Sophia Warren (twostepsahead) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-07 03:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: marvel comics, iron man, pepper potts |
Who: Pepper and Tony
What: Catching up
When: Recent-ish
Where: The house in Malibu primarily; through the Marvel Door
Warnings: None
After the destruction from Tony’s last birthday party (oh, the happy memories) the Malibu house had been entirely renovated for the fourth or fifth time. JARVIS was reinstalled with increased control over security and communication management inside and out, because as Iron Man became a more commonly recognized figure, his technology became more of a target for people out to steal it. He had been focusing on upgrading his New York headquarters, Stark Tower, over the last few months, because he’d found the government kept trying to sneak things by him when he wasn’t paying attention, so the east coast was a better place to be.
This was all before he ended up as a figment in a cab driver’s head, of course. Silver entering the picture was extremely inconvenient for Tony, who had recently worked out his purpose in life three years ago and was loathe to reexamine. Tony wasn’t the kind to accept being a figment, and he was already remolding his life to work in 24 hour increments before Silver took the action back. Now that he knew he got to be himself through the door, Tony was less grumpy about taking up space in Silver’s head, but for a while there he’d wanted to wrench control from the collected, controlled Silver at every opportunity. Silver was stronger than Tony could believe in that regard, however, and accustomed to managing a lot of pressure and a lot of information thanks to his former occupation. Tony couldn’t make the ex-spook do anything he did not want to do.
Fortunately, Silver had a healthy interest in Tony’s life and technology, so he made a deal with the billionaire that he’d go through the door twice a week as long as Tony walked back out of it in a timely fashion. It was working so far, but Tony was already chafing at the boundaries. He spent a lot of time testing the Mark VI and going over the things he knew (vaguely) about himself, things he could have (or had) supposedly done in other... worlds, you could say. Parallel universes. The future. It was all very confusing, and it was interfering with Tony’s desire to live in the now.
After one such soul-searching flight, Tony dropped through one of the custom skylights of the Malibu residence out of the dark evening, landing on a circular pad constructed for just such an occasion and allowing the disassembling of the suit as he moved casually forward. “Pepper?” he shouted, into the dark house.
There was still work to be done, even if she was a piece of fiction. Pepper didn’t want to think about Felicia and her life in Las Vegas. For now, there were phone calls to return, appointments to be rescheduled, and other things to take care of. She had no interest in discovering any information about her fictional self, particularly since she was quite real after stepping through the door. She and Felicia were of the same mindsets so it wouldn’t be too difficult to work out a schedule for them to spend time in both worlds. At least, Pepper hoped as much.
She was in the middle of updating her calendar with an few plausible schedules for she and Felicia, as well as leaving notes for Felicia to keep an eye on Silver, when she heard Tony’s familiar voice. She clicked out of her PDA and sent it back to the home screen as she walked to meet him. Pepper was dressed in a dark blue skirt and matching jacket with a white blouse and black, sensible heels. It was her usual attire, though her hair was down instead of being tied back. “Lights, please, JARVIS,” she requested softly as she entered the room. “Is everything squared away in New York then?” she asked, giving him a warm smile. There was a part of her that wanted to ask about how he was coping, but Pepper wanted to keep things professional for now. Felicia was subtle enough to that Pepper was confident that Tony would be taken care of on both sides of the door.
“Good evening, Mr. Stark. Good evening, Miss Potts,” JARVIS said, as the lights came up to a pleasant near authentic evening glow.
Tony was pleased to see Pepper here and whole. “Hair down,” Tony observed, rolling one shoulder as he kept walking in a straight line through the glass doors and into the living room on a intercept path. He gave her a little lift of brows. “I’m interrupting a date?” Moving past her the way he always did, Tony stepped all the way into the apartment, noticing the plethora of statistics and images JARVIS was offering on screens at all sides. “New York is getting there. You should go there. Get settled. All the happenin’s are happening there these days, believe it or not. At least the chowder’s good, right?”
Seeing him made her feel relieved, even though she hadn’t been aware of being nervous. The feeling lasted all of a moment before Pepper pushed it away. They had more important things to figure out and her feelings were easily ignored in favor of that. “You are,” she replied dryly, stopping herself from rolling her eyes. She followed a few steps behind him, giving him space as he approached the screens. She didn’t understand most of what was displayed, but that was just as well.
“I’ve adjusted the schedule to allow for time outside of...this,” she replied, hesitating only slightly. A slight shake of her head got her back on track. “I’ll get out to New York as soon as I can, though it likely wont be until next week. It will likely take a week or so to work out a steady routine but I’m confident it wont affect anything here.” Given how hard both she and Felicia worked, it wouldn’t be a problem at all. “Otherwise, everything is in order.” Well, if you didn’t count being fictional and at the mercy of another person, but here wasn’t the place to think of it. She ignored the comment about the chowder, but she did make a mental note to research all the various places he would be likely to frequent so that he’d have a table waiting for him.
“Don’t know what I’d do without an adjusted schedule... Who’s the lucky man? Can I fight him or just bankrupt him?” Tony had an uncanny ability to carry on several conversations at once, at whatever pace he chose to have them. He kept walking as she followed along, taking a detour through the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of flavored water on his way downstairs. “And New York won’t go anywhere without you, with only two or three days a week here.” Tony ignored Silver’s response of two, not three and carried on with his commentary. “I’m going to have to drop a lot of meetings. Change to phone meetings... something like that. You know this works in Silver’s Vegas, too?” Tony held up one of the familiar blue glass squares that functioned as a combined PDA, cellphone, and master control of many of his devices.
Pepper smiled when Tony asked if he could fight or bankrupt her date considering she’d spent her evening doing work for him. “That isn’t necessary,” she replied instead, following him through the kitchen and then downstairs. She was always a few feet behind him. “I assumed as much. Your schedule can account for two or three days a week here,” she added, though she didn’t add that she’d likely spend three or four days through the door. Felicia didn’t seem to mind, quiet as she was. Her attention was drawn to the device for a moment before shaking her head. “I didn’t. That will be quite useful. I’ll change your meetings,” she replied, pulling out her iPhone and making a note of it.
“You’ve been invited to three functions over the next six months. I’ll send along the regular donation the next time I’m here. Felicia is being quite agreeable about all of this,” Pepper went on, though it progressed from business to slightly business-related. She supposed it wasn’t too much of a problem if he was mentioning Silver so easily.
“Only three?” Tony tossed out, casually. He tapped his fingers on the glass next to the door to his lab and stepped inside. It smelled of melted glass and electricity, with a dash of motor oil over Tony’s unmistakable cologne. “I’m sure I can work up something where Silver’s voice ends up sounding like mine. In fact I think I have something like that already.” Silver had a quite different idea of the situation than Felicia. Silver reminded Tony that this world wasn’t real, and Tony scowled. “If he cooperates. Keep it down to what’s absolutely necessary, will you?”
The iPhone caught his eye and he took a double-take. “I can make you something better than that bit of junk. Are you emotionally attached?” He smiled a teasing smile, pocketing his own ‘phone,’ and walking over to inspect last year’s models of the suit.
Pepper’s lips twitched just slightly when he questioned how many functions he’d been invited to. “If you’re itching for a fourth, I’m sure that can be arranged,” she replied. He hardly needed the events to have a good time. “Of course. I’ll try and keep them brief as well,” she replied. She should be able to handle a few of the calls, but otherwise, they’d simply have to work things out. Another note added to her to-do list, but it was hardly a bother. While Felicia didn’t understand the situation, she did understand the importance of work. Pepper was grateful for how understanding Felicia was being.
“Am I...no,” she replied, a bit bewildered as to why he was even asking the question. “It was simply what was delivered to Felicia.” Pepper glanced down at it, then back and Tony. “You can do whatever you’d like, though if you could put JARVIS on something for me, that would work out quite nicely.” She followed him over to where the models were, used to the smell by now. “How has the suit been?” she asked after a few moments. She’d forgotten to ask earlier about his flight.
Tony wasn’t interested in functions, and though he enjoyed making a spectacle of himself, he had bigger things on his mind, and with only forty-eight hours with every week, he had to be careful with his time. He’d only been careful with his time once before, and he didn’t want to feel like he was going to die every time he went back through that door. Planning. Good terms with Silver. Maximize his time.
“It’s the one sent to you? Really?” Tony twisted around from the suits and faced Pepper, focusing on the phone. “I need to look at it. I don’t know what makes it work both ways... Need to test if my equipment works there or if his works here... anything but what came from the door?” Thinking aloud, eying the iPhone, twisting it in his hand.
“It was,” she replied, handing him the phone. “It’s got a bit of an extra kick to it, but it’s not JARVIS.” Her tone was fond as she glanced around the room. Though he was a computer program in essence, Pepper had always thought rather fondly of JARVIS. The addition of him on her system, if possible, would assist her as well as Felicia. She would do what she could to make it more bearable for both of them.
Most of what Tony said, Pepper assumed was meant for himself. She was silent for a few minutes as he looked over the phone. “Do you have any idea how long we’re allowed to stay?” This was her first time through the door and she wasn’t sure how much time she had. Given the...uniqueness of the situation, Pepper was certain there were rules. She just wanted to know what they were.
Tony strode away with Pepper’s iPhone in hand, using one knee to push the wheeled chair out of his way and plugging the phone into the consoles on his desk. “Wires,” he muttered, “practically stone age.” JARVIS started describing the model of the phone and software versions as well as the physical specs. None of this was helpful to Tony, who started touching the gently glowing data as it passed over the screen. “Doesn’t look out of the ordinary yet. JARVIS isn’t a light piece of software for a hunk of junk like this... we’ll see...”
Distracted by his toys, Tony only answered a full minute later, as if she had just asked the question. “Twenty-four hours exactly. Tried it already. JARVIS, pull up door countdown.” The projectors mounted around the room assembled a six digit clock, the hundredths of seconds spinning downward. Tony had another twenty minutes.
Of course the technology took precedence, but she didn’t mind that. He wouldn’t be Tony Stark if he were any other way. “I’m sure I’ll make do,” she replied when he said he’d have to see about adding JARVIS. She’d been able to function quite well without the software before she’d met him. Besides, she would still have access to JARVIS while she was here. She was distracted from her thoughts when he said that they’d only have twenty-four hours.
“How many times have you been here?” she asked, glancing at the clock JARVIS pulled up. Twenty minutes. She still had a few hours left but the idea that he’d be forced to leave in twenty minutes left an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. It was a feeling she firmly pushed away because it wasn’t like he was dying again or anything like that. He was simply returning to Las Vegas as Silver and then he’d be back the next time he walked through the door. The end of the world, it was not.
Tony, who had left the clock where it was and returned to his tinkering with the phone, stopped what he was doing to turn his head and raised one eyebrow. “You mean counting all the times I came to see the site, oversee the installation of my lab, babysit a decorator, not to mention however many years we--” Cough, “--I lived here?” He turned back to the phone and gave the screen a couple hard taps to see an exploded view of the file storage system. “Twice.” It was bizarre to Tony how he could have his whole life experiences mean next to nothing. He blamed Silver, because Silver was immediately in reach just at that moment.
Another couple taps and then Tony walked away, rubbing at the bright light in his chest. “It looks normal. I don’t want to tamper with it yet until I’ve had more time with mine and experimented with some things from here on that side.”
Pepper arched her own eyebrow at his response. ‘We’ was certainly the more accurate term, but she was glad that he corrected himself. It brought memories of almost kisses and actual kisses that she preferred not to think about. They were hardly appropriate and the actual kisses they’d shared came from a near death experience. It had just been a product of over stimulation and adrenaline, hardly based on real feelings of intimacy. She waited for an actual response without a word and nodded once she got it.
“Thank you,” she replied curtly. “You know, we’ve faced worse and came out on top. We’ll get through this too.” Pepper’s tone softened slightly as she watched him walk away. She was concerned with how he was handling this situation. It was certainly one of the most unique situations they’d been in, but it was hardly the worst. They weren’t getting shot at for one.
Tony falsified a bright smile. “Sure.” For his part, Tony would probably prefer getting shot at. At least he could build something to protect himself or shoot back, something, anything that was better than just sitting around and talking to some guy in his head. “JARVIS, show me what you have on the mobile. You’ve got nineteen minutes to impress me.” Tony said, giving Pepper a last, faintly hooded glance before rounding the desk again and approaching his workspace, which was already aglow with the schematics. There had to be strange energy schemes, some trace of what was going on here. Worlds didn’t just open and close. Tony glanced back, a last ditch comment before he got immersed in what he was doing. “I’m going to want to do an analysis on the keys, too, eventually.”
Her lips curved downward in the barest of frowns at his smile. She knew him better than most and she knew that smile was just for her benefit. It wasn’t worth pushing at the moment and she did have more work to do. “Just let me know when and I’ll be sure to be here,” she replied before leaving him to his work. She’d collect her phone later, after Tony left. Pepper made her way back upstairs and turned the TV on, mostly to catch up on the news while she worked. Two and a half hours later, with only fifteen minutes left in her world, Pepper went back downstairs to collect her phone. She waited there for the door to pull her back.