wildlyconflicted | [Dinoplot

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[Dinoplot - Day 2]

Without a doubt, the last 24 hours have been the most miserable of Pepper's life. To think, she'd believed that time she had been trapped in an elevator with Tony, a Vegas showgirl and a chihuahua had been bad. Right now, she'd give anything to be back in that metal box with Amber and Mr. Winky.

The dinosaur that had initiated their group into this mess had eventually gone away, although the four of them had remained treed for at least another hour before daring to climb down. Determining which way to walk had been an impossibility, the sun all but completely obscured by thick, ugly cloud cover as the rain continued. It seemed hours they'd trudged along at a snail's pace, trying to keep the baby quiet and jumping at every errant twig snap, and Pepper can't say for sure they weren't just walking in circles.

The night they spent in another tree, and Pepper had assigned rotating watch duty, although the only one of them who got any real sleep at all was the toddler. They've been hiking through mud and rain since this morning, Cooper, Rachel and herself taking turns carrying the little one. Pepper's beginning to think this may be Hell.

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"Go home?" Rickon asked, looking at the robot man a little fearfully. There was more curiosity than fear, though, along with the hope that he might see Mother again very soon. He wondered if going for a ride meant the same thing as it had when the Lion picked him up and took him back to his bed in the big castle. That would be nice.

"Don't be scared," Pepper coos to the toddler, and runs a hand briefly over the crown of his head before shooting Tony a thoroughly disgruntled glare. "I'm walking. Don't you dare come back here. If you think you've seen me angry before, you're wrong." What does she really have to bargain with, though? Negotiating with a dying person is pointless.

"Well, then it's lucky I'm already wearing a suit of armor," Tony said, lifting his eyebrows and slanting his eyes briefly to the side before turning back to the boy.

"Go home," he confirmed. "I hope you're not afraid of heights- we might have to tie whoever this is to my back, I don't want to rely on the kid... holding on."

"Shit," Rachel mutters, handing the baby over and trying to ignore the, like, lasers or whatever on those hands. "Hold him. Do you have rope? Vines might work."

She nudges Cooper a couple of times with her boot before determining he's really not waking up.

If the robot man said he would take Rickon home, then Rickon had no reason not to believe him. He desperately wanted his own bed and his mother and his toys and not to be wet again for a very long time--the rain was like the longest bath Rickon had ever had. But he was not about to leave Wolf and Blanket behind, and he held tight to them with one arm while clutching something on the robot man's suit with the other.

"Put the baby inside Cooper's shirt," Pepper suggests, and reaches to lift the child free from Tony's arms. "We're going to go on a ride with Cooper, okay?" she tells the baby as she kneels and stretches out the neck of Cooper's t-shirt enough that the little one's head can fit through. It's a tight fit in there what with the blanket and toy, and she sincerely hopes there aren't any broken ribs she's making worse.

Still crouched beside the two, she peers up at Tony through the rain. "If you can pick Cooper up, I'll pull the shirt tight and tie it in the back."

"See, this is why I need you. This is why co-operating is... good," Tony said, picking Cooper up as gingerly as he could, exercising care that he didn't hold him so tight as to crush him.

Or the child. "Okay, kid, you ready? You seem ready."

Without actually waiting for confirmation, he looked at Pepper, said, "Keep dinner warm for me," shut the visor and launched into the air in a roar of repulsors.

Rachel watches him go for a long, quiet moment before slowly turning back to Pepper.

"What the fuck was that?" she screeches, stomping her foot and flailing her arms impressively for how tired she is.

The love of my life, Pepper thinks but doesn't say, eyes to the sky and mouth pressed in a frustrated line. In the wake of all the excitement, the sudden calm feels almost oppressive, and she turns a weary look to Rachel. "It's complicated," she allows, and swallows hard so that she doesn't lose her composure. It isn't the time.

"He only listens to me when it suits him, so we might as well just wait," she adds with a sigh, trying to sort her gratefulness from her concern so that she feels a little less like she's going to go crazy with it. "It won't be long."

There's like, fifteen entire seconds of spluttering before she manages the next question. "No, like, why does he have a flying robot suit? You realize people don't have flying robot suits where I'm from. Or, you know, dinosaurs but right now this seems weirder to me."

This has the potential to be a long explanation, so Pepper casts around for a place a little less directly in the rain. The spot they'd been in with the bananas seems good enough, and she walks back over to stand beneath the low-hanging branches.

"He has a robot suit because he had a moral epiphany and decided to become a superhero," Pepper replies, reaching back to briefly lift the damp weight of her hair from her neck. "Because he also happens to be one of the smartest people who ever lived, he can actually do things like that on a whim. Please do me a favor and never sleep with him, I'll lose all respect for you."

"Deal," she mutters, shivering under the goddamn banana tree in her stupid stripper costume, trying to get all this new information to fit somewhere in her brain.

"So what are you, then? Why do you know him?" Pepper does not look like someone who flies around punching dinosaurs.

"I used to be his personal assistant," Pepper answers, watching Rachel and wishing she had a coat or sweater to give her, but at this point they're equally miserable. "For about fifteen years before I got here. Now I'm- Well, I honestly don't know what I am, to be completely honest. Roommate and best friend, I suppose." Just now, she's entirely too worn to be anything but truthful.

Rachel lets out a bewildered, "Huh," before sliding down to sit at the base of a tree, trying to ignore the pool of Cooper's blood. "That is...really different from my reality back home."

"Knowing superheroes didn't used to be normal for me, either," Pepper replies, and looks briefly back to the dingy gray sky before turning her attention to Rachel again. "Where were you from, before?"

"All over," she says, closing her eyes. Feels like all the adrenaline is crashing at once. She suspects that will change if she gets flown home by a robot. "Lived in New York for a few years, was in South Beach when I showed up here. North Carolina for a few years in high school. Parents usually lived abroad somewhere. What about you two?"

"Los Angeles," Pepper answers, despite the mansion having been in Malibu. "Your parents didn't take you with them?" Naturally you hear about those sort of situations, but it's difficult to imagine actually happening. She has to wonder what Aaron would make of Rachel, what profile he'd come up with.

"That would have been way too much work," she says with a quiet laugh. "They were fine. Just not real hands on. Anyway, last they knew I was still in New York and last I knew they were in Morocco. You know, I wonder how that works? Does everyone just think we disappeared off the face of the earth?"

"I can't speak for anyone else, but for me Tony was still there, even after he'd appeared here. Apparently that's common—Alternate universes or something, but I couldn't explain it," says Pepper. "On the one hand, it's nice to know that no one's back home worrying over where you've gone, but on the other… well. It's weird to think that there's some other you still back there, going about life like normal."

"But...do you think that means when we go back then we go back to whoever we were?" she asks, sitting up straight, as fear starts to trickle in. Shit, why hadn't she even though of this, before? "Then what's the point? All these fucking...life lessons or whatever and I just go back to South Beach, high off my ass? Great."

"I don't know," Pepper admits with a vaguely pained expression. Still hyped enough on adrenaline that she can't keep still, she begins to slowly pace beneath the tree. "What happens when and if you end up back home is even less sure than what happens there when you leave. If we're talking about alternate universes, who's to say that, for example, that Tony and I aren't from completely different ones that just happen to be just alike? I know a couple who are from two vastly different realities yet together in both of them. I think all you can do, Rachel, is just the best you can while you're here."

"If I don't remember any of this, I'm going to go back to the same shit, I know I will," she says, blowing out a breath as her foot taps on the sloshy ground. "Fuck, at least I'm not dead. That would suck, right? Or...I don't know. I guess at least I'm going back to fucking...Earth."

"Maybe you won't go anywhere," Pepper pauses in her pacing to point out. "Maybe you'll stay here. Nobody knows, and it doesn't look like anybody is ever going to. So, you live your life according to what you know now. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to plan for circumstances that may or may not even exist."

"So how's that working you?" Rachel asks after a minute. Rachel's never thought much, if at all, about the future, but she's also never felt so completely helpless, either.

For a long moment Pepper holds Rachel's gaze, and then drops her eyes to her feet, half-covered in mud.

"I don't have a choice but to focus on the present, right now," she answers, heart hitching in her chest.

Edited 2010-07-28 21:31 (UTC)

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