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When the phone rang, Pepper all but dove across the bed to answer it. There was a long silence when all she could hear was her own fast-working lungs dragging air in and out, and silence on the other end.
“Tony?” she asked finally. It was him, that was his ringtone—
“Pepper,” he said. She had never heard him put so much emotion into her name before. It was relief and despair and an ocean of pain.
“Tony, what’s wrong?” Pepper had seen the news, of course she had, but she had also listened to his cool, rational tone of voice with Friday immediately after… what happened in the airport. This was not that voice. This barely sounded like the same man. She sat up straight in bed and composed herself like she was about to go into the boardroom, hoping it would help put some steel into her metaphorical spine. Something had happened after the fight at the airport, something that must have been, impossibly, even worse. “Tony, tell me.”
“Oh God, Pepper,” he said, all in a rush, as though her instruction had opened the floodgate. “Hon—Pepper, I’m on my way, please, please let me, I know you don’t want—I’m not—I know we’re not, not a thing, anymore, just please, just tonight, just let me—I just need you to hold me. Just a little bit. I’ll go in the morning, I promise. Pepper—“
He hadn’t sounded that bad since Afghanistan, since those nightmares she had never let him know she knew about.
“Hush, sweetheart, it’s okay,” Pepper told him softly, and he made a sound like choking and stopped talking. “That’s okay, I promise. You’re allowed. Come here.” They weren’t together anymore; it had been too hard to watch him go out and risk his life over and over again. It had been too hard to know that he thought that she was perfect, and that he was a waste of her time. But with the way he sounded on the line, broken and scared, scared of her, there was no good reason to deny him this. She still loved him as much as she ever had, after all.
“Thank you,” Tony said wetly. She thought maybe he was crying.
“Don’t thank me,” Pepper said. He shouldn’t thank her for doing what any decent person would. “Just come here.”
“I am,” he said. She heard it, then, out on the balcony: the clank of armored boots landing just outside her French doors. Pepper couldn’t help a little jump at the sound, but she scrambled up to open the door just the same. It occurred to her only when the chilly night air rushed in that she was not very dressed at all—but that didn’t matter.
Tony was just standing there, stock-still on her balcony and encased in armor, impossible to read. It was gleaming and perfect and clearly not the same armor he had worn when his friends turned on him in the airfield, the armor that had been plastered all over the news earlier. Pepper shuddered to think what had become of that armor, if he had to change into a new suit.
“Tony?” she said carefully. “Tony, take off the armor. Come here. You can come in, sweetheart. Tell me what happened?” Pepper pushed the door open wider to reinforce the invitation, but Tony didn't say anything. The too-fast run of words had stopped like a river drying up. Almost a minute went by before the armor started disassembling quietly, lights winking out to leave only the background illumination of the city. It was enough to see that Tony's face was wet. His eyes were staring straight through Pepper like he was seeing something else, something awful, in her place.
Finally, he met her eyes. Pepper could see the answer to her question lingering there, the words trapped like they were too big, or too terrifying, for him to let them out. He remained silent. It scared her.
Pepper couldn’t help gasping when Tony finally stumbled away from the empty metal skin; in the dim light she recognized one of his nice leather jackets, but it was dirty and tattered. The front of it shone with dark liquid seeping from a wide, curved gash like—
No. It couldn’t be—
It looked just like the curve of Steve’s shield.
Pepper pressed her hand to her mouth and bit down hard, swallowing again and again until she thought enough of her anger had gone down with the bile. Tony, in this state, could only be hurt by her anger.
But there was nothing on Earth, as far as she was concerned, no law, no argument, nothing, that could justify doing that to Tony Stark.
God, if he hadn’t had that surgery—
But the anger wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t. Pepper pushed it down and smothered it until only the pain and the concern were left. Tony needed her, now more than ever.
“Pep—“ he choked out. The fear was gone, and it left him looking very young, and very lost.
“Shh. I’ve got you.”
Neither of them said a word for the next several minutes. Pepper just guided Tony inside and led him through her bedroom to the en suite bathroom at the other end. She turned on a row of warm LEDs set into an alcove over the vanity, just enough light to see by. With slow, gentle motions, she stripped him down so that she could see all of him, every bruise and scrape and cut the armor hadn’t been able to save him from. He tensed and shook when he was exposed, so Pepper pulled off her own shorts and t-shirt, being vulnerable where he was likewise. She stroked his hair reassuringly and took care to avoid the places that were matted with his blood. His hands steadied.
The curved gash on Tony's chest wasn’t deep. When Pepper leaned in close to examine it, it had already stopped bleeding. But what the injury lacked in depth it made up for in sheer extensiveness; the whole length of the cut was surrounded by deep blue-black bruising, where the crushed armor had no doubt pressed against his skin. His reconstructed sternum was intact—it had to be, Tony had designed the metal replacements himself—but looking at all of him together, Pepper could only think small mercies.
But it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t. She repeated it over and over, because it wasn’t. There was no shrapnel in his heart now, and there was no poison in his blood. He would live.
Taking a deep breath, Pepper pulled her softest, fluffiest washcloths from the cabinet and wet them with warm water in the sink. She ran them carefully over Tony’s skin and wiped away the grime and sweat as best she could without pressing into the bruises or scraping over the cuts. Tony’s whole body was angled toward her in a wretched arch even as he passively let her clean him, sweet and aching and needy in the way he almost never let himself be. Pepper kept on with her task, but every minute or so she ran her fingers through his hair or down the side of his neck, sending a tremor and a relieved sigh through his weary body. It was a strange, satisfying kind of relief to realize that she still knew how to take care of him.
There was saline in the cabinet for just this purpose—just this fear—and Pepper used it to flush the places where his skin was broken, getting the metal and gravel out of the wounds. She had gauze, too, and she wrapped up every injury that looked like it needed it with antibiotics and careful pressure. There weren’t many, thank God.
She came to the wound over his heart, and tears pricked at her eyes as she dressed it. How much time had he spent terrified because of the state of his heart? How many times had he feared for it because of people who should have been his friends?
Pepper cleaned it, too, and smeared it with antibiotic before she wrapped the gauze all the way around his chest, taking no chances that the bandage might slip. She leaned in close to his body and heard the hitch in his breath when she ran the gauze around his back. Whether it was from the closeness or the pain in his chest, she couldn’t be sure.
“You don’t have to do this,” Tony croaked finally. There was agony and exhaustion in the edge of his voice, and an almost pathetic gratitude, too. He really hadn’t expected Pepper to want to help him. He had expected—what, that she would put up with his presence for a little while and then kick him out in the morning, still looking like this? It was obvious that he needed more than a little cuddling, but that was all he had been able to ask for. A tear did slip from the corner of Pepper’s eye then, and she dashed it away with the back of her wrist.
“Of course I do,” she said. “Tony, you must know that I love you. Still. And always.”
“I—I know,” he said, but it was a poor attempt at a lie. Oh, Tony. Pepper set down the gauze and wrapped herself around him this time, mindful of his bruises, and pressed herself against his body. She was barefoot, but so was he—he only fought himself for a moment before he visibly gave in and tucked his head under her chin. The way he always used to when he needed to feel safe, surrounded.
She could feel his tears dripping into the hollow of her throat. God, what had happened to him that this little kindness was enough to undo him?
“Tony, I love you. I do. I’ll tell you every day if that’s what you need to believe it,” she promised, foolishly maybe. They had taken a break for reasons, good reasons, but like this it was hard to believe that they were good enough. He was crying harder, now, and his arms finally came up around her in return, clutching at her back. His left arm’s grip was much weaker, and she knew she’d have to take a look at it in a bit, but right then she just held him tighter. “Never think that I suggested a break because I don’t love you,” Pepper told him. It sounded like a plea. It felt like a plea, begging him to understand that it wasn't that she didn't love him enough; it was that she loved him too much to bear knowing that it was hurting him to be with her. It spilled out of her unbidden. “It’s just—you thought you didn’t deserve me. And I thought you needed—but it doesn’t matter now.”
“Pepper,” he said quietly. She couldn’t name the feeling in his voice, but it was something huge and powerful and tender.
“It’s just that—that’s not how it works, Tony, it isn’t—and even if it were…” she took a deep breath, held him tighter so he couldn’t run away. “You’re a good man, Tony, and you deserve good things. Not… this. Never this. Tell me what happened to you. Please, Tony.”
Tony didn’t. He just held her tighter still. Pepper was the one to tremble, then, at her own nightmare visions of what must have been lurking behind his eyes in that awful stare from the balcony, in the trembling of his hands as she undressed him.
After a few minutes of clinging to each other, she realized that he wasn’t going to be the one to let go. He needed the contact too badly. So Pepper disengaged them gently and slowly, bringing a hand up to his face so that their eyes met for the second time that night.
He looked awful. Bruised and tired and angry and so sad it broke her heart just looking at him. He looked like the man who had once told her I don't have anyone else.
Pepper kissed him. Tony responded instantly, desperately, surging up into her mouth like he thought she would save him from whatever horror was locked up in his head.
He tasted like blood.
Pepper pulled back and picked up her washcloth again, pressing her finger over his lips while she ran it carefully over his face and neck, and then wet it again to tease the dried blood out of his hair. She reached into the cabinet one last time to get the cream, and she worked it as gently as she could into his black eye. His eyelashes fluttered when her fingertip slid over the fragile skin under his eye, but he stayed quiet and still and let her work.
His silence told her as plainly as any words that something was deeply, direly wrong.
When she was done, Pepper ran her fingers down Tony’s left arm, registering his wince at the pressure. She raised an eyebrow in question, but he didn’t say anything. It was clear enough that it wasn’t broken, and there wasn’t enough swelling for it to be a sprain or dislocation, so Pepper let the matter drop. Instead she turned off the light and guided him back to the warm darkness of her bedroom and eased him under the covers, where he curled up automatically on his right side, like he needed to protect himself.
He didn’t. Pepper would protect him. She would pursue Captain Rogers to the ends of the Earth herself to make him answer for this, if it came to that. Pepper didn't think she was a very complicated woman, and she didn’t need very much in life, really, but she did need Tony to be safe. It had made it hard to be with him before, and now, it made it easy to hate his former friends.
She wondered how Tony had ever thought she was perfect.
It didn’t matter. He was here now, and so was she, and now she could make sure that he was safe. Even if it didn’t stick, even if they couldn’t be together again afterwards, they would be together for tonight, in every way that mattered. He would be hers.
When the tension in Tony’s muscles gave way to lassitude, Pepper let herself press up against his back until they were touching from shoulder to ankle. She wasn’t physically strong, not like the gods or assassins who seemed to keep coming out of the woodwork, but like this, surrounding Tony in the dark, Pepper felt as strong as any of those superheroes. Even if she could barely throw a proper punch, she still knew how to fight back a few of the demons that tormented Tony’s mind.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Pepper murmured into the back of his neck. “You’re here with me. You’re mine.”
“Yeah?” Tony said. His voice was so small.
“Yeah,” she answered. One arm wrapped around his waist, and the other snaked up to wind fingers into his hair. She stroked with gentle care for the soreness and exhaustion of his body. “Tell me, Tony.”
Here, in the dark, he finally could.
The story he told was long and dark and awful, and by the end of it Pepper didn’t think she’d be able to sleep without nightmares for a week, but it was worth it to know, to understand, to see Tony finally close his eyes and relax his body. His sleep wasn’t easy by any means, but Pepper could see how it reassured him, even unconscious, to know that she was there with him, taking care of him. When the dreams came, she chased them away with a firm grip and gentle words until rest tenuously took her too.
And when they woke together too early in the morning, Pepper kept Tony close, and everything seemed just a little brighter than it had the night before.