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i.
"You've brought me to a hospital," Tony said, bleeding from the side of his mouth. "How could you?"
There was no time, after it all, to wait for an ambulance or a clean-up squad or to check, even, if Obadiah was truthfully dead. Pepper had seen him hit, and trusted her eyes enough. She had sat with Tony laying half broken across her lap, in the back of a S.H.I.E.L.D. Hummer as they sped towards the hospital, counting the cracks across his second skin. She hadn't finished by the time they arrived and pried Tony from her hands.
Hospitals, like war zones, were filled with Tony's metal masterpieces. His greatest, though, was lying prone and lifeless in his chest – the arc reactor was down, and Tony was dying. Pepper's voice became harder than she knew it could be as she told the doctors. "He's asking for you," they replied.
A squad of fire-fighters turned up within minutes and hacked him free from the suit with two pairs of industrial wire-cutters. Agent Coulson was standing outside Tony's suite with a pile of national security contracts for anyone who had the briefest glimpse of Tony's battered face. It was all happening very rapidly. Pepper was trained for this sort of thing, but she wasn't trained for this.
"I'm fine, Pepper," was the first thing Tony said to her. She gripped his mess of a hand in her own, easing up when he flinched. "I'm fine. You're fine. We're all fine here now, as a better man than me once said." He struggled to sit up, his bones creaking and his skin damp. Pepper told him he was being absurd, told him to lie down at once, and didn't care that she was mothering him. Tony waved her off weakly. "Stop talking. It's making it harder to concentrate. Pepper, listen to me. I need you to get me a battery. Anything remotely industrial. Throw some sponger off life-support if you have to, just get me a battery. Can you do that?"
She nodded. Of course she could. She was nothing if not reliable, and she was far more than that for Tony Stark.
She brought him the car battery from the Hummer. It stank of oil and weighed more than she could carry, but she brought it to him on a dolly anyway, her mind absolutely set.
Tony greeted her with a hiss and a grimace. "That's great. Ironic, but great. Okay, Pepper. Now I want you to bring it over here, and sit down, that's it, and save my life. No pressure."
He guided her through the process, step by step. She held the stagnant reactor in her hand like a child, cradling its sharp corners in her palm, and hooked it up to the battery, Tony's fingers and soft voice leading her all the while. "Good. You're doing really good."
It crackled into life. The reactor's light seemed dull and feeble, but it was alight. Pepper let her hands shake for a moment, then bit her lip and looked at Tony. He gestured to the hole in his chest. "In she goes," he said calmly.
"You told me I wouldn't have to do this again."
"You should be flattered. It's not every day I invite someone back for a second date."
Pepper reached in, felt metal and blood and flesh and something inhuman, and plugged the reactor into Tony's heart with her fingertips. It flickered and blazed and made his skin glow, and Tony breathed in. It was as though he were breathing for the first time. He took Pepper's hand, and they shivered together. "You don't mind if I just lose consciousness now, do you?" he asked, winded.
"You idiot," Pepper said.
"Awesome," Tony replied, and slept, and kept sleeping.
ii.
Of course, of course Tony told everyone. It was the most self-centred, egotistical, potentially dangerous thing he could do, so in his mind that seemed like a great idea, why the hell not, let's just reveal my secret (no emphasis) identity to the world. He was ridiculous. Pepper thought he was being completely ridiculous. But Pepper also knew that giving him a cued-in speech was the best way to make his mouth run away with itself. Tony was contrary like that.
"It's fine for you," she said wryly as Hogan bundled them into a car post-haste to escape the mass press hysteria. "You don't know how many phone calls I'm going to have to handle."
"Leave it off the hook," Tony said conversationally. His eyes were bright and excited and he was looking at her, just her, and she couldn't say no to him.
"Ha ha," she said instead, and smiled against her will.
Half of the world wanted a piece of Tony Stark's mind, and the other half wanted all of his body. Pepper spent days constantly fending off calls from companies begging sponsorship, magazines begging reviews, Rhodes begging Pepper to keep him sane, women begging for dates. She reeled off the list to Tony every morning. He paid attention to approximately none of it.
"What was that thing about Playgirl?" he said, barely looking up from his workstation.
"They want you to do a cover shoot."
"Pants or no pants?"
"In the suit." Pepper pursed her lips. "And they want an article about how exactly you went about crafting such chiselled abs and, I quote, 'an ass that could save my world anytime'."
Tony glanced up at her. "You disapprove, Ms. Potts? Tell them I'm free Wednesday."
Tony wasn't free Wednesday. He wasn't officially free for the next two months, according to Jarvis' calendar, which they tended to consider locked in stone. Still, Tony missed an interview with the New York Times, his keynote speech at the Maybell Sanctuary Peace Ball, and a board meeting he'd already moved back four times. Instead, he disappeared and came back with a new set of scars, a wrecked tendon in his left leg, and a smile the width of the state on his face. "Saving the world, Pepper. Kinda top priority."
He couldn't make time for the board of directors, but he still found time for his girls.
They'd always fairly flung themselves at Tony, but now he was a world-renowned superhero as well as a millionaire, Pepper found going out in public with him near hellish. "One day they'll all realise you're only a gentleman the night before," Pepper told him as his hoard, as she called them, disappeared behind them in a screech of tires.
"Hey, I'm not exactly modest about it."
"Mr. Stark, I can't truthfully say you're modest about anything."
"You're just jealous," he said, leaning over and tapping her lightly on the chin. "Behind the pale and cold exterior lies the fiery and exotic Virginia Potts, whose greatest desire in life is to have her suave, handsome employer treat her like one of his tarts."
Her skin tingled where he had touched it, but Pepper defiantly refused to itch it. "Only you, Tony, could pull women's lib back thirty years with a single sentence." He mouthed you love it at her, and she smiled with the corner of her mouth.
She liked to keep an eye on him. It wasn't voyeurism, she told herself sternly; it was a purely professional interest. It wasn't as though she spied through the cracks in his door to make sure he was performing up to standard – that was in Jarvis' job description. Sometimes she hung around the house after he retreated to his bedroom with whatever woman happened to be around, but she was good at keeping herself scarce until he was finished. That night, after he'd gone upstairs, ostensibly entertaining an aspiring actress, she made herself comfortable on the sofa, reading over her notes with a mug of hot coffee and a slice of carrot cake, licking her fingertip to pick up the crumbs.
She was drifting, when Jarvis' quiet voice lit up the living room. Tony had worked for days programming his AI to actually whisper, rather than simply lower the volume, and Pepper had found it endearingly impressive. "Ms. Potts, I believe Mr. Stark may be having some difficulties in the bedroom."
Pepper raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure I don't need to know the details."
"Motion paths indicate that Mr. Stark's current liaison may be a trained assassin. You might wish to interrupt them. I would advise taking the fire poker."
Pepper had some basic self-defence training that she'd picked up as a young woman, though had always refused Tony's attempts to refresh her memories on the grounds that his idea of grappling was closer to sexual harassment. So instead, she took Jarvis' advice, kicked Tony's door open, ran in, poker aloft, and whacked Tony's guest sharply in the back of the head.
Pepper really, really hoped she was an assassin.
There was an awkward moment. Pepper stared at Tony. The bed sheets were pooled handsomely around his hips, just low enough to make her straighten up and avert her eyes. He looked back at her, gently bemused. Then he looked at the prone body on the floor, derringer in her limp hand. Then he turned back to Pepper. "Well," Tony said. "That was unexpected."
iii.
Pepper had always gone to these ridiculous, celebrity-fodder charity events with Tony, but she had never really gonewith Tony. Her role was to fade into the background, looking smart but not inviting attention, fielding any business associates into a discreet corner away from Tony and his good-time harem.
Then he had started buying her dresses.
Technically, very technically, the first had been the sweeping blue. It was a birthday gift, and Tony's vast bank accounts had provided for it, and though it hadn’t exchanged hands from his to hers, she knew he thought of it as a benevolent gift. She was quite put out, actually, that she'd been wearing it on that balcony, that night when he had left her waiting for a drink that never came and a kiss that was half-implied, never followed through. Pepper had chosen that dress because it was beautiful, and now it reminded her of standing outside, shivering slightly, and feeling ridiculously abandoned.
"I've got you a gift," Tony told her, one day. She was wary, understandably, because the last gift he had supposedly bestowed upon her turned out to be the fact that he had reprogrammed the house's smoke detectors to play Firestarterwhenever he burnt his toast.
"What's the occasion?"
"Just you," Tony said simply, and it knocked the breath out of her. Being around Tony so much was a constant struggle to keep her composure, and Pepper had been finding it more and more difficult of late. It didn't help when he pulled out the dress.
It wasn't what she'd have chosen for herself. It was red, and she tended to avoid colours that vied with her hair for attention. She preferred a formal skirt that went below the knee, because she knew how prying cameras were with a higher cut. But this was Tony – Tony who complimented her daily on how pert she was looking – and the dress was beautiful. Silk roses on one shoulder and a neckline that would flatter anyone, Pepper found herself falling at once.
Tony knew it, and it showed in his smug grin. "I want you to wear it to the CNN Gala with me."
"It's a little conspicuous," she said, looking at where his fingers crinkled the cloth.
"You should be seen," Tony replied, and that was that. He took her to the gala, officially, arm-in-arm, photos together and all, and answered anyone who questioned him about the exact nature of their relationship with infuriating and typical vagueness. The gossip columns were filled to the brim with speculation and slander, but Tony was used to this. It was a bit newer to Pepper. She wasn't sure she liked it when bitter, middle-aged journalists cast aspersions on her character in public forums.
But then Tony brought her a sky blue ball gown, and Pepper found it hard to get angry with him for thrusting this upon her.
It became another aspect of her routine. Boil tea, sort mail, liase with S.H.I.E.L.D, accompany Tony to the same event she had spent so long persuading him he needed to go to. He loved attention but had to be so contrary about it – turning down an offer of lunch with the French President so that he could cut the ribbon on a giant Wal-Mart opening in South Carolina.
Only once had Pepper been the reason he missed an appointment. She felt foolish about it afterwards, for letting something so absurdly girlish happen to her – her heel snapped as they were about to set off, and Tony found her sitting on the couch trying to salvage it with superglue.
"Oh golly, for shame, what a pity," Tony said, deadpan, flopping down beside her and loosening the collar of his tux. "This terrible calamity has ended our perfect evening with abrupt tragedy."
"You've got an entire workshop downstairs," Pepper said, scrunching her nose up in concentration. "You can fix this in five seconds flat."
"Nope. Too late. What's done is done. We'll just have to spend the evening in with pizza and Black Sabbath instead." Tony put his arm around the back of the sofa and let his fingers drape lightly on Pepper's bare shoulder. She noticed, and said nothing. He switched on the television, and the screen flooded with images of an out-of-control forest fire raging across the Canadian border.
"Call in that pizza," Tony said, letting his thumb stroke once over the crook of Pepper's neck. "I'll be right back."
iv.
Tony didn't like to warn people when he was going to do something outrageous, so it was without fanfare and over breakfast one inconspicuous morning that he informed Pepper they should date.
Pepper put down her mug very pointedly. She looked at Tony. He looked back at her, innocently. She couldn't read him. She never could, not entirely. When he was awkward, he brushed conversations off with sarcasm, and this was a catching trait she occasionally thanked him for. "Is that a general statement? Because yes, I'm all for you dating and me dating, and us both dating in a mutually exclusive and totally unrelated way."
"The chopper's taking us to Seattle at seven, and I've booked out Sky City for us. Wear something short."
It was a terrible idea. It was possibly the worst idea Tony had ever suggested – Tony, who thought swimming with sharks was a pretty cool prospect. Pepper seemed to shut down. "No," she said, after a while.
"Alright then, wear something long. Even better, wear nothing."
"No, Tony," Pepper said. Her lips were soft but her mouth was hard, and she stared at his hands on the table. She couldn't quite justify in her mind why it was such an awful idea. That upset her more than anything.
"Are you turning me down?"
"Yes."
"Are you mad at me?"
"No."
"You're talking in monosyllables. You're mad."
"I'm not mad," Pepper said, laying her palms flat against her thighs.
Tony was brash and he was inappropriate. He still made jokes about her assets when she tried to talk stocks with him, and he still bought her two martinis at a time when she clearly asked for a babycham, and he still tried to make her dance with him in the workshop when she was trying to dictate the board's latest minutes to him. But Tony didn't ask Pepper out again. Even if he didn't understand people most of the time, he loathed making the same mistake twice.
That night, terrorists planted a home-made bomb in the lift of the Space Needle and sent it up to the top floor. CNN reported how miraculous it was that no-one was killed in the raid, as the entire restaurant had been booked out by a private party that never turned up.
v.
She blamed herself.
Thirty-seven people died in the wreckage, because Pepper had called and she was in trouble and Tony couldn't not save her first. He was too late for the others; too late for himself. The blaze was out of control, the rooftop beams falling like dominos onto the factory floor as the building collapsed in on itself, a vortex of metal and glass. He miscalculated, perhaps, or was distracted by a scream, or was still thinking about Pepper and whether or not she was okay. In any case, he didn't catch the rafter until it landed full force on his right shoulder, ripping through metal and skin like a meat cleaver.
Pepper sat by his bed as he healed, and blamed herself.
"Shit happens," Tony told her, waking from his fitful reverie.
"I'm so sorry," she said. He leant across the space between them, and touched the back of her hand, and curled his slow fingers in her hair.
He hadn't saved the world this time, but he had saved her. That, Tony said, was plenty enough.