Chapter 10
Pepper is on a plane when aliens invade Manhattan.
She punches her thigh in frustration.
She knew about the Avengers Initiative. She did not guess that a day was all it took for things to go to absolute hell. She had thought Tony would keep her updated.
There was not time.
Tony goes into a hole in space, because of course he does, taking the nuke that would have hit New York with him—
He grabs it and she is not surprised, she is not, she is so proud it hurts but not surprised at all, her idiot, her stupid, stupid Kage—
But--
Oh.
Tony falls through the portal after a scary moment when Pepper thinks she is going to have to mount an interstellar attack—her brain races ahead to how she could get through to how she could survive, who she could force to open another portal, it would fucking happen—and is caught by the Hulk.
Pepper throws back her head and laughs and cries because ofcourse.
Tony is not quite the same as Pepper, in that Pepper’s memories of being Sakura are crystal clear if she wants them to be and Tony obviously doesn’t consciously remembering being Naruto, but he is so very definitely her teammate.
(He is scary smart and quick to love, happy and smiling despite the pains of his childhood—and why? Why couldn’t Naruto have parents who loved him and raised him and sheltered him from harm just once—where someone else would be screaming. He creates as easily as he destroys. He is warm. He always makes the sacrifice play, putting other people before himself.)
(Even though it makes her pull her hair out.)
(She grudgingly concedes that red and gold, while garish, are leaps and bounds better alone than being combined into bright orange.)