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In the end, he called Pepper.
He’s not entirely sure how he managed to get out of the bunker where he and the man he’d thought was his friend had fought so bitterly. He did recall somehow getting picked up by his plane and immediately reaching for a drink.
Only, the bottles were no longer there. He’d removed all trace of them from the plane after Pepper had left. He remembered it because his increased drinking since Sokovia had been the basis of many of the fights between them.
He slumped in his seat, too worn out in so many ways. He was hurting and too many things had changed in the last few hours. It seemed like everything he had always known to be true were nothing but lies.
So, he called the one person who had never betrayed him and had always been honest and real with him.
Pepper was more than a little surprised when she got the phone call from Tony. With things unsure and in flux between them, she hadn’t known if he would ever call her. Taking a break had been her idea, but cutting off all communication between them had been Tony’s.
It was the way he sounded that made her say that she would meet him at the airport.
She had never heard him sound that lost before. It wasn’t Tony. That worried her because it meant that something had happened that might have broken him. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one, but she forced it to the back of her mind. She was good at compartmentalizing and she would make no plans or allow any of her fears to surface until she saw him and spoke with him.
When he disembarked from his plane, she took one look at him and immediately bundled him into the car. She sat in the back seat with him as Happy drove, but Tony didn’t speak.
This worried her even more.
Pepper took him to her penthouse apartment. It was somewhere familiar and she wouldn’t have to do an inordinate amount of searching for anything she needed in order to help Tony feel better.
After pushing him into taking a shower, she firmly sent Happy home. Whatever had happened, she knew without a doubt that Tony did not need or want an audience. While Tony showered, Pepper placed an order with her favorite Mexican food delivery place. It may not have been the healthiest choice, but in her mind, comfort food was both pertinent and appreciated right now.
(Plus, she needed it to fortify herself in order to hear what had happened to Tony that he returned in such a condition.)
When Tony finally left the shower, he looked cleaner but no less lost. She helped him get dressed in something comfortable and then directed him into the living room. There was food on the table in front of the sofa, but there was also a selection of alcohol. After Tony finally took a seat, Pepper handed him a glass of his favorite whisky.
“Drink,” she murmured gently. “Then talk.”
The drink looked like it was putting some color back into Tony’s face, and then he started talking.
He told her everything starting from the political aftermath of Sokovia, through the Accords, the attacks on the UN, the fight between the team at the airport where Rhodey had been so badly injured and then his visit to where the military had some of the team imprisoned. Her heart ached for him when he told her how he felt seeing them behind bars and how they had greeted him.
“I was doing everything I could to try to keep them out of lock up, Pepper, I really was.”
“I know,” she reassured him, because she did know.
She believed him because after the events of Sokovia and the creature he had called Ultron, Tony had been so determined that things needed to change. He believed that there had to be a better way to achieve the safety and freedom of not just this country but them all. His methods were not always clear to others and it wasn’t how she would go about doing things, but a company was not a team of powered super heroes.
She believed in him even when it seemed he was pushing her to the side more and more to be a better Iron Man. She knew he was a good Tony Stark even if he couldn’t separate the two.
When he started talking about Siberia and the events there, she finally understood why he looked the way that he did.
When it looked like he was going to slump over, Pepper moved closer and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
She rubbed his back and held him close as his pain came pouring out of him. She couldn’t believe that Steve had screwed things up so badly…
...or maybe she could.
It was no secret that he didn’t always take other people’s feelings into consideration when he did what he thought was right.
After all, he had been too blind to see that Tony signing the Accords had been him taking a page out of Captain America’s playbook.
“I thought Steve was my friend, Pepper. But then he told me that he knew his Hydra friend killed my parents. He killed my mother and she had never been involved in any of dad’s work.” Tony’s breath hitched and she could feel his tears soaking through the shoulder of her suit. “He knew and he still fought me to protect their killer. My dad helped make him what he is and he…”
Pepper had no words of comfort that would make the betrayal any better. All she could do was hold him and be there for him. All she could do was tell him once again that he wasn’t alone. He was never alone.
Once he had calmed down a little and she had gotten him to eat a little bit and to drink even more, she took him by the hand and tugged him to her bedroom. She peeled him out of his clothes even as she divested herself of her own. Once that was taken care of, she lay him down in the bed and then curled up close next to him. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close against her as he expelled his pain, his fear and his grief over so many things.
She listened to him, she comforted him, and she loved him.
They would always drift apart at different times, but she knew that they would always drift back together. They loved each other and he was a part of her every bit as much that she was a part of him.