Fandom:
Iron Man (movieverse)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Summary: It
will not be long, love...
Disclaimer: Most of the characters and situations in this story belong
to Marvel Comics, Fairview Entertainment, Dark Blades Films, NBC, and
other
entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement
is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others
belong to me, especially Cedric, and if you want to borrow them, you
have to ask me first.
Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any.
Well, I'm back. Real life decided I had other things to do,
including dealing with some health issues (none truly serious, just distracting). After waiting
so long, you deserve to have the whole story, so I'm finishing it up
with three more chapters and an epilogue. Thank you for your
patience, your encouragement while I've been on hiatus, and your
feedback.
Especial thanks to Laura27md for last-minute reassurance, and Cincoflex, as ever, for editing,
support, and telling me that yes, getting my appendix removed did take
precedence over that last chapter. *snerk* Much, much love
to you both.
All that and I didn't even pop the rating. Huh.
*********
In the days preceding Pepper’s return from Japan, Jarvis
reported, her building had acquired an imposing new doorman, a handyman
who wore a concealed weapon, and a new tenant across the hall from her
apartment--agents Donovan, Shaw, and Davis, all in disguise. The
AI had hacked into the FBI team’s communications on Tony’s
order, and kept them apprised as the operation proceeded. Donovan
was going to be livid if he found out, but Tony simply didn’t
care.
Cross stayed in Pepper’s apartment, making the occasional foray
for milk or to the post office, but always with Stark Industries
security detailed by Tony to guard her; the idea was to lure Three into
the building itself, rather than to give him an opportunity to pick
“Pepper” off from a distance again.
Pepper moved back into her chosen room in Tony’s house, and took
up as much of her work as she could without leaving the house.
She was physically recovered, Tony judged, and it wasn’t as
though he didn’t need her back on the job, but he still wished
there was some way to make her take more time off.
It was a weird sort of limbo, waiting for Pepper’s shadowy
attacker to actually do something. Donovan brought by a mug shot
to show Pepper--Yarbro had apparently done some time for assault and
extortion--but she shook her head over it, recognizing nothing.
Tony snuck a look at it, seeing only an average-looking white man with
wide shoulders and dark hair, clean-shaven and slightly
contemptuous. There was nothing in the image that indicated
dangerous obsession.
Still, Tony mentally painted a target in the middle of Yarbro’s
forehead. Breathe on her
again, and you’re mine. He was willing to let the
FBI take their shot first, it saved hassle and legalities, but the
minute the sting began Iron Man was going to be in the sky
overhead. Just in case.
When a mission came up the very night they returned to the United
States, his sense of divided loyalties was almost as bad as Farkar had
been, but he’d gone. And had probably broken an airspeed
record on the way home, but it hadn’t mattered--nothing
happened.
Not for a week.
Not for two weeks. Pepper talked hopefully of the possibility
that Three had just given up and gone away, but Tony knew he
hadn’t. He didn’t know how he knew, but the certainty was
there. Wounded pride,
Cross had said, and Tony could see it; how being outsmarted and
defeated by a slender, big-eyed, helpless-looking woman would be a burn
that would not be soothed by anything other than revenge.
Funny, that. Once upon a time, he would not have tolerated that
kind of loss either, though his need to be the best would have taken a
different form. Now he found himself wondering if defeat
wasn’t the sweeter option after all.
I keep trying to
surrender. She just won’t accept.
Yet, anyway.
It felt like Pepper was ignoring everything that had passed between
them, his plea and her promise to consider it; as if she wanted to
pretend it had never happened. It made him feel hurt, and
angry. We just got back,
he reminded himself. It’s
not like she’s had time to do anything yet.
But he felt...helpless. It was a terrifying thing to put his
heart in Pepper’s hands and just wait, not knowing when she would
answer him or even if. On the
other hand...she kind of already had it.
That was the scariest part, that he really hadn’t had a
choice. In all his past relationships, however long they lasted,
Tony had been the one in control. He had made his choices, and
decided when to end things. This time, it wasn’t up to
him.
You can be patient, he
reminded himself. He’d learned patience in a hard school,
but it had paid off in the end and he had to believe it would
again.
It was hard to keep his hands to himself, too. He still found
himself dreaming about that first kiss, when he’d lost it
completely, and the way she’d responded...but there didn’t
seem to be any opportunity to so much as ask for another one.
Pepper scarcely slowed down enough to talk to him, let alone anything
else, and Tony found himself feeling lonely again. Which was
stupid, she was right there,
but he couldn’t help it.
And underneath it all was the question of what he was going to do if
she decided that she didn’t
want a relationship with him. Would she walk away, quit her job
and leave? Tony thought he might be able to manage to live with
the status quo, as long as she were still around, but the idea of
losing her completely terrified him, even if she was perfectly
fine.
It’s not fair,
he whined to himself. He’d never anticipated having to wait.
And waiting was hurting a lot more than he’d ever imagined it
could.
They were halfway into Week Three, and Tony was working on flight
dynamics and vaguely aware that he’d missed dinner, when Pepper
keyed her way into his workshop. "Ms. Potts," he said, noting her
lack of shoes with approval. "Come to put me to bed?"
Pepper bit her lip, hesitated, and then went over to the kitchen
area. To his surprise, she took down the bottle of Scotch and
poured herself a measure, on ice, before turning back to him. "I
need you to tell me about Afghanistan."
His first instinct was to refuse. They were his memories, his triumph and his
shame, and no one else had a right to them.
But her fingers were a little too tight on the glass, her eyes a little
too wide, and Tony realized abruptly that maybe this wasn't about him.
He took a breath and let it out slowly. "Pour me one too," he
said, and turned away.
They ended up on the battered couch, Tony with his back against one arm
and Pepper huddled at the other end, her bare feet drawn up. It
felt a lot like the last time, but with the emotions turned inside out,
and Tony sipped away half his glass before he had the words organized
enough. Pepper waited quietly, looking chilled despite the warmth
of the workshop, and he thought vaguely about finding her a blanket or
something, but the pressure of memory was too much.
"The worst thing was not knowing if they killed Rhodey," he began at
last, starting in the middle, and Pepper winced in sympathy. "I
mean, if they'd caught him they would have used him as leverage on me,
but they blew away all the soldiers with me, I didn't know if they got
him too..."
He didn't tell her everything. Some of it was too raw, still;
some of it just didn't come up in his rambling. But he told her
about the darkness and the firelight and the pain; the small moments of
comfort, the ideas sparking like fireworks that didn't fade. He
spoke of his captors, the stupid and the smart, the occasional careless
kindness, the deliberate brutality. He told her about Yinsen for
the first time, his saving grace in hopelessness, quiet courage and
compassion and wry humor, and how his life was more than a gift now, it
was a responsibility.
And in the end, he told her about how her voice had yanked him back
from madness, how sometimes the memory of her was what kept him from
pulling out the electromagnet and letting his own handiwork take its
course.
She never spoke. But the tears coursing down her cheeks told him
she was listening; and when she unfolded herself and reached out, his
hand met hers in a hard grip, and the tightness around his chest
implant eased.
It was a strange sensation, to sit together unspeaking, without the
need to do more; just two people, two friends, holding on to one
another.
It was enough.
Virginia let herself sleep in a little the next morning, more to give
herself time to process than because she was actually tired. Tony
had dropped hints here and there about what his captivity had been
like, but her imagination had clearly been unequal to what he’d
gone through. She wasn’t even sure where she’d found
the courage to ask; it had just been a strange need for parity, for
recognition that if they were going to be anything more than what they
were there had to be more trust.
And it had worked. He’d trusted her with the details...and
she’d trusted that he would tell her.
It was good to get back to
routine, hectic as it was. Though Virginia had to admit to
herself that her enforced vacation really had been a necessity, for her
mental health if not her physical. She kept waiting to feel
embarrassed about her breakdown in the garden, now that they were back
to what she might laughingly term as “normal”, but the
feeling never showed; instead, there was a shy gratitude to Tony for
just being there.
And, beneath that, a desire to repeat the experience--not the crying
jag, but the comfort of just holding on to him for a while. It
was odd; she’d never applied the label of comforting to Tony Stark before,
and yet there it was. She was used to him surprising her, but not
in quite such a fashion.
As she’d promised him, she thought about what had passed between
them. He hadn’t actually managed to ask her anything, she remembered
with amusement; the koi had interrupted that. But it was clear
enough what he wanted.
And you want it too.
That wasn’t in question. Folly, perhaps, but then Virginia
had never imagined that she’d actually get it; the Tony she
wanted and the Tony who existed weren’t the same. Until now. It was a little
eerie, seeing the potential she’d dreamed come to life in him; it
was something she wasn’t sure she could trust, and yet...
When he decides to do
something, he makes it happen. There was plenty of proof
of that.
In the end, she decided, it scared her. Wanting Tony from a
distance was easy; she’d been doing it for quite some time.
Taking the step forward into the unknown of a relationship with him was
hard, because almost
anything could happen. And she couldn’t predict what
exactly would happen, because
a relationship would change all the rules.
It could be glorious. It could be terrible. “Knowing
Tony,” Virginia murmured to the early morning, “it could be
both simultaneously.”
But she was smiling as she said it.
It was Thursday morning when Jarvis spoke quietly into Virginia’s
ear where she sat working in her little office in Tony’s
home. “Ms. Potts, the undercover team is on alert. It
appears that Mr. Yarbro is finally making his move.”
Virginia let the chill pass over her and away and sat up
straight. “...All right, thank you. What’s Tony
doing?”
“Changing clothes. He intends to monitor the operation from
a distance.”
Virginia pressed her lips into a hard line. She didn’t
approve of him hovering over the FBI’s operation, but he had
flatly refused to be talked out of the idea. The one reassurance
she had was that none of the weapons either side would be carrying
could hurt him when he was armored up. Rising, she smoothed her
hair with an automatic hand and headed for the stairs to the
workshop.
But he was gone by the time she got there, and she realized that he
must have had the suit already prepped. Sighing, uneasy, she
folded up the shirt and pants he’d discarded and laid them on a
chair, and gave into temptation. She didn’t really approve
of Tony’s electronic eavesdropping, but not knowing was
worse. “Jarvis? What’s going on?”
In response, he put the radio chatter of the undercover team over the
speaker system. It was a jumble of terse orders at first, but
Virginia concentrated, and formed a mental picture; the suspect
entering the building and taking the elevator, the team’s members
moving into place behind him, Cross waiting poised--and, Virginia
trusted, armed--behind Virginia’s apartment door.
It was weirdly tantalizing, piecing the action together at one
remove. She couldn’t hear gunfire, but the sudden burst of
raised voices told her something
had happened, and the urgent call for an ambulance made her heart
squeeze and the image of Cross hover in her mind’s eye. No--
But then Cross spoke herself, a little breathless but crisp and sure;
it was Yarbro who needed the ambulance.
Virginia closed her eyes and exhaled, then fumbled for another chair
and sat heavily. The relief was almost incapacitating. She
hadn’t known just how tense she had been, even safe behind
Tony’s protecting walls; but the news that the man who hunted her
was rendered harmless made her swallow hard and press the heels of her
hands into her eyes. She wanted to cry; she wanted to
laugh.
She...wanted a hug.
The thought was so absurd that she did
laugh, just a breath’s worth, shaking off the shock and
pushing herself to her feet. Any of the males in her life would
have been happy to give her one, she thought, if they were handy, but
Happy was finishing his medical leave and Rhodey was on assignment
overseas, and Tony--
“Hey, Potts,” came the voice over the speakers, as if on
cue. “Were you listening?”
Virginia smiled, feeling a rush of fondness for the worst complication
she’d ever met. “Yes, I was. Is
he...” She faltered.
Tony’s voice was a touch grim. “He’s in pretty
bad shape, from what I can see. Sounds like Cross is a dead
shot.”
That made her shiver. “I guess...I guess it’s over
then.”
A hiss of air, as of a breath blown out. “Guess
so.”
The hunger to go home, to get
back to her own private space, was startling. You have things to do, Virginia
reminded herself; extraordinary events aside, this was a working day,
and life didn’t stop just because of one madman.
“When will you be back?”
“Not yet.” Tony sounded a bit brusque.
“I, uh, I’m going to run up to the range in Canada and run
a few tests. Since I’m already in the air.”
Translation: he was full of adrenaline and needed to burn it off.
Slightly disappointed but not surprised, Virginia nodded even though he
wasn’t actually there. “All right. But no
moose, Tony. Remember the last time.”
His chuckle was short but genuine. “Like I could forget it. See you in a few
hours, Potts.”
“Goodbye,” she murmured, not even sure the connection was
still running. Rubbing her arms as if at a sudden chill, she
stood, trying to focus on the next task. “Jarvis? Is
he okay?”
“Vital signs indicate a moderate level of stress, but no
more,” the AI replied calmly. “The
‘tests’ should help.”
Blowing things up with his repulsors, and fancy flying. Well, it
was far less destructive than some of his past habits. Virginia
shook her head, and turned to go back upstairs, trying to estimate how
long it would be before Agent Donovan called to tell her that it was
finished.
Tony was checking the woods for wildlife when Jarvis patched him
through to a call from the FBI. “Special Agent
Donovan,” he said blandly, without a hint that he’d been
watching Pepper’s building from above just in case things went
pear-shaped. “You need something?”
“Mr. Stark.” The dry tone of Donovan’s voice
told Tony that the agent wasn’t fooled in the least, but Tony
didn’t care. “The suspect is in custody.”
Even though he already knew that, Tony let out a sigh of relief.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, and meant it. “Your
people okay?”
Donovan’s voice warmed a fraction. “Yes, they
are.”
“How’d it go down?” He’d seen people go
in and out, and listened to the radio chatter, but details had eluded
Tony; all he knew was that Cross had shot Yarbro, presumably with good
reason.
He wasn’t sure Donovan would tell him, but after a second’s
hesitation the agent spoke. “Yarbro knocked on Ms.
Potts’ door in disguise, and when Agent Cross opened it he pushed
his way in and attempted to shoot her. He reacted before we had
our agents in place, and she was forced to return fire.”
“Did he say why the hell
he was doing all this?” Tony felt a resurgence of the
familiar fury.
“Unfortunately he was too badly wounded to communicate.
He’s still in surgery.”
That damped the fires a bit. “Huh. Remind me not to
piss Agent Cross off.”
“Always advisable,” Donovan replied with a trace of
amusement. “In any case, Ms. Potts is now aware that she
can return to her home.”
“I’ll call off the bodyguards,” Tony said,
half-tempted to keep them there out of sheer paranoia but knowing that
Pepper would never permit it. “And...thank
you.”
The words weren’t as hard to say as he thought they would
be.
Donovan’s tone was gentler than Tony expected.
“It’s our job, Mr. Stark. Good
afternoon.”
Tony spent the next few hours in a more thoughtful mood than when
he’d arrived at his remote testing range, though he still put the
suit and its latest experimental software upgrades through a thorough
workout. As the sun neared the horizon, Jarvis told him that
Pepper had gone home for the day, though she’d left a stack of
paperwork for him at his house, and Tony rolled his eyes as he
vaporized a dead tree. Hope
springs eternal, huh, Potts? He had much more interesting things to do
just now than sign things.
He was exploring the possibilities of his infrared scanners when Jarvis
mentioned another call. Tony pulled up mid-flight, blinking, and
realized that it was full dark. “Whosit?”
“It is an FBI number,” Jarvis said, and Tony frowned,
wondering why they were calling back.
“Okay, put ‘em on. Hello?”
The voice was not Donovan’s; it was Cross’, breathless and
rushed. “Mr. Stark--it’s not him.”
“What?” For an instant he didn’t understand,
and then--
No.
“The man we had in custody died in surgery. When the
coroner processed the body we found that the fingerprints weren’t
a match. He was a dupe.”
His blood was turning to ice, horribly familiar. Cross was
hurrying on. “Yarbro is still out there, and we can’t
get through to Virginia.”
Tony became aware that the landscape below was passing by at a very
high speed; either his subconscious was as terrified as the rest of
him, or Jarvis was being proactive again. “Get someone there.”
“On their way, but it’s going to take a few
minutes--”
Tony cut the connection with a jerk of his chin. “Jarvis,
get Pepper on the line, I don’t care if you have to hijack every
cell tower between here and Baja.”
“Working,” the AI replied crisply. Tony poured on
every bit of power he could muster, pushing the limits of the
suit’s capabilities and praying desperately that he, that someone
would get there in time.
“I have a connection,” Jarvis said, and the hiss of an open
carrier sounded in Tony’s ears.
“Pepper?
Are you there?”
“Tony--” Her voice was soft.
He rode right over whatever she was going to say. “Pepper,
it was a ringer, it wasn’t Yarbro! Get out of there, get
out now. I’m on my way--”
“Tony.”
It was a hard whisper. “I know.”
“You do?” He blinked, dizzy with sudden hope.
Was she safe already? Were the--
“He’s in my apartment right now,” she continued,
scarcely loud enough to be heard. “I have to--”
With a pop, the connection broke.
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