[For Tony] Item post
The end of November brought with it palpable expectation. Too many years, apparently, had December blown in cold and snow-crusted, and now, even after a year that had seen a blistering heat wave before the the dip towards icy temperatures, the hot, humid air seemed heavy with anticipation. Most of the day Pepper has spent inside escaping the cloying heat, but as the sun had dipped toward the horizon, she'd pulled her hair back and donned her sneakers for her evening run, one of the few activities in her day she allotted strictly for herself and no one else. She might not have the opportunity again until January.
The interior of the caves was calm and cool, dark stalactites dripping ominously from the ceiling and casting long shadows in the sporadic electric lighting. Eyes and ears played tricks on you down there, could make you irrationally wonder what might be lurking in the shadowy dips and culverts, but practical Pepper kept a tight rein on reason and her attention on the familiar crunch of her shoes as the sound bounded out and echoed back from the darkness.
An arm branched out from the main thoroughfare, inky and unlit but for one pale blue pinprick of light that caught Pepper's attention and snapped her head around. "Tony?" she called, eyes narrowed uselessly against the dark, but only her own voice returned to her. There were dozens of reasons he could be down there, each rattled crisply off in her head and doing absolutely nothing to assuage the sense of foreboding that had blossomed in her chest or the way the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up like tiny divining rods for disaster.
She called out again to the same result, contemplated returning to the Compound for a flashlight, waffled. This was ridiculous, she told herself. It was nothing, absolutely nothing, and she'd laugh at herself later. She needed to put on her big girl panties, go see what it was, and if Tony really was down there molesting some unsuspecting co-ed, she had a perfectly legitimate reason to smack him upside the head.
Swallowing down her sense of dread, she stepped purposefully off the main path, footsteps echoing close in the darkness as she marched, focus fixed on the increasingly-familiar glow of an arc reactor. Close enough to confirm it, she heaved a burdened sigh that she hoped fully communicated how much of a trial Tony was to her on a daily basis.
"So it is you-" she began upon approach, but then forcefully choked on her words as her eyes swung upward and sketched out the hulking, shadowed figure that was absolutely not Tony at all.
Without prompting or second thought, she turned and ran, a spray of sand and stone kicked in her wake, and she didn't stop: not once she was outside, not until she'd nearly bowled Tony over, flushed and wide-eyed and sucking in great, panicked gulps of damp island air.
The interior of the caves was calm and cool, dark stalactites dripping ominously from the ceiling and casting long shadows in the sporadic electric lighting. Eyes and ears played tricks on you down there, could make you irrationally wonder what might be lurking in the shadowy dips and culverts, but practical Pepper kept a tight rein on reason and her attention on the familiar crunch of her shoes as the sound bounded out and echoed back from the darkness.
An arm branched out from the main thoroughfare, inky and unlit but for one pale blue pinprick of light that caught Pepper's attention and snapped her head around. "Tony?" she called, eyes narrowed uselessly against the dark, but only her own voice returned to her. There were dozens of reasons he could be down there, each rattled crisply off in her head and doing absolutely nothing to assuage the sense of foreboding that had blossomed in her chest or the way the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up like tiny divining rods for disaster.
She called out again to the same result, contemplated returning to the Compound for a flashlight, waffled. This was ridiculous, she told herself. It was nothing, absolutely nothing, and she'd laugh at herself later. She needed to put on her big girl panties, go see what it was, and if Tony really was down there molesting some unsuspecting co-ed, she had a perfectly legitimate reason to smack him upside the head.
Swallowing down her sense of dread, she stepped purposefully off the main path, footsteps echoing close in the darkness as she marched, focus fixed on the increasingly-familiar glow of an arc reactor. Close enough to confirm it, she heaved a burdened sigh that she hoped fully communicated how much of a trial Tony was to her on a daily basis.
"So it is you-" she began upon approach, but then forcefully choked on her words as her eyes swung upward and sketched out the hulking, shadowed figure that was absolutely not Tony at all.
Without prompting or second thought, she turned and ran, a spray of sand and stone kicked in her wake, and she didn't stop: not once she was outside, not until she'd nearly bowled Tony over, flushed and wide-eyed and sucking in great, panicked gulps of damp island air.