Chapter Text
As they drove through the city Tony flinched with every blinding light or car, expecting the vehicles to crash against them and explode into smoke.
The city had changed. Many buildings that had once collapsed under thievery and destruction of the snap- or blip as everyone seemed to call it- were brand new. He caught glimpse of a few artistic tributes with his iron mask, even fewer with his actual face, but said nothing.
Morgan chirped happily through most of the trip, which he was thankful for. Nobody expected him to speak or do anything else.
Happy also refrained himself from any comment, though Tony could easily notice how the man wanted to speak up. The trip was uneventful apart from that. He felt a near joy at watching Morgan and Peter interacting as a family.
All that satisfaction both increased and became negative when he began to recognise the trees and driveway of their cabin.
Peter helped him walk towards the house slowly, and the teenager even looked away when Tony’s face flushed in embarrassment.
The cabin had not changed. Every book, chair and piece of furniture was in place, neatly dusted and welcoming him. Morgan’s drawings littered the walls of the kitchen with a variety of shapes; flowers from the garden outside, crooked portraits of Peter in his red and blue suit, doodles of the Unicorns Valkyrie apparently brought on her visits, and even a large helicarrier that floated with a rainbow.
He was able to carefully climb up and down the stairs, so no adjustments were made to their bedroom. The only new thing as Peter’s room, and Morgan insisted on having a grand tour with explanations for each poster.
Tony hated it all. He wanted to rest, to come back home in one piece and stop feeling like a stranger in a different house. He suppressed the urge to tear his hair out and smiled for his daughter. Fortunately, Peter soon swayed her away for some Disney films and he settled in the porch with Pepper.
The glassy lake gave off the same mirror-like view from before.
“... and I’ve managed to work from home for the next few weeks to help you back home. Peter and Morgan are going back to school tomorrow to give you more time as well and….”
Pepper’s lips moved gracefully as she went over the mental agenda. Tony only half-listened, his arm was still numb and with it half of his senses. His arm tingled in a phantom pain- the world around him seemed blurred and too real.
“Tony?”
“I’m listening.”
She seemed to compress a doubtful glare. “Also, the team wants to see you.”
“The team?”
“Steve, Natasha, Sam. Everyone’s overjoyed that you’re awake.”
Overjoyed was a strong word. The thought of those people- his teammates- powerful, all knowing beings looking down on his vulnerable state, scared him.
“They want to visit?” he asked, not meeting her eyes.
“I think we could start with the Bartons. Just a few days ago we went to visit them. Just a calm lunch, the kids going for a swim, casual conversation. We also need to book another appointment with a neurologist- Dr. Davis insisted. Even if we know it is possible to fit for a prosthetic of your own design she insisted we make an appointment electromyography test.”
“A what?”
“A test to measure your nerves-”
“I know what it is, Pepps.” he sighed. “Just… not very keen on another doctor prodding me all over.”
“We can ask Bruce if you want.” she offered.
“Bruce… what’s he been up to?”
“He went back to India for a while, but returned for the Continental Aid Convention and….”
Peppers soft voice got him lost into thought again. Every piece of information that his wife provided seemed as an overwhelming wave of anxiety. He gulped down, draining his tea and keeping the cup close to his lips.
His head was pounding against his skull uncomfortably. His throat was tight- choking onto his trachea painfully. When he glance up at Pepper in mid-speech there was no panic in her eyes.
Get it together-
His stomach began curling into itself with nausea and in one instant he was dashing inside the house. Their bedroom door closed vaguely in his memory as he promptly fell to his knees and vomited.
A hand was crushing his skull. He couldn't move, he was petrified. Too much, too much light, too much pain, too much-
“Tony?”
Pepper was knocking on the door by the time he had pitifully curled against the porcelain bathtub. His breath were laborious and his voice felt like sand.
“May I come in?”
“I’m fine, Pepper. Don’t come in.”
The door was locked. Pepper was on the other side, restless.
“Please.”
“I’m fine. Just a minute.”
He sat there for hours. Obadia's blood-curdling eyes bore into his soul from the corner of the room. Pepper was kneeling next to the door and talking. He waited.
Pepper was crying. She shouldn't be- he was fine. Nothing was wrong. The kids were safe. She was alive. Everything was fine.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
As a child, Jarvis would tap him awake and Anna would offer him a mug of hot cocoa, whenever his parents were out of town. Maria would sing him to sleep in Italian, with words he couldn't comprehend but appreciated nonetheless.
During nearly all his adult life, Tony had awoken from nightmares with a scream or loud yelp, usually scrambling off the bed in a tangle of sweat and thin bed sheets. His heart would pump violently, his arc reactor would suffocate the living hell out of him. After muting the worried A.I. and stayed curled in a corner of his lab till morning.
When a group of fighting, overly-powered and terribly traumatised people started living in the same building as himself, his post-nightmare routine changed; instead of curling up, he would travel down to a common area, nearly always finding some sleep deprived hero, and quietly work the night away in the presence of another human being.
After the snap, he just curled against Pepper and quietly wake, shaking in silence.
This was the case at the moment. He laid on the bed, feeling his heart pound against the metal and Pepper breathing steadily besides him.
Tony was paralysed for a good half hour before quietly standing up, briefly considering waking up his wife. Instead, he slipped down the stair and paced around their home before deciding to go outside. The night was chilled, tiny icicles forming on the porch from the incoming winter. He should have brought a coat, but going back inside didn't suit him.
No stars tonight.
As he sat down slowly on the stairs of his home, balance still off from the loss of limb, he noticed how Morgan’s play tent was still propped up. The vegetables he had last seen were different, bigger, and a chair had been added to the pair besides the grill.
For the first time in nearly a decade, he wondered what would have happened if he died.
Tony could picture his funeral perfectly. He had dreamed his death quite a few times since he woke up, but he didn't consider them nightmares. They were tranquil thoughts, luminous, noiseless. He supposed anyone else would take them as horrors.
He could picture them burying his ashes in the lake; Pepper in a simple black dress with her hair down, Peter with a tight suit that didn't fit him as well as any chemical pun t-shirt, both of them holding Morgan’s tiny hands. He wondered if the little girl would understand his death as well as he understood his own parents’ end.
Don’t think of that. You’re alive.
He could not recall much of his time in the comma, but knew the hallucinations would come back in tiny fragments.
Go back inside, the coldness will make you sick.
He tried to creep back in quietly, completely chilled. He regretted not bringing out a coat for the third time, and hoped the creaking of the door would not wake anyone.
“Tony?”
Damnit
Pepper was very much awake, pointing a whisk at him, in a domestic scene that he would never have pictured. She was leaning on the kitchen isle, hair in a half bun, pajamas and a kiss-the-cook apron he had bought for an anniversary.
“Hi.”
“Nightmare?” she asked.
“Oh, no, just the vital idea of how long my stump of an arm can survive in winter conditions. My little science experiment- also for the sake of the kids. Someone has to check how cold it is before they go into shenanigans around the lake.”
His noticeably insincere smile gave him away. The redhead shook her head, chuckling to herself before fetching a blanket from the living room and placing it around his shoulder.
“Thanks.” he kissed her cheek before she went back to her original post. “I…. I’m sorry about earlier today. I wasn't thinking correctly.”
He prepared himself to be scolded but she just smiled sadly.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really, no. Neither about the nightmare- dream.” He sighed and fidgeted with his hand before the blanket slipped over his nonexistent arm. “Besides, you cooking at four a.m.? That a better topic- tell me, does this affect your daily productivity?”
Pepper shrugged, looking down on the bowl. “I wasn't very sleepy, and figured I could wait for you to come in while making these.”
He felt warm at the thought of her worry, yet giving him space to come out of his shell. The nightmare was still fresh in his memory. Tony shook his head, finally noticing the amount of ingredients around. Eggs, organic almond flour, bits of chocolates.
He sneaked a piece of the sweet into his mouth. “I didn't know you liked to make macaroons.”
“I took up baking during this year. But mine are pretty dull compared to Happy’s.”
“Happy cooks ?”
“You’d be surprised at the amount of things he can do.” Pepper said, sifting some cocoa powder with the almond flour.
“Huh. Why are you sifting it again?”
“I like to make sure the batter is smooth, darling.”
Tony cocked his head to the side, watching his wife gently prepare the sweets delicately. After sifting the dry ingredients twice more, she began folding the egg whites with care.
“Morgan seems to adore school. How’d you find that kindergarten?” he asked, grabbing a pinch of the batter when she looked up.
“Laura’s kids used to go there too. And the bus comes to pick her up every morning in a station fifteen minutes from here, so it was easier for Peter to go with her.”
“He also takes the bus?”
“Sometimes.” she said. “Other times he just uses the suit.”
As she started piping the cookie batter into small circles on a tray, his mind began racing again, feeling that any moment, Obadiah's pale, bleeding face would lurk above Pepper’s shoulder.
“Tony?”
“Yes?”
“I really think you should begin going to therapy.”
Excuse me?
He glared at Pepper, immediately refusing the idea.
At age of seven, he had just acquired his first scar: a thin, ugly scab on the side of his hand after dealing with a razor-sharp engine, the first he ever built. His eyes had shone with pride even with the bleeding cut, but instead of praise from his father, he got a curt nod, three reporters snapping pictures, and a one way ticket to boarding school. In the institute, he was introduced to a soft-eyed woman to whom he talked to for an hour and a half. He spilled his heart out in a particular anecdote of two boys slapping him for being smarter.
He had left happy of having a secret keeper, but his trust broke when Maria, a day after, asked him about the boys. A fact had popped up in Tony’s young man; Therapists were not to be trusted.
“Just think about it, Tones. After all you’ve been through… it helped me a lot when you first fell into a comma. Peter also went to a few sessions to sort out his grief over…”
Tony had not met a therapist until decades later, after the whole Vanko affair. Rhodey had convinced him to at least seek professional help. He went inside, thirty minutes late, answered the doctor’s questions and never came back.
“Pepper…”
“I mean it.” she closed the oven’s door and sat back down facing him. “You just had a panic attack today. Don’t deny it. I also did a lot of research. The five stages of grief, dealing with heavy trauma, post traumatic disorder-”
“Bullshit, Pepps-”
“Listen!” her fierce glare shut him up. “Tony Stark, just listen to me. You’re not the first or the last one to have a panic attack. I know you’ve had them before. And therapy may be terrifying, but even Steve Rogers has once sat down in a colourful chair to tell a professional about himself. There’s no judgment here.”
He hesitated. “Rogers is a golden boy. I’m not- besides, I have gone through plenty without a woman talking about my chakras and moral alignment-”
“I’m being serious, it's a professional, medical-”
“I know that, honey-bear, but I’m… “ he pause when he was about to say fine, suddenly not so sure of himself.
Pepper seemed to notice his abrupt silence and went to his side, hugging his frame without reproach.
“You’re not okay. Your arm was amputated, you missed one whole year of your daughter and son’s life. You woke up to a beaten, weary yet now complete world without a clue of what's going on. Not to mention everything else in your life.”
Tony nodded, letting Pepper rock him gently.
“Go to therapy. Just four sessions. If not for yourself, then do it for me, for Peter and Mo.”
He sighed, knowing there was no way of winning back the argument. “Fine. Just four sessions.”
“Just four sessions.”
Pepper planted a kiss on his hair and begun chopping more chocolate to make a ganache. His eyes prickled tiredly, but there was no way he was going back to bed. Instead, he simply relaxed to the sight of Pepper cooking.
She was very beautiful, he noticed. Her slender hips, vaguely visible with his AC/DC t-shirt behind the apron and a pair of loose checkered pjama pants. He observed her patiently for the first time in months; the small, delicate wrinkles underneath her blue eyes, soft jawline and thin rosy lips. Her hair now had stray dashes of grey that didn't make her any less dazzling.
He could see the small scar on her ear from the Mandarin’s attack, notice how her skin was pale with the dim lighting, how her strong, able hands cooked.
“Pepps?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Pepper set down the macaron with an affectionate smile. “Why the sudden rush of emotion?”
He blushed. “”No reason, just… I don’t think I said that as much before. Also, in case anything happens-”
“What could happen?” she questioned, smile fading.
“Pepps, we never know, with my kind of lifestyle and… “ he stopped talking, walking over to the couch and staring into the fireplace. She followed, leaving the sweets untouched.
“Tony? What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on, I promise.” he murmured, meeting her worried expression. “I just realised I never really promised you anything like that before and, well…”
“Is the famous Tony Stark stuttering?”
“What? No! Just… think of everything we’ve done till today.” Tony said, taking her hand with his remaining arm. “You used to be a second-rate jumped-up amazon secretary with the Andie Walsh hairdo and I…
“-Used to be an arrogant, narcissistic asshole with no reason to live except alcohol?” she prompted, leaning closer and resting on his chest, careful of his burns.
“No need to be so harsh.”
“It’s true.”
He half smiled. “Yeah. So what am I now, though? An arrogant, half-fried amputee that manages his problems with freezing in the winter night? Without mentioning my still handsomeness and genius intellect, of course.”
“Perhaps. All that but with a better reason to live.”
He shrugged, wrapping his arm around her waist. “Which is?”
“You’re loving family, Mr. Oblivious.”
“Meanie. Remember I’m still in the three thousand points for best parent.”
“How about best wife?” Pepper prompted, flipping around to rest her head on his chest while looking at him.
“You won that one years ago, Pepps.”
“Mm-hm.”
Tony nodded, resting his chin on her head. “I mean it. You win, Mrs. Stark. Now take a nap before that pink bug upstairs jumps into your arms.”
“You can carry her too, you know?”
“Peter already does that.” he noted.
“It's not the same. Don't you have more daddy points?”
“Eww, Pepps, don’t call them that.”
She smiled, looking up and kissing him, gently caressing the burned side of his face.
“Don’t worry about the future, Tony. You already saved it.”
“High cost.” he mumbled.
“Worthy cost.” she changed, curling up tightly. She was right, he decided, she was right as she always is.