Pepper was the first to find out about his depression. It was after the whole mess with the paladium poisoning. She had ranted and raved about his idiocy in not telling her when she began questioning his reasons for keeping it a secret. That, coupled with his habit of self-medicating with scotch and his self-deprecating remarks, made it very small jump from 'idiocy' to 'no self-preservation and possibly suicidal'. The first, he had to admit, was true. The second was considered for all of two seconds before being dismissed.

The pros and cons to having Pepper Potts in his life were of a wide variety and Tony didn't know to be grateful for her actually giving two shits about him or to keep her at arms length. After all few people cared about him or bothered to stay for so long before leaving.

Although something in him chilled at the thought of her leaving if she knew how weak he was, he pulled up the sleeves of his AC/DC shirt and showed her his scars to prove how he was over harming himself purposefully. He wasn't sure what was going through his mind at the time and for once followed his instincts over the logic his brain was screaming at him.

~linebreak~

He was still amazed by the fact that she stayed even after seeing how broken he truly was. She promised him that day that no matter what happened, or how many times he mesed up she wouldn't leave. He believed her. And she never left.

Peper POV

Pepper knew that working for Tony Stark would be insane and quite often ridiculous-as was proven with the cat incident- but never had she thought it would come to THIS.

The man refused to tell anyone for almost a year that the very thing saving his life was killing him, and then proves all her fears about his lack of self worth right, just by pulling up a sleeve! She wasn't sure if she wanted to strangle him or hunt down whoever it was that would dare hurt her Tony and give him such a low opinion of himself.

Wait. When the HELL did he become her Tony? Well, whenever THAT development happened, she would figure out later.

Tony Stark had trust issues. In fact, often, they had their own issues. Not that she really could blame him after that mess with Stane... but his faith in her was... astounding. And slightly scary if she was being honest. Trust had to be earned and she wasn't exactly sure what she did to gain Tony's so easily. (Later he would tell her it was because she was there and because she she saw through the bullshit that was his mask to the man underneath a long time before he showed it to her and she still stayed).

Really, she was clueless to what she could do, so she did what she did best. She stayed. She helped him through the hard days when the voices were so loud he would just hide in bed. If she could deal with crazy, she could with this too. And really, that was all that mattered.

A/N so pepper is awesome. Im proud of this. Next chapter is steve! So yeah.