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The first time Pepper had seen Tony in hospital he was getting his appendix out. It was quick and routine and relatively easy to deal with. Tony had fallen ill on a Tuesday, had JARVIS scan him and identify the problem and by Friday he was back home and grumbling about not being allowed in the workshop for another week.
Every subsequent visit to the hospital has been hellish.
Broken bones and infected wounds, removing the goddamn arc reactor and all those respiratory illnesses his weakened chest is so susceptible to, the overdoses and alcohol poisoning and worst of all the palladium detox. Every. Single. Time. Tony has been in hospital Pepper has had to dig down and live in iron.
She’s having trouble doing that this time. It’s not that iron is failing her, iron doesn’t fail, it’s that she’s got him back. Tony is home. She got him back. The worst should be over. She shouldn’t need iron anymore when she has Iron Man.
But the creature in the hospital bed doesn’t look like Tony. His beard has grown out and his body is wasted and his eyes are glazed and confused and the only words he’s been lucid enough to say are I’m sorry . Pepper is afraid he’s apologising for surviving.
Pepper is afraid in general, really.
Half the world is ash and the Avengers aren’t doing anything about it. Pepper is very, very afraid that they’re expecting Tony to fix it. When they visit she can see a kind of hungry anticipation to their sorrowful expressions and she wants to scream and throw them out. Tony has already given so much, he shouldn’t have to give anything else. Especially not to these people.
Even Rhodey has a kind of unrelenting unshakable faith that Pepper finds utterly unbearable. She knows Tony will wake up and repair the fractured universe with his bare hands, that’s not the point. The point is- The point is…
Pepper isn’t sure what the point is. She’s just tired of all the expectations. Tony is the very best man in all the world and people should stop expecting him to be.
She lifts his hand up and presses a kiss to the back of it. She’s been holding his hand for days. Even in her sleep she reaches across from her cot next to his bed and grasps his fingers.
The beeping of his monitors are a constant comfort. More than once she’s been woken up at night by a slight change in their rhythms. They bring a comforting reality to a situation that often edges into dreamlike.
Pepper thinks she might be cracking up.
Sometimes she deliberately remembers Tony at his worst. He can be callous and careless and capricious and he has hurt her a million times over. She pretends that remembering that helps.
It doesn’t, and so often it leads into thinking about all the ways she’s hurt him.
Even that is better than thinking about the good times, and there are so many more good times than bad. Pepper doesn’t want to think much at all. She’s tried all her usual distractions but even SI can’t hold her attention for long. The world has collapsed down into this room and this hospital bed and this man and the beep beep beep that tells her he’s still living.
One thing she doesn’t do is cry. It’s not a matter of repressing her emotions, she tries every night to cry herself to sleep. She’s just missing the part of the circuit that will connect up and allow the current to flow. She describes it like that to Jim and he smiles at her sadly and it’s only once he’s left that she realises it’s a Tony metaphor.
It should have been obvious what the missing part of the circuit actually is.
“Hey,” he says. His voice is a weak rasp but it finally sounds like him.
“Welcome back,” says Pepper.
His eyes are clear and when he looks at her he recognises her and the joy of it builds up inside her until it splits her mouth into a wide grin.
“Space still sucks.”
She knows what he’s doing. He’s going to make light of it and pretend he’s fine and she can’t, she can’t actually handle that.
“Don’t,” she says softly. “Don’t do that.”
His pained smile falls and his mask cracks and oh god and she’s crying.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. He sounds as desperate and alone as every other time he’s said it from this bed and Pepper won’t hear it again. She can’t.
But before she can tell Tony that his eyes go very wide and he somehow gets even paler and he struggles to sit forward.
“Pep, I need a phone. Is FRIDAY here? Of course she is this is the compound hospital. FRIDAY I need to call May Parker,” he says, agitated. “Fuck! She’s been waiting all this time and I haven’t-“
“I took care of it, honey.”
Tony melts back onto his pillows with a sigh and gazes adoringly up at her. “Of course you did,” he says. His face is haunted and something in him seems broken but the smile he gives her is the special secret lopsided one that’s only ever genuine.
“Your only job is to get better,” she says and squeezes his hand.
Pepper sees it then, in the way he stiffens and his smile fades, the horrible truth of expectation. No one has ever demanded anything from Tony that he hasn’t demanded of himself. They all want him to save them so he thinks he has to.
Tony grunts in pain as he shifts slightly and the bed squeaks. He doesn’t look at her as he says “You’re right.”
Pepper goes cold.
She blinks at him as he studies his bedsheets, steadfastly avoiding eye contact. There’s something twitching in his jaw.
he doesn’t think he can fix it he doesn’t think he can fix it he doesn’t- how can he- he’s given up? ...okay. he’s given up but you don’t give up on him. never never never give up on him
“I thought space was beautiful,” she says. “Cold and terrifying, but beautiful.”
That makes him look at her. She squeezes his hand again.
“Who did you think came to pick you up?” She asks.
Tony frowns. “You wore the Rescue suit and I missed it?”
He’s not okay, not by a long shot, but the question is so quintessentially Tony that she knows he can be. That he will be.
“I guess I’ll just have to wear it again,” says Pepper.