And the World Comes Crashing Down: Chapter 1
Right, this is my response to piratepianist's challenge to write an AU in which Pepper ends up with Tony in Afghanistan too. So, for your viewing pleasure, I present:
Title: And the World Comes Crashing Down: Chapter 1
Author: Ebony Twist
Rating: PG-13 (Better safe, than sorry)
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I can't say that I own them outside of wildly vivid fantasies.
Summary: When the rest of the world is beyond your reach, who else can you hold on to?
“Is it true you went twelve for twelve with last year’s Maxim cover models, sir?”
Beside Tony Stark, Pepper resists snorting into the bottle of water she snagged at the base, instead choosing to roll her eyes with as much dignity as possible. Focusing her eyes back on her blackberry, she decides the more productive choice is to check up on the fifty two e-mails she’s acquired in the time it’s taken her boss to present his latest invention with his usual aplomb, picking her way through fan mail, semi-important meetings, important meetings, and extremely important meetings. Still, her lips can’t help but twitch at the comment about the twins and when Tony drops an arm over her shoulder to include her in the picture, Pepper gives a small, ignored protest that remains unheard among Tony joking about gang signs and peace with the boy who couldn’t be a day over twenty with that sort of wide-eyed admiration for the infamous Mr. Tony Stark, her own remarks drowned out by arguments about how to handle the camera.
“Mr. Stark, I really don’t believe-“
The sky flashes with light, blinding Pepper and cutting her off mid-sentence.
“Just click it, don’t change any-“
But whatever argument the soldier was about to make disappears among crashing booms and the pain of Tony’s hand squeezing into her shoulder as he yanks her towards his body with all the force of the bombs exploding a few feet ahead.
--------
The next few minutes feel surreal for him, almost like he’s watching the events from the comfort of his workshop, feet propped up at his desk and the volume blaring in his ears. Except Pepper’s not normally clutched to his body like a lifeline when he watches movies and even he normally doesn’t like his noise this ear-shattering, and with those simple smatterings of logic, he slams back into reality just as the boy with the camera jumps out of the car and into the fire. The panic that grips him feeds him adrenaline and fear, enough that when the kid who had just been staring at him like some little boy who’d just met his hero suddenly becomes a soldier he grasps forward, pleading for a gun, before he’s gone too, blown to bits and smattered against a broken window.
“Tony, oh god, we have to move-“
Pepper’s voice chokes, and he can feel her body shaking against his and suddenly the panic goes from disorienting to overwhelming. One arm firmly wrapped around her waist, he shoves the door open and drags her forward, away from the bombs and the gunshots and the destruction, back behind a craggy rock where they crouch for a few seconds of peace until his eyes catch on the machinery laying on the ground and for a second he’s back in his workshop and this has to be some sort of weird, crazy movie-dream brought on by having too much scotch and cold Chinese food at three in the morning before going off to sleep.
Then reality comes crashing through once again and he has seconds before he’s shoved Pepper behind him and they’re flying through the air, only not really, because they’ve crashed to the ground and why does everything hurt so much? Dazed, he stares down at his chest and there’s red seeping through his shirt and a part of him wonders if that’s blood, or maybe he’s just seeing the strawberry hair that’s covering his vision too, the sweet scent of flowers mixing in with dust and blood and scotch. His fingers stop grasping at his chest then so he can see if Pepper’s alright because suddenly she’s the only thing he can focus on and he’s not really sure why, but he’ll leave that thought until later because even worrying about her has begun to hurt his head and he needs to see her face before the blackness takes over completely.
Her freckles are stark against the pale skin of her face and there’s a gash on her forehead that looks nasty but she’s breathing because he can feel her chest rising up and down against his hand, the only solid feeling in the haze his mind’s started to sink into. Contentment that she’s okay fills him, fills him enough that when the blackness starts seeping back forward he lets himself fall asleep to the rhythm of her chest beneath his head.
--------
The first time she wakes up, Pepper’s strapped to a chair and her alarm clock has come in the form of a barrel gun connecting with her cheek. She thinks grimly that it will leave a mark, but that’s the least of her worries because one of her captors grabs her shoulders to shake her, demanding answers to questions she can’t understand and then he stops before grinning and running a hand down her cheek, caressing the bruised, battered skin with all the familiarity of an old lover while he whispers what a horrified part of her thinks might be promised threats.
Pepper responds in a way she thinks Tony would have been proud of, and when the gun smashes into her skull once more, she can still hear the echoing, furious screams from when she bit his hand.
---------
The first time he wakes up, he’s stuck between dreams and reality, or more like nightmares either imagined or tangent. Fire runs through his veins, and he bucks, clawing against hazy captors and burning, bright lights. It takes a few seconds for his drug-clouded mind to coldly identify the harsh, piercing shouts as his own and the part of his brain that has always been just logarithms and algorithms and sequences classifies the identification away like he’s just discovered x and now he only needs y, z, and maybe a formula for them all to fit into. The pain in his chest just increases, though, and soon what coherency he has left has drifted away, just like his thoughts, dripping through his hands as he tries to grasp onto them, except they’re like sand and soon his hands are empty and so’s his head and he’s back to fevered dreams filled with lullaby screams and strawberry hair that drips blood.
----------
The next time his jumbled thoughts decide to make some sort of logical sense, a plain sack has just been yanked off his head and he’s staring at an old-fashioned video camera while a thick Middle-Eastern accent dictates in some foreign language. The unflappably scientific part of his brain labels the scene as a ‘ransom demand,’ or something along those lines and that becomes filed away next to his panicked, wild screams and an intense need to know that his assistant hadn’t managed to get caught in the shrapnel blast too.
Even now, though, his thoughts are moving too sluggishly to do him any good and the sack’s back on his head before he can get past a vague sense of terror. Now, though, he’s falling back into blackness that calls him into dreams of fire and bodies and boy soldiers fighting against the impossible.
Later, he will wish to go back to those dreams because even they are better than what has become his reality.
C
Title: And the World Comes Crashing Down: Chapter 1
Author: Ebony Twist
Rating: PG-13 (Better safe, than sorry)
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I can't say that I own them outside of wildly vivid fantasies.
Summary: When the rest of the world is beyond your reach, who else can you hold on to?
“Is it true you went twelve for twelve with last year’s Maxim cover models, sir?”
Beside Tony Stark, Pepper resists snorting into the bottle of water she snagged at the base, instead choosing to roll her eyes with as much dignity as possible. Focusing her eyes back on her blackberry, she decides the more productive choice is to check up on the fifty two e-mails she’s acquired in the time it’s taken her boss to present his latest invention with his usual aplomb, picking her way through fan mail, semi-important meetings, important meetings, and extremely important meetings. Still, her lips can’t help but twitch at the comment about the twins and when Tony drops an arm over her shoulder to include her in the picture, Pepper gives a small, ignored protest that remains unheard among Tony joking about gang signs and peace with the boy who couldn’t be a day over twenty with that sort of wide-eyed admiration for the infamous Mr. Tony Stark, her own remarks drowned out by arguments about how to handle the camera.
“Mr. Stark, I really don’t believe-“
The sky flashes with light, blinding Pepper and cutting her off mid-sentence.
“Just click it, don’t change any-“
But whatever argument the soldier was about to make disappears among crashing booms and the pain of Tony’s hand squeezing into her shoulder as he yanks her towards his body with all the force of the bombs exploding a few feet ahead.
--------
The next few minutes feel surreal for him, almost like he’s watching the events from the comfort of his workshop, feet propped up at his desk and the volume blaring in his ears. Except Pepper’s not normally clutched to his body like a lifeline when he watches movies and even he normally doesn’t like his noise this ear-shattering, and with those simple smatterings of logic, he slams back into reality just as the boy with the camera jumps out of the car and into the fire. The panic that grips him feeds him adrenaline and fear, enough that when the kid who had just been staring at him like some little boy who’d just met his hero suddenly becomes a soldier he grasps forward, pleading for a gun, before he’s gone too, blown to bits and smattered against a broken window.
“Tony, oh god, we have to move-“
Pepper’s voice chokes, and he can feel her body shaking against his and suddenly the panic goes from disorienting to overwhelming. One arm firmly wrapped around her waist, he shoves the door open and drags her forward, away from the bombs and the gunshots and the destruction, back behind a craggy rock where they crouch for a few seconds of peace until his eyes catch on the machinery laying on the ground and for a second he’s back in his workshop and this has to be some sort of weird, crazy movie-dream brought on by having too much scotch and cold Chinese food at three in the morning before going off to sleep.
Then reality comes crashing through once again and he has seconds before he’s shoved Pepper behind him and they’re flying through the air, only not really, because they’ve crashed to the ground and why does everything hurt so much? Dazed, he stares down at his chest and there’s red seeping through his shirt and a part of him wonders if that’s blood, or maybe he’s just seeing the strawberry hair that’s covering his vision too, the sweet scent of flowers mixing in with dust and blood and scotch. His fingers stop grasping at his chest then so he can see if Pepper’s alright because suddenly she’s the only thing he can focus on and he’s not really sure why, but he’ll leave that thought until later because even worrying about her has begun to hurt his head and he needs to see her face before the blackness takes over completely.
Her freckles are stark against the pale skin of her face and there’s a gash on her forehead that looks nasty but she’s breathing because he can feel her chest rising up and down against his hand, the only solid feeling in the haze his mind’s started to sink into. Contentment that she’s okay fills him, fills him enough that when the blackness starts seeping back forward he lets himself fall asleep to the rhythm of her chest beneath his head.
--------
The first time she wakes up, Pepper’s strapped to a chair and her alarm clock has come in the form of a barrel gun connecting with her cheek. She thinks grimly that it will leave a mark, but that’s the least of her worries because one of her captors grabs her shoulders to shake her, demanding answers to questions she can’t understand and then he stops before grinning and running a hand down her cheek, caressing the bruised, battered skin with all the familiarity of an old lover while he whispers what a horrified part of her thinks might be promised threats.
Pepper responds in a way she thinks Tony would have been proud of, and when the gun smashes into her skull once more, she can still hear the echoing, furious screams from when she bit his hand.
---------
The first time he wakes up, he’s stuck between dreams and reality, or more like nightmares either imagined or tangent. Fire runs through his veins, and he bucks, clawing against hazy captors and burning, bright lights. It takes a few seconds for his drug-clouded mind to coldly identify the harsh, piercing shouts as his own and the part of his brain that has always been just logarithms and algorithms and sequences classifies the identification away like he’s just discovered x and now he only needs y, z, and maybe a formula for them all to fit into. The pain in his chest just increases, though, and soon what coherency he has left has drifted away, just like his thoughts, dripping through his hands as he tries to grasp onto them, except they’re like sand and soon his hands are empty and so’s his head and he’s back to fevered dreams filled with lullaby screams and strawberry hair that drips blood.
----------
The next time his jumbled thoughts decide to make some sort of logical sense, a plain sack has just been yanked off his head and he’s staring at an old-fashioned video camera while a thick Middle-Eastern accent dictates in some foreign language. The unflappably scientific part of his brain labels the scene as a ‘ransom demand,’ or something along those lines and that becomes filed away next to his panicked, wild screams and an intense need to know that his assistant hadn’t managed to get caught in the shrapnel blast too.
Even now, though, his thoughts are moving too sluggishly to do him any good and the sack’s back on his head before he can get past a vague sense of terror. Now, though, he’s falling back into blackness that calls him into dreams of fire and bodies and boy soldiers fighting against the impossible.
Later, he will wish to go back to those dreams because even they are better than what has become his reality.
C