Who: Tony, Pepper, then Silver and Felicia What: Negotiations for safety and state. Where: Marvel Door New York Stark Tower, then Passages Hotel When: Now. Warnings/Rating: None!
Felicia didn't particularly like Tony, but Pepper insisted that he knew what he was doing. She was more interested in making sure that Silver didn’t die because of Tony, particularly after that woman had burst into flames. It made her wonder what could happen to her if someone used Pepper to get to Tony. She hoped that wouldn’t happen. It didn’t take long at all for her to cross through the Marvel door and Pepper took over. She met him at the New York office, calm as a button. Inside though, she was concerned about Tony and what had happened with this magnet.
“Mr Stark,” she greeted, tone giving away just a hint of her concern. “How are you both?” It would be helpful, first of all, to know what to tell the medics in the lobby of the hotel, or at the hospital if it came to that. Felicia was quite adamant about giving Tony a rather firm talking to if she had to take Silver to the hospital.
Nobody had yet come up with the bright idea to get to Tony through Pepper, not even Tony. Perhaps it was the casual way in which he treated her, and possibly the obvious fact that Tony Stark wasn’t close to anyone but his machines and the military contacts that used them. Tony did all kinds of stupid things, but they were always his stupid things. It was like being a genius nearly killed him almost as many times as it saved him. Fortunately being a genius meant that he could make all the busy bee agents go away when he said he was fine, thanks. Almost. Working for SHIELD meant you weren’t as stupid as most busy bees, so there was an increased presence watching the Stark Tower’s entrances. Tony thought it was pretty stupid to guard entrances against Loki, but if it made them feel better...
Tony was in a sumptuous office at the highest completed floor in the tower, above just skeleton iron and glass. The place was already equipped like living quarters, though there was paper over the installed granite and it still smelled like new paint and cut carpet. As Pepper walked in, Tony turned his head and told JARVIS to mute the classic rock. Lying completely back made the pain worse so he was half-reclining in an expensive leather chair. For once, he was completely sober. He gave her his signature little boy smile. “I bet Felicia had plans. I’m fine.” He didn’t look so great, a few shades paler over the worn out Aerosmith t-shirt, but he wasn’t visibly injured.
Pepper was concerned the moment she got a good look at him. She’d crossed in Malibu yesterday evening to change his appointments and therefore hadn’t gotten a chance to physically see him. If she had, she likely would have insisted on staying with him despite Felicia’s plans to meet with Liam. The smile didn’t even come close to fooling her and she narrowed her eyes. “Lying to me never ends well, remember?” she replied, chastising him just slightly.
She came to stand in front of him, dressed in her typical business suit with her hair pulled back into a tight bun. “What happened? I noticed the extra SHIELD agents,” she added to her question. Hopefully, it would get some sort of answer from him other than a simple ‘I’m fine’.
Tony lifted one hand and scraped at his eyebrow with a blunt thumb. She was going to be difficult about this, he could tell. He tipped a little forward in the chair and focused on keeping his breathing shallow. “I wasn’t lying. I think the female definition of ‘fine’ is obviously different than mine.” The hand moved down to rub over his chest, casting little dark lines over the brilliant glow of the chestpiece, and he dropped it into his lap. “Silver, by the way, agrees with me.”
When she came nearer Tony let the chair creak under his weight as he shifted toward the computer screens on the brand new desk not inches away. “JARVIS, replay the recording from last night, mute, fast forward.” The screen lit up with JARVIS’ polite acknowledgment of the request, and the civil-looking Loki appeared to mime a conversation with Tony against the backdrop of the New York sky. About halfway into the recording, the man in the suit turned into Colonel Fury, and a few seconds after that, the recording shifted to a different camera, which showed the agents closing in around the false illusion of Loki in his full Asgardian regalia. “Stop.” The recording cut off before anything else was shown.
Her eyebrows knit together, unsure of where his comments had come from. It wasn’t like she had nagged him, or even said anything other than asking what had happened just then. She didn’t particularly like not knowing what was going on in his life - his near death experience case in point - but prying put her in an awkward position. Pepper didn’t reply and simply watched the footage. She watched, taking in every detail she could, and looked to him when he said stop.
“Who was that?” she asked, curious. He wasn’t anyone that she knew but he certainly didn’t look like someone friendly. Particularly if SHIELD was prepared to take him down. She also failed to see anything about a magnet, but she didn’t press any further about that. It wasn’t her job to pry too much, as much as Felicia was urging her to ask for every last detail.
“Loki. Thor’s brother, the psychotic black sheep of the family. I was working on an experiment with the hotel doors from this side and I attracted some unfortunate attention. He set off one of the suit alarms, and that was when the SHIELD agents showed up. I have absolutely no idea why someone hasn’t trained them about not accepting orders when there are shape-changers in the field. Since I didn’t want to be full of bullet-holes, I disarmed the situation.” This was a long speech and it took a surprising amount of breath from him, and he leaned back a second before tipping forward, obviously fighting the urge to breathe hard. “So the moral of the story is that there’s a new bully in the neighborhood.”
She felt like she was supposed to know both of those people, but Felicia supplied the knowledge Pepper didn’t have. She noticed how he was straining and waited patiently for him to get his bearings. “I’ll speak with the SHIELD agent in charge of watching the building,” Pepper replied. It was really all she could do, and she didn’t particularly want Tony to be full of bullet-holes either. “Are you ready to cross over, or do you need more time to...rest?” She would’ve preferred to say ‘recover’ but she thought it best to play along with his insistence that he was fine.
Tony had already spoken to a lot of agents, but when Pepper spoke to people she generally had a more idea of what she expected to happen than he did, which was why she was better at almost everything except for building machines and artificial intelligence. Emphasis on the artificial. “Silver wants to try it.” Tony put a hand flat on the arm of his chair and rose slowly to his feet. So far so good. Most of the pain came from deep breaths and anything that caused his chest to expand, so he was cutting down on the laughing, shouting, and gorilla chest-pounding. “I came through the door at the end of the hall.” He rounded the edge of the desk and it was not with his usual spring. “So how was your day?” he gasped, giving her a flippant grin not entirely devoid of strain.
Pepper had to fight the urge to move to his side and help him walk. It was clear that he wasn’t at his best and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from asking again if crossing was a wise idea. Instead, she counted her blessings that there was triage in the lobby and that they could cross back if he needed to. “Very well,” she replied, walking carefully alongside him. She was a bit closer than she usually kept herself, but Pepper didn’t notice that with how focused she was on Tony.
“Uneventful,” she replied cautiously, a bit unsure exactly as to why he was asking. “Felicia has new clients for her public relations firm so she’s been fairly busy with that.” Pepper sounded distracted, focused as she was on his movements and the sound of his voice. He wasn’t okay and she was worried about how that would translate through the door.
It turned out that walking required Tony to be completely upright, which caused little stabbing pains that seemed to make it all the way into his lungs without explanation. He thought of these little pains as needles angled in various places on the way to his heart, and perhaps a lot of breathing, movement, and (who knew) huge electromagnetic arrays caused them to cut into him. Tony’s own EKG (he had the equipment) hadn’t shown anything he wasn’t expecting, but he was also monitoring very closely remotely thanks to JARVIS, and he was also improving. “PR, not something you associate with Silver.”
Tony didn’t seem to have trouble moving his limbs, but he didn’t move quickly, either, and he kept pausing to take small, quick breaths of air. Halfway down the hall he stopped, gasped, and lilted sideways. “Silver is going to have to come right... right back through.”
She did not like the way he was moving. It took her a few long moments before she remembered to reply. “It’s what she did before she took over the garage,” Pepper replied. “Silver uses the garage as his legal address. She’s fixed up the garage and gave him his own space. She does what she can for him, but she tries not to pry.” Quite similar to her situation, though she’d been with Tony for a long time, longer than Felicia had known Silver. He was walking too slowly to be okay and the way he was breathing was all wrong as well.
As soon as he started to lilt, Pepper reached for him. “Okay,” she said softly, and the concern was evident in her voice. She had no idea how she could help him, but touching him reassured her more than just seeing him. Part of her was upset that she hadn’t stayed last night because it was obvious now that she should have. She’d wait for him to get better before trying to broach the subject of him expanding his definition of ‘fine’. “Come on, the sooner we get to that door, the sooner we get back and you can rest.”
Small catches in the material of Tony’s shirt betrayed the monitoring equipment he was wearing, equipment that was quickly explained when JARVIS’ polite voice sounded from invisible speakers somewhere nearby. “Sir, EKG readings are showing irregularities in R-waves. Please take care.” Give it to Tony to program his AIs to care. Most people would chalk it up to his preference for flattery, but the odd duck might wonder why Tony really needed his machines to give a damn about him.
Tony stopped and leaned against Pepper’s elbow. He wasn’t a great weight (or he tried not to be) and he just paused to get his breathing under control like an old man. Apparently he was determined to carry on a conversation like normal. “Does she know... why he’s in Vegas?” Tony quirked a brow up at Pepper as if inside information might be forthcoming. Silver was far better at hiding his secrets from Tony than the other way around. After the pause they went several more steps down the hall, and stopped again for Tony to transfer his lean onto the wall next to the door.
Pepper felt the wires and JARVIS answered the question on the tip of her tongue. She sighed and reminded herself that while he might be an idiot, he was a brilliant idiot. It was a relief when he stopped to lean against her and she gently rubbed his back, like she imagined a mother would a sick child. It was a bit frustrating that he continued to insist that nothing was wrong but this was her job and she did care about him.
“No,” she replied, “and she doesn’t ask. She respects his privacy, but she’s willing to do what she can for him.” That much was obvious - to her at least - because she was here, helping him. “She doesn’t have many friends,” Pepper went on as the walked further down the hall. She switched sides with him so that he could lean against the wall, but she kept one hand on his back. Her other hand went to the door handle, but she didn’t turn the handle. “Let me know when you’re ready,” she said softly, not rushing him in any way.
Tony still didn’t know why a successful intelligence operative like Silver would retire to the middle of the desert to drive rich people around. If you listened to Silver it was some kind of dramatic zen personality thing, but Tony privately doubted that. Even zen personalities had logistical concerns, especially when you used to be a spy. Silver didn’t even carry around a weapon, which meant he was a very good spy. Ergo: logistics. He made a thoughtful sound over Pepper’s opinion of Felicia, a sound somewhere on the way to thoughtful surprise, but overtaken with his own concerns. It was a sound Silver would not ever have made. “Lucky boy.”
Tony didn’t mind Pepper taking care of him all that much, since she’d been doing it for years, but she had a tight worry on her face that reminded Tony too much of pain and it made him feel strange, almost guilty for bothering her. He decided to blame it on Silver. He gave a little wave of one hand and, without even looking to see if the hotel hall was there or if it was the open skeleton of the unfinished stairway, he took a step through.
Silver turned out to be more broad than Tony even if they were about the same height, his back being the most visible thing about him after he went through and caught himself on the wall opposite Tony’s door. The transition was without time or metamorphosis; it was just Tony one second and Silver the next, the latter’s skin desert brown in comparison to Tony’s pallor.
Pepper wasn’t entirely sure how she should take his comment about Silver being lucky. It wasn’t as if she was nagging him to death or even prying as much as Felicia wanted. It was times like these that she had to remind herself that she was him employee and nothing more. Felicia balked at that, but Pepper hushed her. She did everything he required, even if that meant biting her tongue when he did something like this. He’d always do what he wanted, no matter what anyone said.
As soon as he motioned for her to open the door, she did so, glad to see that the hotel was on the other side. He walked forward first and Pepper had to blink. She’d never seen Silver for herself, just through Felicia. Her hesitation last a split second and she followed him through, transitioning into Felicia much the same way Tony had into Silver. Felicia wore much simpler clothes though sensible all the same. She was a touch shorter than Pepper, and a bit more filled out just about everywhere.
“Silver?” she asked, her voice a bit warmer than Pepper’s despite the obvious concern there. “Do you need to go back across?” Felicia positioned herself in front of Silver and tried to get a good look at him.
“Good to see you, Felicia,” was Silver’s greeting. The recent change highlighted many things that contrasted Silver from his Alter, not the least being his deeper tone of voice, though far more modulated in volume. Even leaning against a wall, Silver exuded an air of calm, deliberate control. It wasn’t a clouded, anxiety-driven grip on reality, but an aura that seemed to come from how much thought he put into his decisions. Silver glanced over Felicia’s shoulder into the empty hallway of the Stark Tower office, and then experimentally pushed himself up against the wall. He grunted with pain and bent quickly, trying to ease the pressure off his chest.
“No. Staying here for... now. Things to do.” This was not what Tony had expected at all, and he protested not because he wanted his body but because he didn’t know what Silver’s condition would look like here in Vegas, without the little bits of metal to explain the damage and pain. Silver put a hand to his chest and felt for the electrodes Tony had put across his chest, and fortunately they were still there. “Going to need that ride, though,” he said, breathing shallowly in exactly the same way Tony had, even with his comparative bulk. “Just to my car.”
Felicia rolled her eyes at Silver’s greeting. Without the employee-employer relationship that Pepper dealt with, she was more free to say exactly what was on her mind. Pepper cautioned her to not take her frustrations with Tony out on Silver, but Felicia had no intention of doing that. “Are you sure?” she asked, glancing back at the open door. “I’ll take care of whatever it is you need to do, or at least get in touch with the people waiting on you to explain that you’re...busy,” she offered. It wasn’t lost on her that she was offering to do exactly what Pepper did for Tony but she wasn’t about to let Tony’s stupidity seriously injure Silver.
“How about the hospital then? Or at least the triage thing downstairs? Just get looked at and then I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” Felicia bargained. She hadn’t even moved to shut the door because if it came to forcibly taking Silver across, she’d need as much on her side as possible. “Please?”
Silver didn’t have any of Tony’s pride, and he saved most of his breath for moving, which he started to do almost immediately, with the wall for support. Physically Tony was in better shape than he allowed people to think, but in comparison, Silver made Tony’s efforts look casual; Silver was in good enough condition that he could run several miles in the Vegas heat and he had several pounds of muscle on Tony not just through natural build but through effort. He was careful not to get bulky, because bulky people get noticed, but he was also stronger than he looked.
None of that helped much with the pain in his chest.
“Hospital is no good. We can see the people downstairs, but--” he gasped for a breath, “--they’re just going to look at this.” He touched his fingers to the outline of the wires on his chest. “Monitoring through the... phone.” It wasn’t that Silver was in worse shape than Tony, it was just Tony insisted on pushing it aside and pretending it wasn’t there.
She waited for him to speak, but she was treating him a lot like Tony in that she assumed that he was downplaying how he was feeling. She didn’t know him the way that Pepper knew Tony, so she was drawing on what knowledge she could. Felicia’s first instinct was to frown when he said the hospital was a no go, but then again, she’d always lived life on the straight and narrow. Well, as straight and narrow as she could given that she’d worked in politics for a number of years.
He touched the wires beneath his shirt and Felicia reached out to touch them as well, mostly out of curiosity. The muscle beneath her fingers was impressive and she looked up at him curiously before withdrawing her hand. “Do you know how to read it or can JARVIS explain it to you?” she asked, ignoring the fact that she was talking about a fictional computer program. As long as Silver knew how to read it, she was reasonably confident they could get through this. “And you’re staying at the garage until the phone says you’re back to normal.” He could take care of what he needed to take care of, but she wasn’t going to make the same mistake Pepper did.
“Tony can... tell me.” Silver had better color and more determination than Tony, and he also had much more awareness and control over his body. He carefully pressed himself up from the wall as he reached the end of the hallway and got himself to full standing. “He’s not pleased about this.” He kept his voice even quieter than usual to keep his diaphragm from expanding, but he also got himself relatively upright through sheer effort. “Me either.” Silver reached into his pocket and pulled out the elaborately technological phone. It was showing the telltale dips and rises of a heart monitor. He swished that aside and typed something, and then he put it away again.
“Lying down... is a good idea,” he said, taking an experimental step that led to enough pain that he doubled over again. So, not so much with the stiff backbone. This would be a disappointing way to die, was Silver’s opinion. Tony’s vehement reply was that they were not going to die. He was probably right, and Silver was just being morbid, but when your chest hurt this much, it was hard not to start contemplating the relevance of the body in the space of existence. Tony said something nasty about philosophers. Silver smiled, and then turned toward Felicia. “Sorry, but give me a shoulder, will you?”
Pepper stilled Felicia’s tongue before she could make a remark about it being Tony’s fault that he was like this in the first place. “I can’t imagine why,” she replied dryly, giving him about the same space Pepper had given Tony on their walk to the door. He pulled out the phone she recognized as Tony’s and thought he was making a note of something, so she didn’t question it. “Alright,” she replied, but then he was doubled over. “Silver!” She was by his side in an instant, her left hand on his upper arm and her right hand across his shoulder.
Felicia didn’t even dignify his request with a reply, ducking under his arm and moving her right hand to his side. “Are you sure you want to do this? We can go right back across and Pepper’ll strap him to a chair so he doesn’t do something stupid again,” she offered. Pepper denied the claim quite loudly, but no one could hear her save for Felicia, and she wasn’t about to share that. Felicia helped support some of his weight and she was stronger than she looked. She wasn’t afraid to take at least part of his weight, willing to do what was necessary to make sure that he was okay.
As soon as Silver bent double much of the pain evaporated, reinforcing Tony’s diagnosis and (according to the scientist) suggesting that they’d recover soon. Silver tried to lift his arm around Felicia’s shoulders but the chest pain radiated out to his upper arm and he stopped and dropped it back down. “It’s no different... there for him,” Silver said, without his usual precision of meaning in words. “Hurts but... necessary. Better this than dead.” Silver wanted to go on to say that Tony might not seem like much but generally the man knew what he was doing, except he promptly ran out of breath.
The journey down the stairs was agonizing and by the end of it Silver was more than willing to stop at the little medical center on the ground floor, where he sat down in much the same way Tony had been sitting in his office. He had his hand to his chest.
Felicia did the best she could to support him without causing him any pain. “He’s the one at fault, not you. You shouldn’t have suffer because of him,” she replied, clearly annoyed at Tony. She still helped him down the stairs, letting him go as slowly as he wanted. She didn’t want either of them to die, no matter how much she disliked Tony at the moment. Once he was situated on one of the chairs set up, Felicia left him to get a volunteer.
She came back with a woman in a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope around her neck after questioning her on her education and experience. She had graduated from Johns Hopkins and had been practicing for nearly ten years. Felicia hovered as the woman did her work, unwilling to trust her entirely given his unique situation. Of course, anything the woman said went over Felicia’s head since she knew next to nothing about hearts or medicine.
At first the woman was alarmed when Silver described chest pain (not visibly alarmed, but the grave, serious kind of alarmed that doctors get when they’re concentrating), but after Silver took off his shirt and showed her the electrodes and the EKG readings she was, perhaps, slightly mollified that he wasn’t having a heart attack. All the same, she advised they stay put and asked if they’d read the signs about healing in their home world. Silver would only say that it was complicated and probably safer to heal on this side, and the doctor had to take him at his word, especially after he refused to go to an actual hospital where they could do more tests. She tried to talk him into it, saying that she was not equipped, but he said he would rest and politely refused all other care. In the end Silver was reclining on a bed folded up to nearly chair shape, his bare chest rising and falling and his expression contemplative. He turned his head and sought Felicia’s eyes. “You don’t have to stay.”
She was glad that the woman got Silver to agree to at least rest. It was easy to see the relief in her expression and Felicia shook her head when he said she didn’t have to stay. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course I’m staying,” she replied firmly. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to stay here on his own. She pulled up a chair next to his bed and crossed her legs before giving him a smile. “Do you need me to get you anything? Or change any arrangements? Tony mentioned yesterday that he’d rescheduled something for you.” Felicia wasn’t trying to pry, she just wanted to be helpful so that he’d stay and rest like he needed to. “And besides, I’m your ride remember?” Never mind that she didn’t trust him to stay at the garage if she didn’t stay with him.
“I only had one appointment today, driving a client... and he did reschedule it, with his usual tact.” Silver had to speak slower than usual since he couldn’t take in as much air as usual, but he managed to get the faint note of irritation in nonetheless. “And the grapevine... says that there might be... some problems with that. But I have to look into it.” He crossed a hand over his chest and lifted the phone to give it a little shake of indication that this was what he meant by “grapevine.” “Tony’s problems will have to wait.” He stared at her for a moment longer and then appeared to think of something--something Tony would not like at all. “You can do something for me. Well, Pepper for Tony, if it’s not too much to ask you.” It was obvious he was asking Felicia, not Pepper. He already knew Pepper would do whatever she thought would help Tony best.
Felicia nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure he should be up and about or stressing himself out. “You can look into it here?” she asked as he gestured with the phone. He wasn’t exactly able to move all that much without assistance, but she still felt the need to ask. “Of course I will. What do you need?” Because as mad as she was at Tony, Pepper would do anything for the man and Felicia had promised that she would help Silver. Had she taken a moment to step back and evaluate the situation, she might’ve realized the similarities between the four of them, but that was the last thing on her mind at the moment.
With pauses for breath, Silver said, “Tony has been in touch with Spider-man, to tell him if things happen, or if this Loki is sighted. So far the other Avengers have not appeared, and there is a lot of pressure on Tony from SHIELD and his other government contacts. It is a bad time for Iron Man to go on vacation.” He paused again, this time for a longer while, to smother a cough that would only hurt and then ponder his request before he actually made it. Tony disapproved. “...Pepper could make it look like Tony was there. He disappears into his labs for days, as long as no one actually saw him...”
Spider-man. That was, oddly, what Felicia latched onto before processing his request. She thought it over for a few long moments, but it didn’t really sit well with her. “If I go back through the door, what about you?” she asked slowly. She could understand the importance of keeping Tony’s injuries under the radar, but she also wanted to make sure that Silver didn’t die while she was covering Tony’s ass.
“I need to rest. You know me, Felicia. I drive around. I’m not going to be doing anything straining.” Silver gave Felicia an encouraging smile, the eternal calm one he wore almost all the time. At most, Silver prevaricated silently, he would be working on intelligence-gathering, low level desk type stuff. He didn’t need to run miles for that. “But since Tony has managed to piss off what amounts to a minor god, he needs to be able to breathe before he can do half the things he wants to do.” Silver was of the opinion that Tony would go charging in there if Spider-man so much as reported a sighting, and Silver valued his life more than most people seemed to think.
The truth was, she didn’t know him, not really. She knew that he drove around and that he lived out of his car, but that was hardly healthy for him at this point. It was difficult to argue with his logic, particularly if Loki was anything like what she was imagining. “You’ll stay at the garage, right?” Felicia asked, fully expecting that he agree. “I’ll go through and Pepper will cover his ass with a smile on her face, but you need to rest and give yourself time to heal,” she insisted. She’d do exactly as she said and she’d worry about him as well, but it would be helpful to know that he would at least be somewhere safe. “Do you have anyone that can come check on you?” she added, though she’d make time to escape for an hour or so to check up on him herself if she had to.
Well, there was that. Tony might have jumped off a building to test his newest suit, but Silver wasn’t going to drive when he had chest pain. He nodded slowly--not too much, but some. “I won’t drive. I might need to go somewhere but... but I won’t drive.” He reached out--not raising his shoulder too high, everything was avoiding the damn chest pain, he could sense Tony’s frustration with it--and he touched Felicia’s knuckles, the back of her hand where it was nearest to him. “I’m sorry you have to worry about this. I wouldn’t have gotten you involved.”
“I’ll drive you somewhere before I go across,” she offered, trying to be as accommodating as possible. Felicia turned her hand under his and brought her other hand to hold his a bit more intimately than she’d ever intended. “It’s okay,” she promised him softly. “That’s what I’m here for, alright? I know we don’t...know each other as well as we probably should, but I’m here for you.” If Mr. Wallace could trust Silver, then so could she without any great burden. Maybe Pepper was bleeding a little too much into her conscious, but Felicia could have cared less. She’d promised to look after Silver and she genuinely did care that he get better.
Silver gave her hand a squeeze and then withdrew it. He knew quite a bit out of Felicia, all on paper of course, but with a few words here or there that Wallace had written before he passed and left in places he was sure that Silver would find it. Wallace had been an excellent man and an even better agent, and Silver trusted his judgment implicitly. All the same, he would have preferred that Felicia stay out of the more dangerous responsibilities that he felt Tony dragged Pepper into. “I can get a cab,” he reassured her, seriously. And after a moment he added, a little hesitantly, “You know me as well as anyone else in a hundred mile radius, Felicia.” It might not have been a smart idea to encourage a closer relationship with the way this was going, but as long as the danger stayed in Tony’s world...
He was insisting in his own way and she didn’t want to push him too hard. Pepper had a better relationship with Tony, at least in Felicia’s opinion. “Alright,” she replied, and she barely managed to hold herself back from fishing out her wallet and handing him what cash she had on her. Felicia dismissed it as Pepper’s incessant need to take care of Tony, no matter what form he was in. What he said next made her smile warmly. “Stay at the garage and let me know if you need anything, okay?” She stood but left the chair, in case anyone who recognized him happened to pass by.
He put out an arm to stop her, too quickly, and it cost him, but he put it out anyway. “Don’t let this take you over. I appreciate the favor, but I--Tony--will be back soon. A few days, just like he said. Okay?” He knew he was asking a lot of her, asking her to give up her time, even a short section of her life. It was beyond a lot. “Tony and I can switch places sooner if you need it.”
Felicia stopped as soon as he started to move and turned her attention back to him. “Take as long as you need,” she insisted. “I’ve got nothing but work to do and Pepper’s no slacker.” She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Talking about how her life revolved around work was a sore topic with her family but she meant for it to be reassuring. She put her hand on the one he’d reached for her with and gave it a squeeze again. “Try not to die while I’m gone.”