Symbiosis Chapter 7
Title: Symbiosis Chapter 7
Authors: Neon Daisies and 4persephone
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Disclaimer: Ironman is the property of Marvel Comics
Pepper is woken up...oddly. It feels like someone is tapping inside her head. Her automatic response is to reach for Tony, but the moment she touches him she knows he's sound asleep. He doesn't even respond to her touch - neither the physical or the psychic. However, the peace she feels coming out of him is soothing; calming. Enough so that she nearly goes back to sleep.
Then she feels that tapping sensation again, and she stirs restlessly. Then a voice sounds, whisper soft, inside her head.
'I have tea and brownies. Minus the hash.’ There’s a subtle amusement in his voice that is both familiar and at the moment, a little annoying. ‘Now come let an old man inside before he melts in this heat.'
Malcolm. She blinks for a moment at the usually unfamiliar act. Her father hasn’t tried to speak with her this way since she was a girl of fourteen. All she really remembers of his attempts is that they gave her ferocious headaches for days afterwards sometimes, depending on how much strength he put behind his attempts. ‘He finally stopped after the third onset migraine.’ Her mother had been disappointed and wanted him to continue, but he had actually put his foot down.
It was one of the few times in her entire childhood she’d seen him actively lose his temper and yell at the woman who’d raised her.
She’d thought at the time that his efforts were forceful, now though, she can feel the strength he has at his disposal, and is amazed by his control because only a portion of it is being used. She wonders if her struggle to maintain any control is a sign of inexperience or of weakness on her part.
She also knows she’ll probably be finding out within the next couple of hours. ‘Can‘t avoid this forever, Pepper. Even if it does feel like a trip to the principal’s office.’ "Jarvis, let Malcolm in whenever he comes to the house," Pepper instructs softly as she climbs out of bed and looks around for her clothing. When she finds what's left of the suit she'd been wearing the day before, she drops it back to the ground.
'It looks like they've been through some kind of laundry war zone.' Even wearing Tony's clothing seems like less revealing than putting back on her own crumpled, wrinkled garments. Beside there’s something about the smell of them that is actually making her sick to her stomach. ‘It’s time to get this set dry cleaned. I’ll see about going over to my house later today to get some more changes of clothing…’
For some reason that idea just makes her sicker, like entering her own house is somehow dangerous. Right now the thought of leaving these walls is enough to make her want to hyperventilate. It’s another thing she’s going to have to force herself to ask Malcolm about.
She finds a pair of shorts that have a drawstring and a clean sweatshirt and pulls them on before going back to the bed to check on Tony. She finds the man asleep, with his nose buried in his pillow, lips smacking unhappily. 'He knows I’m gone and it's stressing him out,' some part of her catalogues a bit absently. The rest of her sees that tension and resists the urge to climb straight back into bed. Because she knows a little about bonds at least, and she knows what they are both feeling isn't anything more than latent separation anxiety.
'You're brooding,' comes a soft voice in her head. Malcolm’s mind speak is quiet and low, though not as soothing as he probably intends it to be. 'If this is how hard you try to stay disconnected from everything you feel it's no surprised you're so overwhelmed at the moment.'
'Just...stop. Please. I'll be down in a minute.' Hearing his voice in her head is... Well, it's uncomfortable. She’s not sure if that’s because it’s unaccustomed to the practice, or if she’s just reacting to sympathetic memory. She only knows that where the same type of communication with Tony seems natural, having someone else in her head is enough to make her hackles raise and her stomach start turning summersaults.
She actually feels Malcolm withdraw. ‘Fine, but for the record Ginny, I'm not trying to stress you. You're subconsciously screaming like a siren and it's giving me a headache.'
His patience is too patient, and Pepper slams down her shields so hard that Tony groans. She reaches out automatically and rests a comforting hand on the back of his neck while she struggles to find her connection to him through her defenses. By the time she locates the tiny gap that she somehow knows is for Tony alone, she's breaking out in a light sweat. However, the sense of accomplishment she feels as she slips just far enough into his dreams to reassure him makes the effort worthwhile.
When she gets downstairs it's to find Malcolm standing in the kitchen looking exasperated. "I didn't say slam your shields up, Pepper, I said I was sorry. I didn’t come here to preach or invade you privacy, but I will have to use my gifts if I’m actually going to help you."
"And I asked you to knock it off. I don't like having other people in my head." She pulls plates from one cabinet and tea cups from another. "You're my father, but that doesn't give you permission to just intrude on me whenever you want. You should understand how it feels to have your mind as your last place of refuge. If you want to talk to me, you can damn well use words."
Malcolm's eyes narrow in what is obviously frustration, and yet his mind remains gentle and non-confrontational. "Yes, I do understand needing a refuge, and I have one. You on the other hand don‘t.” The old man sighs and takes a plate from her, cutting off a generous wedge of brownie and sitting down at the table. “Also, yes: I am your father, but considering that you’ve apparently known for years and never brought it up, you don't get to use it as an excuse not to listen to me now just because it‘s convenient for you.”
She drops her head at that comment because he's right and she knows it, and once again his words have managed to fill her with shame. Malcolm seems to see this, because he sighs and reaches out to carefully take her hand. "Look, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard. But I'm not your enemy Pepper, and I never will be.“ He sighs and takes another bite of brownie. “For the record it's not in my nature to deliver an ass kicking unless somebody makes me. But you almost died yesterday and that puts this all at a different level."
Malcolm shakes his head. "I will play hardball on this if I have to, so for God‘s sake Pepper, please don‘t make me."
Pepper knows from her own inner fragility that he's right, but that state only makes her all the more reluctant to let anyone in. It's not like they're talking about performing surgery or something. They're talking about what boils down to essentially manipulating who she is at her very core. And she's really not sure she'd willingly let anyone that far in. Even Tony wouldn‘t have the option, if she had a choice about that.
"I don't want you coming in uninvited," Pepper says firmly, driven by the same sense of self-preservation that had driven her into this state in the first place. "You ask from now on. And I’ll try to be flexible. But don’t treat me like an idiot and learn to respect my boundaries." Then she looks him right in the eye. "Or I’ll kick back even harder, and I don't know for sure, but I suspect I’m close to an equal match for you these days."
Malcolm's jaw twitches, but he nods just a little. "In power yes, in training no. I’ll try and stay low key as long as you try and stay open. First though please let me help you because I can feel your strength draining...and Pepper, it hurts watching you suffer when it’s totally unnecessary."
His second deliberate use of her work nickname distracts her momentarily. "Mal you are welcome to call me ‘Ginny.’ I’ve never objected to the name."
It just isn’t her very often anymore. Well, at least not really.
The man in front of her chuckles. 'I'm not talking to ‘Ginny.’ I’m talking to the person who's actually in charge these days, and the name she answers to is Pepper."
"What are you talking about?" Pepper asks in confusion as she sits down at the kitchen table without a single thought towards the use it'd been put to earlier in the day. She's too distracted. Malcolm's right about the effort it takes to keep herself so tightly closed off and the toll it's taking on her, though she's surprised by how much of it is that with her shields drawn tightly it's hard to know how Tony is. She hasn't realized until this moment how much she actually monitors him throughout the day.
Reluctantly, she lets the shields go until she's left with the day to day barrier that's more instinct than a conscious decision to keep. Without it she'd be overwhelmed by the people she comes into contact with daily. Though she isn't really sure if it's some kind of psychic block or just a natural reserve.
Malcolm whistles under his breath. "Okay. Should have seen this one coming. His presence actually helps to stabilize your shields. Let me guess, are you having issues with the idea of getting more than one hundred feet away from him at the moment?"
Pepper looks at him dourly, doing her best to suppress a bolt of shock. "Okay, rule number two: if you want me to cooperate you will stop talking, acting or even looking so damn cryptic all the time. It’s insulting and it pisses me off, because if I wanted to see a soothsayer I'd go to the fair and shell out fifty dollars to have someone ooh and ahh all over me."
Malcolm sighs at that. "You're going to have to stop doing that you know, if we‘re going to make any progress."
"Doing what?!" she growls back. “What did I just say about not being cryptic?!”
The man leans a little closer. “When I said that you need to stop it, I was referring to the way you keep devaluing all psychic gifts by comparing them to freak shows because they make you uncomfortable.” He straightens back up in his chair. “And I’m calling you Pepper because it's the name that Tony gave you and the one you think of yourself as now." His lips actually smirk. "Unless you're going to tell me that internally you still think of yourself as Ginny?"
He was right and Pepper knew it. It was one of the things she’d accepted first in order to keep her job. In her early days on the job she’d done her best to get him to use her real name, but she’d been unable to match Tony’s stubborn tenacity. Eventually she’d made the name her own, putting it on like a suit of armor every time she went to war on his behalf. Most people these days knew and respected the ‘infamous Pepper Potts.’
Virtually none of them had ever met ‘Ginny.’
"I compare them to freak shows because most of the time that's the only use I see them used for," Pepper mutters. "Even Mom went through her fortune telling phase at one point. She dragged us both to one every other week."
"Your mother was a fruitcake." Malcolm informs her candidly. "She's half the reason you're in this mess. She’s the only reason you’re untrained…" Something in Pepper snaps to hear that said of a woman who’s been dead and buried more than fifteen years.
"Yeah well, you get the other half of the blame, because you're the idiot who fucked her before you took the time to know her, and you certainly didn’t bother to stick around after. She’s gone and she was my mother. Do you really think bad-mouthing her is a good place to begin with me?"
"I’m only telling the truth, which is necessary if we’re ever going to fix this mess. Yes - I slept with you mom and then I left her. It was the late seventies, Pepper," Malcolm informs her baldly. "And we were both skunked on hash and wine the night you were conceived. Still you exist because of that, so I can't see it as a completely bad thing."
"You hurt her every time you came and left. How was that possibly good for any of us?" Pepper snaps.
"Yeah well, Pepper, I hate to break it to you, but it was pretty much mutual in terms of the agony. Here's a hint, Virginia, it wasn’t my idea to have me remain 'Uncle Malcolm.’" The brunette's hand tightens hard in his lap. "I loved your mom. I wanted to marry her. It wasn't me who busted us up it was her. She just couldn’t accept the world as it was in reality…"
"What do you mean, Mom wasn't 'accepting?'" Pepper cuts him off. "Mom was the most open minded person I've ever met - and I know she loved you."
Malcolm interrupts right back. "Yes she did. But she refused to believe that just being what she actually was could ever be good enough for me." Malcolm groans, and Pepper can see regret in his face. "This is not the way that I‘ve wanted to deal with this subject...I've made a point not to badmouth her in front of you."
The man rubs his forehead and suddenly looks his almost fifty eight years. "It's just…Your mom did have her gifts, Pepper. They weren’t as flashy as mine. But she was a brilliant artist who could have done so much more if she’d focused on it wholeheartedly instead of considering it just an unimportant hobby…”
Malcolm dropped his hand from his forehead and met her gaze directly. “I never wanted anything more than the woman I first met..." He shakes his head. "But she got it into her head that she had to be 'more' - and that if she wasn’t, that meant she‘d eventually lose me." Malcolm rolls his eyes. "What ended up happening was exactly the opposite. I lost her and you both to her damned sense of inadequacy.”
That sickened feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach again. Though this time it wasn’t her own emotions alone - her father’s were in there as well. Malcolm must have been unaware his own shields were slipping, because now she is fighting the urge to get up and hug the shit out of him. Malcolm draws a deep breathe before he finishes. “And that pisses me off, Pepper. It’s been more than thirty years and I can barely breathe when I think about it. I loved her and there was nothing I could do to fix it.”
"Malcolm, you’re an empath. Why didn't you just...?" Pepper shakes her head then buries her face in her hands. "You can make people see the truth, Malcolm. Why didn't you just make her?" Because her life would have been very different if she'd had two parents, if there'd been someone else in the house to balance out her mother's flightiness, so she didn't have to.
"If only things were that easy. She was supposed to be my bonded, Pepper. My gifts never worked effectively on her." The words are half laughed and half whimpered, an admission that leaves him gutted and leaves her completely out of breath because it means that her father has lived the last three weeks of her life for going on thirty-four years.
"How did she fight it?" Pepper whispers. "How could she fight it?" The mother she remembers had showed none of the signs that Pepper herself had experienced in the last weeks. "And how could either of you bear it when you came to visit?" She remembers how hard it'd been not to rush to Tony's side the moment he stepped off the plane the day he returned to the US. How she'd distracted herself by biting her lip and digging her nails into her hands. And that had been before they'd had sex.
If for some reason, she and Tony needed to separate for a long period of time now, she's absolutely certain that the first thing they'll do when reunited is fall on each other without a single thought to their surroundings.
Yet Malcolm and her mother had been at best incidental lovers who had almost never even shared a bedroom to sleep in. Though come to think of it they'd always already been there and freshly showered when she came home and found he'd come to visit.
Before she can be totally disgusted by that realization, her father continues, stopping the thought in it's tracks. "Your mother wasn't the empath, Pepper. I was the one who took the worst of it. And I bore it by getting high...at least until I found somebody in Africa willing to sever the bond. Why do you think you were even born, Pepper? Sometimes birth control fails."
He shrugs, "There is a reason I only visited sporadically. Even after a severing ceremony that nearly killed me the connection was constantly trying to repair itself. "
"You know someone who can sever bonds?" The question slips out before Pepper can stop it and she winces, not needing to imagine Tony's reaction if he had overheard her. He'd made it pretty clear that backing out was no longer an option he was going to let her consider.
"I knew someone yes. She died fifteen years ago. The only person left with that skill who has the power to see it through is the person talking to you." Malcolm’s eyes narrow in her general direction. “And if I agreed to attempt that kind of thing it would only be after you and Anthony both got a close up and personal empathic playback of what it did to your mother and I. Because it's not something I'd put you through without knowing and accepting all the possible consequences.”
Which meant it wasn’t going to happen. Because Tony would never risk her life, and she’d never risk his, which made it the ultimate catch twenty-two. She’s searching back through her memory now, looking at everything she's ever known about her mother except now she is finally starting to understand it.
The woman hadn’t been just determined to increase her power, she’d been desperate. Perhaps because she’d honestly believed it could bring them all back together again. That it could make them all whole. ‘Or maybe it was justification…a way to accept that she’d massacred her life.’ Because if she couldn’t be more than she’d been then it was all for nothing. The woman had destroyed herself and the man she loved because she’d never been able to accept what she was.
She'd also crippled her daughter in ways Pepper was only beginning to recognize.
That knowledge was chilling. It actually made her shudder. "I didn't mean it. Not really. I can’t be without him anymore." And she can't. But she’s still struggling to cope with everything a mature bond entails. "I don't think I understand one thing, Malcolm: Tony's not empathic, but he was feeling our bond before it was...realized." If that was the right term. "Why are we different than you and Mom in that? Are all bonds different?"
"You both have much greater power than your mother and I did...and you were never trained to cope with you empathy effectively. And by the way: like hell your lover’s not empathic!"
Pepper’s eyes widen in disbelief and Malcolm snickers, trying to decide whether to cushion the next blow or just deliver it bluntly. "Just because he's a flicker of flame next to your floodlight doesn't mean he's deficient, Pepper. He's just untrained and thus far really, really lucky.”
Then the older man sits back and crosses his fingers, seeing the confusion build and waiting for the inevitable denial. Pepper looks at Malcolm through her fingers. "Like hell he’s empathic," she says back when she finds the ability to speak again. "No one who causes the chaos he does can possibly be empathic. We don't go through that much Excedrin in this house for that."
"Why do you think that he causes so much chaos? Because I’ll tell you right now that his nature isn’t meant to be destructive, it's meant to orchestrate change.” He shakes his head, “And for the record, I think you'll find that his lack of need for Excedrin is explained by the fact that you've been both buffering and grounding him for years now.”
Malcolm shrugs. "As for his attitude - input is mostly output. To risk a misquote, 'what one seeks one often finds.' He's probably got a bad habit of mimicking or satirizing the attitudes of everyone around him. I’m guessing that if you put him in a isolated spot though, where he doesn’t subconsciously read other people and react accordingly, what results is pretty much who he really is with all the garbage filtered out."
Pepper just stares at Malcolm because he's just described Tony's public face versus Tony when he's buried up to his neck in engine parts and axel grease in his garage. He’s known Tony less than forty eight hours and accurately summed up his entire basic personality. It also explains all of her headaches. She wonders if it also explains how easily women have always fallen into Tony's bed.
"Oh god my head hurts," is all she says in reply. Her hands are starting to shake a little as well, though she's barely processing that consciously. Instead she's filtering back through every press conference and every public appearance, and she’s re-evaluating. She’s seeing every moment he's gone from Tony the charming to Tony the ass in the space of a heartbeat. How many people had he slept with who now openly despise him? How often has she seen him simply shut down as if the world doesn’t matter?
'Defense mechanism,' she realizes after a moment. 'Fight or flight and sometimes both except managed internally.' She wants to go upstairs and fuck the subtle self-loathing out of his head almost as badly as she wants to beat the crap out of the next reporter who as much as looks at him funny. "God, I never even suspected..." She closes her eyes as she rubs at her head. If she had, she would have been much more careful around him. But she hadn't been, and the result is that for the last nine years she's essentially been throwing herself at him every chance she got. No wonder she's the only person who's ever been able to manage him. She'd been speaking his language all this time.
Malcolm shrugs. "Don’t blame yourself, Pepper. You're mostly untrained yourself. Call it blind serendipity...you both got exactly what you needed." Then amused grey green eyes look into hers for a minute. "You do realize that if you let things work the way they should, this link will stop hurting and balance both of you. It's why the thing formed in the first place."
Pepper trembles and shakes her head in a jerky movement. "I..." Her voice is hoarse and she has to clear her throat. "It's hard to think kindly of anything that's caused as much trouble as this bond. I didn't even know it was there until six months ago." The look in Malcolm's eyes is puzzled, like he has no clue what she's talking about. "Tony was in Afghanistan," she whispers in explanation. "He was kidnapped by terrorists. He was hurt, and needed...surgery. And I went through all of it with him." Just remembering it brings the pain flooding back. "For three months I thought I was going crazy...or that the alternate visions of him either alive or dead were going to drive me crazy."
The shock in the other man's eyes is strong and then incredulous. "My god...why didn't you call up Merilee? Andrew? Me?!"
'Because I couldn't bring myself to admit it was happening,' something whispers in her head. 'Because Mom was a ditz and I had to stay grounded or we both would have fallen...'
“I couldn't...I didn't understand what was happening." The man across from her narrows his eyes. "I didn't want to admit what was happening," she self corrects. "Because Tony is the freak and super-genius in this relationship. Not me. I was already enough of a nerd without admitting to being the emotional equivalent of a lighting rod." The last words are nearly wailed in embarrassed disbelief.
Then before she can say another word strong arms are lifting her up and out of her chair. "What in hell are you doing?" Tony glares at Malcolm accusingly.
"I'm fine." Their link is wide open and Pepper knows her lover has never been this angry. She twists to wrap her arms around Tony, instinctively going for the quickest way to center and ground him. She realizes instinctively he’s reacting to her distress as if she’s under some kind of physical attack. "Malcolm just didn't understand why I resisted the bond so strongly. He didn't understand I didn't even know about it until you were abducted. He's not hurting me. It's just...the remembering."
"Then stop - you’re overstressed enough already." Tony growls at the man across the table, “If this is your version of ‘teaching’ then you can fucking get out!“
Malcolm raises his hands in surrender. "The psychic boils have to be lanced before her whole mind turns septic. This shit is what got her into that room you hate so much. Back off and let me do my job."
Pepper ignores Malcolm for the time being, because he's right and the prospect of dredging up all the gunk that's mired her down is terrifying. But Tony comes first - he has to come first, or she’s afraid that he's going to literally attack Malcolm. She tightens her arms around him and lets her body relax into his, which only makes the shivers racing through her more apparent. "It's better now that you're here. Remembering...seeing it all again is too much without you here. That's why the nightmares have been so awful."
She knows what losing him feels like, and every time she watches him die, that feeling comes back. Without being able to touch his skin and feel him, there’s been nothing to short circuit the fear. It'd been like a cloudy day without a sun strong enough to break through the gloom. "Nightmares?" Malcolm asks. "Are these the ones from when he was abducted?" He’s remaining absolutely still with his eyes still fixed on Tony.
Pepper shakes her head, then shrugs. "Half the time yes, the other half of the time they’re about his upcoming missions."
Tony reacts to that information like it's a lightening strike. His arms tighten around her convulsively, and then he's spinning her around. "How often?" he demands, holding her in place with his hands on his shoulders.
"Dreams or foresight, Ginny?" Malcolm demands at the same time, and Pepper buries her head in Tony’s shoulder.
"I don't know," Pepper admits to Malcolm softly. "About sixty to seventy percent of them just...well they simply feel true." To Tony she speaks with a whispered hush. "Until last night? I had them four or five nights a week."
The room goes eerily, chillingly silent. Malcolm doesn't say a word. Tony is shaking and she can feel his agonized disbelief pouring down through the link as he processes that new information. "My god," Malcolm whispers at last. "At that rate how have you not gone absolutely crazy?!"
She actually laughs, though it closely resembles a cry of pain. "What makes you think I haven't?" Her hands are running up and down Tony's arms without direction from her. His pain is swamping her and she has to erect several layers of shields before she can even take a full breath. Only then can she start to analyze what she's getting from him. "You honestly had no idea what I was talking about, did you?" she asks him softly. "You didn't understand why ‘a few dreams’ would make me so set against becoming even closer to you."
Tony isn't looking at her, he's looking at Malcolm. "You have to tell me how to break the bond...how to fix this." He's nearly bending them in half trying not to knock them both out with the indescribable pain. The very idea sends the link into flames, as if it's a sentient being and the suggestion has left it threatened or made it irrationally angry. Though, the heat going through the link has nothing on the instinctive flare of temper Pepper feels at the suggestion. The moment the link flares to life she drops into it without even the suggestion of control and feeds her outrage into it and the debilitating pain of even the thought of being permanently separated.
Her mind grabs his and her consciousness sinks its hooks into his until there's little distinction between Pepper and Tony. And then she just says, "No."
This is not going to happen. They’d finished this argument last night.
"Pepper..." he whispers in agony. "You're hurting because of me. I can't keep doing that to you now that I know."
"She's hurting because she's untrained." Malcolm interjects, "And because she delayed getting help for so long she's all but destroyed her psychic reserves. Foresight does not have to be this painful; the bond can help buffer some of the damage." He sighs and runs a hand back through the hair sliding out of it's ponytail. "I can even teach you to help shield her from her dreams when she sleeps. But only if the two of you will let me."
"You can't leave me, Tony. And even if you did we wouldn't be any better off." She sinks her psychic hooks deeper into him. "It wouldn't stop either of us from hurting. It'd mean living like the last three weeks for the rest of our lives." Across from her Malcolm flinches, and Pepper almost regrets the honesty. Tony though is just trying to center himself and find a safe release valve to siphon off the latent anxiety. He latches on to Malcolm's words like a lifeline.
"I can stop her gifts? What exactly do you mean?"
"Not stop them, just help regulate them." Malcolm says tiredly. "Pepper, let Tony go. You're overwhelming the poor guy and hampering his ability to think." That causes Pepper to groan and take several steps back. Tony actually shivers from the absence of contact.
"You said I can help her." The engineer picks the words more carefully this time.
"If she can buffer you, than you can buffer her. Not as effectively and not for quite as long, but it will help at least a little. Right now I'd suggest we start with that because if we do that it should stop the nightmares for at least a couple of nights."
"I didn't dream last night." Pepper acknowledges quietly. Or if she had, they had all been good. If it weren't for the emotional stress of the day, she'd have had to say she was actually feeling good.
"Then he's already doing it subconsciously. And it probably helps that you're in the same bed. Skin on skin contact works for a reason; it's like talking to a person through a telephone instead of just screaming bloody murder across a giant room."
Pepper nods, then turns as she feels a startled thought from Tony down the link.
"Could it also be that now that it's been acknowledged, the bond isn't...well, trying as hard to get her attention?" Tony sounds uncomfortable, and looks a little awkward, but Pepper can see the gears turning in his head. "I mean, energy when it has no place to go simply builds up, and builds up, and builds up until it forces its way out in some fashion. Couldn't that have been the case here? And the weakest place for it to get through would have been her fears for my safety. If it wanted completion, it would have worked through the most likely way to make her comply. And through her, me."
Malcolm pauses a moment. "Damn you're going to be handy. It's not often we find a person with a gift for sheer diagnostics." He looks at Pepper. "Only you can tell me if he is right about that theory though."
Pepper stares at the other man in disbelief. "You're asking me to confirm?! You're supposed to be the specialist, why are you asking me?"
Malcolm rolls his eyes. "Pepper, this isn't a pure science. It's an art, and some things simply come down to instinct."
Which is part of the problem, Pepper realizes after a moment. Both her father and her lover live on instinct above all else. She on the other hand doesn't even acknowledge it most days.
"I don't know." She snaps at him irritably. "It's not like I've had any kind of baseline to compare with."
"Does is feel like he's telling the truth?" Malcolm asks her, gaze sharpening insistently.
"It feels..." Pepper pauses because what she feels makes her sound like a lunatic. "It feels like whatever there is between us has a life of it's own that is only partially controlled by us. It feels like it wants us to be together and is going to do what it has to in order for us to get there, and now that we are finally bending to the pressure it's not going to just let us go." She looks over at Tony and the look on his face is indescribable. She reaches out and takes his hand. "'Bond' is a good word for it, because I feel like we really are trapped in some way that's somehow beyond either of us." She says it all in a rush and to her own ears she sounds unhappy and just a little disbelieving.
Malcolm smiles a little, in a way that's acknowledging and sad. "Then welcome to the big leagues, where you're only partly in charge of your own lives anymore." He shrugs. "I won't say it's always pleasant, but it is one hell of a ride." Pepper can't help the shot of pain that goes through her like a toothache, and she can't entirely shield it from Tony. This time he doesn't get angry, he just turns his full attention on her and she can feel his fumbling attempts to feel out why she's distressed.
"We'll talk about it later," she mumbles as she carefully closes herself off. She's stronger than him and she's not afraid of using that strength to give herself the space she needs. Right now, even having Tony in on her thoughts is too much for her to handle.
She's just so tired of the loss of control, and she's not sure she can handle how well he's probably accepting the idea.
Tony doesn't know this though. He only knows that she's hurting. "How do I shield her?" he asks Malcolm after a moment. "When I'm awake and we're not going to get to be naked anytime soon."
"Tony!" She blushes from her toes to the roots of her hair. Malcolm, bless his heart doesn't laugh. Which is probably fortunate because if he had she would have had to kill him. Her limits are strained already from too many sudden shocks and invasions of her long-held privacy.
"It's all right, Pepper. Both of you close your eyes." Tony obeys immediately but Pepper is more hesitant to comply.
Malcolm sighs and reaches out with his mind, sending a wave a reassurance toward her. "I'm not going to touch you - you two can do this on your own with a simple talk-through, but it's easier for beginners if you cut down on the distractions. Close your eyes Virginia, and for once just try and trust me."
Maybe it's his facial expression, maybe it's his tone. Maybe it's the use of her full name, which she hasn't heard him speak since her mother's funeral. Maybe it's even Tony who's standing less than three feet away with only one eyelid cracked open. 'Scared of the dark, Potts?' Tony's voice in her head is whimsical. She snorts and shuts her eyes in disbelief. Something of this is familiar, barely remembered from a few of Malcolm's visits early in her childhood. Pepper reaches behind her and pushes herself up to sit on the counter. Then she brings her hands to rest in her lap and she tries to remember what's supposed to happen next. It was so long ago, and they're dealing with concepts she'd barely understood then. And since this had almost always happened when she'd been in the midst of a temper tantrum, she remembers the anger more clearly than the directions Malcolm had given her long ago.
Something about...self monitoring, she thinks, though that's an adult term that she applies to it. It's certainly not how it'd been explained to her then.
Malcolm’s voice is low and soothing. A register he rarely uses, because it is all but impossible to ignore. "Okay, now the two of you need to imagine your bond - like that string of light between your bodies that you visualized earlier, Tony."
Pepper raises an eyebrow at that but complies after a moment, shocked at how easily the image comes this time. Between her and Tony lies a strong twine of energy - millions of threads in alternating red and green colors - appears. She gasps a little at the sheer beauty of the weave that she is seeing.
"I can see it." Tony admits to Malcolm. "Same as before...well not the same exactly, this time it's a chord yes, but of two distinct colors."
"Red and green." Pepper supplies the additional information before her father can ask, reaching out with a finger to touch the bond gingerly. When she does it's like standing in the warm sun. She can swear her heart rate actually drops, and her breathing deepens slightly.
"Okay then," Malcolm continues softly. "I want you to both reach out and grab the bond and envision yourself standing in an empty white room. But listen carefully...Pepper, remember how you used to like Star Trek? I want you to think of the energy screens they have around their ships. And when you get inside I want you both to picture one in your head. That's going to embody your personal shielding."
She obeys and is shocked when she finds them standing face to face in a white room with what looks like a force field of green energy just above her skin. 'Well, this never happened in Star Trek,' she thinks as she holds up her arm for closer examination. Unless one considered this a more advanced form of the force fields that the Borg threw up...
God, she is such a geek. Pepper jerks her attention back to what Malcolm is trying to show them. She studies the green film-like light covering her skin, then studies the one around Tony. For some reason, his is more...boxy. He smiles at her mischievously. 'You're not the only one who watched a little Next Generation, Potts.' Then the shield contracts so that it looks more like hers. Except the colors are different. His is a brownish green. Puzzled, Pepper steps closer and examines the glow around him. Up close she can see that there's red light dancing under green; Tony's actually covered by his own shield and her own. And since green is the dominant color, then hers must be stronger than his.
What bothers her is that she doesn't know if it's always been this way, or if this is just some kind of natural defense she threw up to protect him. Or if it's an extension of her need to protect herself, since he's now an intimate part of who she is.
Tony is studying the shielding himself, and after a moment he starts to look a little concerned. "Uhm, Pepper...may I suggest you stop stretching yourself quite this thin when you can barely cover yourself."
He's right, she realizes, after another moment. Closer inspection of her own shields show constant slight permutations of the color. It's like an over-stretched fabric that's letting to much light through to the skin right below.
'No wonder I’m tired,' she acknowledges to herself. Still, "I...I'm not sure that's a good idea. I don't know how long I've been doing this Tony. It might leave you at risk if I try and change it."
"And leaves you at risk to keep it like this. You're too fragile, Pepper. You need the protection more than I do right now. Trust me on this. I know a little bit about armor." His smile is lopsided. "Just pull back enough so that you're completely protected, for a little while at least."
So she does. She mentally draw the shielding back. The effect is immediate, and a little stunning actually. Far from the bright but thin shield of before, Tony's own shields actually expand as her own slip back to wrap more thickly around her. She doesn't know if that's because it naturally adjusts or if she's somehow been unconsciously suppressing his ability to protect himself.. "Mal...can a bondmate impair a partner's ability to shield...?" She asks the question very carefully.
Malcolm's voice echoes back, "No. But it's not unusual after an initial cementing of a bond for certain abilities to increase in power a significant amount."
"So the stronger I am, the stronger Tony can be?" If nothing else, it's a excellent reason for her to work on taking care of herself.
"Not exactly. He will hit natural limits to his gifts, but you're both changing, so those limits will be different than they used to be. You'll both have brand new base lines." Then Malcolm’s voice turns businesslike. "Stark, do I need to tell you how to shield her or have you already figured out the process? Shielding her from nightmares will basically just involve helping her tighten her shield to the point that nothing gets through but you. You won’t be able to constantly do it, but you can manage it occasionally if she‘s becoming critically short on sleep."
"I think I get it." Tony reaches out to hold her without actually moving. It's...hard. It feels like trying to use muscles that have atrophied. But there are results. The hue of Pepper's shields dim a little as some of his red flows into them. But all too soon he knows that he's hit his limit. He feels it; it's the sensation of knowing that one more turn of the screw will crack whatever it's supposed to be holding together.
"Tony, stop," Pepper gasps, at the same precise moment he feels the call to pull back.
And he does, but with obvious frustration. "I thought you said I could shield her, Malcolm...that did virtually nothing."
"Says who?" Pepper whispers in shock. "You obviously didn't feel it the way that I just did." Then her voice softens. "It felt...good. Like being wrapped in a blanket with you in front of a fire. Except the blanket was bulletproof."
He blinks at that particular analogy. Then smirks "So - force fields, Pepper? How much geek-TV did you watch as a kid?"
"Touchy subject, remember, Stark?" And besides...it wasn't really a question of how much she'd watched as a kid...since Star Trek in it's many variations had gotten her well into her twenties, and then there'd been shows like Battle Star Galatica, and Firefly, and Dr. Who... "Besides, who are you kidding? You know what Borg shields look like. Hell you probably tried to build them at some point..." She sees a wry look on his face she takes as confirmation. "Hmmm...Maybe I ought to be looking into the old Classic uniforms if I want to seduce you some night."
"These are not Borg style shields, Pepper. They are Babylon Five White Stars maybe..." Then he waggles his eyebrows... “Hmm... The outfit has possibilities. You kinda are Deanna Troi."
"Babylon Five is the equivalent of Gene Roddenberry's bastard lovechild," Pepper says scornfully, though there's a heavy dose of teasing in her voice. "You obviously aren't a purist."
"Hey! Deep Space Nine was a rip off from J Michael Straczynski. Besides, can we say better tech and hotter babes? Not to mention way better CGI."
"DS9 tackled way more tough, social issues -" she starts, but she's interrupted by a mental shake from Malcolm. From the look on Tony's face she can see he felt it too.
The older man snorts and speaks aloud. "You do realize you're saying all this out loud. And I'm not sure who the more pathetic geek is.’
"Me," they both say simultaneously, then scowl at each other and prepare to debate the point.
Malcolm snorts again. "Let's just say you're well matched and leave it at that. Pepper, I want you to drop all your shields."
Authors: Neon Daisies and 4persephone
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Disclaimer: Ironman is the property of Marvel Comics
Pepper is woken up...oddly. It feels like someone is tapping inside her head. Her automatic response is to reach for Tony, but the moment she touches him she knows he's sound asleep. He doesn't even respond to her touch - neither the physical or the psychic. However, the peace she feels coming out of him is soothing; calming. Enough so that she nearly goes back to sleep.
Then she feels that tapping sensation again, and she stirs restlessly. Then a voice sounds, whisper soft, inside her head.
'I have tea and brownies. Minus the hash.’ There’s a subtle amusement in his voice that is both familiar and at the moment, a little annoying. ‘Now come let an old man inside before he melts in this heat.'
Malcolm. She blinks for a moment at the usually unfamiliar act. Her father hasn’t tried to speak with her this way since she was a girl of fourteen. All she really remembers of his attempts is that they gave her ferocious headaches for days afterwards sometimes, depending on how much strength he put behind his attempts. ‘He finally stopped after the third onset migraine.’ Her mother had been disappointed and wanted him to continue, but he had actually put his foot down.
It was one of the few times in her entire childhood she’d seen him actively lose his temper and yell at the woman who’d raised her.
She’d thought at the time that his efforts were forceful, now though, she can feel the strength he has at his disposal, and is amazed by his control because only a portion of it is being used. She wonders if her struggle to maintain any control is a sign of inexperience or of weakness on her part.
She also knows she’ll probably be finding out within the next couple of hours. ‘Can‘t avoid this forever, Pepper. Even if it does feel like a trip to the principal’s office.’ "Jarvis, let Malcolm in whenever he comes to the house," Pepper instructs softly as she climbs out of bed and looks around for her clothing. When she finds what's left of the suit she'd been wearing the day before, she drops it back to the ground.
'It looks like they've been through some kind of laundry war zone.' Even wearing Tony's clothing seems like less revealing than putting back on her own crumpled, wrinkled garments. Beside there’s something about the smell of them that is actually making her sick to her stomach. ‘It’s time to get this set dry cleaned. I’ll see about going over to my house later today to get some more changes of clothing…’
For some reason that idea just makes her sicker, like entering her own house is somehow dangerous. Right now the thought of leaving these walls is enough to make her want to hyperventilate. It’s another thing she’s going to have to force herself to ask Malcolm about.
She finds a pair of shorts that have a drawstring and a clean sweatshirt and pulls them on before going back to the bed to check on Tony. She finds the man asleep, with his nose buried in his pillow, lips smacking unhappily. 'He knows I’m gone and it's stressing him out,' some part of her catalogues a bit absently. The rest of her sees that tension and resists the urge to climb straight back into bed. Because she knows a little about bonds at least, and she knows what they are both feeling isn't anything more than latent separation anxiety.
'You're brooding,' comes a soft voice in her head. Malcolm’s mind speak is quiet and low, though not as soothing as he probably intends it to be. 'If this is how hard you try to stay disconnected from everything you feel it's no surprised you're so overwhelmed at the moment.'
'Just...stop. Please. I'll be down in a minute.' Hearing his voice in her head is... Well, it's uncomfortable. She’s not sure if that’s because it’s unaccustomed to the practice, or if she’s just reacting to sympathetic memory. She only knows that where the same type of communication with Tony seems natural, having someone else in her head is enough to make her hackles raise and her stomach start turning summersaults.
She actually feels Malcolm withdraw. ‘Fine, but for the record Ginny, I'm not trying to stress you. You're subconsciously screaming like a siren and it's giving me a headache.'
His patience is too patient, and Pepper slams down her shields so hard that Tony groans. She reaches out automatically and rests a comforting hand on the back of his neck while she struggles to find her connection to him through her defenses. By the time she locates the tiny gap that she somehow knows is for Tony alone, she's breaking out in a light sweat. However, the sense of accomplishment she feels as she slips just far enough into his dreams to reassure him makes the effort worthwhile.
When she gets downstairs it's to find Malcolm standing in the kitchen looking exasperated. "I didn't say slam your shields up, Pepper, I said I was sorry. I didn’t come here to preach or invade you privacy, but I will have to use my gifts if I’m actually going to help you."
"And I asked you to knock it off. I don't like having other people in my head." She pulls plates from one cabinet and tea cups from another. "You're my father, but that doesn't give you permission to just intrude on me whenever you want. You should understand how it feels to have your mind as your last place of refuge. If you want to talk to me, you can damn well use words."
Malcolm's eyes narrow in what is obviously frustration, and yet his mind remains gentle and non-confrontational. "Yes, I do understand needing a refuge, and I have one. You on the other hand don‘t.” The old man sighs and takes a plate from her, cutting off a generous wedge of brownie and sitting down at the table. “Also, yes: I am your father, but considering that you’ve apparently known for years and never brought it up, you don't get to use it as an excuse not to listen to me now just because it‘s convenient for you.”
She drops her head at that comment because he's right and she knows it, and once again his words have managed to fill her with shame. Malcolm seems to see this, because he sighs and reaches out to carefully take her hand. "Look, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard. But I'm not your enemy Pepper, and I never will be.“ He sighs and takes another bite of brownie. “For the record it's not in my nature to deliver an ass kicking unless somebody makes me. But you almost died yesterday and that puts this all at a different level."
Malcolm shakes his head. "I will play hardball on this if I have to, so for God‘s sake Pepper, please don‘t make me."
Pepper knows from her own inner fragility that he's right, but that state only makes her all the more reluctant to let anyone in. It's not like they're talking about performing surgery or something. They're talking about what boils down to essentially manipulating who she is at her very core. And she's really not sure she'd willingly let anyone that far in. Even Tony wouldn‘t have the option, if she had a choice about that.
"I don't want you coming in uninvited," Pepper says firmly, driven by the same sense of self-preservation that had driven her into this state in the first place. "You ask from now on. And I’ll try to be flexible. But don’t treat me like an idiot and learn to respect my boundaries." Then she looks him right in the eye. "Or I’ll kick back even harder, and I don't know for sure, but I suspect I’m close to an equal match for you these days."
Malcolm's jaw twitches, but he nods just a little. "In power yes, in training no. I’ll try and stay low key as long as you try and stay open. First though please let me help you because I can feel your strength draining...and Pepper, it hurts watching you suffer when it’s totally unnecessary."
His second deliberate use of her work nickname distracts her momentarily. "Mal you are welcome to call me ‘Ginny.’ I’ve never objected to the name."
It just isn’t her very often anymore. Well, at least not really.
The man in front of her chuckles. 'I'm not talking to ‘Ginny.’ I’m talking to the person who's actually in charge these days, and the name she answers to is Pepper."
"What are you talking about?" Pepper asks in confusion as she sits down at the kitchen table without a single thought towards the use it'd been put to earlier in the day. She's too distracted. Malcolm's right about the effort it takes to keep herself so tightly closed off and the toll it's taking on her, though she's surprised by how much of it is that with her shields drawn tightly it's hard to know how Tony is. She hasn't realized until this moment how much she actually monitors him throughout the day.
Reluctantly, she lets the shields go until she's left with the day to day barrier that's more instinct than a conscious decision to keep. Without it she'd be overwhelmed by the people she comes into contact with daily. Though she isn't really sure if it's some kind of psychic block or just a natural reserve.
Malcolm whistles under his breath. "Okay. Should have seen this one coming. His presence actually helps to stabilize your shields. Let me guess, are you having issues with the idea of getting more than one hundred feet away from him at the moment?"
Pepper looks at him dourly, doing her best to suppress a bolt of shock. "Okay, rule number two: if you want me to cooperate you will stop talking, acting or even looking so damn cryptic all the time. It’s insulting and it pisses me off, because if I wanted to see a soothsayer I'd go to the fair and shell out fifty dollars to have someone ooh and ahh all over me."
Malcolm sighs at that. "You're going to have to stop doing that you know, if we‘re going to make any progress."
"Doing what?!" she growls back. “What did I just say about not being cryptic?!”
The man leans a little closer. “When I said that you need to stop it, I was referring to the way you keep devaluing all psychic gifts by comparing them to freak shows because they make you uncomfortable.” He straightens back up in his chair. “And I’m calling you Pepper because it's the name that Tony gave you and the one you think of yourself as now." His lips actually smirk. "Unless you're going to tell me that internally you still think of yourself as Ginny?"
He was right and Pepper knew it. It was one of the things she’d accepted first in order to keep her job. In her early days on the job she’d done her best to get him to use her real name, but she’d been unable to match Tony’s stubborn tenacity. Eventually she’d made the name her own, putting it on like a suit of armor every time she went to war on his behalf. Most people these days knew and respected the ‘infamous Pepper Potts.’
Virtually none of them had ever met ‘Ginny.’
"I compare them to freak shows because most of the time that's the only use I see them used for," Pepper mutters. "Even Mom went through her fortune telling phase at one point. She dragged us both to one every other week."
"Your mother was a fruitcake." Malcolm informs her candidly. "She's half the reason you're in this mess. She’s the only reason you’re untrained…" Something in Pepper snaps to hear that said of a woman who’s been dead and buried more than fifteen years.
"Yeah well, you get the other half of the blame, because you're the idiot who fucked her before you took the time to know her, and you certainly didn’t bother to stick around after. She’s gone and she was my mother. Do you really think bad-mouthing her is a good place to begin with me?"
"I’m only telling the truth, which is necessary if we’re ever going to fix this mess. Yes - I slept with you mom and then I left her. It was the late seventies, Pepper," Malcolm informs her baldly. "And we were both skunked on hash and wine the night you were conceived. Still you exist because of that, so I can't see it as a completely bad thing."
"You hurt her every time you came and left. How was that possibly good for any of us?" Pepper snaps.
"Yeah well, Pepper, I hate to break it to you, but it was pretty much mutual in terms of the agony. Here's a hint, Virginia, it wasn’t my idea to have me remain 'Uncle Malcolm.’" The brunette's hand tightens hard in his lap. "I loved your mom. I wanted to marry her. It wasn't me who busted us up it was her. She just couldn’t accept the world as it was in reality…"
"What do you mean, Mom wasn't 'accepting?'" Pepper cuts him off. "Mom was the most open minded person I've ever met - and I know she loved you."
Malcolm interrupts right back. "Yes she did. But she refused to believe that just being what she actually was could ever be good enough for me." Malcolm groans, and Pepper can see regret in his face. "This is not the way that I‘ve wanted to deal with this subject...I've made a point not to badmouth her in front of you."
The man rubs his forehead and suddenly looks his almost fifty eight years. "It's just…Your mom did have her gifts, Pepper. They weren’t as flashy as mine. But she was a brilliant artist who could have done so much more if she’d focused on it wholeheartedly instead of considering it just an unimportant hobby…”
Malcolm dropped his hand from his forehead and met her gaze directly. “I never wanted anything more than the woman I first met..." He shakes his head. "But she got it into her head that she had to be 'more' - and that if she wasn’t, that meant she‘d eventually lose me." Malcolm rolls his eyes. "What ended up happening was exactly the opposite. I lost her and you both to her damned sense of inadequacy.”
That sickened feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach again. Though this time it wasn’t her own emotions alone - her father’s were in there as well. Malcolm must have been unaware his own shields were slipping, because now she is fighting the urge to get up and hug the shit out of him. Malcolm draws a deep breathe before he finishes. “And that pisses me off, Pepper. It’s been more than thirty years and I can barely breathe when I think about it. I loved her and there was nothing I could do to fix it.”
"Malcolm, you’re an empath. Why didn't you just...?" Pepper shakes her head then buries her face in her hands. "You can make people see the truth, Malcolm. Why didn't you just make her?" Because her life would have been very different if she'd had two parents, if there'd been someone else in the house to balance out her mother's flightiness, so she didn't have to.
"If only things were that easy. She was supposed to be my bonded, Pepper. My gifts never worked effectively on her." The words are half laughed and half whimpered, an admission that leaves him gutted and leaves her completely out of breath because it means that her father has lived the last three weeks of her life for going on thirty-four years.
"How did she fight it?" Pepper whispers. "How could she fight it?" The mother she remembers had showed none of the signs that Pepper herself had experienced in the last weeks. "And how could either of you bear it when you came to visit?" She remembers how hard it'd been not to rush to Tony's side the moment he stepped off the plane the day he returned to the US. How she'd distracted herself by biting her lip and digging her nails into her hands. And that had been before they'd had sex.
If for some reason, she and Tony needed to separate for a long period of time now, she's absolutely certain that the first thing they'll do when reunited is fall on each other without a single thought to their surroundings.
Yet Malcolm and her mother had been at best incidental lovers who had almost never even shared a bedroom to sleep in. Though come to think of it they'd always already been there and freshly showered when she came home and found he'd come to visit.
Before she can be totally disgusted by that realization, her father continues, stopping the thought in it's tracks. "Your mother wasn't the empath, Pepper. I was the one who took the worst of it. And I bore it by getting high...at least until I found somebody in Africa willing to sever the bond. Why do you think you were even born, Pepper? Sometimes birth control fails."
He shrugs, "There is a reason I only visited sporadically. Even after a severing ceremony that nearly killed me the connection was constantly trying to repair itself. "
"You know someone who can sever bonds?" The question slips out before Pepper can stop it and she winces, not needing to imagine Tony's reaction if he had overheard her. He'd made it pretty clear that backing out was no longer an option he was going to let her consider.
"I knew someone yes. She died fifteen years ago. The only person left with that skill who has the power to see it through is the person talking to you." Malcolm’s eyes narrow in her general direction. “And if I agreed to attempt that kind of thing it would only be after you and Anthony both got a close up and personal empathic playback of what it did to your mother and I. Because it's not something I'd put you through without knowing and accepting all the possible consequences.”
Which meant it wasn’t going to happen. Because Tony would never risk her life, and she’d never risk his, which made it the ultimate catch twenty-two. She’s searching back through her memory now, looking at everything she's ever known about her mother except now she is finally starting to understand it.
The woman hadn’t been just determined to increase her power, she’d been desperate. Perhaps because she’d honestly believed it could bring them all back together again. That it could make them all whole. ‘Or maybe it was justification…a way to accept that she’d massacred her life.’ Because if she couldn’t be more than she’d been then it was all for nothing. The woman had destroyed herself and the man she loved because she’d never been able to accept what she was.
She'd also crippled her daughter in ways Pepper was only beginning to recognize.
That knowledge was chilling. It actually made her shudder. "I didn't mean it. Not really. I can’t be without him anymore." And she can't. But she’s still struggling to cope with everything a mature bond entails. "I don't think I understand one thing, Malcolm: Tony's not empathic, but he was feeling our bond before it was...realized." If that was the right term. "Why are we different than you and Mom in that? Are all bonds different?"
"You both have much greater power than your mother and I did...and you were never trained to cope with you empathy effectively. And by the way: like hell your lover’s not empathic!"
Pepper’s eyes widen in disbelief and Malcolm snickers, trying to decide whether to cushion the next blow or just deliver it bluntly. "Just because he's a flicker of flame next to your floodlight doesn't mean he's deficient, Pepper. He's just untrained and thus far really, really lucky.”
Then the older man sits back and crosses his fingers, seeing the confusion build and waiting for the inevitable denial. Pepper looks at Malcolm through her fingers. "Like hell he’s empathic," she says back when she finds the ability to speak again. "No one who causes the chaos he does can possibly be empathic. We don't go through that much Excedrin in this house for that."
"Why do you think that he causes so much chaos? Because I’ll tell you right now that his nature isn’t meant to be destructive, it's meant to orchestrate change.” He shakes his head, “And for the record, I think you'll find that his lack of need for Excedrin is explained by the fact that you've been both buffering and grounding him for years now.”
Malcolm shrugs. "As for his attitude - input is mostly output. To risk a misquote, 'what one seeks one often finds.' He's probably got a bad habit of mimicking or satirizing the attitudes of everyone around him. I’m guessing that if you put him in a isolated spot though, where he doesn’t subconsciously read other people and react accordingly, what results is pretty much who he really is with all the garbage filtered out."
Pepper just stares at Malcolm because he's just described Tony's public face versus Tony when he's buried up to his neck in engine parts and axel grease in his garage. He’s known Tony less than forty eight hours and accurately summed up his entire basic personality. It also explains all of her headaches. She wonders if it also explains how easily women have always fallen into Tony's bed.
"Oh god my head hurts," is all she says in reply. Her hands are starting to shake a little as well, though she's barely processing that consciously. Instead she's filtering back through every press conference and every public appearance, and she’s re-evaluating. She’s seeing every moment he's gone from Tony the charming to Tony the ass in the space of a heartbeat. How many people had he slept with who now openly despise him? How often has she seen him simply shut down as if the world doesn’t matter?
'Defense mechanism,' she realizes after a moment. 'Fight or flight and sometimes both except managed internally.' She wants to go upstairs and fuck the subtle self-loathing out of his head almost as badly as she wants to beat the crap out of the next reporter who as much as looks at him funny. "God, I never even suspected..." She closes her eyes as she rubs at her head. If she had, she would have been much more careful around him. But she hadn't been, and the result is that for the last nine years she's essentially been throwing herself at him every chance she got. No wonder she's the only person who's ever been able to manage him. She'd been speaking his language all this time.
Malcolm shrugs. "Don’t blame yourself, Pepper. You're mostly untrained yourself. Call it blind serendipity...you both got exactly what you needed." Then amused grey green eyes look into hers for a minute. "You do realize that if you let things work the way they should, this link will stop hurting and balance both of you. It's why the thing formed in the first place."
Pepper trembles and shakes her head in a jerky movement. "I..." Her voice is hoarse and she has to clear her throat. "It's hard to think kindly of anything that's caused as much trouble as this bond. I didn't even know it was there until six months ago." The look in Malcolm's eyes is puzzled, like he has no clue what she's talking about. "Tony was in Afghanistan," she whispers in explanation. "He was kidnapped by terrorists. He was hurt, and needed...surgery. And I went through all of it with him." Just remembering it brings the pain flooding back. "For three months I thought I was going crazy...or that the alternate visions of him either alive or dead were going to drive me crazy."
The shock in the other man's eyes is strong and then incredulous. "My god...why didn't you call up Merilee? Andrew? Me?!"
'Because I couldn't bring myself to admit it was happening,' something whispers in her head. 'Because Mom was a ditz and I had to stay grounded or we both would have fallen...'
“I couldn't...I didn't understand what was happening." The man across from her narrows his eyes. "I didn't want to admit what was happening," she self corrects. "Because Tony is the freak and super-genius in this relationship. Not me. I was already enough of a nerd without admitting to being the emotional equivalent of a lighting rod." The last words are nearly wailed in embarrassed disbelief.
Then before she can say another word strong arms are lifting her up and out of her chair. "What in hell are you doing?" Tony glares at Malcolm accusingly.
"I'm fine." Their link is wide open and Pepper knows her lover has never been this angry. She twists to wrap her arms around Tony, instinctively going for the quickest way to center and ground him. She realizes instinctively he’s reacting to her distress as if she’s under some kind of physical attack. "Malcolm just didn't understand why I resisted the bond so strongly. He didn't understand I didn't even know about it until you were abducted. He's not hurting me. It's just...the remembering."
"Then stop - you’re overstressed enough already." Tony growls at the man across the table, “If this is your version of ‘teaching’ then you can fucking get out!“
Malcolm raises his hands in surrender. "The psychic boils have to be lanced before her whole mind turns septic. This shit is what got her into that room you hate so much. Back off and let me do my job."
Pepper ignores Malcolm for the time being, because he's right and the prospect of dredging up all the gunk that's mired her down is terrifying. But Tony comes first - he has to come first, or she’s afraid that he's going to literally attack Malcolm. She tightens her arms around him and lets her body relax into his, which only makes the shivers racing through her more apparent. "It's better now that you're here. Remembering...seeing it all again is too much without you here. That's why the nightmares have been so awful."
She knows what losing him feels like, and every time she watches him die, that feeling comes back. Without being able to touch his skin and feel him, there’s been nothing to short circuit the fear. It'd been like a cloudy day without a sun strong enough to break through the gloom. "Nightmares?" Malcolm asks. "Are these the ones from when he was abducted?" He’s remaining absolutely still with his eyes still fixed on Tony.
Pepper shakes her head, then shrugs. "Half the time yes, the other half of the time they’re about his upcoming missions."
Tony reacts to that information like it's a lightening strike. His arms tighten around her convulsively, and then he's spinning her around. "How often?" he demands, holding her in place with his hands on his shoulders.
"Dreams or foresight, Ginny?" Malcolm demands at the same time, and Pepper buries her head in Tony’s shoulder.
"I don't know," Pepper admits to Malcolm softly. "About sixty to seventy percent of them just...well they simply feel true." To Tony she speaks with a whispered hush. "Until last night? I had them four or five nights a week."
The room goes eerily, chillingly silent. Malcolm doesn't say a word. Tony is shaking and she can feel his agonized disbelief pouring down through the link as he processes that new information. "My god," Malcolm whispers at last. "At that rate how have you not gone absolutely crazy?!"
She actually laughs, though it closely resembles a cry of pain. "What makes you think I haven't?" Her hands are running up and down Tony's arms without direction from her. His pain is swamping her and she has to erect several layers of shields before she can even take a full breath. Only then can she start to analyze what she's getting from him. "You honestly had no idea what I was talking about, did you?" she asks him softly. "You didn't understand why ‘a few dreams’ would make me so set against becoming even closer to you."
Tony isn't looking at her, he's looking at Malcolm. "You have to tell me how to break the bond...how to fix this." He's nearly bending them in half trying not to knock them both out with the indescribable pain. The very idea sends the link into flames, as if it's a sentient being and the suggestion has left it threatened or made it irrationally angry. Though, the heat going through the link has nothing on the instinctive flare of temper Pepper feels at the suggestion. The moment the link flares to life she drops into it without even the suggestion of control and feeds her outrage into it and the debilitating pain of even the thought of being permanently separated.
Her mind grabs his and her consciousness sinks its hooks into his until there's little distinction between Pepper and Tony. And then she just says, "No."
This is not going to happen. They’d finished this argument last night.
"Pepper..." he whispers in agony. "You're hurting because of me. I can't keep doing that to you now that I know."
"She's hurting because she's untrained." Malcolm interjects, "And because she delayed getting help for so long she's all but destroyed her psychic reserves. Foresight does not have to be this painful; the bond can help buffer some of the damage." He sighs and runs a hand back through the hair sliding out of it's ponytail. "I can even teach you to help shield her from her dreams when she sleeps. But only if the two of you will let me."
"You can't leave me, Tony. And even if you did we wouldn't be any better off." She sinks her psychic hooks deeper into him. "It wouldn't stop either of us from hurting. It'd mean living like the last three weeks for the rest of our lives." Across from her Malcolm flinches, and Pepper almost regrets the honesty. Tony though is just trying to center himself and find a safe release valve to siphon off the latent anxiety. He latches on to Malcolm's words like a lifeline.
"I can stop her gifts? What exactly do you mean?"
"Not stop them, just help regulate them." Malcolm says tiredly. "Pepper, let Tony go. You're overwhelming the poor guy and hampering his ability to think." That causes Pepper to groan and take several steps back. Tony actually shivers from the absence of contact.
"You said I can help her." The engineer picks the words more carefully this time.
"If she can buffer you, than you can buffer her. Not as effectively and not for quite as long, but it will help at least a little. Right now I'd suggest we start with that because if we do that it should stop the nightmares for at least a couple of nights."
"I didn't dream last night." Pepper acknowledges quietly. Or if she had, they had all been good. If it weren't for the emotional stress of the day, she'd have had to say she was actually feeling good.
"Then he's already doing it subconsciously. And it probably helps that you're in the same bed. Skin on skin contact works for a reason; it's like talking to a person through a telephone instead of just screaming bloody murder across a giant room."
Pepper nods, then turns as she feels a startled thought from Tony down the link.
"Could it also be that now that it's been acknowledged, the bond isn't...well, trying as hard to get her attention?" Tony sounds uncomfortable, and looks a little awkward, but Pepper can see the gears turning in his head. "I mean, energy when it has no place to go simply builds up, and builds up, and builds up until it forces its way out in some fashion. Couldn't that have been the case here? And the weakest place for it to get through would have been her fears for my safety. If it wanted completion, it would have worked through the most likely way to make her comply. And through her, me."
Malcolm pauses a moment. "Damn you're going to be handy. It's not often we find a person with a gift for sheer diagnostics." He looks at Pepper. "Only you can tell me if he is right about that theory though."
Pepper stares at the other man in disbelief. "You're asking me to confirm?! You're supposed to be the specialist, why are you asking me?"
Malcolm rolls his eyes. "Pepper, this isn't a pure science. It's an art, and some things simply come down to instinct."
Which is part of the problem, Pepper realizes after a moment. Both her father and her lover live on instinct above all else. She on the other hand doesn't even acknowledge it most days.
"I don't know." She snaps at him irritably. "It's not like I've had any kind of baseline to compare with."
"Does is feel like he's telling the truth?" Malcolm asks her, gaze sharpening insistently.
"It feels..." Pepper pauses because what she feels makes her sound like a lunatic. "It feels like whatever there is between us has a life of it's own that is only partially controlled by us. It feels like it wants us to be together and is going to do what it has to in order for us to get there, and now that we are finally bending to the pressure it's not going to just let us go." She looks over at Tony and the look on his face is indescribable. She reaches out and takes his hand. "'Bond' is a good word for it, because I feel like we really are trapped in some way that's somehow beyond either of us." She says it all in a rush and to her own ears she sounds unhappy and just a little disbelieving.
Malcolm smiles a little, in a way that's acknowledging and sad. "Then welcome to the big leagues, where you're only partly in charge of your own lives anymore." He shrugs. "I won't say it's always pleasant, but it is one hell of a ride." Pepper can't help the shot of pain that goes through her like a toothache, and she can't entirely shield it from Tony. This time he doesn't get angry, he just turns his full attention on her and she can feel his fumbling attempts to feel out why she's distressed.
"We'll talk about it later," she mumbles as she carefully closes herself off. She's stronger than him and she's not afraid of using that strength to give herself the space she needs. Right now, even having Tony in on her thoughts is too much for her to handle.
She's just so tired of the loss of control, and she's not sure she can handle how well he's probably accepting the idea.
Tony doesn't know this though. He only knows that she's hurting. "How do I shield her?" he asks Malcolm after a moment. "When I'm awake and we're not going to get to be naked anytime soon."
"Tony!" She blushes from her toes to the roots of her hair. Malcolm, bless his heart doesn't laugh. Which is probably fortunate because if he had she would have had to kill him. Her limits are strained already from too many sudden shocks and invasions of her long-held privacy.
"It's all right, Pepper. Both of you close your eyes." Tony obeys immediately but Pepper is more hesitant to comply.
Malcolm sighs and reaches out with his mind, sending a wave a reassurance toward her. "I'm not going to touch you - you two can do this on your own with a simple talk-through, but it's easier for beginners if you cut down on the distractions. Close your eyes Virginia, and for once just try and trust me."
Maybe it's his facial expression, maybe it's his tone. Maybe it's the use of her full name, which she hasn't heard him speak since her mother's funeral. Maybe it's even Tony who's standing less than three feet away with only one eyelid cracked open. 'Scared of the dark, Potts?' Tony's voice in her head is whimsical. She snorts and shuts her eyes in disbelief. Something of this is familiar, barely remembered from a few of Malcolm's visits early in her childhood. Pepper reaches behind her and pushes herself up to sit on the counter. Then she brings her hands to rest in her lap and she tries to remember what's supposed to happen next. It was so long ago, and they're dealing with concepts she'd barely understood then. And since this had almost always happened when she'd been in the midst of a temper tantrum, she remembers the anger more clearly than the directions Malcolm had given her long ago.
Something about...self monitoring, she thinks, though that's an adult term that she applies to it. It's certainly not how it'd been explained to her then.
Malcolm’s voice is low and soothing. A register he rarely uses, because it is all but impossible to ignore. "Okay, now the two of you need to imagine your bond - like that string of light between your bodies that you visualized earlier, Tony."
Pepper raises an eyebrow at that but complies after a moment, shocked at how easily the image comes this time. Between her and Tony lies a strong twine of energy - millions of threads in alternating red and green colors - appears. She gasps a little at the sheer beauty of the weave that she is seeing.
"I can see it." Tony admits to Malcolm. "Same as before...well not the same exactly, this time it's a chord yes, but of two distinct colors."
"Red and green." Pepper supplies the additional information before her father can ask, reaching out with a finger to touch the bond gingerly. When she does it's like standing in the warm sun. She can swear her heart rate actually drops, and her breathing deepens slightly.
"Okay then," Malcolm continues softly. "I want you to both reach out and grab the bond and envision yourself standing in an empty white room. But listen carefully...Pepper, remember how you used to like Star Trek? I want you to think of the energy screens they have around their ships. And when you get inside I want you both to picture one in your head. That's going to embody your personal shielding."
She obeys and is shocked when she finds them standing face to face in a white room with what looks like a force field of green energy just above her skin. 'Well, this never happened in Star Trek,' she thinks as she holds up her arm for closer examination. Unless one considered this a more advanced form of the force fields that the Borg threw up...
God, she is such a geek. Pepper jerks her attention back to what Malcolm is trying to show them. She studies the green film-like light covering her skin, then studies the one around Tony. For some reason, his is more...boxy. He smiles at her mischievously. 'You're not the only one who watched a little Next Generation, Potts.' Then the shield contracts so that it looks more like hers. Except the colors are different. His is a brownish green. Puzzled, Pepper steps closer and examines the glow around him. Up close she can see that there's red light dancing under green; Tony's actually covered by his own shield and her own. And since green is the dominant color, then hers must be stronger than his.
What bothers her is that she doesn't know if it's always been this way, or if this is just some kind of natural defense she threw up to protect him. Or if it's an extension of her need to protect herself, since he's now an intimate part of who she is.
Tony is studying the shielding himself, and after a moment he starts to look a little concerned. "Uhm, Pepper...may I suggest you stop stretching yourself quite this thin when you can barely cover yourself."
He's right, she realizes, after another moment. Closer inspection of her own shields show constant slight permutations of the color. It's like an over-stretched fabric that's letting to much light through to the skin right below.
'No wonder I’m tired,' she acknowledges to herself. Still, "I...I'm not sure that's a good idea. I don't know how long I've been doing this Tony. It might leave you at risk if I try and change it."
"And leaves you at risk to keep it like this. You're too fragile, Pepper. You need the protection more than I do right now. Trust me on this. I know a little bit about armor." His smile is lopsided. "Just pull back enough so that you're completely protected, for a little while at least."
So she does. She mentally draw the shielding back. The effect is immediate, and a little stunning actually. Far from the bright but thin shield of before, Tony's own shields actually expand as her own slip back to wrap more thickly around her. She doesn't know if that's because it naturally adjusts or if she's somehow been unconsciously suppressing his ability to protect himself.. "Mal...can a bondmate impair a partner's ability to shield...?" She asks the question very carefully.
Malcolm's voice echoes back, "No. But it's not unusual after an initial cementing of a bond for certain abilities to increase in power a significant amount."
"So the stronger I am, the stronger Tony can be?" If nothing else, it's a excellent reason for her to work on taking care of herself.
"Not exactly. He will hit natural limits to his gifts, but you're both changing, so those limits will be different than they used to be. You'll both have brand new base lines." Then Malcolm’s voice turns businesslike. "Stark, do I need to tell you how to shield her or have you already figured out the process? Shielding her from nightmares will basically just involve helping her tighten her shield to the point that nothing gets through but you. You won’t be able to constantly do it, but you can manage it occasionally if she‘s becoming critically short on sleep."
"I think I get it." Tony reaches out to hold her without actually moving. It's...hard. It feels like trying to use muscles that have atrophied. But there are results. The hue of Pepper's shields dim a little as some of his red flows into them. But all too soon he knows that he's hit his limit. He feels it; it's the sensation of knowing that one more turn of the screw will crack whatever it's supposed to be holding together.
"Tony, stop," Pepper gasps, at the same precise moment he feels the call to pull back.
And he does, but with obvious frustration. "I thought you said I could shield her, Malcolm...that did virtually nothing."
"Says who?" Pepper whispers in shock. "You obviously didn't feel it the way that I just did." Then her voice softens. "It felt...good. Like being wrapped in a blanket with you in front of a fire. Except the blanket was bulletproof."
He blinks at that particular analogy. Then smirks "So - force fields, Pepper? How much geek-TV did you watch as a kid?"
"Touchy subject, remember, Stark?" And besides...it wasn't really a question of how much she'd watched as a kid...since Star Trek in it's many variations had gotten her well into her twenties, and then there'd been shows like Battle Star Galatica, and Firefly, and Dr. Who... "Besides, who are you kidding? You know what Borg shields look like. Hell you probably tried to build them at some point..." She sees a wry look on his face she takes as confirmation. "Hmmm...Maybe I ought to be looking into the old Classic uniforms if I want to seduce you some night."
"These are not Borg style shields, Pepper. They are Babylon Five White Stars maybe..." Then he waggles his eyebrows... “Hmm... The outfit has possibilities. You kinda are Deanna Troi."
"Babylon Five is the equivalent of Gene Roddenberry's bastard lovechild," Pepper says scornfully, though there's a heavy dose of teasing in her voice. "You obviously aren't a purist."
"Hey! Deep Space Nine was a rip off from J Michael Straczynski. Besides, can we say better tech and hotter babes? Not to mention way better CGI."
"DS9 tackled way more tough, social issues -" she starts, but she's interrupted by a mental shake from Malcolm. From the look on Tony's face she can see he felt it too.
The older man snorts and speaks aloud. "You do realize you're saying all this out loud. And I'm not sure who the more pathetic geek is.’
"Me," they both say simultaneously, then scowl at each other and prepare to debate the point.
Malcolm snorts again. "Let's just say you're well matched and leave it at that. Pepper, I want you to drop all your shields."