[Dinoplot - Day 2]

[wildlyconflicted]

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.

Comments

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

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.

[wildlyconflicted]

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."

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

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."

[wildlyconflicted]

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."

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"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.

[wildlyconflicted]

"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.

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

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."

[wildlyconflicted]

"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?"

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[wildlyconflicted]

"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.

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[wildlyconflicted]

"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."

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"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."

[wildlyconflicted]

"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."

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"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."

[wildlyconflicted]

"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."

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"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.

[wildlyconflicted]

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.

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"Oh shit," Rachel murmurs, feeling all kinds of shitty. "Are you dead back home or something?"

[wildlyconflicted]

"No," Pepper is quick to correct with a shake of her head. "It's complicated," she repeats, wishing she could just explain but knowing it isn't really hers to tell. "Suffice it to say that people can have serious problems here just as easily as back home."

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

"True," she concedes.

Probably like whatever reason Pepper and robot guy were arguing. "So is this guy really going to fly us back? That's insane."

[wildlyconflicted]

"Whether we like it or not," Pepper huffs, and turns to peer worriedly back up at the sky again. It's so difficult to see through the rain that she doubts they'll know Tony is coming until he's arrived again, yet she continues to look for him nonetheless.

[notawastedlife]

As much as he just wanted to open it up, there were passengers to consider, and it wouldn't be very useful if he arrived and found he'd broken someone's neck by pushing the speed. There was windchill to consider, too.

So it was a rather gentler landing in front of the compound than he traditionally went for, which wasn't to say that his entrance following this was any less abrupt; he marched in, stuck the injured kid on a table and handed off the younger child to the first official looking person he found and marched straight out and took off. He didn't even raise the visor the whole time.

The return journey, he opened it up, staying just above the treeline right up until he cut the engines, threw his hands out in front of him to brake and dropped below it, skidding to a halt a few feet from the tree beside Pepper and her companion.

[wildlyconflicted]

Desperately, Pepper wishes she could be angry. She'd managed to be plenty annoyed earlier but can't quite hold onto the feeling now in the wake of talking with Rachel, too much preying on her mind and too tired to deny it. Now when she looks at Tony in that suit, more than anything she feels frustrated and useless and burdensome. He's dying and she can't do anything about it, she can't even convince him to not make things worse.

Emotion hits her all at once. With her normal means for restraining herself so worn, she simply gives in to impulse and crosses immediately to Tony, to that damned suit, in the pouring rain. Wordless, she shoves him with both hands with all of her weight, which naturally does nothing at all. Mouth turned down in a petulant frown, chin trembling, she proceeds to smack him on the chest, over an over, although it's impossible to tell whether she's actually crying because of the rain.

[sluttylyingliar.livejournal.com]

So...this is awkward. Rachel hangs back under the thick canopy of the trees and decides to just watch this go down. Pepper deserves a nervous breakdown and she's still pretty sure she's going to get a ride at the end of all this.