Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Eighty-Eight: Pepper and Tony

Pepper and Tony

Bucky is finding that the sessions with Janis are helping. Steve is always there with him. Whilst he trusts Steve with his sanity and his life, he still does not truly trust anyone else except Freya. Freya had told Steve a little about what had happened with Bucky at the camp, she had even mentioned about the 'ticking clock' process and he was able therefore to tell Janis some of what Bucky had faced. Listening to Steve talking to Janis was the first Bucky knew about it. It is a shame that Tony does not tell them what he has access to, it would have helped the process - although what effect it would have on Janis' mind, god only knows. Even for Tony some of the tapes and files are not easy to look at, and they have become harder to watch and read since Janis' first meeting with them.

After that meeting Tony had locked himself away in his lab. Pepper knows it is time she interfered, time she made Tony realise just how much she loves him, just how much she wants to be a part of his life, wants to be there for the bad as well as the good.

Tony is sat at one of the many work benches he has scattered around his lab and he is working on electronic parts whilst grumbling at his helping hand, Dum-E, who behaves more like a pet dog than an automaton. His other helping hand, Butterfingers, is parked away in the corner working on some type of monitoring system and when it sees Pepper it waves to her, she cannot help but smile and finds herself waving back.

"Am I interrupting?" Pepper asks Tony. Dum-E shakes it's head as if to say no.

"It's always nice to see you but I need to get this finished. Give me a bit longer and then I'll come and find you," Tony says picking up another circuity board.

"So I am interrupting?"

Tony smiles "Yes."

"Good, I hoped I was," and Pepper's reply stops him in his tracks and he looks at her. He knows that look on her face.

He does the Tony-looking-sheepish act that usually charms her, but he can see it isn't going to work this time. He throws down the board, crosses his arm and looks hard done by. Pepper takes one of his arms and pulls it to her and then takes his hand and kisses it which surprises him. Then she pulls him up from the bench and over to where he has an old couch he sometimes sleeps on.

"We need to talk," she says as she sits down next to Tony, totally focused on him. He goes to lie to her, to tell her no they don't, but instead he finds the words drying up in his mouth. "Tell me," she says quietly. Then she waits.

When he speaks it is not what she was expecting.

"Did she drug me?" he asks.

"Who?" Pepper is puzzled.

"You know who..." and when he can see Pepper is still frowning: "The woman, Janis."

"No! What makes you think she drugged you?"

"I would never have shot you Pepper, never!" And she can hear the anger in his voice.

"She said you probably wouldn't remember and warned me you would ask..." she says slowly, and Tony quietens.

"Okay, you remember what you said to her about not believing -"

He doesn't let her finish "Yes, yes I remember that!" he says impatiently.

"Do you remember her asking you to remove your wrist watch?"

Tony frowns. "She didn't." But there in the far recesses of his mind, it sounds familiar.

"You had said that no one could be made to do something by passing a watch back and forward...no let me finish," Pepper is firm and stops Tony as he goes to interrupt her. "Janis asked if she could show you a trick, make you do something you would never do and you agreed. She then asked you to take off your watch and look at it, she told you to watch the second hand ticking around and you did. Then she seemed to lower her voice, it was...comforting. She told you that in a minute she was going to take a mirror out of her purse and lay it on the table but that you would see it as a gun. She said she would then ask you to say the alphabet but when you reached the letter G you would pick the gun up, aim it at me and fire." Pepper smiles to try and belay any accusation that she thought he would hear in her voice. "She asked if you understood and you said yes."