Fic: Sentinel, part IV (Iron Man)
This one tried to kick my ass. Thanks to
ithildyn for taking a look and for encouragement and to
besyd for vital help in a couple of key places. And to everyone who discussed the legal side of Stark Industries with me a few days ago.
Previously...
Sentinel
4.
"So which one is it?" Tony spoke up as Happy pulled the limo onto the Pacific Coast Highway, heading towards the city.
"Which one is what?" Pepper smoothed her skirt over her thighs and glanced up to catch Tony's attention sliding away from her hands.
"Briggs didn't get his information on the Pentagon lawsuit on his own. Which means someone on the board leaked it," he said to his window.
Outside dusk was beginning the slow fade to night. Tony's profile was briefly outlined in flickering light as a car zipped past them, weaving through the lanes of traffic. Pepper forced herself to face forwards before he noticed her eyes on him.
"Might not have come from the board," she pointed out. "There are plenty of other players with interests at stake."
Tony grimaced and fell back into silence.
Pepper suppressed an urge to bat his hands away from his throat as he fiddled with his tie for the tenth time in the fifteen minutes since Happy had picked them up. He'd already thumbed free the top button of what had started the evening as a smartly pressed shirt and now his tie was pulled askew, the line of the knot ruined. The suit's casual disarray and the fact that he hadn't bothered with a haircut since shortly after he'd returned from Afghanistan lent him a rakish edge that might have been at home on the cover of GQ but was wholly inappropriate for their destination.
If it had been any other occasion Pepper would have sent a polite apology on Tony's behalf without bothering to run it by him first, but they were headed to a party thrown by Brett Maguire, the most recent addition to Stark Industry's board, a man with deep contacts in the energy industry - a man they needed on their side, quickly. Despite Tony's public admittance to owning (and even worse, using) a flying suit of armor, the injunction Obadiah had filed against him had been thrown out for lack of evidence; even so, the board remained restless and doubts about his competence as CEO were running high. Tony might own controlling interest in the company but there were ways around that if the board got motivated enough - and a fifty-six point drop in the stock with no sign of a rebound any time soon was a pretty strong motivator.
The frenzy over Tony's kamikaze unmasking of himself as Iron Man had only occupied the news cycle for a week before anyone started digging deeper. The Wall Street Journal had published a scathing editorial that morning, tolling the death knell for Stark Industries and tearing into Tony as a traitor to boot. And now reporters like Lester Briggs - the L.A. Times' veteran business correspondent - were pursuing the story with the gusto of jackals circling a fresh kill.
To top it off the first of the lawsuits Pepper had been anticipating since Tony announced the company would immediately cease weapons production had started to gain traction. So far he'd managed to side step the issue but it wasn't going away. No matter what Tony's feelings were on the morality of the matter, Stark Industries had multi-billion dollar contracts hanging in the balance - not only with the U.S. Department of Defense but with a handful of European Union member states as well as private entities such as Halliburton. Legally they were obligated to deliver on those contracts, the CEO's change of heart be damned.
She wasn't sure how much of this had sunk in yet, and despite toeing the agreed upon line the tone of his responses to the interview that afternoon hadn't reassured her any. He'd been reciting talking points, and Briggs was astute enough to realize it. Which wasn't to say that Tony hadn't been at his best - charming, quick witted, casually deflecting Briggs from areas he didn't want to discuss and mostly succeeding. She'd gone into the session gripped by the very real fear that one of Briggs' questions would set Tony off on a wild tangent. She'd hovered on the periphery ready to step in and cut things off if need be, but for once he'd stuck to the proverbial cards.
Too bad it wasn't going to be enough.
"Who do we know at the Times?"
Pepper stared at him. "We don't even know what Briggs is going to write." She didn't add that there was a snowball's chance in hell the Times was going to acquiesce to a polite request that the story be killed. "And our contact at the Times is… well, he was Obadiah's contact."
A muscle jumped along Tony's jaw and his fingers tapped out a staccato rhythm on the armrest. Pepper caught Happy watching them from the rear-view mirror, expressionless as ever, and straightened in her seat.
After Briggs had departed Tony's blithe facade folded in on itself and he'd retreated to his shop until Pepper prodded him to get dressed for the party. The importance of keeping the board happy had apparently started to penetrate, because he hadn't tried to weasel out of it, just emerged an hour later freshly showered and dressed in a sharply tailored suit and an incongruous pair of designer sunglasses that Pepper had immediately vowed to snatch at the first opportunity.
By then Pepper had abandoned her research on Ibrahim Yinsen and changed from her business suit into a conservative black sheath, a choker of freshwater pearls that had belonged to her grandmother her only concession to the inevitable glamour of a party in Los Angeles. She'd caught Tony staring at the small of her throat as they waited for Happy but to her utter relief he'd kept his thoughts to himself. For the time being, anyway. But his glances were lingering a little too long these days, when she least expected it, and it never failed to leave her flustered.
"Let Maguire do the talking. He'll want to bend your ear about his clean coal project and--"
"Potts, this isn't my first shindig," Tony groused. "Clean coal. And here I thought I was the walking oxymoron."
"I know it isn't, but--" She stopped herself before she could complete the thought. Obadiah had done most of the back room glad-handing, bringing Tony in to charm the marks with his natural flair for showmanship after the deals were all but squared away.
Tony's eyes narrowed. "You wanna script the small talk out for me beforehand?" He tugged at his sleeve, exposing a good length of forearm and wrinkling his cuff. "Here. Got a pen? Give me the Cliff's Notes."
"Don't be ridiculous," she started, but she was cut off by a sound up ahead of them on the road, ear-splittingly loud, like crystal hitting concrete. And then the limo jerked, and Happy -- stoic Happy -- let out a curse, yanking at the wheel, and there was a squeal of metal grinding on metal and she was thrown against her seatbelt with enough force to choke the breath from her throat, and just as her hands flew up to catch herself she slammed backwards against the seat, her head snapping back into the leather.
When the car came to rest she just sat there, gasping, staring through the windshield at the crumpled remains of what might have been a Honda Civic smashed against the guard rail two car lengths in front of them, only it was hard to tell for sure because part of the roof had peeled back like a sardine can and the rest was covered in smoke.
"Jesus," she heard Happy breathe. "Jesus, you alright back there?" He turned to them, wedging himself into the window between the front and the back, his face the color of oatmeal.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," she said, patting the divider as if to reassure him. She caught herself and withdrew her hand. Her eyes felt stretched too wide. "What happened?"
Happy locked onto her voice and his face crumpled a little in relief. "I think we missed it. I think --"
She didn't hear the rest. Illuminated by the dirty yellow of streetlights, witnesses were already climbing out of the cars stopped ahead of the limo, ringing the periphery of the wreck wearing the dazed expressions of people awakened from deep sleep with a douse of cold water. She could see the cool glow of cell phones and realized with a start that it hadn't even occurred to her to report the accident.
"Mr. Stark."
There was a dull ache when she swallowed. Pepper ran a shaking hand over her throat, felt shallow welts where the pearls had been squashed between her skin and the seat belt.
"Mr. Stark--"
She blinked and turned and found Tony still flattened against his seat, one hand splayed across his window and the other braced against the leather near his thigh. He hadn't said a word since the limo screeched to a stop.
"You okay? Mr. Stark, Jesus, talk to me."
His eyes were-- Pepper tried to swallow again, her throat constricting. "Tony," she ventured, reaching out for the hand between them. He pulled away from her touch but it felt like reflex. Then his head came around and she couldn't read him at all.
"Yeah," he said. He turned back to stare at the hand pressed to the window and then lifted it away slowly as if he wasn't sure the glass would hold.
"Tony," she repeated, her hand hovering over his shoulder, not quite touching. "Look at me--"
"What the fuck was that, Hogan?" he growled. And then he lurched forward against the strap of his seatbelt, gone hard and inarticulate with rage, scrabbling at the belt's catch as if he was about to launch himself at Happy. "Were you trying to fucking get us all killed? Is that it?"
Happy reared back, face blank with shock.
"It wasn't his fault. It was an accident, Tony--" Pepper grabbed for him and he turned on her with a snarl, the belt giving way, his hands in tight fists. Before she could think, before she could get out another word, he had thrown open his door and was gone.
"Stay here," Happy snapped, and then he vanished too.
Like hell. Pepper fumbled with the latch to her own belt and then stepped out of the car into the night air, into a chaos of smoke and headlights and idling engines and distant sirens. And there was Tony up ahead, stalking away from Happy, who shouted something that was drowned out by the traffic noise before it could reach her. Pepper rushed to catch up, picking her way through a carpet of shattered glass and shards of plastic, and Happy grabbed hold of her elbow as she tried to pass him.
"Where's he going?" Pepper demanded.
"Miss Potts, please-"
But it was clear where Tony was headed. He'd shed his suit jacket and was making a beeline for the wreckage.
"Tony!" she shouted, yanking her arm out of Happy's grasp. She scooped up his jacket on auto-pilot, trying to reach him before he did something incredibly stupid like-dammit. He'd disappeared into the smoke. Pepper sprinted forward and then skidded to a halt at the heat coming off of the crumpled Civic. And Tony was backing away too - he careened into her full force and she grabbed his arm to keep her balance.
"Tony!" Smoke stung her eyes, burned her throat. "What are you doing?"
His forehead and hands were already smudged with black. He stared at her for a beat as if he had no idea who she was. Then he shook free of her grip and his voice when it came was hoarse and scathing. "There are people in there. In the car. What do you think I'm doing?"
And there were. She could just see a bloodied shoulder through the gaps in the twisted metal, and that bit of blue, that was someone's baseball-capped head. "Oh my God!" she gasped. Were they moving? She tore her gaze away and turned back to Tony. Distant memories of a Stark Industries-sponsored first aid course echoed at the back of her mind. He didn't know - he didn't know anything about this, what if moving them made it worse? But the fire-- "Tony, God, just think about this. You're not in the armor. You can't do it by yourself." Her eyes darted back to the horror of the burning wreckage. "The rescue crews are almost here, just--"
"Wait for them?" Tony laughed. Something feral roiled just under the surface of those words, something she didn't recognize at all. "Either help me or get out of my way." With that he circled away from her, eying the wreck with a focused intensity, as if the obstruction the burning car posed to his goal of freeing the people trapped inside could be overcome if he could only locate the right leverage point.
Her stomach twisting, Pepper stepped back, watching him, giving him room, ready to help any way she could. But the sirens were deafening now and before she knew what was happening she was shoved aside by a swarm of firefighters. Happy plucked her out of the morass, draping her shawl over her shoulders, and they huddled together near the limo's front grill as the rescue crew set upon the wreckage.
"You see him?" Happy rose up on the balls of his feet and then sank back down. "I don't see him anymore."
"I've got to call the Maguires, let them know-" But her phone was in her purse, and her purse was still on the floor of the car where it had tumbled during the accident. Happy nudged her shoulder before she could make a move to retrieve it, because there was Tony, pushing his way through the gathered crowd, his face bleached as white as his shirt in the headlights.
"What happened?" Happy asked. Tony ignored him, heading towards the back of the car.
"Your hand," Pepper managed.
"Let's go," Tony barked over one shoulder.
Happy caught her eye. She saw panic reflected back at her and knowing it was shared didn't make it any easier to swallow. Tony had already settled into his seat, gazing out at them through the windshield as casually as if he was waiting for a ride to a business luncheon. Happy shook his head and slid into the driver's seat and Pepper climbed in next to Tony, automatically reaching for her purse, shuffling through it for her phone.
Tony's left hand was cradled in his lap, bandaged to the wrist, the gauze wrapped tight around his palm and knuckles. He noticed her staring and frowned.
"Before you get any ideas, the paramedics checked it out."
"What about-"
"The people in the car?" He shrugged. "Dead."
"Both of them? What happened?"
"Hogan," Tony said, as if she hadn't spoken. "Let's go."
"Back to the house, Happy. I'll call Maguire and-"
"No," Tony cut her off. "You said this was important."
"Tony, we just--"
"Hogan, take us to L.A. After you drop me off you can bring Miss Potts home."
"I'm not going home. But we don't have to do this." Pepper turned on him, ready to shake him, just shake him until he looked her in the eye again and told her what the hell was going on. “You can't go to the party like this. You smell like... Tony, you're a mess.”
He wasn't listening to her anymore. She wasn't even sure he knew she was there.
"Hogan, who pays your salary?"
Happy turned and sent her an apologetic half-shrug. "L.A. it is," he said.
She could argue the point, but it was a losing proposition. Pepper handed Tony his jacket and then sank into her seat, closing her eyes. Tried to forget the alien bitterness of his laugh when she'd begged him to wait for help to arrive, tried to stop seeing those faceless people trapped in the twisted metal remains of their car.
By the time Happy had inched free of the snarled traffic and the limo was hurtling towards Brett Maguire's L.A. residence she'd nearly convinced herself that erasing the last half-hour from her memory might just be possible. But then her shoulder brushed Tony's, and she felt how rigidly he was holding himself despite his outward air of nonchalance, and she was forced to admit that she didn't have nearly enough denial in her to forget anything that had happened tonight. And she doubted she ever would.
ithildyn for taking a look and for encouragement and to
besyd for vital help in a couple of key places. And to everyone who discussed the legal side of Stark Industries with me a few days ago.
Previously...
Sentinel
4.
"So which one is it?" Tony spoke up as Happy pulled the limo onto the Pacific Coast Highway, heading towards the city.
"Which one is what?" Pepper smoothed her skirt over her thighs and glanced up to catch Tony's attention sliding away from her hands.
"Briggs didn't get his information on the Pentagon lawsuit on his own. Which means someone on the board leaked it," he said to his window.
Outside dusk was beginning the slow fade to night. Tony's profile was briefly outlined in flickering light as a car zipped past them, weaving through the lanes of traffic. Pepper forced herself to face forwards before he noticed her eyes on him.
"Might not have come from the board," she pointed out. "There are plenty of other players with interests at stake."
Tony grimaced and fell back into silence.
Pepper suppressed an urge to bat his hands away from his throat as he fiddled with his tie for the tenth time in the fifteen minutes since Happy had picked them up. He'd already thumbed free the top button of what had started the evening as a smartly pressed shirt and now his tie was pulled askew, the line of the knot ruined. The suit's casual disarray and the fact that he hadn't bothered with a haircut since shortly after he'd returned from Afghanistan lent him a rakish edge that might have been at home on the cover of GQ but was wholly inappropriate for their destination.
If it had been any other occasion Pepper would have sent a polite apology on Tony's behalf without bothering to run it by him first, but they were headed to a party thrown by Brett Maguire, the most recent addition to Stark Industry's board, a man with deep contacts in the energy industry - a man they needed on their side, quickly. Despite Tony's public admittance to owning (and even worse, using) a flying suit of armor, the injunction Obadiah had filed against him had been thrown out for lack of evidence; even so, the board remained restless and doubts about his competence as CEO were running high. Tony might own controlling interest in the company but there were ways around that if the board got motivated enough - and a fifty-six point drop in the stock with no sign of a rebound any time soon was a pretty strong motivator.
The frenzy over Tony's kamikaze unmasking of himself as Iron Man had only occupied the news cycle for a week before anyone started digging deeper. The Wall Street Journal had published a scathing editorial that morning, tolling the death knell for Stark Industries and tearing into Tony as a traitor to boot. And now reporters like Lester Briggs - the L.A. Times' veteran business correspondent - were pursuing the story with the gusto of jackals circling a fresh kill.
To top it off the first of the lawsuits Pepper had been anticipating since Tony announced the company would immediately cease weapons production had started to gain traction. So far he'd managed to side step the issue but it wasn't going away. No matter what Tony's feelings were on the morality of the matter, Stark Industries had multi-billion dollar contracts hanging in the balance - not only with the U.S. Department of Defense but with a handful of European Union member states as well as private entities such as Halliburton. Legally they were obligated to deliver on those contracts, the CEO's change of heart be damned.
She wasn't sure how much of this had sunk in yet, and despite toeing the agreed upon line the tone of his responses to the interview that afternoon hadn't reassured her any. He'd been reciting talking points, and Briggs was astute enough to realize it. Which wasn't to say that Tony hadn't been at his best - charming, quick witted, casually deflecting Briggs from areas he didn't want to discuss and mostly succeeding. She'd gone into the session gripped by the very real fear that one of Briggs' questions would set Tony off on a wild tangent. She'd hovered on the periphery ready to step in and cut things off if need be, but for once he'd stuck to the proverbial cards.
Too bad it wasn't going to be enough.
"Who do we know at the Times?"
Pepper stared at him. "We don't even know what Briggs is going to write." She didn't add that there was a snowball's chance in hell the Times was going to acquiesce to a polite request that the story be killed. "And our contact at the Times is… well, he was Obadiah's contact."
A muscle jumped along Tony's jaw and his fingers tapped out a staccato rhythm on the armrest. Pepper caught Happy watching them from the rear-view mirror, expressionless as ever, and straightened in her seat.
After Briggs had departed Tony's blithe facade folded in on itself and he'd retreated to his shop until Pepper prodded him to get dressed for the party. The importance of keeping the board happy had apparently started to penetrate, because he hadn't tried to weasel out of it, just emerged an hour later freshly showered and dressed in a sharply tailored suit and an incongruous pair of designer sunglasses that Pepper had immediately vowed to snatch at the first opportunity.
By then Pepper had abandoned her research on Ibrahim Yinsen and changed from her business suit into a conservative black sheath, a choker of freshwater pearls that had belonged to her grandmother her only concession to the inevitable glamour of a party in Los Angeles. She'd caught Tony staring at the small of her throat as they waited for Happy but to her utter relief he'd kept his thoughts to himself. For the time being, anyway. But his glances were lingering a little too long these days, when she least expected it, and it never failed to leave her flustered.
"Let Maguire do the talking. He'll want to bend your ear about his clean coal project and--"
"Potts, this isn't my first shindig," Tony groused. "Clean coal. And here I thought I was the walking oxymoron."
"I know it isn't, but--" She stopped herself before she could complete the thought. Obadiah had done most of the back room glad-handing, bringing Tony in to charm the marks with his natural flair for showmanship after the deals were all but squared away.
Tony's eyes narrowed. "You wanna script the small talk out for me beforehand?" He tugged at his sleeve, exposing a good length of forearm and wrinkling his cuff. "Here. Got a pen? Give me the Cliff's Notes."
"Don't be ridiculous," she started, but she was cut off by a sound up ahead of them on the road, ear-splittingly loud, like crystal hitting concrete. And then the limo jerked, and Happy -- stoic Happy -- let out a curse, yanking at the wheel, and there was a squeal of metal grinding on metal and she was thrown against her seatbelt with enough force to choke the breath from her throat, and just as her hands flew up to catch herself she slammed backwards against the seat, her head snapping back into the leather.
When the car came to rest she just sat there, gasping, staring through the windshield at the crumpled remains of what might have been a Honda Civic smashed against the guard rail two car lengths in front of them, only it was hard to tell for sure because part of the roof had peeled back like a sardine can and the rest was covered in smoke.
"Jesus," she heard Happy breathe. "Jesus, you alright back there?" He turned to them, wedging himself into the window between the front and the back, his face the color of oatmeal.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," she said, patting the divider as if to reassure him. She caught herself and withdrew her hand. Her eyes felt stretched too wide. "What happened?"
Happy locked onto her voice and his face crumpled a little in relief. "I think we missed it. I think --"
She didn't hear the rest. Illuminated by the dirty yellow of streetlights, witnesses were already climbing out of the cars stopped ahead of the limo, ringing the periphery of the wreck wearing the dazed expressions of people awakened from deep sleep with a douse of cold water. She could see the cool glow of cell phones and realized with a start that it hadn't even occurred to her to report the accident.
"Mr. Stark."
There was a dull ache when she swallowed. Pepper ran a shaking hand over her throat, felt shallow welts where the pearls had been squashed between her skin and the seat belt.
"Mr. Stark--"
She blinked and turned and found Tony still flattened against his seat, one hand splayed across his window and the other braced against the leather near his thigh. He hadn't said a word since the limo screeched to a stop.
"You okay? Mr. Stark, Jesus, talk to me."
His eyes were-- Pepper tried to swallow again, her throat constricting. "Tony," she ventured, reaching out for the hand between them. He pulled away from her touch but it felt like reflex. Then his head came around and she couldn't read him at all.
"Yeah," he said. He turned back to stare at the hand pressed to the window and then lifted it away slowly as if he wasn't sure the glass would hold.
"Tony," she repeated, her hand hovering over his shoulder, not quite touching. "Look at me--"
"What the fuck was that, Hogan?" he growled. And then he lurched forward against the strap of his seatbelt, gone hard and inarticulate with rage, scrabbling at the belt's catch as if he was about to launch himself at Happy. "Were you trying to fucking get us all killed? Is that it?"
Happy reared back, face blank with shock.
"It wasn't his fault. It was an accident, Tony--" Pepper grabbed for him and he turned on her with a snarl, the belt giving way, his hands in tight fists. Before she could think, before she could get out another word, he had thrown open his door and was gone.
"Stay here," Happy snapped, and then he vanished too.
Like hell. Pepper fumbled with the latch to her own belt and then stepped out of the car into the night air, into a chaos of smoke and headlights and idling engines and distant sirens. And there was Tony up ahead, stalking away from Happy, who shouted something that was drowned out by the traffic noise before it could reach her. Pepper rushed to catch up, picking her way through a carpet of shattered glass and shards of plastic, and Happy grabbed hold of her elbow as she tried to pass him.
"Where's he going?" Pepper demanded.
"Miss Potts, please-"
But it was clear where Tony was headed. He'd shed his suit jacket and was making a beeline for the wreckage.
"Tony!" she shouted, yanking her arm out of Happy's grasp. She scooped up his jacket on auto-pilot, trying to reach him before he did something incredibly stupid like-dammit. He'd disappeared into the smoke. Pepper sprinted forward and then skidded to a halt at the heat coming off of the crumpled Civic. And Tony was backing away too - he careened into her full force and she grabbed his arm to keep her balance.
"Tony!" Smoke stung her eyes, burned her throat. "What are you doing?"
His forehead and hands were already smudged with black. He stared at her for a beat as if he had no idea who she was. Then he shook free of her grip and his voice when it came was hoarse and scathing. "There are people in there. In the car. What do you think I'm doing?"
And there were. She could just see a bloodied shoulder through the gaps in the twisted metal, and that bit of blue, that was someone's baseball-capped head. "Oh my God!" she gasped. Were they moving? She tore her gaze away and turned back to Tony. Distant memories of a Stark Industries-sponsored first aid course echoed at the back of her mind. He didn't know - he didn't know anything about this, what if moving them made it worse? But the fire-- "Tony, God, just think about this. You're not in the armor. You can't do it by yourself." Her eyes darted back to the horror of the burning wreckage. "The rescue crews are almost here, just--"
"Wait for them?" Tony laughed. Something feral roiled just under the surface of those words, something she didn't recognize at all. "Either help me or get out of my way." With that he circled away from her, eying the wreck with a focused intensity, as if the obstruction the burning car posed to his goal of freeing the people trapped inside could be overcome if he could only locate the right leverage point.
Her stomach twisting, Pepper stepped back, watching him, giving him room, ready to help any way she could. But the sirens were deafening now and before she knew what was happening she was shoved aside by a swarm of firefighters. Happy plucked her out of the morass, draping her shawl over her shoulders, and they huddled together near the limo's front grill as the rescue crew set upon the wreckage.
"You see him?" Happy rose up on the balls of his feet and then sank back down. "I don't see him anymore."
"I've got to call the Maguires, let them know-" But her phone was in her purse, and her purse was still on the floor of the car where it had tumbled during the accident. Happy nudged her shoulder before she could make a move to retrieve it, because there was Tony, pushing his way through the gathered crowd, his face bleached as white as his shirt in the headlights.
"What happened?" Happy asked. Tony ignored him, heading towards the back of the car.
"Your hand," Pepper managed.
"Let's go," Tony barked over one shoulder.
Happy caught her eye. She saw panic reflected back at her and knowing it was shared didn't make it any easier to swallow. Tony had already settled into his seat, gazing out at them through the windshield as casually as if he was waiting for a ride to a business luncheon. Happy shook his head and slid into the driver's seat and Pepper climbed in next to Tony, automatically reaching for her purse, shuffling through it for her phone.
Tony's left hand was cradled in his lap, bandaged to the wrist, the gauze wrapped tight around his palm and knuckles. He noticed her staring and frowned.
"Before you get any ideas, the paramedics checked it out."
"What about-"
"The people in the car?" He shrugged. "Dead."
"Both of them? What happened?"
"Hogan," Tony said, as if she hadn't spoken. "Let's go."
"Back to the house, Happy. I'll call Maguire and-"
"No," Tony cut her off. "You said this was important."
"Tony, we just--"
"Hogan, take us to L.A. After you drop me off you can bring Miss Potts home."
"I'm not going home. But we don't have to do this." Pepper turned on him, ready to shake him, just shake him until he looked her in the eye again and told her what the hell was going on. “You can't go to the party like this. You smell like... Tony, you're a mess.”
He wasn't listening to her anymore. She wasn't even sure he knew she was there.
"Hogan, who pays your salary?"
Happy turned and sent her an apologetic half-shrug. "L.A. it is," he said.
She could argue the point, but it was a losing proposition. Pepper handed Tony his jacket and then sank into her seat, closing her eyes. Tried to forget the alien bitterness of his laugh when she'd begged him to wait for help to arrive, tried to stop seeing those faceless people trapped in the twisted metal remains of their car.
By the time Happy had inched free of the snarled traffic and the limo was hurtling towards Brett Maguire's L.A. residence she'd nearly convinced herself that erasing the last half-hour from her memory might just be possible. But then her shoulder brushed Tony's, and she felt how rigidly he was holding himself despite his outward air of nonchalance, and she was forced to admit that she didn't have nearly enough denial in her to forget anything that had happened tonight. And she doubted she ever would.