InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "gimme your tots."

runs_the_show (runs_the_show) wrote in doorslogs,
@ 2012-09-18 20:53:00

Entry tags:

door: marvel comics, iron man, pepper potts

WHO Pepper & Tony
WHAT Talking
WHEN Recently
WHERE Pepper's office in Malibu; Marvel Door
WARNINGS There's talking about Tony's imprisonment here.

The first night it happened, Pepper had fallen asleep on the couch by accident a few days after the incident with the memories. She wasn’t surprised, not when it had only just happened, but after the fifth time of waking up either screaming or in a cold sweat, she stopped sleeping through the door. Justine’s dreams were full of fairytales and happy endings, not the pain and torture of someone she cared about. Despite everything, she still cared and she didn’t know what that said about her, but no one cared so it didn’t matter. It worked though, letting Justine do all the sleeping, so that was how they worked. It wasn’t the best, not by any means, but it was better than suffering through nightmares. Sometimes Justine had nightmares, but hers were about her brother leaving or something bad happening to her friends. The brunette was much better at shaking them off.

Tonight though, she’d fallen asleep at her desk, head resting on a stack of papers and her hand loosely wrapped around the stem of her now empty wine glass. The dream had been different this time. Instead of simply remembering the pain from the memory, as if it were happening to her, she was there in the cave with him, watching as someone bent over him, using medical instruments on his chest. When she’d tried to reach him, she found herself chained to the wall, heavy manacles that looked like something out of a bad horror flick. He cried out in pain on the table and she pulled and pulled at the manacles, sobbing and begging them to stop. They couldn’t hear her, or they weren’t paying any attention. Pepper screamed and struggled so much that she jerked her hand, the glass tipping over and ruining the papers on her desk. That didn’t wake her though. Her own pained scream woke her, and she realized it was only a dream. Relief coursed through her as she tried to wipe the tears away.

She was still in her office, pacing in front of the windows behind her desk. Her eyes were red from crying, tear stains on her cheeks. Pep had only dried her eyes and tried to get a lid on it but it wasn’t coming. She needed to talk about it, after all this time. She had hated it, when he’d been gone, and it had been easier in some ways when she hadn’t known what he’d gone through. She still didn’t know, at least not all of it. What she did know, she wanted to forget. How he carried it, she had no idea.

Tony had a wicked hangover, and because Silver was an old maiden aunt, the damned man had turned right around at the door and marched right back through to force Tony to deal with it. Silver was even more smug when Tony realized he’d just walked into the lobby of Stark Industries’ West Coast business office, a neat building with modern furnitures that had always been, to his mind, “Pepper’s Office.” Tony was torn between wanting to have it out with Pepper about trying to take over his life and avoiding her because he didn’t want to talk about why he was objecting when he never had before. Now that he was standing in the lobby, however, with the designer tennis shoes and two-hundred-dollar jeans no shield against the low light and scent of cleaning polish, his ego simply wouldn’t allow him to retreat.

He saw the light on in her office (not unusual, Pepper worked all hours the same as he did), and, grumbling to himself, he moved forward, arms swinging awkwardly. “Pepper,” he said, trying to sound casual as he walked past the abandoned secretary’s desk and pressed his hand against her door to walk in. The blue glow of the chestpiece under green cotton diminished somewhat under the office lights. There was a pause while he scanned the room for her, unaccustomed to seeing the chair behind the glasstop empty, and when he saw her he had the chance to take only one step before he saw the look on her face. He immediately looked guilty, assuming it had to do with him and the phone call the previous evening. A second look and he saw the red eyes, and he didn’t think he’d been that upsetting. He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She had to marvel at how quickly he appeared, as if he knew she’d just had a nightmare about him. There was a quip in there somewhere, about the devil and appearing, but she was just relieved to see him, arguments or not. Pepper had turned her back to the door as soon as she’d heard footsteps, but she’d turned around again when she heard his voice. Her arms were wrapped around her middle, giving her the smallest comfort, and despite everything, she tried to smile. He was here, whole, and that was more of a comfort than her own paltry attempt. “Hi,” she said softly, and then immediately started to worry her lower lip. After a few silent moments, Pepper turned back to face the window, looking at his reflection in the glass.

“It’s not what you think,” she said quietly, gaze focusing on the ocean view out her window. It took a little longer for her to speak again. “I fell asleep at my desk by accident. I stopped sleeping here, as me, for a while now. Justine’s dreams are nicer.” Pepper sounded distant, but for his sake she tried harder to pull herself together. Talking about it only made her remember the nightmare and she absently rubbed her wrists. She’d never had manacles around her wrists, so her imagination filled in the blanks, likely making it far worse than it ever could have been. “Why are you here?” It wasn’t accusatory in the slightest, just questioning, honestly surprised.

Tony always showed up when he was least expected. When he was wanted for serious business and anything that required a responsible, sober appearance, he made sure to be elsewhere. It was very common. The ghost of Tony reflected in the window grew larger and more defined, and when he spoke it was a few feet behind her left shoulder. He didn’t know what she thought that he thought, but for once he kept his mouth shut, and it paid off, because she kept talking. Tony didn’t like listening to other people very often, and he was out of practice, so he looked upon it as a stroke of luck. For once he was neither smiling nor distracted. He looked at her reflection as she looked at his. “This is where I showed up this time. So I came to see you. Spontaneous evaluation to see how you measure up.” He gave her a faintly apologetic, humorless smile at the bad joke. “What are you having bad dreams about?” he asked, putting the two together.

She couldn’t see his face with the kind of detail she would’ve wanted, but it was obvious that he was more serious than he’d been the past few times they’d spoken. “I pale in comparison,” Pepper replied blandly, not reacting to the joke, bad or otherwise. She didn’t measure up to Tony, but she could follow direction fairly well and she’d gotten used to handling the day to day. He would always be the best salesman they had, when he wanted to be. It was amusing, in a sad kind of way, that he made sense of what she was trying not to say. “The memories. It isn’t the first time, but-” Pepper had to close her eyes and take a deep breath so that her voice wouldn’t hitch. “It wasn’t just the memories this time. It was...a mixture of that and the...nightmares I had when you were gone,” she admitted, her voice clear but soft. They’d never talked about what it had been like when he’d been kidnapped. She had never talked about it. Maybe it was time to.

The comment about measuring had been an expression only, and he liked what she did with it, so he smiled more sincerely, a quick smile accompanied by a glimmer in one eye, visible even in the vague reflection he offered. After a moment, he put one hip against the edge of her desk. In the absence of light and sound from the lobby outside, the office felt reassuringly quiet, and it was filled with the feel of Pepper--smell, sound, even the texture of the carpet. Tony blinked. “When I was gone when?” The shift in her tone indicated exactly what she meant, and a split-second later he caught up. “Oh.” He was visibly surprised that she was still troubled by that, a clear indication of just how much Tony was wrapped up in his own affairs and reactions to things. “What kind of nightmares? Memories?” Either. Both. All amusement was gone from his eyes now, and he looked grim, eyes hooded and dark, his chin slightly down to emphasize his focus.

She didn’t bother to clarify. He picked it up a moment later and it was almost enough to get her to smile. Almost. “They told me the convoy was ambushed, that you were missing but they were looking for you. I didn’t start worrying until 72 hours passed. I didn’t sleep for more than an hour or so at a time for the first...two weeks? I started falling asleep standing up so I compromised. Six hours of sleep, but then the nightmares started. Rhodey was looking for you at first, so no one was telling me anything. Obadiah was taking care of the company so I was...not floundering exactly, but- every time the phone rang, I thought it would be Rhodey, telling me- telling me that he’d been too late. It was easier to distract myself with work during the day, but when I fell asleep, I imagined the worst. Every night it was something new, some imagined horror. Drinking helped.” She had to take a few pauses here and there, but she was done hiding it. Pepper took a deep breath, got her bearings, and continued. “They stopped, shortly after you came home.” Iron Man’s appearance hadn’t made it any easier, but she’d gotten used to that once she’d understood why he did it. “I thought it would stay that way but the memories...brought it back. I know it wasn’t real, at least not my being chained to the wall, but- I knew some of what they did to you. It’s so much worse when it’s real.” She couldn’t look at him, her gaze trained out into the scenery. It wasn’t his fault, but she knew she needed to talk about it and he was the only one she’d ever consider talking about it with. He was the only one she trusted explicitly.

Tony listened. That in itself was remarkable, as Tony was not a good listener. It implied a certain empathy that he simply did not possess, and people had long since stopped waiting for him to develop such a thing. Now, however, he was seeing some of the things that had gone on while he’d been missing. At the time, he had not thought his absence would cause anybody sleepless nights. Sure, he knew Rhodey, Pepper, Obadiah, they would be worried, but not that much. It turned out that Obadiah hated him more than missed him, and Tony tried not to think about how much he missed Rhodey. He wasn’t here now, and Tony hadn’t quite gotten over the man’s loss of faith after Tony’s return from the desert. “Chained to the wall,” Tony repeated, confused and frowning. “This was in your memory? You know what they did?” This deeply disturbed him, and he actually took his weight off the desk and took a step back, as if his memories were catching and he might accidentally infect her.

As distracted as she was, she didn’t miss that he was actually listening to her and not cracking jokes or just brushing it off. Maybe she hadn’t given him as much credit as he deserved in all of this, and she’d have to figure out some way to apologize for that. Pepper had just assumed that he hadn’t wanted to talk about his time away and she had just wanted to forget about it. With how things had devolved between them, she could understand why the nightmares had started again. “The memories,” she explained. “When I got your memory, from that...fluke situation. It just gave me something to build on.” She turned around to face him, eyes bright with emotion, but she didn’t try to reach out for him. “I just. I felt helpless while you were gone. I missed you.” Here, she shook her head. “And I know you probably don’t want to hear that, but I’m going to say it anyway. I missed you and your inability to keep Monet and Manet straight, how you completely disregarded schedules in favor of working in the shop...” Pep trailed off, but she was smiling now because those were some of the things she loved about him. “I’ve been working for you for over ten years. We’ve been through quite a bit together. It...you mean something to me.” And now that she said it, she wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to take it. She couldn’t take it back, but she did stop herself from trying to say anything else, for fear she’d just make it worse.

Tony looked at her with concern, as if she was informing him that she had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The expression looked strange on his face, too complex and covered to be typically Tony. He had never been hard to read, even as a child, and his actions were always completely transparent to his teachers and, later, colleagues. You didn’t really need to send a spy to assess his state of mind; all you had to have was a YouTube account and a couple magazines.

His reaction to his time in the desert had been extremely public, and he made sure of it. At the same time, he’d never been open about what happened. He didn’t want anyone to know about the chestpiece, so he hadn’t gone to any doctors or told anyone except Pepper and Rhodey about why it was necessary. Everyone assumed he’d used the Mark I just to escape, and he had never enlightened anyone on what the Ring had really wanted him for, and what they’d done to force him to cooperate. It was not something he wanted to burden anyone else yet, and he hadn’t thought, at the time, that he wanted anyone to look at him with that kind of knowledge in their eyes. The way Pepper was looking at him now.

Tony was surprised that he didn’t want to leave. Instead, he felt bad for her and her alone, rather than embarrassed or afraid that she had the knowledge. For a few seconds, he wasn’t capable of answering. He took a breath, examined her face again, then looked away. In a quick succession of moves, he leaned over and took her hand, drawing her around to the front of her desk into one of the chairs that faced it. Turning it with his foot, he gently pushed her down on it with both hands on her elbows. After that he crouched in front of her so she could see into his face. He smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring. “I missed you too.” Then, uncertainly, not sure how much she knew or theorized: “I’m sure your nightmares exaggerate, the way nightmares do. I’m okay. No lasting damage.” As if all damage was to flesh alone.

Being exposed, vulnerable like that with him wasn’t something Pepper had ever done before. They’d had intimate moments before, but those almost kisses hadn’t become anything until after the Expo. Still, one kiss did not a relationship make and she was okay with that. More than okay with that, because if that was all he wanted, or all he was willing to give, Pep wasn’t interested. Now though, now she was afraid she’d gone too far, crossed a line they couldn’t go back from. As least he wasn’t dying anymore. All of this, it just hadn’t been dealt with and she was just so tired of fighting with him. Maybe, if she got past this, if they got through this without making it worse, things would get better between them. She could only hope.

If it wasn’t for the fact that she knew him fairly well, Pepper would’ve gotten defensive with the way he looked at her, like she’d just said the absolute worst thing in the world. If that was how he felt though, she understood. Serious personal relationships weren’t something he was known for and she knew that. She was one of the few constants in his life, the other two off the top of her head being JARVIS and Rhodey. It hurt, she wouldn’t pretend otherwise, but it was out on the table. Sort of. He looked away and her lip trembled just the smallest bit, but then he took her by the hand and had her sitting down in one of the chairs there. Her eyes never left his, her lips parted just slightly, her expression clearly one of confusion, wondering what he was going to say that she needed to be sitting. His smile wasn’t quite reassuring, not until he admitted that he missed her too, and Pepper was glad she was sitting then. Not because she was truly surprised, but because it was the first time he said as much and it was nice to hear. Really nice.

Pepper moved her hands to his forearms, wanting to touch him in some small way. It wasn’t intimate or needy, just a physical reassurance that he was there, that he cared enough to sit her down to try and reassure her that everything was okay. “They do,” she promised him. She hadn’t told him about any of this in order to worry him or make him feel like he couldn’t talk to her about it if he wanted. “I just-” Pepper sighed and lifted one hand to tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. Things have been...stressful.” She offered him a wry smile. “I guess I’m not as good at this as I thought.” Nothing like a bit of self-deprecating humor to try and make some of the awkwardness she was feeling go away.

The destruction of the Expo had been one of the things Tony had missed, like Cap’s awakening and Thor’s arrival. He was one of the only people in the city that wasn’t especially troubled by his lack of experience in this area; in fact, the way some people acted about SHIELD, he was quite pleased that he was coming into this cold. He felt like some fresh perspective and real suspicion should always be in the make when it came to SHIELD. (Tony was never a taking orders kind of guy, and he felt like everything should be questioned on a regular basis to keep people honest.) Then again, he didn’t know what he was missing out on in... other areas.

Tony examined Pepper’s face, trying to figure out how much the memories and nightmares were telling her. How far back? How detailed? Did she know about the missile with his name on it? The faces of the American soldiers in the humvee? What about the Ring’s men he had killed in the cave? Yinsen? He felt like she would have mentioned Yinsen. Tony brought up the man’s lined, smiling face. She would have asked about the only good thing in that cave, surely. Tony dropped his gaze from hers and pressed his fingers into the inside of both of her arms, pressing his palms against hers. “You can’t be good at everything all the time.” He paused. There was a slight increase of pressure. “That cave is not somewhere I’d want you to be,” he said, chewing on nothing at one side of his mouth. He seemed to be asking her for something in his concern.

Pepper had heard the voice - Yinsen’s - during the actual memory itself but it paled in comparison to the overwhelming pain she’d felt and so she barely remembered the soothing tones. In her nightmares, the masked men who’d sent the ransom video to Obadiah stood guard around his half-naked body (from the waist up) and the masked man who’d spoken in the video was above him, digging into the hole in his chest with stainless steel medical instruments and she could feel the pain as if it were her own. She remembered how hard it had been to breathe, how much he’d wanted it to just stop. Her eyes were trained on his face as she relieved it for however brief a moment, until she felt his hands on hers. That snapped her out of it.

She didn’t have to be good at everything, no, but she wanted to be. She wanted to be the person that he turned to, that he relied on, and she didn’t feel like she was that person anymore, not when she wasn’t involved all that much in his life. Ms Watson took care of the appointments now, and although Pepper payed close attention and picked up the slack, it wasn’t the same. But that wasn’t important just yet, even if it was written clearly on her face. She was disappointed in herself, but could he see it? Did he know her as well as she hoped he did? She wasn’t sure. Maybe he did, if he’d missed her too. “It’s not somewhere you should’ve been,” she whispered, her hands tightening their grip without her realizing it. He should’ve been found so much more quickly than he had. “You haven’t...talked to anyone about what happened, have you?” She wasn’t surprised by that but it did make her realize that even the small bit that she knew - the pain the most dominant thing - was intruding on his privacy. Pepper bit her lip to stop from apologizing again, for something that had been out of her control.

That look on her face when she went distant scared the hell out of him. He was looking right into her face, and she had been looking at him, but then she just went away. Her eyes were still open, but she wasn't there, and he knew exactly where she'd gone. Tony did things to try to make that place go away, even when he knew it lived in his mind. He had a drink every day, even if he did it casual and he did it cool, he still did it. There was never a time he didn't have a project going, and the only thing that was at all stable in his life was Silver. Silver was the only one that seemed to understand the cave that still existed in Tony's mind, and he never said a word about it.

Tony pressed his jaw together and his eyes went wide and dark. They stayed that way even when she returned to the room, to him. His grip on her went painfully tight, but only for a moment. "No. Except you. You want to talk about it?" He thought she did. Maybe it would make her feel better. If it would make her feel better, he would. He gave her a weak smile through the beard he kept so carefully trimmed. It flickered and went out like a bad flame. "But I definitely need a drink first. You hungry?"

Pepper thought the conversation they were having was the reason for the tightness of his grip and the set of his jaw, so she said nothing. Even if his hands hadn’t loosened after a moment, she would have endured it because she thought it was what he needed to do. When he asked her if she wanted to talk about the cave, she almost said no. Almost. It was her first instinct, to decline the offer and tuck the subject back into the recesses of her mind, but that weak smile, that disappeared so quickly, made her reconsider. What if he needed to talk about it and he didn’t know how to ask? What if talking about it would make him feel better? She would listen then, and she would try not to cry again.

“I would,” Pepper replied honestly, trying to keep any hit of a question out of her tone. “Yea, I could use something to eat,” she added, but that was a lie. The last thing she wanted was food, or alcohol, but if that was what he wanted, she’d take care of it. Suddenly, she could be useful again, in more than one way, so she gave him a smile that was a little bit stronger than his and slipped out of the chair, staying in contact with him for as long as was reasonable before she made her way over to the crystal decanter and glasses, pouring liberal glasses for both of them. Pepper picked them both up and walked over to him, handing him one of them. “Pizza? Or I can cook,” she offered, knowing her apartment was only just through the door if he wanted.

Tony leaned back and rose off his heels as Pepper stood up. He knew that business like wire to her spine, and to him it indicated a returning reality, to the way things were meant to be. He could still look at the redness under her freckles and in her eyes and sense a disarming fragility, but she was a little more herself when she was being in charge. “You cook?” he wondered aloud. He put one hand in his pocket, an automatic defensive gesture, as she circled around him and went to the bar. Tony wasn’t here to use that much, and Obadiah had been more liberal with it in his way than Pepper ever was. There was nothing odd in her handing him a drink, though, and he took it automatically and sat in the chair she had just left. There was still one more facing it on this side of the desk, and he obviously expected her to sit down. “Pizza. I don’t think I want to go anywhere. One of these days you’ll have to tell me what you cook.” Unless, of course, she wanted to change the subject from traumatic POW experiences in the Middle East, in which case he’d talk about cooking now. Tony took a deep drink of thirty-year scotch to soothe his nerves.

A fond, warm smile was hidden from him with her back turned to him the way it was, but it was there. “I do, quite well, I like to think,” Pepper replied as she poured them both drinks. Even though she knew hers would likely take all night to finish and his significantly less, it didn’t matter. “Pizza will be quicker though,” especially since he didn’t want to go anywhere. Which, she could honestly understand given the topic of conversation and she appreciated that he was willing to do this for her. As soon as she handed off his glass, she picked up the phone to call for pizza. The place had their order on file - something she’d set up at a number of restaurants - and informed the security desk to bring the food up when it came. Then she took a seat across from him. “I’ll cook for you one night, when you’re free.” It was an out for him, if he’d rather not, and it was automatic, even though she knew he always did whatever he wanted. Except, he was doing this, wasn’t he? So maybe she needed to reevaluate what she knew about him. Pepper could only hope that this conversation would be a good step forward.

She wasn’t sure where to start though, so they lapsed into silence for a few minutes as she tried to get her bearings. “Rhodey- He said the convoy was attacked, when I finally had a chance to talk to him. What... do you remember?” Pepper wanted to approach this with as much caution as she could while still maintaining enough firmness to drive the conversation if necessary. She half hoped that he would start talking and simply keep going.

Tony didn’t break the silence at first, his drink in one hand and his fingers loose. He slumped down in the chair, spine settling against its straight, modern lines, refusing to conform to the discomfort meant to keep anyone looking at Pepper across her desk in their place. That kind of thing even worked on Tony, and he was pleased that he didn’t need to deal with all the desk ornamentation, and she was sitting a few inches from his knee rather than on some kind of high platform under disapproving arched eyebrows. He glanced at her. She wasn’t disapproving now, though maybe she should be.

Tony coughed, rubbed one eyebrow, squinted at nothing. “Yeah. They hit the convoy, your basic...” He trailed off, decided not to talk about the specifications of each weapon, the caliber of bullets, the boxing tactics. “...Never mind. They hit it and they used our stuff.” He decided not to name it. “Landed right next to me before it went off. Figured that was it, but then I...” he hesitated, his eyes flickering over her face. “Woke up. Later. In this cave, with this chunk of metal in my chest.” Tony reached up and tapped four short nails to the blue glow. It rang gently under the impact. “Only I was attached to a car battery. Lots of shrapnel swimming around in there. I’ve looked into it; too small to be operable, even if you could keep me alive long enough to pull it out. An Afghani doctor was also being held there, and he did the first operation. Steady hands.” Tony smiled a strange tilted smile, bittersweet. “But when I was up and around, I improved it.” He let his hand drop from the glow and fell silent again.

Her eyes widened for the briefest of moments when he said it was ‘our stuff’ that had hit him. Pepper’s knowledge of all things that had transpired was minimal but things were starting to click into place just a bit. Stark Industries, Obadiah? He had been supplying the ‘other side’? That explained exactly why he shut down manufacturing as soon as he’d gotten home. It explained some of their conversations too, but she didn’t say anything just then. This time, her eyes didn’t drop to his chest piece. Her gaze didn’t move from his face. “A...car battery?” Pepper was confused, but then, she shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d modified and improved on it. He was never very good at being attached to things. She couldn’t imagine a car battery was any different.

She also noticed the look he got when he mentioned the doctor. Pepper decided to leave that be, not poke at something that he might consider a fond memory or moment. “With the arc reactor.” Confusion colored her expression again. “But how did you find the parts for it?” She thought it was a logical question, not anything particularly bad or pressing. Pepper angled herself toward him a bit more and took a small sip of her whiskey while she waited for his response.

Tony almost never realized how intelligent Pepper was. She always kept up with him, even when he was at his most technical, and now, when he was being blunt to the point of evasive, she could always read him. She could read him years ago when he was stuck in the desert hundreds of miles from her, and she could read him now. He gave her a smile for her question, which was, of course, exactly the right one. “They gave them to me, because they wanted me to build them a Jericho.” The appropriately named weapon was now entirely unavailable and the schematics were not even available to Stark Industries employees, but back then it had been the product of years of development and Tony’s own personal touch.

He turned the glass on his palm a couple times, clearly trying to decide how much to tell her. After a little while, he cleared his throat and said, “I said no, at first. But it turned out that... wasn’t the way to go. So we tried subversion instead. Pretend to build the weapon, buy time to build something else. Yinsen helped.” Tony ground his heels into the carpet, steadying himself on the chair.

The Jericho, the product he’d gone to demonstrate personally. She frowned, her brow creasing as she tried to think it through. They must have had parts from other weapons that they had, and hoped that Tony would be able to rebuild it from memory, but she had to think about how they’d known he would have been there in the first place. She didn’t know if they’d gone public with his itinerary, but she didn’t think so. But- Obadiah. He would’ve known. One mystery was solved before he spoke again. A faint smile crossed her lips when he admitted to not agreeing at first. That was just how he was, and she wasn’t surprised in the least.

“The suit. You built the suit from...your other weapons?” That was impressive, even for him as far as she was concerned, but she tried not to let it show. Instead, Pepper took another sip of whiskey as she debated asking about Yinsin. It seemed, just from those two simple words, that Yinsin had provided assistance and possibly even some kind of kinship for Tony. Did she want to intrude on that? She wasn’t sure. Particularly since there had been no mention of Yinsin before this. What had happened to him, after the cave? If it was something bad, she didn’t want to make him think too hard about it. “It sounds like he was what you needed,” Pepper commented lightly, setting the glass on the edge of her desk. “What happened when you escaped?”

Tony was glad she didn’t read into what he’d said about resisting in the beginning. He hadn’t really mentioned the torture part to anyone before, because he wasn’t proud of it. Yinsen had tried to make it seem like it was inevitable, but somewhere in the bottom of his stomach, Tony hadn’t thought so. He’d thought that he’d failed, and even if he’d torn the Ten Rings apart, they were still somewhere in his mind, pushing him into stale water. He pressed his mouth together, then he drank the rest of the scotch in one. That was a burn even for Tony, and he said, “Yinsen was killed. But the Mark I worked, and I burned everything before I got out of there. And then... well, Rhodey probably told you the rest.” Tony had made the same conclusion she had about Obadiah, but like her, far too late.

Pepper reached out for him, her fingers brushing along the wrist of the hand holding his glass. He wasn’t the type to show his emotions but she thought maybe he could use a little comfort just then. Just a careful, reassuring squeeze, and then her hands were back on her lap. “He told me they found you walking the desert and about the reactor. He didn’t say much else though, other than asking me to ensure you’d get checked out by a doctor when you came home.” She smiled faintly, remembering the day he’d walked off the plane and waved off the EMTs. She also remembered how glad she’d been that he’d finally made it home and how they just glossed over it. “What was it like? While you were working, I mean,” she asked, but before he could answer, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she raised her voice to say, and a security guard came in holding the box of pizza with a few paper plates and napkins on top. “You can just put that over here,” Pepper instructed, getting up to get the decanter of whiskey to refill his glass while the man walked further into the office to set the items between where Tony and Pepper had been sitting. He smiled politely at Tony before nodding to Pepper, who had returned with the decanter, and taking his leave. She offered him a refill before opening the pizza box and pulling out a slice for him first, and then one for her.

Tony didn’t say anything when the pizza guy came in, and he watched him in a way he didn’t usually watch people he didn’t know. Nobody had ever seriously challenged Tony or his existence before the cave in the desert, and while it hadn’t left him with the kind of damage he knew was common in soldiers, it had changed him, and deeply. Pepper was one of three people who really knew Tony both before and after, and the only one still speaking to him. The pizza guy, as nondescript as he was, seemed like he didn’t belong, and Tony didn’t return the smile, nor did he frown. He just watched him. The interruption made Tony quiet in a way he hadn’t been since the beginning of the conversation, and he took a piece of pizza and a refill. The pizza didn’t taste like anything to Tony, though Pepper probably ordered the best. He didn’t know what to say after the interruption, the brief spell of intimacy broken.

Despite pulling out a slice for herself, Pepper didn’t touch her pizza. She settled back down in her chair and just looked at him. The silence hadn’t been bothersome before, but it felt different now and she wondered why. Was it because of the interruption? Or was it because she’d made him talk about something he hadn’t wanted to? “You know,” she started softly, “I think I understand better, why you use the Iron Man suit. I don’t...understand it completely, I won’t pretend to, but I get it now. More than I did that day in the workshop.” She could still remember how intensely he looked at her when he told her that there was nothing else but the next mission, nothing else except keeping the world safe and Stark Tech out of the wrong hands. Pepper had picked up that flash drive and gone to the office that day because she’d wanted to help him. She didn’t want to see him die, and she still didn’t. That intensity hadn’t faded she didn’t think, but it had changed into something else, something she wasn’t quite sure of. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right? Not willingly, at least, and Justine isn’t leaving anytime soon.” She knew sometimes Alters changed and other times disappeared altogether. Sometimes they came back without any memory of being there before. She wasn’t going to leave him though, not when she thought he needed her.

“It’s been ten years, Tony, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that, even with all the ups and downs, they’ve been the best ten years of my life. I wouldn’t trade any of it, not for the world.” Pepper was being completely and utterly honest with him, reaching out again for his hand. She didn’t know how else to tell him that she cared about him in a way that wouldn’t make him run off or shut her out completely. There was a part of her that was still afraid he’d do that, but there was also a part of her that hoped that maybe he’d let her in. “Thank you, for talking about this with me. I know it couldn’t have been easy. It means a lot to me that you did,” she added, just as sincerely as her earlier statements.

Tony smiled, just a little, and it was out of affection for her and not any real peace with the topic at hand. He didn't think that she'd ever understand exactly why he did what he did, or what really had happened. It was perspective, all perspective. The Ten Rings had shown Tony what he was, a creature of destruction, a person that caused more death and pain than any one thing since the Black Death. Yinsen had helped him learn how to live with that truth. The experience had been stained with a selfish, desperate need to survive and the astonishingly simplistic fear that he wanted nothing else. Even in the middle of that moral dilemma, Tony hadn't been able to overcome his own self-importance. There wasn't anything he hated more about himself. He couldn't change that.

He thought, looking at her, that Pepper had wasted her years with him. Yet all the same he couldn't imagine going through it without her. He trusted Pepper and Tony was not anything like naive; he knew that given the chance eight out of ten people would use the power Tony had given Pepper and do much worse than Obadiah Stane. He'd watched her in the first five years, setting JARVIS to tracking numbers and benefits, and not even one penny had been misplaced. Even Tony could be impressed.

Tony took a deep breath and gave her hand a squeeze. "We should have talked about it earlier. Go sleep in a bed, and if you're still getting these nightmares, we're going to need to try something else." Tony had no idea what. Group therapy? He shuddered at the thought, but he'd do it to keep that terrified look off her face. He let go of her hand and finished his drink. After the first three or four bites of pizza, he wasn't as hungry as he thought he'd been.

His smile comforted her, small though it was and her smile widened in turn. This was just one small step and she was looking forward to taking more steps with him as he was ready to take them. He deserved so much and all Pepper wanted to do was facilitate him getting everything he deserved. She didn’t mean that maliciously either, not at all. She saw the good in him, and all of his potential. Despite his flaws and the mistakes he made, Pepper truly believed that he could one day look in the mirror and love the man he saw there, for both the good and the bad. The squeeze of his hand was a good sign too and for once, she wasn’t afraid of going to sleep. Her relief was probably written all over her face, but she didn’t mind.

“I’m always here to talk, to listen,” she reminded him gently, before taking a bite of her pizza. She really wasn’t hungry at all though, so she set it aside after that. Her drink was forgotten as well, off to the side, and would no doubt be cleaned up later after they’d left. Pepper started to thank him, but a yawn overtook her and she covered her mouth with the palm of her hand. “Sorry,” she said a bit sheepishly, but it was as good a sign as any that it was probably a good idea to get some sleep. She stood and moved over to his side, leaning down to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Tony.” Pep stepped back then and gave him a warm smile before turning to leave. The door to her office opened to the building’s hallway instead of Passages but there would be a car waiting for her to take her home. Even if she did have another nightmare, she didn’t think it would be as bad as the others.