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firmament2009-05-04 09:31 pm
gorgeousnerd) wrote in firmament2009-05-04 09:31 pm
"Welcome Back, Ms. Stark", Iron Man (movieverse), PG-13, girl!Tony/Pepper.
Title: Welcome Back, Ms. Stark
Fandom: Iron Man (movieverse)
Rating: PG-13 for language and disturbing concepts (discussion/vague depiction of rape).
Length: About 3400 words.
Characters/Pairings: Girl!Tony/Pepper, other movie characters.
Summary: Pepper Potts waited for Tony Stark to come back, even after she was in right in front of her.
Notes: My schedule filled up, so instead of writing the fics I intended to, I finished the girl!Tony one I had lying around.
Welcome Back, Ms. Stark
The woman's name was listed on her resume as Virginia Potts, but she made it clear very early on that it was to be "Pepper" or "Miss Potts". (She didn't seem to care for "Ms.", which Tony preferred in combination with her own nickname; "Antoinette" was too much of a mouthful, and too French.) Tony didn't find it too difficult to follow Pepper's wishes, which was good, because Tony's wishes always won out.
Tony discovered that employing a female assistant was refreshing. She'd hired men for years, but they'd always been very reluctant to clean up after her one-night stands. Particularly the male ones. Of course, Pepper was a very tolerant person, so maybe it wasn't a gender issue so much as a personality one.
Before long, Miss Potts was as much a fixture at Tony's houses as Jarvis was. Considering Tony considered Jarvis as good a friend as Rhodey, it was probably the closest thing to a compliment she would give anyone.
-
Tony was late – again - and there was a half-naked reporter in her living room.
Pepper peeked out from the door of her office, which Tony had given her as a token gesture and she only used to sneak up on visitors. She was half-tempted to leave the woman with Jarvis and send in the driver once she was dressed. Tony was in the shop; she'd never know one way or the other, as long as the woman didn't wander downstairs. Tony never noticed.
Before she could continue that line of thought, Pepper grabbed the hangers from the door on which they were hung and stepped out. It was just plain luck that the reporter - Christine? - was hovering toward one of Jarvis's displays and didn't notice.
"That's Jarvis," she said aloud. "He runs the house."
Christine whirled around. "You must be the famous Pepper Potts."
Famous. Cute.
"After all these years, Tony still has you picking up the dry cleaning?"
"I do anything and everything that Ms. Stark requires. Including, occasionally, taking out the trash."
The reporter didn't even give her the luxury of a flinch. "Tell me, Miss Potts, have you and Tony ever..."
Pepper smiled. "Ms. Stark is my employer, and that is the extent of our relationship."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I didn't consent to an interview." She waved a hand toward the stairs. "I'm sure Ms. Stark wouldn't mind if you used her bedroom to change."
"Between us girls, right?" Christine's voice rang with condescension. "You can tell me."
Pepper just smiled.
-
They stopped the painkillers long before the hole in Tony's chest had healed. Yinsin translated their brief excuse - they'd only used enough to keep her from going into shock, and she was lucky to get anything – but Tony read the gaze of the captor without assistance. His eyes moved up and down her body, and when they paused over her chest, she knew he wasn't looking at the hook-ups for the electromagnet.
So when she refused to help build the Jericho - like she was going to say yes - she wasn't surprised when the bag was shoved over her head and she was bent over her makeshift bed. But that didn't stop the tears from springing to her eyes when the too-big trousers were shoved down and agony followed.
Anyone in the Nine Rings would have thought, from hearing her sobs, that they were scaring her into submission. Only Pepper or Rhodey would have recognized the real emotion that lay beneath.
-
When the plane opened, Pepper smiled. And she hoped that's all Tony would see. She'd done her best to clear her eyes of any hints of water, but seeing the plane land was enough to get her choked up.
Tony sat in a wheelchair at the back of the plane while Rhodey stood by her side. Her right arm was in a sling, but that didn't stop her from ignoring Rhodey's hand when she pushed to her feet. She also stepped forward before Rhodey could wrap his arm around her shoulder or try to hold her up in some other way.
Before Pepper knew it, Tony was standing in front of her. "Your eyes are red."
"Yes," Pepper said, then waited for the snappy follow-up.
It didn't come. Instead, Tony's eyes moved away from Pepper's face and in the direction of the waiting car, but Pepper could tell that there was something else she was seeing. Judging by the way her jaw clenched, saying that she didn't like was she was looking at would have been an understatement.
Another breath, and Tony relaxed. She didn't look back at Pepper. "Tears for your long-lost boss?"
"Tears of joy. I hate job hunting."
Tony finally cracked a hint of a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. Pepper's stomach churned. Tony had built a shell while she was away, and Pepper wasn't sure even she'd be allowed in.
-
Tony went straight home from the airport. Well, almost, but a drive-thru didn't really count as a stop. Pepper tried to insist upon a hospital, but the glowing circle warming between Tony's breasts called for a different course of action. One she couldn't share.
Jarvis was blunt, as usual. "Did you have fun on your little get-away?"
"Vacation's over," Tony said, not taking her eyes away from her displays. "It's time to work."
-
Pepper had been hearing noises in the basement for days after Tony's return. That in itself wasn't weird; Tony's hot rod was still incomplete, and that was only the latest of projects. But since Tony didn't seem inclined to go to the office – or anywhere else, for that matter – Pepper had nothing to do but listen. She only went down to give Tony her morning espresso, and Tony was always hiding when she did. No one had to spell that out for her.
She'd stayed away for nearly a week, but when she heard crashes accompanied by a shout and followed by silence, Pepper decided it was time to intrude.
Tony was lying on a gurney, surrounded by monitors making distressed noises. Her skin was nearly blue, and it wasn't a reflection off the arc reactor...although there appeared to be two sitting around, one lying on top of Tony's bared chest, and one on the ground, directly under her slumped hand.
Pepper opened the door, then ran straight for Tony. She picked up the glowing circle that was closest and fished for the connection in the metal hole. There was a liquid of some kind – and boy, did it reek – but Pepper did her best to ignore it.
"Come on," she muttered, her racing heart filling her ears. "Come on!"
There was a jolt as the cord clicked into place, and Tony opened her eyes and gasped. The monitors picked up a rhythm again.
"Tony?" Pepper asked, feeling her neck for a pulse. Even though she could see and hear the monitors just fine. "Can you hear me?"
A wheeze, then a nod. "Pepper."
"What happened?"
"I needed..." Tony waved a limp hand at the floor. "It wasn't going to be enough."
"For what?"
Tony looked away, and Pepper felt her throat close up.
"Talk to me," Pepper said. "Please."
A heavy hand swept strands of hair off patches of sweat on Tony's forehead. "You don't want to hear it."
"But..."
God, why wouldn't Tony look at her? Pepper's face had to be exposed right now, had to be showing each and every thought she'd had over the past few days. Tony could always read her like she was a schematic or blueprint, so why wasn't she even trying?
"Thank you, Miss Potts. That will be all."
-
It wasn't until the flaps on the back of the legs started sticking for no reason that Tony realized she hadn't had a drop since she'd come back. And since she hadn't had anything to drink while in captivity, she'd been forced into sobriety for nearly half a year.
Okay, so it wasn't the flaps, exactly. If Tony had been able to sleep properly, she would have seen that one of the gears had cracked and needed replacing, and it would have been a five-minute fix. But Tony hadn't been sleeping, so she threw her wrench at Dummy and ran upstairs to find Pepper. Thanks to the fact that it was two in the morning, Pepper wasn't there, and the fully-stocked liquor cabinet in the kitchen was.
It was the first time in two months and three days that Tony hadn't worked on the suit during a free waking moment.
-
Pepper answered her phone before she opened her eyes, but her voice was clear. "Hello?"
"Can you check on Tony?"
"Rhodey?" She cracked an eye and checked the green display by her bed. "What's wrong?"
Rhodey cleared his throat. "I got a call from her a few minutes ago, but I was in the control tower, so I couldn't pick up. I think she was trying to call you, considering she said your name about fifty times."
Pepper pushed the blankets away with her free hand and got to her feet. "You think? You don't know?"
"She sounded..." He paused. "She was drunk, Pepper."
That stopped her in her tracks. Tony, drunk? The woman who could down five scotches in an hour and not even walk funny?
"I'm going over there right now," Pepper said, slipping into her shoes. "I'll call you later."
-
The vodka bottle was so far away. How had it moved? Tony had been holding it, hadn't she?
"Pepper," she said. "Pepper, get me the bottle, Pepper."
Why wasn't Pepper doing anything? Where was Pepper?
"Tony?"
She tried to look up, but her eyelids were so heavy. "Pepper? The bottle."
One of her eyelids jerked upward, and she could see a hint of red hair amongst the swimming blurs in front of her eyes. "Can you stand up?"
Tony laughed. "I'm sitting. No standing."
"Let's get you cleaned up." Pepper crouched down.
"Have a drink first."
"I'll pass."
"But..." Tony closed her eyes. It seemed to be the only way to get the room to stop spinning.
-
Pepper sighed and picked the now-unconscious Tony up. There was no way that she was going to make it up the stairs to the bedroom, so she didn't even bother trying; the couch would probably be just as comfortable. Certainly, it was easier to prop Tony's head up, which would prevent choking if vomit came into play.
Since Tony was a compact 5'4”, and Pepper wasn't much bigger, Pepper took the unoccupied end of the couch. There was no way she was going to leave her boss alone for the rest of the night, whether she dozed off or ended up staring for every remaining minute.
-
Sunlight breached Tony's lids and assaulted the eyes beneath, sending pain down the optic nerves and into her brain. She furrowed down her eyebrows and gave an incoherent verbal announcement equivalent to "fuck you" to the sun.
A female voice mumbled in response.
Tony managed to raise one eyelid enough to see Pepper glowing at the end of the couch. That sight, she decided, was enough to attempt to lift the other. Tony realized that the white upholstery was reflecting, but even so, the light surrounded Pepper – hell, embraced seemed more appropriate. She seemed to have an aura around her.
And that's when Tony knew she hadn't sobered up completely. Only alcohol made her sappy.
Sitting up confirmed her suspicions; the room spun around enough to make her go cross-eyed. But that didn't stop her from going over to Pepper. As Tony approached, her eyes cleared enough for her to see that Pepper was wearing pajama pants with cartoon monkeys on them, although she was mostly curled up under a work blazer. A lock of her hair had fallen out of the do she had swept up, and Tony found herself reaching out to push it out of Pepper's face.
"Tony."
She jumped and stopped her hand in mid-air. But Pepper groaned and snuggled closer to the couch, and Tony stepped back. She looked at the floor for a moment, then walked for the stairs, the sound of her bare feet muffled by the tile.
-
For several days, Tony had been sitting in front of her hot rod every time Pepper had delivered the espresso. She'd even spoken in Pepper's presence. Pepper wasn't sure what had changed, but maybe Tony had just needed a bender to get her back in action. It wasn't what she would recommend – in fact, she'd been firmly against Tony's alcohol usage for years, even if she kept it quiet – but it was such a relief to talk to her again that she couldn't help but be happy.
Until she came down one morning to see the glass wall completely shattered, and Tony was nowhere to be found.
Obadiah's office told Pepper that no meetings between Ms. Stark and Mr. Stane's were in the appointment book. Rhodey said that he'd spoken to her the day after the drunken phone call, but not since. Pepper's own schedule was blank, just like it had been since Tony's disappearance and return, but that didn't stop her from staring at it every morning that Tony wasn't in the basement. She knew Tony wouldn't want her to call the police, but she clutched her cell phone every single day she stepped into the Malibu mansion.
It was only on the third day that Jarvis spoke to her.
"You needn't worry," he said, and even though he sounded more smug than ever, Pepper's shoulders loosened. "I spoke with Tony an hour ago."
"Where is she?" Pepper asked. Her voice barely shook.
"I expect she'll return soon."
Pepper opened her mouth, but she closed it again. Jarvis wasn't going to tell her anything because Tony didn't want her to know.
She set her jaw, but she didn't put her cell phone away.
-
Gulmira's landscape might have looked as nice as Yinsin's description, but as Tony flew in, she only saw the bullet holes in the walls and the corpses lining the streets. And when she got closer, she strained to see the faces of the members of the Nine Rings and nothing else.
When she recognized some henchmen dragging men up against a wall, she landed hard, the metal of her suit shuddering as it took the impact. Bullets bounced off of her torso and her arms, but she only felt dents pressing through the body suit she wore underneath. And then she stopped feeling them at all as she saw the men's faces, contorted with anger.
The terrorists standing near the men flew through the air as she pointed her stabilizers in their direction, as did the ones standing by themselves. The men pointing guns at the heads of the women were just as easily dispatched, thanks to Jarvis's targeting systems. But Tony felt no sense of justice...or anything, for that matter. She felt like an extension of the suit, like the guidance system or even the main framework: moving when she had to, dead when she didn't.
An alarm blared, and on the display, she saw a red circle where one of the men was hiding behind a wall. She grabbed him without delay and threw him at the ground at her feet.
His eyes, wide with fear, looked her in the face, then at her only exposed part.
The arc reactor.
-
Before Tony had disappeared, Pepper checked the financial news and her emails on the couch in the Malibu house every morning they were there because she liked to look out at the waves. The night that Obadiah had woken her up with the news of Tony's first disappearance, she had driven out to the house and stared at the water until she passed out, and did so for every night after.
On the evening of the third night that Tony was gone again, Pepper fell asleep on the couch instead of going home. She awoke to a crash in the basement, and almost before her eyes were open, she was running for the stairs.
The whirring and clanking became deafening as she got closer, probably because there wasn't any barrier between the stairs and the rest of the basement anymore. But she'd heard plenty of industrial sounds before, so she continued down without so much as putting her hands to her ears.
As the room came into view, Pepper wasn't sure what she was seeing, not at first. The robots were yanking at a red metal suit on a platform, and she stared at it for a moment, wondering if Tony had set automatic repairs to go off before she'd left.
But the suit pulled away from the robots holding its arms, and it reached up and pulled what looked like the head, and Tony's shaggy hair fell down the back. It tangled around the tie in her hair and hooked in the various grooves in the suit.
Tony's head sagged forward, and the robots grabbed at her arms again. The suit was dented in several places, but even though the robots yanked so hard that Pepper thought they were going to dislocate her shoulders, Tony didn't seem to notice. Or care.
"What's going on?" Pepper called out, climbing over the glass as carefully as she could in her heels.
Tony didn't give any indication that she'd heard.
"Tony!"
Again, nothing.
Pepper ran forward, ignoring the slight wobble in her ankles, and into Tony's line of vision. Or rather, what would be Tony's line of vision if she looked up from the floor.
Her face was pale, and thinner than Pepper remembered, but then, she couldn't remember the last time that Tony had eaten in front of her.
"I nearly killed him."
Pepper nearly missed the words over the whir of the robots. It was only years of practice that allowed her to pick out Tony's words.
"What?" she asked.
Tony didn't look up. "I don't even know his name. But I nearly beat his head in."
"I don't--"
"Chasing him didn't help. Beating him didn't..."
The robots got the arms free, and from there, the rest of it started coming off. Some of the pieces bent with a scream that made Pepper wince, but again, Tony didn't notice at all. Soon, Tony was standing around in a black, form-fitting body suit that showed just how much weight she'd lost; her curves were still there, and so were most of the muscles in her arms and legs, but her shoulders jutted outward far more than they used to.
"Are you okay?" Pepper asked as the platform sank into the floor. Her voice choked slightly.
Tony's eyes flickered upward, and for the first time, Pepper realized just how big and brown they were.
"I was held captive in a cave for three months by a terrorist organization called the Nine Rings. When I refused to build the leader a duplicate of the Jericho, one of his underlings raped me."
Pepper flinched, but Tony didn't stop talking.
"I said I'd build it for them, but instead, I built a suit and fought my way out. I built this suit the minute I came back, and I thought it was because I wanted to keep my weapons out of their hands. But when I flew over there, I realized that it was because I wanted...I wanted to kill him. The underling."
"But you didn't," Pepper said, and it wasn't a question.
Tony shook her head, and a lock of hair fell into her face. She ignored it. "I punched him. Twice. The suit...his nose and his jaw were broken. And then I stopped."
Pepper wanted to ask why, but her eyes fell on Tony's gloves. Even though they were red, she could see dark streaks across the knuckles.
"What about Rhodey?" she asked instead.
Tony's eyes narrowed. "What?"
Pepper leaned forward and brushed the hair off of Tony's face. "Did you tell Rhodey about this...what happened to you?"
"No."
"That's what I thought." Pepper stepped so close their noses were almost touching. "I've been so worried about you."
She wasn't entirely sure what happened next, whether Tony had instigated the kiss or she had. But the way Tony stared deep into her eyes, even while they were kissing, and the way she wrapped her arms around Pepper's back told her exactly what she'd been wanting to know for months.
Tony was back.
Finally.
Fandom: Iron Man (movieverse)
Rating: PG-13 for language and disturbing concepts (discussion/vague depiction of rape).
Length: About 3400 words.
Characters/Pairings: Girl!Tony/Pepper, other movie characters.
Summary: Pepper Potts waited for Tony Stark to come back, even after she was in right in front of her.
Notes: My schedule filled up, so instead of writing the fics I intended to, I finished the girl!Tony one I had lying around.
The woman's name was listed on her resume as Virginia Potts, but she made it clear very early on that it was to be "Pepper" or "Miss Potts". (She didn't seem to care for "Ms.", which Tony preferred in combination with her own nickname; "Antoinette" was too much of a mouthful, and too French.) Tony didn't find it too difficult to follow Pepper's wishes, which was good, because Tony's wishes always won out.
Tony discovered that employing a female assistant was refreshing. She'd hired men for years, but they'd always been very reluctant to clean up after her one-night stands. Particularly the male ones. Of course, Pepper was a very tolerant person, so maybe it wasn't a gender issue so much as a personality one.
Before long, Miss Potts was as much a fixture at Tony's houses as Jarvis was. Considering Tony considered Jarvis as good a friend as Rhodey, it was probably the closest thing to a compliment she would give anyone.
Tony was late – again - and there was a half-naked reporter in her living room.
Pepper peeked out from the door of her office, which Tony had given her as a token gesture and she only used to sneak up on visitors. She was half-tempted to leave the woman with Jarvis and send in the driver once she was dressed. Tony was in the shop; she'd never know one way or the other, as long as the woman didn't wander downstairs. Tony never noticed.
Before she could continue that line of thought, Pepper grabbed the hangers from the door on which they were hung and stepped out. It was just plain luck that the reporter - Christine? - was hovering toward one of Jarvis's displays and didn't notice.
"That's Jarvis," she said aloud. "He runs the house."
Christine whirled around. "You must be the famous Pepper Potts."
Famous. Cute.
"After all these years, Tony still has you picking up the dry cleaning?"
"I do anything and everything that Ms. Stark requires. Including, occasionally, taking out the trash."
The reporter didn't even give her the luxury of a flinch. "Tell me, Miss Potts, have you and Tony ever..."
Pepper smiled. "Ms. Stark is my employer, and that is the extent of our relationship."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I didn't consent to an interview." She waved a hand toward the stairs. "I'm sure Ms. Stark wouldn't mind if you used her bedroom to change."
"Between us girls, right?" Christine's voice rang with condescension. "You can tell me."
Pepper just smiled.
They stopped the painkillers long before the hole in Tony's chest had healed. Yinsin translated their brief excuse - they'd only used enough to keep her from going into shock, and she was lucky to get anything – but Tony read the gaze of the captor without assistance. His eyes moved up and down her body, and when they paused over her chest, she knew he wasn't looking at the hook-ups for the electromagnet.
So when she refused to help build the Jericho - like she was going to say yes - she wasn't surprised when the bag was shoved over her head and she was bent over her makeshift bed. But that didn't stop the tears from springing to her eyes when the too-big trousers were shoved down and agony followed.
Anyone in the Nine Rings would have thought, from hearing her sobs, that they were scaring her into submission. Only Pepper or Rhodey would have recognized the real emotion that lay beneath.
When the plane opened, Pepper smiled. And she hoped that's all Tony would see. She'd done her best to clear her eyes of any hints of water, but seeing the plane land was enough to get her choked up.
Tony sat in a wheelchair at the back of the plane while Rhodey stood by her side. Her right arm was in a sling, but that didn't stop her from ignoring Rhodey's hand when she pushed to her feet. She also stepped forward before Rhodey could wrap his arm around her shoulder or try to hold her up in some other way.
Before Pepper knew it, Tony was standing in front of her. "Your eyes are red."
"Yes," Pepper said, then waited for the snappy follow-up.
It didn't come. Instead, Tony's eyes moved away from Pepper's face and in the direction of the waiting car, but Pepper could tell that there was something else she was seeing. Judging by the way her jaw clenched, saying that she didn't like was she was looking at would have been an understatement.
Another breath, and Tony relaxed. She didn't look back at Pepper. "Tears for your long-lost boss?"
"Tears of joy. I hate job hunting."
Tony finally cracked a hint of a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. Pepper's stomach churned. Tony had built a shell while she was away, and Pepper wasn't sure even she'd be allowed in.
Tony went straight home from the airport. Well, almost, but a drive-thru didn't really count as a stop. Pepper tried to insist upon a hospital, but the glowing circle warming between Tony's breasts called for a different course of action. One she couldn't share.
Jarvis was blunt, as usual. "Did you have fun on your little get-away?"
"Vacation's over," Tony said, not taking her eyes away from her displays. "It's time to work."
Pepper had been hearing noises in the basement for days after Tony's return. That in itself wasn't weird; Tony's hot rod was still incomplete, and that was only the latest of projects. But since Tony didn't seem inclined to go to the office – or anywhere else, for that matter – Pepper had nothing to do but listen. She only went down to give Tony her morning espresso, and Tony was always hiding when she did. No one had to spell that out for her.
She'd stayed away for nearly a week, but when she heard crashes accompanied by a shout and followed by silence, Pepper decided it was time to intrude.
Tony was lying on a gurney, surrounded by monitors making distressed noises. Her skin was nearly blue, and it wasn't a reflection off the arc reactor...although there appeared to be two sitting around, one lying on top of Tony's bared chest, and one on the ground, directly under her slumped hand.
Pepper opened the door, then ran straight for Tony. She picked up the glowing circle that was closest and fished for the connection in the metal hole. There was a liquid of some kind – and boy, did it reek – but Pepper did her best to ignore it.
"Come on," she muttered, her racing heart filling her ears. "Come on!"
There was a jolt as the cord clicked into place, and Tony opened her eyes and gasped. The monitors picked up a rhythm again.
"Tony?" Pepper asked, feeling her neck for a pulse. Even though she could see and hear the monitors just fine. "Can you hear me?"
A wheeze, then a nod. "Pepper."
"What happened?"
"I needed..." Tony waved a limp hand at the floor. "It wasn't going to be enough."
"For what?"
Tony looked away, and Pepper felt her throat close up.
"Talk to me," Pepper said. "Please."
A heavy hand swept strands of hair off patches of sweat on Tony's forehead. "You don't want to hear it."
"But..."
God, why wouldn't Tony look at her? Pepper's face had to be exposed right now, had to be showing each and every thought she'd had over the past few days. Tony could always read her like she was a schematic or blueprint, so why wasn't she even trying?
"Thank you, Miss Potts. That will be all."
It wasn't until the flaps on the back of the legs started sticking for no reason that Tony realized she hadn't had a drop since she'd come back. And since she hadn't had anything to drink while in captivity, she'd been forced into sobriety for nearly half a year.
Okay, so it wasn't the flaps, exactly. If Tony had been able to sleep properly, she would have seen that one of the gears had cracked and needed replacing, and it would have been a five-minute fix. But Tony hadn't been sleeping, so she threw her wrench at Dummy and ran upstairs to find Pepper. Thanks to the fact that it was two in the morning, Pepper wasn't there, and the fully-stocked liquor cabinet in the kitchen was.
It was the first time in two months and three days that Tony hadn't worked on the suit during a free waking moment.
Pepper answered her phone before she opened her eyes, but her voice was clear. "Hello?"
"Can you check on Tony?"
"Rhodey?" She cracked an eye and checked the green display by her bed. "What's wrong?"
Rhodey cleared his throat. "I got a call from her a few minutes ago, but I was in the control tower, so I couldn't pick up. I think she was trying to call you, considering she said your name about fifty times."
Pepper pushed the blankets away with her free hand and got to her feet. "You think? You don't know?"
"She sounded..." He paused. "She was drunk, Pepper."
That stopped her in her tracks. Tony, drunk? The woman who could down five scotches in an hour and not even walk funny?
"I'm going over there right now," Pepper said, slipping into her shoes. "I'll call you later."
The vodka bottle was so far away. How had it moved? Tony had been holding it, hadn't she?
"Pepper," she said. "Pepper, get me the bottle, Pepper."
Why wasn't Pepper doing anything? Where was Pepper?
"Tony?"
She tried to look up, but her eyelids were so heavy. "Pepper? The bottle."
One of her eyelids jerked upward, and she could see a hint of red hair amongst the swimming blurs in front of her eyes. "Can you stand up?"
Tony laughed. "I'm sitting. No standing."
"Let's get you cleaned up." Pepper crouched down.
"Have a drink first."
"I'll pass."
"But..." Tony closed her eyes. It seemed to be the only way to get the room to stop spinning.
Pepper sighed and picked the now-unconscious Tony up. There was no way that she was going to make it up the stairs to the bedroom, so she didn't even bother trying; the couch would probably be just as comfortable. Certainly, it was easier to prop Tony's head up, which would prevent choking if vomit came into play.
Since Tony was a compact 5'4”, and Pepper wasn't much bigger, Pepper took the unoccupied end of the couch. There was no way she was going to leave her boss alone for the rest of the night, whether she dozed off or ended up staring for every remaining minute.
Sunlight breached Tony's lids and assaulted the eyes beneath, sending pain down the optic nerves and into her brain. She furrowed down her eyebrows and gave an incoherent verbal announcement equivalent to "fuck you" to the sun.
A female voice mumbled in response.
Tony managed to raise one eyelid enough to see Pepper glowing at the end of the couch. That sight, she decided, was enough to attempt to lift the other. Tony realized that the white upholstery was reflecting, but even so, the light surrounded Pepper – hell, embraced seemed more appropriate. She seemed to have an aura around her.
And that's when Tony knew she hadn't sobered up completely. Only alcohol made her sappy.
Sitting up confirmed her suspicions; the room spun around enough to make her go cross-eyed. But that didn't stop her from going over to Pepper. As Tony approached, her eyes cleared enough for her to see that Pepper was wearing pajama pants with cartoon monkeys on them, although she was mostly curled up under a work blazer. A lock of her hair had fallen out of the do she had swept up, and Tony found herself reaching out to push it out of Pepper's face.
"Tony."
She jumped and stopped her hand in mid-air. But Pepper groaned and snuggled closer to the couch, and Tony stepped back. She looked at the floor for a moment, then walked for the stairs, the sound of her bare feet muffled by the tile.
For several days, Tony had been sitting in front of her hot rod every time Pepper had delivered the espresso. She'd even spoken in Pepper's presence. Pepper wasn't sure what had changed, but maybe Tony had just needed a bender to get her back in action. It wasn't what she would recommend – in fact, she'd been firmly against Tony's alcohol usage for years, even if she kept it quiet – but it was such a relief to talk to her again that she couldn't help but be happy.
Until she came down one morning to see the glass wall completely shattered, and Tony was nowhere to be found.
Obadiah's office told Pepper that no meetings between Ms. Stark and Mr. Stane's were in the appointment book. Rhodey said that he'd spoken to her the day after the drunken phone call, but not since. Pepper's own schedule was blank, just like it had been since Tony's disappearance and return, but that didn't stop her from staring at it every morning that Tony wasn't in the basement. She knew Tony wouldn't want her to call the police, but she clutched her cell phone every single day she stepped into the Malibu mansion.
It was only on the third day that Jarvis spoke to her.
"You needn't worry," he said, and even though he sounded more smug than ever, Pepper's shoulders loosened. "I spoke with Tony an hour ago."
"Where is she?" Pepper asked. Her voice barely shook.
"I expect she'll return soon."
Pepper opened her mouth, but she closed it again. Jarvis wasn't going to tell her anything because Tony didn't want her to know.
She set her jaw, but she didn't put her cell phone away.
Gulmira's landscape might have looked as nice as Yinsin's description, but as Tony flew in, she only saw the bullet holes in the walls and the corpses lining the streets. And when she got closer, she strained to see the faces of the members of the Nine Rings and nothing else.
When she recognized some henchmen dragging men up against a wall, she landed hard, the metal of her suit shuddering as it took the impact. Bullets bounced off of her torso and her arms, but she only felt dents pressing through the body suit she wore underneath. And then she stopped feeling them at all as she saw the men's faces, contorted with anger.
The terrorists standing near the men flew through the air as she pointed her stabilizers in their direction, as did the ones standing by themselves. The men pointing guns at the heads of the women were just as easily dispatched, thanks to Jarvis's targeting systems. But Tony felt no sense of justice...or anything, for that matter. She felt like an extension of the suit, like the guidance system or even the main framework: moving when she had to, dead when she didn't.
An alarm blared, and on the display, she saw a red circle where one of the men was hiding behind a wall. She grabbed him without delay and threw him at the ground at her feet.
His eyes, wide with fear, looked her in the face, then at her only exposed part.
The arc reactor.
Before Tony had disappeared, Pepper checked the financial news and her emails on the couch in the Malibu house every morning they were there because she liked to look out at the waves. The night that Obadiah had woken her up with the news of Tony's first disappearance, she had driven out to the house and stared at the water until she passed out, and did so for every night after.
On the evening of the third night that Tony was gone again, Pepper fell asleep on the couch instead of going home. She awoke to a crash in the basement, and almost before her eyes were open, she was running for the stairs.
The whirring and clanking became deafening as she got closer, probably because there wasn't any barrier between the stairs and the rest of the basement anymore. But she'd heard plenty of industrial sounds before, so she continued down without so much as putting her hands to her ears.
As the room came into view, Pepper wasn't sure what she was seeing, not at first. The robots were yanking at a red metal suit on a platform, and she stared at it for a moment, wondering if Tony had set automatic repairs to go off before she'd left.
But the suit pulled away from the robots holding its arms, and it reached up and pulled what looked like the head, and Tony's shaggy hair fell down the back. It tangled around the tie in her hair and hooked in the various grooves in the suit.
Tony's head sagged forward, and the robots grabbed at her arms again. The suit was dented in several places, but even though the robots yanked so hard that Pepper thought they were going to dislocate her shoulders, Tony didn't seem to notice. Or care.
"What's going on?" Pepper called out, climbing over the glass as carefully as she could in her heels.
Tony didn't give any indication that she'd heard.
"Tony!"
Again, nothing.
Pepper ran forward, ignoring the slight wobble in her ankles, and into Tony's line of vision. Or rather, what would be Tony's line of vision if she looked up from the floor.
Her face was pale, and thinner than Pepper remembered, but then, she couldn't remember the last time that Tony had eaten in front of her.
"I nearly killed him."
Pepper nearly missed the words over the whir of the robots. It was only years of practice that allowed her to pick out Tony's words.
"What?" she asked.
Tony didn't look up. "I don't even know his name. But I nearly beat his head in."
"I don't--"
"Chasing him didn't help. Beating him didn't..."
The robots got the arms free, and from there, the rest of it started coming off. Some of the pieces bent with a scream that made Pepper wince, but again, Tony didn't notice at all. Soon, Tony was standing around in a black, form-fitting body suit that showed just how much weight she'd lost; her curves were still there, and so were most of the muscles in her arms and legs, but her shoulders jutted outward far more than they used to.
"Are you okay?" Pepper asked as the platform sank into the floor. Her voice choked slightly.
Tony's eyes flickered upward, and for the first time, Pepper realized just how big and brown they were.
"I was held captive in a cave for three months by a terrorist organization called the Nine Rings. When I refused to build the leader a duplicate of the Jericho, one of his underlings raped me."
Pepper flinched, but Tony didn't stop talking.
"I said I'd build it for them, but instead, I built a suit and fought my way out. I built this suit the minute I came back, and I thought it was because I wanted to keep my weapons out of their hands. But when I flew over there, I realized that it was because I wanted...I wanted to kill him. The underling."
"But you didn't," Pepper said, and it wasn't a question.
Tony shook her head, and a lock of hair fell into her face. She ignored it. "I punched him. Twice. The suit...his nose and his jaw were broken. And then I stopped."
Pepper wanted to ask why, but her eyes fell on Tony's gloves. Even though they were red, she could see dark streaks across the knuckles.
"What about Rhodey?" she asked instead.
Tony's eyes narrowed. "What?"
Pepper leaned forward and brushed the hair off of Tony's face. "Did you tell Rhodey about this...what happened to you?"
"No."
"That's what I thought." Pepper stepped so close their noses were almost touching. "I've been so worried about you."
She wasn't entirely sure what happened next, whether Tony had instigated the kiss or she had. But the way Tony stared deep into her eyes, even while they were kissing, and the way she wrapped her arms around Pepper's back told her exactly what she'd been wanting to know for months.
Tony was back.
Finally.