[For Tony] Item post

[wildlyconflicted]

The end of November brought with it palpable expectation. Too many years, apparently, had December blown in cold and snow-crusted, and now, even after a year that had seen a blistering heat wave before the the dip towards icy temperatures, the hot, humid air seemed heavy with anticipation. Most of the day Pepper has spent inside escaping the cloying heat, but as the sun had dipped toward the horizon, she'd pulled her hair back and donned her sneakers for her evening run, one of the few activities in her day she allotted strictly for herself and no one else. She might not have the opportunity again until January.

The interior of the caves was calm and cool, dark stalactites dripping ominously from the ceiling and casting long shadows in the sporadic electric lighting. Eyes and ears played tricks on you down there, could make you irrationally wonder what might be lurking in the shadowy dips and culverts, but practical Pepper kept a tight rein on reason and her attention on the familiar crunch of her shoes as the sound bounded out and echoed back from the darkness.

An arm branched out from the main thoroughfare, inky and unlit but for one pale blue pinprick of light that caught Pepper's attention and snapped her head around. "Tony?" she called, eyes narrowed uselessly against the dark, but only her own voice returned to her. There were dozens of reasons he could be down there, each rattled crisply off in her head and doing absolutely nothing to assuage the sense of foreboding that had blossomed in her chest or the way the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up like tiny divining rods for disaster.

She called out again to the same result, contemplated returning to the Compound for a flashlight, waffled. This was ridiculous, she told herself. It was nothing, absolutely nothing, and she'd laugh at herself later. She needed to put on her big girl panties, go see what it was, and if Tony really was down there molesting some unsuspecting co-ed, she had a perfectly legitimate reason to smack him upside the head.

Swallowing down her sense of dread, she stepped purposefully off the main path, footsteps echoing close in the darkness as she marched, focus fixed on the increasingly-familiar glow of an arc reactor. Close enough to confirm it, she heaved a burdened sigh that she hoped fully communicated how much of a trial Tony was to her on a daily basis.

"So it is you-" she began upon approach, but then forcefully choked on her words as her eyes swung upward and sketched out the hulking, shadowed figure that was absolutely not Tony at all.

Without prompting or second thought, she turned and ran, a spray of sand and stone kicked in her wake, and she didn't stop: not once she was outside, not until she'd nearly bowled Tony over, flushed and wide-eyed and sucking in great, panicked gulps of damp island air.

Comments

[wildlyconflicted]

As it turned out, waiting at the end of a darkened corridor while someone you cared about walked into potential peril was only marginally better than waiting at home while someone you cared about walked into potential peril. Front pressed against the wall of the main corridor, Pepper peered around the corner into the shadows, straining her eyes but only barely able to make out the outline of Tony's shape in the pale glow of his reactor. She wanted to call out to him, to ask him what was happening, but was afraid making any noise would be a bad idea.

[notawastedlife]

It remained completely inert, the whole walk up to it. He stood there, the faint, barely visible glow from under his own shirt mirroring that from the center of the armor, and stared at it.

He hadn't built this, but he was responsible for it.

He supposed that it wasn't trying to kill him at this moment should be some sort of a relief. Didn't feel like much of one, though. He tapped on it with the screwdriver, then reached forward and opened it up.

Then he turned around, considered, and shouted, "AAAH- no, just kidding, it's fine. Come on out."

[wildlyconflicted]

Heart lodged in her throat, Pepper had actually startled, and though her gasp had been small, the cavern echoed it bigger. With a hand pressed against her chest, she turned and sagged against the cave wall, too relieved to be annoyed by Tony's utterly inappropriate sense of humor.

A moment later, she crept warily back into the dark and drew to a stop just behind Tony's left shoulder, wide-eyed as she stared up at the suit. Instinctively, she'd grabbed hold of his bicep, and her fingers trembled despite herself.

"What is it?" she asked, although what she really meant was a host of questions she knew Tony couldn't answer: why that of all things, why here, why now. "Is it real?"

[notawastedlife]

"It's real," Tony confirmed. "It's real, and we're taking it back."

That, as far as he was concerned, was the important part.

Partly because he didn't know the why. What was it doing down here, empty but running? If Obadiah had come along for the ride, wouldn't he have walked it out? Or, at the very least, taken the arc reactor.

He was fond of doing that, as Tony recalled.

[wildlyconflicted]

Naturally, Tony was already planning what he was going to do with the thing when Pepper had hardly had time to catch her breath. She guessed it was fair, considering how hard she worked at keeping an unaffected demeanor about everything; he couldn't know that there were only two nightmares she ever had, and that thing was one of them.

"How?" she asked, staring up at the mask a long moment before turning to look at Tony's profile. "Don't tell me you're going to get in it." Of course, now that she'd said as much, she could see it was the only option despite her irrational fear of the thing. Tony wasn't supposed to be in this suit, he was supposed to be in the good suit. The idea of him in this one upended her whole worldview.

[notawastedlife]

"I'm not going to leave it here," Tony said, for a moment intent.

For a moment. "Why, you jonesing to take it for a spin?"

He wasn't being entirely facetious; he didn't particularly want to drive Obadiah's monster of a suit. It had no style, for one.

For another, it had been built purely to be a weapon of war.

[wildlyconflicted]

"What? No," Pepper immediately asserted, leaving no room for argument even had Tony not been joking. "I'm just concerned for your well-being," she continued with a degree more poise. "You've never been in a suit like this, and it's obviously very different from yours. If you hurt yourself, I'll have to get you out of it and carry you to the nearest clinic, and I'd rather avoid that if possible."

[notawastedlife]

"Well, sure. For one thing, it's not as good," Tony agreed, leaning in to examine the larger space for the pilot. "But it's based on mine. I can fly it."