Theme 48 - Shock
Title: Mortality
Author: ZionAngel
Theme: 48 - Shock
Rating: T
Length: 1689 words
Summary: He doesn’t understand his own mortality, and that scares her more than anything.
AN: These keep getting longer. I’ve got to start cutting these down or I’m in trouble.
She spent the last day and a half worrying about where Tony was, and if it had anything to do with her uncharacteristic and rather humiliating lack of self-control at the benefit. He was nowhere to be found, she couldn’t contact him, and no one else knew where he was, either. But then at 4:36 in the afternoon, Jarvis informs her out of the blue that Tony has returned and is down in the workshop.
She steels herself, damping down the fear of what he’ll say to her, how he’ll look at her, what his answer will be when she asks where he’s been - and why. She descends the stairs to the shop, expecting to find him stepping out of the Audi in his leather coat - but when she gets close enough to stare at the shattered remnants of the glass wall, her fear is erased completely, and shock takes its place.
“Sir, the more you struggle, the more this is going to hurt.”
“Be gentle, it’s my first time.” She can’t move for a few seconds after she sees Tony, in some massive red suit, surrounded by the mechanical arms and robots that usually uses in large-scale building projects. “I designed this to come off, so - OW! Hey!”
“Please try not to move, sir,” Jarvis asks again.
Pepper moves slowly across the workshop toward him, and the scratches and burns on the paint of the thing he is wearing slowly come into focus. “What’s going on here?” She can barely manage to force the words out.
He stops struggling against the machines, which pause for a moment. He hesitantly looks over his shoulder at her, and there’s a moment of silence as the gears in the robots stop moving. “Let’s face it, this is not the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.”
She doesn’t hear his quip, because she finally realizes what those scratches and dents are. “Are those bullet holes?”
“Um…” He glances down at his metal sleeve, which is scratched and burned. “Maybe….” She stares incredulously, and she feels herself beginning to hyperventilate when he looks back up to here. “Okay, I know it looks bad, but really I’m fine, just a couple of little burns - really, really minor burns, maybe, and -”
“Tony, what the hell is this?!” He begins to formulate a half-hearted excuse when she cuts him off. “Where have you been?”
“Uh, well, that’s kind of a long story, I -”
“Is this what you’ve been building this whole time?”
“Pepper, calm down, I’m fine, I just -”
“Calm down?! Tony -”
“The bullets didn’t actually pierce the suit -”
“-you can’t just show up after disappearing for two days and tell me to calm down!”
“-they just scratched the paint, its fine.”
She keeps staring, gesturing aimlessly as if she can pluck the words she needs from the air. “What the hell is going on, Tony?”
“Look, Pepper,” he begins as one of the robots attempts to tug at his sleeve. “Uh, I’m kind of stuck, so just - help me get out of this thing and I’ll explain everything. Okay?”
Pepper sighs, trying to be calm. Almost reluctantly, she moves toward him, retrieving the mechanical screwdriver he indicates. She steps up onto the platform he’s standing on, and follows his instructions for removing sections of the suit. It’s a few minutes before she can bring herself to speak, or even decide what she wants to ask. “Is this what you’ve been working on?”
“Yeah. Upgrade of the suit I made in Afghanistan. Lot of upgrades.”
For the first time, she really looks at it, noting the intricacy of the interlocking pieces, how they all seem to be perfectly designed to allow a full range of movement. “Tony… this is… incredible.”
He scoffs. “Not so incredible if I can’t get it off. Remind me to add - OW!” One of the robots yanks off the arm piece she had loosened. “Add a quick-release latch.”
She keeps going, but knows that she has to ask this sooner or later. “Tony… Where have you been?”
“In Gulmira.”
She’s heard the name, and tries to identify it. “That… that place that’s been on the news, in Afghanistan?”
She looks at his face again, and she finds his eyes dark and almost frightening. “They were my weapons,” he says, just above a whisper. “All of them.” He says nothing for a moment, just takes in a long, ragged breath. “It was the same people who held me captive. Karen - or Carrie, or - oh, stupid reporter from Vanity Fair, whats-her-face, ambushed me at the benefit the other night and showed me all these pictures of Gulmira, and what they’d done….” Pepper knows she shouldn’t be thinking such selfish thoughts at a time like this, but she can’t help the relief at suddenly knowing what happened after he left her on the rooftop - and the fact that it had nothing to do with her. Tony sighs heavily, bringing her back to the present. “Yinsen was from Gulmira. They’re attacking there to get back at him.”
“Tony… I’m sorry.” It’s all she can say.
“When she showed me the pictures I went outside to find Stane, and… It was him.” Rage flares across his face, and she sees hurt in his eyes. “It was him all along.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The weapons.” She sees him fighting for control over himself. “He’s been selling them, Pepper, that’s how all the terrorists and rebels have been getting them. And he filed the injunction with the Board, he’s trying to lock me out so he can keep doing it!”
The shock of this statement is so overwhelming that Pepper can barely form her words. “Are you sure? I mean -”
“He admitted it to my face.”
They fall into a long silence as she and the robots finish removing the suit from his body. She takes the time to try to understand, to break this all down in some way that she can comprehend. This is Obadiah they’re talking about - the man who’s practically Tony’s second dad, and his father’s lifelong friend and confidant. And Pepper knows him pretty damn well herself, and even she had never suspected anything like this….
Finally free of the suit, Tony steps down from the platform. She can see a few black rings on his skin, where the heat must have transferred through the metal. “I don’t understand, what were you doing over there?”
“I was destroying my weapons.”
His frank and immediate response catches her completely off guard. “Wha - I - what?”
“I flew there and I destroyed all the weapons that I could find.”
She gapes at him. “Ton - wait, you flew in that?” He’s not fully facing her, but he has a look on his face that is half pride and half panic. “That thing can fly?” The idea should be stranger to her, but then again, it was built Tony Stark.
“It can do a lot of things.”
“I - you -” she stammers, with no idea where to start. “You made this thing, flew halfway across the world in it into an active war zone and almost got yourself killed in the process?”
She’s trying to stay calm, trying to control herself and not panic or scream or something, but she just can’t believe what she’s hearing. She’s terrified by the sudden images her mind invents of what he’s been doing the last day and a half, and she’s amazed that he would do something like this.
He’s moving toward the lounge in the corner of the shop, and she follows him. He’s too casual about this. “I wasn’t almost killed, Pepper, this thing is a flying tank and it’s bulletproof. I factored in for every possible scenario, even the tank and the plane -” He stops short, and she can see enough of his face to know that he hadn’t intended to say that much.
She gapes, but she keeps moving toward him. “What tank and plane?” He mutters something, and starts walking away from her, but there’s no way in hell she’s letting this go. “Tony! What. Tank. And. Plane?” She grabs him by the arm and turns him forcibly toward her.
She can see him thinking, trying to make up an excuse, but he quickly resigns to the fact that he’s not getting out of this. He doesn’t look her in the eye, and speaks hesitantly. “The… tank that shot me and… the Air Force F-22 that Rhodey sent after me that kinda… crashed into me.”
Pepper’s head feels very much like it’s going to explode.
“Okay, before you say anything, the pilot was fine and Rhodey didn’t know it was me at first, and -”
And then what happens is as close to an explosion as she can survive. “TONY! You - you’re -” She babbles incoherently for a moment, shaking in frustration. “You can’t just go out and try to play superhero, Tony! You could have been hurt, or killed -”
He’s shaking his head. “No, the suit - it’s completely safe -”
“No it’s not completely safe, Tony, and the fact that you can’t realize that just proves that you shouldn’t be doing this! Everything has a weakness, Tony, including you, and including that suit. I - you….”
And then she’s just too shocked and overwhelmed, and she nearly collapses onto the leather couch. She doesn’t say anything else, and neither does Tony - he just slowly sinks down beside her. They stay that way for a while, and most of her thoughts are focused on just how scared she is that he did this, and seems to want to do it again. It terrifies her that he doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of his own mortality - despite the fact that it was hanging by a thread for three months… or maybe that’s why he doesn’t grasp it.
And somewhere in there, she vaguely comprehends the fact that he had never intended to leave her alone on that rooftop.