Saving Grace

Four

"I'll be back before you know it," he'd said.

It's been weeks. Months. Lifetimes.

All Happy and Pepper would tell her was that he was missing. Something happened, and they couldn't find him.

"Why not?" she'd asked. Her entire world was crumbling around her. "Where is he? When will he come back?"

Happy sighed sadly, "I don't know, kid. But they're looking." For his body, he thought, but he couldn't say it. Not to her.

Everyday without him she became more and more upset. At seven years old, she was sick with worry. She didn't want to play, and she definitely didn't want to do her school work. Pepper tried to get her to watch a movie, but she refused. He was all she had, and now he was lost.

One day, she was upstairs, alone in her room. Pepper and Happy were downstairs, dealing with everything. Jarvis suddenly said, "Ms. Potts, it's Grace..."

Pepper found her crying on her bedroom floor, clutching a teddy bear to her chest. Pepper recognized it as the one Tony said he bought for her when she was three. She'd been carrying it around ever since they told her he was missing.

Pepper almost started crying herself, but held her tears down for Grace. She sat down next to her, putting a hand on her back. "Grace."

She just kept crying.

Pepper pulled her closer and held her, putting her on her lap. "It's gonna be okay."

"Wh-Why won't he c-come back?" She cried harder, burying her face in Pepper's shirt.

"I don't know, honey. But he will. He'll come back for you."

But it didn't help. She was inconsolable. Pepper couldn't help herself; she started crying, too. She tried to calm her down for about ten minutes, but nothing worked.

Finally, she had an idea.

"Jarvis," she said, "can you play a recording of Tony's voice? Anything you have."

He played a recording of verbal notes Tony took about five months ago on some measurements for something he was building. Grace quieted, listening.

Eventually, she fell asleep, the teddy bear still in her arms.