[Even disregarding the fact that Pepper Potts is absolutely covered in what she can only describe as slime (though her brain keeps interjecting snot like a particularly annoying younger sibling into her thoughts), her clothes are hardly what one might call suitable for the occasion.
It’s hard, really, to determine just what makes them worse suited for waking up in an egg on what appears to be, for all intents and purposes, an alien planet. Is it the pencil skirt that hugs her hips and lands just below her knees? The fact that it and its matching blazer are both white? Or the the wholly impractical heels? The ones she nearly turned an ankle on more than twice as she was half-dragged across the roots of the jungle floor?
Carefully, she pushes hair slick with slime (snoooooot, says her brain) behind her ear. As it turns out, it’s easier to accept the existence of alien planets on a theoretical level than when faced with the complete and slimey reality of one. She knew they existed, she just didn’t think— This whole thing is more Tony’s speed than hers. The ache — already familiar like an old friend — spreads through the pit of her belly. Her brow knits and she lets out an uneven breath.
This is not the place.
Not here where she can’t tell whether the smell is coming from the walls and the floors of the holding cell or from her. She reaches down, the tips of her hair — heavy with slime — brushing across her bare knees, and slips one of her shoes off. The folds in her clothes, stiff with goo, creak as she straightens and leans back against the wall. Her hands turn the shoe over and over, like this is the first time she’s seeing it.]
If this was a movie, [she offers the person sitting next to her without looking up, fingers sliding down the heel to its sharp point at the end,] I’d just snap this off to make them into flats.
[Her mouth curves in apology.]
Might be the only way to make them less useful.
EXPLORE THE BASECAMP
[The world hasn’t stopped spinning — faster and faster with each turn — since Pepper’s temp agency sent her to Stark Industries for a two week stint, and two days in she was plucked from the reception desk rotation to assist Tony Stark. Just temporarily, her supervisor told her.
Everyone knows how that turned out.
It paused for a moment — a quiver in the rotation — when Tony disappeared in Afghanistan. But he came back — different, better — and suddenly the world picked up speed again.
Iron Man Obie Stark Industries Learning to run a Fortune 100 company with all that it entails Scrutiny from the board, the share holders, and the media The Tower The Battle of New York Shaping legislation A two story tall plush bunny Extremis Sokovia The Accords The Blip Restructuring Stark Industries to account for half the work force gone and the other half grieving.
When things slows down, she tells Rhodey, she’ll let herself grieve. Like they will. Like she hasn’t been telling herself that next week, things should slow down for years now. Like slow is a setting Pepper Potts is equipped to handle.
(Pepper always knew, somewhere deep in her gut, that she’d survive Tony. She just thought that when it happened, it would be saving the world, and she’d at least have a body to bury. Not this world-wide grief and the sudden emptiness of three billion people shaped holes in as many lives, and the uncertainty of not knowing for sure.)
But now, the world has tilted over on its axis and crashed to the ground. It lies unmoving, and in the sudden lull, Pepper doesn’t know how to breathe around the grief that comes crashing into her. If it weren’t for the steady rotation of the bunks between the night shift and the day shift, it would be tempting to just pull a threadbare blanket over her head and stay lying down until the hollow feeling goes away.
As it turns out (thankfully) there’s a lot to do around the Adamant. If you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty or waiting to be asked. Enough that someone determined enough can work themselves into exhaustion before tumbling to bed, sleeping like the dead, only to wake up and do it all over again.
It’s not running a company or the schedule of a genius, billionaire, playboy, philantropist, but Pepper has always been a quick study.
Find her in the mess hall, clearing dishes, wiping down tables, or organizing the washing station.]
If you’re done with that bowl, I can grab it for you.
[Or over in the aid station between meals. Where, if she isn’t ripping old and worn clothes into makeshift bandages, she’s updating the inventory.]
How many of those gnarly, brown roots do we have? I’m not sure what they’re called or what they do, but it must be something useful because there’s a lot of them.
BOOZE
[The clear liquid sloshing around in the tin cup Pepper is offered by a smiling stranger tastes like nothing so much as the time Tony tried to distill his own vodka down in the workshop. It was early days, maybe a year into her tenure with him, and she can still remember sitting perched on one of the tall workbenches, her heels toppled over on the floor beneath her. Rhodey was there, she thinks, and they were all laughing through burning throats, their eyes tearing up.
It was, Tony admitted, a failed experiment.
Strange to think, that back then it was weapons in various states of completion that littered every flat surface in the work shop. Everything deadly, just in increasingly inventive ways. It’s too easy to super impose the most recent iteration of the work shop, and Tony’s smiling face — eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement — over the past. The human brain rewriting history without malice or intent (ill or not).
It’s Tony’s smile her mind lingers on as Pepper takes a second, slower sip. Like maybe alien planet moonshine improves on repetition. It does not. The liquid burns all the way down her throat, and when her eyes sting it’s not with laughter. All around, the little ragtag crew of strangers are trying to make the best of the evening, the booze building more bridges than a common tongue.
Pepper feels so out of place. Even happy memories tugging on the strands of grief wrapped around her heart like barbed wire. She turns, eyes sifting for an exit. It’s the empty hands she sees first, zeroing in on the person they belong to like a missile from the old days.
Here [she says, pressing the cup — tin warm from her hands — into the hands of the stranger, before looking up and giving them a quick smile that’s more polite than bright.] Two sips were more than enough for me.
NETWORK
Nice to meet you, Cartagena.
1. Pepper Potts 2. Most recently: NYC, New York, USA, Earth 3. The smell right before and right after it rains. It smells new, clean. Like possibility and the best aspects of hope. 4. A giraffe 5. 39 6. Questionnaires are not normally ”enjoyed” in my culture. But thank you for facilitating getting to know each other.
WILDCARD
[Happy to work with whatever you want to throw at me! Or, if you want to work something out, give me a shout on plurk at peerpressure]
Pepper Potts | MCU
[Even disregarding the fact that Pepper Potts is absolutely covered in what she can only describe as slime (though her brain keeps interjecting snot like a particularly annoying younger sibling into her thoughts), her clothes are hardly what one might call suitable for the occasion.
It’s hard, really, to determine just what makes them worse suited for waking up in an egg on what appears to be, for all intents and purposes, an alien planet. Is it the pencil skirt that hugs her hips and lands just below her knees? The fact that it and its matching blazer are both white? Or the the wholly impractical heels? The ones she nearly turned an ankle on more than twice as she was half-dragged across the roots of the jungle floor?
Carefully, she pushes hair slick with slime (snoooooot, says her brain) behind her ear. As it turns out, it’s easier to accept the existence of alien planets on a theoretical level than when faced with the complete and slimey reality of one. She knew they existed, she just didn’t think— This whole thing is more Tony’s speed than hers. The ache — already familiar like an old friend — spreads through the pit of her belly. Her brow knits and she lets out an uneven breath.
This is not the place.
Not here where she can’t tell whether the smell is coming from the walls and the floors of the holding cell or from her. She reaches down, the tips of her hair — heavy with slime — brushing across her bare knees, and slips one of her shoes off. The folds in her clothes, stiff with goo, creak as she straightens and leans back against the wall. Her hands turn the shoe over and over, like this is the first time she’s seeing it.]
If this was a movie, [she offers the person sitting next to her without looking up, fingers sliding down the heel to its sharp point at the end,] I’d just snap this off to make them into flats.
[Her mouth curves in apology.]
Might be the only way to make them less useful.
EXPLORE THE BASECAMP
[The world hasn’t stopped spinning — faster and faster with each turn — since Pepper’s temp agency sent her to Stark Industries for a two week stint, and two days in she was plucked from the reception desk rotation to assist Tony Stark. Just temporarily, her supervisor told her.
Everyone knows how that turned out.
It paused for a moment — a quiver in the rotation — when Tony disappeared in Afghanistan. But he came back — different, better — and suddenly the world picked up speed again.
Iron Man
Obie
Stark Industries
Learning to run a Fortune 100 company with all that it entails
Scrutiny from the board, the share holders, and the media
The Tower
The Battle of New York
Shaping legislation
A two story tall plush bunny
Extremis
Sokovia
The Accords
The Blip
Restructuring Stark Industries to account for half the work force gone and the other half grieving.
When things slows down, she tells Rhodey, she’ll let herself grieve. Like they will. Like she hasn’t been telling herself that next week, things should slow down for years now. Like slow is a setting Pepper Potts is equipped to handle.
(Pepper always knew, somewhere deep in her gut, that she’d survive Tony. She just thought that when it happened, it would be saving the world, and she’d at least have a body to bury. Not this world-wide grief and the sudden emptiness of three billion people shaped holes in as many lives, and the uncertainty of not knowing for sure.)
But now, the world has tilted over on its axis and crashed to the ground. It lies unmoving, and in the sudden lull, Pepper doesn’t know how to breathe around the grief that comes crashing into her. If it weren’t for the steady rotation of the bunks between the night shift and the day shift, it would be tempting to just pull a threadbare blanket over her head and stay lying down until the hollow feeling goes away.
As it turns out (thankfully) there’s a lot to do around the Adamant. If you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty or waiting to be asked. Enough that someone determined enough can work themselves into exhaustion before tumbling to bed, sleeping like the dead, only to wake up and do it all over again.
It’s not running a company or the schedule of a genius, billionaire, playboy, philantropist, but Pepper has always been a quick study.
Find her in the mess hall, clearing dishes, wiping down tables, or organizing the washing station.]
If you’re done with that bowl, I can grab it for you.
[Or over in the aid station between meals. Where, if she isn’t ripping old and worn clothes into makeshift bandages, she’s updating the inventory.]
How many of those gnarly, brown roots do we have? I’m not sure what they’re called or what they do, but it must be something useful because there’s a lot of them.
BOOZE
[The clear liquid sloshing around in the tin cup Pepper is offered by a smiling stranger tastes like nothing so much as the time Tony tried to distill his own vodka down in the workshop. It was early days, maybe a year into her tenure with him, and she can still remember sitting perched on one of the tall workbenches, her heels toppled over on the floor beneath her. Rhodey was there, she thinks, and they were all laughing through burning throats, their eyes tearing up.
It was, Tony admitted, a failed experiment.
Strange to think, that back then it was weapons in various states of completion that littered every flat surface in the work shop. Everything deadly, just in increasingly inventive ways. It’s too easy to super impose the most recent iteration of the work shop, and Tony’s smiling face — eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement — over the past. The human brain rewriting history without malice or intent (ill or not).
It’s Tony’s smile her mind lingers on as Pepper takes a second, slower sip. Like maybe alien planet moonshine improves on repetition. It does not. The liquid burns all the way down her throat, and when her eyes sting it’s not with laughter. All around, the little ragtag crew of strangers are trying to make the best of the evening, the booze building more bridges than a common tongue.
Pepper feels so out of place. Even happy memories tugging on the strands of grief wrapped around her heart like barbed wire. She turns, eyes sifting for an exit. It’s the empty hands she sees first, zeroing in on the person they belong to like a missile from the old days.
Here [she says, pressing the cup — tin warm from her hands — into the hands of the stranger, before looking up and giving them a quick smile that’s more polite than bright.] Two sips were more than enough for me.
NETWORK
Nice to meet you, Cartagena.
1. Pepper Potts
2. Most recently: NYC, New York, USA, Earth
3. The smell right before and right after it rains. It smells new, clean. Like possibility and the best aspects of hope.
4. A giraffe
5. 39
6. Questionnaires are not normally ”enjoyed” in my culture. But thank you for facilitating getting to know each other.
WILDCARD
[Happy to work with whatever you want to throw at me! Or, if you want to work something out, give me a shout on plurk at