Chapter 22
If Father Christmas had made his own visit the night before, complete with clattering reindeer, Peggy would have never known. She slept like the dead, wrapped up in Steve’s arms, so safe and warm she didn’t know if she even dreamed. It was well into the following morning before she awoke to his beatific smile and the bright sunshine on the dusting of snow on Christmas Day.
By tacit agreement, neither of them brought up their respective missions that day, despite Peggy’s nagging curiosity on what Steve had been up to that kept him and Romanoff so off the grid that they had missed everything with Stark. Really, she just lacked the energy to press it, and Steve had shown no inclination to wonder outside of asking if all parties were safe enough. They hadn’t even bothered turning on the news programs to see the fall out of it all. Instead, they spent their day together quietly, she with a nose in one of the several new books he had purchased her, curled up under a cozy blanket on her end of the sofa, he on the other with his new art supplies, blatantly and obviously sketching her where she sat there.
It was, to be sure, blissful and perfect.
Boxing Day was not a day most Americans recognized, which Peggy found a pity. Real life intruded on their holiday cocoon.
“They arrested the vice president,” Steve greeted her as she wandered out of their bedroom later that morning, Steve watching the news on the television screen, having finally gotten into the practice of “watching” rather than “reading” the news, thanks in part to JARVIS helpfully putting it on any time there was something of note. The words “scandal” and “crisis” were plastered all over the lower third as footage played of the vice president being escorted out of the Old Executive Office Building in Washington DC by police and Secret Service, past a bevy of stunned and horrified staffers.
“We suspected he was involved with Killian, but Sharon must have found hard evidence.” She shook her head, grimly. “I would be curious as to how many officials in the government knew about what he was up to and were silent about it.”
“Perhaps more than we care to admit,” Steve rumbled, darkly. He had yet to mention the case he was on with Romanoff. Peggy had never demanded that he did, she knew the game as well as he did, but the ritual of discussing tidbits with one another, of hashing out questions and bouncing off ideas, had become second nature since he started working with the former-Russian operative. That he wasn’t with this case left her mildly worried, more so because whatever happened clearly bothered him, but he had yet to bring it up.
Their plan was to take the train to Washington DC that afternoon. It allowed them time to get back to Steve’s apartment at a decent hour, as they had an early call to attend Christmas with the extended Carter clan the following day. It also allowed Peggy time to sit with Sharon and get the debrief on the case and all the fallout from it, well before she would be distracted by Sharon’s siblings, cousins, and their packs of children. As much as Peggy adored the families of Michael’s son and daughter, few of them understood the mad world that Peggy, Steve, and Sharon all inhabited.
So it was somewhat of a large surprise when JARVIS politely interrupted her repacking her bags for her brief trip to Washington. “Miss Carter, Mr. Stark wanted to know if you are available for visitors.”
She blinked up at the ceiling midway through sorting through several tops for her trip. “I…suppose. How far out is he?”
“He is leaving the tower now and should be here in less than five minutes.”
It only took Peggy a second to figure out how he achieved that feet. “He’s got another suit already?”
“This was one that was already in the lab at Stark Tower, he just hadn’t activated it yet.”
Peggy wondered if Pepper knew about this one. “And I am guessing he didn’t feel like having a driver take him.”
“I believe his ankle bothering him is serving as his excuse.”
In all fairness, a fractured and sprained ankle was a good excuse to have, as she doubted he wished to walk to and from a car, let alone make his way upstairs. “Thank you,” she said, moving out to the living area. “Steve, we are about to have company.”
He had been tidying up from their lazy Christmas Day, his various art supplies in hand as he tucked them neatly away in his travel bag. “We have to be at the train station in a couple of hours.”
“I know, it’s just…” But her words were cut off as a wooshing sound rose outside of the balcony windows. Stark neatly landed on the snowy concrete, his suit opened from the middle outward, allowing him to step out in his comfortable jeans, a faded, long-sleeved t-shirt that did not hide the glow of the arc reactor in his chest, and a more streamlined and sturdy looking booted cast that Peggy was fairly certain was his own creation and not standard medical issue. Carefully, he limped across the balcony as Peggy rushed to open the door for him, worried about the slick surface and his injured foot.
“How is the limp,” she asked, genially, earning a shrug and sigh as her response.
“Doctor says six-to-eight, if I am a good boy and keep it booted up and don’t put too much stress on it.” He hobbled in, giving Steve a wave and a nod in greeting. “Cap!”
“Tony,” he had wandered over to offer Stark his hand, the two shaking firmly. “I’m so sorry for everything that happened. How’s Happy?”
“Improving,” he replied, sounding optimistic. “Surgery went well, they are hoping to have him off the vent in another day or two, and then slowly bring him down off the medical coma. Then it’s just a waiting game, but the prognosis looks good for a full recovery.”
“That’s good!” Steve and Peggy both echoed one another, pleased that one bit of goodness was coming out of the entire Mandarin affair.
“Yeah, Pep and I are going to go fly out to be with him when they bring him off the drugs, that way we can see him when he’s awake.” There was no masking the guilt that Stark felt over Happy Hogan’s situation, no matter how little of it was actually his fault. She glanced at Steve, sensing Stark wasn’t here to simply pass along holiday well wishes.
“Hey, give him my best wishes for a speedy recovery when you see him,” Steve offered, picking up on Peggy’s silent request. “You wanted to pick up some of those pies at the restaurant down the street for tomorrow. I can go get those while you two chat.”
One day, Peggy considered, fondly, she would really have to work with Steve on his covert skills. “That would be wonderful, yes, please. Don’t forget the mince, Harry and Maggie are fond of it.”
“Right,” he assured her, swooping in for a brief peck on her cheek, before clapping Stark on the shoulder. “Good to see you, Tony.”
“You too, Cap,” he returned, as Steve gathered his leather jacket and warm scarf, making for the foyer and front door. “You seriously got him out of here with a honey-do list?”
“I didn’t get him out of anything,” she snorted, waving him over to the sofa in the living area. “I think he simply sensed the same thing I did, that you were here for a chat and not necessarily with him.”
“I mean, you make it sound as if I would have a problem discussing this with Cap. I like him!”
Peggy eyed him with the look that said she knew he was fibbing, or at the very least stretching the truth.
“I like Cap, Peggy,” he insisted, vehemently. “It’s just…we have very different personalities. And I may still have a lot of daddy issues I project on him for completely unfair and unjust reasons. I mean, I suppose I need to get to know him better, but you got to admit, I have a lot of trust issues, and building long term, meaningful relationships was not ever my forte.”
“This I am well aware of.”
“I mean to say I am trying…will try…more…with Steve,” he stuttered, lowering himself carefully to the end of the sectional. “Why mince pie?”
It was a credit to the long relationship Peggy had with first Howard, now Tony, that she hardly batted an eye at his random segue. “My family likes it, mostly my niece and nephew. They were born in England and lived there as children, you know. In that, they take after their father.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I never liked the stuff.”
“How very un-English of you,” he quipped.
“And yet, I don’t think you are here to discuss pies,” she gently prodded, settling on the other side of the sectional. “So what did you need?”
For a long moment he stared at the Christmas tree in her living room, all glitter and filled with baubles. Heaven knew where Juan had found them last minute on Christmas Eve. Peggy didn’t think that Stark was paying it much mind, however, lost in thought as he was. She waited, patiently, for him to collect himself, his expression working as he opened his mouth to say something, paused, then started again.
“I wanted to say I was sorry,” he finally stuttered out, running a hand through his already somewhat messy dark hair. “For dragging everyone into this, for making this, once again, about me.”
It was the sort of earnest, personal insight that Stark wasn’t known for and it rather shocked Peggy that he said. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, looking up at her shock and rolling his eyes. “Don’t make this harder than it already is, Carter.”
“I’m not, or I’m not trying to, I’m just…surprised is all, that you are saying it.”
“What, that I can recognize that I am self-centered, that I tend to operate in accordance with my own self-interest most…a lot of the time?”
His choice of words struck her, the memory of another Christmas and another conversation with a different Stark. “No…no that isn’t surprising. I just…I’m glad you are working through it.”
He sighed, throwing himself more deeply into the squashy cushions of her sofa. “It’s not like I could get away from that, Howard hammering it home to me every day of my young life. I feel like I’ve spent every day since he died either trying to live up to all the dire warnings he had about my potential or trying to push against them, and honestly on any given day it’s even odds which is which. Maybe I don’t even know anymore.”
How the hurt from one generation could spiral down through the subsequent ones, like a disease, crippling everyone down its path. “You know, your father once told me he was swearing off marrying and children for that very reason. Said he felt that the Stark’s were too arrogant and selfish, and he didn’t want to foist that on a family.”
“Yeah, well we both see how much he stuck to that oath. I think me sitting here is living proof that didn’t happen.”
“No, it didn’t. But perhaps it was less because Howard couldn’t keep a promise to himself as it was that he finally realized something I had been trying to tell him all along; no one can do this alone, Tony. Not you, not anyone.”
“Easy to say when your worst tendencies don’t get people killed,” Stark retorted. “You know why Killian was even a thing? Why Maya Hansen and Extremis were even a thing? It was because of me, Peggy! I was the one who created that monster, years ago in Switzerland. You asked me why Killian was making it personal, it was because I shamed him, made him desperate, a weird guy with a limp. I thought I was better than he was, certainly cooler than he was, and I was too drunk on booze and my own sense of self-importance to bother with him, not even caring that this guy was risking everything, putting himself out on the line to reach out to me. Imagine if I hadn’t been an asshole to Aldrich Killian that night, if I had connected with him about his ideas. Imagine all the lives that could have been saved if I had just met up with him for five minutes? Instead, I had a one night stand with Maya, and frankly I don’t even remember if it was good or bad, as she was just one of many such one night stands at the time. Maybe if I had stayed with her the next morning, talked through my solution for the glitch in the formula, brought her on board at Stark Industries, all of those soldiers wouldn’t be dead right now, all of those people killed by their explosions, all those Killian either murdered or let die. That blood is on my hands now, Peggy, sure as it is on Killian’s or Maya’s.”
There was a certain truth to Stark’s words, she couldn’t deny that. “Tony…”
“And that is not including Happy, or Rhodey, or Pepper, all three of whom got sucked into all of this by Killian. You know, he grabbed Pepper because he wanted to make me desperate, to suck me into his plan, because I was the only one who had a chance of figuring out how to make Extremis work. She didn’t ask for any of this.” A wild, sad chuckle rose out of him as he scrubbed at his face, still horribly bruised from the fighting the other night. “Christ, she wanted out of town. She wanted us to pack our bags and go somewhere…anywhere. I was so angry about Happy, so…indignant that someone would hurt one of mine on my watch, and when one of those reporters popped off at me I just shot off my mouth and made it worse. Nothing he was doing had anything to do with me until that point, and I couldn’t be bothered, but the minute he hit me where it hurts I let my pride get in the way and people I care for suffered for it.”
The weight of the last few days hung on Stark’s shoulders, pulling him down literally and metaphorically. It was strange to see it out of him, to see his never ending well of confidence so very shaken. All of their worlds had been turned upside down in the last few years, certainly hers had, but for Stark, who had spent a lifetime trapped in the bubble of his privileged, singular existence as the genius only child of Howard Stark. Everything he thought he understood about the world both good and bad had been challenged. For the first time in his life it was really becoming clear to him it wasn’t just about him, that his actions had far reaching consequences in positive and negative ways towards everyone he knew, and many people he did not. Worse, since New York, there was the new realization of just how big and terrifying their universe actually was, and just how small and fragile their world was in it. It was small wonder that after all of this he was having an existential crisis.
“You know what I’m going to say,” she sighed, crossing her arms and sinking into the sofa herself.
He didn’t meet her pointed expression, but she knew he could sense it all the same. “I know it’s not all about me, Peggy.”
“But you seem to be taking the weight of this all on you.”
“Who else is there to take it,” he snapped, angrily lashing back at her matter-of-fact tone.
“For starters, Aldrich Killian, the man who was so desperate for a means to cure his own ailments and be taken seriously by people he pushed through this Extremis serum far before he should have, without any of the proper precautions or vetting needed for such a thing. He allowed his own insecurities to dictate his path and consequently people died from it, many people.”
“Insecurities I blatantly ignored.”
“You and who else? Killian didn’t become this way from one interaction from you, Tony. Ask Steve about it sometime, he faced a lifetime of people judging him for his physical conditions, both in good and bad ways. My guess was that Killian faced the same thing and allowed it to make him bitter.”
Stark rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Yeah, well Steve faces that and gets a magic serum and comes out as America's hero. Killian does it and becomes a monster.”
“They are two different people, who made two different choices.” It sounded obvious, but perhaps it was hard to remember that either man was more than just the serum that made them into what they became. “As for Maya Hansen, she made choices too. She could have done more research into Killian before agreeing to work with him. She could have stood up to him far sooner than she did. She could have drawn the line so many times before it got as far as it did, and she didn’t. Perhaps by that point, she felt trapped. Perhaps she felt she had gone too far to step away from it. But she has her part to play in all of this, creating that serum and not putting a stop to all of it, knowing what she did about it. That’s on her head, not yours.”
She knew Stark was listening, even if he seemed stubbornly determined to place himself at the center of all of this. “I could have worked with her. I should have, really.”
“Perhaps, but honestly, Tony, how many people do you have throwing themselves at either yourself or Pepper with their latest inventions, hoping to get funding? Again, she made the choice to pursue Killian’s money. She has a responsibility in all of this, too.”
“Maybe,” he muttered, sounding uncertain at her practical words.
“Maybe?” She scoffed, tempted to toss a throw pillow at him, if nothing else to mock his moroseness. “I didn’t see you working on Extremis yourself!”
“True,” he admitted, quietly. “If I had, it might have worked.”
“And perhaps we are all lucky that it didn’t!”
Her statement clearly confused him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Extremis is one of a long line of attempts to once again re-create the same bloody serum that makes Steve who and what he is. Maya Hansen said so herself. In the nearly eight decades since Abraham Erskine made that formula, it’s been the brass ring of the field. Everyone has wanted it, many have tried it, and all with disastrous results. I suppose in that sense one could lay part of the blame for what happened here at Erskine’s feet, or Colonel Phillips, your father, even on me. We all were involved in that research, we all stood by it at the time, and none of us really considered the full ramifications of what might come out of this at the time. If we had…I don’t know if we’d have done anything differently. Who is to say?”
That was the awful part of all of this, the piece that had been nagging Peggy throughout the case, and really ever since she had found out about the efforts to recreate the serum. It hadn’t precisely been a secret that there had been many attempts, after all both the army and Howard had admitted to it, but the lengths that were being taken to reproduce results in the decades sense were beyond shocking. They had known they were playing with fire, after all, Johann Schmidt had been the first super soldier and a prime example of how exactly it could all go horribly wrong when not done right. It seemed that every attempt after - Bruce Banner, the army’s mysterious and unfortunate Project II, whoever he was, now these Extremis soldiers - they all had suffered needlessly, all because the government justified the need for weapons over the lives of the people who were being most affected by it.
As if reading her thoughts, Stark spoke into the quiet. “If you could go back and talk Rogers out of it, tell him not to take that serum, would you?”
It wasn’t a question she had ever been poised before. “He so desperately wanted a shot, to be given the chance to serve like everyone else. I don’t know, maybe? The truth was everything that makes him who he is now, that was all there before the serum. All that did was make him physically taller and bigger, perhaps add a small edge to his acuity. Everything about him is just…him. He’s the way he always was, even before the serum.”
“You mean he was that insufferably good before Howard shot him up,” Stark groaned.
His mild complaint was teasing, and it was enough to pull a half-smile out of Peggy, trapped in her own morose musing. “Did you really believe that the best parts out of him came out of a bottle?”
He winced, the argument from months ago clearly still fresh enough for him to remember his words. “You know, there was this crazy scepter that did a whammy on all of us. None of us were in our best moment there.”
“I remember,” she replied, mildly. “All of this was to say that in our own way, myself and everyone who worked on that serum had a role to play in what happened with Extremis and Killian as well. We no more considered the consequences of any of this than he and Maya Hansen did. We were just lucky enough that Erskine found Steve. Had it been anyone else, who knows what the consequences would have been. But because Steve worked out so well, everyone believes they can recreate him, somehow find the right chemicals to make another super soldier, without thinking through all of the ramifications of what that means or on the effects on other peoples’ lives, whether the person they are giving such incredible gifts to is even someone who can and should wield it. All they see is a weapon in a war they keep escalating, and I have to own my part in that.”
Her confession clearly struck him, his expression thoughtful as he regarded her. “You know, I have to admit I hadn’t even gone down that path yet.”
“I assumed as much,” she replied, gently ribbing him.
“You are going to tell me it is because I’m self-centered and self-involved?”
“Well…I’m not going to say it’s not.”
His response was to snort at her in disgust. Whether that disgust was aimed at her or himself was less clear.
“Tony, you are brilliant, there are no two ways about it. But none of this is just all about you! You are neither solely responsible for the faults of the world, nor are you the only person who has the capability in fixing them. Like you said, you have Pepper in your life now, you have friends, a team of people who will come to your assistance at a moment's notice, no matter if you made the mistake or someone else did. As Steve continually used to remind the Howling Commandos during the war, the only way any of them were going to survive this was together. That’s not untrue here.”
Stark cringed, but didn’t argue with her. “Did he always sound like someone’s youth pastor?”
Now she did toss a throw pillow at him, which he easily batted away with a chuckle. “He got that idea far better than I did,” she confessed, feeling the need to defend him. “I was the spy who worked alone, and it took me a long, long time to understand how to work as a team and learn to rely on others. Steve understood it intrinsically. I suspect it likely had more to do with his upbringing and his relationship to Barnes. Honestly, he is still teaching me about it, as he has the patience of a saint.”
“So are you admitting there are days you’d rather just punch me in the face?” In even saying that, Stark preened.
“Many,” she muttered, much to his delight. “But honestly, I had more than my fair share of turns trying to pull the lone spy angle. I almost had to because no one else was willing to give me a chance to do otherwise. Besides, I thought if I did it by myself, if I went at it alone, then I could mitigate the circumstances…that no one would be hurt.”
The painful memory of all of those affected by her actions in those years still ached, even in the strange new circumstances she found herself in now. “There were people who were injured because of me, people who died, and I carried the guilt of that weight and pushed people away. Even now I struggle with it. I know better than anyone I’m impulsive, that I can be reckless and charge into things without thinking them through. That is my fault and weakness that I have to learn to manage, just as you have to do yours.”
She had confessed this all to him to show him he was not alone in the guilt and doubts he carried. She wondered if he even had considered that he wasn’t. Judging from his quiet thoughtfulness, he perhaps hadn’t. For all of Stark’s brilliance, empathy was never his strong suit. It often didn’t occur to him that there were others struggling with the very same things that he himself was going through.
“You seemed to learn your lesson, in the end,” Stark pointed out softly.
“Somewhat,” she qualified, knowing she still stumbled on it, as her recent argument with Sharon had pointed out.
“Still, you learned!”
“Sure, after having a very wise man lecture me about it several times over.” She smiled, recalling Edwin’s remonstrations clearly. “I am sure he likely gave you the same lecture over the years.”
He obviously knew of whom she was speaking, as he chuffed a laugh. “Yeah, 'lectures', plural, is probably the right word for it. Jarvis always did know how to dress me down.”
“Me too,’ she grinned, her heart aching, missing him. “All that to say is that you aren’t alone, you can do better, and it is not all about you all the time. And next time, before you want to go and challenge mad scientists on national television, perhaps run it by the rest of us first.”
“Duly noted,” he said, pushing himself out of the sofa cushions, sitting up carefully on the edge of the sofa, going easy on his injured foot. “Good talk, Aunt Peggy. We should do these more often.”
She couldn’t help but needle him a bit. “You should have these with Steve more often, too.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, irritably, but didn’t deny it as he pushed himself up, slowly. “You heard about the vice president, right?”
“I saw they arrested him this morning.”
“He had a granddaughter who had an accident a couple of years ago, freak sort of thing. Lost one of her legs, was wheelchair bound.” Stark shrugged as he meandered through the living room back towards the balcony where his suit was waiting. “Like you said, we all make choices, I suppose. I guess a bit of treason was worth it for him to give his granddaughter her quality of life back.”
“Not to mention being the leader of the free world,” Peggy pointed out dryly. “Let us not forget he had something to gain out of this too.”
“Also true,” Stark agreed, stopping at the glass doors. “It did get me thinking, you know, about the suits and the technology, of things I could do with it, ways we could make it useful. I mean, I make essentially a high-tech prosthesis for me to be a superhero. Why can’t I make something for a girl who lost her leg in an accident, or a veteran who got their limbs blown off by a modified version of one of my weapons? I can do more things that create bombs.”
“You can! It would be an admirable venture if you did,” Peggy agreed, finding much to like in this plan. “And I think it might prove to be much more fulfilling and beneficial to the world to work on that on your sleepless nights than yet another one of your suits.”
Stark snorted, sighing as he nodded. “Yeah, about that, so I was giving it some thought, the whole suit thing. I mean, I’m not saying I want to stop the whole Iron Man gig or being an Avenger. After all, if Pierce has given us the go ahead, my money is going into this venture, right? I still plan on being a part of the team! But, with everything with Pepper, I got to also start thinking of what comes next, what’s the future for me, for her, for us.”
He reached up to tap the glowing blue light under his soft, cotton t-shirt. “So I’m going to get this taken out, finally. Like, permanently.”
Peggy blinked, staring first at the arc reactor that had become such a defining part of Stark over the last three years, then up at his wry smile. “Are you sure? What about your heart?”
“Funny thing about this whole Killian fiasco, made me think back a lot to when I met him, not that I remember much of the night. It was a blur of scotch, champagne, more scotch…but anyway, I did remember that during that night I met this engineer from Afghanistan named Yinsen, a rather polite and unassuming guy. Turns out he’s the one who was in that cave with me, came up with the electromagnet in the chest in the first place. He got the idea from a Chinese heart surgeon he had been talking to, whom he introduced me to that night, but I was too busy trying to get up Maya Hansen’s skirt to be bothered with. Anyway, I tracked down Doctor Wu a while ago, but haven’t pulled the trigger. Who knows why? Maybe I wasn’t ready to let go of that cave, of Yinsen, of all the things he did for me, of the man I became because of him. Whatever…anyway, I called Wu’s office in Hong Kong yesterday and I’m meeting up with him in LA when I go to see Happy, will do a consult, see what ideas he has. If he’s got something good, after I get Happy healthy and Pepper worked out, maybe I will let him put me under the knife, get back to just being regular old Tony in my day-to-day life. No more glowing reactor embedded in my chest.”
He laid it out to her so matter-of-factly, as if it were a done deal, and perhaps in the decisive rapidity with which Stark’s mind often worked, it was was, but for Peggy, it felt so sudden. “And just like that, you are taking it out?”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s just like that…”
“I meant you decided this in the day and a half since I saw you last?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged, looking as calm and peaceful about it as she had seen him about anything. “Since I got out of that cave, Peggy, I’ve lived my life in fear, scared of what would happen if I got captured again, worrying about bad guys getting my weapons and hurting people again, of aliens invading, of people I care for getting hurt, of me dying and not being able to think of a single goddamn way of getting out of it, of the sort of legacy I would leave behind if I did die. I guess I am tired of being scared. Maybe that was the gift Killian really gave me in the end, the knowledge that even in my lowest point, without my suits, without my gadgets, I am still Iron Man. I was given this gift…this burden…of genius, passed to me from my father. It is the power I have, my one true super power. Howard used it to build bigger bombs trying to bring world peace, and that failed. Maybe if I give myself time and space without always being afraid, maybe I can come up with something better.”
His genius wasn’t the only thing he inherited from Howard, Peggy mused. He also got his father’s idealism. “It’s a nice thought, Tony. Do you think it will work?”
“Who knows,” he admitted, ruefully. “But I got to try. I want to do right by Pepper, I want to build a life with her. And I still want to build the Avengers into something that can be good, something that isn’t just Fury’s little pet project, shoved on a back burner until he decides to whip us out for whatever major disaster that he deems fit to send us on. Maybe, if it gets to the point that the team can pick up the slack and save the world without me, maybe then I can retire, walk away, leave it all to you and Cap and settle somewhere with Pep….take up golf.”
Of all the big dreams and hopes he had just spilled to Peggy in the last few minutes, the idea of him wandering the back nine somewhere with a bag of golf clubs was perhaps the most ridiculous notion to come out of him. “You’d be horrible at it, you know. You lack the patience. You’d just come up with some sort of self-guided ball that would find its way to the hole every time.”
His dark eyes lit up briefly with the very idea of that. “Now that you mention it, that isn’t a horrible idea.”
“Tony!”
“No, you’re right, I’d have no patience for the game.” He shook his head, biting back a teasing smirk. “But maybe I could settle down. I’m not saying today, but the idea hovers there. Pepper talks about it, and between you and me, I really like the idea of not making everything about me for a while. Maybe make some of this about her…about us.”
This was a far cry from the Tony Stark she first met years ago, and an even further cry from the Howard Stark she knew for the better part of a decade. Perhaps this Tony, newly emerged from the Mandarin’s ashes, was more akin to the man Howard tried to be, the man he could have been.
“You really do love her,” Peggy pulled a teasing smile, delighted to see Stark flush.
“Yeah, well we all know I couldn’t function without her in the first place. I think it’s just the logical next step.”
“Mmm, and have you told her your plans?”
“Last night, my Christmas gift to her, since I kind of blew up the actual Christmas gift I got her in our Malibu house. I think she likes this one better anyway.”
“I’m glad.” Perhaps he and Pepper would be alright after all. “You’ll let me know when you do plan on having your surgery? I’d like to show you support.”
It was a simple statement of solidarity, but it clearly struck Stark who paused, clearly moved as he nodded. “Uhh, yeah, sure, I’ll let you guys know. Besides, I’ll be here in New York for my recooperation, I imagine, and I will need to pester somebody, and you and Bruce are here all the time, so…”
“Thank goodness he has the patience of a saint,” she muttered, knowing that patience was hard won by Bruce.
“Anyway,” Stark hunched his shoulders as he carefully turned with his booted foot. “Better get back to Pepper. I left her dealing with the insurance nightmare on the Malibu house. Hey, have fun down in Virginia with your family! Tell Sharon thank you, for everything.”
“I will,” Peggy assured him as he moved to open the door and limp back across the pavement to his suit. She went out with him in the chill air, wrapping her arms around herself in the cold, watching him carefully until he managed to get to his suit, turn around, and step clumsily inside of it. The metal wrapped itself around him, accommodating even his walking cast, until only his arc reactor inside was seen. The eyes of his helmet lit up as the suit came to life.
“Have a happy New Year,” Stark wished her as he set his hands flat at his sides, lifting off the ground with the repulsors on both his hands and feet.
“The same to you,” she called, waving as he did the same, before taking off in the crisp, late December air, weaving skillfully around the buildings of Time Square, before moving further south towards Stark Tower. Peggy watched him as long as she could before he disappeared behind a building, leaning against the railing of her balcony. A new year, a new beginning, and a very different future, perhaps 2013 would be a much more quiet and less chaotic year than the one that had come before. It was a pleasant thought to consider.
Until Scott Lang’s dire warnings of the future and the alien known as Thanos crept in her mind, reminding her once again why it was she was standing there in the future.
With a sigh, Peggy rubbed her arms against the cold and went inside to finish packing.