himself for his shame. "What kind of a person is afraid of Captain fucking America?" he snapped.
"I don't know, what kind of person?" she asked.
"Usually, it's the bad ones," he said bitterly.
"Do you think you're a bad person?"
"I used to design and manufacture weapons. I semi-regularly kill things, sometimes even people. One of my creations tried to wipe out the human race. I'm pretty sure that doesn't make me a good person."
"But does it make you a bad one?"
"Most people seem to think so."
"I'm more interested in what you think."
"Why would it matter what I think? People will go on believing whatever the hell they want to believe."
"For my sake, then. I would greatly value your answer to that question."
Tony sighed heavily. "Do I think I'm a bad person?" he repeated slowly. "Sometimes. Yes, sometimes I do." His voice trailed off and he stared vacantly out to sea.
"What about the rest of the time?" she prodded gently.
"The rest of the time I try to pretend those times don't exist. I try to pretend that I belong with the do-gooders of this world. Like Captain America, the paragon of all that is right and good." Even he could hear the sarcasm practically dripping from his voice. "I'm a loose cannon, someone not to be trusted with information like what actually happened to my parents. After all, the only person I fight for is myself."
"Do you really think so?"
"No," he scoffed. "But Rogers does, and good old Stevie boy is never wrong about anything, or so he'd have you think." He drank the rest of the water in his bottle. "Before you ask, no, I don't believe he thinks he's always right. He just usually acts like it, the smug bastard."
"That irritates you."
"Yes," he said shortly. "If you're wrong, you need to cop to it. He's fucked up a lot of things, especially lately, and all he's offered is a half-assed apology for not telling me about my parents."
"Do you always cop to your mistakes?"
"I haven't always, no. I'm working on it, though. Pepper and Rhodey get on me about that."
"It's good to have people who will keep you accountable."
"Yeah." He lapsed into silence, feeling like he'd run out of words.
"Tony, I'm going to send you a questionnaire I'd like you to answer before we talk again. Will you be able to call again tomorrow?"
He shrugged before remembering she couldn't see him. "I've got nothing else planned," he said lamely.
"I'll put you down for the same time again. If you would answer the questions before you go to bed tonight, that will give me time to review them before we talk tomorrow."
He agreed and she hung up. He slowly climbed to his feet, his muscles protesting loudly and at length, the sun hot on his uncovered head and shoulders. It was so far past noon it was nearly one and his body couldn't quite make up its mind whether food was a good idea or not. From the slight dizziness he felt as he stood, food and more water needed to happen sooner rather than later.
He stopped at a nearby local place where he scored a table in a corner to mostly evade notice, though his waitress kept giving him long looks when she thought he wasn't watching. Her service otherwise was impeccable, so he didn't comment on it. When he'd eaten and she brought his bill, she said, "I'm sorry, but do I know you? You look really familiar."
"I used to live near here," he said casually, waiting until she'd set the slip of paper on the table before he picked it up.
"Yes, of course, that must be it. Sorry to bother you. I hope you enjoyed your lunch."
He nodded, making a show of wiping his mouth with the napkin until she left him alone. He paid with a fifty dollar bill left on the table as he made a quick exit. Hopefully if she ever saw him again, all she'd remember was the huge tip.
Notes:
The "intricately messed up" descriptor was borrowed from the School of Movies Age of Ultron podcast, said by Sharon Shaw at about 30 minutes in.
Tony went jogging in the Zuma and Trancas Canyons, located near where his house was in the movies.
The local place where he ate was inspired by someplace I found while exploring the area via Google Maps, but I forgot to make note of the name. I think it might have been the Sunset Restaurant.