If Pepper had been the only person hurt and she was in vast amounts of pain but still very much alive and seen to by capable physicians, she didn't see why Tony should seem so cagey. Guilt had rattled him, surely, but this was practically reticence from a man who typically didn't know the meaning of the word.

Carefully, Pepper reached a hand to curve against her cheek and forehead, confirming that she was scratched and bruised but not horribly disfigured. She briefly wiggled her toes to confirm she wasn't paralyzed or missing a limb. Her chest felt as if she'd been sat on by an elephant, but she was apparently all there. Was he really so distraught that she'd been in danger? That she got banged up? He wasn't nearly so upset after the dinosaur thing.

Forgetting herself, she drew a too-sudden breath to ask what he was hiding, and for a couple of seconds the pain was practically blinding, sharp and hot, radiating from ribs and breastbone. Instinctively her hand flew up to press against her chest and there stilled as fingers caught on the curve of metal beneath the blankets.

Immediately, Pepper began shaking.

She didn't want to look. She couldn't make herself look. This couldn't be happening, it wasn't happening. There was no possible way.

"…Tony?" she managed, a thin, shuddering sound, plaintive and childlike.