Pepper didn't know what the Winter Soldier meant, let alone who it was. She didn't know many things that were discussed within Stark Tower, or behind locks, or at length. But she knew, with the sharp twinge of something giving way behind her breastbone, that she had not expected the man with the serious eyes and the kind hands the night of a party, to set her toward betrayal as easily and as smoothly as if she had made no choice at all. She didn't know if she would have done, if Thomas who had given just a little of the attention she wanted, whose mild warmth she had turned towards as easily and simply as stretching toward sunshine without thought to what he brought with him, had asked. If all he had done was ask.
But he had not. And she flinched when he said 'forget' as easily as if it were an exchange between the cashier and the constant flow of footfalls behind them both. "I come and go at will," she repeated, and her voice was low, "But I don't see everything, I don't hear everything. Why didn't you ask?" and it was plaintive, that lack of choice.
"It's what?" And she reached, then. Not for cutlery and not for the structures of the support beams above but below, reached blindly for what she could feel. Something, something that wasn't right, and the color in her faded until she was leached of the pretty, limpid look she had had coming through the door in anticipation. There was nothing of anticipation left.
"You could have asked. You could have given me a choice."