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Pepper watched the tiny point that was the Iron Man fly up through the portal on the screen. Tony was going to be okay, he got himself into shitty situations all the time – that one spurned woman with the gun – and he always got out okay, he always managed the impossible –
Please, let him be okay.
He was through and he had taken the warhead with him – Pepper works with Tony, of course she knows what a nuclear bomb looks like – and then the portal was closing and, and – he wasn’t coming back.
Where are you? Come on, Tony, come on.
And then he was coming back. He was falling. Why wasn’t he flying? He was falling.
He fell and vanished behind the skyline.
The report cut to the newscaster.
She shut the TV down.
Tony wouldn’t just fall to his d-
Tony wouldn’t fall.
He had designed the suit himself. Tony’s inventions were always perfect. Always – okay, so most times, that one automatic make-up-applier was a disaster looking for its kind.
He wouldn’t just die like that – Tony wasn’t the self-sacrificial type. He wasn’t.
Except when it came to things that mattered to him. Like his company. His inventions. Her.
New York.
I’ll call him. Yes, exactly.
She scrambled for her phone, completely ignoring the business associates that were discussing whatever that was, that had happened in Manhattan.
One missed call.
There it was blinking at her.
One missed call. You have one new message.
You have one new message from: Mr. Stark.
No. Yes.
He was going to tell her he was alright.
She called it up.
“Hi Pepper”
It was him, he was alright! He had called her, probably just after he’d somehow , miraculously – impossibly – landed on the ground.
“I’ve never done this before.”
He sounded sad. Tony doesn’t sound sad. He’s impertinent, cock-sure and arrogant, sometimes caring, or apologetic, but never had she heard him sad.
“I guess this is good-bye”
No.
“Goddammit, this sounds cliché. That’s not me. So again, just ignore that, there, whatever that was.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t turn on the TV, that’s an order Miss Potts. Anyway, well, there was a problem downtown. “
“Shit, how do I do this? You’re way better than me at this emotional crap. I’m just the irresponsible guy.”
Yes, yes I am, but that doesn’t matter, Tony, it doesn’t, just don’t –
“Sigh. Well, anyway. Don’t let S.H.I.E.L.D. touch my stuff. It’s Banner’s.”
What?
“The company, of course, is yours. Do with it what you want, it was you anyway who was running it. Did I tell you I’d invented another element? No? Anyway, Dad showed me how to do it. I’d planned on naming it Pepperium.”
Tony, you idiot.
She could feel the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I’m gonna go into space. Just not like planned, or before. I’m gonna fly through this big-ass portal, I’m having J.A.R.V.I.S. take pictures, it’s beautiful. You’d like it. So many stars you can’t see in the city. And if I’m not mistaken there are a lot of constellations we can’t see from home. Name one after me, will you?”
Yes. Of course. Anything, Mr. Stark.
“Pepper I –“
Yes, Tony? Please, just keep talking.
“Pepper I –“
“Fuck this shit! I’m here in another galaxy or something and have a nuclear warhead on my back –“
“My suit’s failing. Sorry Pep, ‘m not gonna survive this one.”
She realized, absurdly that she had stopped breathing. Breathing was so not on her list of priorities right now. Who needed breathing anyway. She took a breath.
“What I wanted to tell you Pep, is you’re gonna figure everything out. Trust your gut. It’s normally right. I still don’t get, how it could have let you to me.”
My gut is always right, Tony, especially when it comes to you.
“I’m not a good man, Pep.”
How often she had tried to dissuade him from that particular notion. How often she’d enforced it.
“But I still love you.”
If this were some stupid cliché, time would stop, the world would cease to spin. The phone would fall out of her hand. She would bend over, hug her knees and cry for an hour. And continue crying.
The world continued to spin.
“Goodbye, Pep.”
Goodbye, Tony.
“You have no new messages.”
She stopped the call and gingerly laid her phone to the side. She noted absently that the other people on the plane had stopped talking and were staring at her.
Tony was dead.
Tony loved her.
Tony was dead – he had loved her.
She was now her own boss again.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
She straightened her skirt and went to the toilet. A flight-attendant told her they were touching down in a minute. She nodded, thankful that Stark Planes didn’t have the problem of an unsecure landing. She could hide in the toilet a bit longer.
Tony had loved her.
She loved Tony.
Not had loved him.
Tony was dead.
She didn’t feel the plane land. She did see the lamp signalizing the flight-mode flicker off. They were home. In New York. Tony was still dead.
She willed herself to stop crying and splashed her face with water. He had left her the company. Out there were important business associates. That had seen her break down. She had to do damage-control. That was something she had learned very well under Tony Playboy Stark.
Who was dead. Who had loved her.
She left the toilet and escorted the men – only men, she was a woman in a men-filled world, a heart-broken woman in a men-filled world, she was strong, Tony trusted her with his company, for which he had bled, she was strong, hear her roar – out of the jet and watched them enter their waiting cars.
Happy was waiting for her in front of Tony’s – now Happy’s, he would have left all his cars to Happy. He was like that, nobody else was trusted with his cars, not since she had smashed that last one, oh god, Tony was dead – in front of his car.
He looked at her worriedly, opening his mouth to say something, ask her if she was okay – Happy was a caring man. She couldn’t answer him. She wouldn’t shatter his world. Tony was the center of their world. An epicenter at times, but the center.
She couldn’t make a gaping hole appear in Happy’s world, not yet.
The world was blurry. She was crying again. Curiously she lifted a hand.
Funny. I didn’t even realize that.
A tear fell from her eyes and landed on her hand. It was clear.
Why is pain clear?
Far away, she heard Happy’s voice.
“I don’t know what has happened to her, Mr. Stark. She was like that when she left the plane.”
I don’t know either what has happened to me Mr. Sta-
Mr. Stark!
She spun around, hair slapping her in the face, the uncomfortable feeling reeling her back into reality.
“Tony!”
Her voice breaks sometime during the two syllables that make up the biggest part of her life.
He wore his grin. His grin. His almost-patented, yeah-well-I’m-Tony-Stark-love-me-hate-me-or-fuck-me-grin.
“You left a voice-mail.”
Her voice is as strong as she is used to.
“Ah, yes, erm”
“You left me a voice-mail. I saw you fall.”
“Yeah about that – a bit Hulk-therapy and it was all okay again, so just ignore that bit about me dying okay?”
“I heard your stupid annoying voice, telling me you were going to die!”
“Okay, now that is uncalled for, and I know I’m awesome enough to miss me, but-“
“You told me you were dying, I thought I heard you die, I saw you fall!”
She was screaming. She was also crying. Why was she crying? Ah, yes Tony was dead.
Tony wasn’t dead.
Then she registered it.
She was not standing two steps from the man she had thought dead, who had said he loved, whom
she loved.
She was standing in front of him, trying to squeeze the precious, precious life out his stupid iron-suit.
“You’re not dead. You’re alive.”
“Yes, Pep.”
He wasn’t grinning. He was smiling, softly.
“You’re alive.”
“We already had that, let’s not repeat ourselves.”
Now he was grinning again.
She was smiling too.
“You love me.”
It was not a question. She knew it, because Tony Stark was a lot of things, a liar, he was not.
“Yes.”
For once, Tony despite his tendency to talk too much in too short a time for normal beings to understand him, he didn’t say more than that.
“You love me.”
He looked a bit worried. He opened his mouth.
“You love me. I love you.”
He was smiling.
“Do I get a kiss?”
He grinned roguishly, impishly and just so, so typically Tony-ishly, that she smacked his arm. Which was armored.
Ouch.
He laughed.
“Domestic abuse!”
“Oh shut up, Tony.”
She kissed him.
You’re alive.