Fandom:
Iron Man (movieverse)
Rating: PG-13 (may change later)
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.
Many thanks to Cincoflex
and Laura27md, whose advice I appreciate even though I don't always
follow it.
*********
It was past midnight by the time he got home. Tony let the
‘bots strip his armor away and trudged to the garage shower,
weary to the bone and bitterly aware of the fact that no one had called
him to tell him Pepper had been found.
He would have preferred to fly straight back out to the search base
camp, but no one would be looking in the dark, and the long score up
the back of his armor--and the accompanying damage to its
stability--had to be dealt with before he could go out again.
You barely made it home in
one piece and you know it, he told himself as he turned the
water on as hot as he could stand. Gotta do something about the stress points
on the leg pieces...
It had been something of a freak accident--an explosion had smacked him
with a steel girder at just the right angle and force to actually do
more than scratch the paint--but the fact remained that there were
probably several hours of repair work ahead, not to mention
redesign.
The upgrades can wait.
Tony tapped the little touchscreen he’d installed in the shower
and used its virtual keyboard to instruct Jarvis to start
repairs.
At least the mission had been fairly successful. There had been a
minimum of civilian casualties, and none of them children, and there
had even been a couple of adults practical enough to take charge of
their fellow hostages, which saved Tony from having to try to
communicate with them himself or finding someone in authority to handle
them. Jarvis did his best to translate, but dialect and idiom
were always tricky prospects.
When he was clean, Tony toweled off and dressed in a pair of old shorts
and one of the sleeveless tees he kept on hand for such occasions, and
limped upstairs.
The faint snore coming from the couch alerted him to the fact that his
best friend was stretched out on the cushions, sound asleep. Tony
regarded him through the dimness with a mixture of exasperation and
affection, and finally tiptoed over to scoop up the blanket from the
back of the long sofa and drape it over Rhodey’s motionless
form.
He’s got to be almost
as worried as I am.
Pepper was Rhodey’s friend too; Tony always liked to watch them
tease each other and laugh at shared jokes, even when said joke was on
him.
I’m a damned lucky
bastard to have them both.
Tony moved silently away and went to find something to eat.
In the end he had to take a bottle to bed with him to be able to
sleep. Tony sipped slowly, staring blankly at the windows on the
far side of the room, all dark with night.
He hadn’t quite had the heart to wake Rhodey, and anyway Tony
knew that the news he most desired wasn’t there to be
heard. So he drank Scotch and waited for his body to give into
sleep, and wondered bleakly what sort of bed Pepper had out in the
darkness.
If any.
His sleep was uneasy, and Tony searched for her in his dreams as well,
wandering around a forest inexplicably full of people, then returning
to the base camp only to be told that Pepper had returned hours before,
and had just left again. As dreams often went, Tony pursued his
goal but never quite caught up to her, constantly diverted by
distractions and problems.
Rhodey’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake, was actually a
relief. The sky was barely lightening, but Tony hadn’t shut
the lamps off the night before and the room was golden with
light.
“You said you wanted an early start,” Rhodey said as Tony
sat up and scrubbed at his face with both hands. “When did
you get back?”
“I dunno. Two?” Tony yawned.
“Something wrong with my guest rooms?”
Rhodey yawned in turn. “What are you talking
about?”
“You always sleep on the couch.” Tony slid out of bed
and headed for his closet. “I’ve got how many rooms
in this place, and you take over the living room
instead...”
“I was waiting for you to get home,” Rhodey said, looking
unusually scruffy with his need for a shave. “Speaking of
which, I gotta run home and change. Can you stay put until I get
back?”
“Jarvis? How long until repairs are finished?”
“Estimated time to completion is ninety-three minutes,” the
AI replied, and Tony pulled on a shirt and stuck his head out of the
closet.
“There you go. As soon as the suit’s fixed, I’m
out of here.”
Rhodey narrowed his eyes. “I’ll ask later,” he
said. “Breakfast is your problem today.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tony stepped into a fresh pair of jeans
and fastened them up. By the time he left the closet, Rhodey was
gone, and Tony went to find something to make for breakfast.
Fried egg sandwiches were easy enough, and could be eaten while
driving, which meant they were perfect for Rhodey. Tony ate his
on the spot, however, taking bites in between gulps of coffee and
trying to convince his body that it wanted
to be awake.
Pepper...
He left Rhodey’s share of the food in the kitchen and went
downstairs to start working on the upgrades. They would at least
keep his mind occupied until the colonel got back.
The day was pretty much a repeat of the previous one; the searchers
spread out from the base point, moving faster at first as they passed
over ground already covered, then slowing. Progress was slower
due to the wider area to cover.
Tony ranged overhead, letting Jarvis do most of the scanning
work. He was surprised at just how much wildlife there was; the
heat signatures of deer were almost the same as humans, and more than
once he dipped down to investigate, only to have a large tan shape bolt
out of whatever hiding place it had found and bound frantically
away.
There was only a small reassurance in the fact that he’d found no
predators larger than the bobcats.
Late in the afternoon, however, the searchers were recalled over the
radio frequency kept for them. When no reason was given, Tony
frowned at his HUD. “Jarvis? What’s
up?”
“A group of preadolescent campers has been reported missing in
the Sespe Wilderness. All searchers who are not volunteers are
being reassigned to the Sespe effort.”
Fury hardened Tony’s muscles, and he inhaled to curse--and froze
as Pepper appeared in his mind’s eye, hands on her hips and her
most forbidding glare directed straight at him. “Anthony Stark, don’t you dare. They’re children. They need help a lot
more than I do.”
She was just a figment of his imagination, but she was right.
Tony squeezed his eyes shut, said the bad word anyway, and shut off the
thermographic scan.
He gave himself twenty seconds to sulk, and then cleared his
throat. “Back to base, Jarvis.” It was hard to
speak loud enough for the microphone to pick him up.
The AI said nothing, which was a mercy. Tony let the world slide
past beneath him, and felt his heart clench tighter with every
mile.
You chose this.
His conscience--so long muffled, until his eyes had been opened--spoke
sternly. You chose to be a
superhero, and say so in front of the world.
And a superhero, much as he might rage against the thought, was
honor-bound to go help with the new search.
Pepper, I’ll come back,
I promise.
As soon as I can.
The only comfort was the image of her approving smile.
The skunk woke Virginia just before dawn. She wasn’t sure
how, since it didn’t seem to be making any noise, but she opened
her eyes to see the black-and-white shape hesitating at the entrance to
the restroom.
For an instant Virginia held still, all the cautionary tales about
skunks running through her head, but then she sat up slowly. I don’t want to be trapped in here
by that thing.
The skunk sensed her, no
doubt
of it. The creature raised its head, sniffing busily, and she
realized that it must have scented the food she’d eaten for
supper; she’d thrown a candy wrapper in the trash can.
“It’s all gone,” she told the skunk, and stood,
unkinking muscles displeased with the hard floor.
The skunk hunched, eyed her for a moment, and then retreated out the
door without haste. Virginia let out a long breath, relieved at
its decision, and stretched.
By the time she was done using the facilities and filling her water
bottles, it was just light enough outside to distinguish shapes.
She examined her blisters carefully. They’re better this morning, but
I’ll bet they’ll pop right back up after an hour or
two.
Still, there was no helping that. She wished for cotton to
cushion them and pulled her socks back on, lacing up the shoes
tightly. Shrugging into her pack, she exited the restroom
cautiously, but the skunk had apparently left.
Virginia hesitated as she looked towards the road, wondering if she
shouldn’t stay put after all. But it could be days before someone stops
here. At least on the road I have a better chance of finding
someone.
As long as it wasn’t her kidnappers. Well, her stolen
clothes made her look like a hiker; perhaps it would let her go
unnoticed. She opened a packet of candied pineapple and set off
down the road again, nibbling.
The morning rolled slowly away, counted off in steps and rest
breaks. Twice Virginia thought she heard someone, or something,
in the forest bordering the road, but each time when she halted and
listened she could make out nothing. At noon, however, she heard
the unmistakable hum of a car engine.
It was coming from behind her. She turned, peering back up the
curving road, adrenaline making her pulse quicken. The car came
into view quickly, moving at a speed that proved her sense in walking
on the shoulder.
Virginia waved her arms frantically and even found herself shouting,
but the car--an older-model sedan--zoomed past her without even
slowing. She caught a glimpse of the interior, but just enough to
know that there was only the driver. As she watched, still
waving, the vehicle swept around the next curve and was gone.
She stared after it in open-mouthed disbelief. She had been so
focused on finding someone, anyone, that it hadn’t actually
occurred to her that she might be ignored.
“Well, hell.”
Virginia threw up her hands and glared in the direction of the vanished
car. “Just great.”
There was nothing else to do but keep walking. She did, fuming at
the driver, even though she knew her appearance was hardly likely to
inspire confidence.
I’ve been trying to get
out of here for two days, and
they just zipped by like I wasn’t even there...
It was such a small thing, she knew; sooner or later there would be
another car. But it still galled.
It was early afternoon when she reached another gravel turnoff.
Virginia hesitated, then decided she couldn’t afford to miss the
chance that there might be someone at this one. As she trudged
down the short driveway, she caught a glimpse of color through the
trees, and felt her heart rise again.
It was an SUV, bright red, and beyond it were two dome tents and a
clutter of gear. She hurried forward, but as she neared it was
clear that whoever was camping in that spot was absent.
Still-- She
actually patted the SUV as she passed it. This one isn’t abandoned.
The gear bore smears of dirt, but it was the grubbiness of use.
It seemed a little rude to sit at the picnic table that was part of the
campsite--an intrusion into the unknown campers’ space--but there
wasn’t anything else available and she didn’t feel like
sitting on the ground. Virginia put her pack on the bench next to
her and used a handful of water to splash her hot face, then settled in
to wait.
It wasn’t easy. All the exercise notwithstanding, she was
quickly bored, and at the same time she felt antsy, waiting for the
campers--whoever they were--to return.
She knew it was irrational to fear that they too had abandoned their
site, but she couldn’t help the thought. Tony would laugh at you, she
scolded herself.
In her imagination he lay down on the bench opposite, one arm beneath
his head and one leg crossed over the other knee as he stared up at the
trees and sky overhead, smirking. What, you think Bigfoot ate ‘em,
Potts? They’ll be back.
It made her scoff, because if there was one person worse than her at handling boredom
it was Tony Stark. If he were
really here I’d have to hog-tie him to keep him from hot-wiring
the SUV or something equally obnoxious.
Sighing, she turned around so she could lean back against the table,
and looked up herself. The leaves and branches overhead made a
lacy pattern against the bright sky, subtly changing as a high breeze
played tag with the trees. Virginia felt a measure of her
impatience drain away as she watched; the motion was hypnotic.
Her imaginary Tony persisted behind her, comfortable in the outdoors as
he probably would never be in real life, caught in a contemplative
moment. Her eyes followed the leaves, but in her mind he spoke
again, words that she hadn’t put in his mouth.
I miss you, Pepper.
That made her blink and shake her head, and the vision shattered.
Virginia swallowed hard, and told her subconscious it needed to get a
hobby.
She was still watching the leaves when voices reached her ears, the
high-pitched tones of children shouting to each other. She drew
in a breath and straightened, looking around eagerly.
Out of the forest on the opposite side of the campground came two
little girls, running ahead of a pair of adults. Virginia’s
hands met in her lap and, in lieu of a BlackBerry, clasped each other
tightly.
The children spotted her at the same time, but where the younger one
halted, the older girl bounced forward. “Hi! Who are
you? This is our camping spot!”
“Dinah!” her father called, but the girl was too eager to
pay attention, instead halting at the end of the table with a huge
grin.
“Are you camping too? We’ve been hiking all day.”
Virginia put Dinah’s age at about eight. She smiled back at
the girl, feeling her eyes prickle at this unqualified acceptance, the
first friendly human contact she’d had in days.
“I’m kind of camping, yes.”
“Dinah.”
The adults hurried up, the smaller girl in tow, and their stares raked
over Virginia suspiciously. “What have we said about
talking to strangers?” her father scolded.
“You’re right here,”
Dinah argued. “And she looks nice.”
The parents were her own age, Virginia guessed, both slender if not
overly tall. She smiled at them as well. “I’m
sorry to, um, intrude on you. I’m...kind of
lost.”
The woman’s face softened as she took in Virginia’s
appearance, though she didn’t let go of her younger
daughter’s hand. “You look lost,” she agreed,
cautiously polite.
The man stepped forward to lay hands on Dinah’s shoulders.
“Are you out here alone?” His expression was mingled
suspicion and concern.
Virginia glanced down at her hands, grubby and chapped; she’d run
out of lotion the day before. “Yes. I--I was
wondering if I could just borrow your cellphone to make a
call.”
“We didn’t bring our phones,” the woman said, smiling
a little. “When we go on vacation we want to really get
away from it all.”
“We’ve been here five
days,” Dinah informed her proudly.
“Today’s our last day, though.”
“You’re going home tomorrow?” Virginia asked her
absently, struggling to mask her disappointment at the lack of
communications equipment.
“Tonight, actually,” the man said, letting go of Dinah and
ruffling her hair fondly. He glanced at his wife, who tightened
her lips thoughtfully and then raised both brows. “How long
have you been lost?”
“Three days,” Virginia sighed. Looking at their
expressions, still slightly wary, she made the instinctive decision to
keep the details of her circumstances to herself. Her abduction
might have made the news, depending on Happy and how Tony had reacted,
but these people clearly knew nothing of it, and years of honing her
ability to read people told her that claiming to be Iron Man’s
kidnapped personal assistant would not go over well. “I got
lost hiking.” Which was fairly close to the truth, after
all.
“Well, we’re about to start packing up.” The
man glanced at his wife again. “We could drop you off at
the ranger station on the way out.”
Virginia’s fingers trembled in their tight knot, and she had to
blink. “That would be...great. Thank
you.”
The man smiled suddenly, and held out a hand. “I’m
Mike, and this is my wife Trish.” Virginia met his hand
with hers; he had a firm grip but not a hard one.
“You’ve met Dinah, and the little one is
Helena.”
“I’m Virginia.” She shook hands with an eager Dinah,
relief making her dizzy. “And I’m very glad to meet
you all.”
She tried to help the Franklins break camp, but Trish gave her a
sharply assessing look and then made her sit down again. She dug
a bottle of sports drink out of their supply box and set it in front of
Virginia. “Here. You’re looking a little
peaked.”
Relief had left Virginia feeling drained, and she didn’t
argue. She sipped the warm liquid slowly and watched the family
as they carried bundles and bags to the SUV and took the tents
apart. Even little Helena, who was--as she’d told Virginia
shyly--four, trotted back and forth from site to truck, handing items
up to her mother.
Dinah and her father wrestled the tents into submission, Dinah
chattering non-stop. Virginia had to smile at the girl’s
energy, undimmed even after a morning out on the trails. I’ll bet Tony was a lot like that
as a kid.
She wondered briefly what his parents had been like at home, and how
they’d coped. She hadn’t met Tony until several years
after their deaths, and he rarely spoke of them, so she knew little
beyond what was public history.
But she got the feeling that his life with them had been happy, though
if pressed she could not have articulated how
she knew. Maybe it was just the sense of a kindred spirit, for
while Virginia had no family any longer, she’d grown up secure in
the knowledge that she was loved.
“Where are you from?” she asked Mike as he paused for a
break and a drink himself.
He dropped onto the seat opposite. “Santa Monica. We
try to get up here at least a couple of times a year.” Mike
took a swig of water. “You?”
“Malibu,” Virginia said. “I work as a personal
assistant.”
Mike nodded thoughtfully. “The CEO where I work has one of
those. He’s got twice the brains of his boss and he needs
all of ‘em.”
She laughed. “I have days like that, yeah. Where do
you work?”
She led him to ramble on a bit, avoiding the question of her own
employer, and before long Mike was on his feet again, taking apart tent
poles. Trish climbed out of the SUV and began handing out
sandwiches, managing to include Virginia in her distribution without
making it seem as though she were the uninvited guest that she
was.
The sandwiches were nothing spectacular--peanut butter and jam on store
bread--but to Virginia they tasted wonderful.
Real food. I’m
never going to insult Skippy again.
When the last piece was loaded, Mike strapped Helena into her booster
seat and climbed in after her, with Dinah on the other side, leaving
the front passenger seat for Virginia. The cushion felt oddly
soft after days of dirt and rocks--and tile--but she wasn’t about
to protest.
As the SUV pulled out of its spot, Trish glanced over at
Virginia. “The ranger station’s at the gate to the
park--about five miles down.”
Virginia hesitated, then spoke. “I’d like to stop
there and make that call, but afterward would--would it be possible for
me to ride back to Santa Monica with you? I can pay for
gas,” she added hastily. Santa Monica was much closer to
home than-- Virginia realized she still didn’t actually
know where she was.
Trish frowned. “What about your stuff? I’m sure
the rangers can help you find it.”
Virginia bit her lip. “At this point all I want to do is
get home,” she confessed, and Trish smiled sympathetically.
“I can understand that.” She glanced in the rear-view
mirror, and apparently her husband consented, because she nodded.
“Sure, we can do that. Is there someone who can give you a
lift to Malibu?”
“Yeah.” Virginia let out a breath, relieved
again. “Thank you.”
Trish reached over and patted her arm. “It’s not a
problem.”
Mike activated the overhead DVD system, and the soundtrack to My Neighbor Totoro
filled the truck, enthralling the children. Virginia leaned her
head back against the headrest, and whether it was exhaustion, days of
stress, or simply relief, fell asleep.
Normally Tony would have enjoyed the search and rescue operation.
Good press for Iron Man was always valuable, and there was no denying
he got a kick out of actually being
a hero, whether in a war-torn country or in his own proverbial
backyard.
And, unlike the past frustrating days, the Sespe search proved
ridiculously easy. Of course, it was simpler to look for a group
of nine people rather than one alone, but it still took so little time
that Tony told Jarvis to start a file about converting the suit’s
thermographic sensors for use by aircraft. The first group of
heat signatures Tony zeroed in on was a bunch of campers who were not
lost, though they were quite forgiving of the startlement once he
explained why he’d fallen out of the sky in their midst.
The second group proved to be a flock of vultures working on a deer
carcass, and Tony didn’t even have to land. The third
signature was the jackpot--seven small hikers and two counselors, one
with a broken leg--and it almost made Tony smile to see the glee in the
kids’ eyes when he appeared.
After that it was a simple matter to alert the other searchers and
guide a couple of rescue helicopters in to a nearby clearing.
Tony carried the injured man to the aircraft himself, tossing off
vaguely polite replies to everyone’s exclamations and
questions. But it was late in the day before he was able to leave
the situation behind.
The base point for Pepper’s search still had a few people
around--a couple of reporters, and a few people who had volunteered
support services for the searchers who were still out looking. It
had both surprised and touched Tony when quite a number of Stark
Industries employees had turned up to help with the search. Even
Happy had put in an appearance.
Donovan’s team was still on the job as well, but Tony
didn’t see any of them as he came in for a landing. He
flipped up his visor, heading for the main building. He wanted to
talk to Rhodey before he went back out, and Jarvis had told him that
the colonel was currently at the base point.
“Anything?” Tony asked as Rhodey loped out.
Rhodes shook his head. His mouth was set in a grim line.
“It’s like she just vanished into thin air. I
actually heard someone talking about alien abduction, if you can
believe it.”
Tony snorted bitterly. “Doesn’t surprise
me.”
Rhodey sighed. “Maybe she made it to the road after all,
and hitched out of here.”
“She would have called,” Tony countered. “You
know she would have called as soon as she could.”
Rhodey winced, and Tony knew what he was thinking. What if she caught a ride with the wrong
person?
He shoved the thought away. “She’s alive,
Rhodey. I know she is.”
“I want to believe that too, but Tony...” Rhodey ran
a hand over his scalp. “You have to start preparing
yourself for the possibility that she won’t be
found.”
The surge of anger was huge, and Tony crushed it back, raising his chin
and meeting his old friend’s eyes directly. “I was
gone three months,
Rhodey. She didn’t give up on me, and neither did you.” He glared.
“Don’t you turn your back on her.”
Rhodey raised both hands. “I’m not gonna, Tony.
Truly.” His gaze was serious, and Tony knew he was telling
the truth. “But not everybody is going to see it that
way. We’re not going to be able to keep this many searchers
for long.”
Tony let out a long breath, the fury ebbing somewhat.
“Yeah, I suppose so. I’ll look into hiring some
professional trackers tomorrow.”
“You do that.” Rhodey grimaced. “In the
meantime, it’s getting dark and they’re all headed back
in.”
Tony glanced up at the sky, which was still a clear blue despite the
shadows starting to gather under the trees. “I’m
going to make one more pass.”
If Rhodey argued, Tony didn’t hear it. He snapped down his
faceplate and walked far enough away to put Rhodey outside blast range,
and took off.
He made three. The dogs had found no trace of Pepper anywhere
along the road either, and Tony didn’t think she’d doubled
back to it. No, she’d gotten as far as the stream, and
vanished.
Tony wondered, not for the first time, whether the abductors had
managed to shoot Pepper after all. Her body could have been
carried downstream--
But then he reminded himself that the searchers had long since checked
the stream’s banks for a corpse. The watercourse was too
shallow to truly hide a body, or to float one for long without its
getting hung up somewhere.
She’s alive. She
has to be.
Finally it was Jarvis who made him quit, scolding him austerely until
he returned home. Rhodey followed him faithfully in his truck,
but Tony waved him off when they reached the mansion. “Go
home,” he told his friend over the cell connection.
“Sleep in your own bed instead of on my couch. I’ll
see you tomorrow.”
“I’m too tired to argue,” Rhodey admitted.
“All right, but no taking off before I get here, you hear
me?”
“Do my best,” Tony answered, carefully not promising
anything. He bid goodbye and flew down into his workshop to let
his robots peel him free.
His head ached with fatigue and strain, and the hot shower did nothing
to alleviate it. Tony went upstairs, threw himself down on his
bed, and tried to sleep.
But Pepper intruded, filling his head with memories. From the
first time he’d seen her dimpling smile to the last argument
they’d had, she was all he could think of.
He recreated all the most precious moments--her hand on his forehead
when he’d last run a fever, her soft-voiced prodding when he was
late for something, her trembling smile when he’d walked off the
plane back from captivity. Pepper asleep in the corner of the
limo, worn out by a long day; Pepper in his kitchen, dancing to the
music pouring out of the speakers and unaware that he was watching;
Pepper laughing as she chatted with an SI board member old enough to be
her father.
Pepper leaning into him, just inches away, a kiss hovering between them
that he knew somehow would be sweeter than any he’d ever
tasted.
Sleep would not come.
Finally Tony sat up, contemplating the bottle of Scotch, still
half-full where it sat on his bedside table.
That won’t help.
The idea that appeared was ridiculous, far too similar to one of his
old stunts, something sure to annoy if anyone found out about it.
But Tony was beyond caring. Methodically he rose and dressed, and
returned to the garage.
The keys were right where he’d left them, tossed into a tangle of
wire on one of his workbenches. Tony plucked them free.
“Jarvis,” he said to the air, “route any calls
concerning Pepper to my cell. Block the rest of
‘em.”
“Will do, sir,” the AI replied quietly as Tony swung
himself into the Tesla.
The drive was short. Tony parked in the garage--Jarvis had to
beep the gate open for him--and rode up the elevator to the sixth
floor. The hall beyond was cool and well-carpeted, even quiet,
but he was in no mood to appreciate that. Instead, he paced down
to the door numbered 614, and unlocked it.
He’d been to Pepper’s apartment once, during his last
stalker scare; he’d insisted on seeing it so he could design a
better security system. The upside to that was that Tony knew the
master code to bypass the alarm, and did so, closing and locking her
door behind him.
The hallway was lit, but the rooms beyond were dark; the air was a
little stale, undisturbed for too long, but it still carried a hint of
her scent, sweet and enticing. Tony walked slowly down the hall,
extending his senses to catch every trace of her.
He didn’t bother with the light in her bedroom. Tony toed
off his sneakers and kicked them aside, then stretched out on the
neatly made bed. The comforter was cool at first touch but
quickly warmed against his skin, and Tony scrabbled at its top edge
until he had pulled it far enough back to work a pillow free.
The pillow definitely smelled of Pepper, a rich and drowsy
perfume. Tony tucked it under his head and lay still, curled on
his side.
The tears that wetted the cotton were silent, and he was asleep before
they dried.
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