Tony/Pepper AU Ficlet

[icarus_chained]

For a prompt on comment_fic of: "MCU, Pepper, benevolent dictator". Um. I suspect I took this a LOT more seriously than intended -_-;

Title: Pale Queen
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, a little Rhodey. Tony/Pepper
Summary: "Ask me to help you take over the world, Pepper Potts. Ask me to be your knight, and you my queen. Ask me that, ask me anything, and I will."
Wordcount: 1317
Warnings/Notes: Erm. Pain and joy and world domination?
Disclaimer: Not mine

Pale Queen

"Do you ever feel like maybe Dr Doom had the right idea?"

Tony froze, his eyes flashing up to meet Rhodey's equally alarmed stare, and slowly, warily, the pair of them turned to the final person in the room.

Pepper wasn't looking at them. She was glaring down at a spread of papers on her desk, damage reports and collateral and who knew what, wisps of hair sticking out wildly where her fingers had been fretting at her temples, trying to stave off the encroaching headache. She looked pale and tired, and her tone was far too calm and rational-sounding for the words that were in it.

"Um," Tony managed, half turning towards her and half ready to run away. "About what, Pep? Because the man is more than a little crazy, there aren't many things he's right about. The whole 'technology from magic' thing, to start with ..."

She looked up at him, an odd little smile on her features. A bloodless-looking little thing.

"I was thinking more about the 'benevolent dictator' part, actually," she admitted, resting her cheek carefully on one fist. "There are times when the idea seems so very ... so very attractive. Don't you think?"

And she said it with a distant serenity that he recognised. The one that only came after you'd already pushed through useless rage and drifted into the quiet place beyond it, where suddenly so many things seemed right and necessary and doable. That place at the far edge of extremity, where suddenly the world seemed crystal clear.

Tony knew that place. Tony set things on fire, from that place. The thought of Pepper there ...

"It'd be a lot of work," he tried cautiously, edging a little towards Rhodey, glancing over at him for back-up. Rhodey just stared back, nonplussed and so far from willing to be the first to step into this breach. Tony glared at him, and turned back to smile winningly at Pepper. "Not that I don't think you could do it, Pep, but given how much hassle it already is to run SI, are you sure you'd really want to?"

Honestly, who would want that? Who'd set themselves up to be the place where the buck stopped, to be responsible for all that shit? He wouldn't, that's for sure. A whole world. Who would do that?

Pepper's expression never even flickered, though. It stayed bright and amused and clearly, distantly thoughtful.

"I know," she murmured, her lip quirking faintly. "And as supervillain origins go, 'depressed and angry over paperwork' isn't the most impressive. Especially when I'm not even a superhero yet. It's just ..."

She paused, idly moving papers around the desk in front of her, fingertips delicately lifting them into new and possibly more illuminating positions. There was an odd note to her silence, a touch of pain to that distant clarity, a touch of something deep and genuine.

"It just seems like it would be better," she said softly. "To be the one who sets the rules, so you can always know whose fault things are. To make things whole and streamlined, so that things can't slip through the cracks and ... and hurt people." She shrugged, the movement slightly stilted, slightly pained. "It would be so much work. But sometimes ... sometimes it almost feels like it would be worth it. You know?"

And it was the little desolate note that did it, the hollow pain and the quiet steel behind it. Tony felt something, a quiver of something as it moved through him, as bright and clear and distantly joyous as the thing in her expression, and without quite realising it, he found himself moving. Found himself drifting towards her, with Rhodey as close and as silent behind him. She looked up at him, pale and tired where she sat like a weary queen on her throne, and some instinct moved him to kneel beside her, to look up at her with something strange and fire-forged in his expression. Something as desolate and fierce as her own.

"You'd be good at it," he told her, while she smiled bemusedly down at him, and reached out to touch his cheek with pale fingers. "You'd be the most terrible and wonderful dictator ever, Pep. You'd be the best."

And while she laughed at him, warm and startled, he reached up, and caught her hand in his. Tangled her slim fingers in his blunt ones, wrapped slender steel in fire and iron. She went still, her eyes widening, and he smiled at her, an expression only one other person had ever seen. A man long years dead, a man who'd died to set him free.

"Tony?" she whispered, something wide and fearful in her eyes, and under it, just beneath it ... something not fearful at all. Something hollow and distant and ready, in that bright distant place where suddenly the world seems so very clear. "Tony?"

"If you asked me to," he told her, and it was bright and it was laughing and it was completely serious, "I'd do that for you. If you wanted a world, I'd get you one. Any world you wanted. You're the sanest person I know. I'd trust a world to you without a second thought."

Her chest hitched, her breath stuttered, and her hand was so tight in his. So warm and pale and desperately strong. Rhodey sat down suddenly behind them, gripping the edge of the desk and lowering himself down in Tony's peripheral vision. Never saying a word. Never voicing a single protest. Tony grinned, fire in the darkness, and held tight to Pepper's hand.

"Ask me to help you take over the world, Pepper Potts," he said, his tone entirely too calm and rational-sounding for the words it contained. "Ask me to be your knight and you my queen. Ask me that, ask me anything, and I will."

And he meant it, he meant every word, he'd trust her with anything and fight to give her everything. He'd pick a fight with the whole damn universe to make her happy, to see the steel in her shine bright and clear. He couldn't run a world, only an idiot would think him capable of that, but in the right hands, a weapon in the right hands, he could sure give that world to someone who could.

He was the weapon they all wanted, the thing everyone wanted on their side, the thing they fought and clawed and tore people apart to acquire. He was the thing that had fought itself free, the thing that bowed its head to no-one, the thing that damn well dared them to try and take him again. He was no-one's weapon but his own, and he knelt now at her side. He offered it to her, to the one person who had never asked before, and if she asked now, he'd give it.

And she knew that. Looking at her, seeing her, he could see she knew it. That bright, hollow thing in her eyes, that desolate joy. She listened, and she heard, and she knew.

She pulled her hand from his, drew it carefully and gently back. He let it go, watched it draw away. Watched it return, until it passed behind his vision, as she carefully took his face between her palms. As she cradled his head and leaned down to rest hers against it, her forehead warm and heavy against his. His breath hitched in its turn, and she smiled at him. Soft and bloodless.

"Give me a world, Tony," she said quietly, into a silence hushed and trembling. "Help me make a world to keep you safe in. To keep everyone safe in." A tiny smile, a shaking thing. "Help me do that. Please?"

And he bit his lip, a laughing knight before his weary queen, and nodded his head against hers.

"Ms Potts, it would be my absolute pleasure."