Hearing.

[quigonejinn]

One day, Tony has a visitor. A man in a blue suit. He stops in the middle of a word when he catches sight of you, wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, and then, he whips around and stares at Tony, whose face has gone stiff. Tony did not like the idea of the man coming in the first place, and now, he grips his friend by the shoulder, and they go into another room to argue.

" -- tell Fury, see if I don't."

" -- ahead. Have fun with that."

You could hear more of their conversation, you suspect, if you asked Jarvis to relay it to you, but you decide against it. In fact, it is such a long time before either comes back out that you fall asleep on the couch.

...

There seem to be only three actual persons in the world, though: you and Tony, of course. Jarvis seems human, though without a body, but it has been explained to you that he is only lines of writing inside a box. Like the robots in the shop that help Tony, he seems alive, but is not. Also, there are the anchors on CNN, but they do not feel real even as much as Jarvis or the robots do.

So yes, the third person in your world is Pepper.

...

After a while, the friend comes out of the room, and he sits down next to you. He has a curious hat in his hands, and he turns it around and around while. You study the way it looks in his hands, trying to recall where you've seen it before. Surely, you have. It looks so familiar. Even the shade of blue seems familiar. It ought to be right on the tip of your tongue.

"How're you doing?" he says.

You stop frowning long enough to give him the wide, content smile that satisfies Tony, but it doesn't satisfy this man.

"I'm Rhodey," he adds, and holds his hand out. You look at his hand, then back up at his face. What does he want you to do with it?

Tony comes and stands behind the couch. His voice is tight and strange-sounding, and you can see his hands curled up over the edges of the couch. "I didn't want you to come in the first place, Rhodey, so you should go now. While we're still friends."

Rhodey looks up at Tony then, with a look you've never quite seen on anybody before -- he almost seems sad, in fact -- and Tony smiles in a way that you've never seen before, either.

...

So yes, Pepper. You and Tony watch a movie one night, and the story is something about a girl in the city, who has a very complicated life. It is hard to follow the story, and it is, curiously enough, all in black and grey. You lie down on the couch and put your head on Tony's knee; he has a glass of whiskey in which he lets the ice cubes melt, and he works on something out of one of his electronic books from which he can draw out figures in three dimensions.

Halfway through the movie, you become aware that he is holding the notebook, but is mostly looking at you.

His hand rests on the side of your face, and out of curiosity, more than anything else, you press your lips against his fingers.

Tony goes absolutely still, and to see if you can get that response again, you kiss him again, a little higher, on the inside of the wrist. And then higher after that, to the crook of his elbow. Through his shirt, you touch your mouth to the edges of the arc reactor. Then to his neck. Then to the side of of his face. You take the notebook out of his hand, set it to the side, and climb into his lap and put your mouth against his mouth, and at that point, it abruptly stops being about seeing how he will react and more for the pleasure of having his mouth on yours because you have never imagined that Tony's mouth could have a taste to it, like something that could be drunk.

"Here," you say and turn your head so that his mouth brushes against your neck, and then you slide your hands underneath his shirt.

By that point, he's panting, and so are you. The only thing part of him really moving, though, are his eyes, wide and dark. They look from one side of your face to the other, not quite sure what to make of this, so you take his hand behind your head, then lean in and put your mouth on his: even that isn't quite right, though. It's nice, but somehow, not quite what you want.

You have, in fact, no idea what you want until he slides his hand underneath your dress, between your legs and underneath the fabric. His mouth is half-open, and he watches your face as he runs one finger along your body there.

...

"Did you do that with her?"

So yes, Pepper. Tony is pleased when you act like her, but he gives you so little information about her that it is hard to please. He likes it when you organize things and make them tidy. He takes a strange pleasure in having you tell him what to do so that he can ignore it or, on those occasions when he does what you suggest, act very pleased with himself.

The morning after the movie, though, Tony is strange, and you do not know what to make of his behavior. He seems to be taking efforts to keep from touching you. Over and over, he asks you what you would like to do today, whether you would like something else for breakfast, and while he is taking a blood sample from your arm to put into the machine for analysis and his records, you say, "Did you do that with her?"

He turns his head and looks at you. It is another expression that you don't have a name for, and a great deal of time passes before Tony says, "Not exactly."

...

You barely remember the beginning. There must have been a laboratory, you suppose, or something like that. Your first real memory is of being in a car next to Tony. The car is now in the garage, and the countryside that you passed through with Tony was somewhere else. He has other houses, you know. One in the mountains. Two by the sea. This one has neither mountains nor a sea, but it has you.

...

Rhodey somehow gets a message to you through Jarvis. You're not quite sure whether Tony knows about it, but if he does, he doesn't say anything about it, at least not before you go meet Rhodey -- Rhodey says that if you come down to the edge of the property the day after tomorrow, the two of you can talk. Tony doesn't say anything about it, and you don't give him an explanation for why you leave the house alone.

"You're -- "

"I know," you say and lean back in the seat of the car. It's soft, but rough at the same time, and it feels utterly different than the seats that Tony has in his cars. "He told me. He showed me some of her hair."

Rhodey stares at you.

"I want you to tell me about Pepper," you say. "How did she die?"

....

After you get out of Rhodey's car, you walk back to the house with shoes off because you want to feel the ground underneath your feet, and you find that Tony is sitting on the steps that lead from the driveway. He looks a little pale, and there's a pair of binoculars next to him. You move them aside, then sit down and lean your head against his shoulder.

Slowly, as if not quite awake, he reaches up and puts his arm around your shoulders.

....

Tony is the beginning and end of things for you. Walking down to the edge of the property to meet Rhody and walking back tires you for an entire day, and generally, you find that you sleep more and more. More and more, you wake only when Tony comes into the room and touches your cheek or your shoulder to wake you.

...

"What was Afghanistan like?"

It is during the period when he almost seems afraid to touch you, so he is sitting at the very far end of the couch and is pretending to ignore you, but he knows that you have nothing else to do but talk to him or watch television or a movie, so he looks up and answers your question.

"Cold. I lived in a cave for three months. And made this and the first version of the suit in the shop." He taps his chest, where you can just see the arc reactor glowing through his shirt, and he's quiet for a moment. "I had a friend there who saved my life twice."

"Rhodey?" you say.

Tony's face tightens, and you can see that he does not want to talk about it anymore. Later that day, though, he does let you help him in the shop.

...

One night, you are with Tony again on the couch. CNN is on, and you're watching something about a country very, very far away. As far as you know, Tony is watching you, not the television; you have your head in his lap, and every once in a while, he touches on the arm or the shoulder, and you wonder about the chances of getting him to touch you between the legs again.

Eventually, you turn over to kiss his hand because that seems to be the way that these things start, and you find that he is already looking down at you.

Slowly and very deliberately, you kiss the knuckles of his hand -- they're curiously scarred, and there's a hard place on his palm, probably right where it fits under the light on the suit -- and he closes his eyes, then slides down on the couch. He puts his arm under your hips, so that you are lying on it, and some instinct makes you put your legs over his shoulders.

You're wearing a long dress that day, and Tony pushes it past your knees with his mouth. His beard tickles on your skin, and you look down at him. He looks back at you.

A moment passes, and it's strange. You can tell the shape of the beard from the way it feels against your skin, and with two fingers and a little cooperation from you, he works your underwear off. You settle your leg back on his shoulder, and you're about to ask him to touch you with his fingers like he did before when he leans his head down and breathes directly onto your skin.

Fingers don't come until later, when you've got your hand in his hair and you can't stop saying his name.

...

"Car crash," Rhodey had said that day in the car. "That's how Pepper died. I didn't even know they were -- they were -- "

One day, Tony has to leave. You go down to the shop and watch Jarvis help him into the suit, and when he's left, you go back upstairs and watch Tony on CNN. You're too tired to understand what, exactly is going on, and when you wake, Tony has come back. He's taken a shower, but you can still smell smoke and something else on him. It seems baked into his hands and skin.

He climbs onto the couch behind you and puts his arms around you; his hair is still wet from the shower.

It's the first night the two of you sleep together.

...

The bruises from the shots and blood sampling from the before haven't faded, and this makes Tony frown. You are tired all the time now, and you have to lean your face against the wall while he takes today's blood sample. Half the volume of the usual, he says, and kisses you on the cheek. He seems more comfortable with doing that now.

"When I'm gone, will you make another one?"

"There's not going to be another one," he says. "You're going to live forever.

The wall is cool underneath your cheek. "What if I don't live forever?"

He says, quietly, "There still won't be another one."

...

Rhodey had said that Pepper was funny, so you have Jarvis find an assortment of jokes. You'd like to learn one and be able to repeat it to him -- it is hard to keep anything in your mind for very long, and you try to keep it straight. A door, an aardvark. A million miles.

That afternoon, you lose consciousness while trying to walk from the kitchen to the terrace.

...

As you deteriorate, you become too weak to walk, and you have difficulty staying awake for any length of time. Tony knows that you like hearing his voice, though, so he spends hours telling you things. He talks about his company and about SHIELD. He talks about Rhodey, how they met and how much they used to work together, and he even starts telling you a little about his parents -- Tony doesn't like talking about them, but he tells you about the day his his father took him sailing on Long Island Sound and they talked about the next generation of capacitors.

It's a happy memory for him, and after Tony is done telling you about it, you ask for water.

He goes and gets you one, and when he comes back with water for you and whiskey for him, you've opened up one of the hidden workspaces he keeps on Jarvis. The sheet is in your lap, and a three-dimensional model rises above it. A pair of spiral ladders, spinning very, very slowly, and you look at him, then a the model, then back again.

"This is the one, isn't it? The one after me."

Incision points are marked with arrows, and you watch the structure turn and turn. In fact, for the first time in your two month life, your eyes aren't fixed on Tony as he walks across the room. You keep your eyes on the ladders, the red and green and blue and yellow, even as he comes and sits and puts his face in your hair and doesn't say anything for a long, long time.

...

Tony had meant it, you think, when he said that there wouldn't be another one.

...

As you deteriorate, you become too weak to walk. Tony tries to save you, goes to great lengths to do it, in fact, but you have difficulty staying awake for any length of time. Your appetite, which had never been great, disappears. You remember the days when you grew so rapidly that you would wear a too-large shirt in the morning and have your wrists sticking out of it by afternoon, and to keep you at a healthy weight during it, Tony would bribe your week-old self with promises of ice cream. You didn't know what ice cream was, but you ate to please him, and you ate the ice cream, too, because you had the vague thought that the first Pepper had liked ice cream.

Would the first Pepper have been angry that he made clones to replace her?

Near the end, you cannot see anymore -- something about the muscles that work your eyelids, and you cannot speak well, either, so Tony stays by you constantly, holding your hand, talking to you. You sleep with your head on his chest, and the sound of the arc reactor fills your last hours. The newest version is almost silent, but hums just loud enough to cover his heartbeat: you live the span of your days with Tony Stark.

You die without ever hearing another person's heartbeat.

...

Some years later, Tony and Brigadier General Jim Rhodes are together. There's a grip-and-greet photo op to announce a new aspect of the cooperation between SHIELD and various government organizations, and Tony's hand feels clammy in Jim's. Tony doesn't look good, either, and this is the first time in years they've actually stood next to each other. It blows by. The speed, the flash of photographer's bulbs, and Rhodey swears that out of the corner of his eye, he sees a red-haired woman in black, waiting for Tony.





So yeah, I don't think it has the same HOLY SHIT SO THAT'S WHAT HE'S DOING element, but I'm happier with how this talks more directly about the clone and is less explicit about Tony's manpain. And works in the job of Iron Man better.

Written while listening to the Peaches remix of The Bird & the Bee "Fucking Boyfriend." I mean, this is the cover that goes with it on Amazon. In my head, this is the knock-knock joke clone-Pepper learns:

Who's there?
Aardvark.
Aardvark who?
Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles.

Comments

Re: MY BACKSTAGE WANKING, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.

[besyd.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA! Yes! Reed's brain would be all twisty (because, y'know, he can do that so well), what with Tony having showed up on his door all not!Tony - though he probably chalked that and his not-quite-Tony-but-still-wild story about "he's got mine ... help before he does something with it" to Tony (a) being sick or maybe influenced by aliens or (b) trying some new hedonistic substance or other. His brain and his tongue would just knot right up when he saw the lace, the smoldering look, the ...

And then Tony!Pepper would give a very unladylike "Oh, shit" when he sees Pepper!Tony walk in behind Reed.