"It's not real," Tony said quickly. "It's just—drawing. Like coloring books for engineers."
Tony looked at the blank whiteboard. At the empty drawer. At the quiet Alfa Romeo. Then he took her hand.
Pepper said it was progress. "You're finally human," she whispered, tracing the circular scar where the electromagnet had sat. Tony smiled and nodded and waited for her to fall asleep so he could walk to the garage.
Just a thought experiment, he told himself. Engineering is meditation. iron man 3.rar
Pepper stood there in her robe, arms crossed. Not angry. Just tired.
He opened the bottom drawer of his toolbox. Inside, wrapped in an oily rag, was a single repulsor node. Non-functional. A paperweight. He'd kept it as a reminder not to relapse.
"Nothing," he said. And for the first time, he believed it. "I'm afraid of nothing. That's the problem. I don't know who I am without the next explosion to run toward." "It's not real," Tony said quickly
Pepper erased the whiteboard with her palm. Tony flinched, then didn't.
It started as a tingle in his left hand—phantom feedback from a gauntlet he no longer wore. Then the images arrived: Aldrich Killian's molten face, the Vice President's cold smirk, the barrel of a tank aimed at a playground in Tennessee. Tony gripped the workbench until his knuckles went white.
She held out her hand.
No. He'd promised Pepper. No more suits. No more sleepless nights welding titanium alloy. No more near-death experiences.
His hand hovered over it.