𝒩𝑜𝓌 𝐼 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌 𝓈𝒽𝑒'𝓁𝓁 𝓃𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓂𝑒 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓃 𝒶𝓈 𝓈𝒽𝑒 𝓇𝓊𝓃𝓈 𝒶𝓌𝒶𝓎
Audelia Motter and Tony Stark had each other's backs through thick and thin. But after the abduction of the billionaire in Afghanistan by the Ten Rings...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Walking gingerly into the lab in the basement, Pepper Potts kept her eyes trained cautiously on Tony Stark as he moved around the lab, pressing different things on his screens and tinkering with his suit as it hung from the ceiling.
Hearing her heels clicking on the concrete, Tony turned and pointed over at his assistant.
"Good, you're here. You busy? Cause I really need you to run an errand for me," Tony grabbed a flashdrive sitting on the table, tossing it over to Pepper. "I need you to go to my office. You're going to hack into the mainframe and you're going to retrieve all the recent shipping manifests."
"Tony-"
"This is a lock chip. This'll get you in. It's probably under Executive Files. If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need to look for the lowest numeric heading-"
"So what?" Pepper's voice cut in, her eyes narrowed as she gripped the flash-drive in her hands. "I bring the information back here and you just do the exact same thing?"
"That's the plan, yes," Tony sighed, looking down at the tools littered across the table in front of him. "They've been dealing under the table. Dell and I...we have to find out weapons and destroy them. It's the only way."
"Tony, I would do anything to help the two of you," the red haired woman swallowed the lump in her throat. "But I can't help you if you're going to start this again. Especially when you're dragging Deli into this-"
"I haven't dragged her into anything," Tony rebutted, pointing at the woman. "Dell is doing this because we're on the same page. Those weapons are out there because of her, too. There is nothing except this. There's no art opening. There is no benefit. There is nothing to sign. There is the next mission and nothing else."
"Is that so?" Pepper shook her head, tossing the flash-drive onto the counter as she turned away. "Then I quit."
Tony eyes widened as he rose from his seat, his next words stopping Pepper in her tracks near the door of the lab.
"You stood by me, all these years, as I reaped the benefits of destruction. You stood by Deli and encouraged her to help design the most dangerous weapons in the world. Now that we're trying to fix it, you're going to walk away-"
"Because you're going to kill yourself, Tony!" the red haired woman's voice was raised as she whipped around to face her boss. "I'm not going to be part of it. You're going to kill yourself, and then you're going to get Audelia killed. That woman cares about you so much that she will follow you anywhere, just like she is right now. You're going to get the both of you killed."
As the weight of the words set in for both of them, Pepper Potts couldn't find it in herself to actually walk out that lab door and leave him behind. Tony and Audelia...they were all she had. Her friends, her family, and as much as she wanted to walk out she couldn't force herself to take the step.
