(Untitled)

[wildlyconflictd]

Things had been going so well.

Okay, maybe "well" was a bit of an exaggeration, but things were a decent approximation of well. Nothing was blowing up and no one was in mortal peril, which was the best Pepper could hope for on any given day. It was all about perspective, really.

Things had been going without incidentThere were several reasons

Comments

[notawastedlife]

That did not look encouraging.

"Buck up, Potts," he said, coming down the boardwalk, on his way to the scrapyard. "You look like someone ran over your puppy."

[wildlyconflictd]

Without speaking, Pepper lifted the broken shoe over head with one hand. She wasn't even completely sure where the heel had gone; beneath the boardwalk or off somewhere in the bushes, most likely.

No, no one had run over her puppy, but in theory this was worse. A puppy would be more easily replaced.

[notawastedlife]

"Someone ran over your puppy," Tony confirmed, wincing and looking around, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "Those weren't... expensive, were they?"

Of course they were. That normally wouldn't be an issue, but here 'expensive' meant 'hard to replace.'

[wildlyconflictd]

Pepper hummed briefly in the affirmative and dropped the shoe back into her lap. "It's my fault," she admitted, despite her earlier inclination to destroy the pathway. "My mind was somewhere else, and I forgot I shouldn't be wearing them out here."

[flyboy_shepp]

It seemed to be ending up to be John's day for finding women sitting on the boardwalk looking like the world had wronged them somehow. He was surprised to see Pepper sitting there - John got the impression she didn't often just up and sit down on a boardwalk people walked along all day, every day. Especially not in such nice clothes.

Cash was following along in the treeline, barking at little animals or whatever it was he did as John came to a stop near Pepper. "You okay there?"

[wildlyconflictd]

Not immediately placing the voice, Pepper swung her head around and then hesitated at the concerned face of John Sheppard. "Oh. Yes, I'm fine, really. Just a little bad luck, that's all. But I'm fine," she answered, feeling suddenly and intensely petty, so upset over something so relatively minor. "It's just-" She puffed out a little self-deprecating laugh, and held up what was left of the shoe. "They were favorites."

[flyboy_shepp]

"I see," John replied, nodding slightly. He still didn't get what it was with women and heels beyond his own appreciation of them, but he'd seen Nancy upset about a broken heel enough times to know it wasn't just a broken heel.

"And not easily replaceable, I'm guessing," he added, crouching down so he wasn't towering over her.

[wildlyconflictd]

"No," Pepper confirmed with a sigh, and gave the shoe a disappointed once over before dropping it back in her lap. "Back home it would have been frustrating, but there were hundreds of shoe stores just waiting to replace it. Here, I have to hope that whatever governs that box in the basement in benevolent, and that seems pretty unlikely if the outfits most people wear on a daily basis are any indication. I guess I should just be thankful it's giving me anything other than stirrup pants and acid wash."

[whiskytango_rto]

"Even if you literally fall for me," Ray said as he realized who it was sitting on the edge of the boardwalk, "I'll still have a girlfriend." He stood next to her and leaned over enough to watch her face. "I can see you're really upset over it, but there's nothing I can do."

[wildlyconflictd]

"Unless you've become a cobbler since the last time I saw you, Corporal, then no, there really isn't," Pepper shot back with a skeptical arch of her brows. "And I'm not really upset. Just frustrated. Imagine losing your rifle. Those are about as easy to come by around here as this shoe."

[whiskytango_rto]

If he stared at her blankly, it was more out of some instinctive warrior-spirit terror that was making him go over exactly who he'd checked his rifle back in with after the fucking kidnapping shit than misunderstanding the connection. Not that there really was one, in his opinion. "Replacing my rifle wouldn't be a problem, 'cause if I lost it, I'd probably have to perform ritual suicide for disgracing the Marine Corps like that. And no, you're not allowed to take that as permission to kill yourself over a shoe. You can have mine if you're that against walking home barefoot."

[wildlyconflictd]

"Since my home is on the other side of that mountain," she pointed at the landmass that defined the island skyline, "I think I'll be going back to the Compound to find some sneakers. I shouldn't have worn these out the front door anyway, I just wasn't thinking." Well, not about shoes, at any rate. Just everything else in her life.

[pocketfullowit]

She wasn't crying. Yet. That was a relief. "Hey," he greeted, a little cautious since he still didn't have any tissues. If this was about Tony Stark or some other man not wanting to marry her, he was at least more well versed in that than he was a few days ago. That idea, however, was tossed away as quickly as it had come to him.

[wildlyconflictd]

Oh wonderful, it was the comics lover. Not that the compassion wasn't appreciated, but it was so completely weird having someone admiring her because she'd apparently been depicted in a comic book doing things she had no recollection of.

"Hello," Pepper replied after a polite clearing of her throat. "Don't mind me, I'm just mourning the lost efforts of Manolo Blahnik." She held up what was left of the shoe to clarify.

[pocketfullowit]

"Hey, I remember - " Seth's index finger was poised in an a-ha! gesture that slowly lowered back with the rest of his digits when he saw the vestiges of what could have very well been the world's sexiest shoes. Next to Summer's pink heels when her toes were painted all cutely, that was.

"...those," he finished with a grimace and a pop of his index fingers and thumbs, then a clap of his palm against his opposite fist. "Hey, if it's any consolation, you have really cute feet."

[wildlyconflictd]

Pepper laughed at that, appreciative of Seth's efforts. "Thank you, you're sweet," she replied, and then resigned herself to get over the loss and back to being practical again. She pushed herself to her apparently cute feet and climbed back up onto the boardwalk. "I guess they were impractical anyway," she sighed with a disappointed look down to the shoes in her hands.

[aintthatbad]

Skinny may be incapable of understanding the nature of this particular tragedy, but heartbreak is heartbreak and that, at least, is more or less universal.

"Ma'am? Sorry to intrude, but did something happen?"

[wildlyconflictd]

What an accent.

By that point, Pepper was well used to people calling her ma'am, but when she looked up and saw the face attached to that voice, she couldn't help but feel ancient. He was a baby. A very polite, apparently Southern baby.

"Oh, I'm fine," she insisted, and offered a wan smile as she held up her broken shoe. "I can't replace it, is all. Thank you for asking, that's very kind."

[aintthatbad]

He frowns at the shoe, then offers her a sheepish half-smile. "I haven't the faintest idea how anybody moves in those without falling right over and snapping their necks, and I consider myself a pretty coordinated guy. You've got my admiration for making it this far."

What does he know? He's had the same pair of boots for most of the past three years. This isn't a conversation he's ever really had before. (Correction: Not with a woman, to be fair. There were nights in London where he wondered similar things about the ladies they met on the streets and in the clubs, but the tone was markedly different then.)

[wildlyconflictd]

That made Pepper laugh, and she offered a vaguely abashed shrug. "The things we do for fashion," she replied, and had to admit to herself that all in all, she could have fared much worse. She hadn't even fallen, but she supposed if she could run from giant homicidal robots in shoes like that, her balance was fairly advanced.

After a final disappointed look to the shoes in her hands, she pushed herself to her feet and climbed barefoot back atop the boardwalk. The broken shoe she tucked beneath her left arm and she extended her right hand. "I'm Pepper."