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The Avengers were back in residence at the Tower, mostly in their own quarters or lingering in the kitchen, but without JARVIS, and with FRIDAY not yet ready for global control of the Tower systems, no one could tell Pepper exactly where Tony had slunk off to.
Pepper found him, curled up, shivering and shaking, just outside the door to his lab. She crouched next to him, looking him over carefully. It was far too often that being Iron Man left him bruised and bleeding, inside and out. This looked like it was one of the bad ones, emotionally. She carefully sank to her knees, putting a hand on his shoulder. Once his breathing had evened out, she tried talking to him.
"Tony, sweetie... what's wrong? Can you tell me? Please tell me. Don't keep it all in this time. Don't bury it in tech."
"Nope, I won't do that. Not going in there. I can't be here, I can't... can't let myself be the guy who set all this in motion. But that's who I am. You were right, I'm no good at this, I can't do this on my own. I don't know how to be different. I'm better with a team. But my team's gone."
"The Avengers are okay, they came out of it okay."
"Luck. Balanced on the edge of a knife. I'd've gotten them all killed. Not doing enough, doing too much, they take the brunt of it either way. But that's not what I mean. Battle's one thing, science is... something else. I go too fast, I get so excited, only JARVIS and Bruce could follow. And they're gone."
Pepper hummed thoughtfully. "They were good for you," she agreed. "Maybe made you look at things a little more carefully. But the Avengers are good for you, too. I've seen that."
"Still not regretting letting me join the band, going off to tour the world without you?"
"No," Pepper replied easily. "No regrets."
"What would you say if I told you Steve asked me to help take down Hydra?"
Pepper gave him a look, as if she knew what was coming. "I'd say he must have been disappointed when you told him 'no.'"
He grimaced a little. "I told him I'd think about it?"
Pepper sighed. "Tony, sometimes it's someone else's job to save the world. You've given The Avengers so much. They live in your house, use your tech. I love that they're your friends. But at some point, that has to be enough."
"You - you...." He waved his hands in the air above his shoulders, not able to articulate how much more complicated than that it was. "Okay. Right. Next time he asks me to help him take down a Hydra base, you be there, okay? You look Captain America in the eye and say, 'no, Iron Man's retired, he can't help you fight evil.'"
Pepper laughed, rolling her eyes just slightly. "Wow, his patriotic puppydog eyes really must do a number on you, Mr. Stark."
"You have no idea," he muttered, and then he looked at Pepper, an uncharacteristic solemnity in his voice. "I love you, Pep, and if you say this has to be a no, it's a no. But he needs help. He didn't ask for help with the SHIELD mess before, but he's asking now and if I had to guess, that means serious shit's going down and if we don't back him up, he's gonna get himself killed."
"We?" Pepper asked.
"Me and Bruce. He's not going if I'm not there with my finger on the button to launch Veronica. Rest of the team's ready and raring, but we're waiting on your call. And the Hulk can do a lot to change the tide."
That made her pause. She liked Bruce, always had, since she met him, saw how he was with Tony and how Tony could open up easier around someone who followed his mental processes. She liked how cautious he always was. And, of course, they both appreciated the save, at the end of the Battle of Manhattan. In short, Hulk had her approval.
"Okay," she said, sighing. "But you follow Steve's lead, got it? None of those after the fact 'I calculated acceptable risk' bullshit excuses. Let him decide when you're needed and where."
Tony scoffed. "You do realize this is the guy who went alone behind Nazi lines, against orders, and took on a whole base by himself?"
She rolled her eyes, harder this time. "Yes, you're both stupidly self-sacrificing. Just... take care of each other, okay? Just be a team."
"Yes, Ma'am," Tony responded jauntily, before leaning in to give her a kiss. "Promise no to get too caught up in the suits and forget what I'm fighting to come back to."
"That's what I like to hear," she said, smiling, before returning the kiss.
Tony couldn't pinpoint where things had gone so wrong, where he'd failed to calculate the odds or account for the possible results. Ultron had seemed like an acceptable risk. Looking back... he still did. And that was what scared Tony.
"I don't go in blind," he told her, eyes pained. "Not anymore. I know creation and power and discovery, all that comes with risk. But I can't just stop having ideas, trying to figure out how to make 'em work. That's what I do. That's who I am. And at least with Bruce and JARVIS, I had someone else's eyes on my work, in case I missed something." He sighed, leaning back against the wall, closing his eyes. "Should I be trying to stop? I don't think I can, but... would the world be better off without me?"
"No, Tony, never." She pulled him in close, pulled his head down onto her shoulder. "I'm so sorry about Bruce, and about JARVIS. You'll be okay. You'll get through this."
He let himself float in her arms, just for a moment, let her quiet confidence carry him. But he couldn't do that forever. "What's next?" he asked.
"Come back to Malibu with me," she asked him. "Help put the finishing touches on the new house. See how fast you can get FRIDAY filling in the gaps that JARVIS left."
"You'd trust me with that?" he asked. "After Ultron?"
"Tony," she said, tone serious and strong, "maybe the others don't realize this, but I worked with JARVIS pretty closely. I trusted him with the data and statistics and mechanics of running half my company. Our company. And he was a person. He was a good person." Her hand smoothed Tony's hair comfortingly. "And you made him. You're a good creator, parent, whatever you want to call it. No matter what Ultron was, what he did, if you made him to watch over something as important as defending the world, then he was enough of a person that what he did was his fault. No one else's. He wasn't you. He wasn't an extension of you. He was no more you than you are your father."
Tony blew breath through his nostrils. "It's not that simple," he told her.
She sighed in agreement. "Family never is."