Fic: Helpmate, 3/5
Fandom: Iron Man (movie) AU
Pairing: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts (slash)
Spoilers: Possibly something from the movie might've slipped in. But really it’s all AU and speculation.
Notes: 3486w. See the picspam thesis and Part I and Part II.
Summary: Stark's convoy is obliterated twenty kilometers west of Kandahar.
Fanonical movie poster made by: delighter, queen of my heart.
III. The Names of Our Wounds
Rhodes calls Pepper first.
It’s 5:30 in the morning, the sun is already hot and white in the kitchen and Pepper is pecking at Stark’s email intermittently while he microwaves extra cheese for his breakfast burrito. Stark isn’t due back from Afghanistan for two days, and before his phone started beeping, Pepper was fantasizing about maybe reading the Times himself. Out on the balcony. In his bathrobe with his plate of jalepeno burritos and his espresso.
But after he slides his cell shut the first thing he does is put the paper, untouched, aside for Stark. So that he’ll have it when he comes back. So it’ll be waiting for him on his desk.
And then Pepper spends six weeks awake: on the phone, at the Stark Industries complex. In meetings he’s not invited to, calling people he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t sleep except in twenty minute snatches, and every time he does he wakes up with his fingernails cutting into his palms and a tension headache all over his body. He ignores that, takes whatever baked goods or vending machine food he can scrounge, and pretty much commandeers Stark’s office as his own.
He’s dimly aware that it must be weird for people that he’s even in the building - he’s never once before been to the complex without Stark himself - like an amputated limb jerking around on its own, leaking blood and turning grey.
That’s pretty much what he feels like. Like if he stops moving he’ll never get started again. Curl up. Rigor mortis. Because whenever he closes his eyes, whenever the room is silent, it’s just questions. Where the fuck is Tony. Is he alive. Who has him. When is he coming back. Is he hurt. Is he alive.
After the first three days, Obadiah Stane comes in and sits down in the chair opposite and makes some conciliatory noises. Pepper stares dully at the man’s white beard as he reminds Pepper to change his clothes. Stane also suggests that Pepper shave if he’s going to keep tagging along - those are the words he uses, ‘tagging along’ - to the meetings with the S&R team the military’s thrown together.
Pepper has to pretty much elbow his way into acting as the sharp and brutish spearhead on the search and rescue coordination. Partly because no one else is stepping up with the right level of rigor, and partly because even though he can tell they don’t want him, no one takes the initiative to say no. When people - executives, board members, assholes from the press - don’t return his calls about this Pakistani radio release or that EU offer of intelligence support, he goes to their offices. He finds that there are actually very few assistants who will lie directly to his face, or who are truly capable of keeping him out of their boss’s office. He gets what he wants, even as he feels the slow and heavy build-up of resistance to him rising.
And maybe it’s lack of sleep, or maybe it’s standard paranoia, but every day Pepper can feel his network tattering like cobwebs in a harsh wind. Without Stark’s name, he’s just a twenty-three-year-old kid with an expensive watch and a cloudy future. The longer this goes on, Pepper knows, the more powerless he’ll become. Until he can’t help Stark at all, and the only hope will be Obadiah, who, from his actions so far, couldn’t find a duck in a puddle without a twenty-million-dollar periscope and some stock incentives.
So thank god Pepper’s been taking drastic measures.
Sometime in the middle of the third week, Rhodes stops by Stark’s office with a bag full of breakfast and - no shit - a sleep mask. They eat the former together and Rhodes won’t even comment on the latter, just muttering something like just try it alright into his eggwich.
Between lukewarm gulps of burnt-bean coffee, Pepper grills Rhodes, typing as fast as he talks, constructing and re-constructing his list of action items (the 30 page chaptered document is titled: HOW TO SAVE TONY STARK).
Rhodes says, “So with Crayford onboard, we’re just waiting on shipment overseas. The navy will want something for that, considering it’s all technically part of your sales pitch to the air force. They’ll agitate.”
“Fine,” says Pepper. “There’s a broomcloset fund in the R&D budget that Stark uses to sweeten the pot when he’s winding you guys in before a big upsell. Pick them out something nice.”
“Ngh,” says Rhodes, closing his eyes briefly. “I didn’t want to hear that.”
Pepper has sympathy for Rhodes’ responsible and patriotic ideas about budgets and salesmanship, but not much patience. “I can get everything - vehicles, arrays, ordinance - to the port at Newark by oh-four-thirty Thursday. How long after that?”
Rhodes checks his notes. “The Algol is there now, but she’ll take eighteen days minimum to get to the Gulf, and then there’s overland through Pakistan.”
“The Algol,” Pepper squints, “You don’t mean one of those Dutch sealifts from the seventies?”
Rhodes spreads his hands, “We tend to plan these things in advance. Years in advance. I can’t get authorization on a hundred ton aircraft shipment with two weeks notice, Pepper. No one can.”
Pepper presses his mouth together, biting back an automatic response. Stark could. Instead, he says, “Fine. I have a plane that can take the load. How about you just worry about getting us clearance and an approved flightplan. I need it in Kabul before next week.”
“Fine,” says Rhodes. He stands up and gestures at the sleep mask. It’s black, with a ribbon tie. “Seriously, Pepper, just put it on next time. You’ll thank me.”
Pepper’s already turned back to his screen, wondering what in the hell Stark did with the 200 ton cargo plane they built during the Gulf War. He knows it never saw service, but it has to be kicking around somewhere. He picks up the phone to call Crofter in logistics.
“I’ll call you when I have a departure scheduled for you,” Rhodes says, lifting a hand at the door.
Pepper waves him off as Crofter picks up the line.
There are news briefs in a handful of major papers about the odd additional training mission in Afghanistan, Jarvis tells him when he asks for a search, but for the most part Pepper and Rhodes’ massively unethical divergence of resources goes unremarked. Stark Industries accounts for the two billion dollar shipment of field intelligence and recon equipment, (along with some newer-than-new vehicles and ammunition, just in case), as part of a pre-sale quality assurance contract.
Helpfully, a handful of VPs have turned a blind eye to his activities, but Pepper knows it’s only a matter of time before he gets his ass busted over it. Probably fired, possibly sued. Maybe jail time. And for his part, Rhodes makes sure that the equipment gets used - hard and often - but only within the thousand square kilometers around the convoy attack.
For his next trick, Pepper is planning on launching at least three military-grade satellites into orbit for a better view of these apparently untrackable cave systems. He’s scheduled that in for next Monday.
And then Obadiah comes in again. Stark’s been gone for 65 days at that point, but Pepper refuses to count like that. Obadiah, on the other hand, seems to want to tattoo the number onto Pepper’s face. He’s wearing a black suit, black tie, black sunglasses over his big bald head. The effect is more that he just came from a theme party, rather than mourning. Pepper’s mouth twists at the sight.
Stane settles down in one of the chairs at Stark’s desk. Pepper has superstitiously avoided that entire area, instead getting a cheapo Ikea table brought in for him to work on. He likes it the way it is, with Stark’s screensaver and pile of crap, his gym shoes underneath. He looks over at it sometimes: imagining Stark coming home to find everything the way he left it reinvigorates him to work harder.
But Obadiah sits with his hands on the armrests, forcing Pepper to circle over to that half of the room in order to face him. But Pepper doesn’t sit down, he stands behind Stark’s desk with his back to the windows and waits.
“You eat dinner yet?” Stane says first, obviously prioritizing.
“I ate something.”
“You know, Pepper, a few of us on the board are getting a bit worried.”
“Stock prices will pick back up once he gets back, it’s a temporary dip. Fear of a rudderless ship is legitimate, but in this case foundless.” Pepper says automatically. He’s had to say it at least two dozen times already, every time he gets a tip from a reporter that’s what they ask for in return: a comment on worries about the faltering stock.
Stane chortles, deep in his throat. “No, no. We’re worried about you. Being here day and night, working yourself to the bone. It’s not healthy, Pepper. When was the last time you took a day off?”
Pepper doesn’t hesitate, “2002.”
“Well, don’t tell the union,” Obadiah is hilarious. He chortles again.
Pepper is finding the black suit more and more offensive. He crosses his arms, repeats another sound byte. “There is no priority more important to this company than getting Mr. Stark back.”
“Pepper,” Obadiah pats the chair next to him. Pepper ignores the offer. “At some point we have to come to terms with reality.”
Pepper opens his mouth. Stane talks over him: “There is no proof that Tony survived the attack. We have nothing. We have his jacket, a few shirt buttons with blood on them and a blood stain in the dirt. No distress calls, no ransom demands, nothing.”
“How does that prove-” Pepper starts, blood rising.
“Don’t you believe that if Tony were alive he’d be able to scheme, or sweettalk, or just plain old outsmart his captors - get himself at least a couple of seconds with a radio? For chrissakes, after all this time Tony Stark could’ve built a transponder out of fig leaves and camel dung. If he were alive.”
Pepper can’t even look at Stane. He glares over the man’s shoulder, out into the hallway, trying his damndest to keep his expression human, if not polite.
Stane leans forward, in the standard posture EQ manuals label as ‘open and sympathetic.’ “I know you don’t believe Tony is stupid or incompetent or helpless, Pepper, so I just don’t see why you’re holding out that he’s alive.”
Pepper says, “Will that be all for today, Mr. Stane?”
Stane sighs, puts his palms to his knees and levers himself out of the chair. He takes a few steps closer, coming around the desk. He’s a large man. Pepper grinds his heels in and refuses to take a step backwards.
“I have to ask you to clear out of the complex by the end of the business day.”
“Am I fired?” Pepper lifts his chin. He wants Stane to say yes. If Stane says yes, then he’s already lost everything and adding an assault charge won’t hurt Tony’s chances at all, and he won’t have to feel guilty.
“Ha! Ha! Oh, Pepper.” It’s like watching a 60s sitcom, Stane even pauses to pretend to wipe a tear out of his eye. What a sociopath. “No, of course not. You’re a rare breed, boy. I’ll book you an appointment with Todd down in HR, and you can come in one day to discuss the options for a more suitable placement.”
He actually pats Pepper on the shoulder, then turns to go.
At the door, he pauses to say, “You just stay put at Tony’s place for now. Until we can find you something more central. Maybe on a bus route.” He looks at his Rolex. “Almost four now, I’d get packing.”
It’s like a switch is flipped. Pepper can barely admit it to himself, but that one move from Stane decisively cripples him. He loses all his contacts when a press release casually mentions his leave of absence for nervous exhaustion, even as they laud his years of ‘conscientious service.’ His access to company funds and operations is severed. He can’t even check Stark’s business email anymore. In a lot of ways, Obadiah’s made sure he’s as dead to the company as Tony is.
He starts sleeping again. Or at least, lying prone for hours on end - in bed, on the couch, on the cool granite of the balcony - eyes open, eyes closed. Lights on or off. Sun up, sun down. He just lays down and floats in a grey, thoughtless limbo. But he still has a few resources, a few leads. He still combs the internet for news, and cold-calls international players minor enough to not have heard of his manufactured breakdown. And he keeps sending tentative feelers back into the company for news on his unlaunched satellites, hoping to sound out the weak link, the one who’ll give him the necessary access to get those bastards into orbit so they can do some good.
The only person who actually contacts him, though, is Rhodes. Rhodes is the one who calls to tell him that Stane’s applied to have Stark declared legally dead. And then, after two weeks of Pepper scrambling to find a lawyer who’ll work on cash and speculation to oppose it, Rhodes calls back to say it’s ok. The military knocked the board down on the basis that the attack was a military situation and military protocol dictates who is dead or MIA or obviously fucking alive, just not present to provide a pulse right now.
Rhodes comes over one afternoon because he’s in town. That’s the excuse he gives Pepper, and that’s the excuse Pepper accepts as he reactivates Jarvis long enough to give the house a once-over security check. He knows that the private server and the workshop downstairs will be the first things Rhodes will want to check up on. National secrets, competitive edge, et cetera, et cetera. Pepper mops the floor in the kitchen while he’s at it.
Rhodes isn’t in uniform, just a t-shirt and jeans. He has a fifth of Jack in a paper bag and he pours it as soon as he makes it to the living room. It’s barely five o’clock. “Tony would never let me drink this stuff around him,” he says, “It was always his house, his plane, his tank, his hotel, and his liquor.”
Pepper runs a hand through his hair, takes the proffered glass.
“To Tony,” says Rhodes, and pulls back the triple.
Pepper does the same, saying it clearly: “Tony.”
The night goes downhill from there. When the bottle’s dry, Rhodes does his security sweep. And Jarvis, after five weeks of being flicked on and off like a lamp, acts a little sulky about it. Even through the liquor Pepper can hear the AI mocking Rhodes as he runs through the access stats, and rattles the glass door at the bottom of the stairs.
When Rhodes has curbed his concern, Pepper says, “You want to get something to eat?” and they take a cab downtown.
A streak of perversity makes Pepper direct the driver to Silo Niobe. But it’s a club now, called the Night Deposit. They eat donairs across the street and then Pepper straightens his collar, drunk enough to be confident that the doorman will recognize his face from all the CNN spots. The man not only recognizes Pepper, he gives his condolences. Pepper can feel his expression go flat, and doesn’t tip the bastard.
They drink more. A couple more people claim to recognize Pepper. Someone asks if Rhodes is his new boss, the next Tony Stark. They both laugh, but only because they’re pretty plastered by then. The club is bank-themed, with fake money littering the floors and occasionally falling onto the dance floor. At one point there is dancing. Rhodes has some good moves, and Pepper just shakes it, pulls some b-boy bits from his old neighbourhood. He used to be able to do a shoulderspin, but that was when he was 16, and he nearly gets kicked out for trying. Probably the doorman told the bouncers to watch out for them. He should’ve tipped.
They decide to leave anyway. They walk down the street, waiting for a cab to come by so they can hail it, and Pepper tells Rhodes about his twenty-first birthday, how Stark brought him out clubbing like some kind of initiation ritual. This has been a recurring theme in their conversation all night: times Stark did something dumb, hilarious, frightening, brilliant or, yeah, dumb.
Pepper says, “He must’ve drank twice as much as me. But you know how he was, it didn’t show.”
“That man could swallow ethanol and it would turn to water in his veins,” Rhodes remarks.
“He had to ask one club to put a bouncer nearby, send away all the girls coming over.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Tony I knew,”
“And even then, the waitress left him her number.”
Pepper finds himself brooding about that night. They’d both been really drunk: stumbling and belligerent and laughing raucously. Happy had given them a lecture about puking in the towncar before letting them into it at the end of the night, as the sun came up.
Pepper can remember sitting in the car and feeling strange, and having it come to him in a flash of understanding: he and Tony were alone there. No girls, no business contacts, no hangers-on, not even cell phones. Through the hour long drive back to the house - a crawl through early morning rush hour traffic - Tony had been silent, smiling quietly to himself out the window. Before parting ways in the kitchen, Tony had reached over to stroke Pepper’s ear with a thumb, smiled again, and said, “Happy birthday.”
Eventually, a cab comes by and he and Rhodes get in. Pepper gets it to stop at a corner store, and they pick up more cheap booze and then head back to the house. The driver makes fun of them when he sees it, “What, you two drunks gonna break ina Tony Stark’s mansion? You two more fucked up than I thought.” Pepper tips the guy twice.
It’s not even midnight, and Rhodes squawks when he sees the time. “Fucking lightweights!” he declares, and pours out another three rounds of shots to get them going again. “Play us some tunes, Jarvis,” he says, and Jarvis breaks out the Al Green before Pepper threatens to switch him off permanently.
By 2am, they’re both done. Out on the balcony, Rhodes stands and wavers over the table. Pepper says, “Why don’t you stay tonight,”
Rhodes looks over, a little bit of relief on his face, “That’s probably a good idea. I’ll grab a guest room,”
Pepper stands up with him, to be at eye level. He can’t help it, he just does it, he reaches across and touches Rhodes’ ear with his thumb, the curve of it at the top, his fingers brushing the smooth skin behind.
Rhodes can’t hide the look of shock, and then disgust, that twists his features. He jerks his head away, growls out, “Fuck, what-” before stopping himself. He takes a step away, out of reach.
Pepper drops his hand back to his side, but doesn’t avert his eyes. There is a long silence while Pepper watches Rhodes master himself to something like pity. Pepper himself feels scalded, his skin seared off his body.
Eventually, one of them says, either a question or an answer: “He’s not coming back,”
And then Rhodes leaves. And Pepper turns to the railing.
He can’t even feel any mortification through the drunk, it’s all just loneliness. A dull cold ache that starts under his ribcage, and moils where it touches underneath the burning hot of his skin. He feels like he’s running on steam, which boils through his veins backwards and slow.
There’s no way to tell how long he stays out there on the balcony, dangling his hands into air that shifts restlessly hundreds of feet above the sea. Pepper thinks: he won’t ever feel any different than this. This is all that’s left.
He goes inside, climbs the stairs to Stark’s bedroom. He’s been in there once, twice, when Stark’s called him in to fetch or take notes or something. Never on his own. Never once in the past three months, either.
Stark’s bed is unmade, dirty sheets and a duvet on the floor. One flabby pillow rucked at the top. Pepper sheds his clothes and climbs in, and yeah, the smell is familiar. As soon as he recognizes that, he sleeps instantly.
He’s not awake when the house phone rings beside the bed, he’s not awake when he answers it. He’s not awake until Rhodes says, in a voice hoarse as broken glass, that they’ve found him. He’s alive.
Part IV: This Whole Place Gets Ugly
Pairing: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts (slash)
Spoilers: Possibly something from the movie might've slipped in. But really it’s all AU and speculation.
Notes: 3486w. See the picspam thesis and Part I and Part II.
Summary: Stark's convoy is obliterated twenty kilometers west of Kandahar.
Fanonical movie poster made by: delighter, queen of my heart.
III. The Names of Our Wounds
Rhodes calls Pepper first.
It’s 5:30 in the morning, the sun is already hot and white in the kitchen and Pepper is pecking at Stark’s email intermittently while he microwaves extra cheese for his breakfast burrito. Stark isn’t due back from Afghanistan for two days, and before his phone started beeping, Pepper was fantasizing about maybe reading the Times himself. Out on the balcony. In his bathrobe with his plate of jalepeno burritos and his espresso.
But after he slides his cell shut the first thing he does is put the paper, untouched, aside for Stark. So that he’ll have it when he comes back. So it’ll be waiting for him on his desk.
And then Pepper spends six weeks awake: on the phone, at the Stark Industries complex. In meetings he’s not invited to, calling people he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t sleep except in twenty minute snatches, and every time he does he wakes up with his fingernails cutting into his palms and a tension headache all over his body. He ignores that, takes whatever baked goods or vending machine food he can scrounge, and pretty much commandeers Stark’s office as his own.
He’s dimly aware that it must be weird for people that he’s even in the building - he’s never once before been to the complex without Stark himself - like an amputated limb jerking around on its own, leaking blood and turning grey.
That’s pretty much what he feels like. Like if he stops moving he’ll never get started again. Curl up. Rigor mortis. Because whenever he closes his eyes, whenever the room is silent, it’s just questions. Where the fuck is Tony. Is he alive. Who has him. When is he coming back. Is he hurt. Is he alive.
After the first three days, Obadiah Stane comes in and sits down in the chair opposite and makes some conciliatory noises. Pepper stares dully at the man’s white beard as he reminds Pepper to change his clothes. Stane also suggests that Pepper shave if he’s going to keep tagging along - those are the words he uses, ‘tagging along’ - to the meetings with the S&R team the military’s thrown together.
Pepper has to pretty much elbow his way into acting as the sharp and brutish spearhead on the search and rescue coordination. Partly because no one else is stepping up with the right level of rigor, and partly because even though he can tell they don’t want him, no one takes the initiative to say no. When people - executives, board members, assholes from the press - don’t return his calls about this Pakistani radio release or that EU offer of intelligence support, he goes to their offices. He finds that there are actually very few assistants who will lie directly to his face, or who are truly capable of keeping him out of their boss’s office. He gets what he wants, even as he feels the slow and heavy build-up of resistance to him rising.
And maybe it’s lack of sleep, or maybe it’s standard paranoia, but every day Pepper can feel his network tattering like cobwebs in a harsh wind. Without Stark’s name, he’s just a twenty-three-year-old kid with an expensive watch and a cloudy future. The longer this goes on, Pepper knows, the more powerless he’ll become. Until he can’t help Stark at all, and the only hope will be Obadiah, who, from his actions so far, couldn’t find a duck in a puddle without a twenty-million-dollar periscope and some stock incentives.
So thank god Pepper’s been taking drastic measures.
Sometime in the middle of the third week, Rhodes stops by Stark’s office with a bag full of breakfast and - no shit - a sleep mask. They eat the former together and Rhodes won’t even comment on the latter, just muttering something like just try it alright into his eggwich.
Between lukewarm gulps of burnt-bean coffee, Pepper grills Rhodes, typing as fast as he talks, constructing and re-constructing his list of action items (the 30 page chaptered document is titled: HOW TO SAVE TONY STARK).
Rhodes says, “So with Crayford onboard, we’re just waiting on shipment overseas. The navy will want something for that, considering it’s all technically part of your sales pitch to the air force. They’ll agitate.”
“Fine,” says Pepper. “There’s a broomcloset fund in the R&D budget that Stark uses to sweeten the pot when he’s winding you guys in before a big upsell. Pick them out something nice.”
“Ngh,” says Rhodes, closing his eyes briefly. “I didn’t want to hear that.”
Pepper has sympathy for Rhodes’ responsible and patriotic ideas about budgets and salesmanship, but not much patience. “I can get everything - vehicles, arrays, ordinance - to the port at Newark by oh-four-thirty Thursday. How long after that?”
Rhodes checks his notes. “The Algol is there now, but she’ll take eighteen days minimum to get to the Gulf, and then there’s overland through Pakistan.”
“The Algol,” Pepper squints, “You don’t mean one of those Dutch sealifts from the seventies?”
Rhodes spreads his hands, “We tend to plan these things in advance. Years in advance. I can’t get authorization on a hundred ton aircraft shipment with two weeks notice, Pepper. No one can.”
Pepper presses his mouth together, biting back an automatic response. Stark could. Instead, he says, “Fine. I have a plane that can take the load. How about you just worry about getting us clearance and an approved flightplan. I need it in Kabul before next week.”
“Fine,” says Rhodes. He stands up and gestures at the sleep mask. It’s black, with a ribbon tie. “Seriously, Pepper, just put it on next time. You’ll thank me.”
Pepper’s already turned back to his screen, wondering what in the hell Stark did with the 200 ton cargo plane they built during the Gulf War. He knows it never saw service, but it has to be kicking around somewhere. He picks up the phone to call Crofter in logistics.
“I’ll call you when I have a departure scheduled for you,” Rhodes says, lifting a hand at the door.
Pepper waves him off as Crofter picks up the line.
There are news briefs in a handful of major papers about the odd additional training mission in Afghanistan, Jarvis tells him when he asks for a search, but for the most part Pepper and Rhodes’ massively unethical divergence of resources goes unremarked. Stark Industries accounts for the two billion dollar shipment of field intelligence and recon equipment, (along with some newer-than-new vehicles and ammunition, just in case), as part of a pre-sale quality assurance contract.
Helpfully, a handful of VPs have turned a blind eye to his activities, but Pepper knows it’s only a matter of time before he gets his ass busted over it. Probably fired, possibly sued. Maybe jail time. And for his part, Rhodes makes sure that the equipment gets used - hard and often - but only within the thousand square kilometers around the convoy attack.
For his next trick, Pepper is planning on launching at least three military-grade satellites into orbit for a better view of these apparently untrackable cave systems. He’s scheduled that in for next Monday.
And then Obadiah comes in again. Stark’s been gone for 65 days at that point, but Pepper refuses to count like that. Obadiah, on the other hand, seems to want to tattoo the number onto Pepper’s face. He’s wearing a black suit, black tie, black sunglasses over his big bald head. The effect is more that he just came from a theme party, rather than mourning. Pepper’s mouth twists at the sight.
Stane settles down in one of the chairs at Stark’s desk. Pepper has superstitiously avoided that entire area, instead getting a cheapo Ikea table brought in for him to work on. He likes it the way it is, with Stark’s screensaver and pile of crap, his gym shoes underneath. He looks over at it sometimes: imagining Stark coming home to find everything the way he left it reinvigorates him to work harder.
But Obadiah sits with his hands on the armrests, forcing Pepper to circle over to that half of the room in order to face him. But Pepper doesn’t sit down, he stands behind Stark’s desk with his back to the windows and waits.
“You eat dinner yet?” Stane says first, obviously prioritizing.
“I ate something.”
“You know, Pepper, a few of us on the board are getting a bit worried.”
“Stock prices will pick back up once he gets back, it’s a temporary dip. Fear of a rudderless ship is legitimate, but in this case foundless.” Pepper says automatically. He’s had to say it at least two dozen times already, every time he gets a tip from a reporter that’s what they ask for in return: a comment on worries about the faltering stock.
Stane chortles, deep in his throat. “No, no. We’re worried about you. Being here day and night, working yourself to the bone. It’s not healthy, Pepper. When was the last time you took a day off?”
Pepper doesn’t hesitate, “2002.”
“Well, don’t tell the union,” Obadiah is hilarious. He chortles again.
Pepper is finding the black suit more and more offensive. He crosses his arms, repeats another sound byte. “There is no priority more important to this company than getting Mr. Stark back.”
“Pepper,” Obadiah pats the chair next to him. Pepper ignores the offer. “At some point we have to come to terms with reality.”
Pepper opens his mouth. Stane talks over him: “There is no proof that Tony survived the attack. We have nothing. We have his jacket, a few shirt buttons with blood on them and a blood stain in the dirt. No distress calls, no ransom demands, nothing.”
“How does that prove-” Pepper starts, blood rising.
“Don’t you believe that if Tony were alive he’d be able to scheme, or sweettalk, or just plain old outsmart his captors - get himself at least a couple of seconds with a radio? For chrissakes, after all this time Tony Stark could’ve built a transponder out of fig leaves and camel dung. If he were alive.”
Pepper can’t even look at Stane. He glares over the man’s shoulder, out into the hallway, trying his damndest to keep his expression human, if not polite.
Stane leans forward, in the standard posture EQ manuals label as ‘open and sympathetic.’ “I know you don’t believe Tony is stupid or incompetent or helpless, Pepper, so I just don’t see why you’re holding out that he’s alive.”
Pepper says, “Will that be all for today, Mr. Stane?”
Stane sighs, puts his palms to his knees and levers himself out of the chair. He takes a few steps closer, coming around the desk. He’s a large man. Pepper grinds his heels in and refuses to take a step backwards.
“I have to ask you to clear out of the complex by the end of the business day.”
“Am I fired?” Pepper lifts his chin. He wants Stane to say yes. If Stane says yes, then he’s already lost everything and adding an assault charge won’t hurt Tony’s chances at all, and he won’t have to feel guilty.
“Ha! Ha! Oh, Pepper.” It’s like watching a 60s sitcom, Stane even pauses to pretend to wipe a tear out of his eye. What a sociopath. “No, of course not. You’re a rare breed, boy. I’ll book you an appointment with Todd down in HR, and you can come in one day to discuss the options for a more suitable placement.”
He actually pats Pepper on the shoulder, then turns to go.
At the door, he pauses to say, “You just stay put at Tony’s place for now. Until we can find you something more central. Maybe on a bus route.” He looks at his Rolex. “Almost four now, I’d get packing.”
It’s like a switch is flipped. Pepper can barely admit it to himself, but that one move from Stane decisively cripples him. He loses all his contacts when a press release casually mentions his leave of absence for nervous exhaustion, even as they laud his years of ‘conscientious service.’ His access to company funds and operations is severed. He can’t even check Stark’s business email anymore. In a lot of ways, Obadiah’s made sure he’s as dead to the company as Tony is.
He starts sleeping again. Or at least, lying prone for hours on end - in bed, on the couch, on the cool granite of the balcony - eyes open, eyes closed. Lights on or off. Sun up, sun down. He just lays down and floats in a grey, thoughtless limbo. But he still has a few resources, a few leads. He still combs the internet for news, and cold-calls international players minor enough to not have heard of his manufactured breakdown. And he keeps sending tentative feelers back into the company for news on his unlaunched satellites, hoping to sound out the weak link, the one who’ll give him the necessary access to get those bastards into orbit so they can do some good.
The only person who actually contacts him, though, is Rhodes. Rhodes is the one who calls to tell him that Stane’s applied to have Stark declared legally dead. And then, after two weeks of Pepper scrambling to find a lawyer who’ll work on cash and speculation to oppose it, Rhodes calls back to say it’s ok. The military knocked the board down on the basis that the attack was a military situation and military protocol dictates who is dead or MIA or obviously fucking alive, just not present to provide a pulse right now.
Rhodes comes over one afternoon because he’s in town. That’s the excuse he gives Pepper, and that’s the excuse Pepper accepts as he reactivates Jarvis long enough to give the house a once-over security check. He knows that the private server and the workshop downstairs will be the first things Rhodes will want to check up on. National secrets, competitive edge, et cetera, et cetera. Pepper mops the floor in the kitchen while he’s at it.
Rhodes isn’t in uniform, just a t-shirt and jeans. He has a fifth of Jack in a paper bag and he pours it as soon as he makes it to the living room. It’s barely five o’clock. “Tony would never let me drink this stuff around him,” he says, “It was always his house, his plane, his tank, his hotel, and his liquor.”
Pepper runs a hand through his hair, takes the proffered glass.
“To Tony,” says Rhodes, and pulls back the triple.
Pepper does the same, saying it clearly: “Tony.”
The night goes downhill from there. When the bottle’s dry, Rhodes does his security sweep. And Jarvis, after five weeks of being flicked on and off like a lamp, acts a little sulky about it. Even through the liquor Pepper can hear the AI mocking Rhodes as he runs through the access stats, and rattles the glass door at the bottom of the stairs.
When Rhodes has curbed his concern, Pepper says, “You want to get something to eat?” and they take a cab downtown.
A streak of perversity makes Pepper direct the driver to Silo Niobe. But it’s a club now, called the Night Deposit. They eat donairs across the street and then Pepper straightens his collar, drunk enough to be confident that the doorman will recognize his face from all the CNN spots. The man not only recognizes Pepper, he gives his condolences. Pepper can feel his expression go flat, and doesn’t tip the bastard.
They drink more. A couple more people claim to recognize Pepper. Someone asks if Rhodes is his new boss, the next Tony Stark. They both laugh, but only because they’re pretty plastered by then. The club is bank-themed, with fake money littering the floors and occasionally falling onto the dance floor. At one point there is dancing. Rhodes has some good moves, and Pepper just shakes it, pulls some b-boy bits from his old neighbourhood. He used to be able to do a shoulderspin, but that was when he was 16, and he nearly gets kicked out for trying. Probably the doorman told the bouncers to watch out for them. He should’ve tipped.
They decide to leave anyway. They walk down the street, waiting for a cab to come by so they can hail it, and Pepper tells Rhodes about his twenty-first birthday, how Stark brought him out clubbing like some kind of initiation ritual. This has been a recurring theme in their conversation all night: times Stark did something dumb, hilarious, frightening, brilliant or, yeah, dumb.
Pepper says, “He must’ve drank twice as much as me. But you know how he was, it didn’t show.”
“That man could swallow ethanol and it would turn to water in his veins,” Rhodes remarks.
“He had to ask one club to put a bouncer nearby, send away all the girls coming over.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Tony I knew,”
“And even then, the waitress left him her number.”
Pepper finds himself brooding about that night. They’d both been really drunk: stumbling and belligerent and laughing raucously. Happy had given them a lecture about puking in the towncar before letting them into it at the end of the night, as the sun came up.
Pepper can remember sitting in the car and feeling strange, and having it come to him in a flash of understanding: he and Tony were alone there. No girls, no business contacts, no hangers-on, not even cell phones. Through the hour long drive back to the house - a crawl through early morning rush hour traffic - Tony had been silent, smiling quietly to himself out the window. Before parting ways in the kitchen, Tony had reached over to stroke Pepper’s ear with a thumb, smiled again, and said, “Happy birthday.”
Eventually, a cab comes by and he and Rhodes get in. Pepper gets it to stop at a corner store, and they pick up more cheap booze and then head back to the house. The driver makes fun of them when he sees it, “What, you two drunks gonna break ina Tony Stark’s mansion? You two more fucked up than I thought.” Pepper tips the guy twice.
It’s not even midnight, and Rhodes squawks when he sees the time. “Fucking lightweights!” he declares, and pours out another three rounds of shots to get them going again. “Play us some tunes, Jarvis,” he says, and Jarvis breaks out the Al Green before Pepper threatens to switch him off permanently.
By 2am, they’re both done. Out on the balcony, Rhodes stands and wavers over the table. Pepper says, “Why don’t you stay tonight,”
Rhodes looks over, a little bit of relief on his face, “That’s probably a good idea. I’ll grab a guest room,”
Pepper stands up with him, to be at eye level. He can’t help it, he just does it, he reaches across and touches Rhodes’ ear with his thumb, the curve of it at the top, his fingers brushing the smooth skin behind.
Rhodes can’t hide the look of shock, and then disgust, that twists his features. He jerks his head away, growls out, “Fuck, what-” before stopping himself. He takes a step away, out of reach.
Pepper drops his hand back to his side, but doesn’t avert his eyes. There is a long silence while Pepper watches Rhodes master himself to something like pity. Pepper himself feels scalded, his skin seared off his body.
Eventually, one of them says, either a question or an answer: “He’s not coming back,”
And then Rhodes leaves. And Pepper turns to the railing.
He can’t even feel any mortification through the drunk, it’s all just loneliness. A dull cold ache that starts under his ribcage, and moils where it touches underneath the burning hot of his skin. He feels like he’s running on steam, which boils through his veins backwards and slow.
There’s no way to tell how long he stays out there on the balcony, dangling his hands into air that shifts restlessly hundreds of feet above the sea. Pepper thinks: he won’t ever feel any different than this. This is all that’s left.
He goes inside, climbs the stairs to Stark’s bedroom. He’s been in there once, twice, when Stark’s called him in to fetch or take notes or something. Never on his own. Never once in the past three months, either.
Stark’s bed is unmade, dirty sheets and a duvet on the floor. One flabby pillow rucked at the top. Pepper sheds his clothes and climbs in, and yeah, the smell is familiar. As soon as he recognizes that, he sleeps instantly.
He’s not awake when the house phone rings beside the bed, he’s not awake when he answers it. He’s not awake until Rhodes says, in a voice hoarse as broken glass, that they’ve found him. He’s alive.
Part IV: This Whole Place Gets Ugly