Wildly Conflicted

Typically, Pepper opted to take the Compound stairs. She seldom (if ever) had reason to venture into the lower levels beyond the basement, and unless she was wielding a particularly large basket of laundry, she left the elevator for the people who might legitimately need it.

Back when she'd first been injured, however, people who legitimately needed it had expanded to include herself. Making it even halfway down the basement stairs without getting winded had been an impossibility. She had been lectured about the danger of falling and overexerting herself by half the people she knew, and gotten more comfortable with using the elevator as a matter of necessity.

Today she had planned on the stairs, but when the elevator doors swung open just as she happened by, she'd instinctively stepped that way and inside, mind occupied with the laundry she needed to fold and supplies she needed to pick up from the store room.