PepperONY fic: "The last real mystical experience of Tony Stark"
Title: The first and last mystical experience of Tony Stark
Fandom: Iron Man: Film.
Characters/Pairings: Jim Rhodes, Pepper Potts, and Tony Stark. Shades of Tony/Pepper.
Genre: …Introspection/Dream sequence.
Summary: The moments before Tony Stark wakes up to meet Yensin. “I’ve never had a psychic experience before.” You have now.
Notes: …I kept listening to Incubus’s “Megalomaniac” while writing this, which I think, inspired Tony’s attitude.
I really don’t know where the idea came from though. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
He dreams and in dreaming finds the answers that he does not want to admit when he is awake.
His decision was not a rash one, far from it. Every decision he makes is intense, every action is incredibly personal. He does not even realize it, for Tony Stark, captain of Industry and honest-to-god genius was always inhibited in that small factor. He never acted without conscious thought. It was his Zen, his only concession to the nature of the lives that monks and other men of the world lived. The slightest word was coolly calculated; the slightest plan was finished months in advance.
And this is how the universe rewards him for his attention to detail. This is how he is gifted, with death in desert sand blowing over his hair and in his mouth. Muscles aching and the most important muscle of all made of metal.
So he dreams and screams out to the heavens with a voice so very wearied why. Why when I did everything right, why when I was your chosen, you’re beloved, why have you forsaken me?
He thinks it is perhaps a hallucination; she is the last person he’d been thinking of. She comes to him in a business suit, Armani with her red hair cascading down her back.
The scene is so surreal he knows it has to be a dream, “…I didn’t expect you here.”
“You called.” She shrugged helplessly, “Mr. Stark. I kind of have to answer, that’s my job.”
He holds up his hands holding a car battery- (a car battery of all things!) “…Think you could call me an ambulance?”
“I think AmeriCare would charge quite a bit to pick you up in the middle of an insurgent campground.” Pepper’s smile is coy, “…I can arrange that however if you’d like…”
“No.” He lowers his hands and drops to the sand. It’s fibers run coarse through his fingers as he picks up a grain and sets it down again, “…No. Would go beyond the call of duty but no.”
“…The definition of beyond the call of duty varies between persons.” Pepper sat down beside him and he took a moment to realize that she wasn’t wearing one of her many pairs of shoes, “Love to some is considered above and beyond the call of duty, to trust so explicitly in a moment of great danger is sometimes more then anyone is capable of.”
“That.” She said, leaning back on her elbows, “Is why there is war. We are so unsettled, so afraid of what we could be stand in fear of other men. We hover in quiet out of the way places and brandish sticks at each other.” She drew out her fist and pantomimed shaking a weapon at some imaginary foe.
“…I’ve never asked you what you thought before.”
The wind plays with her hair, “What I think is inconsequential. Does the wind ask the trees what it thinks of how fast it blows? Does the ocean ask the land how it feels about it eroding away at it’s very self, at its core?”
That’s when he in his cynical way, his obsession with science, knows for sure, “You’re not her.”
Her gaze turns curious. She shifts her position to stare at him, “…Are you sure?”
“Pepper is never that…eloquent.”
“Have you ever asked her? Have you ever spent any time with her, with any of the other pieces you play with in your game?”
“What game am I playing?”
“You’re playing against the world. That’s-why you do what you do Tony Stark. You’ve got something to prove and you don’t feel like you’ve proven it yet and now…” Her fingers find his hand and he shivers in the heat, “…You feel like you won’t get the chance.”
“Who are you?”
“…Did it ever occur to you that that’s a very rude question to ask someone?”
“You’re not Pepper.”
“I’ll ask you again. How are you so sure that I’m not Pepper?” She smiles that cute little half smile that he’s starting to notice even here in his subconscious. There is a shift in the sand.
“Or that I’m not Rhodey?”
There he jerks, there he sits up to find his supposed best friend the liaison between one group and another staring at him with his attention riveted, “…Hey man!”
“Hey yourself.” Three they sit on the sand watching the wind play with grains that have been there since the beginning of the world, “What are you two arguing about now?”
“…This party with two people I’m never going to see again.” Tony raised his hands, “Sit back, I wish I had drinks but I’m afraid you’re gonna haveta buy, I left my wallet back in reality.”
“He thinks we’re not real.”
James Rhodes frowns, “…He what?”
“He thinks we’re illusions.”
He bristled as Pepper smirked, “I feel like I should be insulted.”
“You should be.” Tony pointed a hand at him, swooning, “I should be able to imagine a lot better companions then a comm. Jockey and a personal assistant.”
“I don’t have to take this crap.” Rhodey rises, “I get my ass all the way out of my supposedly metaphorical bed and come to sit with you in a desert of all places and you call me a comm. Jockey? Thanks man. Thanks a whole lot. Have fun escaping-on your own.”
“…Yeah go.” Tony waved a hand at him, “…Probably be better off, and you don’t want to loose if this is all really a game.”
“Game?” Rhodey shoots back, “This isn’t a game. You idiot, you really think you’re in control here?”
“Jim!”
Pepper’s voice is sharp as the pilot waves off, stalking away down the dunes and disappearing from sight. Tony looks up to find pepper standing over him, “So what, you’re leaving me too?”
She sighed, “Will there be anything else Mr. Stark?”
He tried to think of something else to say, “What exactly have you done already?”
She folded her hands in front of her and studied him with a careful expression. He blinks, a little unnerved.
“…This is a hallucination.”
She nodded once.
He was fitting the pieces together in a way that worked, “This is a hallucination that I created. You’re not really here.”
“You seem almost sad by that.”
“…I don’t understand it.” Stark set his hands down on his knees, pushing himself off the dune, nearly sliding, “…I’m not the mystical man type, I don’t get visions-I’ve never even had a psychic experience and…You’re here. And Rhodey is-well-he was here. What is it that you’re supposed to show me?”
She bites her lip and lowers her head and starts to walk.
Things that worked so well at one point break at times, they falter. They snap and loose pieces. There is little care, they become worn, and they loose power. Sometimes there is an accident.
Tony Stark feels his knees give first. He falls into the sand and can’t move; it’s thick and choking. It’s a C-Span brief, it’s a General congratulating him and placing another order, it’s goddamn public access television. All encompassing, foul smelling, much moving between his fingers and his toes eating him alive…
She turns halfway down the dune. With her red gold hair blowing back in the wind and the saddest smile on her face he reflects that she is possibly the most beautiful woman in the world, a goddess.
Leaving him. Abandoning him.
“Pepper!” its moving faster now, “No, Don’t leave me, don’t leave me here! Come back-“
The three stages of desperation:
Bargaining: Okay-Okay Pepper, if this is your way of asking for a raise…you’ve got it babe. I’m sorry-I’m sorry I said you weren’t real okay? I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Hey-you want a jet? I can get you a jet! I’ll build it myself…. Heh…Pepper-Pepper please…Virginia…
Anger. “Goddamnit you stupid bitch! You get back here now! I mean it! Your ass is so fired; you’ll never find a job again! I will make it my life’s work to take everything that you care about and destroy it! Do you hear me! Pepper! Turn around when I’m talking to you! -“
Horror. What, you’re leaving me? Nobody-nobody should leave anybody else…Please…I don’t-I don’t want to be alone. I’ve never-My dad-My dad left me alone…My mom did too-they thought I could take care of myself I-I- please Pepper, I didn’t…I didn’t mean…No, Don’t leave me here like this! Please!
His scream echoes across the desert and is lost in the howling of the winds.
------------
He comes to with something soft and warm looking at him.
Framed in gold she looks like a goddess, an angel. Her smile is the best thing he’s ever seen, the desperation in his chest is gone. The ache of his destroyed heart has vanished.
“Hey Man!” The face disappears and he sees another, someone more familiar, “…You stupid sonnuvabitch-one of these days you’re going to get me killed.”
Rhodey smiles in understanding, “I’m gonna let the lady explain. See you soon Tony. See you soon.”
By the time they are alone Pepper folds her arms across her front and sits back to study him intently, “…I doubt that there’s a lot you are going to take from that.”
Hardly. For the first time in his life he felt real fear. He felt real desperation and loneliness, “…Why is this happening to me?”
“…In time you’ll see.” And for the first time she does not sound like his assistant, she sounds like something else entirely. She sounds like a thousand talking voices, a cheering crowd. She sounds like cameras, which makes him, blink, tilting his head to the side to look at her, “…In time you’ll see.”
“…So this is the part where I wake up in a hospital?”
The lie was comforting.
“…This is the part where you wake up and you do something about your situation Mr. Stark.” She rose, “…Just lay back and count to five.”
“Stay with me.”
She kneels again, ever obedient, a student of service if he’d ever seen one. The obscure reference crosses his mind and he shakes it off.
One.
“So what, you were supposed to shock me?”
“Here’s hoping it did.” Pepper said, “Because as an extension of your subconscious I doubt that I’d serve any purpose if I didn’t play Jiminy Cricket from time to time.”
Two.
“Showing me that I shouldn’t be so callous, so uncaring…”
“…Ideally.”
“You know, they say that Genius marches to the beat of a different drummer entirely. Our lapses are usually forgiven.”
“Not in this case.”
“Bitch.”
Three.
“Smartass Prick.”
“…So what happens when I wake up?”
“The learning begins. This is step one. Steps two through twelve are ones that you’re going to have to follow. You complained about being bored, well and good, let it not be said that the universe doesn’t listen.”
“So God has something to do with this? What’s the big guy look like?”
Four.
“He’s a short eighty-six year old looking man with glasses who says “Excelsior!” A lot.”
“He sounds like Stan Lee.”
“Only you and Deadpool, Tony Stark, would be allowed to break the fourth wall like that.”
“So before I go Pepper.” Tony blinks, her image fading, “Let me ask you something. Rhodey I get, but what are you doing here?”
He continues to talk as the years give way to months, to days, hours, minutes and seconds.
“Is it because you’re the ultimate voice of good in my life? Is it because out of everyone you’re the only one who tells me what I need to hear, who listens to what I have to say and who considers me redeemable? Is it because-Because-”?
A feeling stirs.
“…Because I think that maybe in some other life, some other place and other consciousness I could have it in me to love you?”
Her mouth opens, her hand moves toward his face and…
Five.
“Damn it.”
“Ah good, you’re awake.” Reality is hard, brown and hard and screaming as a wizened figure washes his hands in a dirty and dried sink, “…I was beginning to get worried.”
-------------
Weeks later, days later, Tony Stark is sitting on his couch in his room and remembering how much he likes having people leap to obey him. He remembers how much he enjoys soft fabric and comforting climate-controlled buildings. He remembers how much he enjoys ground-solid man-made pavement versus the dirt, the earth and the sand shifting beneath his feet.
“…Mr. Stark? I have a Dr. Pepper for you…” pepper nods mutely. Hers was the first face he saw off the plane, coming out of nowhere-a figure amid a windy and dry desert…
He smiles, “…You are. A lifesaver.”
They’d made headlines today. But no action of Tony Stark has ever been more thought out. And for once he’d had help, beyond his massive intellectual capacity, “…It’s in the job description.”
I could call AmeriCare but I think the price might be a little steep…
He laughs, a sharp noise. She backs up a step, “…Can I do anything else?”
Tony opens his mouth and closes it again before shaking his head. She leaves, heels clacking as she moves to the door before putting her hand on the edge and turning to face him, expression curious.
“…What happened?”
The learning began. How to be spontaneous, how to be fixed from the broken thing that he had been.
“Something…Mystical.”
It’s mumbled so low that she can’t hear as he looks up, staring her pointedly in the face, “I was held captive by a group of militants who like to use my toys as battering rams to get what they want in the biggest fucking sandbox that humanity’s ever seen. Why?”
She shakes her head, smiling ruefully, “…Anything else Mr. Stark?”
Answer the question that I asked you, framed in the sun like a goddess in red and gold. You left me, you abandoned me, and you came back. Nobody who’s ever abandoned me has come back.
No. She couldn’t. In his mind’s eye he saw his consciousness shake her head. He would have to find the answer on his own in time.
“…That will be all Miss potts.”
He closed his eyes and drank the liquid; it was cool and refreshing, spontaneity in action, a first test and a good one.
Fandom: Iron Man: Film.
Characters/Pairings: Jim Rhodes, Pepper Potts, and Tony Stark. Shades of Tony/Pepper.
Genre: …Introspection/Dream sequence.
Summary: The moments before Tony Stark wakes up to meet Yensin. “I’ve never had a psychic experience before.” You have now.
Notes: …I kept listening to Incubus’s “Megalomaniac” while writing this, which I think, inspired Tony’s attitude.
I really don’t know where the idea came from though. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
He dreams and in dreaming finds the answers that he does not want to admit when he is awake.
His decision was not a rash one, far from it. Every decision he makes is intense, every action is incredibly personal. He does not even realize it, for Tony Stark, captain of Industry and honest-to-god genius was always inhibited in that small factor. He never acted without conscious thought. It was his Zen, his only concession to the nature of the lives that monks and other men of the world lived. The slightest word was coolly calculated; the slightest plan was finished months in advance.
And this is how the universe rewards him for his attention to detail. This is how he is gifted, with death in desert sand blowing over his hair and in his mouth. Muscles aching and the most important muscle of all made of metal.
So he dreams and screams out to the heavens with a voice so very wearied why. Why when I did everything right, why when I was your chosen, you’re beloved, why have you forsaken me?
He thinks it is perhaps a hallucination; she is the last person he’d been thinking of. She comes to him in a business suit, Armani with her red hair cascading down her back.
The scene is so surreal he knows it has to be a dream, “…I didn’t expect you here.”
“You called.” She shrugged helplessly, “Mr. Stark. I kind of have to answer, that’s my job.”
He holds up his hands holding a car battery- (a car battery of all things!) “…Think you could call me an ambulance?”
“I think AmeriCare would charge quite a bit to pick you up in the middle of an insurgent campground.” Pepper’s smile is coy, “…I can arrange that however if you’d like…”
“No.” He lowers his hands and drops to the sand. It’s fibers run coarse through his fingers as he picks up a grain and sets it down again, “…No. Would go beyond the call of duty but no.”
“…The definition of beyond the call of duty varies between persons.” Pepper sat down beside him and he took a moment to realize that she wasn’t wearing one of her many pairs of shoes, “Love to some is considered above and beyond the call of duty, to trust so explicitly in a moment of great danger is sometimes more then anyone is capable of.”
“That.” She said, leaning back on her elbows, “Is why there is war. We are so unsettled, so afraid of what we could be stand in fear of other men. We hover in quiet out of the way places and brandish sticks at each other.” She drew out her fist and pantomimed shaking a weapon at some imaginary foe.
“…I’ve never asked you what you thought before.”
The wind plays with her hair, “What I think is inconsequential. Does the wind ask the trees what it thinks of how fast it blows? Does the ocean ask the land how it feels about it eroding away at it’s very self, at its core?”
That’s when he in his cynical way, his obsession with science, knows for sure, “You’re not her.”
Her gaze turns curious. She shifts her position to stare at him, “…Are you sure?”
“Pepper is never that…eloquent.”
“Have you ever asked her? Have you ever spent any time with her, with any of the other pieces you play with in your game?”
“What game am I playing?”
“You’re playing against the world. That’s-why you do what you do Tony Stark. You’ve got something to prove and you don’t feel like you’ve proven it yet and now…” Her fingers find his hand and he shivers in the heat, “…You feel like you won’t get the chance.”
“Who are you?”
“…Did it ever occur to you that that’s a very rude question to ask someone?”
“You’re not Pepper.”
“I’ll ask you again. How are you so sure that I’m not Pepper?” She smiles that cute little half smile that he’s starting to notice even here in his subconscious. There is a shift in the sand.
“Or that I’m not Rhodey?”
There he jerks, there he sits up to find his supposed best friend the liaison between one group and another staring at him with his attention riveted, “…Hey man!”
“Hey yourself.” Three they sit on the sand watching the wind play with grains that have been there since the beginning of the world, “What are you two arguing about now?”
“…This party with two people I’m never going to see again.” Tony raised his hands, “Sit back, I wish I had drinks but I’m afraid you’re gonna haveta buy, I left my wallet back in reality.”
“He thinks we’re not real.”
James Rhodes frowns, “…He what?”
“He thinks we’re illusions.”
He bristled as Pepper smirked, “I feel like I should be insulted.”
“You should be.” Tony pointed a hand at him, swooning, “I should be able to imagine a lot better companions then a comm. Jockey and a personal assistant.”
“I don’t have to take this crap.” Rhodey rises, “I get my ass all the way out of my supposedly metaphorical bed and come to sit with you in a desert of all places and you call me a comm. Jockey? Thanks man. Thanks a whole lot. Have fun escaping-on your own.”
“…Yeah go.” Tony waved a hand at him, “…Probably be better off, and you don’t want to loose if this is all really a game.”
“Game?” Rhodey shoots back, “This isn’t a game. You idiot, you really think you’re in control here?”
“Jim!”
Pepper’s voice is sharp as the pilot waves off, stalking away down the dunes and disappearing from sight. Tony looks up to find pepper standing over him, “So what, you’re leaving me too?”
She sighed, “Will there be anything else Mr. Stark?”
He tried to think of something else to say, “What exactly have you done already?”
She folded her hands in front of her and studied him with a careful expression. He blinks, a little unnerved.
“…This is a hallucination.”
She nodded once.
He was fitting the pieces together in a way that worked, “This is a hallucination that I created. You’re not really here.”
“You seem almost sad by that.”
“…I don’t understand it.” Stark set his hands down on his knees, pushing himself off the dune, nearly sliding, “…I’m not the mystical man type, I don’t get visions-I’ve never even had a psychic experience and…You’re here. And Rhodey is-well-he was here. What is it that you’re supposed to show me?”
She bites her lip and lowers her head and starts to walk.
Things that worked so well at one point break at times, they falter. They snap and loose pieces. There is little care, they become worn, and they loose power. Sometimes there is an accident.
Tony Stark feels his knees give first. He falls into the sand and can’t move; it’s thick and choking. It’s a C-Span brief, it’s a General congratulating him and placing another order, it’s goddamn public access television. All encompassing, foul smelling, much moving between his fingers and his toes eating him alive…
She turns halfway down the dune. With her red gold hair blowing back in the wind and the saddest smile on her face he reflects that she is possibly the most beautiful woman in the world, a goddess.
Leaving him. Abandoning him.
“Pepper!” its moving faster now, “No, Don’t leave me, don’t leave me here! Come back-“
The three stages of desperation:
Bargaining: Okay-Okay Pepper, if this is your way of asking for a raise…you’ve got it babe. I’m sorry-I’m sorry I said you weren’t real okay? I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Hey-you want a jet? I can get you a jet! I’ll build it myself…. Heh…Pepper-Pepper please…Virginia…
Anger. “Goddamnit you stupid bitch! You get back here now! I mean it! Your ass is so fired; you’ll never find a job again! I will make it my life’s work to take everything that you care about and destroy it! Do you hear me! Pepper! Turn around when I’m talking to you! -“
Horror. What, you’re leaving me? Nobody-nobody should leave anybody else…Please…I don’t-I don’t want to be alone. I’ve never-My dad-My dad left me alone…My mom did too-they thought I could take care of myself I-I- please Pepper, I didn’t…I didn’t mean…No, Don’t leave me here like this! Please!
His scream echoes across the desert and is lost in the howling of the winds.
------------
He comes to with something soft and warm looking at him.
Framed in gold she looks like a goddess, an angel. Her smile is the best thing he’s ever seen, the desperation in his chest is gone. The ache of his destroyed heart has vanished.
“Hey Man!” The face disappears and he sees another, someone more familiar, “…You stupid sonnuvabitch-one of these days you’re going to get me killed.”
Rhodey smiles in understanding, “I’m gonna let the lady explain. See you soon Tony. See you soon.”
By the time they are alone Pepper folds her arms across her front and sits back to study him intently, “…I doubt that there’s a lot you are going to take from that.”
Hardly. For the first time in his life he felt real fear. He felt real desperation and loneliness, “…Why is this happening to me?”
“…In time you’ll see.” And for the first time she does not sound like his assistant, she sounds like something else entirely. She sounds like a thousand talking voices, a cheering crowd. She sounds like cameras, which makes him, blink, tilting his head to the side to look at her, “…In time you’ll see.”
“…So this is the part where I wake up in a hospital?”
The lie was comforting.
“…This is the part where you wake up and you do something about your situation Mr. Stark.” She rose, “…Just lay back and count to five.”
“Stay with me.”
She kneels again, ever obedient, a student of service if he’d ever seen one. The obscure reference crosses his mind and he shakes it off.
One.
“So what, you were supposed to shock me?”
“Here’s hoping it did.” Pepper said, “Because as an extension of your subconscious I doubt that I’d serve any purpose if I didn’t play Jiminy Cricket from time to time.”
Two.
“Showing me that I shouldn’t be so callous, so uncaring…”
“…Ideally.”
“You know, they say that Genius marches to the beat of a different drummer entirely. Our lapses are usually forgiven.”
“Not in this case.”
“Bitch.”
Three.
“Smartass Prick.”
“…So what happens when I wake up?”
“The learning begins. This is step one. Steps two through twelve are ones that you’re going to have to follow. You complained about being bored, well and good, let it not be said that the universe doesn’t listen.”
“So God has something to do with this? What’s the big guy look like?”
Four.
“He’s a short eighty-six year old looking man with glasses who says “Excelsior!” A lot.”
“He sounds like Stan Lee.”
“Only you and Deadpool, Tony Stark, would be allowed to break the fourth wall like that.”
“So before I go Pepper.” Tony blinks, her image fading, “Let me ask you something. Rhodey I get, but what are you doing here?”
He continues to talk as the years give way to months, to days, hours, minutes and seconds.
“Is it because you’re the ultimate voice of good in my life? Is it because out of everyone you’re the only one who tells me what I need to hear, who listens to what I have to say and who considers me redeemable? Is it because-Because-”?
A feeling stirs.
“…Because I think that maybe in some other life, some other place and other consciousness I could have it in me to love you?”
Her mouth opens, her hand moves toward his face and…
Five.
“Damn it.”
“Ah good, you’re awake.” Reality is hard, brown and hard and screaming as a wizened figure washes his hands in a dirty and dried sink, “…I was beginning to get worried.”
-------------
Weeks later, days later, Tony Stark is sitting on his couch in his room and remembering how much he likes having people leap to obey him. He remembers how much he enjoys soft fabric and comforting climate-controlled buildings. He remembers how much he enjoys ground-solid man-made pavement versus the dirt, the earth and the sand shifting beneath his feet.
“…Mr. Stark? I have a Dr. Pepper for you…” pepper nods mutely. Hers was the first face he saw off the plane, coming out of nowhere-a figure amid a windy and dry desert…
He smiles, “…You are. A lifesaver.”
They’d made headlines today. But no action of Tony Stark has ever been more thought out. And for once he’d had help, beyond his massive intellectual capacity, “…It’s in the job description.”
I could call AmeriCare but I think the price might be a little steep…
He laughs, a sharp noise. She backs up a step, “…Can I do anything else?”
Tony opens his mouth and closes it again before shaking his head. She leaves, heels clacking as she moves to the door before putting her hand on the edge and turning to face him, expression curious.
“…What happened?”
The learning began. How to be spontaneous, how to be fixed from the broken thing that he had been.
“Something…Mystical.”
It’s mumbled so low that she can’t hear as he looks up, staring her pointedly in the face, “I was held captive by a group of militants who like to use my toys as battering rams to get what they want in the biggest fucking sandbox that humanity’s ever seen. Why?”
She shakes her head, smiling ruefully, “…Anything else Mr. Stark?”
Answer the question that I asked you, framed in the sun like a goddess in red and gold. You left me, you abandoned me, and you came back. Nobody who’s ever abandoned me has come back.
No. She couldn’t. In his mind’s eye he saw his consciousness shake her head. He would have to find the answer on his own in time.
“…That will be all Miss potts.”
He closed his eyes and drank the liquid; it was cool and refreshing, spontaneity in action, a first test and a good one.