Chapter 8
Chapter 7
“Easy, hey… hey, take it easy,” he calls out, hands raised in surrender as he warily eyes the barrels of two pump-action shotguns pointed with deadly precision at his chest.
This wasn’t quite the welcome he was expecting, but then again he can’t really say he had time to think about what it was he was hoping to find at the end of the gravel driveway he somehow managed to swerve into without hitting any of the trees that framed it. Between the adrenaline-fogged turmoil of their flight, Stark’s shocking confession and the man’s abrupt loss of consciousness that had James lunging for the steering wheel to avoid ramming the car into the nearest tree, he didn’t have time to think about anything. So maybe finding himself facing two gun-wielding teenagers (and, yes, they are just kids, goddamit, and what the hell kind of place is this anyway?) shouldn’t have come as such great of a shock.
“You’re trespassing.” One of the kids raises his weapon higher, finger tightening on the trigger, and James has to fight the urge to duck, because he’s really not looking forward to getting shot at again. He’s had enough of that for one day, thank you very much.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” he begins, placating. “I just…”
“You just what?”
A woman steps out of a large stucco farmhouse that stands at the edge of the driveway. Tall and blue-eyed with a long beautiful mane of strawberry blond hair pulled into a messy bun above her head, she somehow manages to look intimidatingly regal in a plain white button down tucked carelessly into a pair of threadbare jeans.
“The only people who come here are either running from trouble or looking for it,” she muses, taking a few slow, measured steps toward him, and even though she carries no weapon that James can see, there’s something about her that makes her look even more dangerous than the two gun-wielding teens. “So which of that applies to you?”
“I…” He looks back over his shoulder at their car, parked crookedly in the middle of the driveway (he did the best he could under the circumstances, forced to maneuver his way around Stark’s dead weight to get to the pedals and the wheel). Looks at Stark’s unconscious form, barely visible from where it’s slumped sideways between the steering wheel and the door. “I was told to come here,” he says, turning back to his “welcoming committee”. Thinks back to the name Stark mentioned before passing out and scaring the fuck out of him. “I’m looking for someone named… Pepper?”
He feels ridiculous saying it. Pepper doesn’t even sound like a name. Not a person’s name anyhow. And maybe that wasn’t even what Stark was saying at all – the man was barely putting words together. What if James misheard? What if it wasn’t “Pepper” at all? But he can’t very well ask Stark for clarification now, and it’s not like he’s got much of a choice, does he.
The woman, however, stiffens visibly at the odd moniker, blue eyes narrowing in open suspicion. “Where did you hear that name?”
He swallows nervously as the older of the two teens shifts threateningly toward him. Stumbles back a step, feeling the back of his knee hit the bumper of the car.
“Please,” he tries again, daring to wave his hand in the direction of the driver’s seat. “My friend’s been shot, he needs help.”
The teen glances back at the woman as if asking permission, walks carefully around James to the driver’s seat, his weapon still at the ready as he peers inside through the shot-out driver’s window. In the next instant his dark eyes widen in alarm, mouth falling open with a shocked gasp.
“Miss Potts!” the kid yells over his shoulder even as he’s wrenching the door open, the shotgun tossed aside without a second thought. “Come here, quick! It’s Mr. Stark!”
***
The next few minutes fly by in a frantic bustle of activity, where James stands to the side, forgotten, as he watches the two teens pull Stark out of the car with almost reverent care, settling him briefly down on the older one’s lap. The woman, Potts, crouches down next to him, her face scrunched up in worry as she presses trembling fingers to the pulse point on Stark’s neck.
James doesn’t begrudge her that worry. Because Stark looks bad – a few heartbeats away from a corpse kind of bad. The man’s skin is ashen, his face slack, the left side of his shirt is soaked with blood. Not for the first time James berates himself for not noticing that something was amiss sooner. Perhaps he could have done something. Could have insisted they stop the car. Could have applied pressure to the wound, wrapped it up, slowed the bleeding down. Could have prevented this from getting so far out of hand.
Potts stands up abruptly, motioning for the boys to pick Stark up. “Put him in my room,” she instructs, voice tense – a far cry from her cool, composed timbre from before. “I’ll need boiled water, towels and my medical kit. Get everything ready. And then the two of you go take care of the car – I don’t want either of you witnessing this, you understand?”
The older teen opens his mouth as if to argue, then relents with a nod and the two of them take off toward the house, Stark’s limp body cradled carefully between them.
Potts closes her eyes for a moment, takes a breath, her shoulders trembling slightly before she visibly pulls herself together. Casts a brief assessing look back at James. “Come along,” she tells him in a tone that makes it sound more like an order than a suggestion. “You can help.”
***
In the end James doesn’t end up doing much past crouching by Stark’s head, hands resting lightly on the man’s biceps to help keep him still should he awaken while Potts works on cleaning and wrapping the wound with the help of another woman, who seems familiar somehow, though James, for the life of him, can’t figure out why.
Potts cleans out the wound with copious amounts of boiled water, her hands sure now, in control, exhibiting none of the earlier quiver. But James is all too aware of how skin-deep that control is. Can see it in the almost frantic urgency of her movements, in the lines of tension around her eyes, in the pallor of her cheeks that almost rivals Stark’s…
Stark’s body jolts violently when she pours some rubbing alcohol onto the wound, and she jerks her hand away with a startled gasp, cuts a worried glance at Stark’s face.
“Tony?” she calls out, and there it is – that same naked vulnerability in her expression, the undisguised fear in the wide blue-eyed gaze that James had observed outside earlier. “Tony?”
She reaches for him, hesitant, trembling fingertips skittering over the ashen skin. Stark’s eyelashes flutter briefly in response, his forehead scrunching up. But he doesn’t wake fully, and James can feel the pain-strained muscles under his palms relax as the man slips back under mere moments later.
“He’s alright,” James gives Potts, what he hopes is, a reassuring nod, loosening his grip on Stark’s arms. “He’s still out of it. Just… just keep going.”
She doesn’t acknowledge him, but her jaw clenches sharply, lips pressing together in a grim, worried line. Tears her gaze away from Stark’s face, reaches for the dressing that the other woman holds out for her.
“May,” she calls out as she finishes applying the dressing and moves to cover Stark with a blanket that lies folded at the foot of the bed, “could you go check on the boys, please?” There’s something in her voice, a kind of dark tension that puts James on edge once again.
The other woman frowns at that, casts a wary glance at James. “Are you sure it’s a good idea, Pep?” she hedges, concern written into every line of her expressive face. “I–”
“We’ll be fine,” Potts insists, her voice soft but with an undercurrent of cold, unyielding steel. She gives James a smile that’s all teeth and sharp edges. “I’ll be out in a bit.”
The other woman purses her lips unhappily – an expression eerily similar to what James saw on the face of the older teen not too long ago. Acquiesces with a soft sigh of defeat. “Call me if you need me,” she says and walks out, throwing James one last almost apologetic look.
It’s only when the door clicks shut behind her that James’s brain finally catches up to him long enough for him to remember a pretty brown-eyed woman that used to sit behind Justin Hammer during meetings, writing things down on a thick notepad. Parker, MayParker. The senator’s goddamn secretary. The one James strongly suspects was the reason behind Stark’s abrupt firing 10 years ago. The one who disappeared without a trace.
And he really has to wonder about the coincidental strangeness of it all, has questions he wants to ask. But Potts (Pepper, James knows that, too, now) is looking at him with murder in her eyes, and all those questions are momentarily forgotten as James wonders if the woman might possibly turn out to be more dangerous for his health than the hired killers.