reposting like a reposter.

[mekosuchinae]

I am like five minutes away from setting the entire world on fire through the strength of my hatred alone. I don't even know who I hate! Perhaps your mom.

I need to start going to bed earlier.

Here's (part of) the intro to another aborted Iron Man (film) fic for 31_days:

Two a.m. on a Thursday and Pepper is boarding a private plane. Two twenty-three and she is en route to Sacramento from Chicago. Below her the city lights shine like beacons, fading as they climb higher, then vanishing as they pass through the clouds. The night sky is not so bright. The stars are dull; her window is dark.

She tries to sleep.

*
There's a car waiting for her in Sacramento. Lean, black, stylish but forgettable: exactly what she expected. She doesn't recognize the driver. He's tall and his face is too narrow to be pleasant. She knows it's unkind of her to think so, but in the darkness of the predawn hours she misses Happy with a surprising intensity.

"Miss Potts?" says the driver. He steps forward, his hands out. "I can take your bag, Miss Potts."

Pepper slings her bag off her shoulder, tries to remember what she threw into it in the five minutes between the phone call and running out to her car - her cell-phone, she hopes, but she isn't sure. The driver takes the bag by the strap, then opens the door for her. The interior is as dark as the exterior.

The man in the passenger seat turns his head slightly, nods. His earpiece catches a fragment of the light outside. She can't make out his eyes. S.H.I.E.L.D., she thinks. The coldness in her chest grows.

"Where is he?" she says.

"Please buckle your seatbelt, Miss Potts," says the agent. "We'll be leaving shortly."

As the driver slides back into his seat, Pepper says, "You called me out here. I want to know where he is."

The agent doesn't acknowledge her. When she was Miss Potts, personal assistant to Tony Stark, perhaps he would have answered. Perhaps he wouldn't. Pepper knots her fingers in her skirt.

I'd planned to post the entire intro, but I hate the next couple of passages, so, you know, fuck 'em, they're gone, that's 2,013 words down the drain; let's move on:

She dozes fitfully. If she dreams, she doesn't remember what of; and when she wakes, however briefly, she feels as though she's still dreaming. Around nine, a doctor comes for her.

She sets her hand on Pepper's shoulder. "Miss Potts?" she says gently. "Please come with me."

Pepper goes with her.

*
A thick glass partition cuts the room in two, separating Tony from the rest of the world. Pepper touches the glass. She thinks, He's asleep. She doesn't recognize him at first: his skin is too pale, his hair too short, too grey. What's left of his right leg is bandaged tightly. The lighting is poor on the far side of the room and she doesn't know if she should be glad that she can't see the other leg: if it's there, if it isn't.

Pepper takes a breath. Lets it out.

"What happened?" she says at last.

Context: blah blah futurefic, Pepper retired after some undetermined fiasco, a couple years later Tony is seriously injured in combat, Pepper comes back. Also, Rhodes is awesome.

Reasons why I'm dropping this: don't like the style, don't like the pacing, deeply dissatisfied with the quality of my writing, don't have a good handle on the characters, don't have enough time. Also I want to write stuff with EXPLOSIONS.

Whatever! Moving on to more important things, like dragon spam. Check it:





I ain't apologizing.