Fic: Simplicity
Oy, sorry, this took longer than expected. College sucks your life up sometimes and spits you out exhausted.
BUT, I have been having good Tony/Pepper vibes. Last week, Netflix sent me IM2 on the *day* it came out (which is totally unheard of). So! I have now seen both movies, YAY. :)
Then I was watching it (for the second time) with my sister and friend, and halfway through the movie, they go, "Oh, wait, Tony and Pepper aren't actually together together? Like... involved?" They both assumed they were together since the end of the first movie. PROOF of our ship right there. When people assume like that, somethin's clearly going on. ;)
Anyway, all of this being said, today is a two for one special in compensation.
Title: Simplicity
Fandom: Iron Man
Prompt/Claim: #10:Simple; 20_fics , Table 4, Iron Man: Tony/Pepper
Summary: "I should have known better." She needed time, space, simplicity. Running home, putting half a country between them, was a natural step. A simple step. But even out here, California could still reach her.
Rating: PG lite
Pairings/Characters: Tony/Pepper
Length: 3,200 words
Genre(s): angst
A/N: Companion piece to " No Good On My Own." From more of Pepper's perspective, those events and the continuation. It's better to read that one first, for clearer understanding, though I think this can be read alone. That being said, some (not much) is slightly repetitive if you've read the first. Also, I don't know if we know where Pepper is from or if there's a widely accepted fanonical hometown, but I decided for the purposes of this, I liked Oklahoma. It came to me randomly, and after some state research, it worked. Also, I shamelessly borrowed a movie line or two and worked it my own way. ;) Also also, whoever can spot the classic country music reference herein gets major brownie points. :D
Simplicity was the key to life.
Somewhere along the line, Pepper had come to accept that as truth. Stripped down to its barest components was when life made sense. And life, like everything else in the universe, had to make at least some sort of sense.
Tony Stark was the opposite of simple. Once upon a time, she'd assumed he was simple to figure out. He liked fast cars, cheap women and booze. He didn't like work, deadlines or rules. Simple.
It had taken some time, a few years perhaps, before she realized he really wasn't that simple.
And he certainly did not keep her life simple.
The emptiness of the bed echoed in the emptiness inside her. Alone, vulnerable.
She'd woken here - unbelievable, she'd actually woken up here… - but, reveling in the alien and yet elating feel of having slept here, she snuggled down for a moment in the sheets that smelled of him. She then turned over to stare at…
Nothing. Empty sheets and pillows. The absence of him.
Shock ripped through her. Pain, rejection, confusion chased after it. Complicated emotions, some uncanny sense of remorse. This was painfully familiar. She was just seeing it from a different perspective. The perspective she'd had nightmares about experiencing.
Some cynical part of her mind had made her prepare for this. Folded in her purse was a letter of resignation. She'd kept it on-hand after her first week as Tony's PA. He was a difficult boss, and she spent the first two years constantly on the verge of quitting, letter in hand. She hadn't carried it for years, no matter how difficult Tony was.
But some voice had convinced her to have it on hand this time.
Steely faced, she crawled from the bed, donned last night's unwrinkled dress and retrieved the folded paper. A million feelings of hurt, dismay, shock, betrayal, heartbreak raced through her as soon as her fingers closed on the letter, but she discarded them all in favor of undaunted cynicism.
I should have known better.
She left the letter unfolded on the counter, its perfectly crisp, impersonal black letters echoing her detachment. She let go of it, and fleetingly, she wondered where Tony had hidden himself - most likely in his workshop, a typical favorite when he abandoned women. Pepper didn't even bother asking JARVIS. What did it matter where he was, anyway? He wasn't here.
"I'm sorry, we knew it'd be this way." She penned a sticky note, the one bland expression of her remorse, and left the mansion.
Her walk was confident, her eyes dry. She allowed herself no less dignity than that.
Pepper was from a small town in Oklahoma, just outside Oklahoma City. It'd been a long, long time since she'd lived there. It was a far cry from the face-paced glitz and glamour of Southern California, but she still loved it in its own way. Whenever life in the light-speed fast lane became too much, she retreated to this place, to the familiarity of her childhood home.
Now was just such a time.
She needed time, she needed space. Running home to Oklahoma was a natural step. A simple step.
And here, she felt clearer headed than she had back in California. There was half a continent between her and Tony. Here, where the land and the sky were equally endless and unconfined, the tangled emotions she'd kept bottled in while in California had been free to wildly run their course. She was still raw, but at least the wounds were airing out. And her parents, like the land, were giving her space.
She'd put the smart suits and designer heels away for now and donned jeans and T-shirts. Comfort of another sort lie in tucking away professional Pepper Potts in favor of Oklahoma daughter Ginny Potts.
Life was simpler out here, she told herself, and simplicity was the key to life.
But she found out at the end of a week, even out here, California could still reach her.
Rhodey's unexpected call began eerily similar to a previous one.
"I'm sorry, Pepper. We lost him."
Her breath hitched, chest tightening at the memories of the Afghanistan months. The weeks she spent alone, worrying, living in the mansion as if she were caretaker just to keep up the sense of him, just so she could pretend like nothing had happened and he would be back any moment...
Evidently conscious that she was reliving the terrors of the Afghanistan episode, Rhodey quickly gushed out more details: "He flew off without telling anybody. No mission, nothing. He has the GPS and communications in the suit off, and we can't track him."
She was an indescribable mixture of numb and frantic when she hung up the phone. In less than twenty minutes, she'd thrown together a bag and run out the door to the airport.
She spent three days panicking, pumping JARVIS for details that were either unhelpful or didn't exist, wandering the house and straightening things, sleeping on the futon in the workshop, reliving old memories and pains fresh again every hour…
Mostly, she spent the time asking why.
Tony was self-destructive, that much she knew. He lived too fast, too reckless. But she'd thought he was slowing down, at least somewhat, changing, despite the healthy state of his ego.
She should've learned by now that he wasn't going to change. Ever. He had proved that himself that morning in the mansion. It was a simple, constant truth. That didn't change the fact that she spent those three days alone in the mansion, praying, just praying he'd come back.
Sometime before daybreak on the fourth, sounds jostled her out of a fitful sleep on the workshop futon. Instantly awake, she sprang to her feet. Without him noticing her presence, she stared at him long and hard as the machines pulled away the armor, trying to convince herself he was real and this wasn't another wishful dream.
And then he turned to stare at her. There was no way that hollow-eyed, disbelieving, half-lucid stare wasn't real.
"Where have you been?" she whispered.
"I don't know," he croaked, blinking. "How long…?"
"Three days. Are you… OK?"
He wobbled. She repeated the question twice before he answered.
"No," he responded. "Pep, I'm no good on my own." His voice cracked around the words.
He wobbled again- Moving without a thought, Pepper crossed the room and caught him under the arms before he hit the floor, easing him down slowly, crumbling to her knees.
"Tony." To her dismay, her voice came out as nearly a whimper."Why did you do this?"
She had to give him a bottle of water to inhale before he responded to her. She surveyed him while he did, noting despite his haggard face and obvious exhaustion, he didn't seem to be bleeding or broken.
"I'm no good on my own," he merely repeated.
She breathed in and out slowly, feeling her emotions shifting already, solidifying. This was him, unchanged still. Destructive, unthinking, unapologetic.
"And yet you choose it." Her voice was barely short of a snarl. Releasing him, she stood and moved past him. She had managed to sweep everything under her professional, stony mask again. The words came to her lips with little thought, but she knew they were perfect as they formed: "Take care of yourself, Mr. Stark." Her tone simultaneously bore an edge, a plea, and a hundred meanings. She hoped he understood every one.
"That's what I have you for," he called at her back.
She barely let herself falter a step, forcing the words to impact emptily against her personal shield.
"I'm sorry."
His words grabbed her feet this time, dragged them to a stop at the doorway.
"I'm sorry. I panicked. I didn't know what to do. It's… been a long time. I was lost."
She only half-turned. "You've got all that genius, Tony." Her voice was cold. "Figure it out."
With that, she mounted the stairs and was gone.
And again, she had returned to Oklahoma, surrounding herself with distance. With simplicity, so she could work through the added complications. She felt more hardened now, knowing that he hadn't really changed. At the same time, she felt more conflicted, having been back, having seen him again.
So she had run back to Oklahoma. Again. To make sense of it all. Slowly.
She hadn't planned anything, but the more time she spent here, the more she considered returning for good. A certain part of the California's lifestyle had enticed her, drawn her in despite her carefully constructed walls. And she'd been stung. Badly. It no longer held the same appeal.
Despite the years, Oklahoma was familiar. Warm. Comfortable.
Aviation and aerospace were big here - between a good word from her father and Stark Industries on her résumé, she didn't doubt that she could land herself a good position here, even in a tight economy.
She could be happy here, she thought. It was a definite change of pace, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
"It's you. It's always been you."
It had been a week since her latest return to Oklahoma and two and a half weeks since her first flight from California.
She was still waging the internal battles while helping her mom put away dishes - in the kitchen of a house that could have fit in just one of Tony's rooms - when the doorbell rang. She glanced in that direction, waiting a moment from an announcement from JARVIS before she realized it wouldn't come. Being in a house that didn't talk, at least not audibly, was still strange after an entire week absent.
"I'll get it, Mom," she said, already wiping her hands and moving toward the door.
In hindsight, she realized she should have predicted that on this simple day, the complication that was Tony Stark would show up at her parents' door. But at the time, seeing him standing there had nearly knocked her senseless.
He couldn't resist flexing a Stark grin at her momentarily stunned expression. It helped her impassive face to solidify and her stolen voice to reappear.
"How did you find…?" she began.
"JARVIS," he answered promptly. "I've had him keeping tabs on you for a long time."
Her eyes narrowed.
Dark eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline, he quickly backpedaled, adding, "I have to know where you are, what you're doing…"
Her eyes narrowed even further, becoming thin-slit daggers of ice blue. She forced her teeth not to grind together so she could spit out, "Almost like I should get to know where you are and what you're doing?"
He winced, and she knew she was being brutal. She was relatively certain he deserved it.
He glanced over her shoulder, through the open door. What he saw, she didn't know, but she kept her eyes - daggers - trained on him even as he fingered his collar and said, "Can we speak more privately - take a walk or something?"
She stepped out onto the porch with him, closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. Her feet stayed planted within a step of the door. If she walked any farther, she was afraid her knees might give out.
"I'm sorry about flying off like that," he began uncertainly. He was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Pepper, I just wanted, after all of that, to make myself suffer a little. I deserved it."
Something tightened inside of her. Her chest was constricting, shoving the words out in a rush. "Did you ever stop to think that I'd suffer for that, too? Tony, it was like Afghanistan all over again." Her voice dove down several decibels, barely above a whisper. "Only worse, because you did it all to yourself."
His eyes widened. "Oh, Pepper," he breathed. His voice sounded choked too. Maybe she was having the same strangling effect on him. "I'm sorry, I didn't-"
"Of course you didn't," she cut him off sharply. Anger had burned away the constriction in her chest. "You never do. That's why I'm in Oklahoma."
"Yeah, and I flew all the way to Oklahoma," he returned. "Middle-of-godforsaken-nowhere, Oklahoma." He threw a hand out to indicate the wide plains around them. "What the hell are you doing out here, Pepper?"
She imagined his jet - or worse, the Iron Man suit - sitting among the plain aircraft of the small regional airport. It almost made her want to smile. His California glamour didn't belong here in her simple Oklahoma.
"Tony, you're the reason God made Oklahoma," she muttered to herself under her breath. "Specifically so you wouldn't be completely able to drive me crazy." Before he could ask for clarification on her mumbles, she snapped aloud to him: "I'm from here, Tony. Right now, I need here. Life is slower and simpler. There's more space." Her expression hardened. "Though I suppose space is something you already know about."
He grimaced again, shifting his weight. "I've tried to give you space, but-"
"There's a huge difference between giving space and pushing someone away," she interrupted sharply.
"I didn't push you away," he returned. "You're the one who ran all the way to Oklahoma to, I don't know, recharge your batteries."
She took a menacing step toward him. Her knees were no longer wobbling. Indignation had made her iron solid from toes to scalp. She jabbed a finger into his chest, stabbing the inhuman metal. "Not all of us run on batteries," she snapped. "You can't just expect me to 'charge up' and come running right back to you. It doesn't work that way - I'm not even sure I'm going to go back. I came here after you left me. You left me there, Tony, just like every single one of them. You left me to clean up your mess. Again." The disgusted cynicism coated her voice and dripped on him like acid. "So I cleaned it up real well."
Clearly stunned, his mouth worked fruitlessly open and closed. "I-I panicked," he finally stammered. "I didn't mean to-I just…"
But Pepper wasn't finished yet. "Ten years I've been there for you. Ten years, Tony. An entire decade of my life that I've given to you. After all of that time, I should have known better. I thought you'd changed, I hoped-" She broke off, stopping herself from rambling or, worse, breaking into tears. She cleared her throat and forced out an even voice. "I hoped it was different. After ten years, I should have known better."
She was surprised at how cold her own voice sounded. She was oddly proud of the way it detonated against him, his face falling. Maybe he finally, finally, God, finally! understood.
She shook her head. The tears were pooling in the corners of her eyes now. She refused to let them fall as she mumbled simply, "You let me down."
He swallowed visibly. "I'm sorry," he began. "I never meant to-" He broke off, swallowing again, and in a faltering, uncertain voice continued, "I'm a work in progress, Pepper. Not everything works out perfectly on the first test run. But I… want to make the adjustments and try again."
A sharp retort about how she wasn't a machine started to form on her lips-
"I can't do it without you," he said before she could speak up.
The words stopped her cold, freezing her open mouth exactly as it was.
"Pepper, you're as much a part of what keeps me running as this," he said, tapping the glowing ring, invisible beneath his shirt, in his chest. He smiled, a lopsided, oddly melancholic smile. "After 10 years, you've carved out quite the space for yourself." He patted the actual flesh of his chest. "Especially in here."
Snapping her mouth shut, she looked down, fighting to hide some rampant blush that blossomed from a heat deep in her abdomen. But he gently tilted her chin back up. His eyes wavered uncertainly but tried desperately to hold hers.
"You're not the same. That's why I panicked."
She bit down hard on the inside of her lip. She would not give in, she would not give in… She had to turn her face away, had to break eye contact with him. She could feel her brain, her arguments, starting to crumble, and she knew that wasn't good…
"I'm sorry."
The simple words, poured forth in an emotion-saturated barely-whisper, turned her face right back to his. Damn it, now there was sincerity in his warm brown eyes… warming, melting, thawing sincerity…
She didn't realize he was moving closer until she could feel his breath against her face. And then, unexpectedly, his warm lips pressed softly against hers. Her mind blanked. Completely blanked. Her heart was pounding at her ribcage. She let herself kiss him back.
But after a moment of death, her brain resuscitated itself, blazed back to life. And she knew better than this now. She was just going to get burned again like this.
Drawing back but keeping her eyes closed, she cleared her throat. "If you expect me to just drop everything and go running back with you right away, you're out of luck. I can't."
Still within inches of her face, he growled in the back of his throat. "Why?"
She opened her eyes. He was startlingly close, but his eyes were still closed, forehead wrinkled in disapproval. "Because it isn't that simple," she responded, watching as the furrows in his brow deepened. "Life is full of complications."
He groaned quietly, then forced his eyes open. Intense brown orbs bored back at Pepper. "Well, let me point out the flaw of running a company from Oklahoma when the central office is in California -" He saw the response forming on her lips, and quickly added, " - and I can't very well prove how sorry I am if we're in different states." One corner of his mouth twitched up in that lopsided grin she loved so much. "Besides, I need to stop wasting assistants."
When she quirked an eyebrow at him, he explained, "I've been through 13 in the past two weeks."
She actually laughed, which surprised even her. "Only 13? I think that's a new low for you. How many lawsuits?"
His expression sobered. "Zero. I fired them all - none quit because of sexual harassment. I was a little beyond-" He stopped abruptly, shaking his head fractionally. That corner of his mouth tugged up - ever so slightly, not fully. Instead of continuing, he quietly said, "I've never flown to Oklahoma to get a girl back before."
She couldn't resist the urge to lean forward and kiss him again. For that moment, the world returned to simplicity. Her. Him. Them. Things would become complicated again the second she pulled back - she still had her misgivings, her reluctance to fall again - and she knew that with every cell of her brain.
Well.
Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - complications were worth it.
Finis
Comments are love!
BUT, I have been having good Tony/Pepper vibes. Last week, Netflix sent me IM2 on the *day* it came out (which is totally unheard of). So! I have now seen both movies, YAY. :)
Then I was watching it (for the second time) with my sister and friend, and halfway through the movie, they go, "Oh, wait, Tony and Pepper aren't actually together together? Like... involved?" They both assumed they were together since the end of the first movie. PROOF of our ship right there. When people assume like that, somethin's clearly going on. ;)
Anyway, all of this being said, today is a two for one special in compensation.
Title: Simplicity
Fandom: Iron Man
Prompt/Claim: #10:Simple; 20_fics , Table 4, Iron Man: Tony/Pepper
Summary: "I should have known better." She needed time, space, simplicity. Running home, putting half a country between them, was a natural step. A simple step. But even out here, California could still reach her.
Rating: PG lite
Pairings/Characters: Tony/Pepper
Length: 3,200 words
Genre(s): angst
A/N: Companion piece to " No Good On My Own." From more of Pepper's perspective, those events and the continuation. It's better to read that one first, for clearer understanding, though I think this can be read alone. That being said, some (not much) is slightly repetitive if you've read the first. Also, I don't know if we know where Pepper is from or if there's a widely accepted fanonical hometown, but I decided for the purposes of this, I liked Oklahoma. It came to me randomly, and after some state research, it worked. Also, I shamelessly borrowed a movie line or two and worked it my own way. ;) Also also, whoever can spot the classic country music reference herein gets major brownie points. :D
Simplicity was the key to life.
Somewhere along the line, Pepper had come to accept that as truth. Stripped down to its barest components was when life made sense. And life, like everything else in the universe, had to make at least some sort of sense.
Tony Stark was the opposite of simple. Once upon a time, she'd assumed he was simple to figure out. He liked fast cars, cheap women and booze. He didn't like work, deadlines or rules. Simple.
It had taken some time, a few years perhaps, before she realized he really wasn't that simple.
And he certainly did not keep her life simple.
The emptiness of the bed echoed in the emptiness inside her. Alone, vulnerable.
She'd woken here - unbelievable, she'd actually woken up here… - but, reveling in the alien and yet elating feel of having slept here, she snuggled down for a moment in the sheets that smelled of him. She then turned over to stare at…
Nothing. Empty sheets and pillows. The absence of him.
Shock ripped through her. Pain, rejection, confusion chased after it. Complicated emotions, some uncanny sense of remorse. This was painfully familiar. She was just seeing it from a different perspective. The perspective she'd had nightmares about experiencing.
Some cynical part of her mind had made her prepare for this. Folded in her purse was a letter of resignation. She'd kept it on-hand after her first week as Tony's PA. He was a difficult boss, and she spent the first two years constantly on the verge of quitting, letter in hand. She hadn't carried it for years, no matter how difficult Tony was.
But some voice had convinced her to have it on hand this time.
Steely faced, she crawled from the bed, donned last night's unwrinkled dress and retrieved the folded paper. A million feelings of hurt, dismay, shock, betrayal, heartbreak raced through her as soon as her fingers closed on the letter, but she discarded them all in favor of undaunted cynicism.
I should have known better.
She left the letter unfolded on the counter, its perfectly crisp, impersonal black letters echoing her detachment. She let go of it, and fleetingly, she wondered where Tony had hidden himself - most likely in his workshop, a typical favorite when he abandoned women. Pepper didn't even bother asking JARVIS. What did it matter where he was, anyway? He wasn't here.
"I'm sorry, we knew it'd be this way." She penned a sticky note, the one bland expression of her remorse, and left the mansion.
Her walk was confident, her eyes dry. She allowed herself no less dignity than that.
Pepper was from a small town in Oklahoma, just outside Oklahoma City. It'd been a long, long time since she'd lived there. It was a far cry from the face-paced glitz and glamour of Southern California, but she still loved it in its own way. Whenever life in the light-speed fast lane became too much, she retreated to this place, to the familiarity of her childhood home.
Now was just such a time.
She needed time, she needed space. Running home to Oklahoma was a natural step. A simple step.
And here, she felt clearer headed than she had back in California. There was half a continent between her and Tony. Here, where the land and the sky were equally endless and unconfined, the tangled emotions she'd kept bottled in while in California had been free to wildly run their course. She was still raw, but at least the wounds were airing out. And her parents, like the land, were giving her space.
She'd put the smart suits and designer heels away for now and donned jeans and T-shirts. Comfort of another sort lie in tucking away professional Pepper Potts in favor of Oklahoma daughter Ginny Potts.
Life was simpler out here, she told herself, and simplicity was the key to life.
But she found out at the end of a week, even out here, California could still reach her.
Rhodey's unexpected call began eerily similar to a previous one.
"I'm sorry, Pepper. We lost him."
Her breath hitched, chest tightening at the memories of the Afghanistan months. The weeks she spent alone, worrying, living in the mansion as if she were caretaker just to keep up the sense of him, just so she could pretend like nothing had happened and he would be back any moment...
Evidently conscious that she was reliving the terrors of the Afghanistan episode, Rhodey quickly gushed out more details: "He flew off without telling anybody. No mission, nothing. He has the GPS and communications in the suit off, and we can't track him."
She was an indescribable mixture of numb and frantic when she hung up the phone. In less than twenty minutes, she'd thrown together a bag and run out the door to the airport.
She spent three days panicking, pumping JARVIS for details that were either unhelpful or didn't exist, wandering the house and straightening things, sleeping on the futon in the workshop, reliving old memories and pains fresh again every hour…
Mostly, she spent the time asking why.
Tony was self-destructive, that much she knew. He lived too fast, too reckless. But she'd thought he was slowing down, at least somewhat, changing, despite the healthy state of his ego.
She should've learned by now that he wasn't going to change. Ever. He had proved that himself that morning in the mansion. It was a simple, constant truth. That didn't change the fact that she spent those three days alone in the mansion, praying, just praying he'd come back.
Sometime before daybreak on the fourth, sounds jostled her out of a fitful sleep on the workshop futon. Instantly awake, she sprang to her feet. Without him noticing her presence, she stared at him long and hard as the machines pulled away the armor, trying to convince herself he was real and this wasn't another wishful dream.
And then he turned to stare at her. There was no way that hollow-eyed, disbelieving, half-lucid stare wasn't real.
"Where have you been?" she whispered.
"I don't know," he croaked, blinking. "How long…?"
"Three days. Are you… OK?"
He wobbled. She repeated the question twice before he answered.
"No," he responded. "Pep, I'm no good on my own." His voice cracked around the words.
He wobbled again- Moving without a thought, Pepper crossed the room and caught him under the arms before he hit the floor, easing him down slowly, crumbling to her knees.
"Tony." To her dismay, her voice came out as nearly a whimper."Why did you do this?"
She had to give him a bottle of water to inhale before he responded to her. She surveyed him while he did, noting despite his haggard face and obvious exhaustion, he didn't seem to be bleeding or broken.
"I'm no good on my own," he merely repeated.
She breathed in and out slowly, feeling her emotions shifting already, solidifying. This was him, unchanged still. Destructive, unthinking, unapologetic.
"And yet you choose it." Her voice was barely short of a snarl. Releasing him, she stood and moved past him. She had managed to sweep everything under her professional, stony mask again. The words came to her lips with little thought, but she knew they were perfect as they formed: "Take care of yourself, Mr. Stark." Her tone simultaneously bore an edge, a plea, and a hundred meanings. She hoped he understood every one.
"That's what I have you for," he called at her back.
She barely let herself falter a step, forcing the words to impact emptily against her personal shield.
"I'm sorry."
His words grabbed her feet this time, dragged them to a stop at the doorway.
"I'm sorry. I panicked. I didn't know what to do. It's… been a long time. I was lost."
She only half-turned. "You've got all that genius, Tony." Her voice was cold. "Figure it out."
With that, she mounted the stairs and was gone.
And again, she had returned to Oklahoma, surrounding herself with distance. With simplicity, so she could work through the added complications. She felt more hardened now, knowing that he hadn't really changed. At the same time, she felt more conflicted, having been back, having seen him again.
So she had run back to Oklahoma. Again. To make sense of it all. Slowly.
She hadn't planned anything, but the more time she spent here, the more she considered returning for good. A certain part of the California's lifestyle had enticed her, drawn her in despite her carefully constructed walls. And she'd been stung. Badly. It no longer held the same appeal.
Despite the years, Oklahoma was familiar. Warm. Comfortable.
Aviation and aerospace were big here - between a good word from her father and Stark Industries on her résumé, she didn't doubt that she could land herself a good position here, even in a tight economy.
She could be happy here, she thought. It was a definite change of pace, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
"It's you. It's always been you."
It had been a week since her latest return to Oklahoma and two and a half weeks since her first flight from California.
She was still waging the internal battles while helping her mom put away dishes - in the kitchen of a house that could have fit in just one of Tony's rooms - when the doorbell rang. She glanced in that direction, waiting a moment from an announcement from JARVIS before she realized it wouldn't come. Being in a house that didn't talk, at least not audibly, was still strange after an entire week absent.
"I'll get it, Mom," she said, already wiping her hands and moving toward the door.
In hindsight, she realized she should have predicted that on this simple day, the complication that was Tony Stark would show up at her parents' door. But at the time, seeing him standing there had nearly knocked her senseless.
He couldn't resist flexing a Stark grin at her momentarily stunned expression. It helped her impassive face to solidify and her stolen voice to reappear.
"How did you find…?" she began.
"JARVIS," he answered promptly. "I've had him keeping tabs on you for a long time."
Her eyes narrowed.
Dark eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline, he quickly backpedaled, adding, "I have to know where you are, what you're doing…"
Her eyes narrowed even further, becoming thin-slit daggers of ice blue. She forced her teeth not to grind together so she could spit out, "Almost like I should get to know where you are and what you're doing?"
He winced, and she knew she was being brutal. She was relatively certain he deserved it.
He glanced over her shoulder, through the open door. What he saw, she didn't know, but she kept her eyes - daggers - trained on him even as he fingered his collar and said, "Can we speak more privately - take a walk or something?"
She stepped out onto the porch with him, closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. Her feet stayed planted within a step of the door. If she walked any farther, she was afraid her knees might give out.
"I'm sorry about flying off like that," he began uncertainly. He was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Pepper, I just wanted, after all of that, to make myself suffer a little. I deserved it."
Something tightened inside of her. Her chest was constricting, shoving the words out in a rush. "Did you ever stop to think that I'd suffer for that, too? Tony, it was like Afghanistan all over again." Her voice dove down several decibels, barely above a whisper. "Only worse, because you did it all to yourself."
His eyes widened. "Oh, Pepper," he breathed. His voice sounded choked too. Maybe she was having the same strangling effect on him. "I'm sorry, I didn't-"
"Of course you didn't," she cut him off sharply. Anger had burned away the constriction in her chest. "You never do. That's why I'm in Oklahoma."
"Yeah, and I flew all the way to Oklahoma," he returned. "Middle-of-godforsaken-nowhere, Oklahoma." He threw a hand out to indicate the wide plains around them. "What the hell are you doing out here, Pepper?"
She imagined his jet - or worse, the Iron Man suit - sitting among the plain aircraft of the small regional airport. It almost made her want to smile. His California glamour didn't belong here in her simple Oklahoma.
"Tony, you're the reason God made Oklahoma," she muttered to herself under her breath. "Specifically so you wouldn't be completely able to drive me crazy." Before he could ask for clarification on her mumbles, she snapped aloud to him: "I'm from here, Tony. Right now, I need here. Life is slower and simpler. There's more space." Her expression hardened. "Though I suppose space is something you already know about."
He grimaced again, shifting his weight. "I've tried to give you space, but-"
"There's a huge difference between giving space and pushing someone away," she interrupted sharply.
"I didn't push you away," he returned. "You're the one who ran all the way to Oklahoma to, I don't know, recharge your batteries."
She took a menacing step toward him. Her knees were no longer wobbling. Indignation had made her iron solid from toes to scalp. She jabbed a finger into his chest, stabbing the inhuman metal. "Not all of us run on batteries," she snapped. "You can't just expect me to 'charge up' and come running right back to you. It doesn't work that way - I'm not even sure I'm going to go back. I came here after you left me. You left me there, Tony, just like every single one of them. You left me to clean up your mess. Again." The disgusted cynicism coated her voice and dripped on him like acid. "So I cleaned it up real well."
Clearly stunned, his mouth worked fruitlessly open and closed. "I-I panicked," he finally stammered. "I didn't mean to-I just…"
But Pepper wasn't finished yet. "Ten years I've been there for you. Ten years, Tony. An entire decade of my life that I've given to you. After all of that time, I should have known better. I thought you'd changed, I hoped-" She broke off, stopping herself from rambling or, worse, breaking into tears. She cleared her throat and forced out an even voice. "I hoped it was different. After ten years, I should have known better."
She was surprised at how cold her own voice sounded. She was oddly proud of the way it detonated against him, his face falling. Maybe he finally, finally, God, finally! understood.
She shook her head. The tears were pooling in the corners of her eyes now. She refused to let them fall as she mumbled simply, "You let me down."
He swallowed visibly. "I'm sorry," he began. "I never meant to-" He broke off, swallowing again, and in a faltering, uncertain voice continued, "I'm a work in progress, Pepper. Not everything works out perfectly on the first test run. But I… want to make the adjustments and try again."
A sharp retort about how she wasn't a machine started to form on her lips-
"I can't do it without you," he said before she could speak up.
The words stopped her cold, freezing her open mouth exactly as it was.
"Pepper, you're as much a part of what keeps me running as this," he said, tapping the glowing ring, invisible beneath his shirt, in his chest. He smiled, a lopsided, oddly melancholic smile. "After 10 years, you've carved out quite the space for yourself." He patted the actual flesh of his chest. "Especially in here."
Snapping her mouth shut, she looked down, fighting to hide some rampant blush that blossomed from a heat deep in her abdomen. But he gently tilted her chin back up. His eyes wavered uncertainly but tried desperately to hold hers.
"You're not the same. That's why I panicked."
She bit down hard on the inside of her lip. She would not give in, she would not give in… She had to turn her face away, had to break eye contact with him. She could feel her brain, her arguments, starting to crumble, and she knew that wasn't good…
"I'm sorry."
The simple words, poured forth in an emotion-saturated barely-whisper, turned her face right back to his. Damn it, now there was sincerity in his warm brown eyes… warming, melting, thawing sincerity…
She didn't realize he was moving closer until she could feel his breath against her face. And then, unexpectedly, his warm lips pressed softly against hers. Her mind blanked. Completely blanked. Her heart was pounding at her ribcage. She let herself kiss him back.
But after a moment of death, her brain resuscitated itself, blazed back to life. And she knew better than this now. She was just going to get burned again like this.
Drawing back but keeping her eyes closed, she cleared her throat. "If you expect me to just drop everything and go running back with you right away, you're out of luck. I can't."
Still within inches of her face, he growled in the back of his throat. "Why?"
She opened her eyes. He was startlingly close, but his eyes were still closed, forehead wrinkled in disapproval. "Because it isn't that simple," she responded, watching as the furrows in his brow deepened. "Life is full of complications."
He groaned quietly, then forced his eyes open. Intense brown orbs bored back at Pepper. "Well, let me point out the flaw of running a company from Oklahoma when the central office is in California -" He saw the response forming on her lips, and quickly added, " - and I can't very well prove how sorry I am if we're in different states." One corner of his mouth twitched up in that lopsided grin she loved so much. "Besides, I need to stop wasting assistants."
When she quirked an eyebrow at him, he explained, "I've been through 13 in the past two weeks."
She actually laughed, which surprised even her. "Only 13? I think that's a new low for you. How many lawsuits?"
His expression sobered. "Zero. I fired them all - none quit because of sexual harassment. I was a little beyond-" He stopped abruptly, shaking his head fractionally. That corner of his mouth tugged up - ever so slightly, not fully. Instead of continuing, he quietly said, "I've never flown to Oklahoma to get a girl back before."
She couldn't resist the urge to lean forward and kiss him again. For that moment, the world returned to simplicity. Her. Him. Them. Things would become complicated again the second she pulled back - she still had her misgivings, her reluctance to fall again - and she knew that with every cell of her brain.
Well.
Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - complications were worth it.
Finis
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