Chapter Text
She stumbled, stepping over the threshold of the small apartment, and that mis-step, that stagger, moment of clumsiness tipped her over the emotional edge. Her legs gave way, dropping her to the cheap carpeting where she kicked off her pumps and scootched backwards on her ass until she bumped up against something, a wall, maybe, and she shook, staring at the blotchy streaks she’d left between herself and her shoes.
“Are you injured?” Natasha asked, not Natalie, despite the pencil skirt and heels. Natalie had been at her elbow the entire time but this woman, standing at the door, this was Natasha, or perhaps Agent Romanov of SHIELD, and she was looking at Pepper as though waiting for an answer. Oh, the blood.
“No, it’s not my blood. It’s Peterson’s blood, and Fujikowa’s and …” she gasped.
“You going to throw up?”
“Probably, yes,” Pepper answered.
“Kitchen sink behind you.”
Pepper looked up and the wall at her back was actually a counter. She used the edge to pull herself to her feet, abandoning her shoes in the middle of the floor. Her nylons parted with a tickle like water droplets running down her calf. She peered at her calf. “Oh, I was wrong. I am injured. A scratch. Not…” Not Peterson’s head exploding over her. She leaned over the sink and vomited. Natasha put a hand on her back, then left her to throw up what little remained of a continental breakfast from a continent away and hours ago. A lifetime ago. Two lives. Her sleeves were brown and red, still wet. “Are they both dead?”
“Both?”
“Fujiko --.”
Natasha put up one finger and spoke to the window. “She’s safe, minimally injured. We’re not hopping soon, though. Bring clothes for pickup.” She paused. “Wilco. Channel 4.” She flicked the earpiece, paused again, said, “St. Petersburg,” and flicked the earpiece once more. “Tell him to keep his head down. She’s safer than he is.”
Pepper turned on the water letting water swirl coffee and bits of bagel down the drain, then scooped water from the running tap to rinse her mouth. Her sleeve clung stickily and she pulled at it, linen and silk and bits of brain matter. Shades of white, suitable for semi tropical weather in summer: ivory, vanilla, bone. The bits of skull weren’t the off white of her suit, though; they were speckled and gritty and she threw up again. She ripped off her jacket and shoved it under the still-running water; no dry cleaner could salvage it and she wanted it off, all of it off, but even then, standing bare armed, her shell was spattered and her skirt looked like she’d rolled in paint. She leaned over the sink as her stomach upended again, then ripped at her skirt, popping free the button at the waistband, feeling the cloth pull free at the seams, and stuffed the whole thing in the sink on top of the wadded jacket, letting the water run over it. Her shell and half slip were stained, but at least she wasn’t smearing other people’s lifeblood against her skin. She closed the tap and leaned over the sink for long seconds, watching the water level sink slowly, blocked by the wad of fabric, leaving a high water mark of gore.
“Finished freaking out yet?” Natasha asked from the doorway.
“No.”
“S’okay, you’ll have the rest of your life.”
“More than they will.”
“My point,” Natasha said, dispassionately. The last of the water ran out with a gurgle and Pepper poked at her ruined suit. “Leave it,” Natasha said. “I’ll biobag it. There’s a shower. I’ll bring you clothes that won’t fit, but they’ll be clean. Take your time.”
The door led to a room with a single twin bed with linens folded on it and a shower stall so small that the spray took the whole of it. She folded her legs under her, sole to one tiled edge and knee against the other, an awkward pile of shinbones and knees and spine, folded in on itself, on herself, and wept.
--::--
The water ran cold and she twisted off the tap. A towel, rough but clean smelling, waited for her and she wrung as much water out of her hair as she could before stepping into the rest of the apartment, wrapping the towel around her chest. “Just us,” Natasha called from out of her sight. “No need to close the door. Clothes on the bed. Our options were limited.”
Pepper eyed the mens’ briefs, then slid them on. No one was going to see them, and Y fronts weren’t all that different from panties, she supposed. Except that they hung wrong and bunched, even under loose gym pants. Her hair clung to her neck and dripped on the over-sized tee shirt and she twisted it up and out of the way as she walked into the apartment’s other room. Natasha sat on top of the counter, playing with a rifle scope. “Clint says hello. Okay, no he says, ‘Stylin’, Potts’ but that’s undignified at best, so I’m not going to repeat it. If you want to, you can face the window and lift your shirt.”
Pepper paled and stepped back into the doorway, but Natasha wasn’t looking at her as she continued, “No, she might, and then you’d have to explain to Stark in full on pissed off possessive mode how you caught an eyeful of … Of course I’d tell him. Better, I’d tell Rogers. Or I could put in the official report that … Fury, too. Call her yourself.” The phone at her knee rang, and Natasha picked it up and tossed it cross-body to Pepper without looking. “It’s for you.”
She glanced down. It was an older model, playing a default ring tone, and she didn’t recognize the number displayed on the screen. Honestly, she didn’t even recognize the area code. She pressed the green button and asked, “Hello?”
“She lies. Please don’t flash me.”
“Agent Barton?”
He said, “Tony being pissed at me might be funny, but Rogers makes this face, and I can’t take it. How are you doing?”
“Where are you?”
“I’d wave but you can’t see me anyway. Sorry about the prison-like fashion statement, by the way. I wanted to get you an Iron Man T shirt, but we were stuck with what was in local caches.”
“They’re clean. I appreciate the thought.”
“How’s the calf?” he asked.
“It, um, it quit bleeding while I was in the shower.”
“Let Tasha look at it anyway, okay? Concrete chunks have crap on them and infections su … are preventable.” Barton hung up abruptly and Pepper glanced at the phone. When would this become commonplace, cellphones without sim cards and stockpiles of clothing and were they really called safe houses? In the parlance, the lingo? She could probably ask, but decided she didn’t want to know. She crossed the three steps to the counter where Natasha sat. “Can I call my office?”
“Not yet. Give us an hour or so.”
“They need to know I’m alive.”
“They do. Stark Industries’ official statement is that you’ve left the scene, are in a protected space, and will make a formal statement yourself at some point in the next twenty-four hours.”
The HKSE closed in four hours, she thought. “Why so long?”
“Either we track back the attack now or we use you as bait.” She glanced up. “If you need to throw up again, I can move.”
“No, no, I’m … you’re right. Better me than Tony.” Pepper took a deep breath, then another. Somehow the oxygen wasn’t making it to her brain, and she felt dizzy.
“He’d argue with you.”
“He’d argue with a brick wall.” The response came to her lips with the ease of familiarity.
Natasha glanced at the window. “Besides, you may not be the actual target.”
“You think it was Peterson?”
“Lee.”
A chill went down Pepper’s spine. “Lee was shot, too?”
“Let’s have a look at that leg.” Natasha pulled a white and yellow tube of some sort from the first aid kit and uncapped it.
Pepper put her foot up on the chair seat and yanked up her pants leg. Her calf was slowly oozing blood again. “Please tell me you have protection on Lee. She’s doing groundbreaking work.”
“We have a team on Lee. And on Sonnier.” Natasha wrapped Pepper’s calf and tucked the ointment back into the kit.
“But you don’t have your best team on either of them, because you and Barton are both watching me.”
“Sitwell’s got Sonnier, with Marsh. They’re good.”
“Better than you?” She gestured at the window. “Than him? No, so I’m the primary target.” She could feel her heart start to race again. “I’m not the most valuable, so I’m the most vulnerable.”
Natasha laughed, not with Natalie’s throaty sex-charged chuckle, but something sharp, with unpleasant edges, and moved so quickly that Pepper couldn’t react, couldn’t even flinch. She stood still as Natasha snaked one hand around her neck, pushing her wet hair into her jaw and kissed her, feather light, on the cheek. She shivered as Natasha whispered into her ear. “Sitwell is good enough to protect a Nobel-winning groundbreaking physicist. Martinez is good enough for a geneticist who may unravel the secret of cancer’s unbridled growth, but you, Pepper Potts,” her voice roughened to something more appropriate to the bedroom, “You get us.” She let go and stepped away. “You can blame Tony. I like to do that, especially when something’s not his fault. You can credit SHIELD’s relationship with Stark Industries. Blaming Clint’s fun, too, and technically valid for everything I’ve been involved in for years now. Or Rogers’ face, the one he makes when he catches anyone drinking out of the carton.” She tilted her head. “Or, yes, thank you, when someone swears on comms. Honestly, I didn’t know he spoke Arabic.”
Pepper sat in the chair she’d been balanced on and ran her fingers through her hair. “Well, we shouldn’t be surprised he has a gifted tongue.” She paused and was rewarded by the barest movement of Natasha’s profile. “I suppose we could call him a cunning linguist.”
Natasha laughed again, then said to the air, “No, I’ll repeat it in a second, hold,” and she leaned in to kiss the top of Pepper’s head. “And that’s why you’ve got us.”