Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pepper believes in having an open mind. Pepper believes in fairness. She believes a person shouldn’t be judged by their appearance. She believes that if all the history books say that dragons are sentient, they just might be. She believes that if dragons are sentient and that she shouldn’t judge by appearances then she owes at least one of them a conversation before deciding to be uniformly terrified of them all.

Pepper Potts is a person who follows through on her beliefs, even when that’s against her better judgment. This is why she goes up the mountain. The specific mountain where everyone knows the dragon lives, to the specific cave that everyone knows is the dragon’s lair. This is why she’s more than a little annoyed when it turns out to be completely empty.

It’s highly anticlimactic and she huffs in irritation before stomping back down the path towards the village. A quick exploration had revealed the dragon’s lair to be nothing more than a few paces deep, and beneath her aggravation Pepper is deeply confused. The dragon has to live somewhere.

She’s so lost in theorising where else that somewhere might be that she doesn’t notice dusk has fallen until she trips over a tree root she can’t see and lands on her ass. A sharp pain shoots through her ankle when she tries to stand and she falls on her ass again. Pepper isn’t the type of person to lose her head over a thing like this, but she allows herself to be a little afraid. The mountains at night aren’t safe, even if you’re not scared of dragons.

After the fear comes the plan. She’s not making it home tonight, but there’s a cabin not too far back up the path from her and she can certainly make it there. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Pepper manages to rise to her feet and begin hobbling upwards.

By the time she reaches it her coppery hair is sticky with sweat and she’s shivering in the cool mountain air. The sky is clear which means the moon is bright and she can see, but also that it’s cold, very cold. Pepper wants to scream in frustration when she finds the door locked. Somehow she never considered the possibility.

“What are you doing?” says someone behind her and she makes an undignified squeaking noise as she whirls around and her ankle gives out and she’s headed down onto her ass for the third time before strong arms reach out and catch her.

Pepper looks up into a familiar face. Dark hair and eyes, immaculately trimmed beard, tanned skin cast faintly silver by the moonlight.Tony Stark: the village blacksmith. She doesn’t know him well but years ago when he first came to the village he was the one to give her the nickname Pepper. She’s not sure if that endears him to her or not.

“Potts?” he says.

Pepper stares at him for a moment.

Then she’s struggling to right herself and wincing when she accidentally puts weight on her bad ankle. Tony keeps a steadying hand on her elbow and she can feel the heat of him even through her shirt. He doesn’t make a single comment about how foolish she must look and Pepper is pathetically grateful.

“Hello,” she says eventually, gathering the final scraps of her composure.

Tony just quirks an eyebrow at her and makes a face like he’s trying not to grin. Then he leans past her and unlocks the cabin door, his hand never leaving her arm. Pepper is pathetically grateful for that too.

The cabin is small but well furnished and she looks around with interest as she hops towards the closest of two red armchairs. Tony kneels and hunches oddly with his back to her as he lights a fire in the grate in front of them. He doesn’t seem to have a flint but the room is soon filled with flickering light and a very welcome heat.

Pepper basks in its warmth as Tony moves about the cabin lighting lanterns in that strange flintless way. Every time she tries to see exactly what he’s doing he manages to turn away from her and obstruct her vision without apparently noticing her curiosity. Pepper becomes sorely tempted to ask what his trick is.

Before she can he’s facing her and saying “What were you doing?”

He’s less caustic than she remembers so Pepper finds herself telling the truth. “I was looking for the dragon,” she says.

“What, you were gonna kill it all by yourself?” says Tony, and now his voice is sharp and sarcastic and his face has a kind of frozen ridgid impassivity that she can just tell is faked.

Pepper can feel blood flushing her cheeks and the tips of her ears are burning with embarrassment. “Actually I wanted to speak to it,” she says haughtily.

Tony’s expression doesn’t change but his voice gets a little softer and his eyes seem strangely pleading when he says “Why would you want to speak to it?” The firelight casts dancing shadows across his features and Pepper is struck by an odd compulsion to reach out and cup his jaw in her hand. She suddenly realises he’s really very handsome.

Pepper looks away, into the fire.

“It’s never actually eaten anyone.”

She still won’t look at him but she hears Tony let out a small shocked breath and Pepper waits for him to tell her just how stupid she is.

“You’re right,” he says. “He hasn’t.”

After that, some of the tension leaks out of the room and soon Pepper is merrily teasing him as he reveals himself to have no idea how to make a decent broth.

“You have to start with a stock,” she explains from her position in the armchair. Her ankle has been bound and propped up on a stool, and the pain has dulled to a low throb, so she feels cheerful enough to boss him around. Weirdly, Tony seems to be enjoying it. “Do you even have stock here?” Pepper continues. “Do you know how to make a stock?”

“I don’t normally eat when I’m hu- here,” says Tony. “But it’s simple, right? Just like smithing. You put the things you need together and heat them to the right temperature. It’s the same thing.”

“It is absolutely completely totally entirely not the same thing at all,” says Pepper. She has to twist around awkwardly in her chair to see him properly at the stove, but it’s worth it to catch sight of his bewildered expression. “I’ve seen your smithing, people say it’s the best in the kingdom, how can you be so smart and not know how to make a broth?”

“Best in the kingdom?” Tony’s smile is lopsided and Pepper refuses to let herself be charmed by it. Tony has a little bit of reputation for being more than just charming, and not only with the women of the village. Pepper blinks and remembers that she doesn’t believe in judging people, it doesn’t matter that he’s…. charmed a lot of people. Tony’s smile is nice and that’s all there is to it.

It takes her moment to realise she’s just talked herself back into falling for it, and then her next words come out a little primly. “That’s just what people say.”

He laughs and it’s just as nice as his smile. Pepper decides to take pity on him.

“We don’t have to have broth,” she says.

“You make broth when people are sick,” he replies stubbornly.

“I’m not sick, I’m injured,” Pepper says. “And anyway if you don’t have stock we can’t have broth.”

“I can make stock.”

“Do you have any bones?”

Tony stares at her incredulously and his expression makes Pepper giggle and snort unbecomingly.

“You make stock by boiling down bones, and it takes hours,” she says.

“Oh,” says Tony, seeming genuinely disheartened.

“What else do you have?” Pepper asks gently. She thinks she’s worked out that for whatever reason he’s slightly lonely, for all his charms.

She definitely doesn’t stare as he bends over to root around in a cabinet, except she definitely does because his ass is nicer than his smile and his laugh put together. It’s an exemplary ass.

Pepper is still staring when he dumps the contents of his cabinets on the table, but for a totally different reason. Somehow the only food he has is a little dried venison, some potatoes, and one tiny wizened carrot. They both regard it thoughtfully.

“You’re sick,” says Tony. “You can have the carrot.”

“Injured,” counters Pepper. “And it’s your house, you should have it.”

They both look at it a little longer, until Tony’s stomach audibly growls and he decides to do something about that. He’s vehement that he can boil potatoes by himself, so Pepper goes back to watching the fire. She still can’t work out how he lit it without using a flint. It’s probably some clever blacksmith’s knack, like the way they can always calm horses about to be shod.

Potatoes and scraps of dried venison aren’t exactly a luxurious meal, but Pepper devours them gratefully. Her lunch was only cheese and an apple, and it was an awfully long time ago. Tony eats just as hungrily and Pepper wonders what he would have done for food if she hadn’t been here.

Neither of them eat the carrot.

After she’s eaten Pepper is content to fall asleep in the armchair but Tony insists on giving her his bed. She’s too sleepy to protest much so she drifts off among sheets that smell of him. Metal and woodsmoke and something sweet but unidentifiable chase her into her dreams.

She wakes in the night needing a drink and a piss. Thankfully Tony has a chamber pot so that’s easily taken care of, but making her way to get some water is a painful task. Pepper leans on the walls where she can and limps out of the bedroom into the cabin’s only other room.

The fire has dimmed and it stutters slightly in the grate, but even with the lanterns extinguished it’s not the only light in the room. Tony has pushed the two armchairs together and is splayed out across them dramatically like some tragic prince dying in a play. He’s taken his shirt off to sleep and something in his chest that Pepper can only describe as a star is casting a pale blue light across his faintly twitching form.

She finds herself drawn closer. Tony is well muscled and clearly strong, but it’s the scars that demand her attention. He’s absolutely littered with them. There’s a thick tangle of them around the star, a myriad of smaller marks across his arms and torso, and long ugly ones that make her gut clench on each of his wrists.

Pepper is invading his privacy. She gets her drink and retreats back to bed with impressive speed for someone with a busted ankle.

It takes her a while to get back to sleep.

The next morning they eat more potatoes and the carrot remains untouched. Then Tony pokes at her ankle and declares that she should rest it for at least another day before heading down the tricky mountain path.

“I have work tomorrow!” says Pepper. “I run the village hall and-”

“The library,” Tony continues for her. “And pretty much everything else except-”

“The smithy,” she finishes and he makes that lopsided grin.

“You’re very busy Potts, I know,” says Tony. “But this is gonna get so much worse if you walk on it.”

“I’m not saying here,” Pepper says and has to suppress the urge to cross her arms like a child. The briefest flash of hurt darts across his face and she can’t have that. “I’m very grateful,” she adds softly. “Even if I didn’t get some broth. But I really need to get home, people will worry.”

Tony nods once and gives her a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Pepper finds the expression kind of horrible.

Then it’s gone.

He stands up and offers her his hand. She’s a little shocked by how warm it is, almost uncomfortably so, but it’s pleasantly calloused and the way it wraps around hers as he pulls her to her feet makes Pepper’s breath catch in her throat. Tony moves her arm over his shoulders so he can take most of her weight and she wishes there had been some way for her to wash herself in the cabin. There’s no chance she doesn’t stink.

Tony smells good though, exactly like his bed did, and Pepper takes a surreptitious sniff as they start moving, trying to work out what that unidentifiable scent is. She still can’t place it.

It’s awkward and uncomfortable and her ankle aches as he manoeuvres them out of the door.

“Yeah, this isn’t working,” says Tony when they’re only a few steps away from the cabin and Pepper gives a pained hiss of agreement. “Any chance you’ve changed your mind?”

“I have a responsibility,” Pepper tells him.

“Fine.”

He turns back and deposits her on the front step. It’s still early but Pepper can already tell that the day will be hot, and in the sunlight his dark eyes reflect gold when she looks up at him. It’s almost unnatural.

“Give me… forty minutes,” he says, looking strangely excited, and leaves her there.

He disappears into the woods and comes back with a sapling over his shoulder, face set into lines of calm concentration. Pepper is thoroughly mystified. Then, in front of her eyes, his quick hands cut and shape the tree into a y-shaped staff, perfectly tailored to her height.

“Oh,” says Pepper when he presents it to her and, embarrassingly, blushes. “Thank you.”

At this point the words seem insufficient, but at the moment it’s all Pepper has to give. She resolves to properly thank him somehow once they’re back at the village.

She uses his body to pull herself upright and he helps her get her balance with the staff. For some reason by the time she’s able to walk with it they’re both laughing.

And then they go down the mountain.

Chapter Text

Tony tells Pepper to keep the staff and she uses it to hobble around for the next couple of days. By the following week she’s walking normally again. She hasn’t seen him since they said an unexpectedly soft goodbye in front of her cottage and Pepper is resolute in finding a way to show her gratitude. She hadn’t wanted to think about it at the time, but if she’d had to spend the night out in the dark and the cold with wild animals prowling… well, it’s entirely possible that he saved her life. Pepper believes something like that should be paid back.

That she wants to see him again absolutely does not factor into it.

She’s seen the dragon a few times, just a distant red and gold shape in the sky, too big to be a bird. He definitely lives on the mountain, when Pepper watches him he always appears and disappears from right near the cave that isn’t his home. She feels like she’s barely scraping the surface of a great riddle and if she keeps watching him the clues will all just neatly slip into place. Or at least that’s what she hopes, Pepper hates unsolved mysteries.

The more she thinks about him (not that she spends much time thinking about him), the more she realises that Tony Stark is also kind of an enigma. She doesn’t really know anything about him. She know that he came to the village six years ago. She knows that he is a blacksmith. She knows that he is brilliant. And now she knows that he is kind.

All that is far too little information to form an attachment, and Pepper simply will not allow that kind of naivety. So she’s not attached, just grateful.

Therefore it’s definitely just gratitude that takes her to his smithy one lunchtime with a basket filled with bread and cheese and a handful of the good tomatoes the Bartons grow on their kitchen windowsill that she only gets because of that one favour they all agreed never to talk about. She has wine too, a bottle she’d been keeping. Thanking someone for saving her life certainly counts as a rainy day.

Pepper has granted herself an extra long lunch break, because that’s something you can do when you run the village hall, and the library, and pretty much everything else one way or another. Not the smithy though. The smithy is Tony’s.

His forge is open to the street but he doesn’t notice her approach. He’s bent over the anvil in full leathers and a pair of strange dark goggles, hammering at something small and delicate that she can’t identify. When he hits it with a tool no bigger than her finger, tiny orange sparks fly up towards his face. He pays them no concern.

Pepper clears her throat.

Tony’s head jerks up. She can see him slowly look her up and down before he pushes the goggles up into his dark hair, sending it into a pleasant disarray. There’s a streak of soot on his forehead. He smiles at her, one of his real ones.

“Good morning,” he says.

It’s only a moment before Pepper remembers how to speak.

“It’s afternoon,” she says.

Tony frowns.

“I brought lunch,” Pepper continues. “To say thank you.”

His frown deepens.

Shame and anxiety begin gnawing at her insides before Pepper realises it’s not displeasure twisting his features, it’s confusion. He’s confused. The next realisation echoes hollowly within her chest: Tony isn’t used to being thanked. She remembers the scars on his wrists and thinks that there are many people from his past who she would like to have stern words with.

“Is it broth?” Tony asks, his face smoothing back into an expression of easy confidence.

“Are you sick?” says Pepper and he laughs. It’s a sound like he smells, deep and a little wild and very good .

“This won’t take long.” He gestures at the anvil with the tool she can’t name and Pepper nods in understanding. She knows enough of smithing to be aware that it’s often time sensitive, so she sits on his shoeing stool with the basket on her lap to wait.

Watching Tony at work should be tedious. He doesn’t pay her any attention, seeming almost to forget that she’s there at all. By rights, Pepper should be bored out of her mind as he tinkers with things she can’t figure out using tools she doesn’t recognise. Yet he has a kind of intent competency which thoroughly enthralls her. She only caught a glimpse of it when he made her the staff and now its full force leaves her feeling almost dazed. Pepper wonders what would it be like to have that focus trained on her. Her breath hitches at the thought.

He’s done all too soon and not soon enough and then he’s showing her into a distressingly sparse kitchen. Pepper pictures the warm room filled with potted flowers back at her cottage. She thinks of her small but prized spice collection and drying herbs hanging from the beams. Tony’s kitchen looks like it might not even have plates .

As it turns out he does have plates, but not much else. Pepper has to drink her wine from a tankard. It’s worth it though for the look on his face when she pulls the tomatoes from her basket. She bats his hands away lightly when he reaches for them.

“Sit first,” she says.

Surprisingly he does, but then eats nearly all the tomatoes while she slices the bread. He’s apparently just a ravenous as the first time they ate together and Pepper’s curiosity begins to edge into concern.

“Tony...” she begins hesitantly. “Where’s all your food?”

“Around,” he says, waving a dismissive hand still holding half a tomato. “What’s much more interesting is you.”

“You’re not subtle y’know,” Pepper says.

Tony grins. “Wasn’t trying to be. So, how does one person end up running a whole town? Not that you’re not excellent at it. Most capable and qualified person for it really. But…” he pauses and narrows his eyes at her, tilting his head to one side. It’s a strange expression, half curiosity and half challenge. “There’s a story there,” he finishes expectantly.

Pepper is faintly surprised to find she’s going to tell him.

“You remember the red plague.” It’s not a question, everyone remembers the red plague.

Tony’s face goes very serious and his gaze becomes difficult to meet in its intensity. “I remember,” is all he says.

She takes a deep breath but her words still end up jumbled and breathless. Too fast, like she forcing them out. “I was one of the first to get sick here, and one of the only ones to get better. It just made sense that I’d take over while people were ill, and then when they didn’t get better it just made sense that I stayed in charge while their families were grieving, and then getting sick themselves. It was… a hard time for a lot of people. My family- It used to be a lot bigger. My Uncle Morgan was the last to go, he told me he was glad it was me left, cause I’d always do my duty. I don’t think he knew how cruel that was.”

“They never do,” murmurs Tony, almost to himself, and Pepper can see that he knows . It’s a startling wonderful revelation.

He knows, so she doesn’t have to tell him about the following weeks where all she did was workworkwork and one of her first tasks was figuring out how to expand the graveyard. She doesn’t have to say how with all her family dead no one called her Ginny anymore, and every time she heard the word Virginia she wanted to yell. She won’t tell him how a few years later the way he casually renamed her Pepper was as much a relief as it was irritating.

Tony’s fingertips brush lightly over the back of her hand. He doesn’t say anything else and Pepper is thankful. For a few moments they sit in silence. It’s sort of comforting.

Then there’s a joke and a startled laugh and Pepper admits to herself that she might be a little bit attached.

The next time she visits, Pepper brings him crocuses in a pretty blue pot.

“I’m going to kill these,” says Tony. The flowers are a riotous mix of purple, white and yellow and he regards them with suspicion.

After that it’s only responsible for her to come and water them every day.

Some time later Pepper is standing on Tony’s front doorstep, her basket filled as always with food and this time the tomato plant she finally ( finally ) managed to beg off the Bartons, hand poised to knock. This is the moment she realises she’s courting him. It’s something of a shock. Pepper has never been the one doing the courting before. Going from Tony’s blatant flirtations and easy smiles, he’s known the entire time and is entirely amenable. So that makes things simple then.

Pepper knocks on the door.

Tony is considerably more enthusiastic about the tomato plant than he was about the crocuses. He takes the pot from her very gently and lifts it up to his face. Pepper thinks that if she were a plant she might wilt under his scrutiny.

“You have to make sure I don’t kill this, Pep,” says Tony, not even looking at her.

It’s so casual but he’s never called her that before and Pepper’s stomach does a funny little somersault.

Oh.

Oh.

She’s doomed.

She’s gone straight past attached into the realm of completely-far-gone without even noticing.

Pepper doesn’t do this. She’s sensible about these things. She’s sensible about, well, everything.

This is irresponsible.

Her quiet existential crisis goes totally unnoticed. Tony is still inspecting the tomato plant, nudging a tiny green fruit with the tip of of a sooty finger, a fascinated expression on his face.

“Why did you leave the city?” Pepper blurts out too loudly, grasping at anything to disrupt her current line of thought.

He looks at her, slightly bemused but smiling faintly.

Pepper gets a hold of herself. “I mean, why would the best blacksmith in the kingdom ever leave where he’s appreciated most?” She says, somehow managing to make her tone sarcastic.

“It’s safer here,” replies Tony. Unusually for him he doesn’t rise to her bait and answers with complete sincerity.

Sincerity is exactly the opposite of what Pepper wants right now.

“We have a dragon, Tony.”

He puts down the tomato plant and crosses his arms over his chest.

“You don’t think he kills people,” he says accusingly. His face is doing that thing it does where it goes all hard and impassive. Pepper doesn’t know why he’s suddenly on the defensive but she can feel the conversation rapidly slipping out of her control and she tries to rein it back in.

“That doesn’t make him safe.”

Tony’s chin jerks up minutely. “You’re right,” he admits. His voice is tight.

There’s none of the sense of victory Pepper normally gets when he concedes to her.

She turns and begins to unpack their lunch, but Tony is out of sorts for the entire meal. He makes a valiant effort to wisecrack as expected but something is clearly bothering him. He doesn’t attempt to explain and Pepper doesn’t ask.

She leaves feeling inexplicably guilty.

***

The river starts on the mountain and flows around the west side of village. It takes three days of hard riding to follow it to the closest settlement. As the dragon flies, it doesn’t even take one night.

It takes two days for the first refugee to arrive. He dies of his wounds in the village square and his horse, exhausted, dies with him. The child he carries does not. Thankfully the boy’s aunt and uncle live in the village so Pepper isn’t left trying to home an orphan, but she knows there will be others, and she knows she must be prepared.

They come in dribs and drabs, telling tales of the creatures that destroyed their homes. The story gets more extraordinary each time Pepper hears it. The dragon and another monster, a creature no two people can agree on the appearance of except that it was horrifying, rampaged through the town killing everyone in their path and only stopping to gobble up innocent bystanders.

Pepper really hates being wrong.

Pepper really, really hates being wrong and overwhelmed.

She does her best. She sets up a makeshift hospital in the village hall. She bullies everyone in the village with room to spare into taking people in. She sends letters addressed directly to the king himself to the city, begging for aid. She nearly cries when one of the refugees says he’s a doctor.

“Well, alchemist actually,” he amends mildly. “But I do more doctoring these days.”

Pepper doesn’t care.

He lets her drag him to the hall and very calmly takes charge. He seems to do most things calmly and Pepper feels a wave of relief wash over her as she watches him. This is one less thing she has to take care of.

It is with some embarrassment that Pepper later remembers she left him there without assigning him anywhere to live. Her feet ache and there’s a persistent pain at the base of her spine and she’s just so fucking tired, all she wants to do is crawl between her bedsheets and finally get some sleep, but she stops on her way home and heads back towards the hall.

His name is Bruce, and he doesn’t mind a bit that she forgot to find him a bed, he understands how difficult things must be for her right now. He’d actually just assumed he’d spend the night at her approximation of a hospital.

Of course all that just serves to make Pepper feel more guilty. Especially as she doesn’t know where to put him. The inn is full twice over, her own spare bedroom is being shared by a family of three despite having only one narrow bed, and everyone she’s seen today has already taken someone in.

Pepper sits down on the cold stone steps of the village hall, puts her head in her hands, and lets herself cry. She always does this when things get too much, her only regret is doing it in front of Bruce. It’s late evening by now so he’s brought out a lantern and he sets it down before sitting next to her and awkwardly patting her on the shoulder. His hand is large and reassuring but it’s not the hand she wants, and Pepper abruptly realises who still has space.

“Okay,” she says, rubbing her stinging eyes. “The blacksmith has a room. He’ll like you. Maybe. I’ll tell him to be nice.”

“Are you sure he won’t mind?” asks Bruce as Pepper stands and picks up the lantern.

“No. He’s a good man.” She pauses, unsure how to prepare him for Tony, and starts walking. Bruce falls into step beside her as she sets off on the familiar route from the village hall to the smithy. “He might… He’ll try very hard to make you believe he does mind. If you can overlook that then you’ll see… He- He’s a very good man.”

“Okay,” Bruce says.

They continue on in silence for a short while. It’s not uncomfortable, they’re both just tired, but soon Pepper can feel a question bubbling up in her throat.

“Stop me if this is upsetting,” she says. “But could you tell me what actually happened? I haven’t heard the same story twice and some of it, some of it just doesn’t make sense .”

“You’re talking about the dragon,” he says and Pepper nods apprehensively. Bruce sounds thoughtful as he continues “I didn’t see much but from what I could tell the dragon was fighting the chimera, actively trying to get it away from the town.”

Pepper blinks in shock. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting to hear at all.

“It was a chimera?” is all she manages to say.

“Oh, definitely. I know quite a lot about beasts, for my, uh, alchemy, and that was a chimera for sure.”

“They said it was eating people ,” says Pepper, unable to keep the horror from her voice even though she wasn’t there and this man was so it would be unbelievably selfish to concentrate on how she feels. “They said they both were.”

“It was,” says Bruce. “Until the dragon showed up. I can understand the confusion, trauma can play with perception.” He shrugs one shoulder.

“But not yours,” she says and Pepper isn’t sure if it’s a statement or a question.

Bruce’s voice is very sad and very quiet and yet still somehow slightly wry. “I’ve seen worse.”

Pepper wonders how she keeps finding these lovely but broken men.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because there isn’t really anything else to say.

He just nods and smiles softly at her and Pepper hopes and hopes and hopes him and Tony will get along. Both of them could use a friend.

They turn a corner and they’re on Tony’s street. The forge is unlit and empty and there are no lights shining through windows of the house adjoining it. That’s not altogether odd but Pepper can’t help but worry. She hasn’t seen Tony in days, in fact, she hasn’t seen him since before the attack. Something cold and heavy drops into the pit of her stomach. She knows he sometimes travels for his work. She knows that. He could have been there. He could have been there and she’s only just thinking about it. He could have been there and he could be dead and she’s only just realising it.

Bruce’s hand appears at her elbow. It’s exactly the same temperature as her own skin but it feels freezing. Pepper jerks herself away.

“I know where he keeps a spare key,” she says and the words come out high and strained. “I’ll let you in and… I need to… I’ll go look for him.”

“Are you sure?” Bruce is looking at her sympathetically and Pepper does not want that.

“I’m sure. If he shows up just tell him I sent you.”

“I meant are you sure you don’t want help.”

“Oh,” says Pepper. “Oh. No. No thank you but… no.”

“Alright.”

Pepper leaves Bruce in Tony’s kitchen. It’s no longer a sparse and joyless room and every new thing in it has a memory attached. Strangely enough, that helps her relax a little. The familiarity is soothing instead of painful and Pepper remembers who she is.

She is not someone who loses her head over a thing like this.

It’s not unusual for Tony to be away, and there’s any number of places he could be that are safe, and warm, and maybe even filled with people for him to charm. She’s not his keeper, he doesn’t have to tell her when he leaves. Hell, he might even be up at the cabin some small part of her persists in thinking of as theirs . He’s fine. He’s absolutely fine. He’s almost certainly fine.

Pepper’s still going to go and look for him though.

She checks the hall-turned-hospital first, even though she knows he’s not there. Then she asks at the inn and all three taverns. By the time she steps into the little village temple - devoted to every deity around so none of them get pissed off - she knows she’s out of ideas. Tony doesn’t pray.

Defeated, Pepper turns her feet back towards home. She still has the lantern and it casts long shadows across the cobbled streets. At first she thinks that’s all the shape is, but as she moves closer it coalesces into the figure of a man slumped on a doorstep, clutching a liquor bottle.

Tony.

He looks awful. One of his eyes is blackened and there’s a deep cut across his cheekbone that’s swollen and turning a nasty shade of pre-infection pink. There’s blood in his beard and he shudders slightly as he takes frequent swigs from the bottle.

“Tony?” Pepper says, keeping her voice gentle.

He starts and looks up at her, his eyes wild.

“Pepper.” He tips the bottle at her then takes a deep draught.

It is not often that Pepper Potts is at a loss, but she finds herself totally uncertain about what to do in this situation. She wants to yell at him for making her worry. She wants to ask what’s driven him to drink. She wants to find out who hurt him and hurt them.

“Tony, what happened to your face?”

“I got in a fight,”’ he says.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Pepper really doesn’t want to get frustrated with him but it’s happening anyway.

“Were you there? For the attack?” she asks, hoping something will start to make sense soon.

He stares at her, brown eyes blazing with a cocktail of emotions she can’t begin to comprehend.

“No,” says Tony flatly.

“Well then what are you doing ?” Pepper can’t help herself. He’s better than this, she knows it. “Why aren’t you helping?”

He laughs at that. It’s not the lovely sound she’s come to know, but some hollow and bitter thing. “I can’t help.”

“You most certainly can!” she snaps. “You can start with the doctor I’ve given your spare room.”

Tony doesn’t answer, he won’t even meet her eye, and just takes a long drink from the liquor bottle.

”People talk, Tony!” says Pepper desperately. He has to see how this could hurt them both.

He shoots to his feet so rapidly that if it had been anyone else it would have scared her.

“Maybe that’s what I want.”

The statement is so bizarre it throws her completely. “Tony, what are you not telling me?” Pepper asks.

“If they talk about this at least it’s true,” he whispers, voice hoarse, and leans towards her imploringly. Their faces are so close now she can smell the reek of his breath, alcohol marring that wonderful Tony scent.

“What?”

She’s so lost. Pepper feels like they’ve been having two entirely different conversations, an impression only intensified when Tony pulls away and glares at her coldly.

“Go away, Potts,” he says, but he’s the one who turns and walks away.

Chapter Text

“I’m very sorry for the trouble Ma’am.”

Pepper reminds herself again that it’s not Captain Steve Rogers’ fault that the King, in his infinite wisdom, interpreted her request for aid as please send lots of knights so we have even more mouths to feed .

She sighs. At least housing is no longer an issue. Tony hasn’t technically apologised after their strange semi-argument in the street (does he even need to apologise? Should Pepper apologise? She still hasn’t decided what actually happened there) but he has somehow invented a kind of hut that can be erected and habitable within a few hours. By now, most of the refugees have set them up on the outskirts of the village and things are almost starting to resemble normalcy.

Or at least they would be if not for the armoured strangers camping practically on her doorstep.

Captain Rogers doesn’t look like he expects her to tell him that they aren’t any trouble, which is a relief because Pepper isn’t prepared to lie to him. He smiles faintly at her as she digs around in her records and wishes fervently that he’d stop being so nice. She’d feel much more justified in being annoyed by him that way.

He looks a little dismayed when she finally finds the right book. It’s a slim thing and most of the pages are blank. Pepper just knows it isn’t going to be much help to him.

“There are some older records in the library, and some academic works and fictions, but that’s everything from the last decade or so,” she says, handing it to him.

He frowns as he makes a cursory scan through its contents. “This is all livestock,” he says.

Pepper knows that. Pepper is intimately aware of the fact. If she hadn’t known that, she never would have gone up the mountain.

“Yes,” she replies. “Although to be honest most of those could be just wolves, or sheep wandering off, or who knows. People get overexcited.”

The Captain closes the book and looks at her intently. Pepper finds her spine straightening and her chin lifting. When Tony looks at her like that it’s studious, like he wants to understand every part of her but he’ll accept whatever he sees. Captain Rogers is more… not judgemental exactly, but like he’s daring her not to disappoint him whilst at the same time having complete faith she never will. Pepper chooses to believe he doesn’t mean it to be condescending.

“Absolutely no attacks on humans?”

“We’ve been lucky,” says Pepper. “There was one… four years ago now a little boy went missing. Charlie Spencer. We all thought the dragon had got him but a week later his body washed up a mile downriver.” Sometimes she thinks his family would have preferred it to have been the dragon. It’s hard to hate the water you drink. “That was in the book,” she continues, “but the entry’s been removed. You can see the missing page.”

She’d seen him notice it. Answering his questions before he can ask them makes Pepper feel less like she’s being interrogated. Which is ridiculous, she has no reason to feel that way and Captain Rogers has certainly done nothing to imply it.

“You have been lucky,” he agrees. “Incredibly so. I’m glad.” He really is, she can tell. He’s positively delighted that they’ve completely avoided any dragon related human fatalities. “But once we take care of this you won’t need to be.”

Pepper doesn’t know why that makes her blood run cold. Captain Rogers smiles consolingly at her when she nods mutely.

“I’d like to put in a rush order with your smith. I have the specifications here,” the Captain says, patting a pouch on his belt.

“You’ll have to ask him about that,” Pepper replies. Her face feels strangely rigid as she attempts to smile back.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He flushes. “I thought you two were…”

“That wouldn’t mean I get to make his business decisions.”

“No. No, of course not.”

The way the Captain alternates between authoritative and uncertain is a little jarring. It makes Pepper consider that maybe she’s being unfair. It makes her decide to cut him some slack.

“I’m going there next actually, I can show you the way?” she says.

Captain Rogers gratefully accepts the offer.

He’s polite. He’s polite and principled. He’s polite and principled and pleasant. If Pepper could just get past this completely irrational fear - and it is fear, for some unfathomable reason she is terrified of what this man can do - then she could see them easily becoming friends. 

Friends. 

Pepper doesn’t have friends. Tony doesn’t count, there was Hope before she left for the city, and she’s friendly with everyone because she couldn’t do her job if she wasn’t, but she doesn’t actually have any friends.

“Are you okay?” asks Captain Rogers. He’s matched his pace to hers as they walk and keeps shooting unhappy looks at the basket she won’t let him carry.

“Yes, sorry, I’m fine.” Pepper can tell she sounds distracted.

She’d diagnosed Tony’s loneliness so effortlessly, like it was nothing. His self-imposed isolation was obvious. But even though she’s always surrounded by people, Pepper’s just as bad. No wonder she got attached so quickly.

Then the smithy comes into sight and he’s there poking Bruce with something pointy and grinning delightedly when the other man gives a shocked laugh. Smoke and steam from the forge fog the air around him, giving the scene a strange surreal haze. Tony is wearing a ridiculous red tunic-thing with the sleeves ripped off and the muscles in his arms ripple as he reaches across to poke Bruce again and his hair flops into his face and Pepper can’t bring herself to regret falling fast for one second.

“Tony!” she calls.

He pushes his hair back with one oil-stained hand and runs an appraising eye over the Captain as they approach. 

“I’m not taking in another stray,” Tony says, voice light and teasing and so different from his hollow tone that night on the street. “He can have a hut like everyone else.” Then he’s addressing Captain Rogers, who looks deeply nonplussed at his teasing. “Although you might not fit the regular size. Do I need to design a specific brick shithouse model?”

Pepper can see Bruce behind Tony trying not to laugh. She’s having a hard time keeping a straight face herself.

“Captain Rogers,” she says and puts down the basket with her and Tony’s lunch. “This is our smith, Tony Stark. And Bruce Banner, he’s a doctor.”

“Alchemist,” corrects Bruce half-heartedly.

“Tony Stark?” says the Captain. Tony suddenly looks the most uncomfortable Pepper has ever seen him. He crosses his arms over his chest. “ The Tony Stark? Kingsmith? Howard’s son?”

Tony gives a single sharp nod.

Kingsmith. It’s as impressive as it is unsurprising. Tony really is the best in the kingdom. So good he used to arm the King himself. So good the King’s knights still know his name, though it’s nearing a decade since Tony could have lived in the city. Rumours turn into facts, facts turn into questions. Pepper bites her tongue.

“Word in the city is you’re dead,” Captain Rogers continues, his tone wary but eager.

“I’d like to keep it that way,” says Tony shortly.

“If that’s what you want, then of course. I can be discreet.”

There’s a silence.

It’s awkward.

Tony is stone. Captain Rogers smiles uneasily and does an admirable job of concealing his chagrin.

Pepper and Bruce share a confused glance. 

“You said you had a commission?” she prompts.

The Captain seems to rally. “Yes!” he says. “We’re not going to take the dragon down with just swords after all. This will prevent unnecessary-”

“No.”

“I was a little worried, it is complex, but you shouldn’t have any problems. It’s actually your design. We-”

Tony places his hands on the anvil in front of him and leans forward. “ No ,” he repeats ardently.

“This could save lives,” says the Captain, shocked.

Tony’s jaw twitches. “There’s a long and complicated story which you don’t want to hear and I definitely don’t want to tell you,” he says, trying so hard to sound casual. “And I understand that my expertise is alluring, but I don’t make weapons anymore.”

“If this is an attempt to barter I-”

Pepper feels a stab of indignation cut through her confusion. Whatever Tony’s reasons are it’s not about money.

“You could offer me more gold than sand in the desert and I still wouldn’t build you a weapon,” he says. “Nails. I’ll make you infinite nails. I’ll shoe your horse and repair your cooking knife and if you ask really nicely I might be persuaded to knock the dents out of your armour. But no weapons. Not anymore.”

Captain Rogers draws his sword.

“You made this,” he says pleadingly, holding it out to Tony. ”It’s the most beautiful blade I’ve ever wielded. Your father made my shield.” His voice turns scathing. “Are you really going to discredit that legacy because of your... what? Your ego?”

Tony’s flinch is barely perceptible. That hit a nerve.

“Don’t talk to me about legacy Rogers, all you have to offer the world is hitting things with a big pointy stick,” he says through gritted teeth.

Pepper opens her mouth to try and diffuse the tension, but Bruce gets there first.

“There are other smiths!” he says, slightly too loudly.

Every head turns to look at him. Pepper is keenly aware of the heat from the forge. It seems to wrap around her and squeeze, wringing sweat from her pores like water from a dishcloth.

She takes a step towards Tony as Bruce takes a step towards the Captain. They don’t spare each other a single glance but there’s still a shared moment of wordless communication; Bruce handles Captain Rogers, Pepper takes care of Tony.

She hears Bruce usher the other man away, saying something about asking after a smith among the refugees, but all her attention is focused on Tony. He’s trying very hard to look unaffected and she’s struck by how well she knows him. She knows before he does it how he’ll refuse to meet her gaze and pretend to be entirely preoccupied with whatever he’s supposed to be working on. She knows how he’s concerningly adept at lying with his whole body. She knows not to be fooled. She knows him but she knows next to nothing about him. She knows him but not his history.

As she studies him the light from the fire catches Tony’s eyes and they flash gold. Gold and grieving. He can lie with his body but his eyes never quite seem to manage it. She knows he needs comfort but first he needs challenge.

“What was that about?” she asks, arching an eyebrow.

“I don’t get along with knights,” says Tony quickly and lightly, trying to play it off as a petty eccentricity.

“Why?” presses Pepper.

“Sailors on the other hand….” he continues, waggling his eyebrows suggestively in the way that usually doesn’t fail to make her laugh.

“Tony.”

She can see the moment she wins. He looks away from her and crosses his arms protectively. It can’t be a coincidence that the gesture covers the space where she knows the star nestles in his chest. Pepper steps forward and lays a hand on his bare arm. He’s being standing next to the forge so long that he’s hot to the touch. 

“Tony,” she repeats softly, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“You experience things,” he says. His eyes finally find hers and bore desperately into her. “But... No one else is ever gonna see or…” He pauses and grinds his teeth, but doesn’t break their gaze. His eyes are like honey and his voice is thick. “I remember his face. And his armour. The way his gauntlet shone. Then it was covered in blood and didn’t anymore.”

Pepper nods. She wants to do more, she wants to hold him and stroke his hair and press gentle kisses to his burning forehead. But Tony’s entire being is tensed and ready for flight. He won’t take her comfort.

“I do understand, Pep. I’m very smart y’know, I get it. Dragons aren’t safe. People need to be protected. Knights need weapons to do that. I know it’s selfish but they can’t be from me. I won’t do that, not again.”

Pepper feels inexplicably privileged to hear his rambling confession. Admittedly there are gaps there so wide that it doesn’t make much sense, but now is not the time to press for details. Tony has just proved he will open up to her. It doesn’t have to be all at once.

“Are you doing the right thing?” asks Pepper.

“Yes.” The word is hard and sharpened with conviction. She’s never heard Tony so certain.

“So how have you got it so twisted up in your head that you think doing the right thing is selfish?” Pepper says, confident she can trick some self-worth into him.

She’s unprepared for the way a flash of guilt briefly warps his handsome features. 

“You wouldn’t say that if-”

“I know there’s something you’re not telling me, Tony. I know you think I won’t be able to forgive it. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I do know you. I’m willing to wait to find out. For as long as it takes.”

Tony swallows.

Pepper is suddenly tired to her bones. It’s not Tony’s fault, but he’s sewn up so tightly and unpicking him one stitch at a time is completely draining. She can see the fight they’ll have if she stays and she won’t let them have it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, picking up her basket.

Before she leaves, Pepper presses a kiss to his cheek. It’s brief, so brief that her lips barely brush his skin, but when she turns at the end of the street to wave goodbye he’s still standing dumbstruck in the same position.

***

“How can you possibly know you don’t like the city?”

Pepper is slathering her bread with honey and butter and deliberately not looking at Tony. “Some of us don’t have the luxury or the inclination to go gallivanting-”

“Bull shit you don’t have the inclination,” interrupts Tony, with a kind of laughing snort. Pepper finds herself glaring across the table at him.

“-around the kingdom to find the place they like best.”

“Who says I like here best?”

“Oh, so you just decided to stay here for seven years cause, what? The bustling nightlife? The thriving academic circles? The technological innovation?”

She shoves nearly a whole sticky piece into her mouth and chews angrily. Tony is licking honey off his fingers in a way that seems intended to embarrass her. The pinkness of his tongue is faintly obscene. Pepper does not think what he wants her to think. She absolutely refuses. 

Tony makes a particularly lewd face, eyes wide with his tongue stuck out to caress the very tip of a finger, and she can’t help but laugh.

“I knew you were bored here!” he says triumphantly.

“I am not bored . I have a very important job. I have a responsibility. I’m needed.”

Bruce had left just over an hour ago, claiming that listening to the two of them was exhausting and that they should, in his exact words, “get a room”. Tony had told him technically as it was his house they already had all the rooms and the doctor had practically fled, presumably to assist the last few refugees still recuperating in the village hall.

“Name the last time you had fun, Potts,” says Tony, picking up the butterknife and gesticulating with it. Pepper notes with mild annoyance that he’s used it in the honey. “And it can’t be with me.”

She opens her mouth to answer him, then closes it again. He can’t possibly be right. Even if he is she can’t possibly let him have the last word.

But Pepper doesn’t get a chance to win that next conversation point.

Tony is on his feet and halfway out of the door before she has even had time to take in a breath, but then she’s up and following him out through the forge and into the street. The day is slightly too cold to be out without a jacket and she shivers and takes half a step closer to Tony’s warmth. Pepper finds herself almost doubting whether the shriek and shouts that drew them outside even happened. It seems as if all the noise has been sucked from the world and the two of them stand motionless. For a moment Pepper is sure that if she tried to speak it would be soundless.

Then there’s the slap of feet against cobblestones. 

Pepper doesn’t look at the people tripping over each other in their haste to get away.

She’s looking at what they’re trying to get away from.

It’s… purple. Purple and huge. 

Purple and huge and teeth and teeth and teeth. How can one head have so many fucking teeth? No wings, it’s not a dragon, but huge and scaled and a long twisting neck that reaches down to crush and chew the slow and unlucky.

Time seems suspended as she watches a great pair of jaws descend and in a sanguine spray, rip the top half from little Cooper Barton’s body. Pepper will remember the sound his mother makes for as long as she lives. It’s a hoarse hollow wail that seems to drag the breath from Pepper’s throat in sympathy. She turns to reach for Tony, to gather some sort of comfort from his presence, but the space next to her is empty. As if he were not just standing horrified by her side.

That’s when the temple bells start ringing, a frantic cacophony to signify to the village that they are under attack. Pepper sets off running at a sprint.

She has planned for this. It would have been irresponsible not to plan for this. She even gets a sort of perverse satisfaction out of watching her directions being followed. Those who can safely evacuate leave without burdening themselves with their belongings, and everyone else heads to the village square and the deep, fortified chambers below the temple. They are following her instructions to the letter. Pepper’s relief is tinged with pride. 

In spite of all her plans people are still screaming and stumbling and so so scared.

She shouts to them as she races past and they fall into step around and behind her. The rabble gathered about her grows steadily until she feels like one small part of a giant mindless beast. Even the appearance of Captain Rogers and his knights is not enough to dispel the panic that has fallen over the crowd as they flee. Intermittently there will be a strangled cry and a sickening crunch from somewhere at the back of the group and people will run towards the temple just that little bit faster.

Pepper’s lungs burn and the muscles in her legs ache and she’s not leading anyone anywhere anymore, she’s just a little girl frightened and stupid, running for her life. Her awareness narrows down to just the ground directly in front of her, making sure she doesn’t fall, and the sound of her footsteps desperately keeping time with the harried heartbeat hammering in her ears.

She slides into the square, stumbling over her own feet. There’s a slim knight in black chainmail directing people into the temple. Doing Pepper’s job for her. That’s bad, that’s very bad, because that leaves her free to panic, and that would be the worst thing.

Pepper thinks about how she doesn’t know where Tony is.

Panicking would be the second worst thing.

There may be a little desperation in her voice as she runs towards the knight and yells for her to go and help the others. She gives Pepper a quick assessing glance followed by a curt nod and darts away, her deep red hair barely shifting as she moves.

The thick, bitter stench of smoke begins to fill the air. People are moving too slowly, they’re running but they’re still too slow, they’re not going reach the temple vaults in time. They’re going to die. 

Pepper will wait outside until the last villager is inside the building if it kills her.

It. Is. Her. Duty.

And if she happens to see Tony? If she happens to confirm he’s safe?

Well. That wouldn’t be the worst thing.

She can hear the fight but she can’t see it. The yells from the knights and the shrieks from the creature and the clash and clang of sword against scale. She tries to concentrate instead on helping people into the temple. Somehow her very presence seems to calm them. Pepper Potts is in charge, even at the end of the world. She knows every one of their names, she knows the names of the people missing from family groups, she knows that Rio and Jefferson haven’t even named their new baby yet. In her head she makes a list of survivors. By her calculation most of the villagers and refugees have either fled or made it to the vaults. Pepper thinks of Cooper Barton. The list is always going to be too short.

Then there’s the scrape of talons against cobblestones and the crack and crumble of yet another building being destroyed. The monster coils fluidly through the ruins of the library and Pepper finds herself staring straight into its eyes from across the square. They’re a sickly yellow, like the colour of a healing bruise, and they glisten with intelligence. It’s smart .

Its mouth opens in a twisted reflection of a smile and its tail whips out and curls around a straggler. Pepper doesn’t get a chance to see their face and memorialise their name before they’re flicked up and up and then falling right between the creature’s teeth. As a movement, it’s horribly reminiscent of Tony tossing blueberries into the air and catching them on his tongue. Playing with his food.

As it chews its victim, the monster’s gaze never leaves Pepper. It’s a long pin just beneath her breastbone, holding her in place, rendering her useless while the very last people make it to safety. She’s suddenly angry. How dare this thing threaten her home, her people, her responsibility? How dare it try to take them before she’s ready to give them up? How dare it make her helpless to stop it?

Pepper takes a step forward.

The creature almost looks surprised.

Then Captain Rogers bursts up from the rubble, sword in hand, leaping and twisting and swinging. Sunlight on steel. Metal biting into a long neck. The exposed meat of muscle and windpipe. The shine of bone.

A monstrous toothy head falls at the Captain’s feet. He drops his bloody sword and rests his hands on his knees, panting slightly. The slim knight jogs over to him from somewhere behind the creature and rests a hand lightly on his bent back. Her hair is still perfect, but there’s a long thin cut above her eyebrow and mud on her cheek.

The other knights as rushing to their Captain, but Pepper’s eyes are drawn back to the monster. Are its shoulders twitching? There’s something strange about its neck… Why are its claws still reflexively extending and retracting? Extend and retract. Extend and retract. Extend and-

In the end Pepper isn’t all that shocked when two new heads erupt from the wound and the monster charges towards her.

Pepper has never seen the ocean, but the way Tony has described the wild inevitably of waves must be something similar to the onslaught of the creature coming for her now. She wants to see the ocean. She wants to stand with Tony on a cliff during a storm and watch the water dance. She wants to kiss him on a sunny beach.

A knight in lightweight leather armour is running beside the monster. He isn’t going to reach her in time, and anyway leather is no real protection against those teeth. A rouge part of Pepper’s brain wonders how Captain Rogers could let his teammate fight in such insufficient armour. That thought is quickly followed by the realisation that the knight is going to die for her. She won’t have that.

But before Pepper can do something -anything- to draw the knight away and hopefully save them both, dark feathers are sprouting from his shoulders and he leaps skyward. The unfurl of his wings is like the first stroke of ink on a blank white page, bold against the bright sky. He darts in front of the creature’s heads and they snarl in unison as it recoils from the little flying shape. Abruptly it seems to turn on itself. There’s a frenzy of ripping and roaring as the creature tears at its own flesh. 

When the motion stills Pepper isn’t greeted by the sight of a crazed and broken monster, butchered at its own evil whim. Instead there are eight heads making that mocking grimace of a smile.

“Fuck,” Pepper hears the knight say.

It’s really smart.

There’s a little bit of panic in the winged knight’s voice as he calls for Captain Rogers whilst desperately dodging the creature’s gnashing teeth. The other knights are too far away. Rogers is running but not fast enough. Pepper doesn’t know why she can’t turn away, why she can’t duck into the safety of the temple, why she has to stay and watch.

Then shade falls over the square and she looks up to see red and gold and fire blocking out the sun. The dragon swoops over the creature and with a snap of his jaws one of its heads falls to the floor. He makes it look as easy as popping the head off a dandelion. Pepper wants to cry out pitifully that it won’t work, but then with a thin burst of flame the dragon cauterises the monster’s bleeding stump.

Seven heads left.

With a high, keening wail the creature lashes out at the dragon, swiping its claws at his stomach. The dragon twists in the air and turns more quickly than any beast of his size should be able to. He flaps his wings once and a gust of wind brushes her face. For a moment she’s hit by the smell of metal and woodsmoke and something sweet but unidentifiable before the reek of blood and battle returns.

The dragon glides over her and Pepper gazes upward at his golden underbelly. In his chest, shining a steady pale blue, is a light she could only describe as a star. Pepper wonders how long she’s known. It might have been ever since that first night in the cabin. It changes nothing.

Captain Rogers screams at her to get to safety and Pepper can’t delay any longer. With one last long look at the dragon over her shoulder she retreats into the temple.

Beneath the stained glass ceiling, inside the temple is cast in shades of blue and purple and red. Pepper’s shadow flickers as she runs between statues of gods she’s never believed in. Behind an icon of a minor goddess of protection there’s a narrow spiralling stone staircase. Her footsteps echo on each step.

Then it’s into the vault and the tide of voices with a tide of questions, none of which she can adequately answer. Then there’s Bruce -thank fuck for Bruce- drawing her away to stitch up a cut on her arm she doesn’t remember getting. He’s set up a little hospital in a back corner of the vault, and most of the people there are beyond his help.

Pepper watches a little girl she doesn’t know the name of bleed out as she cries for her father. They must have been refugees. She doesn’t know where her father is. Part of her hopes he’s already dead. There’s only one person whose job it will be to tell him, and she’s so tired.

Muffled sounds from the fight above make their way down the narrow staircase. Guessing what could have caused each yell and scrape and roar becomes a kind of warped game among the huddled crowd as they wait.

They wait.

They wait.

They-

Finally, there is silence. After several long, empty minutes the villagers begin to stir, and before Pepper can attempt to stop them they are surging up the stone steps and back out into the aftermath of the battle. When it becomes clear that she won’t be listened to, Pepper runs and pushes her way to the front of the crowd as it spills out of the temple.

Smoke fills the air and there’s a stench of burning flesh. Partway up the mountain a swathe of trees have been knocked down, leaving a dark scar across the forest. In its centre a pyre blazes.

The village itself has fared much better. Only a handful of buildings smoulder slightly and a dozen more are reduced to rubble. They’ve been astonishingly lucky. Or, as Pepper suspects, the dragon lead the creature away from the village to the mountain, where damage from the battle would be less keenly felt.

“Miss Potts!” someone calls, and she turns to see Captain Rogers running towards her, his step unnaturally light for a man in full plate armour. His helm is missing, there’s a bloody gash from his temple to his jaw and he’s covered in soot, but his smile is wide as he approaches her. “It’s dead!” he announces, and a delighted ripple passes among the villagers.

Pepper wants to quiz him further, but a shadow passes overhead and as one the crowd looks up at the shape flying above them. He falters in the air and flaps his wings frantically.

The dragon crashes more than lands in the village square. The ground shakes and it’s pure luck that only the small clock tower in the centre is crushed. There’s a long moment where the great beast just lies there shuddering and breathing, and then he twists and folds impossibly in on himself until there’s only the figure of a man curled up among the ruined pieces of clock. He’s unsteady on his feet as he stands. 

Tony is completely naked and bleeding profusely from a deep wound in his stomach. The star in his chest glows brightly blue and it’s shocking against the red of his insides pouring out. His eyes lock with Pepper’s and they’re a burning gold.

Everyone has seen. The weight of every gaze in the village is heaped on Tony’s bruised and bloodied shoulders. He sways as he attempts to stagger forwards. Pepper watches his eyes fade back to that familiar brown and her gut lurches when she realises they’re filled with fear.

This is the secret. This is the thing he’s so sure she’ll never forgive him for. He’s wrong, of course he’s wrong, but he doesn’t know that and he’s still choosing to walk towards her.

Captain Rogers’ hand is on her arm, holding her back, when she tries to go to Tony. His grip is so hard it hurts, and his other hand is on his sword. Pepper pulls away from him angrily and her sleeve rips.

After the shrieking clashing noise of battle and panicked escape, the silence cast over the square following Tony’s crash had been eerie. The sound of tearing cloth has broken that and now the crowd rushes forward in a clamour. Their voices are not gentle. More blood spills from Tony’s stomach.

When he falls, he hits the ground hard.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, apart from the cut on her arm, the only injury Pepper sustained from the day of the attack is a mild case of sunburn. The same can’t be said of Tony. It’s been three days and he hasn’t yet woken up. The skin on her cheekbones and chest and most embarrassingly her nose is peeling and the wound in Tony’s side still sometimes bleeds, and oozes a thick foul smelling pus, and it’s killing him it’s killing him he still hasn’t woken up.

Bruce is doing his best (he’d never do anything less), but treating Tony, and treating Tony in secret, obviously has him a little out of his depth.

She isn’t quite sure how they did it. Captain Rogers said something distracting and the slim red-haired knight whisked Tony’s unconscious form away before she could blink. Pepper also isn’t sure if Tony is a guest or a prisoner as he lies unmoving in the Captain’s tent. The villagers think he’s a prisoner, Bruce insists he’s a guest, the knights are being concerningly coy about the matter. Pepper doesn’t know who to trust.

Or rather, her trust lies exclusively with an injured man who won’t wake up .

She wants to wait by his side and tend to his every need. She wants to be there when those ridiculously long eyelashes flutter and those gods-damned eyes stare softly up at her. She wants to hold his hand, always. But of course she can’t. The village needs her more than ever and her duty is never done.

Pepper stays with him every night though. She falls asleep in the uncomfortable foldable chair by his bed, fingers linked with his, murmuring a lullaby made from the names of the survivors, of every life he saved. It’s a long list.

On the fourth morning after the battle she’s woken by Bruce’s hand on her shoulder. The other holds a steaming mug of tea which he offers her wordlessly, raising a single eyebrow in a way that somehow manages to chastise her for not taking better care of herself. It makes her want to lash out and attack him for not taking better care of Tony, for the way he’s still lying cold and still despite Bruce’s efforts. But she knows that’s not fair, so she grits her teeth and holds her tongue and takes the tea with a grateful nod.

It’s not what she’d consider proper tea, the kind you add milk to, but the light and floral flavour is pleasant, and Pepper sips quietly and burns her tongue as Bruce checks Tony over and prepares to change the dressings on his wounds.

He lights an oil lamp hanging from the roof of the tent, and it casts long flickering shadows across the canvas walls. When Bruce rolls the bandages gently off of the wound on Tony’s stomach, light dances over the glistening gore and the cloying stench of rot fills the little room.

Bruce’s makes a quiet clicking noise with his tongue and grimaces when he pokes with the tip of one finger at the greenish pus leaking from Tony’s side.

“At least he’s not feverish,” he says.

A horrible thought hits Pepper.

“He normally runs hot,” she says. “Are you sure dragon fevers are the same?”

Bruce exhales heavily. “No, I’m not. I guess giving him feverfew can’t hurt.”

Pepper helps him as he hurriedly but carefully redoes Tony’s dressings, and gives him a weak smile as he races off to create whatever concoction might save the smith’s life. Her mug of tea is still steaming when he leaves. She tries not to look at the little clock ticking on the wooden chest that doubles as a bedside table. The time she has left with Tony is mere minutes before she needs to paint strength onto her features and face and fix the village.

“Wake up,” she tells Tony, just like she does every morning before she leaves. This time, on pure impulse, she brings his hand up to her lips and presses a kiss to the back of it.

Instantly embarrassment flares through her and she feels her cheeks go red beneath the sunburn. He’s not even awake and he reduces her to this. Pepper practically flees the tent, chased out by the rapid beating of her heart.

The day passes quickly, filled with more absolutely essential tasks than she has time for. Every day since the attack has been like this. Bruce says the monster was a hydra, and burning the stumps of its necks was truly the only way to defeat it, so that’s what she tells people. Without Tony they’d likely all be dead, but that doesn’t stop them blaming him for the damage. Some even doubt he was trying to help at all. Those conversations always end as soon as they notice Pepper’s presence.

She develops an ache at the base of her neck from all the tension she’s holding in her shoulders. She loves her job, she’s always loved her job, she loves this. But when she closes her front door behind her at the end of the day her nose prickles and her eyes sting and well up with tears. She hates this.

Pepper allows herself a moment of weakness. She stands with her back pressed against the door, iron rivets digging into her skin, and takes several shaky uneven breaths. Then she calms herself down by mentally counting and identifying all the dried herbs hanging from the beams of her kitchen ceiling. By the time she sees the chicken carcass sitting on the table her composure has returned.

She has just enough time to set it to simmer into a stock over the hearth and scribble a quick thank you note to Mrs-Arboghast-from-next-door for leaving it before she has to hurry back to Tony. In the short time since entering her house the weather has turned, and a cold breeze has Pepper shivering as she makes her way to the knights’ encampment. She chooses not to go back for a jacket. 

Tony needs her more than she needs a jacket anyway. 

Pepper walks a little bit faster.

All the strain flows out of her body when she arrives and enters Captain Rogers’ tent to find Tony awake and staring at the roof in confusion. He doesn’t look like he can have been conscious long, and his face is pinched and pale. Nonetheless, Pepper’s heart is buoyant, especially when he sees her and struggles to sit up despite his obvious discomfort.

“You stop that,” she says.

“Yeah, okay,” Tony replies, slumping back on the sheets, agony briefly dancing across his expression. “Where am I?” he asks the ceiling as Pepper sits down next to his bed and automatically takes his hand.

“This is Captain Rogers’ tent,” she says.

Tony’s head jerks towards her in surprise. A disbelieving “huh” is all the response he can manage before his whole frame stiffens and he spits out a fervent expletive. The depth of pain he must be in makes Pepper feel faintly sick. 

She lets go of his hand and smooths the hair back from his forehead, gently stroking his tangled locks. Tony sighs and seems to melt into her touch, closing his eyes as if her mere presence has brought him relief. When he opens them and looks up at her again they’re burning with guilt.

“I should have told you,” he says.

It’s Pepper’s turn to sigh, this time in fond exasperation. “You were keeping yourself safe.”

“I should have told you,” repeats Tony bitterly. “I wanted to but… It was selfish. I just-”

“ Tony ,” Pepper says. “Lying so you won’t be attacked for who you are isn’t selfish, it’s just sensible. I wish you’d been allowed to get to the point where you could trust me with it on your own, but you didn’t do anything wrong. I won’t have you believing you did.”

“I was close, Pep,” breathes Tony. “I was so close.”

His expression as he looks up at her is so uncomplicated and adoring that she can’t help the soft grin that creeps across her face. He looks like he’s been squinting against a bright light that’s been abruptly removed and he can suddenly see again. Pepper has been loved before, but no one has ever looked at her quite like that.

She strongly suspects she’s staring at him in the exact same way. Pepper finds herself marveling at how the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when his mouth twitches into that lopsided smile has made her go all… mushy , and his revelation that he was intending to trust her with his secret has her so touched that she wants to yell at no one in particular that she’s never been this sentimental. She can’t even bring herself to mind.

Pepper reminds herself that loving Tony isn’t going to make her life easy, in fact she can only see it making everything much harder. So much harder and so much better. So much harder, so much better, so very worth it.

She realises they’ve been just looking at each other for nearly a whole minute, and Tony is struggling to keep his eyes open. Hopefully that means he won’t notice the heat crowding her cheeks and tingling in the tips of her ears, but when his smile turns into a smirk she knows he definitely has.

“You need to rest,” she says gently.

His brow furrows. “I can’t stay here, Pep, it’s not safe anymore.”

“Would I let anything happen?” Pepper says it so quickly it’s almost a snap, but she knows he’ll take it as comfort.

She reaches up and snuffs out the oil lamp, sending a brief smoky whiff through the tent. In the dimness, lit only by the pale light of his star, Tony looks a lot less ill. His eyes drift closed again, and when he opens them his expression is distant, staring right through her to somewhere far away.

“Ana,” he mumbles, reaching for her hand as he fights against the heaviness of his eyelids. “Can you find Pepper for me? I need to see Pepper.” 

He’s still murmuring her name into the pillow when sleep finally claims him.

***

Originally, the flask had been a joke. Tony had presented it to her with an incredibly long winded rambling explanation of how exactly it would keep her theoretical soup warm. Pepper had chosen to concentrate on how badly he concealed how excited he was to give her a present instead of the actual words he was saying. It was more endearing that way.

Now Tony doesn’t recognise it. He’s been getting steadily worse over the two days since he woke up, alternating between muddled consciousness and a rough sleep riddled with nightmares. Bruce’s feverfew doesn’t seem to be doing anything, but he still reapplies the poultice twice a day religiously. Pepper refuses to think about the day he stops trying.

When she produces the burnished metal flask Tony just blinks at her, puzzled, but to Pepper's relief he remembers enough to laugh when she tells him it contains chicken broth.

“Oh,” he says, his words slow. “Did I make that?”

“Yeah, you said it has a vacuum in it?” says Pepper. She doesn’t actually know what that is but clings to the vain hope that it might be the one thing she needs to say to snap him out of his delirium.

“That makes sense.”

Tony closes his eyes and Pepper panics.

“But I made the broth!” she says in a desperate attempt to keep him awake.

“I’m not sick I’m…” Tony’s face scrunches up as he struggles to recall the word before he finally settles on “hurt. I’m hurt.”

Pepper swallows around the sudden lump in her throat. “I think you’re definitely both at this point. You can have broth.”

She pulls a bowl and spoon out of her basket and sets them on the bedside chest. Her hands shake a little as she pours the broth. It’s still hot from when she made it that morning, Tony’s odd little flask worked perfectly, and a rich warm scent billows out around them, covering the smell of sickness that permeates the tent.

Tony is gazing transfixed at a small brown moth fluttering around the oil lamp hanging above them. His eyes track its movements around and around that one shining point.

“They like my chest too,” he says. “I haven’t figured out why yet, but they like it more than firelight.” He shifts so his chin drops onto his shoulder and he drags his eyes up to meet hers. “Have you ever tried baklava ? They make it in…” Tony pauses and refocuses, struggling to pull the scattered fragments of his consciousness back into order.

“Have some broth,” says Pepper, because she knows ordering him about will make them both feel better.

He grits his teeth and glances away from her, his hands curling into loose fists at his sides. Pepper’s heart feels like it’s being dragged down inside her as she realises he’s not strong enough to feed himself. She picks up the bowl and spoon and tries to school her expression into one of calm compassion. If only she could feed him with her eyes closed to make sure he can’t see the fear there.

“Steve?” says a voice from outside as one of the tent flaps is pulled open.

“Definitely not,” says Pepper wryly. She doesn’t actually know where the Captain is. It’s his tent but he’s only visited a couple of times in the past six days, both instances to collect one of his belongings rather than check on Tony. She has no idea where he sleeps.

“Definitely not,” agrees the knight who steps into the tent. He has chin length brown hair and a pale, chiseled face. Pepper rememberers him driving a spear into the hydra’s side during the attack. For some reason his left arm is fully suited from pauldron to gauntlet in scuffed but polished steel, and he wears no other armour.

That’s strange, but what’s even stranger is Tony’s reaction. He shoots out of bed and places himself firmly between Pepper and the knight, shoving her behind him and knocking the bowl out of her hands. It falls to the floor with a clatter and broth soaks into the rug and groundsheet.

Tony sways in place, the burst of energy that had propelled him to his feet clearly not lasting long. His breathing is ragged and he’s dressed only in bandages and a pair of borrowed underwear.

“Not her not again not her please not again not her please please no not her,” Tony says, breathless and garbled. His whole body is shaking as he repeats the same few phrases over and over again. 

The knight’s mouth hangs open in shock and he takes a step forward with his arms raised placatingly. Pepper fixates on the fact that he’s just stood in some of the vegetables from the broth as just about the only part of the situation she can understand.

“I’m not gonna-” begins the knight.

“Kill me leave her!” gasps out Tony. His stomach wound has reopened and red is blossoming across his bandages but he stays standing.

Comprehension dawns in the knight’s grey eyes. His mouth snaps shut and guilt unfurls across his features. He lowers his arms, meets Pepper’s eyes regretfully, and turns on his heel and leaves.

Tony makes a noise somewhere between a sob and a sigh. Pepper finds a relatively uninjured spot on his shoulder to rest her hand and moves her thumb back and forth soothingly. 

“Did he hurt you?” he asks, still facing the tent doorway.

Pepper doesn’t know when or how the knight could possibly have hurt her, but she recognises that Tony isn’t exactly thinking rationally at the moment.

“I’m okay but you’re not,” she says, hoping he hears all the love and concern layered in her words.

“I’m not important,” he replies absently, every fibre of his being anticipating another attack from outside.

Pepper wants to yell at him for even entertaining the thought. Of course he’s important. She doesn’t get her chance.

Tony crumples to the floor.

***

It doesn’t take Captain Rogers long to appear after Pepper has wrestled Tony’s limp form back into bed and tracked down Bruce to redo his stitches. Night has truly fallen over the campsite and she hears the gentle clunk of Rogers setting a touch into the empty brazier outside the tent before he enters. Pepper imagines titanium reinforcing her spine. She wants an explanation.

Thankfully Tony is asleep. Bruce gave him some kind of tincture made from poppies and told her it’s godsent for pain. He’d left the bottle along with strict instructions about dosages, followed by throwing his hands in the air and frustratedly proclaiming that it was all guesswork anyway when it came to treating a dragon. It was the least collected she’s ever seen him and Pepper told him to go get some rest, but she doesn’t think he listened.

The Captain lingers in the entrance. Beyond his broad shoulders she can see a handful of stars winking in the sky. The light from the oil lamp casts his face in dramatic shadows and glints in his golden hair. He looks nervous.

“You’re letting in a draft,” says Pepper.

Captain Rogers swallows and steps inside. His whole body is stiff and rigid and he appears to be thinking very hard about what words he needs to formulate next.

“Bucky felt it would be best if I explained,” he says carefully.

Pepper can’t help but raise an eyebrow. Bucky seems far too soft a name for the knight who’d so terrified Tony.

Rogers glances at the sleeping blacksmith.

“You won’t wake him,” says Pepper. “He’s drugged.” The Captain winces and she chooses to twist the knife a little. “For the pain,” she adds unnecessarily.

“You’ll tell him what I tell you?” His relief is obvious.

“Of course,” she promises. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll believe it.”

The Captain heaves a deep sigh. “I know,” he says. “That’s fine.”

There’s a long pause. Pepper waits for Captain Rogers to finish screwing his courage to the sticking place and tries not to let her extreme eagerness for answers show.

“I’m actually ninety eight years old,” says the young Captain.

Pepper’s brows draw down over her eyes and her mouth opens in protest as her expression morphs into one of pure affronted incredulity. The idea that Rogers has suddenly chosen now to develop a sense of humour is almost offensive. She won’t listen to his bullshit and she’s just about to tell him so when, clearly panicking at the look on her face, he continues.

“We were hit by a sleeping curse! Me and Bucky.”

“Okay…” Pepper says dangerously, narrowing her eyes at him. 

The Captain stands like he’s facing his superiors. Feet evenly planted, chin slightly raised, arms stiffly at his sides. Like he’s heading to court marshal. Pepper takes a little vindictive pleasure in his obvious unease, then immediately feels guilty for it. He’s not a bad man, not truly. Deep down, the only thing she doesn’t like about him is his potential to hurt the man sleeping beside her. It’s just such a pregnant potential.

“It was pure luck,” Captain Rogers explains. “I was woken up nearly seventy years later through the -uh- traditional method, but Bucky was found after a few years by a sorcerer who woke his body and not his mind, and used him to commit…” He trails off and shakes his head infinitesimally. Pepper notices his hair almost brushes against the roof of the tent. “Terrible acts,” the Captain finishes finally.

“And one of those acts was against Tony.”

Rogers looks at his feet, all his soldier’s poise melting away. “I knew Bucky had killed Howard Stark. He was a friend of ours before the curse and Bucky remembered killing him. It didn’t seem important in the city where Tony was dead, and after he refused to build any weapons for us here I didn’t think him and Bucky would ever meet. It was a mistake, I’m sorry.”

“Forgiveness isn’t-” starts Pepper.

“Up to you, I know.”

Pepper sorts her reactions into little boxes inside her mind. Her anger and horror and pity can all be dealt with later, what she needs to look after right now is Tony.

“You need to keep your friend away from here,” she says. She keeps her voice firm and diplomatic, her official dealing with disputes and complaints tone.

The Captain looks up, blue eyes blazing. “It wasn’t Bucky!” he says. His vehemence is startling.

“I don’t think that matters,” says Pepper coldly. “This is between him and Tony, and he’s in no shape to deal with this right now.”

As if to emphasise her point, Tony moans and shifts in his sleep; his twitching form and uneven breaths the already all-too-familiar signs of a nightmare. Captain Rogers stares at him uncomfortably. 

“I think you should go,” Pepper says.

The Captain nods, looking thoroughly miserable if somewhat unburdened. He has to duck his head quite deeply to exit the tent, and just before the flap falls shut behind him something else occurs to Pepper.

“Wait!” she calls. 

He freezes and turns back to look at her, still outside the tent and holding the canvas door open with one hand. There’s a little hint of hope in his eyes.

 “Is Tony your guest or your prisoner here?”

Somehow, the question manages to make Captain Rogers look even more miserable and all trace of hope in his expression dies. “I don’t know,” he says, as if he’s confessing a great sin. In Pepper’s opinion, he is.

“You need to make a decision on that,” she warns him.

Rogers takes it for the dismissal it is.

There’s a long silent moment in which Pepper takes the time to just breathe, pushing air in and out of her lungs like the great bellows Tony uses to stoke the furnace in his forge. Then he moans in his sleep again, and makes an awful gasped choking noise. Pepper leans so close to him her hair falls in a curtain around their faces. She lays a hand on his cheek and gently shakes his shoulder with the other. He’s still frighteningly cold to the touch.

“Tony?” she says. “It’s a dream, Tony. Wake up.”

He does as she says. His eyes snap open and immediately he’s hyperventilating. In his terror the beautiful brown of them flashes gold and he looks at her as if he doesn’t know her. 

Pepper drags up a years-old piece of knowledge from a library book, and cups her hands together and places them over his nose and mouth. Tony’s fingers wrap around her wrists but his grip is weak, and soon relaxes when he realises what she’s doing is helping. She feels the flutter of his breaths against her skin begin to regulate until eventually she can take her hands away.

“Hey, Potts,” he says casually.

She snorts at his bravado. His eyes are bloodshot and underlined with dark rings, his complexion is pale and sickly, he’s in constant pain and he’s been delirious for days, but he’s still trying to make her smile.

“Hello, Mr Stark,” she replies primly, settling back into her chair rather than hovering over him.

“Where am I?” Tony asks and it’s like a physical blow. She’d thought he was a little more lucid.

“Captain Rogers’ tent,” says Pepper, valiantly attempting to keep the unhappiness out of her voice but certain she’s failed.

“Ugh, I already knew that,” he says in frustration. He picks his head up and slams the back of it quite violently against his pillow. “I can’t get my mind right.”

“That’s okay,” Pepper says, fingers twitching with the urge to cradle his face again. “You’re sick.”

“Did I dream the broth?” says Tony. Pepper begins to gesture to the chickeny stain on the rug but he’s still talking, words spilling out rapidly like he’s racing his own reluctance to say them. “That doesn’t matter, I need to apologise for earlier. I thought I saw the man who killed my parents and the thought of you getting killed too… I couldn’t handle it.”

She’s heard him ramble like this before. Dragons aren’t safe , he’d told her. She wonders at how alone he’s been and for how long. She’s so scared for him. Has he been that scared for himself? Has he ever felt safe?

“I’m not exactly enthusiastic about you trying to protect me at your own expense, but I can’t be mad at the instinct.” The admission that she’d do the same lies on her tongue, trapped behind her teeth. She doesn’t need to say it, she’s sure he knows.

“I have to protect the one thing I can’t live without,” he says. His voice is rough with illness but completely matter-of-fact. The statement makes Pepper’s breath catch in her throat.

She leans forward and runs a hand through his hair, smiling comfortingly down at him. As he scans her face and stares deeply into her eyes, concern darts across his features.

“When was the last time you slept in a bed?” he asks.

Pepper elects to ignore the question. “Rogers was just here,” she says. “Explaining that his friend was cursed when he killed your family.”

The maelstrom of emotions that flicker through those deep expressive eyes is almost too much for Pepper to bear. “He was… here ? He was real?” says Tony.

“Yes.”

“And Rogers knew?”

“Yes,” Pepper says, trying not to prioritise her own emotions, but unable to keep the wrath out of her voice. 

The corner of Tony’s mouth twitches up, and he looks incredibly touched that she’d be angry on his behalf. Then she sees his attention shift, and he notices the uncomfortable chair she’s been sleeping in, and the way her hair hasn’t been brushed, and the tiredness in her eyes. Two little lines of worry appear between his dark eyebrows.

“You need to rest,” he says softly, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “This isn’t good for you.”

Pepper knows he means I’m not good for you and she’s not going to permit that. He makes her laugh more than anyone, and the concern he’s directing at her now makes her feel more cared for than she has in years.

As well as the small matter that she loves him completely.

“I’m not leaving this tent.”

“Sleep here then,” Tony says. “But sleep .”

He reaches behind his head with his least wounded arm and tries to extract a pillow. The exertion makes him shake and Pepper swats his hand down.

“I’m fine.”

Tony sighs. There’s a thick grey-blue woollen blanket at the bottom of the bed, and he nudges it with his foot then inhales sharply as the movement jostles his injuries.

“At least take the blanket,” he says, turning those ridiculous eyes on her in supplication.

“ Fine .” Pepper grabs it and shakes it loose. Embroidered at its centre is the star-and-circle emblem painted on the Captain’s shield. “That’s… a lot,” she says, not bothering to keep the amusement from her voice.

Tony is already laughing. It’s that familiar rich deep wild sound and Pepper realises she’s missed his laugh terribly. She’s missed him terribly. Her own surprisingly wicked giggle tinkles out alongside his.

“Go to sleep, Potts,” says Tony gently, gifting her his sweetest smile. His tone turns teasing, “I’m not going anywhere.”

As soon as she covers herself with the blanket, Pepper feels her eyelids getting heavy, and it’s harder to open them again after every blink. The last thing she sees before she drifts off completely is Tony’s face in the steady golden light of the oil lamp, staring at her with an expression that can only be described as worshipful.

The next thing Pepper is aware of is a frantic voice hissing at her in a language she doesn’t know. The tent is soaked in pre-dawn light when she opens her eyes, and Tony hanging half out of bed, leaning so close to her she can smell the way illness has perverted his familiar scent. With one look at his glassy, distracted gaze she can tell she’s lost him to fever dreams again. He continues murmuring the same foreign tongue in a low desperate tone, and Pepper realises she’s heard him speak it in the grip of nightmares before.

“You’re okay, honey,” she says, the endearment tripping off her tongue before she can stop it.

Tony frowns at her. She can practically see how fast his mind is racing, trying to keep up with a situation only he perceives.

“You need to get out of here,” he says, slipping easily back into their shared language. “I’ll be fine, I can hide like last time. He’s coming back and he’ll kill you. Pep, I can’t watch him kill you. When he left my parents’ blood was all mixed together on the cave floor. That can’t be us. You have to go.”

***

Pepper finds it very hard to concentrate the next day. All she can picture is Tony’s panicked attempts to shield her from relentless non-existent threats. She doesn’t know what he was seeing (at first she’d thought it was just Bucky but it soon became clear that he’s not the only dark memory haunting Tony, lurking menacingly in the corners of his mind) but he was brave and defiant in the face of whatever it was. Pepper wonders if the pride she feels in him for it is, in fact, a little strange.

He’d been like that for hours, and Pepper isn’t sure her presence was any help at all. She couldn’t persuade him to take a sedative, and she couldn’t entertain the thought of leaving him. So she sat at his bedside, his cold sweaty palm pressed between her hands, weathering the storm of his delusions until finally he’d passed out from exhaustion.

Pepper feels like she’s going to pass out from exhaustion.

Thankfully there’s a chill bite to the air which keeps her awake as she supervises the continued cleanup. It nips at her skin throughout the day as she goes from directing the construction of even more of Tony’s little huts to helping Bruce in their makeshift hospital, from comforting the bereaved to quashing rumours about the attack, from smoothing out the kinks in the rudimentary rationing system she’s implemented to attending the very last funeral. As always these days, she spends the whole time wanting to cry, and the whole time forbidding herself.

Pepper stays in the graveyard long after the funeral is over. The last person to be buried was little Cooper Barton. The only thing in his coffin was his legs.

His father had spent the funeral raging, blaming Tony for burning the hydra’s body instead of letting them try and retrieve people from its stomach. Pepper knows mourning twists and knots a person up inside, but she still has to bite her tongue to stop herself telling him the idea is impossible and awful and unfair. Still, listening to Clint Barton rage is better than looking at his wife and their surviving children. Humans shouldn’t look so hollow.

It’s late afternoon by the time she’s finally sorted all her emotions away, and every headstone casts a long shadow. The day continues to be clear and cold, and Pepper feels as if grief lies like grit over her entire body. The concept of a hot bath has never been more appealing. Tony would probably even be pleased if she’s late to see him because she took time for a bath.

Her mind turns to the different herbs she could toss into the water, and she gets so caught up in imagining the scent that she almost walks right into the woman waiting just outside the graveyard’s wrought iron gates. She’s blonde, and pretty, and clutching a heavy leather-bound notebook to her chest.

“Miss Potts!” she says, extending a hand. She’s cool and collected but there’s an underlying eagerness to her tone. “I’m Christine Everhart.”

Pepper begins to reach out to shake her hand before she realises that she’s got dirt up to her wrists from where she’d gathered a handful of soil to toss into the grave. She holds her palms up to display how filthy they are to Christine, and the woman gives a small laugh and nods.

“They really weren’t kidding when they said you do everything, gravedigger too, huh?” she says in a tone somewhere between taunt and tease.

It was most likely intended as a much more friendly joke than Pepper takes it, but she’s tired and whatever she does isn’t enough and Tony and Tony and Tony…

“I do whatever’s needed,” she snaps. “Including body disposal if necessary .”

The part of her brain that’s still thinking about her bath wonders if that was really as genuine of a threat as it sounded. Why is she so set on intimidating this stranger?

Pepper clears her throat. “I mean, what exactly is it that you want from me?”

Christine had looked slightly taken aback, but now the keenness in her takes over. 

“I’m a writer,” she says, gripping her notebook a little tighter. “I write the truth. Only the truth. People need to know the truth.”

“That’s very noble,” says Pepper, still wary. “But what are you doing here?”

Christine‘s eyes flick from the coppery hair piled messily on top of Pepper’s head down to the mud on her boots. It’s a long measuring look. “People deserve to know the truth about the dragon.” She says and then pauses, weighing her next words carefully. “I think the dragon might deserve the truth to be told about him too. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

It’s Pepper’s turn to be taken aback. She’s been hoping for something like this. She wants to take every single person who doubts Tony’s good heart by the shoulders and shake them until they see sense. Christine might be her chance to do just that. But she’s not going to be silly about it. Pepper Potts does not lose her head.

“It takes more than one person to tell the truth,” she says.

“I know,” says Christine assuredly. “I have my ways.”

Pepper hums thoughtfully. She looks back at the graveyard. If Tony hadn’t been there they would have had to expand its boundaries again. She probably really would have had to dig graves. They’d still be having funerals. She should pounce on the opportunity to stop him being hated for his help.

But there’s always a catch.

“I’ll think about it,” Pepper promises. She’ll ask Bruce his opinion before she makes a decision. And she won’t bother Tony about it and give him yet another reason to worry.

“Thank you,” says Christine earnestly. Pepper is beginning to gather that Christine is normally far too composed to be earnest. This truth has her excited. She pulls a loose leaf of paper with an address printed neatly on it from her notebook and hands it to Pepper. “If you need to find me, that’s where I’m staying,” she adds.

Pepper gets a polite smile and a professional farewell when she accepts it and, as she stuffs the paper -now grubbied from her fingers- into her pocket, her thoughts immediately turn back to her bath. She’s going to put rosemary in it, and it’s going to be just a little bit too hot.

She spends the entire walk home daydreaming about her bath, and when she finally sinks into it it’s just as good as she imagined. 

It’s also over far too soon. The water grows cold and drains away and Pepper has to go back to thinking about everything that needs to be done. Sometimes she just really wants some peace and quiet inside her own brain. Quite abruptly she realises that to her, peace means Tony.

Thinking of Tony reminds her that she really needs to talk to Bruce, so she plaits her damp hair into a long braid and sets off to track him down.

Her hair is almost completely dry when she finally finds Bruce with Tony, locked deep in a card game she doesn’t know. The rules are complicated and Pepper can’t quite follow them, but even so she can tell that Tony is cheating to devastating effect.

Bruce greets her warmly and Tony offers to deal her in, but luckily before Pepper has to admit she doesn’t know something in Tony’s presence, Bruce says he has to get back to his other patients.

“I’m your favourite patient though, right?” says Tony mock-petulantly.

“Of course, Toby,” says Bruce and Tony gives an indignant gasp. He’s ignored, and Bruce turns to Pepper. “I’ll be back in the morning. He can have another dose of poppywine in about an hour if he needs it.”

Pepper bites her bottom lip and nods along with his words.

Bruce gives her a kind but tired smile, says goodbye to Tony, and hurries out of the tent. Immediately Pepper rounds on the man in the bed. She stands with her hand on her hips and stares him down. He doesn’t look cowed in the slightest.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that,” she says reprovingly. “ No one loses that badly by accident.”   

Tony shrugs a shoulder nonchalantly and then winces when it pulls at his stitches.

“You smell nice,” he says.

“I had a bath. Don’t change the subject.”

Tony sighs in defeat. “He needed a win, he lost four patients today,” he says unrepentantly. “He’d let me win if I had that bad a day. Probably.” His voice goes softer. “I’m glad you took some time to relax.”

Fuck, Pepper loves him.

“Okay,” she says, sitting down and gathering up the cards rather than acknowledging how he makes it difficult for her to breathe sometimes. “What are we playing?”

He flutters his eyelashes at her innocently then gifts her a guile-filled grin. “You know Dirty Solitaire?” he asks, putting his hand out for the deck.

“I don’t think so,” says Pepper carefully as he takes it from her offering palm.

“It’s pretty simple.” Tony still sounds sick but his tone is more cheerful than it has been since the attack. “You can play it with three or five in a starting hand, and at the beginning of the round we show each other our hands, then the objective is to build a hand that’s a similar as possible to your opponent’s starting hand in thirteen turns. You do that by-”

“Oh!” Pepper interjects. “I do know it! My Dad called it The Beast With Two Backs when we were growing up!” 

“ Miss Potts ,” says Tony, sounding delightedly scandalised. 

“No cheating,” Pepper says as Tony begins deftly shuffling the cards.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

After three rounds where she ends up with the Queen of Hearts in her opening hand every single time, Pepper revokes Tony’s dealing and shuffling privileges. He acquiesces happily and then good naturedly laughs at her poor attempts at shuffling.

After seven rounds (three to Tony, four to Pepper, she still isn’t sure he’s not letting her win), she can tell he’s flagging. Despite his valiant efforts to conceal it, she can see the way pain is tightening his features, and how often his nostrils flare in that funny way that means he’s hiding a yawn.

“Tony…” she says ruefully. She doesn’t need to say anything else.

“Nuh-uh, I wanna win,” replies Tony.

Pepper stares at him calculatingly. “Alright, I win the next round, you have to get some rest and if you win we-”

“I win you sleep in your own bed tonight,” he says.

She doesn’t expect the sting of rejection that brings, but it’s sharp in her gut anyway.

“Please?” continues Tony.

Rejection turns to a glow of affection inside her. He’s just looking out for her. He’s always looking out for her.

“Okay,” she says. “You’re still not dealing though.”

He laughs. Pepper thinks that it might be the best sound in all the world.

It soon becomes clear that Tony has definitely been letting her win. She ends up with an embarrassing number of extra cards, glaring at the patterned backs of Tony’s perfect three card hand and his unbearably smug smile.

Just as he’s laying down his winning cards, a great hacking wet cough rips out of his chest and he doubles over from the force of it. The deck scatters everywhere when the bed shakes as he’s wracked with coughs, barely able to breathe between them. A shiver passes through Pepper’s body. This is new.

Tony is still getting worse.

Eventually the coughing fit passes and he’s left exhausted and trembling. Pepper removes the pillows propping him into a sitting position and watches him melt into the thin mattress.

“I still won,” he says, fatigue saturating every word.

“I’m still staying,” says Pepper.

Tony gives a disapproving grunt as she collects up the cards and settles into the chair next to him. He doesn’t say anything, but Pepper can feel his dissatisfaction and the way gratitude is tempering it.

“I’ll sleep now too,” she promises, and he gives her a look so tender she wants to cry.

The tent flap twitches and Pepper feels something rise defensively within her. Her tongue sharpens itself inside her mouth. She squeezes Tony’s hand gently and a warm feeling bubbles up in the pit of her chest when he squeezes weakly back. If this is another Bucky, she won’t let him be unprotected.

The man who enters has a creased forehead and his dark skin is made waxy and bloodless by concern. He looks pained, and when he sees Tony his breath catches in his throat.

“Gods...” he murmurs, and Pepper eyes him warily.

Tony groans and turns his face to her. His speech is soft and slurred when he speaks. “I’m hallucinating again, Pep,” he says hoarsely. 

Pepper takes in the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the glazed look of his eyes, the rasp of his every laboured breath. His hand is so cold in hers. She brushes back the greasy hair clinging to his skin, careful to avoid the still healing wounds on his face.

“It’s okay,” she tells him. When she addresses the stranger she can feel her words becoming hard and sharp, like little pieces of flint she’s flicking at him. “It’s okay, right ?”

The man nods silently. He’d have a nice face if it weren’t so contorted with grief and perhaps a hint of guilt. He steps forward and then kneels opposite Pepper, on the other side of Tony’s bed. Tony blinks at him in confusion.

“Oh, Tones,” he breathes, equal parts wonderstruck and sorrowful.

“This one’s a lot nicer,” says Tony, turning back to Pepper. His words are still slurred but his tone is almost conversational. “It’s Rhodey, my dearest deadest bestest friend.”

The man Tony calls Rhodey gives a shocked disbelieving laugh. “You haven’t fucking changed,” he says, and Pepper can’t tell if he sounds delighted or heartbroken. “But you were the dead one. I’m late home one time and you blow yourself up, at least according to Obadiah. I didn’t even think dragon boys could blow themselves up.”

Tony frowns and shifts slightly, grunting with pain as he moves. “You were lost at sea, honeybear. You were more dead than I was.”

Pepper feels a stab of baseless jealousy at the nickname before she’s overwhelmed with relief that someone else is here who’s unequivocally on Tony’s side. He deserves a whole army at his back, but for the moment her and Rhodey, and possibly Bruce, will have to suffice.

“You’re not allowed to die again,” says Rhodey suddenly, fiercely. He grasps Tony’s free hand with both his own. “Don’t you dare.”

Tony makes a small surprised noise as Rhodey touches him, which turns into a hiss of pain. “No promises,” he mumbles, and his head lolls back on his pillow. Pepper can see the exact moment he loses all semblance of lucidity. “Hurts,” he says plaintively to her, like a child.

Her heart twists.

She notices Rhodey staring at her with naked fear on his face, but comforting him and confronting him for answers will have to wait.

“I got you,” she tells Tony, reaching for the bottle of poppywine that Bruce swears by. She’s not sure he’s heard her so she adds “Tony, look at me.” He does. “I’m gonna make this okay.”

He nods trustingly and gifts her a wide lopsided smile. Pepper knocks a few drops into his mouth like Bruce had shown her and Tony sighs with relief. It seems to take instant effect and his eyes begin to slide closed. Then he glances down at the hand Rhodey is still holding and motions with his head at Pepper.

“This is Pepper,” he says to his friend, barely coherently. “I love her.”

And then he passes out.

Irrationally, Pepper’s first response is anger. All she can focus on is how it shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t have been this confused delirious confession, they should have had a proper awkward romantic fumbling for words. They should have been allowed a beautiful memory. They deserved better .

“He always was a dramatic little shit,” says Rhodey fondly, but one glance at his face tells Pepper he’s still deeply worried.

She looks at him across the bed where the whole world lies sleeping. He’s maybe a few years older than Tony, and though his clothing is fine she can see that his hands are scarred and calloused from hard work. Most importantly, Tony trusts him, so she does too.

“I’m Pepper Potts,” she says. “I guess I love him too.”

Rhodey laughs. It’s not a wild sound like Tony’s but it’s similarly rich. “That was the first time he’s said it, wasn’t it?” he says. He laughs again, taking all the confirmation he needs from the look on Pepper’s face. “Rear Admiral James Rupert Rhodes, call me Jim. Rhodey belongs to Tony, he’s kind of my brother.”

Another person Tony named then claimed. Pepper is finding it very easy to like Jim-not-Rhodey.

“Kind of?” says Pepper curiously. With Jim, she feels no compunction towards revealing her hunger for answers about Tony’s past.

He smiles sadly. “Tony was fourteen when we met. Just this bright brilliant bizarre kid who wouldn’t reveal a single thing about himself. He showed up one day in our village looking all beat up and exhausted and this couple who’d been desperate for a kid for years took him in pretty much instantly. Ana and Edwin Jarvis, good people. They adored Tony and he loved them but he always seemed sort of baffled by it.”

“So he’s never known how to be loved,” Pepper muses. “Damnit Tony…”

“Yeah,” says Jim thickly.

They lapse into silence. Outside the tent there’s the sounds of the camp settling down for the night, the buzz of quieting voices and the extinguishing of fires, the rustle of people returning to their tents. Somewhere nearby an owl hoots, and Pepper thinks about all the little lives that will end in its talons.

“He called me Ana once,” she says. “When he was delirious.”

“They’ve both been dead for a long time,” says Jim. “Red plague. Tony worked out that no one who’d had the pox ever died from the plague, they either didn’t catch it at all or recovered, and he developed this way of giving people pox before the plague could get them, but by that point Edwin and Ana were already dying. He was only nineteen, it really fucked him up. After that we moved to the city and gave his pox cure to as many people as we could, until the Lord Steward got on board and Tony was Kingsmith and I was a navyman and the plague wasn’t really a thing anymore.”

“ Tony stopped the red plague?” says Pepper.

“And I never heard the end of it.”

A rock drops into her stomach. “Oh gods, my whole family died,” she says and Jim frowns at her. “He never told me cause he thought I’d blame him!”

“Wow…” says Jim flatly. “He really hasn’t changed.”

“So his parents were killed when he was fourteen, and then his adoptive parents died when he was nineteen-”

“I think it was more like eleven,” says Jim. “I know he was alone for a while before the Jarvises took him in, but it was over a year before he even said anything about them being murdered, and even longer before he told us they weren’t the best parents in the first place, especially his Dad. He was never gonna say anything about what happened after.”

“I’m sorry I’m just asking you about Tony,” says Pepper. “I just…”

“No, I get it,” he says with a brief grin. “He’s an idiot, you wanna know why.”

“I knew it was gonna be bad, he gets this look sometimes, like he wants to tell me something, but then he always tries to make me laugh instead. So I knew it couldn’t be good, but all that tragedy and there’s still-” Pepper turns Tony’s wrist so Jim can see the scars there. “Do you know what happened there?”

A bleak look settles onto Jim’s features, like storm clouds gathering on the horizon. “I don’t, those are new,” he says tightly.

“And this?” says Pepper, hand hovering over Tony’s star.

Jim shakes his head. “All I know is he went to track down a special material and got attacked by bandits. He was missing for months and when he came back he had that, and refused point blank to ever make another weapon. It wasn’t long after that I had to escort a merchant fleet that got blown off course and by the time we made it back, Tony was dead. His whole forge blew up and took half the street with it. Twelve people died. Or maybe not. They said twelve people died but one of them’s right here. I never wanted to believe it, and when we came into port nearly six day’s ride from here and heard the rumours about a dragon who’s also a man I couldn’t not check. Just in case.”

“Just in case,” echoes Pepper, gesturing at Tony and smiling so wide her cheeks hurt. Jim beams back at her, concern still wrinkling his high forehead but joy gathering in his eyes.

“And he’s still the same heroic dumbass,” he says.

Pepper gives a huff of amusement. “So,” she says, “did he actually tell you about being a dragon cause I found out when he literally flew-”

Suddenly Tony’s whole body stiffens between them and his limbs begin jerking uncontrollably. A flailing arm catches Pepper in the stomach as she shoots to her feet and the wind is knocked out of her.

“Get Bruce!”  she gasps to Rhodey, doubling over but still reaching for Tony.

When her fingers curl around his shoulders his skin is so cold it almost burns. It sends a shudder up her spine to meet the chill lick of night air on the back of her neck as Rhodey runs out of the tent. 

Pepper has no idea what to do. She’s gone from being simply out of her depth to simply drowning. All she can manage is to do her best to stop Tony from hurting himself as he thrashes. 

“Tony, honey, you’re okay, I’m here, you’re okay, it’s okay,” she says in a kind of chant. It’s almost a prayer. “Please be okay.”

Her only comfort is her own words and the fact that Tony’s still breathing. Every inhale and exhale sounds like they’re torn from his throat, like it would be easier to move a mountain than air through his own lungs, but they don’t stop.

In the time it takes for his body to relax, empires are formed and fall, volcanoes erupt and go extinct, generations live and die. It’s also less than five minutes, according to the clock on the bedside chest.

Pepper sinks a hand into Tony’s hair. It’s softness is soothing, and even though he isn’t conscious he leans into her touch. She collapses into her chair and takes a few quick breaths to hold back the sobs gathering in her heart. One step forwards, two steps back.

She cups Tony’s chin in her other hand tenderly. The shape of his meticulously maintained beard has grown out into a thick dark fuzz and hair bristles against her palm. The pulse in his neck thuds reassurance into the heel of her hand.

There’s a moment of absolute hush, where the only sound is the harmonisation of Pepper’s breathing with Tony’s, then Bruce bursts into the tent, quickly followed by Rhodey.

“What happened?” he says urgently.

“I don’t know, some kind of… fit?” says Pepper, still cradling Tony’s head, eyes searching his face for any sign of waking. “He went all stiff and started convulsing. It didn’t last long.”

Bruce closes his eyes and exhales heavily. 

Rhodey stands with his arms folded, stony faced and straight backed.

“I don’t know what to do!” snarls Bruce. Shame flashes over his features and he turns his back on them, holding himself motionless for several seconds. When he turns back he looks devastated but no longer angry. “I’ve only seen these kind of seizures in children, I don’t know if this is a dragon thing or a Tony thing or an infection thing. I don’t know why the feverfew isn’t-”

Rhodey looks at Bruce sharply. “Feverfew?” he says.

“To bring the fever down. Or up.” Bruce laughs sardonically. “He’s cold, I don’t even know if this is a fever.”

“It’s a fever.” Rhodey’s voice is wooden. “And you’ve been poisoning him.”

Nausea instantly begins churning in Pepper’s stomach and all the blood drains from her face. She feels a little dazed.

“What?” is the only word she can choke out.

“Edwin made the same mistake when he was a kid, it was pure luck Tony noticed the medicine smelled different before he got as bad as this. Feverfew can kill a dragon, they use nightshade to bring up their fevers.” Rhodey sounds impressively calm, but the mask-like rigidity of his face tells a different story. He’s just as horrified as Pepper.

“Nightshade as in deadly nightshade? Belladonna ?” says Bruce. 

“Yes,” Rhodey says firmly.

Bruce seems sceptical, but his expression softens when he looks at Tony. 

“It’s worth a try?” he says.

Pepper startles when she realises he’s asking her. She looks down at Tony’s slack body and picks up his limp hand. She traces its scars and calluses with her fingertips.

“Anything’s worth a try,” she says.

***

Watching Tony get better is watching his emotional walls reassemble. Pepper finds it a little heartbreaking. 

She also finds it very unnerving. By rights the steady improvement in his health thanks to the belladonna treatments should buoy her up on a wind of relief, but all she can think of is those dark days where the whole world around her seemed to be dropping like flies. The last stage of the red plague looked like a return to fighting fitness, people were up and going back to their daily lives, grumbling about time wasted on illness, then days or even weeks later the angry rash and weeping sores would rise up again across their bodies and within hours they’d be dead.

Pepper had spent months after her recovery inspecting her hands for that red graffiti scrawl. Even now she still sometimes catches herself checking.

So watching Tony heal is just as unbearable as watching him get sicker.

Leaving his bedside to retreat back to the village that needs her is less heartwrenching now Jim is here. She’s glad he’s not alone. When she’d left to clear her head before setting to work they’d been merrily arguing about the benefits of larger versus smaller sailing vessels. Jim maintains that it’s always better to have somewhere on your boat where you can sleep, whereas Tony claims that a tiny ship skipping over the waves is the closest thing in the world to flying, and he should know. It feels familiar, like a discussion they’ve had many times before. It sounds like a shared history.

The day passes much like all the other days since the attack, overwhelming and awful and maybe just a little bit better than the day before. For the first time Pepper sees actual permanent progress and a little of her old satisfaction in her work returns to her.

The village square is now completely clear of debris and reconstruction is beginning on the clock tower. Rebuilding the tower itself is simple, fixing the mechanism will be much harder. Well, in actual fact for Tony fixing the clock will be easy, it’s just getting the villagers to accept his help that’ll be a nightmare. Pepper smirks to herself. She’s looking forward to winning that argument.

As she’s crossing the square in search of some lunch a small brown haired boy runs up to her. Pepper recognises him as the very first refugee from the chimera attack, the one she’d sent to live with his aunt and uncle after his father died bringing him to safety. She’s delighted to see him beaming up at her. One of his front teeth is missing. 

“Miss Potts!” he says, barely stopping himself from crashing into her legs. “I’m Peter Parker!”

“Yes, I know,” says Pepper, smiling warmly. “Good afternoon, Mr Parker.”

The boy seems suddenly nervous and his open expression begins to close off. He looks down at the ground and shuffles in place. Pepper crouches down to his height. 

“What can I help you with?” she asks, taking one of his wrists in her hand and swinging his little arm back and forth playfully. He giggles and makes his arm go floppy so she can swing it more. The silly game helps him gain confidence, and soon he is staring intently at Pepper.

“Is Mr Stark okay?” he blurts out. “My Uncle Ben said you would know. I really want him to be okay cause he saved my life twice and sometimes he lets me come by the forge and he showed me how to make nails and he says if I’m really good he’ll teach me how to do horseshoes too!”

Peter takes a moment to breathe and Pepper seizes the opportunity to speak. “He’s getting better. He was hurt very badly and it made him very sick but he’s getting better.”

It’s like she’s just promised him all the stars in the sky. His face splits into the widest smile she’s ever seen and his eyes sparkle. As he starts talking animatedly again, Pepper’s attention is caught by a figure crossing the square. Clint Barton stops dead when he notices her looking at him, and instead of acknowledging her nod of greeting he turns and quickly walks away. He’s carrying a tomato plant, and Pepper is just on the verge of wondering why, when her thoughts are drawn back to the child in front of her by his sudden change in tone.

“Miss Potts?” he asks in a tiny voice, and now she’s looking at a little boy who’s just lost both his parents. “They’re saying horrid things about Mr Stark, about the dragon. But he saved us, he’s a hero . You believe he’s a hero, right?”

“Absolutely,” says Pepper fiercely. “Remember, none of the people saying nasty things about Mr Stark actually know him very well. We’re lucky, we do. We know the truth, don’t we?”

To her surprise, Peter lurches forward and clumsily hugs her. “He said you were the best,” he mumbles into her hair. Pepper doesn’t know why that makes her want to cry, but she hugs him back anyway.

“Okay,” she says after he’s stopped squeezing her quite so tightly. “Do your aunt and uncle know where you are?”

Peter pulls away. He’s gone bright red and looks incredibly guilty. “Yes,” he says.

“You’re a terrible liar, Mr Parker,” says Pepper, rising to her feet and offering him her hand. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

They haven’t taken three steps in the direction of the Parker household when a shout echoes around them and May Parker, Peter’s aunt, almost runs into them. Pepper assumes that must just be a Parker thing.

“Peter!” she says again, quieter this time. “Oh gods, Peter!”

“He’s alright, May,” says Pepper gently. “Aren’t you, Mr Parker?”

“Yeah!” says Peter enthusiastically. “Miss Potts thinks the dragon’s a hero too! And-”

“Oh no, I’m sorry, I asked him not to bother you about that,” says May. She has a kind, lovely face, and Pepper gets the impression that Peter will be very well looked after.

“It was actually very good to hear someone who doesn’t blame him,” says Pepper, a little shocked at her own honesty.

May’s brow furrows. “There are plenty of us,” she says. “I know a good man -um, dragon, when I see one.”

Pepper smiles like she’s just been promised all the stars in the sky. “Thank you,” she says.

After handing Peter off to his very relieved aunt, Pepper finds herself heading to the smithy. She’s been avoiding it. The idea of Tony not being there is uncomfortable and alien, but the image of the building burnt to the ground in misguided revenge is haunting her thoughts.

Pepper breathes a sigh of relief when the forge comes into view. It’s fine, totally fine. No one’s touched it. She finds herself hurrying to the familiar space.

It’s very strange to stand by Tony’s anvil and not feel the ever-present heat of the smithy. Pepper presses a hand to the dark metal and lets its coolness seep into her skin. She pulls her jacket a little tighter and checks that all his tools are still there. She knows they will be. Traditionally, a blacksmith’s tools belong to a forge, not a person. The smithy stays even as the smith changes, and a village will always need a smith.

They’ll come for the man before they come for the building.

One specific fear mostly assuaged (and new ones springing up in its place), Pepper 

lets herself into the house, just to check. As she always does, as if she’s just brought a lunch to share with Tony, she heads immediately to the kitchen. The room feels like home when she enters, even if the person who makes it so isn’t there. A frigid breeze makes her shiver, and Pepper turns to close the window.

It’s smashed and there’s a few smears of dried blood caught on the jagged edges of the glass. It’s a hideous intrusion into a place of safety. Pepper looks around the room. The only thing missing is Tony’s tomato plant. She thinks about the stiffness of Clint Barton’s retreating back as he turned away from her. 

A worm of unease hollows a home right beneath her heart. She has to see Tony now .

Her feet are sprinting towards the knights’ encampment before her brain has a chance to catch up. When it does, it’s fully on board and pushes her to go even faster. She feels like a ticking clock is snapping at her heels. She doesn’t know why she’s so certain that something is wrong.

On the outskirts of the camp she passes Jim and Bruce ladling stew from a large cauldron into three bowls. Pepper pushes through several knights heading towards it to get their own lunch. She swears under her breath as the winged knight steps in front of her path.

“Are you okay?” he asks kindly, raising his arms to stop her in her tracks.

“Let me past, please,” says Pepper through gritted teeth, chest heaving with exertion.

He scans her face, and then relents and steps aside. He shouts something after her as she sets off running again, but Pepper doesn’t hear it. Her footsteps ring in her ears like Tony Tony Tony .

Finally she reaches Captain Rogers’ tent. The unease inside her has grown from a worm into a snake, coiling around her windpipe and constricting her heart. As she pulls aside the flaps it rears up and renames itself dread.

The sight that greets her goes from confusing to chilling in a matter of moments. The Captain’s clothes chest is open and its contents are spilled across the floor, as if someone had rifled through them in a hurry, trying to find something that wouldn’t be too big. There’s a pair of boots missing from the corner and Tony isn’t in bed .

Tony isn't anywhere.

He’s gone.