Archive of Our Own

Tony gives Pepper emergency guardianship over Peter in the spring of 2002.

It's half a year after Peter's born, but the wait is understandable. The first few months of Peter's life were spent practically living in the hospital NICU in New York, and then they spent a hectic winter settling Peter back in Malibu. On top of all that was everything with Mary. The funeral had to wait until Peter was more stable and Tony and the Parkers were still grieving. Even Obie wasn't worried about Tony's will of all things.

It sticks with her, the day he gave her guardianship, because it was such a…role reversal.

Tony Stark, hip cocked on the edge of her desk with a stack of paperwork in his hand saying, "Sign this," like it was nothing.

Like it wasn't casually making her partially responsible for his child in the event of his death.

“Tony—"

"Don't forget the initials too. Such a hassle, I know."

"Tony, this is—what—“ she sputters, uncharacteristically unable to recover. "Why?"

He puts his hands in his suit pockets in a casual way that has always read as a nervous tick to her.

"What happened with Mary..." Tony still has to clear his throat, talking about it. His head turns behind them to his office. Peter is in his playpen on the floor, rolling a colorful Fisher-Price school bus back and forth, squealing with glee as it lights up and makes the same noise over and over.

"I wasn't ready. None of us were.” Pepper knows him, so she catches the guilt he hasn’t stopped carrying since. Guilt that he wasn’t there, couldn’t fix Mary…something in that range.

"That's not going to happen again. If I…I don't know, get hit by a bus tomorrow, or some asshole terrorist decides to take their shot at the guy making the bombs blowing their people out of the water—“

"Tony..."

"No, listen, it's just...I need Peter to be okay. I need his family right there, ready to go. Just in case. That's you. That's Rhodey and Happy, Ben and May."

"Not Obadiah?” Pepper questions. Obie is practically more of a father figure to Tony than his own father ever was, and she figured he would come way before her on a potential guardianship candidate list.

"In spirit. He already had to shoulder one kid he didn't want, best not make it two.” More truthfully, Tony admits, “Besides, Peter would just cramp his style. Business Brunches and Booze kinda clashes with Bedtime Stories and Barney, you know?"

They both smile, but Tony’s fades quickly, turning into something more anxious.

"Pepper, if you don't want to do this—“

“No! That’s not—“ she finds herself insisting. It’s not like she’s thought about wanting to have kids at all yet, let alone wanting responsibility for someone else’s child in an emergency situation when there are other options available.

But she’s known Peter since the day he was born. Even if she's the last person on the list, at least she’d be someone. Peter would have someone.

“I just—Tony, I know we've worked together for years now, and you know that I'd do anything for you, but…“ She crosses her arms, leaning back in her desk chair, allowing it to sway her legs away from him just a little. ”Are you sure this is what you want? You're offering your personal assistant possible custody of your child. That's insane."

"You know I live to walk on the wild side, Pep,” is the witty reply she expects. Then Tony nudges her leg with his own, catching her attention and forcing her eyes to meet his. “And you know that you are so much more than an assistant to me.”

There's an underlying plea—does she know? There’s an insecurity always following Tony around that the ones he loves are going to leave him, that showing himself to them all will be what finally scares them away.

Pepper thinks of New Years, on the cusp of Y2K—they shared a drink and talked about their shared experience of losing a parent too early. The party she and Happy picked him up from in ’98—she’d been woken from a dead sleep at 3 AM and screamed at Tony in the car for being an irresponsible jackass and he’d been genuinely shocked when she came into his office the next morning anyway. Her mother having an innocent fall down the stairs and Pepper thinking not again, not again, and Tony wordlessly cupping her shoulder and arranging her an immediate flight to Ohio.

Of course she knows. Pepper knows the depths of Tony Stark better than almost anyone.

"Let's sign these in your office, Mister Stark," she says, abruptly standing, her voice half caught in her throat.

Tony gives her a look—maybe at the switch to business tone, but he shrugs and comes in anyway, shutting the door behind them. At least with a baby hanging around, the baseless workplace rumors about them having sex in his office have gone down considerably.

Pepper drops the paperwork onto his desk before turning and pulling Tony into a hug. He stiffens at first, but she sticks to the decision until he wraps an arm around her back in turn.

"I'll sign them. I’ll—I'm here for him. For both of you, whatever you need."

"Okay," is all he says, but his shining eyes are saying more—things she can’t interpret, things she’s afraid to. "Good. That’s…good.”

She’d like to say that it’s as simple as guardianship in the event of death. Things would be easier that way.

The problem is that Pepper is so deeply ingrained. She’s not just some random figure that appears and disappears in Tony and Peter’s lives. She takes over a room in the mansion that’s supposed to be Tony’s office, but is more often her own. She does paperwork on the living room couch, shoveling Chinese takeout in her mouth between phone calls. She sits in the workshop and tells Tony his schedule, one hand on her Blackberry, the other arm keeping Peter in her lap as he absently sucks on a teething ring.

Work and life balance have never been easy for her. She goes to her apartment to sleep and watch Survivor on the off chance she’s home early enough on a Thursday. Maybe her job doesn’t require kicking out Tony’s sexual partners in the morning anymore, but she’s still at the mansion at seven o’clock sharp anyway—suit dry-cleaned, hair in an updo, already thinking about the million things she’ll have to do, some of them with Peter on her hip because Tony hates using a babysitter or nanny like every other busy parent in the world.

Since Peter was born so early and so sick, Tony has a hard time trusting other people with his care. Pepper also knows it has something to do with how a nanny practically raised Tony and that he doesn’t want that for Peter. She understands, because underneath it all, Tony is caring and kind and he loves Peter so much. How can she argue with those quirks when it’s only proof of how good a father he is?

Pepper adapts. She just makes it work. She practically learns every parenting lesson Tony does so that there’s always theoretically someone between the two of them that knows what to do when the baby is crying and there’s something important to Stark Industries that the other should be doing.

It’s not surprising, exactly, that it gets confusing for Peter too.

He’s one and a half years old when it happens.

Peter's a little echo chamber, listening and repeating almost every word that comes out of their mouths, even if it's sometimes just inflection-coated babble.

They're in Tony's living room. Pepper is doing paperwork on the couch and prepping Tony's calendar for the month. Peter is in Tony's lap on the armchair as they read one of those books meant to encourage identifying words with people and objects, and Tony has had no trouble trying to get Peter to participate.

Considering he’s the son of two scientists, it’s predictable that Peter’s a pretty curious kid. Naturally, because of Tony’s life and work, Tony is also the person Peter spends the most time with, and therefore Peter makes it his mission to follow his father around and get involved in whatever’s going on. (This can get dangerous in the workshop, hence the oft-used practice of Pepper holding and/or distracting Peter to keep productivity on track.)

“What’s that, Pete?” Tony asks for what must be the hundredth time, trying to get Peter to focus on the task at hand.

Curious means Peter’s curious about everything, including about what Pepper is doing, about the shadows on the floor, or about what the television remote might taste like if he puts it in his mouth for the twentieth time. (For once, that’s on her—she forgets about the new house AI system that can just change the channels for her, and she used to leave the remotes out all the time without worrying about a child.)

“Petey, c’mon, what’s in the picture?” Tony tries again, bouncing Peter on his knee. Tony is unfairly adorable with Peter, and she swears that he knows it kills her productivity. She reads the same line about last year’s budget report for the third time, determined.

“It doggy,” Peter finally answers.

“Good job, buddy. That’s like three in a row.” Without her prompting, he tells Pepper, “I’m going for a new record.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be a competition,” she answers absently, circling the most important section for Tony’s review—he’s got a meeting with Obie tomorrow about a new cost-effective missile model that will hopefully address some of their production expenses from last year. Some version of those words specifically need to come out of his mouth, or Obie won’t listen to the innovative technology of it all that Tony’s been raving about.

“Says you,” he snorts. “Alright, next page. Peter Stark, on a roll, in it to win it—oh, this is easy. Too easy. Now, Peter, I know this guy isn’t half as handsome as the real thing, but I know you know this one.”

Pepper looks up, amused by the description, and okay, a little interested to see if Peter has the attention span to set the streak Tony so eagerly wants him to.

“Quit it, Potts, you’re gonna give him the yips.”

Pepper scoffs. “I’m not giving the baby performance anxiety.”

“It’s okay, it’s just you and me. Pepper’s not even here, just say it. You say it like fifty times a day with zero prompting, it’s nothing.”

Peter points to the book, then at Tony, the tip of his finger scratching at Tony’s facial hair. “You Dada.”

Tony lets out a whoop, lifting Peter and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “That’s four, we’re learning words, numbers—you are killing it, kid.”

Tony wraps his arms around Peter, lightly resting his head on Peter’s. Undeniably adorable, the both of them. (Loathe as she would ever be to admit it to Tony’s face, because his ego definitely doesn’t need it.)

“I think this is the proudest I’ve ever been.”

“I thought that was when he started walking.” Tony showed her that footage at least ten times in the same week. He showed everyone that footage.  “Or when his first word was asking for his bunny? That was really cute.”

Tony sniffs. “It changes. Maybe it’s all of them. I don’t know, Pep, stop being such a buzzkill, my kid’s a genius!”

Peter giggles, likely unsure of what they’re celebrating, but excited to be involved as Tony shakes him around.

“That’s right. Maybe I should move ahead, find a harder section…”

Peter pats the book again, tugging on Tony’s shirt.

“Oh, sorry, you have requests? Feeling a particular word today?”

Peter just points down at something in the book. Then he points to Pepper.

“Pep-ah?" he asks, using the garbled version of her name that she's quickly becoming used to.

Once he mastered asking for his rabbit and garnering Tony’s attention, Peter quickly moved onto the other regulars in his life, even if the pronunciations end up a little butchered. Still, it’s more than her cousin’s kid was doing at that age, which is…interesting. Probably a sign of Peter’s advancement still to come, even if her knowledge on specific developmental milestones is extremely lacking.

Clarifying, Peter asks, ”Pep-ah Mama?”

He asks. Because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know who his mother is, that she’s—

Tony’s mouth hangs open, but Pepper doesn’t wait for any kind of response. She just drops her pen and leaves her phone. She has to leave the room, she doesn’t, she can’t—

“Mama?” Peter says again, more distressed this time, his call following her up the stairs, echoing over and over until it turns into an audible tantrum of cries that Tony will never be able to soothe.

Tony will never be able to fix this for Peter, not now, not until he’s old enough to understand, but not ever, not really.

Peter doesn’t understand that his own mother is gone.

He shouldn’t have to.

Tony finds her sitting on the staircase an hour later, mascara smeared, ponytail loosened. Peter isn’t with him, which means Tony either managed to calm him down, or the kid tired himself out and is napping on the couch.

Tony seats himself to her left, close enough to bump their elbows.

“I’m sorry, that was—I should have corrected him sooner, I should have—“

“Tony.” Pepper doesn’t let him continue. This isn’t his fault. Hell, it isn’t even really hers. Peter’s still so young. They didn’t think he’d recognize the absence until preschool, until all of the other kids were making Mother’s Day cards and he didn’t have a mommy at home to give one to.

But Peter is smart. He’s gentle and sweet, affectionate in a way Tony never allowed himself to be before he had Peter. There’s an intuitiveness to children they didn’t account for. Of course he was seeing her as—of course he wondered, their curious, exceptional Peter.

Their.

Even in her own mind she takes some claim of Peter. Pretends her stake in his well-being means something different than it means for anyone else in Tony’s orbit.

“Tony, I love Peter. You know that. I have been here for him since the day he was born, just like I’ve been here for you since the day you pulled your head out of your ass and decided to hire someone you didn’t want to sleep with.”

“Well…” The joke, the flirtation, whatever it was, dies on his lips when she looks at him.

“I’m not his mother. His mother—“ She feels another wave of grief wash through her, interrupting the sentence. “Mary was his mother. He should never have to question that.”

Mary Fitzpatrick, a stranger she first assumed was a hooker, suddenly became known to her as the mother of Tony’s child. Mary became so important to Tony in those few months. Mary was kind when she didn’t have to be. She was funny and whip-smart. She snorted when she laughed hard and hid her worries and complaints behind the most genuine of carefree smiles.

None of it makes sense. She was practically a stranger to Mary, and yet here was Peter, assuming Pepper is a part of their family, so simple to him, so obvious.

Pepper watched Mary go through contractions too soon, watched a cluster of medical staff cart her away, and Pepper didn’t see her body again until the funeral. Mary was wheeled to surgery and then she was dead, and none of it was fair to Peter, to Mary’s actual family.

“I know it’s not the same, okay, I know she wasn’t—I barely knew her, but she was the mother of that beautiful kid, and I can’t—I don’t want to replace her. That’s what I would be doing if I let him—it’s not right.” Her voice shakes on the last word.

Whether she even wants Peter to call her that is another matter entirely, one she doesn’t want to face. Pepper likes her life, likes the routine and the job security and the few people in it that she keeps close. She doesn’t want to uproot it all for the idea of the picture that Peter is putting together for himself. She can’t.

She looks up to Tony with wet eyes, pleading him to understand.

She has to draw that line now. They have to, because if they don’t…if she doesn’t, this will happen again, and she’ll break Peter’s heart. She can’t leave their lives, but she can spare Peter that. She’s not his mother, but she’s still here. She still loves him. That has to be enough.

Tony nods. His arm settles around her, eliminating the space between them when her cheek presses against his shoulder.

“Okay,” he says, rubbing a hand up and down her arm. Since when did she accept this kind of soothing from Tony? When has she ever needed it? When has he ever offered? She doesn’t know.

“Okay, we’ll—I’ll figure it out. I’m sorry, Pep. I’m sorry you’re—I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t reply. She squeezes the hand over her shoulder, linking their fingers.

They both wish Mary were here, wish things had been different.

Tony squeezes her hand back.

The point of all this, in a roundabout way, is that she’s not ready when her life requires her to be in 2008.

It’s her job to be ready, to prepare for every possible eventuality and make it less of a problem than it was before it got into her hands.

She just didn’t want this.

This: sitting outside of Peter’s elementary school in her car, anxiously chewing down her hundred dollar manicure trying to figure out what to say, how to say it.

Tony is gone.

Peter, your dad’s gone missing.

Daddy might never come home, he might be…he might be dead.

God.

How can she say it to Peter—to a child—if she can barely say it to herself?

It’s been an hour since she got the call from Obie. Thirty minutes since Rhodey affirmed to her personally that the Air Force was organizing a search and rescue operation within the next few hours with the fullest extent of their resources. Fifteen minutes since she’d left a message for Ben and May Parker.

That leaves Pepper herself in charge of telling Peter.

It was supposed to be a normal day, a normal part of her responsibilities, another thing on the checklist: pick Peter up from school, maybe sneak him ice cream on the way home as a treat, watch over him for a few hours until Tony’s only trusted babysitter, Karen, could sub in for the night.

(They’ve tried to keep boundaries for Peter since the…calling her Mama incident.

Pepper doesn’t stay at the house overnight, she goes home at the end of the work day to her own apartment. She doesn’t do bedtime and bathtime, that’s a Dad and Peter thing.

He hasn’t mistakenly called her that since.)

Now it’s all out of the window. How will her life ever be the same if Tony’s—

She shakes her head, trying to clear the thought.

It’s been less than twenty-four hours. They haven’t found a body, and they don’t have any leads. She can’t give into fear when there’s a little kid in that building that needs an adult with their shit together.

That’s always been her, hasn’t it? Tony’s a mess—a glorious, genius, caring mess that has vastly improved in seven years, but is still prone to forgetting dates, requirements, and all of the paperwork he’s ever held in his hand at one point or another.

Tony loudly, ardently, fully loves his son to the ends of the earth and back, but he’s not the one who filled out Peter’s application for preschool in time, not the one that always packs Peter’s favorite Star Wars figurines and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for when he has to sit in on boring meetings.

That was Pepper.

If she can do all of that, she can do this—whatever it is, however long it takes. She loves Peter. Tony’s not dead.

She repeats this in her head, taking a deep breath and waiting for her hands to settle instead of shake before she straightens her skirt, tilts up her chin, and exits the car.

It wasn’t an exaggeration, the way they always said Peter was smart when he was just under two years old. In the years since it’s only been proven further.

In this moment, it’s working against her. She doesn’t even get Peter fully buckled into his carseat before he asks a quiet, “Pepper?”

“Yeah, sweetie?” she sighs out. The endearments were something she could never quit. It helped that Tony never could either. It’s always Pete or buddy or kiddo, with Tony. At times even weirder fare: plays on Peter Rabbit, Petey-pie. It’s whatever pops into Tony’s head and falls out of his mouth just as fast, even if it’s nonsensical. Sometimes he even calls Peter his baby, still, though Peter is bristling against any implication of his youth these days.

“What’s wrong?” Peter kicks his legs a little, a pensive expression sitting between his eyebrows, brown eyes observing in the same way Tony’s do when he’s reading someone’s intentions.

Pepper stops struggling with the same buckle that always sticks, momentarily resting her head on the armrest. Peter could probably do this himself, but he already hates using the seat and she doesn’t always trust him to do it as tightly as he should. Her leg is awkwardly hanging out of the back door of the car. The pick-up and drop-off area only has a couple of other cars around—she’d been late because of…everything. She was trying to get them back to the house first, before they had this conversation.

She was trying to wait.

She was trying to put it off.

Maybe to give Rhodey more time—if they found Tony, there was nothing to tell, after all. More honestly because it was going to tear them both to pieces, and she was hoping for—a perfect moment? A better one?

Pepper was never able to stomach the south lawn of her old college campus—there was a little gazebo surrounded by flowers, and it was the perfect study spot until her RA ran up and broke the news that her mother had called and her father was—

She doesn’t want this to be Peter’s place.

Tony’s not dead, she tells herself, attempting to steel.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?” she tries. The easiest way to engage Peter is a battle of wits—even when it's arguing over how many cookies he’s allowed for dessert, he likes the challenge of thinking things through. At the moment, she’s more hoping for distraction.

“You keep making fun of Dad for getting speeding tickets when he’s always late,” he replies, watching her struggle with the stupid buckle a few more times before it finally clicks. “You’re never late.”

“That’s not true, Tony and I both get held up by meetings all the time.” She pats on Peter’s chest before closing the back passenger door and hopefully this conversation before the conversation they need to be having.

“You usually tell the office,” Peter points out as soon as she opens the driver’s side door. “I asked, and they said you and Dad didn’t even answer your phones when they called.”

Pepper had seen the school on her Caller ID, but she’d been frazzled and halfway there already, so she didn’t think it was worth it. Front Office Janice is an old, stogy woman that judges Peter for having a single father and Pepper for having a career and Tony for not being on the PTA while running a billion dollar company and probably the length of Pepper’s skirts.

As an assistant herself, Pepper is more than over the calls with “reminders” of all of the things they aren’t doing perfectly in Peter’s life.

She mentally readjusts. Peter can practically sense dishonesty. He knows them all too well by now. It’s those little doe eyes that do them all in.

“There is something going on,” she admits slowly, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “But I don’t really want to talk about it until we get you home, okay?”

“Is it…is it bad?”

“Peter—“

“‘Cause if it’s bad, I think I should know. Is it Uncle Rhodey? Is it you? Is it—“

She allows her head to fall back into the headrest. She should have known—things like this don’t really wait, do they?

“Don’t tell anyone I did this,” she commands, before climbing over the armrest and cupholders of her car in an undignified way that would definitely be showing other parents in the drop-off something inappropriate if there were more cars around. Instead she just lands in an ungraceful heap in the backseat next to Peter, who smiles, clearly entertained.

Pepper doesn’t want to take that smile away.

She has to.

She sighs, using the breath to muster up all of her courage, her strength. She’s done her crying, her worrying. This is about Peter and what he needs from her right now.

“You know how your dad went away a few days ago?”

“The Af-gan-is-tan presentation,” he says, enunciating the newly absorbed word. He must have gotten it from Tony or Obie. She remembers when Peter was still toddling around and speaking little sentences that way, impressing strangers at the office or the park as he parsed out words he knew but could still barely pronounce.

“Right,” she affirms. “Well, he was supposed to come back tonight, but he’s gone missing.”

“Missing,” Peter repeats slowly, furrowing his little brow in the same way Tony always does, eyes focused like the answers he seeks are just at the tip of his nose.

“Did he get lost?” Peter proposes. “The Regas—Regis-tran Desert has big hills. I had JARVIS look it up. I told Dad to bring goggles and he said that’s what his sunglasses were for.”

“I don’t think so, honey. You know how Dad’s job is really important, and sometimes people don’t like that?”

“Bad guys,” Peter says in a hushed tone, as if said evil characters have ears right in this very car. “They took him?”

Pepper’s not sure if there’s another way to explain such a complicated situation to a six-year-old. It’s not like the people who possibly kidnapped Tony could be considered good guys, at any rate.

She nods. “That’s what Uncle Rhodey thinks.”

“Is he gonna find Dad?”

“We hope so.” Pepper rubs his shoulder, consoling since her answer can’t be a firm, confident yes. “It hasn’t been too long, and they have lots of strong, smart people in the military that want to find Tony, especially Rhodey.”

She moves her hand from Peter’s shoulder to press it through his hair. It’s an old habit of Tony’s. She’s not Tony, but she thinks it’s what he would want, to give comfort to his child in a time like this.

“And you know your dad,” she adds. “He’s brave, and smart, and stubborn. He’s going to do everything in his power to come home.”

Dead or alive, though. That’s the question.

“I hope he does,” Peter says, his voice still quiet and small. Peter grew up so fast in some ways, it can be easy to forget he’s still so young. He’s just a boy who wants his father, and it’s the one thing that she can’t give him right now.

“I hope so too.” She presses a kiss to his hair. “For now, let’s get you home, okay?”

Peter only nods, focusing his gaze out of the window as she returns herself to the front seat and they drive out of the parking lot.

The days following Tony’s disappearance and apparent kidnapping reveal very little new information. The captors covered their tracks well, and there was no sign of ransom, no ask to Obie or the United States government for money or goods in exchange for Tony’s life.

It leaves many to believe he’s as good as dead within a week.

Sometimes she finds Peter watching CNN after she leaves it on in the living room. She doesn’t underestimate him one bit—he knows what’s going on. He’s waiting for another segment on his father. Every day, there are fewer and fewer. Tony’s disappearance becomes old news in TV time. Peter’s stints in front of the television for the six o’clock news don’t wane.

Rhodey’s updates are inconsistent and slowly growing more haggard.

“There was so much going on,” Rhodey admits to her just a few days after the initial phone call, 11 AM her timezone, 10:30 PM in his own. Her second coffee of the day sits growing cold, tossed to the side in favor of any information, any updates she can get her hands on.

“The first Humvee was trashed to hell—they used fucking missiles, Pep. I can’t tell if they were trying to kill him and the kidnapping was a back-up plan or they were just plain stupid. We were so busy fighting them off, I didn’t even see him—”

“You can’t blame yourself, Jim,” she says. “I’m sure you did whatever you could. You always do.”

“I know,” he lets out with a frustrated breath. “He’s just—he’s my best friend, and I couldn’t protect him. I volunteered to be Stark Industries’ military liaison for a reason. He’s my responsibility.”

“You’ll find him,” Pepper says, confident.

She imagines hours of marching in the sun, days of doing helicopter flybys in possible enemy territory.

These conditions and a lack of decent sleep must be the motivation for his tired answer of, “I don’t know. I hope so. I gotta—god, I hope so.”

Peter copes well, considering, but it’s not easy by any stretch.

The night Tony disappears, Pepper wakes to the sight of a little figure in her doorway.

She put Peter to bed two hours ago. She hadn’t done that since he was a baby, grabbing at her ponytail and babbling sadly, tiredly, No sleep! until the minute she or Tony placed him in his crib.

It’s different now that he’s older. He doesn’t need much help, just a watchful eye to check all of the boxes off of Tony’s usual routines. She’d asked JARVIS for help because she felt like she was swimming, like Tony had those first few months of Peter’s life—she wasn’t a parent.

What was she doing, trying to fake it? Someone else should be here.

But no one was. Peter needed her.

So she helped Peter dry his hair after his bath, and she read him a chapter from The Chronicles of Narnia, and she pressed a kiss to his forehead and called it her best.

Bereft of pajamas, she curled into her own bed an hour later in her rumpled slacks and camisole, trying to stay decent just in case Peter needed her.

(She abandoned the hope of actual pajamas when she went into Tony’s room in the hopes of stealing a pair of sweatpants and found herself on the brim of tears at the still-prevalent smell of his cologne in the air. She made the decision to make a trip to her apartment tomorrow instead.)

And here he is, just a little sleepy blob of Peter—not wearing his glasses, his hair a static-ruffled mess, Bunny tucked in one arm, his body hooded by his entire comforter dragging in a long trail behind him.

She sits up. Waits for…a response? A need? She’s flailing again. Was it a nightmare? The anxiety of it seems to close her throat, and so she just—stares.

Peter seems to take her silence as a dismissal, turning and slinking off the way he came, almost tripping over himself.

“Peter!” she calls out.

He turns back around. He looks at the floor. He looks up at her.

“Can I—“ He seems to be stuck as much as she is, unfamiliar with asking Pepper for these things. It was designed that way. This is a breach of the norm and neither of them seem to know what to do with it. “I, um.”

She takes a stab in the dark. “C’mon,” she offers, holding up the sheets. Peter drops his comforter, little feet thumping along across the guest bedroom. Peter practically jumps into her side, bouncing the bed around.

He easily settles himself against her now that he has the permission, only having to adjust a little to her smaller frame and snuggling his face into her stomach as if to hide himself.

She wishes it was enough to hide him from all of this, to protect him.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” he admits after a beat, whispering the words into the silence of the night.

“Me either,” she says, and finds that she means it too. This house is so big, and Tony’s presence is so large, so all-encompassing. Without him, it’s just Pepper and Peter, anxiously waiting for him to walk back across the threshold.

She and Peter both seem to resist sleep at first, just breathing together in the dark and clinging to each other, but eventually, Peter falls into sleep, and Pepper feels secure enough to do the same.

The second week after Tony’s disappearance, Peter’s school calls.

Pepper offered to give Peter an out—at least a month of stay-at-home work if he wanted it, switching to a tutor if it was necessary. He's smart—too smart for first grade in the academic sense—but he’s enjoying the experience of it for now and Tony was always determined not to throw Peter into boarding school, his own father’s solution to Tony’s constantly growing intellect.

Peter’s also been...quiet, lately. Usually he’s content to talk anyone’s ear off that will listen, but since she told Peter of his father’s disappearance, he’s only given her a lot of mumbling or an answer to a question here and there. She figures it’s part of the process, his way of dealing with something traumatic. Anyway, it’s not like she can force him to talk, right? It’s probably better to let him work through whatever he’s feeling and come to her when he’s ready to talk about it.

Still, it might not be the best for a learning environment where participation is considered part of his grades.

At her offer to opt out of school, though, Peter just shook his head. Despite his current, more quiet behavior, he’d still warranted her with an actual answer, though brief. “I want to go.”

Who was she to deny him the routine if it comforted him? She let it go, and she walked him to drop-off with a hug and a kiss every morning knowing that he probably wished it were Tony. Tony always drew a crowd when he appeared, but Peter’s only focus was that his father was there to see him off for a few extra seconds of the day.

It mattered, these little things—kisses goodbye, tucking in, even just sitting in the same room together while the TV played. It all meant more than she ever realized when it wasn’t her being relied upon for them.

The first week goes relatively okay. She doesn’t get much but shrugs about exactly how school is going, but there aren’t any complaints either. There’s not much response about anything really, and this is from the boy that once spent a twenty minute drive home ranting about how some of the other kids on the playground were squishing caterpillars on the asphalt, and what did those poor bugs do to anyone, Dad?

But then it’s Wednesday of the second week, and her phone vibrates in the middle of a meeting, and it’s the kind of call that no parent wants to answer in the middle of the work day.

“Miss Potts? This is Miss Nelson, Peter’s teacher from Westside Elementary.”

Pepper’s breath catches in her throat. Peter’s practically an angel—he doesn’t get into fights, doesn’t even really get bullied much other than a few comments about his glasses. 

“Yes?” she chokes out.

“Peter has had...a bit of a day, today.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. I recognize this is a strange call for you, considering everything going on at home, but—”

“No,” Pepper insists. “Please, just—tell me. I’m his—it’s what I’m here for. ”

“As you know, normally Peter is quite the attentive student—bright, kind, smart.”

Just like his father, Pepper thinks but doesn’t say aloud.

“But today something was just off as soon as we started the Bell Ringer. He took longer than usual to complete it, and during math time he wouldn’t come up to the board when asked. During English, he stayed completely silent when asked to take his turn and read out loud.”

This, she isn’t surprised by.

She just thought this quiet phase was just that—a phase. She probably hasn’t been talking as much as she used to either. Half of her daily conversations included bickering over nonsense with Tony.

It’s just...Peter used to be their bright little motor mouth, and now he’s up and decided to use as few words as possible to communicate his needs and wants to the people around him.

“By the time we got to recess, I had to change his behavior card to yellow. Normally that’s where he lands for talking too much, but today…”

“It’s been—” Pepper tries to articulate it. Scary. Worrying. A problem she’s slowly getting more worried she won’t be able to solve. “He’s been quieter, lately, yes.”

“Yes, well, it became a bit of a larger issue when everyone was coming inside. He planted himself pretty good inside a puddle—we try to keep the kids out of them, but I think it was an accident. His shoes were soaked with mud. I figured I could help him wash them off once we got inside, but when I asked that he take them off, he refused. When I more firmly told him to take them off I got the same silent shake of his head.”

Stubborn like Tony too, she thinks to herself again. Usually it’s less obvious, less persistent, but she imagines the furrow of his forehead and traces it directly to Tony’s crossed, unrepentant arms.

Miss Nelson sighs. “And then when I warned him that continuing to argue with me would move him to orange he just—he exploded. It was so unlike him. Screamed ‘No!’ right in my face. I kept my word and moved him to orange for it, which just upset him more.”

“Oh, Pete,” she says more to herself. Peter is pretty slow to anger. He’d probably surprised himself by shouting at a teacher.

“Sadly, that’s not where it ends. When he got upset, he locked himself in the class bathroom. I could force the issue with my master key, but considering his state and everything going on in his life...I thought maybe you’d rather come try and handle this in person.”

“Of course.” She answers without considering the meeting, without considering what Obie will say about her duties as Tony’s temporary note-taker and representative of his views in his absence.

Next to the time she strutted into Tony’s office armed with a binder of incorrect budget figures and a bottle of pepper spray, this may be the closest she’s ever come to very plainly thinking, screw it without caring about the consequences.

Peter was going through something all this time and she’d let it simmer until he finally exploded.  She’s such a failure at this, god.

“I’ll be right there,” she tells Miss Nelson. “Thank you for calling—I’m on my way right now.”

She in fact doesn’t decide to blow up an important meeting over this—simply politely apologizes, walks like she has somewhere more important to be, gathers her purse, and walks out without bothering to offer up more of an explanation.

Pepper isn’t shaken by Front Desk Janice, because Janice can judge Pepper and Peter all she wants, she’s not a principal or even a vice principal, she’s just an elementary school secretary. Maybe Pepper’s job is being a glorified secretary, but at least she’s good at it and she has a ridiculous amount of SI shares, so judge that, Janice.

She may or may not be internally freaking out, hence her mental rant about Janice as the other woman simply smiles and allows her to sign in.

For some reason, Pepper expected complete and total chaos in Miss Nelson’s classroom—screaming children, a mess of coloring supplies and construction paper.

Miss Nelson, much like Pepper herself, is apparently pretty unflappable. When Pepper pokes her head in, all of the other children are quietly filling out some kind of workbook, their little self-made dividers put up for privacy between the desks.

A few heads peek up to look as Miss Nelson silently guides Pepper to the back of the classroom, but a stern look back is all it takes to return the small eyes to their work.

“Peter,” Miss Nelson calls. “Peter, I brought someone here to see you.”

“Peter? Honey?” Pepper calls, knocking on the door. “It’s me. Can you open the door?”

There’s a little bit of shuffling—at least he’s responsive. The door still stays closed.

“Give us a sec?” she asks of Miss Nelson. The other woman nods, keeping the attention off of Peter by patrolling the room in a quiet, subtle sort of way.

“Peter, baby, it’s just me, okay?” She leans against the wall, as if she could shield Peter from the rest of the world that way. “I’m really worried about you. I just want to make sure you’re okay—Miss Nelson said you were upset.”

Still silence.

“How about this—instead of coming out, you let me in. Just me.”

This seems amicable enough. The door unlocks with a quick click. Pepper gives a nod to Miss Nelson, hopefully communicating more confidence that she feels.

The bathroom is no bigger than a shoe closet. She’s not exactly jazzed about her suit pants touching the floor, but she’s much more distracted with wrapping Peter into her chest. It feels like those nights at home—at the mansion, rocking the nightmares away.

Tony used to do that too—rock and rock even when Peter was wailing his still-growing lungs out and determined not to sleep. She understands it better, now. As long as it brings him comfort, she’ll sit on the floor in a first grade bathroom stall and hold him close.

She presses a kiss to the side of his head before pulling away. He really is okay, other than the blotchy, tear-stained cheeks and the mud on his shoes and the tips of his jeans.

“Miss Nelson said you’ve had a rough day,” she says, rubbing his arms and clasping his hands in hers.

Peter nods back at her, sniffling and wiping away the snot on his sleeve.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. But I don’t think the way you reacted to your teacher was a good way to handle it, do you?”

She’s getting better at communicating with him when he’s like this—questions that he can answer with a nod or a shake of his head, or even leaving things open to a few words, if he can manage them. It seems to make things simpler for him to handle that way.

Peter shakes his head no and looks directly at the ground, repentant.

“Hey.” Pepper tips up his chin forcing him to meet her eyes. “It’s just a bad day, sweetie. We’re gonna get through it, okay? You and me.”

Peter’s returning look isn’t instilled with confidence, but he doesn’t shake his head at her either, so that’s something.

“I need you to let Miss Nelson know you’re sorry.” How to do so without words, they’ll have to figure out. “And I think that we should take a break from school for a little longer. Just until things settle. Do you want to do that?”

Peter nods.

“Okay then. Sounds like a plan. And I’m pretty good at those, remember?”

At this Peter seems to brighten, squeezing her hands in his own in return.

“To start, we really should clean up those shoes,” she says. Peter steps back from her suddenly, straightening and shaking his head furiously.

She looks down at his feet—it’s hard to tell under the mud, but these shoes are Peter’s very favorites due to the cartoon character design. He’s obsessed with the animated show Phineas and Ferb in a way that Tony seemingly can’t decide if he likes or dislikes, depending on the episode.

Of course. It was about the shoes. It all comes back to Tony in the end, in this hole that keeps getting bigger, in these shoes she can’t fill. She couldn’t do it for Mary and she can’t do it for Tony.

But she’s still Pepper. She loves him. God, she loves Peter. Even when he is sad and mopey and hasn’t said a word to her in days, she loves him so much. She’s the only one here right now. It’s all she can do.

“Your dad wanted to give you those shoes for your birthday so bad.” She allows herself to sound as wistful as she feels, to remember simpler, easier crises.

“He said, ‘Pepper, every kid in the tristate area wants these stupid light-up monstrosities, and I—Tony Stark, can’t find them anywhere.’”

The impression of Tony gets a giggle out of Peter, even though it’s a little stuffed.

“And do you want to know what I did?” Peter nods. “I went alllll the way to Europe the night before your birthday, and my old college roommate just so happened to score a pair in your size. And because we were really good friends, she let me have them.”

The reality is that Pepper started a very large, very expensive group text chain that spanned countries on the search for a pair of children’s shoes, and she got a find at the very last minute. There was an exchange of money, red wine, and a promise to keep in better contact on Pepper’s end that she’d only kind of succeeded at.

“That’s why it was your last present.”

She takes off Peter’s glasses and cleans them with the end of her dress shirt—thankfully it’s cotton, so it does a decent job.

“So you see…those are also a gift from me. And I think we should clean them so you can keep wearing them just like your dad and I want you to. Okay?”

Peter seems to hesitate at first, but she reaches down for his shoes and he doesn’t fight as she unties the mud-cracked laces and slips them off of his socked feet. Honestly, the socks are a mess too, but she can take care of that once she gets him out of the school without tracking mud everywhere.

“Thank you, Peter,” she says, directly, with eye contact. So he knows she means it and isn’t just happy she won the argument.

It takes half a bottle of hand soap and a gratuitous amount of those cheap brown paper towels, but finally the recognizable image of Perry the Platypus shows up under the mud. From there it’s just trying to mitigate the damage they’ll do on the way out the door. She’ll take a damn toothbrush to these things if she has to, but for now she’d rather leave the bathroom and just go back to the mansion.

She pats the results dry—the white sections are still a little brown, but the characters all show, and the lights still flash when she drops them to the floor.

“Okay, Peter. You ready?”

He nods, methodically tying his shoes in the same way he’s been doing since he was three and a half. He’d caught onto the benefits of not walking around barefoot quickly and begged Tony for lessons so he could do it all himself.

She leads him out of the bathroom by the hand, stopping by his cubby to pick up his backpack and jacket.

She leads him up to Miss Nelson’s desk. She wants to see if he’ll speak before she gives him the out.

He looks up at her, tugging on her hand as if for assistance.

“Peter would like to say that he’s sorry for his actions—he was upset about something else, and he took it out on you.”

Peter nods, then, surprisingly, thankfully, through the crack of his voice from all the crying, says, “I’m sorry.”

“Well Peter, I’m glad that you’re feeling better now, and I accept your apology.” To Pepper, she says, “Going home for the day?”

“I think I’m going to keep him out a little longer. Just until we…figure some things out.”

“Well, Peter, you will be missed, but I’ll make sure Miss Potts gets all of your homework, and we can’t wait to have you back in class again when you feel better, okay?”

Peter nods again, then squeezes her hand. Apparently this is a new part of their communication too.

She wishes more of his words would return, but she still squeezes his hand right back.

Pepper doesn’t tell anyone else about Peter’s…problem.

Rhodey is half a world away—she makes excuses why Peter can’t come to the phone, claims that Peter sends his love or says something to her off the phone. Rhodey is too stressed to find it weird. He’s pushing to continue with full search resources, but the Air Force is fighting to scale their efforts back. Rhodey thinks that SI should fund a private Black Ops unit, but Obie’s been bucking it on claims of not making enemies of the US Government at a time like this.

Happy isn’t around as much as he wants to be. Pepper isn’t as high profile as Tony himself. Happy gets reassigned onto Obadiah’s security team for the time being, only catching Pepper in the halls or over coffee in the break room. He came to visit the mansion a few times, but that was in the earlier stages of Peter’s constant quiet. Back then they’d all assumed it was shock. She knows better now, just not what to do about it.

All of them are so…fractured, without Tony. He was the person that brought them all together in the first place. If she didn’t have Peter—she doesn’t know. She thinks she’d feel more alone than she already does, most days.

It’s almost a relief when, between discussing the latest updates on the search for Tony and May burning a frozen pizza, Pepper’s called out.

“Let me speak to my Petey-pie, before you go,” May requests. “I want to see how he’s doing.”

“He’s okay,” Pepper answers automatically.

Everything is okay, it’s all fine. No reason to stop coming into work, no reason to have the media pointing their cameras. She’s making it all okay because that is her job.

“He’s really busy right now, actually. He’s playing—oh, you know the one, with the cute little animals?”

“Peter can talk to me and play Animal Crossing at the same time,” May replies in a knowing tone. “He doesn’t tune me out like Tony does when he’s multi-tasking.”

“I…” Pepper allows herself to panic for exactly two seconds, then walks into the living room and places a hand on Peter’s head to get his attention. “I’m going upstairs for a minute, okay? Let JARVIS know if you need me.”

Peter nods at her distractedly—if he knows who she’s on the phone with, he doesn’t question what she’s up to.

May seems to understand from whatever she overheard—she stays quiet as Pepper ascends the staircase and shuts herself into her temporary bedroom.

“Hi,” she says, lamely. She’s leaning against the wall of the guest bedroom before she slides down it in defeat.

“I know that tone,” May answers. “We all share the parental guilt in this family, honey. Lay it on me.”

I don’t even know if I deserve that title, she thinks.

“Peter hasn’t been speaking,” she admits, breathing in and feeling the way her body shakes when she releases it. “He hasn’t said a word in three days.”

“Oh no. Is he sick?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

A sob releases before she can catch it.

“I don’t know. I don’t—he just won’t talk. It’s like—it’s like he can’t. And none of those stupid parenting magazines I bought at the grocery store say anything about it, and he got in trouble at school a-and he’s been home all week and I’m so scared, May.”

Once the one sob is gone, the tears come in earnest, and she’s just blubbering into May’s ear like a crazy person.

“God, the babysitter probably thinks I’m terrible. She said he’s staying in bed all the time. Sometimes he’s not even sleeping, he’s just lying there in total silence. And when he is awake, he just stays in the house and watches TV or plays video games. He doesn’t ask to go to the park like he used to, or ask for those gross sour juicy candy things at the store. And everyone at work already thinks I shouldn’t even be at work, but if I don’t, who’s going to stand up for Tony in that room? Who’s going to make sure they don’t move on without him and pretend he’s already gone? And—”

May sighs. “Pepper, I say this with love—you’re spiraling right now. Big time.”

“Sorry, I’m—sorry. This is—I should go, I’m—“

“No, no, don’t you dare. Tony used to call with a new crisis every other night. Three in the morning his time, Peter on his hip wailing like a banshee—‘May, what if he’s got an ear infection?’ ‘May, if he doesn’t stop crying, what about his lungs, what if he can’t breathe?’ ‘May, I need Ben to sing that one song, it’s Peter’s favorite, I can never remember the words.’ I’m used to it.”

“I remember,” Pepper sniffs, snotty and ugly, but the memory makes her smile a little.

She always said she was going home early in those days, but then Tony would be freaking out because Peter was freaking out and she’d be there until she fell asleep on the couch, exhausted but delighted that Peter went back to sleep after Tony’s fourth recommended remedy and a desperate call to May.

“You have to let the crazy out to somebody. I guess today that’s me. Now. First thing you’re going to do is take a deep breath. Good?”

Pepper nods even though the other woman can’t see her, breathing in and letting it out forcefully.

“Perfect. Now—you are not a terrible anything. You’re doing your best to hold it all together while Tony’s gone, and every one of us who knows and loves those Stark boys thinks you’re doing an excellent job.”

Pepper’s unsure if she really believes it, but she tries. She could have asked May and Ben to take Peter on, and maybe she should have, but Tony always said this was why he named multiple emergency guardians. She was keeping Peter in his school—trying at least, before his incident. At least for now, she’s succeeding in keeping Peter in his home.

“Honestly, this whole thing with Peter not talking…it might be out of your hands. You should think about having him see a professional.”

“What, a therapist? May, there are already so many people prying into our lives as it is with Tony gone…”

“HIPPA exists for a reason. Whatever he says in a session won’t ever leave the room.”

“I don’t—I don’t know. Not yet. Maybe. It’s just—too much to think about, right now. I just want to take care of Peter. That’s all that matters.”

“Of course it is. I just want you to know the options. Ben and I will help you find someone. In fact—we’ll come visit soon. Getting the dates worked out will be crazy, but—“

“May, you don’t have to—“

“No, Pepper. You aren’t in this alone. We’ll make it work. We’ll talk schedules and all of that boring stuff later. Right now, you need to blow your nose, fix your make-up, and give my nephew a big kiss from me, you understand?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I—thank you, May. Really.”

“No problem. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Talk to you soon.”

Pepper ends the phone call, sitting her Blackberry on the floor and letting a stressed, guttural groan escape her. Rather than follow May’s advice immediately, she curls herself into the bed, taking a moment to put herself together.

Taking Peter to see a specialist. It just seems so…extreme. But if this goes on for much longer…what else can she do? If it’s not a physical incapability, it has to be mental, right? Maybe it’s what’s best for him, in the end.

With a sigh she rises from the bed, trudging into the bathroom to fix her face. It’s red and blotchy from the crying.

Above her, JARVIS announces, “Young Master Peter has requested your assistance.”

She jumps, too hopeful when she asks, “Did he say that?”

“No. He simply found one of my optical cameras and garnered my attention. He pointed towards the stairs and then to one of the taller shelves in the refrigerator. I believe he wants another tube of Gogurt, but knows you do not approve of, as Sir puts it, ‘creative problem-solving’ in the form of climbing the shelves.”

She leans against the sink, lowering her head. That will be his third one this afternoon.

At least he’s eating something. And Gogurt has real fruit in it, right? It’s got…calcium and vitamins, probably? Maybe she can coerce him to eat an apple on the side. Some kind of protein.

“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.” She grabs a make-up wipe and quickly begins to dab at her smeared eyeliner.

Pepper and Obie have gathered in one of the top floor conference rooms to hash out some documentation and take on a much-dreaded conference call with the PR department.

Sadly, Peter is subjected to the torture as well. In the hopes of circumventing his lethargic nature  when forced to stay at home with Karen last week, Peter’s joining her at the workplace and bringing whatever he wants to distract himself. He’s been playing his Nintendo DS by himself in the corner of the room, and she’s considering ordering from his favorite burger place for lunch as a reward for the both of them.

“The question is, with Tony so recently out of the picture, is it viable to start introducing new products?” Stark Industries’ head of Public Relations, Bill Rather, questions. “Are our contractors going to believe in the Stark Industries brand without him backing us? Are they going to want to buy from us while this media snafu is still going on?”

“This company has always been more than Tony Stark,” Obie insists. “And as much as we all miss the kid, I think what he would want is for his legacy to keep thriving. We can’t do that if we stay in this production standstill. I have contacts in the White House chomping at the bit after the Jericho presentation because of everything that happened. They’re more determined than ever to take out enemy cells that are a danger to our military and civilians alike. They want that kind of firepower on our side.”

“We’re just worried about the timing. Selling the missiles now might not be a great look.”

“And that’s fair,” Pepper jumps in. “But until Mister Stark returns, we have to keep the company afloat. Obie is right—we can’t just do nothing just as much as we can’t pretend that everything is going back to normal.”

Obie gives her a look at her use of ‘until’—almost pitying, like she’s naive for thinking a few weeks is such a long time to hold out hope—but he leans back into his conference room chair, nodding.

“Exactly. We have suppliers and contractors and their employees to pay. There are still soldiers in the Middle East right now that need our ammunition, our weapons, our—“

“Okay, okay, Stane, I hear you. I’ll take this to my team, see if they have any bright ideas. Maybe we’ll get you to record a statement to the public announcing our continued operations in the wake of Mister Stark’s absence. Something to keep people’s sympathies on our side during all of this.”

“Thank you, Bill. Email me the results. I have a meeting in New York tomorrow, but I’ll get the talking points from you ASAP. If we have to hire a camera crew and record something on the spot, we’ll make that happen.”

“You got it, Obadiah. See you when you get back in town. Have a good one, you two.”

“Thanks, Bill,” Pepper replies, pressing the button to end the conference call.

She and Obie let out a sigh at the exact same time.

“I feel like I keep having the exact same conversation with people,” Pepper says, rubbing the headache that’s slowly throbbing around her temples. It’s always about the public’s confidence in the company, or the latest news about Tony, or what their next steps are. It makes Tony’s disappearance seem so clinical, just another event they have to work through to get back to normal operations.

“Tell me about it,” Obie agrees. “I warned you—I told you that you should take a break and get the kid out of town.”

“And I told you that I’m fine,” she snaps.

Obie narrows his eyes at her, his smile steeling into something sharper. She’s used to Tony, who has only ever enjoyed the way she sometimes speaks out of turn or forgets her position in the heat of an argument. But Obie isn’t Tony. At times it seems like he preferred when Tony’s assistants were less competent—at least they were predictable and easily came to heel.

“I’m…dealing with it,” she admits. “It’s not affecting my work. As long as I still have a job to do, I’m going to keep doing it.”

“You might not at some point, you know.” It’s not said menacingly, but plainly. “Have as much to do, I mean. If Tony doesn’t come back within six months, I’ll step up as CEO permanently and I’ll take Emma with me. You’ll go to whoever replaces me as CFO. And let’s be honest, you were doing over half of Tony’s job as it was before he was gone. Someone more diligent would bore the hell out of you.”

“I appreciate your concern, Obadiah,” she says, looking down at the stack of paperwork they have to comb through together before they can leave instead of meeting his eyes.

He sounds expectant that he’ll take Tony’s position, like there’s no point in her hoping or expecting any different, and it irks her even though she knows he’s thinking like the businessman that he’s always been.

“I’ll make that decision when the time comes,” she finally says, beginning to read the sheet in front of her from Legal and effectively closing the discussion.

The room goes quiet but for the sound of the clock ticking away over the conference room’s projector wall and their pens scratching at paper.

Wait—no, there’s another noise. An ugly, rough sort of a wheeze that keeps repeating.

She pulls up her head, moving her head around the room and landing on the floor to find the empty spot where Peter was previously entertaining himself.

Peter.

Peter has slid up against the wall, his legs curled up against his chest. He’s wheezing, he’s having an asthma attack. Peter hasn’t had an attack since—god, she can’t even remember. All Tony said was that the last one was so mild they didn’t even go to the hospital. Peter had just overexerted in gym class and the school nurse got worried.

She slams her purse onto the table, dropping out her Blackberry, a mountain of pens, her wallet, her tampons—none of the contents matter until she finds the inhaler in the mix. She always keeps one on hand. Tony had insisted on it after Peter’s asthmatic diagnosis. There was an inhaler in Happy’s car, in a few rooms of the mansion, one she always carefully replaced in every single one of Tony’s suit jackets for the day, and finally, even one in Pepper’s own purse.

Her rolling chair hits the wall when she stands. Thankfully she’s used to running in heels, so the few steps to Peter are nothing. The rug burn through her tights isn’t great, but she’s way more focused on Peter’s choked little gasps.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Obie is asking in the background. Just another thing that isn’t Peter to ignore.

Whenever Peter gets sick, she thinks it brings them all right back to seeing him for the first time in that NICU warmer.

Pepper was the last of Tony’s immediate friends and family to hold Peter in the hospital. She was too busy putting out fires back at SI and trying to set up the unfinished nursery in the New York penthouse with Rhodey as Tony kept vigil on the NICU couch.

Still, there had been a quiet moment, and Tony said, “Take a breather, Potts,” and sat her into the chair in front of the warmer by her shoulders.

He was clearly becoming more practiced with extracting Peter and the host of equipment connected to him. He gingerly slid Peter into her arms without trouble and said, “He is the most important thing in my life now, so you gotta take even better care of him than you do me, okay?”

She laughed like she was supposed to. She cooed at Peter’s uncoordinated grabs for her fingers.

She sees so much of that innocent, struggling baby in front of her as she falls to the ground in front of him. As Peter coughs his eyes get watery and his breathing goes reedy. She wants the CPAP back, the IV, and she wants to hold him, anything to bring his color back towards red instead of blue.

“Here, breathe,” she insists, half-shoving the inhaler between his teeth. “Breathe, sweetheart, you have to breathe, come on, come on.”

It feels like a plea to the world, to Tony, wherever he is. She’s not screwing this up, she’s not lost and scared and treading water. She’s Pepper Potts and Peter Stark is going to keep breathing because she says so, goddamn it.

Peter inhales a quick puff, coughing it out at first. The second attempt is more successful—a longer, healthy dose of medication making its way to his lungs.

“God.” She wants to bring Peter into her arms, but he needs the space to breathe, needs time for his lungs to settle. If he can’t get himself under control they have to go to the hospital, and if she has to take him to the hospital alone— “Peter, thank god.”

Pepper runs her hands over him like it’s just some physical injury she has a hope of fixing. She traces her palms up and down his shoulders, then briefly cups his face in her hands before moving into his hair, tucking back the same loose strands over and over.

Usually after an attack this harsh, Peter would rush into Tony’s arms, desperate to soothe his cries into Tony’s shoulder. He’s still in that sweet spot of enjoying coddling while insisting that he’s growing up.

Instead, Peter catches his breath and just…looks up at her, inhaler now slack in his fist.

“Peter, why didn’t you say you couldn’t breathe?!” She doesn’t realize that she’s yelling until she feels the strain on her throat. “I had your inhaler! Someone always has one, you know that!”

Her grip on his arms is tight—too tight, her nails are going to hurt him if she squeezes any tighter—but she’s never been so scared, she’s never been the only one there during an asthma attack, she could have lost him, she’d never forgive herself if he—

Peter shrugs.

He doesn’t reply. He blinks up at her and has the audacity to shrug as if this wasn’t a big deal. He doesn’t say what triggered the attack, doesn’t offer up an apology, doesn’t have a single word to say to explain himself.

“Peter, you could have died!” she yells, tears building in her eyes. Something is wrong. Where is her bubbly, talkative little boy? Their Peter, the boy that would never make someone worry about him because he knows how much it upsets them? She’s terrified that he’s gone, that it’s her fault, that she’s chased his words away and they’re gone just like Tony and never coming back. No, please no, not that.

“What were you thinking?” she asks of him, a six-year-old recovering from an asthma attack. Peter is always thinking, always questioning, always caring and kind. Why did this happen, how could she not have noticed, how?

His lip wobbles under her interrogation, but his mouth doesn’t produce a sound when it opens. Peter shakes his head, a fresh wave of tears pouring rapidly down his cheeks. His dark eyes plead at her. She wants to beg: what, what can’t you say, why, tell me, let me fix it, please, please.

Instead, she pulls him into her arms, and in this at least, she seems to have gotten something right. He clings to her, wrapping himself around her torso on the floor. It’s uncomfortable and Obie’s probably looking at her like she’s a crazy person, but Peter wants her, he needs her comfort, and as long as she knows Peter wants her around, she’s going to let the rest of it fall to the wayside for now.

“I’m sorry.” She realizes that she’s crying too. It’s the adrenaline, the fear. God, Tony must feel like this all the time, his whole heart is walking around exposed in a world that’s been working against him since the beginning.

“I was just so scared, honey, I’m sorry.” She presses a long, hard kiss to Peter’s cheek. “You’re okay—we’re gonna be okay.”

Peter nods into her neck, but doesn’t let go, snuggling into the way she’s gently rocking them against the floor. She’ll let him stay in her arms all day if that’s what it takes. Anything to make Peter feel safe, loved, to make this mess that is the both of them a little bit more stable.

She should probably go ahead and take the day anyway—she’s a mess and Peter’s clearly just as drained as she is.

When she finally looks up to tell her current boss as much, Obie is gone, his briefcase missing and the door of the conference room long shut behind him.

For a month, they stayed at the mansion because it’s Peter’s home, it’s Tony’s—she has a spare room and a nice apartment, but taking Peter away from the familiar seemed like a terrible idea.

It’s just—trips back and forth to her apartment or the office take time. The mansion is off in the outskirt cliffs of Malibu, and her apartment is closer to Los Angeles proper, closer to Stark Industries.

It’s a thirty minute trip both ways every time she needs to to get clothes and it’s an even longer drive to SI. It never bothered Tony because he shamelessly speeds around with the control of a trained race car driver and he never cared about being on time for a meeting. She’s more careful with Peter in the car and never knows the right back roads to get out of the back-to-back morning traffic.

Also, Peter will go back to school eventually, which will be an extra stop, and she still has responsibilities at SI no matter how much Obie keeps brushing her off, telling her that it’s okay to take time off, to—to grieve.

She does nothing of the sort.

What she does do is slowly but surely begin preparations for her apartment. She buys a twin-sized mattress for Peter and builds the frame with a little help from Happy, who—since her talk with May—she has asked to come around more often, even if Peter doesn’t verbally react any more than before. She decorates the room with Star Wars sheets, with glow-in-the-dark stars that will probably peel the ceiling up and ruin her deposit.

“Are you excited?” she asks on the final drive away from Tony’s house, feigning excitement. She doesn’t want to leave the mansion either, really, but it’s getting…stifling, the feeling of wrongness that lays over them at night, Tony’s obvious presence missing. It’s not good for either of them. May suggested a new environment would do them both some good, and Pepper agreed.

Peter shrugs in the rearview mirror, flopping his bunny’s ears around listlessly. He’s always quiet, now. He doesn’t hum to the radio or talk about what he’s been reading in school or even bother with yes’s and no’s anymore. He nods or shakes his head or crawls into her lap without warning and doesn’t move until he’s fast asleep and her arms are numb.

He didn’t even protest moving. She made the decision practically, and he didn’t argue. (But he did speak a raspy “Goodbye, J,” to JARVIS, and that gave her hope.)

“We’ll go back,” she reassures, sincere. “When he’s home. First thing, okay?”

She doesn’t side with the news outlets—or Obie, for that matter. They’ve all given up hope and she—she’s barely got her head above water as it is, taking care of a six-year-old and trying to keep Tony’s job going while he’s away and barely taking the time to—handle it all.

She can’t think about Tony being—gone. She just can’t.

Peter continues to stare ahead.

May and Ben allow Pepper to pay for their flight. Peter’s still out of school, Pepper’s taking a few of her vacation days, and she’s hopeful that if anything will put Peter in a better, more involved mood, it will be seeing his aunt and uncle for a few days.

She’s called May a few times for advice in the last month, as if the other woman will have some kind of secret child-rearing skills that Pepper doesn’t. It’s more intimate than their usual conversation fare filled with scheduling trips to New York around Tony’s projects at SI and mailing pictures of Peter back and forth.

May doesn’t shy away from sadness the way other people do. Tony always said it’s because she’s a bit of a hippy, but Pepper thinks it’s a certain kind of emotional maturity that she envies. It’s a knowing of self that’s honest and frank.

Everyone else is always walking on eggshells with her when it comes to talking about Tony. May doesn’t mind bringing up her favorite baby Peter stories, this inappropriate joke Tony told her once, that time Ben got all three of the boys stuck outside on the fire escape during a failed stargazing venture. Maybe May doesn’t share that same unshakable belief that Tony’s still alive as Pepper, but she doesn’t let his possible death cloud the good memories of him either.

The particular morning that the Parkers arrive, Peter still isn’t speaking a word but makes it clear through a fit that she’s purchased the wrong flavor of children’s toothpaste, and that it is a sin from which his entire morning routine will never recover. On top of that, he woke her up after a nightmare and she hadn’t been able to go back to sleep as easily as he had splayed on her stomach. She’s exhausted, she’s emotionally drained from fighting him into getting ready for the day, and she herself hasn’t had the time to get herself dressed or even take a sip of her now-lukewarm coffee.

Pepper is more than happy to be absorbed into the Parkers’ warmth the second they knock on the door.

“Oh goodness,” Ben hums. “I think Petey has been putting someone through her paces this morning.”

Pepper would be more concerned about being braless in front of company, but Ben’s gaze is entirely fixed on the rat’s nest of her dirty hair and the bags sitting faintly under her eyes.

“My nephew? My angelic boy?” May questions. “Couldn’t be.”

Somewhere behind her, a clash of glass hitting the floor is followed with a muffled cry of surprise.

“That sure sounds like classic Peter to me, hon.”

May sighs. “So it does. Would you—?”

Ben’s already shouldering past her, chiding Peter from his precarious position of trying to clean up any broken glass without leaving the kitchen chair he’s sitting in. “Just hold on a minute, kiddo, I’m coming. Don’t touch, I’ll get it.”

Meanwhile, May brings Pepper in for a hug. “It’s so good to see you. Sorry it’s taken us so long—getting time off of work has been hell for us both, let alone coordinating it for the same weekend.”

“I’m just glad to have you at all,” Pepper replies honestly. The Parkers are barely family to Tony, and even less so to Pepper, but it doesn’t feel that way with all of the time they spend together because of the kid currently sitting at her kitchen table.

“It’s been that bad?” May holds Pepper by the arms, examining her up and down, searching for the signs of wear and tear this month has wrought and likely finding only the remnants of a sleepless night and the persistent zit on her cheek.

“No, not really, just…” Pepper breathes out. “Rough morning.”

“It happens,” May comforts. “No sulking. I am going to go hug the stuffing out of my excellent little nephew and you are going to take a shower and eat something. Start the day off right. It’ll be great. I’ll make pancakes.”

Pepper can’t help the instant grimace that crosses her face—it’s well known even to her that May Parker’s cooking skills are motivated by a lot of love and very little expertise.

“Okay, fine, Ben will cook pancakes. I will be the executive taste tester along with my very talented sous-chef.”

Ben has moved Peter away from the glass mess on the floor over to the two of them in one elegant swoop. Peter reaches out his own arms and smiles as May happily peppers him with kisses.

“How are you, baby?” May bounces Peter in her arms, unsurprised when his answer is a silent shrug despite his smile.

“Yeah, Pepper warned me you’ve been a little quiet lately. I’m going to miss my chatterbox.” May runs her fingers over his ribs, thankful that this at least gains her a giggle. “Thankfully, I can talk enough for us both, hm? Me and my big mouth.”

“What do you say, Peter? Pancakes sound okay?” Pepper asks. Unbeknownst to either of the other adults, it’s less of an exciting-the-child-by-repetition thing and more actually trying to verify that he’ll eat the breakfast if it’s placed in front of him. The last thing they need to add to this morning is another round of there are three kinds of cereal in this house and you have to eat six spoonfuls of one of them before we leave.

She recognizes that she sounds just as stressed as she feels thinking about dealing with Peter that way, but things since the move certainly haven’t gotten easier. Probably aware of the month benchmark for his father’s disappearance, Peter has only continued to lessen his eating habits along with his speech. She’s lucky for a word out of him, let alone a full sentence.

In that same vein, Peter simply kicks his feet happily in Ben’s arms, nodding his head in agreement.

“Go.” May pushes her by the shoulder, sensing her reluctance. Since pulling Peter out of school, she hasn’t left him alone with anyone but JARVIS and the babysitter.  “Shower, go. He’ll be fine.”

Pepper gives the other woman’s shoulder a squeeze on the way by, thankful for the brief reprieve and happy to hear Peter laughing more than normal.

Ben and May try. They really do.

Pepper tries to plan family-fun sorts of things she knows they’ll all enjoy: a trip to Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, a picnic in the park, a quiet afternoon at the bookstore, bulking up Peter’s seemingly never-ending want for more reading material.  She even takes one night for she and May alone, drinking margaritas and eating too many nachos and coming back giggling and somehow not waking Peter despite Ben’s constant shushing.

They end the fourth day of their visit on the private beach near Tony’s mansion.

Peter is helping May collect seashells on the beach. Pepper and Ben end up naturally hanging back, their arms sometimes bumping as they walk together in the tide.

Peter’s at least more energetic, running ahead of May to collect shells and nodding when she finds one he deems acceptable for their haul. Still, Pepper can tell that May is really noticing his lack of verbal response now that she’s spending more time around it. She tries probing questions, things with easy answers—none of it gets Peter to vocalize more than a giggle.

“You’re good with him,” Ben says without preamble. He’s not the most effusive man in the world, but it’s a purposeful, contemplating sort of quiet. He’s tall and bulky, dressed in a light flannel despite the afternoon sun beating down on them.

“Thanks.” Pepper shrugs. It’s a strange thing to be complimented on, but it happens now and then. Well-intentioned old ladies, expecting mothers looking at her like she’s got some kind of innate guidance to give.

It always happened to Tony, too. Peter’s less than responsible conception combined with a kidnapping scare from the early years left the media under the assumption that Tony wasn’t the superb father that she’d always known him to be. Whenever evidence of Tony’s doting nature appeared in public, it was met with similar comments—Tony Stark loved and cared for his own child, what a surprise.

That’s not how Ben means it though. He’s straightforward and honest. There’s no real way to misinterpret his genuine nature.

“I mean, if it’d been us—we never wanted kids, but we signed the same papers you did. We’d do anything for Peter, same as you.”

Pepper presses her fingers against his arm. “I know.”

“I think Tony would be proud, is all. He was always that way. Thankful of the people who treated his boy right.”

Is to was. Present tense to Past. It chokes up her throat, but she swallows it down. The days of arguing semantic tenses with people are over, she’s decided. When Tony returns, he’ll never hear her making those kinds of mistakes, and it will comfort him. That’s all she knows.

“One day he walked in on me and Pete—the kid had it in his head that we had to play Rebels. Pete had a colander on his head playing X-Wing pilot, and I was flying him around the room making noises, looking like a damn fool, I’m sure.”

He makes finger guns and gives a few heartfelt pew-pew noises accompanied by a buzzing that may or may not be intended to represent engines. Pepper fully laughs.

“Anyway, Tony was running late, and he’d just been standing there at the front door watching us. I was making such a racket and Peter was having too much fun, I guess we didn’t notice him using his key.”

“So you’re saying Tony’s a voyeur?” she asks, bumping his shoulder in jest.

He laughs, but shakes his head. “Less creepy than that. At least, I hope so. More like he was happy to see Peter happy, even when it wasn’t with him. I just felt like—he thanked me for watching Peter, and I knew it was about more than just babysitting for a few hours, you know?”

“He has such a big heart,” Pepper replies.

She thinks of the way Tony let Mary in, the way he’d taken to Peter the second they touched. He and Rhodey were fast friends in college. Pepper had his attention without the threat of pepper spray in his face. Tony’s been burned by a life in the public eye of people who only wanted to use him, but when he feels a genuine connection, his affection is—

She clears her throat. “No one ever believes me, when I say that.”

“Well,” Ben shrugs with a certain finality. “I do.”

Pepper smiles up at Ben—Peter missed out on being tall, losing the Parker gene pool. It’s rare to find men that so easily overshadow her.

“Thanks, Ben.” Like Tony, she’s thanking him for much more than just agreeing with her on that singular point.

They walk along for a few more seconds, quietly bumping shoulders and listening to the waves.

Peter then runs up to her ahead of May, grabbing her hand and using his other sandy palm to hold up a hermit crab for inspection.

She can’t hold back the cringe of her face. She happily supports his mission to defend schoolyard bugs from bullies as long as he’s not bringing them home, but she’d much rather eat seafood than watch such creatures crawl and writhe around in front of her like this.

“Last I checked you were our local marine biologist,” Ben replies, when Peter turns and shoves the creature up at his uncle instead. “Sorry, squirt, I got nothing in the fun facts department on this one. Impressive catch, though.”

It’s another subtle attempt to promote Peter to talk. Normally it’s the type of thing he doesn’t need an excuse to bring up—Tony digitized a children’s almanac collection for Peter early on in his childhood, and he has pages upon pages printed out and strung up all over the walls at the mansion.

This time Peter simply shrugs, as if comforting Ben that it’s okay. He plops the crab back onto the sand, patting at its shell before dragging both Pepper and Ben ahead, meeting May and their bucket of collected shells in the middle.

While he’s still being just as quiet, Peter’s been more amicable about the things he picks battles over with the Parkers around. He’s also been a little more active since he has more people than her to interact with. She thought this was a good sign. A sign that May was right all along—Peter just needed a change of routine, a return to some sense of normal with the family he still has.

However, by the night after the beach, he seems to have tired of simply picking around whatever parts of his food he doesn’t want, moving to complete dismissal of the chicken pot pie presented to him, warm and inviting on Pepper’s previously barely-used dishware.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” May questions, pressing a hand to Peter’s forehead. “You like Ben’s pot pie. Are you sick?”

“Peter, c’mon, it’s really good. I went easy on the black pepper. I know how you hate that. Look.” Ben takes an enthusiastic bite, but Peter’s only response is to shift in his chair, as if to leave the table.

“You skipped most of lunch too,” May points out, leaving her seat to crouch next to Peter and lightly enforcing him to stay seated with a hand on his shoulder. “You need to eat, kiddo.”

Peter shakes his head, pushing the plate away in frustration. He looks to Pepper, silently pleading. She’s the one who has been dealing with this version of Peter, acquiescing to his new picky eating behavior because it’s either that or starving him.

“Talk to me. Use your words. Why won’t you eat your dinner?”

Pepper feels shame pool in her stomach. She’d tried stern, she’d tried stubborn. It didn’t matter to Peter—he was content not to eat. It was better that he ate than not, right? Maybe it’s bad parenting, caving in, but…she’d never claimed to be good at this. People keep saying it—Ben and May keep saying it—but maybe this is where they realize the truth. She gives in and she doesn’t even care, as long as he’s happy again, as long as he’s eating.

As always, when pressured to speak, Peter crumbles. He curls himself into a ball. Sobbing is the only noise that comes from him. May and Ben look to Peter and then her, when honestly, she’s not that far from crying herself. She doesn’t have answers to the problem, only solutions.

“Hey, hey, Petey, it’s okay. It’s okay, just tell us what’s wrong,” Ben tries. Peter muffles himself into his arms, and Pepper can’t sit by anymore. She should have told them to stop bugging him about it, she just—no one else knows. This has been her nightly routine for weeks.

She sits Peter down to meals and it’s a guessing game. Sometimes he eats most of the meal, other times he only eats one specific side. (It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s steamed vegetables or mac and cheese, so the idea of just giving him more can backfire in the balanced nutrition department.)

Often it’s like a game—she stands them both in front of the fridge and makes him point. Some nights this leads to scrambled eggs, or leftovers, or plain buttered noodles. Other times he points at a Yoohoo and she has to insist that’s not an actual food choice. Sometimes she can at least get him to drink Pedialyte or take a children’s vitamin with whatever food she gets down him. Other nights she lets him eat ice cream for dinner and lets it go.

Lately he’s had an obsession with mac and cheese that makes her want to sue Kraft for making their horrendous orange boxed food product in the first place.

With a sigh, she rises from her place at the table. Ben allows her to squeeze past. Probably having heard her, Peter looks up, desperately grabbing for her arms, for her security, for the person who will give him whatever food he wants without making him say another word. She doesn’t know which aspect of her is more comforting to him at the moment.

“C’mon Peter,” she hums. “It’s hard, I know.” She doesn’t really know, but she suspects that’s some part of the reason. Talking has just become insurmountable to him now, and she can’t fix that.

“Pepper—” May tries, but Pepper gives her a look that hopefully translates to hold on.

“I’ll get you something in a minute,” she assures Peter, leading them back to her chair. “You and me, we’ll pick something.”

Peter is fully wrapped around her, his face buried in her neck. God, to think he would ever shy away from Ben and May.

Pepper bounces Peter lightly in her lap, letting him cry the tantrum out. It feels like the part of the terrible twos Tony missed out on. Peter could articulate well already for a toddler, and what he couldn't, Tony seemed to get away with figuring out before it became too big a meltdown.

"You just have to give him time," Pepper insists to the other adults, knowing she looks as crazed and frazzled as she feels. "He just gets upset if you push. It's too many choices, it's too much—"

She clutches at Peter protectively. Is she protecting him, or is she sheltering him, enabling him?

Ben silently wraps an arm around his wife, as if trying to physically transfer his usual serenity into her nervous form.

Pepper thinks that May will tell her she's finally lost it, but instead the other woman sighs, closing her eyes and finding some kind of inner strength before saying, "Okay. If that's how it is then—okay."

May is just sort of like that—she makes the rules, sets the tone, and there's no real argument left to make once she makes her choice. It's a commanding sort of authority that Pepper knows well because she's practiced at it in the business world, with managing Tony.

And yet with Peter...Pepper flounders. What does that say about her?

While May inspects the meager contents of her fridge for something much less complex than Ben's delicious pot pie, Ben holds out his arms, and Pepper loosens her defensive grip.

"C'mon kiddo," Ben says, easily unlatching Peter from her arms. "We gotta get you fed and in bed. I'm dyin' to find out what happens to the wizard kid.”

The one breakdown begets another. The night before Ben and May are supposed to go back to New York, they’re watching The Bachelor and only kind of making fun of it with a glass of wine.

Peter was put to bed hours ago, and she thought that usually signaled good things—a night of uninterrupted sleep for both of them.

"Oh, look, Katie's crying in the limo." May rolls her eyes. "Don't act so heartbroken, honey, we know you were in it for the screen time."

"You're so judgemental," Ben retorts. "Maybe she really cared about him!"

"Half of the couples from this show aren't going to stay together into the next decade. Bet on it."

"You better start searching the couch cushions now, sweetheart, cause you're gonna owe me a crisp twenty in ten years."

"You guys are so sweet," Pepper deadpans, which kicks off a chain of tipsy laughter that overshadows Chris Harrison's cheesy preview of next week's episode.

Pepper has her eyes closed from laughing, so May catches the presence of Peter first.

"Oh, sweetie, were we being too loud?"

Peter is standing next to the couch with his bunny tucked under his arm. He practically dive bombs into Pepper on the couch as soon as he catches her eye.

Pepper accepts his now-familiar weight with a hum, tucking Peter's head against her shoulder. "Alright, honey, I've got you. It's okay."

At first, she wasn’t sure what to give Peter other than physical comfort. Now, she thinks she gets the same thing that he does from it: the steady presence of another person. As much as she might push away his nightmares, Peter himself steadies her, makes her remember why they go through rounds of stilted communication, why she barters over meals and spends her nights scared that she’s not enough.

He is so precious, Peter Stark. He’s worth it. He’s worth anything she has to give.

"What was it, huh? Was it scary?" she asks of him.

Peter nods against her skin.

"Was it about Daddy?"

Peter's responding nod this time is more vigorous.

Pepper sighs. "I miss him too."

They have a variation of this interaction at least once a week. She doesn't want to erase Tony's presence in Peter's life, doesn't want him to forget. Even if it's sad, even if it feels like dragging themselves through the same emotional turmoil over and over...at least they're not giving up. Someone is still missing Tony, someone is still waiting for his return.

Rhodey is her only adult companion in that regard, and she has no plans to abandon him when he's halfway across the world still searching.

May huffs out a little sigh herself, leaning against the armrest of Pepper's couch. "Look at you two." She runs a hand over Peter's back. "Poor thing."

That's when Pepper realizes that May's look from the night before—that decisive, stubborn choice to go along with Peter's picky appetite—was not just about that one decision.

May brushes a hand over Peter's curls, pleased when Peter sleepily settles into the extra touch.

“I think he needs to see someone, Pepper. A professional. Mary had plenty of connections in New York, I'm sure we could find someone—”

Pepper hums, indecisive and just as nervous about the prospect as much as she was a month before. She’s admitted to herself more than once that this behavior has passed normal grieving and transgressed into something more concerning. It’s just—a shrink? She believes that therapy can be helpful, but Peter’s just a boy. A traumatized, sad little boy. Then again, traumatized and Peter are two things she never expected or wanted to be in the same sentence.

"May, I don't know…" she starts, but May holds up a silencing hand.

"No, listen. I am not saying this because I don't believe you're doing a good job. You are doing your best handling a kid who…" May shakes her head. "This family has been through a lot, and kids are sensitive enough as it is."

May moves her hand from Peter's head to Pepper's thigh. "But Tony wouldn't want this. For either of you. Every time Peter caught a cold he practically lost his mind worrying about it. This is—you're taking on a lot of stress and worry on your own with this situation. Let us find someone that can help."

“You’re helping,” Pepper offers weakly.

May gives back a sardonic smile. “I’m flattered, Pepper, but I don’t have a degree in child psychology.”

Pepper mulls it over, then turns to Ben. “What do you think?

“Far be it from me to disagree with May Parker.” Ben shrugs off-handedly.

Pepper reaches out to lightly kick the man’s leg, insistent. “I’m being serious.”

Ben sighs heavily. Because he chooses his words so carefully in moments like these, it makes them feel more important, the air around them suddenly heavier than it already was.

“I’ve never seen him like this, Pepper. I’ve known that boy his whole life, same as you. This isn’t right. I want our baby boy back. He deserves to feel better, and if the best way to make that happen is to try and see a doctor, I say you do it.”

She’s outnumbered.

Suddenly, she feels the hole of Tony’s absence around them. Group decisions about Peter’s health, his wellbeing...this is a family decision, and he’s not getting to cast his vote.

She tries to imagine what he might say.

A shrink? Really Potts? They’re out of their minds. A degree doesn’t mean some stranger knows how to take care of my kid better than I do.

But then again…

I’d do anything for him, Pep. Anything. I’ll go to therapy if it makes him feel better. Probably should have a long time ago anyway, right?

His voice echoes from years past.

I need him to be okay. I need his family right there, ready to go. Just in case. That's you.

“Okay,” Pepper submits, petting Peter’s hair to give reassurance as much as to get it. “Okay. Find me someone, and we’ll go.”

Pepper worried that sitting in a children’s therapy office would make her feel judged. Incapable. Other.

And, well, she does. It feels like failure to admit she can’t take care of a six-year-old on her own. There is surprisingly more camaraderie in knowing she isn’t the only one, though. She and a couple of other parents sit under the harsh lighting with their charges, actually flicking through the magazines on display or, like Pepper, picking away at their cell phones because they’re here instead of at work.

Peter was surly all morning because of this appointment, whining at her repeated instructions to get dressed and disregarding more than a bite of his breakfast. Now that he’s here, he’s single-mindedly occupied with the bead maze in the corner of toys, tracing the wooden circles around their pre-destined tracks in quick, repetitive motions. It’s less genuine interest in his eyes and more…distraction? Is he anxious? Angry that she listened to May and brought him here?

No one used to have trouble with knowing what Peter was thinking.

Pepper sighs, running a hand through Peter’s hair where he sits at her feet. This is for the best. Everyone else in Peter’s life thinks so, and she trusts them as much as she would trust Tony to make this decision. If Peter had been with the Parkers instead of her, this might have happened months ago. Peter would have gotten the help he so clearly needs months ago.

“Peter?” A nurse in printed scrubs calls for them, and despite his earlier resistance, Peter places his hand in Pepper’s and follows along as the nurse guides them into one of the offices.

Pepper knows the public perception of a therapist’s office is all leather settees and shiny degrees on the wall, but this therapist’s office is warm, lit more dimly than the waiting room and decorated more like a kindergarten classroom than an office space. The middle of the room is strewn with kid-friendly offerings—a tube of pick-up sticks, a plethora of Barbies and Pokémon figurines.

“Peter Stark and Miss Potts.” The doctor announces them without having to look at his clipboard. “It’s wonderful to meet you both.” He shakes Pepper’s hand and directs a hand toward one of the chairs off to the side, since otherwise the seating matches the decor in the form of beanbags.

“Would you mind sitting here across from me, Peter?” The doctor asks, flashing Pepper a quick, encouraging smile to let her in on the fact that he wants to start out with Peter alone if the boy will allow it.

Peter looks to her for a nod before following along, and the doctor doesn’t miss the silent exchange, either. He waits until Peter is situated before he takes the beanbag across from Peter.

“I’m Doctor Behr,” the doctor introduces himself. Next to him is a worn, plush bear wearing a little red tie. It’s clearly well-loved, as evidenced by a few stitched seams. “And this is my friend, Mister Bear, who will be sitting in with us. Do you like stuffed animals, Peter?”

At least the man has a sense of humor. She can imagine that joke sitting well with kids even younger than Peter.

Peter eyes the offered plush, but dismisses it with a shake of his head. Pepper can read that expression clearly: not my bunny. He likes soft things, but he’s not interested in plushies if they aren’t his one and only plush rabbit.

Doctor Behr takes this in stride, though, nodding as if Peter’s made a wise choice. “That’s alright, he likes just listening too. He does love a good hug though, if you’re ever offering.”

Peter’s a little too smart for the anthropomorphizing of the stuffed animal. He frowns just like he used to when he was two and people would ask how many fingers old he was before replying, “I’m two, and I can talk,” with a petulant little stamp of his foot.

“Too smart for that stuff, are we? That’s alright, my bad. I knew your mother, you know. She was brilliant too. I should’ve known better.”

Peter doesn’t know much about his mother—Tony told Peter what he could, but he barely knew Mary as it was, and Peter was a little young for the story behind why Mary ended up pregnant in the first place. Still, every child is curious about where they come from, and Peter likes to find the parts of his mother that are still around—old pictures at the Parkers’, the bunny Tony and Mary chose together.

The question garners, at the very least, an inquisitive furrow of Peter’s eyebrows.

“Mmhm. That’s why your Aunt May called to set this up. Your mom and I were friends, and she thought that we could be friends too. Does that sound okay?”

Peter shrugs, staring down at his hands.

“She’s worried about you. She said you’ve had a really rough time lately. Can you tell me about that?”

Peter doesn’t even give that a response of movement. She can imagine Tony’s sarcastic lilt behind Peter’s brown eyes. The problem is that he’s not talking, doc. What kind of stupid question is that?

“What about Miss Potts? Is it okay if I talk to her about you?”

Peter nods this time. He picks up the tube of pick-up sticks and gracelessly upends them onto the floor. Rather than play the game itself, he begins to jab the plastic skewers into the carpet, creating some kind of design.

The doctor looks up to Pepper, scribbling something on his page. “You’re Peter’s current guardian, right, Miss Potts?”

“Yes.”

“May gave me a bit of a rundown over the phone, but why don’t you tell me what’s been happening from your perspective?”

Pepper doesn’t get anxious about much—nerves of steel are kind of a requirement in her line of work—but having a therapist put his focused attention on her gives the acute feeling of being under a microscope, causing a brief hesitation of smoothing down her skirt before answering.

“I just—I’ve known Peter his entire life. I’m at Tony’s house every single day, 365 days a year. Because I’m his assistant and because Tony keeps the people he trusts close. We’re like family, you know?”

She’s not sure if the other man needed the assurance that Pepper wasn’t sleeping with her boss, but she implies it anyway because this is about Peter, and she doesn’t want any thoughts about impropriety clouding his opinions on Peter’s home life.

Doctor Behr simply nods. He doesn’t write anything else down on his notepad, and that feels like a victory.

“He’s always been this sweet, talkative kid, but now—I thought it was just fear, or anxiety because things were changing and it’s been scary for all of us. But it’s been almost two months, and he’s not talking, he’s barely eating.” Pepper feels her eyes welling, like the admittance is bringing all of it back at once. “He has nightmares. Multiple times a week.”

This time Doctor Behr does write some things down, looking back up to ask, “And this started shortly after Tony disappeared?”

At the mention of Tony’s disappearance, Peter stiffens, pausing in his placement of stacking the plastic sticks in a certain pattern. The doctor definitely catches that, but pretends that all of his focus is still on Pepper.

“At first it was just talking less, only answering questions. Now it’s nothing. The not-eating started shortly after. I mean, I know he’s a kid, but it’s not just being picky. And the nightmares…when he was younger he went through a phase of them, but it’s been normal since. On and off, just like every other kid. Now he’s coming to me every other night.”

“Are the nightmares about his father?”

She shrugs. In the beginning she hadn’t asked what the nightmares were about, and now she only guesses at Tony being involved and gets nods or head shakes in return.

“He hasn’t said, obviously, but, sometimes.”

Doctor Behr gives a little nod to himself. “Does he communicate with you in other ways? To compensate?”

Peter’s brown eyes looking up at her, pleading. His fingers making rhythmic taps against her hands that can mean excitement, fear, an ask for attention.

“He tries his best. I try mine, you know, to understand. It works. We make it work.”

“I see. That does sound hard, Peter. I can see why your family wanted you to come talk to me.” Doctor Behr sits forward on the beanbag, lacing his hands together over his clipboard. “It can be hard when we lose the people we love.”

“He’s not gone.”

Pepper knows she’s stepping on the doctor’s moment, but she can’t let that kind of statement stand without correction. She has stopped picking at specifics and wording, but she won’t show anything but full faith in Tony’s return in front of Peter.

Doctor Behr seems to take that in with a calculating look and a quick scribble against his paper. Maybe he’s just like everyone else, thinking she’s lost it for still holding out hope.

Then he picks back up with Peter.

“What do you think, Peter? Do you think your dad is gone?”

Peter’s eyes snap up to meet the doctor’s, shaking his head vigorously. It’s the most reaction Doctor Behr has gotten from Peter so far.

She’s unsurprised when Peter finds her eyes next. He knocks over his precarious tower of pick-up sticks and dashes over to her, pulling on her sleeve and keening through his closed mouth insistently.

Tell him! The look says. Dad’s not gone, tell him, Pepper!

“Okay, okay. I think he got it, sweetie.” She attempts to soothe the reaction with a placating hand through Peter’s hair. Then she allows her tone to sharpen, directing it at Doctor Behr. “Is this really necessary?”

He’s interrogating a six-year-old about his father’s death. It feels…wrong. She knows therapy is about airing out emotions and working through them, but it feels like Doctor Behr has come to a particular conclusion about Peter’s connection to Tony and he’s not letting it go.

“Miss Potts,” Doctor Behr sighs, like this is his norm, like she’s just another patient, an overreacting child. ”These behaviors don’t come from nowhere. They’re often a response to something. Losing his father at a young age is the kind of grief that Peter may not know how to work through yet in any other way.”

Pepper holds Peter to her body a little tighter, feeling defensive. He sounds like the rest of the world, like Obie. Like Tony is already gone and there’s nothing to be done but move on.

There is no moving on from this, not for Peter. If Tony really is dead, she has to be sure. She has to know before she takes away Peter’s childish hope, before she drops her own.

Some part of her feels like she would know. She always had a certain sixth sense about Tony—when he was in trouble, when he was doing the exact opposite of Obie’s instructions, of her suggestions—she always knew, right in the pit of her stomach, like the world was off its axis just enough and she had to tend to Tony before it could start spinning the way it always had before.

The pit is still there, like they’re in the same building and Tony’s calling out for her rooms away. She hasn’t stopped listening for him. Rhodey hasn’t. Why the hell should Peter when he’s the one who needs Tony the most?

“There’s not—there’s no grieving. Tony isn’t—” She doesn’t even want to say dead in front of Peter. She always avoids the word, the notion. “He’s not gone. There’s no grieving happening. The fact that he’s been missing for so long is just—it’s been hard on all of us. That’s why this is happening.”

Something solidifies in Doctor Behr’s expression. A smile suddenly graces his face, but it’s a restrained, pinched sort of thing.

“Peter, would you mind going back to the waiting room with Nurse Lucy for a minute? I need to talk with Miss Potts alone.” The doctor stands up, walking to his desk and picking up the phone from its cradle.

It’s phrased as a question, but Peter knows better. The adults are talking, and he can’t listen. He checks with Pepper momentarily, but when she gives an affirmative nod—glad for the chance to speak frankly with the doctor—Peter takes the hand of the nurse when she’s called in, and doesn’t look back when the door closes behind them.

Doctor Behr gives a sigh, leaning his hips against his desk and crossing one leg over the other. He is a slight, wiry sort of man, dressed in an unassuming button-up and wearing an unfashionable pair of khaki pants.

“Miss Potts.” He’s hardly intimidating, but his tone takes on a sort of severity when he says, “I understand that Mister Stark being gone is hard, but these sessions are only going to be beneficial if you encourage Peter to change his behavior. And in our short time together, it’s clear to me that this behavior stems from losing his father so abruptly, and it’s continued further because of your resistance to treating it.”

That stings just a little. She had been pretty resistant to getting professional help. But look where it’s gotten them! A grown man—a doctor—grilling a child about his father possibly being dead!

“To be frank—for any kind of treatment to work, an integral part of this process is going to be changing the way we talk about Tony, helping Peter understand that he's dead, and assuring him that it's okay to be upset so that he can feel more comfortable expressing himself.”

“Tony’s not dead,” Pepper insists, her voice firm. “He’s missing.”

“Miss Potts, I’m just siding with the statistics. There are 700,000 or more cases of missing persons in this country alone every single year. The odds of finding one man in Afghanistan after his convoy was violently attacked with missiles—”

“I'm not teaching my kid to let go of his hope when they haven't even found a body to bring home to us,” Pepper snaps, letting her voice go cold. Few men outside of boardrooms have ever had the gall to summon it, but this man took the niceties off the table when he brought up statistics to try and convince Pepper that Tony’s dead.

“I know that’s what you believe,” Doctor Behr insists. “But the likelihood of him coming home alive is nearly impossible, and Peter needs to learn to deal with the reality of the situation.”

The reality of the situation. The reality is that she’s been comforting a distressed, morose child through the worst experience of his short life. And, if they’re lucky, this is the worst he’ll ever face. She wants better for him. She’ll give him better, damn the world for making him come too early, for making him lose his mother. Peter Stark has had enough of loss. What else is left?

She doesn’t curse. She doesn’t scream. With Tony, turning a conversation into an argument was as easy as breathing, but with anyone else, she’s never allowed her emotions to bleed out that far.

She’s better than this man telling her to let go of Tony Stark only months after his disappearance, and she’s going to prove it.

She picks up her purse and walks out of the room without another word.

Pepper has failed to clasp the same earring three times, and she’s considering throwing the diamonds directly into a trash can because of it.

She doesn’t want to sit around a luxurious dining table with the people that continue to insist time and time again that looking for Tony is no longer a worthy investment. However, she also knows that Obie tends to get carried away with the fraternizing and forgets the facts and figures, so when he asks for her to attend a meeting with the board, she agrees and says she’ll get Karen to babysit and hope it all goes okay for the night without her. If it doesn’t…well, she has the next day off.

Peter has been flopped on her bed for the last hour, either oddly fascinated with watching her primp, or completely unprepared to let her go. One of Pepper’s favorite pictures from Peter’s short life is one of him “helping” tie one of Tony’s ties before a gala when he was three years old, so she knows that Peter knows it means she’ll be gone for most of the night and inaccessible to him if he needs her.

Once she finally secures the clasp of the difficult earrings, she stands from her seat at her vanity to address Peter.

“What do we think?” she asks, twirling back and forth a little. It’s not her full gala-level of glamor, but the forest green of the fitted dress contrasts nicely with the updo of her red hair and shows off her legs just the way she likes when she wears heels.

Peter gives her a simple thumbs up. She remembers the days his eyes practically gleamed at she and Tony going to events, like it was a game of dress-up and he wasn’t invited to participate.

Pepper brushes off her skirt despite the fact that it’s already pristine. She always feels nervous at these things. She knows that she’s underestimated, seen as a hanger-on because she’s just one of the secretaries, even though thankfully she’s not the only woman.

Tony never made her feel like a nuisance. She was important to the company and to him, and so she sat with the big boys and got to voice her opinions even if none of them were actually listening with any real interest.

“Are you going to be okay?” Pepper asks of Peter, sitting on the edge of the bed and barely resisting the urge to flop back with him and ruin her hair.

Peter’s curls are flared and messy around his head, looking up at her. He doesn’t reply, as is normal, but reaches out to take her hand instead, giving a squeeze.

She presses a kiss to his cheek just as the doorbell rings.

She expects the babysitter, but instead finds Happy standing at the door with his arms crossed like the bouncer he once was.

“You’re early,” she says more bluntly than she meant it.

Happy just shrugs, but she reads something different in his eyes—determination.

“I just wanted to—oof!” Happy is interrupted by Peter slamming into his legs at a full, excited tilt.

He pats Peter’s head a few times, more like he’s a dog than a kid, but it's Happy’s usual brand of gruff affection, so Peter takes to the contact by shoving his head more firmly into Happy’s hand.

“Hey, Pete.” Happy picks Peter up, brushing a cheek with his fingers. “You got a little something there, stay still.”

Pepper smiles, letting Happy into the apartment fully as he wipes the dregs of Pepper’s lipstick from Peter’s cheek.

“Don’t give me that look,” Happy says to Pepper, licking his finger and making Peter squirm as the water-resistant make-up smears around.

“What look?” she feigns innocently.

“That same cute sh—stuff that Tony does. With the big eyes. I’m just cleaning the kid’s face.”

“You’re so prickly,” she teases, taking Peter when Happy feels his job is done and shoves him over. Happy loves Peter as much as the rest of them, but he’s less apt to showing it. (The pictures they have in JARVIS’ blackmail folders of Happy holding a sleeping toddler on multiple occasions, however, allow them to remember forever.)

“Damn right,” he agrees, frowning to himself when he slips at cursing the second time. “Can we talk?”

Pepper just avoids rolling her eyes at how plainly Happy asks. Without the kid, is implied.

“Peter, how about you get ready for bed, and Uncle Happy can read you an extra story before Karen gets here?”

“Uncle Happy is not going to—“ Happy starts, but Peter gleefully shuffles off to his bedroom. He’s been pretty down since their disaster of a therapy session, but seeing his family seems to help with cheering him up a little.

Happy sighs. “I hate you.”

“Uh-huh. You want anything to drink before we have to go? Soda? Water?”

“No thanks.”

Happy’s answer is curt, so she gives in, fixing herself a glass of ice water in the kitchen.

“Alright, I can tell you’ve got your laser-focus on something. Might as well get it over with.”

Happy waits until she settles on the couch before starting.

“May called me.”

She almost spits her water across the coffee table.

“Excuse me?!”

“Oh, come on—“

“May Parker has your number? And you take her calls out of the blue? And you, like, hold an entire conversation with her without hanging up immediately?”

“I’m not that bad. I have friends. I do things.”

“Happy.”

“That’s not the point,” he says, shaking his head of her distraction. “May called me, and she told me that things with Peter have gotten worse since we last talked. She’s worried. Wanted me to check in on you.”

The last time she and Happy talked about Peter was a month ago, right before helping she and Peter move fully into her apartment. He knew Peter was quieter than normal, but she’d kept the severity to herself, just like she had with May and Ben before everything came out.

“So that’s why you volunteered to be my ride tonight,” Pepper hums. “I should’ve known. You’ve learned your duplicity from Tony.”

“Duplicity, christ,” Happy repeats sarcastically. “Pepper, you should’ve told me. Rhodes is still overseas, the Parkers are in New York. I could have helped.”

“You can’t fix this,” Pepper takes a sip of water to avoid the way her throat suddenly feels closed up. She did what May suggested and it didn’t work. What else is there to do but to move on?

“I didn’t say I could do any better taking care of him, I just meant, you know.” Happy waves his hand in the air a little listlessly. “I’m around.”

“I appreciate it, Happy, but I just…” Pepper starts to run a hand over her face before backing it up in fear of ruining her makeup. “I don’t think it helps. I don’t, May and Ben didn’t. I don’t think anything is going to make this better but Tony coming home.”

“You still think he will?” Happy asks, not like others who think she’s wrong to do so, but more like Happy himself has lost his will to hope for it as an outcome.

“You don’t?” she retorts, a little accusatory. If his closest friends can’t believe he’s coming home, who will?

Happy sighs heavily, kicking a shoe into her carpet. “I hope he will. It’s just harder, the longer it takes. Odds are against him.”

Pepper scoffs. “The therapist said that too.”

“I heard it didn’t go so well.” Happy says it like he’s dipping his toe into shark-infested waters, and Pepper feels just as rabid about it, going back to that feeling.

“He said that we had to accept Tony’s death for Peter to get better and that’s just—I think it’s bullshit. He’s bullshit, to think he knows what’s better for Peter than I do after all this time.”

“You and Tony.” Happy shakes his head. “Stubborn as anything, the both of you.”

“Peter too,” she says, and she and Happy both smile at the little mini-Stark they love so much, of all the ways he’s just like his father and all the ways he’s different too.

“I miss Tony too.” Happy takes her hand. “I know it’s different, because you two are—“

She raises an eyebrow, and it effectively stops him from finishing that sentence.

“—you two. But still. We all know how much you care about him and Peter. This performative crap where you don’t tell anyone what’s going on isn’t gonna do you any good. Trust me. You need to keep us in the loop.”

“Because you’re so well-versed in sharing your emotions,” Pepper jokes.

Happy elbows her. “Hey, coming from me, all of that was twenty stanzas of soul-bearing poetry.”

“Alright. I get your point,” she admits. She’s tired of covering up how hard it’s been, anyway. As guilty as it makes her feel about not being enough for Peter, it comforts her that the truth is out there. She’s struggling, and the world hasn’t come to an end for it.

“Thank you for saying something. And for being here for both of us.”

“It’s my job,” Happy answers, but Pepper knows that it means the same as when Pepper tells Tony she memorizes his favorite pizza toppings or Peter’s class schedule. It’s not a requirement for the work, but for the people. It’s a show of love in a way that doesn’t require verbal expression.

“To the job,” Pepper toasts her water, finishing it and gently patting Happy’s knee. “Now, you have a story to read. He’s very into fantasy right now, so I hope you like Lord of the Rings.”

Happy stares up at her with his mouth open. “He’s six.”

“And the Targaryens are dragon masters, what’s your point?”

“That’s A Song of Ice and Fire. Lord of the Rings is about, you know, the ring? ‘One ring to rule them all’?”

“Which you’d only know if you read both series. So you like fantasy. Perfect.”

Happy gives a tortured groan at being outsmarted, but grumbles his way toward Peter’s room regardless as Pepper walks off to get her matching heels from her closet.

There’s something naturally stabilizing about James Rhodes.

Tony always said as much, but Pepper didn’t realize exactly what he meant until she met the man for herself and got to know him outside of his friendship with Tony.

Some of it comes from his time in the military, she supposes. There’s an exacting nature to his actions, whether it’s drinking exactly enough to keep a light buzz during a party or wearing his dress blues perfectly ironed and tucked in. He says what he means to say exactly how he means to say it. The most stressed she’s seen him has been recently due to the search for Tony—sleep-deprived, physically drained from days traveling under the Middle Eastern sun, and oh-so pressured by his superiors to let the entire search drop.

The rest seems to come from having the intelligent mind of an engineer. Where Tony is a chaotic force of creativity with fluctuating, passive direction, Rhodey seems to examine every piece of a puzzle before putting it together completely. He likes to understand his orders before he fulfills them, which she knows can contradict the nature of being a good soldier, but it makes him a good man to his core.

Rhodey projects an empathetic ear and an unimpeachable moral compass. She trusts him in an implicit way that she never has with anyone else, and it’s never let her down. Be it helping her scrape Tony off of the sidewalk after a few too many or joining her for a friendly venting session at the bar, Rhodey always seems to know what he’s doing even when he doesn’t.

That’s why, when it’s four in the morning and Peter’s still not asleep despite being unable to rouse from his bed all day, she ends up dialing the number of Rhodey's satellite phone.

She enters the trunk codes with shaky fingers, waiting as it rings before getting a confused, “Pepper?”

“Hey. Hi, I, um—god, what time is it there, I didn’t even think—you’re probably busy, shit, I’m sorry.“

“Hey, hey. Easy, Potts. Clearly it’s an important call. I’ve got time.”

But does Tony? she thinks. Every day that he’s still out there is another day he could be tortured or lost. Another day closer to death.

“Pepper, c’mon. Talk to me. What’s up?”

“I suck,” she states plainly, laughing through a sob. “I keep thinking it’s good. Sometimes it’s better and I think I must be doing something right, everyone keeps telling me I’m good at this, but then it’s just—I can’t be what Peter needs. I’m not Tony, and I wasn’t prepared for this. It should have been you. I should have asked May and Ben. Anyone but me.”

“I had to find Tony,” Rhodey replies. “I still have to. And you don’t suck. You’re Pepper freakin’ Potts.”

She ignores the platitude, getting to the heart of the matter. “No, I—I haven’t been telling you the truth. All those times Peter couldn’t come to the phone—I’m so full of shit, James.”

“Calling me by my full name, it must be serious.”

“Rhodey!” she insists. “He’s not—Peter’s in trouble. He’s past sick. I tried to get him out of bed this morning and he just…wouldn’t. He looked straight through me. He’s been awake in bed all day, but now he’s not sleeping and it’s late. He won’t eat. What if I have to take him to the hospital? What if they think I’ve been neglecting him, and they take him away? I can’t lose him, I can’t—“

She buries a fist against her mouth, fruitlessly trying to bury the sobs wrenching out of her. Does Peter care that her heart is breaking for him? Would it matter if he knew? Would it get him to move?

“Pepper. Hey, no. You’re not gonna lose Peter. You would never let that happen, because you love him just like the rest of us. Just slow down a second and breathe. Tell me how this happened.”

How this in particular happened is a barrage of nothing. A bad day. A worse day than the bad things every day kept trying to push onto them. Peter in bed and still in bed. Pepper watching him watching nothing but his bedroom wall for the hours she worked from home, stayed in his room. Neglected Capri-Suns, sandwiches, cookies, cereal. Every usual favorite given a bland glance of disinterest. Not even dislike, just—nothing.

Pepper feels like she spends all of her time trying to explain all of it—to explain her actions, to make other people understand Peter’s. But Rhodey is…Rhodey. He deserves to know what’s been going on.

“For months, Peter’s been—different. Not talking, not eating. I tried therapy and I screwed that up too. But this is the worst Peter’s ever been, and I don’t have anything left. I don’t know what else to do.”

Rhodey takes a beat to process her confession, but his non-reply gives her more time to spiral.

“Rhodey, what if the therapist was right? What if by keeping Tony alive, I’m just hurting Peter? What if it’s my fault that he’s so upset? What if I ruined him?”

“Pepper—“

“You have to come home,” she pleads. “You have to do better, because I can’t make Peter better right now and I can’t let Tony go either. I can’t.”

Rhodey lets her cry it out for a moment, taking her big hiccuping breaths and dripping fat tears all over her t-shirt and leggings. She thought she was stronger than this. Better. She was so naive to think she had this under control.

In that confident, assured Rhodey tone, he says, “First off—you’re not a failure or a screw-up. Peter’s going through a lot and you are too. Whatever’s going on with him isn’t your fault.”

Rhodey sighs, the sound of rustling wind picking up through his end of the connection. “And if you’re wrong for still believing in Tony…well, so am I. I’m not supposed to be parading this around, but I got a tip last week about a terrorist encampment west from where I’m currently stationed. We’re flying out in a few weeks, if the intel pans out. I feel it too. He’s alive.”

It feels good to hear. For so long it’s been only her own voice echoing these thoughts.

Listening to the radio, correcting the show hosts: Tony’s alive. Sitting in the boardroom, watching Obie flaunt in front of a whiteboard and announce all of the changes he’ll make when he’s CEO: Tony’s alive. She has a really good day with Peter. She takes him to the park and he laughs when she accidentally swings him too high and he jumps off instead of hitting the ground and she realizes that Tony Stark is the one she wants to tell about every second of it, but she can’t. Tony’s alive, she tells herself, lying in bed and stroking Peter’s back. He is.

“He’s alive,” she repeats again, this time out loud.

“That’s right. Now, as for Peter…mental illness isn’t that different from any other kind of sickness, sometimes. When treating it doesn’t work, sometimes you just have to wait it out. You just have to be there. I mean, hell, just ask yourself: what would Tony do?”

She gives a snort. “God, imagine that on one of those rubber bracelets.”

Rhodey chuckles, probably imagining the same. WWTSD? He’d get a real kick out of merchandising that.

“Seriously, you know Tony. He never knew what he was doing with all of that parenting crap, but he was damn good at it because he loved Peter enough to try. You know what to do for Peter because you were there just as much as I was. More than I was, sometimes. You’ve got this.”

Rhodey groans with a stretch, or maybe it’s just a yawn. It’s midday across the world, and he’s probably jonesing for whatever caffeinated relief the military has on hand.

“Though, if you want tips from the Tony Stark expert—wrap that little squirt up in the coziest thing you’ve got and feed him a grilled cheese. I’ll have you know, Tony stole that move from me many, many hangovers ago and just made it bougie cause he’s got Peter all spoiled.”

She smiles at the imagery—a younger, drunker Tony still grieving the loss of his parents, intently watching Rhodey poke at a slice of buttered cheesy white bread toasting in cast iron before cuddling up on their college futon and watching Die Hard, one of his comfort classics.

“Thank you, Rhodey.” She hopes he can feel the sincerity across the line. She wishes she could hug him, thousands of miles away. “And I’m sorry about…that I didn’t tell you what was going on. You were so focused on finding Tony, I thought I was doing the right thing, adding less stress.”

“Pepper, I’ve known Tony since he was fifteen years old. My life is stress.”

They both laugh at the mood-lifter the way he meant them too, but he sobers when their chuckles die down.

“Listen, if you’ve already tried and quit therapy, you’re probably gun-shy about trying it again, but if you’re interested—“

“Rhodey—“

“If you’re interested…I know someone. I trust her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. There are a lot of guys in my unit with kids, Pep. Sometimes they don’t make it home, sometimes they’re out here for years…it can mess with kids’ heads. She sees them regularly, lets them vent when it’s scary or frustrating. It might be more Peter’s speed.”

She mulls it over. Anyone trustworthy to Rhodey can’t be completely terrible, and now…well, now she’s getting kind of desperate.

“Send me an email. Use your SI account. JARVIS will send it through without the satellite phone charges.”

“As if I wasn’t going to send Tony the bill in the first place,” he jokes. “Seriously, Pepper, you’re doing good. I’ll talk to you again soon. Give Peter my love. Tell him I miss him.”

“I will. We miss you too. Good luck.”

Pepper sits on the couch for another moment, trying to let her emotions settle more thoroughly before she goes back to Peter.

At least now, she has a plan. It might not work just like the last five different attempts to rouse Peter didn’t, but she can’t just give up. As much as she wants to just curl up with Peter and lie in the defeat, it’s not an option. She’s all he’s got right now, and it propels her to be better, to be more than she ever thought she could be in this situation.

She remembers the way Tony’s face changed, those first few days in the hospital. If so suddenly losing Mary broke whatever resolve he’d built during her pregnancy, holding Peter for the first time settled something in him enough to bring it all back together.

She can collect herself too. She can be capable for Peter too.

She sets about making the food first. She realizes pretty quickly that she doesn’t know exactly what Tony’s done to one of the most basic sandwiches in America to make it so special, and ends up calling JARVIS.

“Sir has listed such information under penalty of death secrecy, Miss Potts.”

“‘If I Told You, I’d Have To Kill You?’ Over a grilled cheese? Seriously, Tony?” she grumbles to herself. “Override, Pepper Potts, Code: 451963.”

The bougie grilled cheese isn’t as complicated as Rhodey made it sound. It’s just adding mayonnaise to the bread’s outside and using two kinds of good melting cheese inside rather than just basic American cheddar. Still, she doesn’t deviate from JARVIS’ directions, hopeful that the familiar taste will do something different for Peter’s appetite.

She sets the food on the coffee table before detouring to her bedroom. Buried in a corner of her closet is what was supposed to be a birthday present for Peter. He’s obsessed with the soft blanket on the end of her bed—the top is a soft, knit wool, while the bottom is a cottony polyester—so she went back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and found one in a burgundy pattern.

She unwraps the throw from its plastic packaging and drapes it over her arm, finally slipping into Peter’s bedroom. The lights from the city outside are obscured by his curtains and the sticky stars on the ceiling don’t give off much ambient light, so she stumbles over a pile of clothes before she finds the pile of child that’s occupying the bed.

“This is your one and only chance to object to me picking you up, okay?” she states, finding him still awake and staring up at her with tired, darkened eyes.

He doesn’t reply, so she pulls the sheets back and fits him into her arms. She’s held him more in the last two and a half months than she did when he was a baby, she thinks.

“I made you something special,” she says, carrying on the conversation all by herself. She’s getting used to it, talking to herself at the office in a way that makes Obadiah give her weird looks from time to time.

“I talked to Uncle Rhodey, and he reminded me that it’s your favorite, because it’s your dad’s special recipe. JARVIS helped me get it right and everything.”

She feels Peter’s head shift. He’s moving, not just lying there dead-limbed and hazy. She tries to control a relieved sigh from coming out of her mouth. Peter must have suspected what she was talking about, because he’s looking at the two cut halves of the sandwich awaiting them instead of burying himself in her neck.

Rhodey’s like her brother, but she could fucking kiss him in this moment. He’s a genius, he really is. Look at Peter, so weak but so alive, always fighting for more than the world’s given him.

“That’s right. It’s still warm, too. Are you interested?” She sits him on the couch as she says it, situating them a little differently. She wraps the blanket around him like a shawl, letting the warmth cover him, but also allowing his arms to grab at the food if he wants it.

Peter moves his head again, looking up at her and then to the plate. His thumb edges against his teeth to chew at the nail anxiously. It’s not the time to chide him for the action, so she watches as he deliberates in his mind. He rocks himself, still unsure. Going from a certain numbness to making a decision seems to be taxing in a different way for him.

“You just think on it, okay? We’re staying right here as long as you want.”

It’s silent between them for a while, Peter nestled in her arms, the TV and radio off. The only sounds outside this late—this early—are a few passing cars, a mix of the people driving home from bars or parties after a long night out and the earliest of workers just trickling out into the morning.

She wracks her brain, trying to think of something comforting to hum. Tony’s only real memory of lullabies from his childhood to pass to Peter were half-remembered Italian songs of his mother’s, mostly including humming rather than the actual words. Of all the languages she dabbled in for business relations, Italian wasn’t one of them.

Tony’s music choices for Peter were sometimes eclectic. Peter definitely went through a phase of songs he wanted to play to death, but they often ended up being classic rock favorites that Tony was more than happy to keep blasting from the car stereo, to the displeasure of both her and Happy.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t like any of Tony’s music, though.

She allows herself to strain out a few melodic bars of the Kansas classic she has in mind, remembering in her youth the way Carry On My Wayward Son would bristle excitement in a college bar within those first few notes, causing people to sing and dance along, uniting them all in their differing states anywhere from tipsy to plastered.

Peter’s head swings around to her, and she smiles. “You think I don’t know that song?”

He shakes his head, tapping at her hand quickly, a sign for her to tell him more. In one smooth movement, she puts the plate in his lap and takes half of the sandwich, trying to encourage the eating with his sudden excitement.

“Back before I spent all of my time at my desk in front of your dad’s office, I went to college. It’s where I learned to correct all of your dad’s paperwork, and where I gained a healthy appreciation for 80’s rock.” She gives Peter a teasing smirk, and he smiles back. His sweet little smile that she’s so grateful for, that she misses after too long.

Peter takes a bite of the food in what may or may not be an unconscious manner, fixated instead on her. He’s eating for the first time all day, thank god.

“That’s so good, Pete. You’re doing so good,” she hums. “I love you, you know that?”

The taste of food was enough to make him practically inhale it. He answers her question by nodding into her neck, happily wrapping himself in his new blanket.

“I know it’s been hard, but we’re gonna make it through this. We’re gonna make things better. Whatever you need, okay?”

Peter doesn’t respond again, but she can feel his breaths slowing down into relaxation. Into eased, comfortable sleep.

She goes back to humming a little, letting the morning rise around them as they both finally drift off for the night.

Doctor Powers’ office isn’t actually much of an office. It’s a room sanctioned off in a small building just a few miles away from the apartment complex that she knows Rhodey inhabits whenever he’s home on leave or in town for SI business.

It’s an entire practice for children, laden with toys and activities for waiting kids to entertain themselves and, in a few cases she can see, have their sessions outdoors rather than inside.

It’s not the traditional sort of place one would imagine sending a child for a therapy session, but in that way, it’s kind of perfect. Peter has been more subdued since his incident a few nights ago, but she can see his eyes actively darting around at all of the people in the center, curious about why they’re here instead of a hospital.

After signing in with a sweet but harried nurse, they’re led back to find Doctor Powers with a stack of paperwork in one hand and half of a turkey sub in the other.

The woman looks up with a bit of a jolt, herding them in with the paperwork-laden hand and setting down her food.

“Come in, come in,” she invites after chewing her food. She adjusts her loose bun of auburn hair and rises from her desk, “Sorry, I don’t really give myself a lunch hour around this place, so I take what time I can. You’re Pepper, right? Jimmy’s friend?” She shakes her head. “Of course you are, what am I saying? Us redheads are an iconic bunch, and you’re one of the most famous ones out there.”

The woman has a certain excitable quirkiness to her, but her smile is welcoming and it certainly takes away from the forced professional atmosphere of Doctor Behr’s office. The office itself is certainly less traditional. A few toys are lying in a basket, and there are some coloring supplies in a stack, but there’s not a designated child area like at the last office.

“That’s me,” Pepper affirms, shaking the woman’s outstretched hand. “And this is Peter.”

“Nice to meet you, Peter. I’m Doctor Elizabeth Powers.” Doctor Powers gives a little wave, but doesn’t force Peter to shake her hand or encourage him to respond.

Peter just nods, keeping Pepper’s hand in his rather than splitting away like last time.

“Alright, let's get you two situated so we can get started.” She points them to a leather couch in the middle of the space before closing the door to the office. The couch looks more like something you might put in a den, all cracked brown leather and plush filling that sinks under their weight. Doctor Powers takes the matching armchair across from them.

“Let’s start out simple: Peter, do you know why Miss Potts brought you here today?”

Peter’s brow scrunches in thought before he settles on a bit of a half-shrug.

“Kinda?” Doctor Powers interprets. Peter nods. “Okay, let’s clarify, then. Miss Potts, did you talk to Peter about today’s appointment beforehand?”

“I did,” Pepper answers, kind of surprised that she’s being involved in such a straightforward manner.

“And what did you tell him?”

“That I wanted to help him. That Peter not talking and not taking care of himself was scaring me. That I wanted to try seeing another doctor about it, and his Uncle Rhodey recommended you personally, and I wanted us to try again.”

Unlike with Doctor Behr, Pepper talked to Doctor Powers before the appointment in the hopes of getting a read on her. It was a simple rundown of Peter’s experience, but Doctor Powers had been assuring that it was totally in her area of expertise, and that she was happy to fit Peter in as soon as possible.

“Well, I know it sounds weird, but sometimes you have to shop for the right person. There are a lot of doctors out there, and some of us are better at connecting with certain patients than others. It happens.”

The doctor taps her pen on the arm of the leather seating.

“How about this: tell me what that visit wasn’t doing for you, and I’ll see if I can help make this session more beneficial.”

Pepper stiffens, too used to the initial pushback about Tony to not brace herself.

“The therapist disagreed with us on one particular issue. It was non-negotiable.” Pepper sighs. “He said—he thought that Tony was gone. When we refused to believe it…that was the end of the meeting.”

Doctor Powers hums. “I can see where that would be an issue. You think Tony’s still alive, then?”

“I do,” Pepper answers, squeezing Peter’s hand. “We do.”

Doctor Powers takes an analyzing look up and down at Peter, and Pepper thinks this is it—the next fight, the next time she walks out of the door and risks Peter’s health because of her own beliefs, her feelings, what she thinks is right.

Instead, Doctor Powers lays down her notepad and pen and sits up.

There’s a certain note of genuine emotion in her voice when the doctor says, “That’s very kind of you both, to believe in Tony that much. But I have to be honest, and Peter, I really want you to hear me here, okay?”

Peter looks up at Doctor Powers, but scoots just an inch closer to Pepper, like he’s preparing for the worst, just like she is.

“I don’t know if your dad is alive. I know you want me to tell you differently, but I know as much as you do about his disappearance, and I really can’t say that for sure.” Doctor Powers crosses her leg and leans forward over it. “But I can’t say that he isn’t alive, either. I’ve seen a lot of people considered MIA by the military come home to their families just as much as I’ve helped families grieve for their lost loved ones when they’re finally found.”

Doctor Powers then shrugs.

“I also knew Tony Stark. I heard the stories Rhodey used to tell, talked small talk with him on bases when he traveled my way and at the occasional Air Force event. That man is an enigma like nothing else, and I know how much he cared about you. If anyone could go against the odds and come out on the other side…it’s probably him.”

Pepper finds a tweak of a smile pulling up her lips. She and Rhodey continued to say the same thing. If you only knew Tony by his public persona it was hard to believe a spoiled playboy could survive the harsh deserts of Afghanistan this long. Tony’s family knows better because they know him better. When it comes to the things he really cares about like getting back home to his son…Tony could use his brains and will to do anything.

“Here’s what I can tell you, Peter. That uncertainty, that worry—it’s making you feel a lot of scary, different emotions, right?”

Peter nods, not bothering to wipe the few tears that have fallen from his eyes.

“Well, not eating, not sleeping, not talking…that’s not the way to deal with what you’re feeling. We all deal with our emotions in different ways, and that’s okay. Some people like to talk, some people like to work through it alone, and if you do it right, that’s a perfectly acceptable way to go through things.”

Doctor Powers’ expression turns harder, her tone not unkind but firm.

“Your recent behavior isn’t acceptable, and we need to fix it.”

The only way Pepper could describe Peter’s reaction is indignant. His mouth is pursed open, his brow scrunched as if he can’t believe Doctor Powers would tell him that.

Part of Pepper is shocked too—it’s straightforward in a way Doctor Behr hadn’t tried, but it’s certainly gotten more of a reaction from Peter than anything that man ever said besides talking about Tony.

It’s also more of a reaction than Pepper herself has gotten from Peter this entire week. Because of this, when Peter looks up to her in a request for some kind of support to his side…Pepper shrugs.

What else is she going to say? No, Peter, this experience hasn’t been emotionally draining to me in every way? It’s perfectly fine that you’re practically killing yourself and I just have to watch?

It’s not like she blames him for feeling the way he does, but that doesn’t mean it’s been easy on her to experience him going through it, either.

Peter lets out a bit of whine into the room, and Doctor Powers shakes her head.

“I understand that you’ve had a very hard time, Peter. What you and your family have been through has been difficult. But I can also tell that you’re a very intelligent kid, and you know your father wouldn’t want your sadness to hurt you like this. You know that Pepper doesn’t want this for you either, or she wouldn’t continue to seek help for you to get better.”

Peter shrinks into the couch a little, as if curling away from the accusations.

“You need to try to pull yourself together. For your own health and for the betterment of the people that love you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Peter looks down at his lap, detangling his hand from Pepper’s so that he can wrench his fingers together. She thinks that maybe the work of the firm hand might’ve been too firm—Tony was pretty easygoing and more the type to reason with Peter like a little adult rather than completely give in or reject his tantrums for what they were. Peter’s kind of used to getting some variation of what he wants.

But deep down, Pepper doesn’t think this is what Peter wants. He wants his father. He wants his life back the way it was two and a half months ago. He doesn’t want to be miserable and silent and so unlike the bright, wonderful boy they all know he is.

Peter looks up at Doctor Powers, finally wipes at his tears, and nods.

Proud, Pepper presses a firm kiss to the crown of his head.

Doctor Powers smiles, genuine and wide. It’s the exact opposite of the calculating look that got Peter to open up in the first place.

“I’m glad to hear you’re willing to work to get better. Because getting better does take work—hard work—but I promise you that it’s worth it.” Doctor Powers looks to Pepper. “And you’ll have plenty of support along the way.”

“That’s right,” Pepper hums, tucking Peter into a hug against her side. “We all love you so much, honey. Dad would be so proud.”

Peter nods into her blouse, wrapping his arms around Pepper’s stomach.

“I know you’re not so into talking right now,” Doctor Powers says. “But I think we can work with that. We still need to get to those emotions behind why you’ve been acting this way, and I think I have some exercises that you can do with me and with Pepper that will help. Do you think we can do that before you leave today?”

Peter nods again.

“Perfect. So, since you’re not talking out loud, let me ask you this: do you talk in your head a lot?”

Peter seems to hesitate, but gives an affirmative nod.

“And when you do that, are your thoughts kind? Or are they mean?”

Peter shrugs, but his neck shrinks down further, telling a different story.

Doctor Powers tilts her head and tries a different question. “Well, how about when Pepper cooks you your favorite food for dinner and you don’t want to eat it? Or when she puts you to bed with a great story and you still can’t sleep? What does that feel like?”

Peter starts a half-hearted shrug, but then frowns in thought before settling a hand on his stomach with a clench of his fingers into his hoodie.

“Your stomach hurts?” Doctor Powers clarifies.

Peter nods.

“And what are you saying to yourself when that happens? What are you thinking about?”

For one terrifying moment, Peter looks up at Pepper, and she worries that she is the target of his worst thoughts—all of the things she isn’t, who she isn’t.

Instead, he taps on one of her earrings—a pair of blue sapphires set in gold that were a birthday present. Tony got the birth month and the date wrong, explaining the incorrect birthstone, but he’d been too genuinely excited about actually remembering her birthday for Pepper to refuse them despite her correcting him after the fact.

“They were—Tony gave them to me,” Pepper explains. “You’re thinking about Dad?”

Peter nods with a little smile. He seems to appreciate when, despite his lack of want to communicate, he’s understood.

“You’re thinking about your dad,” Doctor Powers summarizes. “But he’s not here right now, and I bet sometimes that means the thoughts aren’t so nice then, are they?”

Peter shakes his head, the small smile falling away and giving space for a pout.

“I see. It can be hard to fight those thoughts, because they’re your own. But here’s what we’re going to do, okay? When it’s mealtime and suddenly your stomach hurts, you might think, ‘I shouldn’t eat because Dad’s not here.’ Is that something you’ve said to yourself before?”

Peter gives a guilty peek of his eyes over to Pepper, but nods.

“So, when you say something unkind in your head like that, you’re going to stop—just put big ol’ mental stop sign right in front of that ugly thought so you can’t have any more until you deal with this one.”

Doctor Powers holds up a hand, as a physical representation.

“I think you’re gonna like this next part. You like science and math?”

Peter nods vigorously.

“Tony’s through and through, then,” Doctor Powers quips with a smile. “Well, stopping bad thoughts like that takes logic. It takes knowing what a true, concrete fact is, versus a lie. Think about your thought—‘I shouldn’t eat because Dad’s not here.’ Then ask logical questions. What will happen if you don’t eat? You know that one, right?”

Peter nods.

“Right. It’s bad when we don’t give our bodies the energy they need. We get tired and sick without all of those different nutrients. Now, address your dad’s end of things. Will you not eating help Tony?”

Peter looks unsure, but gives a tentative shake in the negative.

“Think of it this way—you eating won’t change anything Tony is doing or isn’t doing. But you know it would make him worry. He wants you to eat, and you know that because of all of the things I bet he makes just for you. He wants you to be healthy, and food is one of the only ways that’s going to happen.”

Peter mulls it over, but nods more confidently this time.

“So, when your stomach hurts, you still have to eat. Even if it’s only a few bites. And then once you eat that much, next time you try a little more, and a little more, until you can eat your whole plate. That’s what I want you to try before our next session, and Pepper will tell me how it goes if you still don’t want to.”

Doctor Powers addresses Pepper, next. “And for you, I have a list of different things to try to help him feel better and encourage that kind of positive thinking.”

When the doctor stands to grab a pre-printed sheet from her desk, Pepper takes the opportunity to give Peter a halting squeeze and pull the other woman for a quiet aside before they leave.

“Thank you for today. You don’t know how crazy it’s been. Everything with Tony, and then Peter acting so differently and that disaster of a therapy session…I’ve felt so useless at this.”

Doctor Powers puts a comforting hand on Pepper’s.

“It can be scary when a kid goes catatonic. Don’t blame yourself for feeling confused or worried. It means you’re a good parent. What’s important is that you’re looking for answers and willing to give him the help he needs.”

Catatonic. And if that doesn’t explain the state she keeps finding Peter in better than anything else she’s tried.

Pepper nods in reply, wiping a grateful tear she hadn’t realized was welling up.

“Honestly, some kind of medication might be the most effective thing for him, but I know that can be intimidating, and I’m also not a psychiatrist, so I can’t prescribe it. I am going to forward you a list of names, though, for people who can. You should think about it.”

Pepper nods, but doesn’t give the idea more thought than a loose consideration at this point. She’s not against medication necessarily, it’s just that this singular, successful therapy session was more than she could have hoped for in the first place. She wasn’t prepared for an after that was actually looking forward instead of desperately giving up all over again.

“Until then, I’m going to recommend setting up another appointment in a few days, and then setting up a schedule to see him once a week after that. I think it will help to make these sessions a regular part of his routine, especially when he returns to school and may need a little extra support.”

Doctor Powers hands Pepper the paperwork about helping Peter’s thinking, offering her hand when Peter joins them to say goodbye.

“It was nice to meet you, Peter. I’ll see you next time, okay?”

Peter nods, shaking Doctor Powers’ hand back and waving goodbye as they walk out of the office.

Pepper grabs Peter’s hand and swings with the hold as they walk down the hallways of the building. “You did really good today, Peter.”

Peter’s hand squeezes hers.

“I know it’s a little fast, so you can say no, but…” She allows the words to drawl. “If I treat us to frozen yogurt, will you at least share a celebratory bite with me?”

He looks up at Pepper, then down at the floor for a moment. Pepper allows him to consider it as she manages the details of setting up another appointment with the front desk.

As she’s unlocking the car, though, he tugs on her hand again, nodding with a determination that she hasn’t seen in quite a while. That just-a-bit-spoiled look where Peter has decided what he wants and that he’s going to get it in the end, even if in this case it means forcing himself to eat when he’s been avoiding it as much as possible.

She helps Peter into his carseat before pressing a kiss to his cheek. The first point on Doctor Powers’ list is about encouragement. “Thank you for trying for me, I appreciate it.”

Peter looks up at her for a second, but before she can pull away to get in the front seat, he leans forward, pressing a kiss back to her cheek and giving her a little smile. Like he appreciates her trying too.

(If she has to wipe an extra tear away before getting back in the car, well…it’s just that kind of day.)

Changing Peter's routine is different, but rewarding.

A lot of the changes start small.

Pepper takes care to engage Peter more, rather than just doing things for him and otherwise leaving him to his own devices. When she makes food, she asks for his help in gathering ingredients or holding up fingers to indicate how many tablespoons of something she should add. When she picks up coffee for herself and Obie in the mornings, she asks Peter to help pick out pastries from the display case to bring as well. When she calls May, she puts them on speaker, keeping Peter in the room and able to be a part of things even if he’s not participating in the traditional conversing way.

At mealtimes, Pepper will ask how Peter’s feeling before the meal starts. Is he hungry? Does his stomach hurt right now? If she fixes a certain food, will that help or make things worse? Can he try at least five bites before quitting? Two? Sometimes she reiterates Doctor Powers’ points about Peter’s guilt and Tony’s absence, and the reminders seem to refocus Peter into at least trying for her sake, for his father’s.

It becomes an exercise in giving Peter simpler choices and more strict guidelines to make it a routine rather than a frustrating event that neither of them have any control over, and it seems to help after a few weeks of practice.

The biggest overhaul is Peter’s sleeping schedule.

He hasn’t slept easily since he was a baby, and it hasn’t changed at all, especially now. Something about the Starks abhors sleep cycles, and getting Peter to stick with one is just as hard as dragging Tony out of his workshop when he’s completely immersed in a project.

The key is limits and distraction.

Pepper used to surreptitiously empty bottles of Tony’s liquor so that he’d be forced to come upstairs and get more, forcing him to leave the workshop, eat, realize he was tired, and often fall asleep on the couch with a half-empty plate of food on his stomach. In his more sober years since, he’s claimed that he knew what she was doing and allowed it anyway, but she likes to think the Starks just aren’t as clever as they like to think they are after three days of limited sleep.

For Peter, she takes his DS away before bed and offers more story time in exchange. She wakes him up in the morning herself, literally taking him from bed and planting him in the kitchen when he’s less motivated to move around himself. She also brings back old pieces of Tony’s routine, once again taken from JARVIS in the form of old security footage.

Her heart wells at the sight of Tony in the midst of Peter’s toddler-hood, curling a shower-damp Peter against his chest in a fluffy towel while drying his child’s hair with the hair-dryer. On nights when Peter’s asthma flared up, Tony would spend at least an hour lulling Peter to sleep with back rubs, making sure his breathing was steadied before he left.

Pepper has to step away from that footage before it turns from reminiscent and soft to depressing that he isn’t here to do the same thing now.

Peter melts into her chest the first night she does it, and though a nightmare follows later on, he’s so tired that he joins Pepper in her bed and instantly falls back asleep next to her.

Pepper's also attempting to coordinate school back into Peter’s routine.

She’s started on the paperwork to get him back into school. He’s missed out on enough classes to need summer school, but when he returns it will be to a different school, just a bit closer to LA than Malibu. A private place with more advanced programs and, the most important detail, on-campus counseling professionals to help students with behavioral problems and learning disabilities.

Months ago, Tony would have reamed her out for even suggesting sending Peter to private school. He spent half of his childhood states away from home at one of those fancy Boys' academies, already an outcast from being younger than everyone else in his grade and further ostracized by his constantly expanding intellect.

But the fact is…Tony’s not here, and Peter needs help. More aptly, Pepper needs help with Peter.

That's why she's also further followed Doctor Powers' advice since their appointment.

She takes Happy up on his offer to hang out with them more. They take Peter to the park on a few shared lunch breaks, since he’s still often in the office rather than with a babysitter. On one Friday night, Happy offers to babysit to give Pepper some alone time, though he lets out the offer with a grumble about the things I do for you people as if it's paining him.

And of course, when the local theater is showing Star Wars, Happy joins them, even though they’re all familiar with Peter’s obsession and have seen it almost as much as Peter has.

Han Solo careens the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field, confidently remarking, “Never tell me the odds.”

Pepper puts an arm around Peter’s shoulder in the dark of the theater and rubs a hand up and down his shoulder, firmly agreeing with the sentiment.

Pepper also arranges a weekend to go with Obie to the SI offices in New York, leaving Peter with May and Ben during the work day and sharing their guest bed with Peter at night. They have no problem finding touristy things to entertain Peter with, and it gives all of them a way to involve Peter in their dinner table discussions, even if he's just excitedly nodding along between thankfully taking bites of his thin crust pepperoni slice.

It's not magic. Peter doesn't suddenly get more talkative. He goes back and forth with eating more, but seems less picky about what he’ll consume a few bites of when he’s not feeling up to much else.

He smiles more, though. And to her, after the haunting blankness of his catatonia…she'll take it.

At the very least, things are at a more comfortable new normal.

That is why, when Rhodey calls on a cloudy Sunday morning, she takes until the very last ring to get to her phone.

She decided that today’s activity to get Peter engaged would include baking. It’s not one of her specialties, but instead something Pepper thought that she and Peter could learn together.

It started out well, even though Peter is certainly more fascinated with the science behind it all than she was equipped to explain on the spot. Before they could even get started, he borrowed her laptop to look up why refrigerating the batter changes the cookies’ texture, and she only just convinced him to risk it this one time, because he really didn’t want to wait a whole day to eat cookies, did he?

Points to childish whims of instant gratification.

So Rhodey calls, and it takes her a minute to wipe the flour and a smear of melted chocolate off of her hand while also pushing away one of Peter’s nimble little fingers from the mixing bowl for the third time.

“Pete, c’mon, you’re gonna eat all of the batter before we’re done,” Pepper chides to Peter with a smile. Then she finally puts the phone against her ear. “Sorry, Peter and I are making a mess.”

It clicks in her brain, suddenly. She hasn’t really talked to Rhodey in weeks. He’s been on the tail of that one lead about a terrorist camp and hasn’t had the time to talk other than for a quick update about his health or to check in on Peter’s progress with therapy.

She sobers. “How are you? How’s the search for—“

“We found him,” Rhodey answers, voice relieved and practically exploding with joy. “Pepper, we found Tony. As soon as they clear him, we’re flying home. Pepper, he’s—”

“He’s alive?” Pepper questions before he can finish, despite feeling the air has been punched from her lungs. The noise of the room only faintly rings in her ears—the oven timer alerting about their latest batch of dessert, the radio playing pop music, the squeak of her kitchen stool as Peter adjusts himself a little closer to the counter.

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s—Tony’s alive. I held him in my arms, it was—god, I can’t even imagine what he’s been through, but he’s alive.”

“Oh my god. Rhodey, I have to tell Peter, I have to—“

“Go, go. Tell him. I’ll call you back, go.”

“Thank you,” Pepper says, and she doesn’t know if it’s a thanks given for dealing with her frazzled explanation or for finding Tony or for believing in her when she needed it most.

“Of course, Pep. Go. Tell the kid his dad’s excited to see him. If he wasn’t so damn dehydrated, he’d probably be fighting the doctors to get to him right now. I mean, don’t mention the dehydration part, but—“

“No, no, yeah. I got it, of course I will. We’ll be waiting when he comes back, I promise. He’ll see Peter. First thing.”

“A promise straight from Pepper Potts’ mouth,” Rhodey must be smiling to himself for the tease—like Pepper keeping her word is akin to some kind of prophetic statement. “I’ll let him know.”

Rhodey hangs up before she does. She’s still locked into her place leaning against the kitchen counter.

Tony is alive. He’s coming home. After months where hope felt like foolishness, it’s real. Tony has been alive this entire time, going through god knows what. Dehydration could be only the most minor of his symptoms and injuries.

She must stand there for a minute too long, because Peter’s crawled down from his place at the counter to tug at her shirt, eyes wide and worried.

“Sorry, honey, I’m just—“ She can’t even find it in her to finish, dropping to her knees and tugging Peter against her as tight as she can.

“They found him,” Pepper says. She meant to sound happier about it, but she more sobs the announcement into Peter’s bony little shoulder. “Your dad’s coming home, Peter. He’s finally coming home.”

Peter’s response is hesitant at first. Questioning with his gaze. But she nods back, can’t stop thinking it—Tony’s alive, yes, god yes, he’s alive.

That’s all it takes for Peter to bury himself against back into her hug just as hard, practically jumping into her hold.

It’s been the two of them alone in their belief all this time, and now it’s the two of them kneeling on her kitchen floor, overjoyed.

Without any available shade, the late spring heat cascading over the landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base is just short of balmy. Pepper keeps feeling like she's sweating through her business-wear.

It's also possible she's feeling overheated because of the six-year-old attached to her hip. Peter's arms have been locked around her neck since the moment they stepped out of Happy's backseat, and his face is buried in the soft shoulder pad of her jacket.

It's a contrast from this morning, when she was awoken not because of a nightmare, but because Peter was excited—jumping on her bed, his smile bright and shimmering in the light peeking through the curtains, excited.

She adjusts her hold on Peter for the tenth time, hiking him back up as he naturally weighs her down. He's bony and short as kids generally go, but the plane delivering Tony back from foreign soil is taking its sweet time and she's tired from a night of on and off sleep.

Pepper wouldn’t say she’s nervous. Yes, she's noted and missed Tony's absence from his usual place at her side, but she's fairly confident that—considering Tony's personality and penchant for stirring chaos wherever he goes—his return will cause enough of a stir for she and Tony to quickly return to their old rhythms.

Then again...Rhodey likely softened the truth of Tony's experience for the brief moments they spoke over the phone in exchange for the quick reassurance that he was alive. She doesn't know what to expect. Three months in captivity, assumed by most of the world to already be dead. Who knows what Tony's captors inflicted upon him, what Tony himself had to do to stay alive in dire straits.

Rhodey told her to have EMS on standby, but Tony had also gotten enough of a medical clearing to actually get on the plane instead of heading directly into some kind of surgery. That has to mean the damage isn't that bad, right? He's probably okay. Mostly okay.

Okay, so maybe Pepper is a little nervous. But more for Tony, if she's being honest. If she can barely stomach the thought of what she might find coming out of that plane in a few moments, how will Peter react? His father returned, but possibly not the same man he's always known, that he yearned for all this time?

If there’s anything worse than torture Tony could have endured, it would be returning home to Peter only to be rejected.

Finally, the plane breaks through a cloud, barely visible above them due to the sun’s glare. Around them, the soldiers begin to prepare for the landing—radios crackle with confirmations and descending telemetry that’s a bit over her head.

The vessel begins its slow journey down to the strip, turning once the wheels touch down towards their small awaiting gathering.

It's happening. Tony is home. There's no more time for worries or second guessing.

Once the plane stills, the base is enveloped in a sudden sense of quiet. Pepper can feel as her heart beats a little faster. Peter knees her gently in the ribs. The rear door of the cargo plane inches open, the whirring of its mechanisms breaking the silence that’s dropped over the airstrip.

Tony is normally a man of pomp and circumstance. Even his private plane was usually crowded by paparazzi when they landed, and his mood depended on the kind of response that would garner. He would either huddle Peter close without saying a word or give some reporter the non-PR-approved soundbite of the week with a few choice curses about privacy.

Pepper notices Tony’s hair first, of all things. Recently cut, but a little too long behind the ears, shaggy and disheveled without product, curling at the ends. The facial hair has clearly been styled into its usual shape with whatever was available, but she imagines the edges are a little rough. She’ll need to call his usual barber once it grows out a bit.

The ramp hits the ground to reveal Tony in a wheelchair, his arm bound by a sling. For a brief moment she thinks, what if he can’t walk, and by the next she’s devising ways to prepare the mansion for it—outfitting everything to be wheelchair accessible, installing elevators, hiring physical therapists and getting him braces that he’ll hate and redesign in hours.

Then he’s standing and waving off Rhodey’s support, waving away the EMT’s as Rhodey chides him to take it easy.

Tony’s face is set in that stoic, determined facade he so easily slips into when things are tough. Like the gaping maws of the press are awaiting him here instead of his loved ones. Putting on the usual show because Tony Stark is nothing less than the iron his father molded him from. He’s not shaking, he’s not injured, he’s fine, just fine.

Above all, Pepper looks at him for the first time in three months and she still sees Tony.

She sees the way his blank face masks the pain of his injuries, the way he holds his arm away from his chest to avoid whatever’s possibly aching underneath his shirt. She notices how he allows Rhodey to give his physical support while still assuring he doesn’t need it to let the other man feel like he’s doing something.

It’s not some stranger she doesn’t recognize. It’s Tony, who lounges around his million dollar mansion in the same five oil-stained t-shirts. The Tony that whirls around in his desk chairs like a little kid during meetings. The Tony that reads children’s stories with all of the voices and kisses his son goodnight like there’s nothing in the world he’d rather be doing.

Their Tony.

She gives a kiss to Peter’s hair, a silent assurance she probably wouldn’t be able to interpret in words anyway.

A tug of Tony’s split lip breaks out into something softer. The media-appropriate facade is eviscerated in seconds by the brightness of his smile. Tony has never, in the last six years, been able to posture away the love he feels for Peter.

This is Tony at his most basic—not the suave billionaire, not the competent CEO—just a father. Just a man that she knows better than anyone else on earth, that she can still read like her favorite paperback book, cover worn and thin and binding cracked, but still whole and beloved for the words inside.

The grin turns a touch amused, his brown eyes meeting her teary blues. They trail to Peter, still bundled against her. Tony’s hand betrays his earlier confidence. It quakes, reaching out to touch his son only to abort the gesture, as if he hadn’t prepared for this moment, as if he can’t believe the reality in front of him will hold.

Pepper looks down, expecting that by now Peter would be fighting to escape her hold, whining in that same way that tells her he wants something he can’t voice, that he would be bawling for the man in front of them.

Peter’s breaths still puff warm against her neck. She’d think him asleep if not for the way his hand is tightly bunched in the neck of her suit jacket.

“Look, Petey,” Pepper tries in a bright, excited tone, feeling the tears stinging at her eyes starting to fall. It’s supposed to be a good moment. She just wanted to give Peter one good moment after everything he’s been through. He and Tony deserve this. “Look, it’s Daddy.”

Tony’s face falls into something quizzical. He doesn’t direct it at Peter. Tony’s questioning Pepper—her distress, her tears, pleading a child to respond, to just turn his head.

She shakes her head, like this is just a fluke, just another thing she can fix if she tries.

“Baby, come on, just look,” she says. “Dad’s home. He came back. He’s home. I promise, he’s right here. You just have to—please, Peter, c’mon, just—”

Tony probably blames her. This isn’t the son he was expecting. Teary, maybe, but not this—this scared little boy afraid to hope after he spent so much energy defending Tony from the rest of the world. He wanted this for so long that he’s afraid for it to be real.

She wants to apologize, but what can she say? I tried my best while you were gone, but it wasn’t enough? Sorry Peter waited until this moment to realize he was anxious?

Tony just shakes his head at her, like he’s reading her mind. (Because they used to do that, have silent conversations across a room, completely in step. It’s like she can really breathe again, finding him standing there when she looks up, finding eyes to meet hers.)

He steps forward, tangling his fingers—calloused fingers, bandaged, burned fingers—into the soft tuft of Peter’s curls. It’s such a familiar, casual gesture for him, but at this moment Tony seems bewildered by it.

“It’s me, Pete. I’m right here. I’m home,” Tony’s voice cracks. “I’ve missed you so much. I love you so much, you don’t even—so much.”

Tony’s voice seems to do the trick. Peter pushes against her chest, turning his head and meeting Tony’s eyes.

It’s hard to describe the connection between Peter and Tony. It’s always mystified all of them, that stomach swooping warmth that seems to fill anyone who sees Tony in action, loving Peter like he always promised to, the way he worried he never could in the early days.

Maybe it’s biology and maybe it’s something more mystical, but it’s always there, permeating the world around them for anyone to see. It’s love, pure and kind and good and the only reason any of them got here after three months of hell.

“Oh, Peter,” Tony breathes out, his hand trailing from Peter’s hair to his cheek.

Pepper can’t suppress the winded oof that comes from Peter kicking off of her chest and fully careening himself into Tony’s arms.

It’s an adorable little disaster of a moment.

Tony catches Peter, but he’s clearly more injured than he wants to let on and has one arm still in a sling, so the armful of his son causes them both to fall to the concrete in a pile. Peter takes that opportunity to readjust, curling around Tony’s neck and chest like a little sloth, bawling against him.

“Dad!” Peter cries. He says it, the word, full and loud, screaming it into the world like it’s been festering inside him all this time and it’s only now safe enough to let out because his father is there to hear it, because he’s always promised to be there for Peter, no matter what. “Daddy!” he repeats over and over.

Pepper and Rhodey both reach out abruptly from where they stand, as if they can somehow fix the way Tony is stuck to the ground by forty pounds of child. Tony simply curls into the hold, tucking his head against Peter and settling more firmly into the concrete airstrip beneath them.

“It’s okay, I know,” Tony soothes through his own tears. “I missed you, baby. God, I missed you so much.”

They’re both crying, loud and harsh and filling the air. Pepper realizes that her own sob has joined the mix once Rhodey pulls her into his chest, a steady hand up and down her back. “I know, Pep. Me too. God.”

But no one else really knows. She imagined Peter’s words returning slowly. Little things like yes’s and no’s peppered into his nods and head shakes and whines.

His first word in months was at the return of Tony, calling for his father. It’s more than she ever could have hoped for.

She tries to compose herself, since Peter and Tony certainly aren’t, still on the ground and in the midst of their bawl-fest. She wipes at the tears streaking her make-up and clears her throat, holding Rhodey’s arm and giving it a squeeze as thanks for holding her up just one more time.

Tony’s still letting out an errant flow of comforts, humming, “Shhh, kiddo, it’s alright,” as if he can’t help but try and calm Peter down despite feeling pretty distressed himself.

He meets Pepper’s eyes.

There are a lot of things she and Tony don’t say. It’s easier sometimes, to assume, to make choices on Tony’s behalf and let him gripe about it later. For him to completely disregard her opinion the first time so that the next time, he knows why he shouldn’t. Words are only wasted between them as playful banter, as a game of wits and wiles, as something untenable that flirts with danger and possibilities they’ve never been ready to face.

I loved him, she tries to tell him, with this look over Peter’s head. He was never alone. He was loved and cared for and waiting for you this whole time.

Part of her wonders if that’s too much to leave unsaid. If despite the mortification of being earnest with Tony, she should tell him as much.

Tony seems to understand. He nods at her, and she takes it as gratitude. Maybe he will say it later with his words when they’re alone and he’s feeling brave enough. Maybe he won’t.

For now, Tony and Peter are reunited, boisterous with their noise of being together again, and she relishes in the sound.

(Unbeknownst to them at that moment, a press photographer for the AP with a contact in the Air Force was notified of an unscheduled plane returning from Afghanistan. He sneaks onto the base in the early morning, delighted to find Pepper Potts and Peter Stark hopping out of a familiar black Rolls-Royce, driven by the similarly recognizable Happy Hogan.

This man, with his telephoto lens and with his body mostly hidden just behind a truck of crates, captures one of the most famous pictures of 2008—Tony Stark reuniting with his son, Peter.

Is it an invasion of privacy?

Yes.

Is it on Tony’s mantle in every house they own for the next decade on?

Yes.)