Chapter 4
--“I love you, I’m lucky.”--
She sits cross-legged on the floor of the space pod behind the backs of the crew seats, propped uncomfortably against the bulkhead. Tries not to think about how alluring, how prohibitively soft and cozy they appear from her current position. It’s pointless to indulge in such thoughts – she won’t be moving from where she is now any time soon. Because where she is now is the only place wide enough in this cramped little pod where she could sit down with Tony cradled securely in her armored embrace, and she is not about to allow herself to be parted from him. Not after everything. Not anymore.
She had retracted the armor the moment they settled down, gently tightening her hold on Tony when his unconscious form slipped further into her embrace once the additional bulk of the armor was gone. She needed to touch him, to feel him solid and alive against her skin. But he feels so cold, so cold.
She hoists him up higher in her lap, trying to be as gentle as she possibly can, terrified that she would hurt him, would break him somehow. Because he looks so fragile, so thin – ethereal almost, like he could disappear at any moment, could crumble to stardust in her arms.
The thought makes her shiver, and she cocoons her body around him as if to shield him from the universe itself, to give him as much of her warmth as she can, ignoring the way her back twinges in protest.
He still feels cold.
--“…lucky.”--
She thought they were too late. When they stepped inside that spaceship – that cold, airless tomb, a black void of death amidst the apathetic, starry beauty of the cosmos, she thought they were too late.
And then she saw him – ghostly pale and lifeless, slumped ragdoll-like against a blue-skinned one-eyed woman, and she became convinced that they were.
But then the woman moved, sensing their approach, shifted as though to protect him, and a new rush of hope made Pepper’s knees go weak.
“His oxygen is almost out,” the woman rasped, when Pepper dropped down beside him, retracting her gauntlets and helmet despite the urgent flash of warning on the HUD.
She could handle a few moments without oxygen. She wanted to see with her own eyes the feeble rise and fall of his chest. She wanted to touch his face. She wanted… she needed… she…
“You need to hurry.”
Yes, that.
Gingerly she slipped her arms under Tony, pulling him in, pulling him up with her. Moved to rush back toward the pod.
“My team?” Rocket’s sudden, desperation tinged growl stopped her in her tracks.
Oh no…
She watched the woman stumble weakly to her feet, one hand braced on the bulkhead. Watched her shake her head with an expression of muted regret. “Dust,” she said, her voice as hollow as the look in her eye. Then her expression twisted, morphing into something uglier, something deadly. “Except Gamora. He killed Gamora.”
The raccoon stiffened, eyes wide, mouth opening and closing in quick, convulsive bursts. And then sound burst through – an awful keening noise that echoed through the empty bowels of the ship like a death knell, making the darkness slither in closer, its icy breath seeming to filter past the suit’s defenses, making her shiver.
“Rocket,” she begged, forcing herself not to flinch away from him as he turned his grief-blackened eyes toward her, his little body trembling with the force of emotions that she understood all too well. “Please, we gotta go. Let’s go.”
“We need to get the Terran home,” the blue-skinned woman broke in, impassive, startling them both, and Pepper watched in growing apprehension as the woman staggered a few steps to the nearby console to pick up an all-too-familiar helmet before addressing them both again in the same robotic tone. “He’s key to bringing everyone else back.”
Something about her words, something about the way she said it made Pepper tug Tony even closer to her chest, fighting the urge to run away from them both.
Rocket’s gaze snapped to her then, drawn by her involuntary movement, black eyes narrowing on Tony’s limp form cocooned in her armored grasp, the furry face twisting into an ugly resentful sneer. “Lucky you,” he spat out, raising his gaze toward her. “Lucky you.”
--“…lucky.”--
She feels a shudder run through him, his gaunt chest spasming as if he’s suddenly running out of air, and she checks the gauge frantically, checks his mask. But it’s not that, it’s not that. And when she sees the way his eyes move behind closed lids, the way his face twists even in the unconsciousness that passes for sleep, she understands.
Carefully, she unwraps one arm from around his chest, moves it to run gentle fingers through his hair, matted with sweat and dried blood.
“Hush,” she shushes him, leaning in to place a quick kiss on the too-too cold skin of his brow. Ghosts her fingertips over the haggard hollow of his cheek. “You’re safe now, you’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay.”
She keeps up her mantra, whispering the soothing empty promises in his ear until he calms, the lines of his face softening, smoothing out, his breathing relaxing once more. She lets herself relax, too, then. Lets her forehead thump lightly against his, exhaling a soft sigh of relief, and almost allows herself to believe her own words.
Later, when they are back on Earth, she will sit at his bedside in the partially restored medical wing, watching him slowly get stronger, and she will think about the message he left her when he feared that he would never see her again, will think about how close that fear came to be, how close she came to losing him this time, how she might lose him still when all is said and done, when he gets strong enough to do what everyone expects of him to make things right.
Later, when they are back at home, and a nightmare rips him out of his uneasy sleep and he jackknifes in bed beside her, a gasping scream echoing between the empty walls of their bedroom, his still too thin chest heaving with the force of it, she will wrap her arms around his trembling form, unafraid of the way he startles within her grasp, his body growing tense like a string about to snap. And she will hold him, whispering softly to him until that snap-ready tension begins to leach away, until the awful blackness in the unseeing pools of his eyes fades and he blinks, slowly, laboriously, coming back into the present. Until he crumples, sagging bonelessly into her embrace. And she will hold him, as tight as she dares, as he trembles against her, his body wracked by silent agonizing sobs. Hold him until he falls back into the exhausted sleep, his face still tucked against the side of her neck. And only then will she notice that she is crying, too, her own tears making new tracks on her skin where his have just begun to dry. And she will wonder, as she watches his uneasy repose, her own sleep now refusing to come, if he will ever truly come back to her, if part of him will be forever lost somewhere amid that cold macabre beauty of space.
But for now as she watches him settle trustingly in her arms, watches his chest rise and fall at a steady reassuring rhythm, she thinks back to Rocket’s anguished reproach and she selfishly finds herself agreeing with the raccoon.
“I love you,” she whispers, pressing another gentle kiss over the fading scar on his cheek. “I’m lucky.”