Echoes

Thud, thud, thud.

Tony's heart was pounding in his ears.

Jarvis was speaking to him but he didn't care. Tony smashed his foot on the gas pedal and sped down the highway. He half expected to see sirens in his rearview mirror. Must have gotten lucky. He didn't need to look at the speedometer to know that he was breaking at least a hundred different speed laws. Adrenaline mixed with sexual tension made it hard to sit still, to focus. Deep down, Tony felt something else. Something much worse.

Fear.

Tony was angry but he was also scared. What the hell happened back there? What the hell happened that sent Scarlett to the hospital with Clint Barton? There were no answers, but a hundred different questions. Before he knew it Tony was home, parking in his driveway and storming inside his house. Why had he left Scarlett there alone? Why had he done that? He knew he should have stayed! He didn't want to leave her like that! Scarlett had asked him to, that was why? But why didn't she want him to help her? He could have helped her! Couldn't he have?

Tony stopped in his living room, confused. Much of the building was being renovated, he'd nearly forgotten. There were people walking all around him every which way, so much so that his head was spinning. Jarvis was talking again, Tony could hear him just fine now but he didn't want to listen. He didn't want to talk.

"Sir? Sir I'm worried, you haven't responded to me since…"

"Jarvis, not now." Tony finally snapped and then waved his arm around before gesturing to the door. "People, take the day. I need this space to myself."

The contractor looked to Tony in aw, about to object but something about the expression Tony wore must have advised him against it.

"You heard the boss! Everybody out!"

After the workers filed out Tony stared at the mess that was his living room. Everything was changing. That was good. It was supposed to be good. Most importantly it had felt good.

Tony did not feel good.

On the contrary, he felt terrible.

"Jarvis, mute all incoming calls unless it's Scarlett. Pick something loud and crank it up." Tony pointed toward the ceiling and without further inquiry Jarvis did as he was told. Black Sabbath filled the house and Tony was relieved, letting his eyes drift closed. There was an insane amount of tension in his shoulders. The last hour had been a blur. A blur of passion, of gratification, and fear. What a terrible combination.

He'd finally gotten what he'd wanted, done what he wanted and it was torn away in a fit of coughing. In the back of his mind Tony had always known something was wrong with Scarlett. After that first article that had been published about her collapse, Tony had feared the worst. But he'd jumped to conclusions before and it had gotten him nothing but hurt.

Shaking his head, Tony opened his eyes. With them closed he could see her and each time those romantic fantasies transformed into a nightmare of illness, Scarlett's face as pale as it had been when she'd bled all over his lab.

Tony had to do something and the thing he wanted to do wasn't possible.

Well, it was but it was nowhere near as satisfying and Tony Stark was not that desperate yet. No, Tony needed to take some kind of action and burn off the manic energy that had followed him home.

Even as his ears rang and he walked across the house to his gym, even as he got changed into some workout clothing and tied gauze around his hands to keep from breaking his knuckles, Tony couldn't decide what he was actually going to do.

Honestly, he didn't even remember hanging his punching bag and beginning to beat its face in. This was not what Tony wanted to do today, no it hadn't been even in the back of his mind over the last few days. Sure, he should probably get back to his regular exercise regimen given that he was Iron Man after all but he hadn't anticipated beating the hell out of a punching bag to the point where he swore his hands were going to break.

It was a means to an end, a way to work off the tension that had sky rocketed as he'd held Scarlett. As he closed his eyes he could see her, feel her pressed against him. It had been perfect, felt perfect, more than he could have ever allowed his imagination to conjure up and hell, he had definitely used his imagination very vividly when it came to Scarlett as his subject matter.

What could he say? Tony humped his way through his feelings, it was how he had always coped with pretty much everything. Sex and booze, the two most reliable things in his life. Now didn’t seem like a time for either and yet they were all he wanted. Closing his eyes again, Tony could see her, feel her hair tickling his arm, hear her laugh as they moved together. Everything had felt so natural, so perfect.

Then he heard her coughing, gagging, choking. He saw her blue eyes turn gray, he saw her disappear. She laid there and no matter how he called to her she had disappeared.

That was it, no more closing his eyes, none of that. An old familiar tightness gripped his chest, not of anxiety, not the kind he'd gotten for so long and suffered with beyond his understanding, but instead this was that fear again. What if she was as sick as Dianne Hendricks had claimed she was? No one seemed to be taking the reporter seriously. No one but Tony Stark. He'd known that something was wrong with her from the very beginning. Between the S.H.I.E.L.D. detail, the odd reports of her in the papers, to the way that he'd seen her suffer with fatigue. God then the bleeding, the bleeding!

That night where she'd bled on his desk would be something that haunted him for the rest of his life. He'd never seen anyone bleed like that, at least not anyone who was healthy. Yet he'd wrote it all off, he'd dismissed it all out of blind trust. It wasn't something that he could ignore anymore.

No, that wasn't right. Scarlett had never outright told him she was healthy, in fact, he'd never asked her if something was wrong. He'd joked around about her being pregnant once but that was only to start a conversation when she had been ignoring him. How far they'd come since then. She was Tony's best friend, his confidant! Selfishly the idea of losing her to an illness beyond his control was devastating. He shouldn't have felt that way, it was selfish, but he did.

Tony was suddenly overcome with anger, with rage!

He beat the hell out of the punching bag, so hard that his fists tore at the material. He kicked it and the whole thing flew off of the heavy duty chain and splattered on the ground in a torn up mess. His breathing was haggard and part of his rage melted away as he saw it there.

If Scarlett was sick he had to help her.

Don't suffer in silence.

He knew what that felt like but he hadn't realized that was what he'd been doing. Maybe that was why Scarlett had offered him that advice. She was suffering, silently, in one way or another. It didn't matter what had happened or how sick she was, he wasn't going to give up on her. Tony wouldn't give up on what they had. For all he knew, he could be overreacting! Just as he opened his mouth to talk to Jarvis, to tell him that he needed to make contact with Dianne Hendricks as soon as possible, a voice interrupted and cut through the music that blasted loudly over the speakers.

It was very much a voice he hadn't expected to hear again for a long time.

"Tony?" Pepper Potts stood, holding her coat against her chest while staring sheepishly at him from the doorway. She looked to the punching bag torn in pieces on the floor and then back at the man she'd lived with only days before. He was upset. She shouldn't have come but Pepper hadn't been able to stop herself.

"God damnit, I am not in the mood." Tony muttered a string of curses and turned away from Pepper, running his gauzed hands through his sweaty hair. She didn't say anything, didn't retaliate. Instead she observed him, watched how he responded, how he moved. For the first time in a very long time, Pepper saw the Tony Stark who she had been such good friends with for so long. He'd always been there deep down, but part of her had forgotten who he was. "What are you doing here?" He turned partially toward her and stared. She didn't say anything, looking almost afraid to begin.

"Tony…"

"If you're here to start an argument I'm not in the mood. Everything we've hashed through hasn't changed, it's a waste of energy. I'll give you whatever you want if you just go away."

"I saw the news." Pepper spoke up, shouting over the music and over the fear that had bubbled inside of her.

"Jarvis, mute." Tony turned at last and looked to Pepper seriously.

"I saw Scarlett covered in blood and with… someone who looked familiar. They were at the hospital." Pepper seemed wary of her words, she didn't want to fight either and the way she held herself made that perfectly clear to Tony. She was like a scared puppy dog. Tony had never meant to scare her.

Tony silenced at once, he didn't have any objections. Part of him waited for her to say she told him so, that Scarlett was nothing but trouble and he should have just stayed with her and worked out their issues. He turned his gaze away and furrowed his brow, suddenly incredibly exhausted. It hung on him like nothing else and he leaned against the boxing ring nearby for support and closed his eyes.

"I thought you might need a friend." Pepper spoke, much to Tony's surprise and he made no attempts to hide it on his face. "If we can still be that. Friends, I mean."

"Now's not a great time for this." Tony decided it really wasn't. He wasn't ready to talk it out, to set new boundaries. There were three thousand things going on in Tony's mind right now and he could honestly say that Pepper wasn't a single part of them. He looked away from her and walked to the broken punching bag. With a heave he picked it up and threw it into the corner of the room. There was sand everywhere. "Jarvis, please tell me we have a backup somewhere."

Staring down at his hands he saw the blood even through the gauze on his knuckles. It'd been a long time since he'd hit anything quiet as hard as he was hitting that punching bag.

"Yes sir, in the closet. I'll order more." Jarvis spoke quietly, reservedly. Even his computer had gotten the hint that Tony was like a ticking time bomb. Pepper didn't move, didn't back away, just stood awkwardly in the doorway of the gym with her hands clasped together. Tony was devastated, probably about something relating to what she'd seen on the news. She didn't come to rub it in his face, no. Not this time. After some time away she knew that their relationship failed because of them both, not because of him and definitely not because of Scarlett.

She even knew, after some deep self reflection, that the changes that had scared her after Scarlett had shown up were good changes, at least for Tony. They were healthy changes. Tony had been more himself since he'd teamed up with Refuge than he'd been since they'd moved out of Manhattan together.

After the dust had finally cleared Pepper missed her friend and realized she'd missed him for some time. But he had also likely missed her as much as she missed him, though she had been too stubborn and too frightened to see it. He'd found a new friend in Scarlett, and their friendship was so different than theirs had ever been.

Pepper had been jealous of that.

Tony hung the new punching bag, ignoring her continued presence. If Tony had to he would yell. He didn't want to but he would.

"You must really care about her to be this upset." Pepper spoke warily, not accusingly. She didn't want Tony to get the wrong idea. Hell, she'd even practiced with Happy before she'd come over. In exchange, Happy had practiced how to apologize to Tony too, for his absence, for his betrayal as a friend, for everything. There were many bridges to be repaired.

Tony punched the new bag and it hurt his hand instantly. It wasn't broken in yet and the abrupt break had done nothing for his strength or his adrenaline. Exhaustion was settling deep within Tony but he had no time for it. He would ignore it until his body forced him to sleep.

"You know what? I really do." Tony looked around him and then stopped the bag from swinging back at him. For a brief second he looked to Pepper and felt guilty, not because of how they'd ended as a couple, but because he was giving her the cold shoulder. No matter how many times Rhodey had told him that it was likely Pepper had been scared to lose his friendship he had never seen any truth to it.

There it was now, written all over Pepper. His friendship, his companionship in a platonic way still meant something to her and she was hoping, desperately, that it meant something to him as well.

"More than I thought I could." Tony spoke without realizing it and turned back to the punching bag before stepping back and taking another thwack at it. Pepper nodded her head and took a cautious step closer. He answered her without telling her to go screw herself, that was a step in the right direction. Maybe the damage between them wasn't completely insurmountable after all. Tony was obviously struggling with this whatever this was with Scarlett and now that Pepper could see past the hurt in their romantic relationship, had begun to move on, she hoped there was a way she could repair any damage that had been done in their friendship.

"I think she cares about you too." Pepper choked on the words, but not because she didn't mean them. It was obvious that Scarlett cared about him, that was partly why Pepper had never gotten past that irrational fear of her. "Just as much, if not more." She nodded.

"Whatever, Pepper." Tony scoffed and walked away from the punching bag and to the far end of the room where he picked up a towel. He wiped his forehead with it, the sweat staining it immediately. The shower was calling Tony's name. He ran his fingers through his hair, wishing it was Scarlett's fingers and not his own.

"No! No, I mean it. I'm not trying to be cruel."

Tony stared at her skeptically and then draped the towel around her shoulders.

"Neither of you may have realized it at the time but she fought for you. You don't do that for someone you don't care about. Scarlett fought me for you without hoping for anything in return. When I wasn't there and you needed someone she comforted you. And on top of all of that, she trusts you."

"Don't…"

"No, look. She does. I spent more time than I should have obsessing over the way she behaved, looking for anything to defame her and… all I found was that she put this trust in you that I had long given up on." Pepper nodded, feeling the heat of emotion behind her eyes. Tony grumbled, seeing the tears forming there. He didn't want Pepper to cry.

"I don't think this is the time for this conversation."

"It is exactly the time for it, Tony. You don't want to see it because you were trying to ignore it. For me. It was… for me. And it took me a really long time to realize it was for me. Actually Scarlett sort of made me realize it when she lashed out at me. Which I deserved, by the way. I said terrible things to her and I didn't mean any of them. I was scared and emotional."

"Yeah, well you're right about some of that."

"Tony when you walk in the room she lights up. With everyone else it's different. Even in pictures it shows! That's why the media speculates so much over you guys. It's obvious to everyone but the two of you what's going on. It's what made me so angry and insecure. Besides all the obvious stuff that is."

"Yeah, you made that perfectly clear too." Tony spoke quietly and wondered if it was true. Did Scarlett light up when he was in the room? Was that even possible or was Pepper just trying to butter him up? It was working if that was the case. Tony knew that Scarlett cared about him she'd even admitted as much but he'd tried his best to write off all of that while he was still dating Pepper.

"I saw something else too."

"Mm, you should stop while you're ahead, Potts." Tony sat on a bench at the far end of the room.

"I saw fear."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"She's scared. Maybe we can find out why."

"Am I scary, Pepper?"

"No, you wouldn't hurt a fly."

"The punching bag in pieces over there would argue very differently." Tony managed a joke and some of that tension melted away. At least in regards to Pepper. She wasn’t there to rub his face in his issues, and for the first time in a long time she genuinely seemed to want to talk to him. They had only needed to step back from their toxic relationship to do that.

"You two belong together." It pained Pepper to say that, but she'd known it for much longer than she would ever admit. That was all she ever wanted to be for Tony, was the connection that he had with Scarlett but realistically when it came down to it, he wasn't it for her either. They had so wanted to make each other happy that they had forgotten how to be happy themselves.

"Yeah, I figured that out." Tony nodded his head and moistened his lips. "But she is scared and… I think there's a hundred good reasons as to why."

"Tony, it can't be something you did…"

"No, no… it's not like that at all." Tony scoffed again but not because he thought she was being ridiculous. "She's scared for me. She said it out loud and it's got something to do with the news today, with every close call we've ever had and there were many I pulled back from because of you." He side glanced at Pepper who avoided his eyes and shrugged her shoulders before coming to sit next to him on the bench. "I think she's sick, Pepper."

"Like sick… sick? Or mental? Or…"

"I don't know. Not… I mean it's obviously not mental. I… I walked out like an idiot. She asked me to go and I did because I am an idiot." Tony laughed but his smile faded quickly.

"You're not an idiot. Well, not about this."

"Thanks, Pepper."

"Sorry, old habits."

"You know the only thing I ever wanted for you was happiness. I hid down in the basement because I thought that I could keep you safe if I had the tools to do so. But I knew that wasn't really why I hid. I knew I wasn't making you happy and I knew I couldn't keep you safe so I did what I always do when there's a problem."

"You try to fix it." Pepper nodded her head and sighed.

"I'm sorry I shut off."

"So am I."

"I'm sorry I didn't end it earlier."

"I'm sorry I didn't either." Pepper smiled weakly. This was what she had hoped for and it had gone better than she ever could have actually anticipated. She picked up Tony's hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, careful of the blood on his knuckles. "I only wanted your happiness too Tony. I think we both forgot how important it was to be happy."

"Yeah, you're right." Tony exhaled deeply and leaned his head against the wall behind him. "Are we going to be okay?"

"We already are." Pepper smiled. "But now we have to do something about Scarlett."