Chapter Text
Pepper took a sip of her long cooled coffee and grimaced slightly at the taste. She wasn’t much of a caffeine drinker to begin with, especially not as of late, but she had been awake for...well, so many hours it was a personal record she would have preferred to never hit. She didn’t need nearly as much sleep as she once did—which was honestly doing wonderful things for her productivity; SI had never been doing better—but even with her enhanced stamina, she was beginning to feel tired.
Her computer screen seemed blindingly bright as it stared back at her, and a stack of papers on her desk looked so white they hurt to look at. The only light in the room was artificial, seeing as the sun had set hours ago. Pepper leaned against the back of her chair and recrossed her legs under her desk, trying to ignore how numb she was from sitting this long.
“Ms. Potts...” F.R.I.D.A.Y’s voice was tinged with an unusual hesitancy. Tony had gifted Pepper with the AI the year he promoted her to CEO of Stark Industries, a fully functioning system that had access to the entirety of S.I, and who, in Pepper’s opinion, could rival J.A.R.V.I.S despite Tony’s insistence that F.R.I.D.A.Y was his younger and simpler sister.
She was meant to be Pepper’s personal assistance, and she was, but she was so much more than simply her assistant. Over the years they had been together she had grown far beyond what Tony had planned for her, Pepper knew that, and she did her best to nurture and guide F.R.I.D.A.Y as gently as she could, always encouraging her growth and congratulating her learning.
Now, she was more than just a personal assistant, and not just because she was Pepper’s closest friend. “Ms. Potts, perhaps a break would do you some good. If you would like, I can have a latte waiting for you in the lunchroom so you may stretch your legs?”
“Thank you, Friday,” Pepper said honestly, long past being surprised by the AI’s compassion but no less grateful for it. “I’ll take a break soon. I want to finish with this section before I stop, and I only have a few...hundred more files to go through.”
“As you wish,” F.R.I.D.A.Y announced, and Pepper sent a small smile towards one of her sensors.
With a determined breath, her eyes continued to scan the endless rows of information, pulled from the web and compiled into neat data and then placed into organized files by F.R.I.D.A.Y. It had only taken her a few hours to compile a list of every single file and do a primary overview of the information once Pepper had authorized her to use ninety-nine percent of her servers for the task, leaving the remaining one percent to ensure the corporate levels of the tower had functioning utilities but nothing more.
Since F.R.I.D.A.Y had announced her completion of the task, Pepper—along with a hand-picked team of intelligent, hard-working women from both Analytics and Legal—had been combing through anything even remotely related to Stark Industries, Tony Stark, herself or the Avengers.
Pepper was currently looking through a collection of files that had seemingly no connection to any of them but had been flagged by F.R.I.D.A.Y regardless. It pained her that she wasn’t going through the files of Tony or herself, but she had been worried she would be too close to notice something alarming, or more likely, something subtle. The two ladies she had working on each folder had been stacked with more NDA’s than most would deem logical, but Pepper was chancing nothing.
She read over the header of a file, and then read it again when something captured her interest.
“Friday, why is this name so familiar?” Pepper wondered distractedly, clicking into the file and scrolling through the information.
It was a personnel file and damn were these things ever thorough. She got a few pages in and had to take a moment to just simply breath, feeling incredibly uncomfortable with the amount of information SHIELD hand on someone that appeared to be nothing more than a civilian until—
“This appears to be a file on a woman named Laura Barton. From what I can gather, she is the spouse of Clint Barton, code name: Hawkeye.”
“Clint’s married...” Pepper’s voice trailed off as she continued to read, and her heart began to race as dread filled her chest. “Friday, is this really saying—”
Pepper couldn’t finish, but after so long together F.R.I.D.A.Y knew what she was asking. “Yes, Ms. Potts. It appears as though Mr. Barton is not only married but he has two young children.”
“That’s an address,” Peter stated, her voice shaking. When F.R.I.D.A.Y next spoke, her voice was gentle. “Yes, Ms. Potts. If you are not aware, I do wish to remind you of the sheer number of high profile deaths Mr. Barton has been directly responsible for during his time with SHIELD.” Yes, that was exactly what Pepper was afraid of. “From what I am hearing from Jarvis, it does not appear that Mr. Barton is aware of his leaked address.”
Oh god. With shaking hands, Pepper pressed the red button tucked neatly against the inside of her desk. Less than two minutes later, the phone on her desk was ringing. “What’s going on, Pep?”
Harold’s voice was a calming balm to her soul, but the worry-laced-terror that was so clear to her ears made her chest ache. “I’m sorry, dear. I promise I’m alright. I found something in this mess that I believe needs immediate attention and I...I’m not sure how best to handle this.”
“Sweetheart...” Harold trailed off with a deep sigh. Pepper smiled fondly despite her exhaustion, her heart tripping over at the softly uttered endearment. “Alright, darling. Send me what you have, and I’ll get on it.”
“Thank you, Harold,” she told him seriously, and she could picture him pulling himself out of their bed and moving around their room as she listened to him through the line. “Please if you...if you have a moment, do try to swing by.”
“Of course, sweetheart.” The endearment was even sweeter without the tinge of worry. She smiled to herself as she folded her hands together in her lap, just listening to the man breathe. A ping that sounded out through the line, another moment of silence and then, “Goddammit, those fuckin’ dumbasses.”
“Mr. Hogan!” Pepper teasingly scolded, just for some semblance of normalcy during this entire mess.
“Sorry ‘bout that, Ms. Potts,” Harold joked right back, the smile clear in the happy chipper of his voice. “I’ll do better with my language.”
“You better,” Pepper advised him, and then she let out a sigh and said, “I’ll see you soon?”
“Course you will,” he promised, and it was with a smile that she ended the call.
Her smile was short-lived, however, when a gentle knock sounded against the glass that lined the right wall of her office. Standing at the open doorway into the connecting conference room was one of the girls she pulled from Analytics, but what had Pepper immediately on edge was that it was Sheila, and Sheila was in charge of files relating to Natalie Rushman.
Nothing she had discovered could be good.
Pepper inclined her head to let her speak, and her voice was brittle when she said, “Ms. Potts, I think there’s something you need to see, ma’am.”
“Sheila, if you call me ma’am again I’m demoting you,” Pepper sighed on instinct, rubbing her temples and tipping her head back against the top of her chair. God, her eyes were still aching.
“Sorry, Ms. Potts,” Sheila said quietly. When Pepper finally opened her eyes, the young girl was staring down at her hands with a frown and Pepper sighed again. It had been such a long...hell, Pepper wasn’t even sure what day they were going on, but it had been long nonetheless. They were all so tired, and if Pepper was feeling tired, they must be exhausted.
“It’s okay, Sheila,” Pepper said and kindly as possible. She stood, not bothering to slip her heels back on as she softly crossed her office to where Sheila was standing, the rest of the girls sat around the large conference tables and all were hunched over their own computers and stacks of paperwork. “I apologize. Ma’am just makes me feel very rather old, and I’m feeling old enough as it is today.”
Sheila laughed softly, thank goodness, and she smiled up at Pepper when she rounded the table to see Sheila’s screen. “Alright, what am I looking at?”
“Well...there are a few names I’ve been searching for. I’ve been combing through everything for Natalie Rushman but...it was quickly clear what that really was and I widened my search parameters with the help of Ms. Friday. I’ve found what appears to be the creation of her identity and have printed it all here,” Sheila gestured to the very heavy file at her side, “but I thought you would want to take a look at this right away. I found it under Natasha Romanoff.”
“Oh?” Pepper muttered, sinking into the chair and rolling herself over with less grace than she has ever shown in a conference room before. She couldn’t bring herself to care, not when the city was sleeping around them and they were the majority of the handful of people that were still in the tower at this time.
But more than that, she knew she had nothing to hide when there was a handful of dedicated, intelligent women surrounding her that had been awake for just as many hours as he had. She didn’t need to show them the mask of grace she wore in the corporate world.
Shaking herself from her thoughts, Pepper focused back on the computer screen and blinked heavily to stop her eyes from burning before beginning to read. The headline had her hands clenching into fists in her lap. By the end, her entire body was shaking with rage, her core temperature rising along with her anger.
She read the final assessment again and again, and still, she could make no sense of the lies poured over pages and pages of a report based on false information and trauma.
Iron Man: yes. Tony Stark: not recommend.
Pepper was reaching for the keyboard to send this to herself when a cry sounded out through the room. Her head whipped up and her eyes immediately snapped to the source of the noise, and her eyes widened as she saw Kaylan—a lovely young woman from Legal who showed nothing but promise and was designated to search for anything related to Tony Stark—watching her computer screen with tears running down her cheeks and both hands clasped over her mouth.
“Friday, show me her screen now,” Pepper snapped, her heart racing and lungs tightening with dread as the large screen against the far wall clicked on and slowly, a dark, grainy video began to play. “Clear up that video. I need to be able to see exactly what’s happening.”
F.R.I.D.A.Y got to work, and in a moment the quality was much better. Pepper watched in growing horror as... Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes looked directly at the camera from over the hood of a car that was all too familiar. Pepper’s eyes followed the man’s arm into the car, and she let out a pained gasp at the sight of Howard Stark, face bloodied as it laid lifelessly across the steering wheel.
Audio began playing, no doubt enhanced by F.R.I.D.A.Y due to the delay, and the tears that had been building in Pepper’s eyes finally spilled over as she heard Maria Stark cry for her life as it was choked out of her, her breath gurgling off into nothing. The entire room was silent save for the choppy audio and they all watched in horror as the monster on screen stalked around the car and shot out the video camera.
The screen blinked to black and the only sound was their joint distress. Pepper felt like her entire body was numb, like she was nothing but a hollowed-out husk filled with despair, until the heat started to break through her thoughts. She was out of her seat before the realization fully formed.
“Friday lock this room down, authorization code echo x-ray tango romeo echo mike india sierra. I don’t want a single whisper of information getting out of here, and don’t you dare alert Jarvis or Tony, override authorization mike sierra papa oscar tango tango sierra.” Pepper took a deep breath that did nothing to stop the boiling of her blood, and she knew her eyes were glowing as she turned back to the room. “Ladies, sit tight.”
Her bare feet made barely a sound as she hurried through her office. Behind her desk was a gorgeous painting that Pepper quickly moved aside. There was no spot for a handprint, no change in the wall, nothing that could be seen by the naked eye—and Pepper was sure nothing could be seen through any other means—and still, she laid her burning palm against the wall and soundlessly, it parted.
Inside was a bare room, adorned with nothing but a large screen, a speaker embedded in the wall, and a handful of F.R.I.D.A.Y’s sensors. The doors slid shut behind her and the unforgiving rage that had been boiling under his skin spilled over in the form of fire erupting across her body. With a scream of pure desperation, she flung her hands away from her and her body exploded with the fury kept contained under her skin.
As she burned brighter and hotter than ever before, there was only one thought in her mind: she was going to burn every single one of them for hurting Tony.