Pepper's Resolution
(Pepper’s office, SI Headquarters, Los Angeles, California)
Three days.
It has been three whole day since F.R.I.D.A.Y. announced Tony’s survival. Three days since the patched up Mark 46 landed awkwardly on the Stark Tower’s landing pad, revealing shortly after that the unconscious, beaten down form of his pilot. Three days since Dr. Wu had to perform an emergency surgery on Tony to stabilize him, landing him in a coma with 7 finger tips and 6 toes amputated, more than half his lung capacity gone from the pneumothorax, concussed brain, crushed sternum, and rapidly deteriorating heart.
Rhodey had insisted on being transferred to the tower’s medbay the moment F.R.I.D.A.Y. announced Tony’s arrival and subsequent surgery. He was then put in Tony’s room a few hours after the surgery. Happy had told her that the colonel had wept and tried to stand up to walk to Tony’s bedside. He couldn’t. Happy had had to physically restrain Rhodey from literally crawling on the floor before he’d gave up and just dragged Rhodey’s bed right next to Tony’s. Happy hadn’t commented on anything else, but she could still hear his voice breaking a little every time he said Tony’s and Rhodey’s names.
Like yours doesn't, she thought. Because it was easier to focus on how her and her friends’ voices break then on how two of the most important people in her life are now bedridden for indeterminate amount of time. One permanently paralyzed, while the other might never wake up without getting shot with a super serum wannabe version four-point-oh.
She gritted her teeth at that thought. F.R.I.D.A.Y. wasn’t allowed to say anything about what happened in Siberia, but she did send an armor back to retrieve a severed metal arm and Captain America’s shield. Shield whose bloody edge match the length of the scar in Tony’s chest.
She had to release a public statement about how she didn’t know the details, but Tony Stark is now in a coma, and all evidence pointed to Steve Rogers’ involvement in his injuries. Harley Keener showed up unannounced at the tower about 24 hours after the release of the statement. By bus, alone. His mother almost called the police because he didn’t tell anyone he booked a bus ticket to New York on a school day. Harley hasn’t left Tony’s room since he’d sobbed against Tony’s right hand. Or what’s left of it, anyway.
Tony had told her once about how he introduced himself as “the Mechanic” to Harley during the Mandarin/A.I.M. fiasco. The unsaid implication of the state of Tony’s hand had made Pepper hop on a jet to the tower when Happy'd told her that Harley wasn’t going to leave and was unresponsive to both his and Rhodey’s attempt to get him to do anything but to call his mother.
“He’s still the mechanic, finger tips or no finger tips,” she had said while hugging him the poor boy. “He’s got a plan for this, believe in him.”
Harley, ever the genius, had stared right into her eyes and asked, “Is he going to explode too?”
Pepper had realized then that everyone in that room had been hurt by extremis in some ways or another.
“Dr. Wu and Dr. Cho said he has been working on extremis for some time now. They said it’s almost perfect,” She had answered, despite her mind screaming, lies! Lies! He never tested this new strain! No one knows if it’s ever going to be safe!
“How perfect are we talking about? 12% more chance of not blowing up in his face?”
Pepper had understood then why Tony had taken such a liking for this boy.
Happy’s ringtone had then interrupted whatever retort Pepper had prepared. “Mr. Parker?” She had asked him, a little redundantly.
The spider-man (not even a man yet, legally) had been constantly contacting Happy since they got him home from Germany. The kid came once, after Pepper told the exasperated Happy to just let him into the tower. But he just took one look at Tony’s fragile body, not even noticing Harley that had starred at the spandex-clad teen, hung his head in shame, and left the room running. The boy called Happy’s phone the next day, asking for her, and promptly stuttered a self-deprecating apology.
“It’s… It’s all my fault, Ms. Potts,” the boy had said dejectedly. “Mr. Stark… he gave me one job to do and… and I screwed up. I screwed it all up. It’s all my fault. I’m so so sorry Ms. Potts.”
Pepper couldn’t even get him to believe that Tony wouldn’t fault him. Knowing Tony, he would’ve felt bad even bringing the kid into the fight. But Peter insisted on apologizing, so Pepper had to accept, if only to give some peace of mind.
Pepper had been hoping the same tactic would work on Vision, but clearly the android was hell-bent on making amends, judging by how he had taken a post outside Tony and Rhodey’s room with Happy. Both seemed to like one another well enough after spending some time guarding the door while glowering (in case of Happy) and staring unblinkingly (in case of Vision) at any foreign visitors.
Pepper sighed.
Life seemed to be having a blast toying around with Tony, and she was getting angry at the unfairness of it all. Tony was a good man. A little irresponsible, yes, but what else could you expect from a genius who grew up with a father who ignored him on the best days and yelled at him on the worst? When you grew up in such an environment, all the while having camera and mic shoved right down your nose everyday from the day your parents announced your birth, could you really grew up not developing some sort of defense mechanism? And that’s not mentioning all the tragedies that blotted his life, starting from the death of his parents.
People should just be grateful Tony had decided to become a superhero instead of a supervillain instead. Not that either would be acceptable for Pepper, as both would entail an ungodly amount of danger and mortal threat for the man she was desperately in love with. How ironic was it that her inability to see him getting hurt and his inability to stand by while others suffer were the reasons why they failed as a couple. He just wanted to be a good person, and she just wanted him safe.
Pepper thought Tony was ready to let go of his dangerous job after he blew up all his Iron Legion after she saved him from Killian. And to be fair, he did keep his promise and stay out of the field. Then of course, as if prompted, S.H.I.E.L.D. turned out to be having an infestation problem, and instead of dealing with it discreetly and smartly, they decided to drop the whole thing (literally) and left Tony to deal with the aftermath. Aftermath that ended with Ultron.
To this day Pepper still couldn’t forgive herself for not acknowledging Tony’s severe PTSD and paranoia properly. She knew all the symptoms, she noticed all the trigger, hell, she was intimately familiar with Tony’s method of dealing with his mental illness. But when Tony started to sleep better, Pepper addressed it as Tony healing instead of Tony exhausting himself to sleep. When Tony said he was “talking with someone,” Pepper thought he had meant a therapist－not Doctor Banner. And when the Iron Legion was turned into a new year’s firework, she really thought Tony was done preparing for whatever it is that he saw beyond the portal.
She did not anticipate Ultron, and despite her believing Tony when he told her that he had shelved the project because it wasn’t working, and that the program wasn’t even ready for interface and came online on it’s own, that he hadn’t meant to kill all those people, Pepper still dumped him afterwards. She had felt like shit, but she was furious. She couldn’t handle Tony’s new brand of mental illness (can we even call this PTSD still, or do we need to make a new name?) and she told him that they ‘needed a break’. Tony took it like a champ, stepping down so graciously that Pepper wished he had done the exact opposite.
Because angry and frustrated Tony meant he was dealing with the issue, however unhealthily. But the 2 minutes silence followed by a soft kiss goodbye on her cheek meant he was resigned, and thought that Pepper leaving was the appropriate punishment for him.
Pepper had told him that she didn’t know what happened, but she believed that he wasn’t the villain. She had told him that it was her that was simply unequipped to deal with all those mess, no mater who’s at fault. She told him that it wasn’t permanent, that she just needed time to process everything. She told him that she still loved him.
Tony just smiled sadly and said, “I know Pep… I know.”
She had wanted so badly to shake his shoulders and scream do you?! do you really?! And yet she’d stayed silent. She had let him hugged her one last time before he’d walked out the door, looking back at her with lips bitten.
They hadn’t touched each other since that day, and now, Tony’s only hope of ever waking up from his coma was something that she knew he was dreading the first time he needed to use it to take out the shrapnel in his chest. He had spent so much time modifying his own strain of extremis not in fear of exploding (although that was also one of the concerns), but because he didn’t want to finally get Afghanistan out of his body if the price was becoming even remotely close to a super soldier.
Tony never told her the details, but anyone could see that Tony’s father was very fixated on Captain America. Howard Stark never made his endeavor to find Steve Rogers’ body a secret, so everyone knew that hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars (before the inflation) was spent in vain because a certain genius couldn’t let go of the past. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what kind of measuring stick Howard Stark had used to torment Tony in his childhood.
The thing was, Tony wasn’t ashamed of acknowledging the fact that Captain America was his childhood hero. Pepper was almost certain that one of the reasons why Tony had tried so hard to impress Steve Rogers. Because despite their obvious incompatibility with each other, Tony still harbored a deep-seated respect for him. The bitterness of his failure to measure up to Captain America in his father’s eye simply pushed him to wanting to be better than Captain America in his own way.
And as if the fates weren’t cruel enough, they were all now left in the dark with the only logical assumption that it was Captain America himself that broke the invincible Iron Man.
Pepper closed her eyes and massaged her temple. It seemed like she’s in constant state of headache these days. The press was hounding her, the board was on the brink of mass panic, Vision retrogress from having human emotion to ignoring anything and everything resembling emotion in a disturbingly Stark-like fashion, only more robotic. Even the kids’ moods seemed to be deteriorating. Peter still called everyday, sounding more and more depressed every time Pepper heard him, while Harley was refusing to talk about anything but extremis V.4, and his mother was at her wit’s end trying to get him to come home. Pepper, Rhodey and Happy had been trying their best to console the kids, but it was hard to reassure someone that things were going to be alright somehow when they themselves didn’t believe it to be true.
Because the truth is extremis was not a cure-all that would magically fix Tony. Both Doctors Cho and Wu had explained to her that while extremis had come a long way from the vile virus that turns human into living bomb, it was still a volatile substance with no real guarantee of a 100% success rate.
Both doctors had told her that the 4th incarnation of extremis (the 2nd being the stabilized version not unlike the one in her own body, and the 3rd was the one that Tony had used to take out the shrapnel) was supposed to be a last ditch effort, tailored by Tony to fit his own physiology. In theory, the virus should integrate with his DNA with less than 30% chance of rejection. But obviously there wasn’t any possibility of real life testing, seeing as the intended recipient of the virus was somewhat limited in availability. All the data gathered was theoretical at best, and an educated guess at worst. The only certainty that they had about extremis version 4 wasn’t even a welcome one.
“It’s going to be excruciating,” Dr. Wu had said, to which Dr. Cho had nodded her agreement.
She'd said, “He will be in pain during the integration process, which would take about half a day to complete.” She’d took a deep breath as if she’d had to brace herself. “The main concern here is that the extreme pain will send him into a shock. With how weak his heart is now, we’re afraid he’s not even going to last long enough for extremis to fix his heart.”
Pepper had been left stunned. She had expected Tony to defy death yet again. She had been expecting a second chance to make things right with Tony. She had been waiting for her turn to tell Tony, really tell him, how much he meant to her. She had wanted to tell him how in love she was with that kind, smart, stupidly reckless guy. How she wished she was a stronger woman, strong enough to keep a supernova of a man in her heart without balking out.
She had not expected to be given mere 3 days to ‘make whatever peace you could’ with Tony.
“It’s a 50/50 chance now, Pepper, even with extremis,” Dr. Cho had said kindly. “Either he makes it or he doesn’t. If he does though, we can assure you that, physically at least, he will be as good as new.”
But Pepper couldn’t care less if Tony couldn’t grow his fingers and toes back. She didn’t care if she had to take care of him for the rest of his life because he wouldn’t be able to get up from his bed. She certainly didn’t care what kind of physical shape Tony would be in. She’d still love him all the same.
Because Pepper didn’t fall in love with Tony because he was filthy rich (he was) or because he was handsome as the devil (he also was). She fell in love with Tony because she noticed one day when she was his P.A. that he had secretly set up a separate fund for the education of SI employees’ children. She fell in love with Tony because on their 3rd date Tony had ditched her to rush into a burning 3-story tall building because a mother had screamed about how her baby was still in her crib on the 3rd floor. She fell in love with Tony because, no mater how much Tony tried to convince her that he wasn’t any good with kids, he’d always make the time for his younger fans. Always indulging them, encouraging them to be curious, be kind, ‘see that puddle over there? Hop on it! You’re all only gonna be kids once!’
She fell in love with Tony because even if he put his asshole-of-the-year mask almost religiously, always insisting that ‘yes, people, ‘tis I: the very privileged, very rich, white American man with no moral and no heart’, always thinking the worst of himself while parading as the biggest narcissist in the northern hemisphere, Tony would always lower the mask around those he deem undeserving of more assholery in their lives.
To his employees he was a stern, but understanding boss. To the distressed, he was that stranger that offered his help. To children he would always be the kind, mischievous adult that their parents couldn’t argue with. To his friends, Tony was a good, kind man that the world seemed to like to knock down.
Pepper took a deep deep breath, and look at the clock displayed on her monitor. Another deep breath, and she stood valiantly, and crossed her office towards the door.
No time for anymore delaying, Tony needed her now, even if he wouldn’t be conscious through his treatment.
And heaven would freeze over before Pepper willingly abandon Tony ever again.