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Pepper had known in her gut the moment Tony showed her the Iron Man suit that their time together was limited. Every time Iron Man flew out to fight god-only-knew-what, her stomach churned for fear of losing Tony.
“There’s a team,” Tony whispered to her one night, on a rarified night when both of them were in sleep clothes, tangled together under the sheets, holding onto each other in the dark. “I won’t be alone out there, I’ll have— I’m going to have a team.”
Pepper had nodded, pressing her nose against his neck, inhaling his warm scent deeply as she steadied her nerves. “There’s still the chance that you won’t come back, Tony.” They had fallen silent, holding each other still, and Pepper let the conversation end. She had a busy day ahead of her in the morning.
Tony had quietly, shamefully, hoped that Pepper was just too busy to break up with him. Board meetings, press conferences, keeping Tony on decent terms with SI’s human resources department... breaking up with Tony? That could wait a day. Or a week. A month.
But the end of Tony and Pepper’s relationship was very similar to a consistent drip of rain water from the ceiling down to a bucket, slowly but surely bound to overflow and spill everywhere because Tony would be bound to forget the leak was there at all.
*
They were in the limo en route to a very elegant and very mandatory gala for one of Tony’s various business partners and their fragile ego. The two of them hadn’t spoken since leaving the tower (a brief “thank you,” when Tony held the door open for Pepper to slide onto the leather seat); Pepper was texting quietly to Tony’s right as he fidgeted with anything in his reach. He had grown accustomed to holding her hand.
“Honey, I can give it up.”
Her thumbs stopped tapping on her phone screen and she let out a measured sigh. “No, you can’t, Tony.”
He pressed his fingertips against the surface of the arc reactor, tapping it through his suit, telling himself the pain in his chest was something he should look at in the workshop tomorrow and nothing more.
He needed to stop making promises. Time and time again Tony has failed her, in big and small ways. She deserved better.
“You’re right.”
*
“You must hate me,” Tony sighed, rubbing his forehead, hiding his eyes.
“I don’t hate you, Tony,” Pepper said softly, reaching out to touch his knee. He risked it and looked to meet her gaze. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her skin aglow despite her smudged makeup. “But this... it’s just been building up, and I know if we let it keep on going, it’ll blow up in our faces sooner than we think.”
Tony placed his hand over hers. She was warm. “You’re right.” This would likely have been the last chance he had, so he squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.