Fic: Iron & Irony, chapters 7 and 8
Jun. 22nd, 2008 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veldeiaRating: PG-13 for some language etc
Category: Crossover, angst, drama, hurt/comfort, romance, suspense
Spoilers: Iron Man, the movie / House MD late season 4
Pairings: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Summary: An Iron Man movieverse / House MD crossover. When Tony suspects he's caught a mystery illness, he turns to the best doctor he can find. But can House solve this puzzle?
Chapter 7: "That's it?"
Full of apprehension, Tony watched as House discharged the EMP.
Contrary to what he'd expected, he actually felt it hit him, like a small electric shock. All the lights blinked out, leaving them in pitch-dark.
It took Tony a few seconds to realize that it was really, completely dark. No blue glow. Despite the shielding, his arc reactor had failed. He could already feel the worsening pain in his chest. For some reason, no one else had noticed, or something had gone wrong, because no one was helping him. He could've been alone in the dark for all he knew. He tried to call out for help, but, of course, he couldn't shout when he couldn't breathe on his own.
He grabbed the arc reactor, yanked it out, shook it, smashed it hard against his palm, but it stayed dead. There was nothing he could do.
A horrible, sharp, tearing pain pierced his heart.
Then, he died.
He woke up to see House standing next to his bed, the EMP-device in one hand, his finger over the switch. And he set it off.
Instantly, the whole device exploded in a huge ball of fire and lighting. The air was full of smoke, everyone in the room was screaming in pain, their clothes on fire, including Tony, who couldn't do anything but lie helplessly in his bed and burn alive.
And he woke up again. The third time, he realized that this was completely ridiculous and he had to be dreaming, but it didn't help. Instead, it made things worse: it removed all the realistic limitations that had been there before.
Since he knew it was a dream, Tony was able to watch as they detonated the device and the EMP went wide, far wider than he'd expected, sweeping through the hospital. Omnipresent, he saw how all electronic equipment shut down, how patient after patient died as their life-support failed - an old man who was in a coma slipping away, the life of a pretty, young girl snuffed out as she lay on the operating table with her chest cut open... And it spread even wider. Outside the hospital, he saw cars stop dead in the streets, neon signs and streetlights go out, chaos and mayhem breaking out everywhere, until there was nothing but darkness...
The next time, he found himself standing beside his own body, witnessing himself go into cardiac arrest. Kutner picked up the paddles and tried to defibrillate him, but instead of fixing his heart, the electric shock completely fried the arc reactor, which stopped working too, and so, he died again.
Tony was starting to feel like he was the main character in a computer game where the goal was to keep him alive, and the one playing the game couldn't get it right no matter what they did, so they had to keep reloading again and again. Or like he was stuck in Groundhog Day, or that one episode of Xena the Warrior Princess, except that there was nothing he could do to influence what was going on.
After everything even remotely realistic had already happened, the scenarios got even more absurd: House was about to launch the EMP, when the door to the room opened, and Obadiah Stane stepped through. First, he used the sonic device to paralyze everyone and shot them in cold blood - Pepper, Rhodey, House, all of them. Then he walked to Tony's bedside, told him "You thought you won, but you never will!" and pulled out the arc reactor.
On one hand, Tony desperately wanted to wake up and get out of this endless loop of nightmares. On the other, he was terrified of learning the truth. What if it was like one of these worst case scenarios, or even worse?
Like House had expected, the event itself wasn't nearly as dramatic as his introduction had suggested. There was hardly anything to see or to feel. The device fizzled and threw a few sparks, and the lamps directly above it blinked out. Without them, the middle of the room, the area around Stark's bed, was left in a dimmer light than the rest, the soft blue glow of the arc reactor standing out clearly.
"Wow," House whispered soundlessly to himself. If the EMP had turned off those lights, then its range really had been just as limited as Stark had said. Estimating from the darkened area in the ceiling, House could visualize how it had emanated from the device in a sphere that just reached each wall of the room. Very precise. He was genuinely impressed. And everything looked promising so far.
"That's it?" Kutner broke the silence, sounding dumbstruck and somewhat disappointed.
"Yup. Roll end credits. Let's go home," House replied the dumb question with a dumb answer. "But wait, look, oh my God, there's a patient on that bed! I wonder if he's all right?"
The stupefied stillness lasted for a few more seconds, and then - finally - his team dashed into action. Kutner knocked on the door leading out and shouted for Taub to get in. As he and the nurses started rushing to the room with the medical equipment, House turned towards Stark.
To his annoyance, he quickly realized that there was hardly anything he could say about Stark's condition right now. The cumbersome protective clothing House wore kept him from doing anything he'd normally have done. Even if he'd had a stethoscope, which he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to listen to anything since his ears were covered - besides, if there was a background hum from the arc reactor, it would have been an ear-splitting experience anyway. Almost the same went for trying to check his patient's pulse: the gloves covering his hands were too thick for him to feel much of anything. So, basically, before they got the monitors online again, he couldn't even tell if Stark still had a heartbeat. Berating himself mentally for not thinking about this earlier, House joined the others in setting up everything.
Good thing that the EMP had worked so well. Since it had been so small-range, they had perfectly working power outlets in the room. The fact that they had plenty of light made things easier too, because having to rely on flashlights and portable lamps would've slowed them down. With four doctors and three nurses in the room, their work was quickly done.
As soon as they had the leads attached, the EKG monitor bleeped an alarm, showing ventricular tachycardia with a heart rate of 164. So, apparently the patient still had a heartbeat, but probably not for long, unless they did something to fix the rhythm.
Kutner had already grabbed the paddles, but House held out a hand in a stop-sign, palm outwards. "Hold your horses, my daredevil Defibrillist," he ordered. He eyed Stark's upper body, his gaze stopping at the silvery arc reactor gleaming in the dimmed light. Shocking someone who had an inbuilt magnet/generator/whatever in their chest had "bad idea" written all over it. "Let's try drugs first. Start him on amiodarone," House decided. Kutner frowned at him. That wasn't going by the book, but following rules blindly never was House's thing.
"His fever's spiked," Thirteen shouted, catching House's attention. He checked the reading - 106.8. Not good. Definitely not good.
"We can't have that. Acetaminophen for the fever... And someone get a blood sample, run to the lab and stare at it for a while. I'd like to know what the hell's going on in there."
House had no idea what was going on in Stark's body. Was the VT due to the high fever, or was it a sign of his heart failing because of the disease, or were both effects of their shot at "treating" the thing? House could see three options. One, the EMP had done nothing, which meant that the symptoms were a sign that the disease was getting worse, and might kill Stark in a matter of minutes. Two, the EMP had worked and deactivated the nanovirus, and now Stark's immune system had to fight the mess still left in his body, which would explain the fever quite well. Three, the EMP had caused something unexpected, like made all the nanoviruses explode - but House would've expected even worse and stranger symptoms from some freak reaction like that.
He glanced at the EKG again. Still VT, but the heart rate had slowed down, and at least it hadn't deteriorated into ventricular fibrillation yet, which was promising. After the drugs had been administered, there wasn't a whole lot they could do but wait and see. House reckoned that if Stark started getting better, then the EMP had probably worked, and if he kept getting worse, then it hadn't. Then again, it was also possible that he'd survive the disease even if the EMP had done nothing at all. So, unless Stark's blood gave some clue, they couldn't be sure what had happened.
First, House had a puzzle that he couldn't solve because he simply couldn't understand it. Now, if the patient started getting better, he wouldn't know why. This had to be the single most frustrating case he had ever had.
"What's going on?" Colonel Rhodes asked commandingly, stepping away from the wall and closer to Stark's bed. "Did it work?"
"How should I know?" House answered sardonically. "I just work here."
"I'm not taking any of that from you," Rhodes grumbled. "Just tell me, is he going to get better?"
"Honestly, I have no idea. Only time will tell."
Time gave them hope. It only took some minutes before Stark's heartbeat settled into a stable sinus tachycardia. "Sorry, Defibrillator-Man, you can put those away," House told Kutner, who'd been standing frozen in his place, with the paddles at ready, all through the scene. "Too bad, you won't be able to add 'getting zapped when trying to defib a guy with an arc reactor' to your list of heroic feats, after all."
Stark's fever had come down a bit as well, but it was still dangerously high. Despite repeated attempts, they couldn't rouse him, though he did respond to pain, trying to withdraw his hand when House pinched his finger. It wasn't unexpected that he was unconscious, not after the way he'd taxed his already exhausted body, working on the EMP device through the night. Then again, slipping into a coma would not be an encouraging sign.
Taub returned from the lab to tell them that "I could still spot nanoviruses in his blood."
"So it didn't work?" Stark's assistant exclaimed, sounding desperate.
"Still can't tell," House replied, annoyed both at her and the uncertainty of the situation. "It might be inactive and just waiting for its doom even though it's still there." But, House thought to himself, at least it showed the bugs hadn't been blasted into tiny bits or anything like that, so it ruled out option number three.
"If it's inactive, then we can't get it anymore, can we? It's no longer contagious?"
"If, then yes. But it's a big If. Very iffy."
"Actually... I really don't care," Potts muttered, and started pulling off her gloves.
Worried out of her wits, Pepper waited and stared as the doctors worked on Tony. She didn't know if the EMP had done what it was supposed to, since she really hadn't known what to expect. She also couldn't follow what was going on. Tony was still unconscious and looked every bit as sick as before. The only things she could understand were Kutner grabbing the paddles, which looked like a bad sign, and the fact that Tony's fever was even higher than before. She felt useless, just standing here like this. She guessed Rhodes felt the same way, and his outburst at House made that even clearer.
When Taub returned and told that there still were nanoviruses in Tony's blood, she felt like all her hopes had been crushed, but then House pointed out that this might be good. The nanoviruses might be inactive. If they were, then she would be safe even without the protective clothing. And if they weren't, well, then Tony was going to die, wasn't he? She had always considered herself a more or less realistic and practical person, and definitely not a Romeo and Juliet -scale hopeless romantic. Yet now she found herself thinking that if Tony was going to die, she really couldn't care less about her own health.
She pulled off one protective glove, then the other, and opened the hood, which contained the air filtering system. By this time, Rhodes had realized what she was up to, and tried to stop her, grabbing both her arms in a strong grip and pinning them against her sides. "Miss Potts! Pepper! Are you out of your mind?"
"Rhodey, you're too late," she told him. "I've already exposed myself to the air."
He knew she was telling the truth. He let go of her arms, and shook his head at her. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said.
"Now we're going to have to keep you in isolation as well, Miss Potts," Thirteen pointed out. "Maybe for quite a long time, too, since we don't know exactly how the disease progresses in the early stages, when will the nanoviruses show up in blood samples, and so on."
Pepper hadn't even thought about that, but she didn't care. At the moment, this felt like the right thing to do. She felt better than a moment ago, not as helpless, and energetic, with an unexpected adrenaline rush that doing something so extreme, more than a bit crazy, had caused. She stripped off the rest of the protective clothing, and stood there, in nothing but her regular clothes.
With everyone else staring at her in a stunned silence, she crossed the room to Tony's bedside, and then forgot that there was anyone else in the room. She swept back the damp hair from his forehead. It felt so hot with fever that he was practically radiating warmth. In the dim light, the arc reactor's glow cast strange bluish shadows on his pale face, in a horrible illusion that made him look like he was dead. She covered the reactor with her hand. It felt cool to the touch, unlike the skin around it. The changed light wasn't much better, though - now Tony's face looked gray instead of blue and white.
A chair appeared behind her, apparently brought there by Rhodes. She sat down on it, and took Tony's hand between hers, intertwining her fingers with his. She couldn't have done any of this properly if she'd still been wearing the protection, and if Tony was going to die, this was the way things should be, with Pepper by his side, until the very end.
In the room around her, people gradually returned to action. House sent away the nurses ("Don't you have anywhere else to be?"), and set his team to run some more tests. Pepper stayed where she was, so that they had to work around her, but they didn't complain.
Rhodes stopped by her side, and stood there silently, looking at Tony as well, and resting a comforting hand on her shoulder. He stayed there for some time - could've been an hour, could've been five minutes - and then, squeezed her shoulder and let go. "I've got to go away again for a while, I promised I'd be in touch with the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Okay," Pepper mumbled. As she watched him walk out, she wondered if Rhodey could guess anything, if he could see that things had somehow changed between her and Tony, and what he would think about it. But she quickly forgot the thought, placing it in the folder in her mind labeled "later", which she would consider thinking about once Tony got better.
More time passed. She didn't bother keeping track of it. At one point, Kutner addressed her, telling her that things were actually looking better for Tony, and that the worst was probably over. She rewarded the good news with a smile, but didn't say anything.
After another timeless while of sitting there, his hand held between hers, Tony grasped her hand.
Pepper jumped, startled by the sudden sign of life from him. She stood up, her hand still in his, and looked at his face. He was gazing towards her, his eyes feverishly bright and clearly unfocused, and his expression surprised and confused.
He lifted her hand with his onto his chest, over the arc reactor, and with his other hand, pointed first at himself and then at her, calling to mind his earlier drawing. He still looked confused, or maybe in doubt, eyebrows raised inquiringly.
Feeling more conscious than before of the fact that there were others in the room with them, Pepper smiled at Tony. "Yes, Tony. I meant it. And we're both still alive."
Tony seemed content with that, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep. Somehow, she thought, he looked better now. More relaxed, with less furrows on his brow.
"Hey!" Doctor James Wilson exclaimed, as Greg House grabbed the larger half of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
"It's for medical purposes," House answered. "I can't remember when I last ate. I might just pass out on the floor of your office any minute now."
Knowing House and the case he was suddenly working on, Wilson thought it was probably true, too. When House got really interested about a case, he wouldn't let little things like sleep or food distract him. But Wilson wasn't about to give up this easily. "Amber made these for me, you know."
"Oh, and you think she guessed I was going to come along when you're eating and pick the bigger half, so she poisoned it? That sneaky bitch!" House said, and bit into the sandwich.
Wilson sighed. Why did he even try? They ate in silence, and House stole what remained of Wilson's coffee before he could drink it himself. Well, it was probably cold and tasted awful anyway. Then, House just sat there, unusually silent, staring at Wilson expectantly. Yeah, Wilson could easily guess what this was about. "All right, I'll ask. How's your superhero?"
"I can't tell you, that's top secret. Men in Black would appear and sweep our memories if I did."
"Oh, come on, House, I know you're burning to tell me!"
"But how badly do you want to know?"
"I'm not the one who's fanatic about this sort of stuff," Wilson said, stood up and took a few steps as if to leave the room.
"Well, all right," House said, not so surprisingly, and Wilson returned to his chair. "He's not super, but he's getting better," House told smugly.
"It's not really thanks to you, though, is it? I mean, it was HPS, so what could you do? Or did you come up with some unheard-of drug that's not yet past trials?"
"Well..." House raised his eyebrows and smirked. "You could say that."
"It was HPS, wasn't it?"
"You could say that, too."
"So, it wasn't! That explains. I was wondering how you'd be this fascinated about a hantavirus infection, but I thought it was just the patient that made the case cool... What was it, then?"
"That's something I really can't tell you," House said, his tone slightly more serious.
"I heard rumors about people getting evacuated from the rooms surrounding Stark's, what was that about?"
"Engineering project. He was bored. It was pretty neat, actually. You know, he really is a genius. I think he might be almost as smart as I am!"
"Since when have you started liking hypocritical wannabe world-savers?" - which was what House had called Stark earlier, when he and Wilson had last discussed the subject.
"I haven't. But Stark's cool."
Chapter 8: "Good news!"
Tony was going through the longest, maybe the most tormenting dream so far. House had flipped the switch, but nothing had happened. The device hadn't done anything at all. So, Tony lived through the last minutes or hours of his life as his body irrevocably, completely succumbed to the nanovirus. The doctors kept throwing everything they could think of at it, House coming up with countless ideas, none of which helped at all, and some even made Tony worse. He observed it all both from a spectator's view, watching the desperation in the room, Pepper's tears, Rhodey's anger and sadness, the doctors' frustration, and, at the same time, through his failing body, feeling the overwhelming sickness, the pain, the final, faint fluttering of his heart, the inevitable knowledge that this was the end...
When he woke up again, still shaken by the horrible experience, House and the EMP device were nowhere to be seen. It took Tony some time to realize that his vision wasn't as clear as before, but blurred, and he couldn't focus his eyes properly, and he was no longer omnipresent, but confined to the narrow view from his bed. His thoughts were awfully sluggish as well, and rambling - it was nearly impossible to concentrate, let alone stay coherent. He felt just as bad as in the previous nightmare. He wondered what this scenario was about, whether this was yet another "no EMP" thing, or maybe he was going to die all alone this time, or something like that.
He tried to concentrate on the surroundings. The lamps in the ceiling above him were dark, but there was light everywhere else, which was new. With huge effort, he turned his head slightly, and saw Pepper sitting next to his bed, and realized that she was holding his hand. He squeezed it tentatively, her small, slender fingers cool against his burning skin. Her beautiful face looked so sad, but her strawberry-blonde hair and freckles and blue eyes stood out vividly, despite the dim light and his fuzzy vision. It all felt very real. Could he be awake? Really awake?
She flinched at his touch and looked at him. Pepper... Had she really said that she loved him, or had that been a dream as well? He tried to think back to the memories of what had happened before the dreams began, but it was all hazy, a jumble of more or less realistic nightmares, of the frenetic hours spent working on the device, and pieces of conversations that he couldn't put together properly.
He was still unable to speak because he wasn't breathing on his own, and he wondered whether he could've put together a sentence that made any sense anyway. Still, he had to know if it had been true. His limbs felt like lead, but he dragged up his hand, lifting hers with it, placing them on the arc reactor, and he pointed at himself and at her, willing her to understand, and she did. She told him she had meant it. It had been true, and this was true, this wasn't a dream. That was all he needed to hear.
Tony went back to sleep, and this time, there were no more bad dreams.
The second time he came to, he knew it was real. The lamps above him were still dark, and in addition to Pepper, who hadn't moved from her place, Rhodey was there too, standing by his other side. On some level, Tony registered the strange fact that Rhodey wore a hazmat suit but Pepper was in her regular clothes. He didn't know what to make of it. They were both smiling at him.
"Way to go, man," Rhodey said, and shook his hand firmly.
"Welcome back again," Pepper greeted, smoothing the hair from his clammy forehead.
Tony still felt like death warmed over, so dizzy that it made him nauseous even though he was lying down, but thinking wasn't as hard as before. He sought for the clipboard, and Pepper handed it to him. His hand lax and lacking the coordination for anything complicated, he wrote, WTF?
Pepper chuckled. "The EMP device worked like you said it would, and you're getting better. They still don't know if the device actually did anything to the virus, but you beat the disease anyway."
"Iron Man kicked ass, as usual," Rhodey added with a grin.
Tony drew a happy smiley, and went back to sleep again.
The third time he woke up, he felt much better. Unfortunately, this time, it wasn't Pepper and Rhodey by his side, but House and Kutner. Tony grimaced with distaste.
"That's no way to greet your saviors," House sneered. Tony scowled at him. Damn this stupid tube stuffed into his windpipe - he seriously needed to be able to return that with an equal load of wit and sarcasm.
With a sound of fast footsteps, Pepper ran to Tony's rescue. "Tony! Good morning!" she shouted, and her face emerged between the doctors, positively beaming at him.
"Good to see you awake, Mr. Stark. And we've got some good news for you," Kutner told. Amusingly enough, he looked like he was a bit annoyed at House, too. "Your lungs are looking much better, so we're here to suggest that we could try extubating you. Getting you off the ventilator, that is."
YES!!!!1, Tony scribbled on the clipboard, wondering if anyone got the joke.
A moment later, when Kutner was pulling at the tube, Tony almost hoped he had said no instead. One more thing to the list of stuff he'd gladly have skipped. He gagged and felt like he was suffocating, and suddenly had a detailed flashback of pulling an even longer and slimier tube out of his nose when he'd woken up in Afghanistan - and then everything faded to black.
He jolted awake to House's grating voice shouting, "Hey! Stark! You Iron moron, the idea was to keep breathing, not to stop doing it!"
He breathed in, sweet, fresh air from the oxygen mask someone had slapped over his face. As soon as he'd gathered enough air to speak, he answered House. "That's... Mr. Stark, to you... and great job... trying to kill... your patient... once again... Doctor Dimwit."
For the first time in days, although breathing was strenuous and his throat felt like he had swallowed a box of nails, Tony felt wonderful.
After they'd made sure that his readings were OK and he was going to keep breathing, the doctors finally left him alone with Pepper. To his puzzlement, Tony noticed that she was wearing an ugly hospital gown now, the same as he was, while the doctors had been in full protective suits.
"What's up... with the... fashion statement?" he croaked at her.
"Um, I... I'm in isolation. Because... I guess I sort of flipped, when I thought you were going to die, so I got rid of the protection..." she stuttered, sounding more than a bit embarrassed. "So I'm stuck here with you until they can be certain that I haven't caught the nanovirus too."
Tony stared at her in disbelief, feeling like his mind had just done a somersault. At first, there was worry for her - he'd never forgive himself if she'd get this horrible sickness too - but then again, he was sure the EMP device had killed the nanovirus like they had hoped it would. He couldn't possibly have survived if it hadn't.
As the concern passed, he came to think about the positive sides of the situation. Whoa. It was a bit overwhelming. Stuck in this not-too-big hospital room with Pepper, possibly for days? Holy shit.
"Pepper... am I still dreaming?"
She planted a firm kiss on his forehead. "Does that feel like you are, Mr. Stark?"
"Absolutely. And I don't want to wake up, ever."
Rhodey hated having to leave the scene in the middle of it, uncertain of whether Tony would live or die, and he hated having to leave Pepper there alone, mad with grief by the looks of it. He couldn't believe she had actually stripped off her protective clothing. He knew she was very dedicated to her job and cared a great deal about Tony, but that had been extreme even for her.
As much as he hated it, Rhodey had promised Sitwell that he'd stop by at the local S.H.I.E.L.D. office at 1600, so he had no choice but to go. Tony had made it clear that the investigation was important, probably more important than Tony's life, since many more lives could be at risk.
The local "office" was actually only one floor of a building otherwise occupied by other government agencies. There seemed to be only about ten people working there, with Sitwell the only one who was actually eager to get something done. Not that Rhodey wanted to criticize them too much, they were all doing their jobs well enough. The others just did it with less fervor and more coffee. The apparent small size of the office and the lack of staff didn't really mean anything, either. There was an extensive network of S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives all around the country, and they communicated with them real-time.
"Good news! Or, well, at least news, I'm not sure if they're that good, but anyway," Sitwell explained excitedly. "We've managed to track down several of the missing scientists, plus one more who was missing and Mr. Stark hadn't found out about. One of the Stark Industries researchers was found dead, still in Brazil. Looked a lot like a car crash, but we're working on the details, it may have been something else. Out of the other seven, we have proof that all of them have been to Brazil at some point, but four have now left the Americas completely. They were headed towards different parts of Asia, so we can't know exactly where they were going. Probably the same place. The whole operation was expertly arranged, they traveled under false identities and all that, but, of course, that couldn't keep us from finding out."
"Of course," Rhodey repeated. It wasn't exactly easy to keep track of Sitwell's rambling talk, when he felt so preoccupied, all his thoughts still in the hospital room with Tony. "Good job. So, to summarize, out of eight missing people, one's dead, four have fled the country and three are still unaccounted for?"
"Yes, and one of those three is the woman who used to work for Stark Industries. We have a few leads that suggest she might still be in Brazil, but no certain information. It's slow, working with the local authorities there. Still, I'm sure will have more on her soon."
"Great. I'm sure Mr. Stark will appreciate your work."
"How is Mr. Stark? Will he be joining us in the investigation soon?"
"I don't know," Rhodey replied, struggling to keep his emotions in check. "I think I should get going now."
"But you only just arrived, you haven't even seen the data yet!"
"There's time for that later," Rhodey said, walked out of the office and drove back to the hospital.
Rhodey had been away for some two hours, but when he returned to Tony's room, it was as if he had never left. Pepper sat in the exact same place, still holding Tony's hand, Tony was still unconscious, looked very ill and had the same amount of medical machinery around him. Doctor Taub was hovering about his bed, checking the monitors, and nodded to Rhodey as a greeting.
"Rhodey!" Pepper exclaimed, and that second Rhodey knew that unlike he'd first thought, things had changed. She was smiling.
"What's up?"
"Tony's better. He's getting better, he's going to be all right," she said, all the earlier anxiety swept away from her face.
Rhodey joined her again in keeping company to Tony. After over an hour of uneventful vigil, the wait was unexpectedly rewarded, as he woke up. He only stayed conscious for a minute or so, just long enough that Pepper and Rhodey got to say "hi" and tell him the good news of his condition. Of course, even during such a short time and restricted to communicating through words written in a barely legible hand, Tony also managed to toss in some geekish humor. As he fell asleep again and the clipboard and pen slipped from his hands, Rhodey picked them up and grinned fondly at the smiley Tony had drawn.
"Everything's going to be okay," he told Pepper.
"Yes, I think so, too."
"We still need to catch whoever's behind this, though. I've got news from S.H.I.E.L.D., they have a few leads."
"Well, that's fine, but please don't tell Tony yet, Rhodey," she pleaded. "If you do, he'll just leap up from that bed and rush head-first into the danger, and he's still far from healthy."
"Yeah, well, I guess I might keep the news to myself for a while longer. Especially seeing as he's asleep again," Rhodey winked. "By the way, it's almost bedtime for healthy people as well. I'm heading to the hotel soon. Now that I know Tony's recovering, I might actually manage to get some sleep. You should try, too," he noted, knowing well enough how little rest she had had last night.
"It's that late? I had no idea. I guess I'll have to ask someone to bring me a bed."
On his way to the hotel, Rhodey wondered about the change he thought he saw in Pepper's attitude towards Tony. It had been there all day, he realized, he just hadn't really stopped to consider it. Somehow, she was more at ease around him than before, and the way she'd touched him today was something Rhodey had never seen from her. Maybe it was just her being worried. Rhodey knew well how being close to death, or the death of someone close to you, could change people. Then again, Pepper staying in Tony's room, even through the night, when she probably could've gotten a room of her own if she'd only asked... Rhodey wondered what this was leading into.
Pepper just couldn't force herself to believe that she could be in any danger herself. That she might've caught the nanovirus and might end up as sick as Tony had been. The whole idea was so unreal now that Tony was healing that she just ignored it completely.
The doctors had told that Tony's latest blood sample showed less nanoviruses than before, but again, they emphasized that it might only mean that his immune system had won the fight regardless of what the EMP had or hadn't done. They had also taken blood from her, but so far nothing unusual had showed up - but they told her that it might not mean anything either, Tony had only started feeling sick days after he'd caught the bug, and they couldn't tell if it would show up in blood samples before that. The truth was, they lacked any accurate means to test for the nanovirus, since looking at someone's blood through a microscope really wasn't one.
So, here she was, stuck in the hospital too. By the evening, the doctors had done the paperwork, and she was officially admitted. For the night, when she asked, they brought her a bed of her own, and hideous hospital clothes. Of course, she had brought clothes with her, a nice satin nightgown, and her toothbrush, and her make-up, and everything, but now she couldn't remember where she'd left her luggage. Probably somewhere in the hospital hallway. She'd ask someone to fetch it for her tomorrow. Today, she was so tired that she was starting to nod off while sitting by Tony's side.
After she woke up with her forehead resting against his ribs with no recollection of falling asleep, she decided she could as well follow Rhodey's advice and lie down. She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
In the morning, everything was better. After Pepper had eaten the completely tasteless hospital breakfast, the doctors showed up, and Tony woke up, and they pulled out the breathing tube. Though he gave her a horrible scare and stopped breathing for a while, House brought him back with a few mocking words, and there he was, breathing on his own, finally!
Only when she had to explain to him what she had done, why she was here without protection, and he asked her if he was dreaming, and she kissed his brow, the full reality of the situation dawned on her. She was trapped in this room with him, for who knew how long. Oh God.
"So, Pepper, I was thinking... Since we're stuck here for a while," he started in his still breathless voice. She frowned at him, slightly worried about what was coming. "This room's dreary. Seriously need to do something about it. I want a proper TV... and a surround sound system... and a king-size bed."
"Doctor Dimwit," House shook his head at Stark's wisecrack. That was lame. Then again, Stark had almost died, maybe it wasn't a wonder he was a bit rusty. House was looking forward to him getting better. There was some stuff he wanted to talk about, and, of course, a lot of verbal sparring to do.
House and Kutner left Stark's room after the successful extubation, to find themselves surrounded by a group of men in suits - or more exactly, three men and one woman, who also wore a pantsuit and had short swept-back hair. They all looked bored but sinister, wearing suitable secret agent earpieces, and one of them even had sunglasses.
"Kutner, look out! The Men in Black are here. I told you Stark was an alien!" House quipped, not really put off by the situation. He'd been expecting visitors like this a lot sooner, actually.
The secret agent people showed no reaction to House's words. "Doctor House," one of them said, and offered him a clipboard with a very official-looking form on it. Kutner got one too. House eyed it through: a non-disclosure agreement. No surprise there, either. The only interesting question was who the people worked for.
"Special agent Newell, S.H.I.E.L.D.," the man who had given House the form introduced himself. "We're here to make sure that no word whatsoever of Stark's arc reactor or the nanovirus that attacked him will ever reach the public."
"But... we sent Mr. Stark's blood samples to the CDC earlier on, when we didn't know what this was," Kutner spoke up timidly.
"That has been taken care of already, Doctor Kutner. Should anyone ask them, they will assure them that Stark's blood tested positive for HPS."
"Shield?" House repeated, frowning. He'd never heard the acronym before. "Superhero-Helping Intelligence-Evading Lot of Dorks or something like that?"
Newell took House's taunting without the slightest change in his expression. "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division," he answered, and showed House a badge with a logo depicting an eagle.
"Oh, all right, that really explains everything. Not," House scoffed.
"Believe me, Doctor House, you don't want to get in trouble with us."
He looked at the form again. As far as he could tell, it seemed genuine. He signed it. "I wouldn't have spoken to anyone anyway," he told them. "There is this little thing called doctor-patient confidentiality, you know." What he didn't say aloud was, he might not have cared about getting in trouble with these secret agent men, but he definitely didn't want to get in trouble with Iron Man. Or, at least any more trouble than he already was in, to be exact.
Back to Chapters 5 & 6
On to Chapters 9 & 10
Category: Crossover, angst, drama, hurt/comfort, romance, suspense
Spoilers: Iron Man, the movie / House MD late season 4
Pairings: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Summary: An Iron Man movieverse / House MD crossover. When Tony suspects he's caught a mystery illness, he turns to the best doctor he can find. But can House solve this puzzle?
Chapter 7: "That's it?"
Full of apprehension, Tony watched as House discharged the EMP.
Contrary to what he'd expected, he actually felt it hit him, like a small electric shock. All the lights blinked out, leaving them in pitch-dark.
It took Tony a few seconds to realize that it was really, completely dark. No blue glow. Despite the shielding, his arc reactor had failed. He could already feel the worsening pain in his chest. For some reason, no one else had noticed, or something had gone wrong, because no one was helping him. He could've been alone in the dark for all he knew. He tried to call out for help, but, of course, he couldn't shout when he couldn't breathe on his own.
He grabbed the arc reactor, yanked it out, shook it, smashed it hard against his palm, but it stayed dead. There was nothing he could do.
A horrible, sharp, tearing pain pierced his heart.
Then, he died.
He woke up to see House standing next to his bed, the EMP-device in one hand, his finger over the switch. And he set it off.
Instantly, the whole device exploded in a huge ball of fire and lighting. The air was full of smoke, everyone in the room was screaming in pain, their clothes on fire, including Tony, who couldn't do anything but lie helplessly in his bed and burn alive.
And he woke up again. The third time, he realized that this was completely ridiculous and he had to be dreaming, but it didn't help. Instead, it made things worse: it removed all the realistic limitations that had been there before.
Since he knew it was a dream, Tony was able to watch as they detonated the device and the EMP went wide, far wider than he'd expected, sweeping through the hospital. Omnipresent, he saw how all electronic equipment shut down, how patient after patient died as their life-support failed - an old man who was in a coma slipping away, the life of a pretty, young girl snuffed out as she lay on the operating table with her chest cut open... And it spread even wider. Outside the hospital, he saw cars stop dead in the streets, neon signs and streetlights go out, chaos and mayhem breaking out everywhere, until there was nothing but darkness...
The next time, he found himself standing beside his own body, witnessing himself go into cardiac arrest. Kutner picked up the paddles and tried to defibrillate him, but instead of fixing his heart, the electric shock completely fried the arc reactor, which stopped working too, and so, he died again.
Tony was starting to feel like he was the main character in a computer game where the goal was to keep him alive, and the one playing the game couldn't get it right no matter what they did, so they had to keep reloading again and again. Or like he was stuck in Groundhog Day, or that one episode of Xena the Warrior Princess, except that there was nothing he could do to influence what was going on.
After everything even remotely realistic had already happened, the scenarios got even more absurd: House was about to launch the EMP, when the door to the room opened, and Obadiah Stane stepped through. First, he used the sonic device to paralyze everyone and shot them in cold blood - Pepper, Rhodey, House, all of them. Then he walked to Tony's bedside, told him "You thought you won, but you never will!" and pulled out the arc reactor.
On one hand, Tony desperately wanted to wake up and get out of this endless loop of nightmares. On the other, he was terrified of learning the truth. What if it was like one of these worst case scenarios, or even worse?
Like House had expected, the event itself wasn't nearly as dramatic as his introduction had suggested. There was hardly anything to see or to feel. The device fizzled and threw a few sparks, and the lamps directly above it blinked out. Without them, the middle of the room, the area around Stark's bed, was left in a dimmer light than the rest, the soft blue glow of the arc reactor standing out clearly.
"Wow," House whispered soundlessly to himself. If the EMP had turned off those lights, then its range really had been just as limited as Stark had said. Estimating from the darkened area in the ceiling, House could visualize how it had emanated from the device in a sphere that just reached each wall of the room. Very precise. He was genuinely impressed. And everything looked promising so far.
"That's it?" Kutner broke the silence, sounding dumbstruck and somewhat disappointed.
"Yup. Roll end credits. Let's go home," House replied the dumb question with a dumb answer. "But wait, look, oh my God, there's a patient on that bed! I wonder if he's all right?"
The stupefied stillness lasted for a few more seconds, and then - finally - his team dashed into action. Kutner knocked on the door leading out and shouted for Taub to get in. As he and the nurses started rushing to the room with the medical equipment, House turned towards Stark.
To his annoyance, he quickly realized that there was hardly anything he could say about Stark's condition right now. The cumbersome protective clothing House wore kept him from doing anything he'd normally have done. Even if he'd had a stethoscope, which he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to listen to anything since his ears were covered - besides, if there was a background hum from the arc reactor, it would have been an ear-splitting experience anyway. Almost the same went for trying to check his patient's pulse: the gloves covering his hands were too thick for him to feel much of anything. So, basically, before they got the monitors online again, he couldn't even tell if Stark still had a heartbeat. Berating himself mentally for not thinking about this earlier, House joined the others in setting up everything.
Good thing that the EMP had worked so well. Since it had been so small-range, they had perfectly working power outlets in the room. The fact that they had plenty of light made things easier too, because having to rely on flashlights and portable lamps would've slowed them down. With four doctors and three nurses in the room, their work was quickly done.
As soon as they had the leads attached, the EKG monitor bleeped an alarm, showing ventricular tachycardia with a heart rate of 164. So, apparently the patient still had a heartbeat, but probably not for long, unless they did something to fix the rhythm.
Kutner had already grabbed the paddles, but House held out a hand in a stop-sign, palm outwards. "Hold your horses, my daredevil Defibrillist," he ordered. He eyed Stark's upper body, his gaze stopping at the silvery arc reactor gleaming in the dimmed light. Shocking someone who had an inbuilt magnet/generator/whatever in their chest had "bad idea" written all over it. "Let's try drugs first. Start him on amiodarone," House decided. Kutner frowned at him. That wasn't going by the book, but following rules blindly never was House's thing.
"His fever's spiked," Thirteen shouted, catching House's attention. He checked the reading - 106.8. Not good. Definitely not good.
"We can't have that. Acetaminophen for the fever... And someone get a blood sample, run to the lab and stare at it for a while. I'd like to know what the hell's going on in there."
House had no idea what was going on in Stark's body. Was the VT due to the high fever, or was it a sign of his heart failing because of the disease, or were both effects of their shot at "treating" the thing? House could see three options. One, the EMP had done nothing, which meant that the symptoms were a sign that the disease was getting worse, and might kill Stark in a matter of minutes. Two, the EMP had worked and deactivated the nanovirus, and now Stark's immune system had to fight the mess still left in his body, which would explain the fever quite well. Three, the EMP had caused something unexpected, like made all the nanoviruses explode - but House would've expected even worse and stranger symptoms from some freak reaction like that.
He glanced at the EKG again. Still VT, but the heart rate had slowed down, and at least it hadn't deteriorated into ventricular fibrillation yet, which was promising. After the drugs had been administered, there wasn't a whole lot they could do but wait and see. House reckoned that if Stark started getting better, then the EMP had probably worked, and if he kept getting worse, then it hadn't. Then again, it was also possible that he'd survive the disease even if the EMP had done nothing at all. So, unless Stark's blood gave some clue, they couldn't be sure what had happened.
First, House had a puzzle that he couldn't solve because he simply couldn't understand it. Now, if the patient started getting better, he wouldn't know why. This had to be the single most frustrating case he had ever had.
"What's going on?" Colonel Rhodes asked commandingly, stepping away from the wall and closer to Stark's bed. "Did it work?"
"How should I know?" House answered sardonically. "I just work here."
"I'm not taking any of that from you," Rhodes grumbled. "Just tell me, is he going to get better?"
"Honestly, I have no idea. Only time will tell."
Time gave them hope. It only took some minutes before Stark's heartbeat settled into a stable sinus tachycardia. "Sorry, Defibrillator-Man, you can put those away," House told Kutner, who'd been standing frozen in his place, with the paddles at ready, all through the scene. "Too bad, you won't be able to add 'getting zapped when trying to defib a guy with an arc reactor' to your list of heroic feats, after all."
Stark's fever had come down a bit as well, but it was still dangerously high. Despite repeated attempts, they couldn't rouse him, though he did respond to pain, trying to withdraw his hand when House pinched his finger. It wasn't unexpected that he was unconscious, not after the way he'd taxed his already exhausted body, working on the EMP device through the night. Then again, slipping into a coma would not be an encouraging sign.
Taub returned from the lab to tell them that "I could still spot nanoviruses in his blood."
"So it didn't work?" Stark's assistant exclaimed, sounding desperate.
"Still can't tell," House replied, annoyed both at her and the uncertainty of the situation. "It might be inactive and just waiting for its doom even though it's still there." But, House thought to himself, at least it showed the bugs hadn't been blasted into tiny bits or anything like that, so it ruled out option number three.
"If it's inactive, then we can't get it anymore, can we? It's no longer contagious?"
"If, then yes. But it's a big If. Very iffy."
"Actually... I really don't care," Potts muttered, and started pulling off her gloves.
Worried out of her wits, Pepper waited and stared as the doctors worked on Tony. She didn't know if the EMP had done what it was supposed to, since she really hadn't known what to expect. She also couldn't follow what was going on. Tony was still unconscious and looked every bit as sick as before. The only things she could understand were Kutner grabbing the paddles, which looked like a bad sign, and the fact that Tony's fever was even higher than before. She felt useless, just standing here like this. She guessed Rhodes felt the same way, and his outburst at House made that even clearer.
When Taub returned and told that there still were nanoviruses in Tony's blood, she felt like all her hopes had been crushed, but then House pointed out that this might be good. The nanoviruses might be inactive. If they were, then she would be safe even without the protective clothing. And if they weren't, well, then Tony was going to die, wasn't he? She had always considered herself a more or less realistic and practical person, and definitely not a Romeo and Juliet -scale hopeless romantic. Yet now she found herself thinking that if Tony was going to die, she really couldn't care less about her own health.
She pulled off one protective glove, then the other, and opened the hood, which contained the air filtering system. By this time, Rhodes had realized what she was up to, and tried to stop her, grabbing both her arms in a strong grip and pinning them against her sides. "Miss Potts! Pepper! Are you out of your mind?"
"Rhodey, you're too late," she told him. "I've already exposed myself to the air."
He knew she was telling the truth. He let go of her arms, and shook his head at her. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said.
"Now we're going to have to keep you in isolation as well, Miss Potts," Thirteen pointed out. "Maybe for quite a long time, too, since we don't know exactly how the disease progresses in the early stages, when will the nanoviruses show up in blood samples, and so on."
Pepper hadn't even thought about that, but she didn't care. At the moment, this felt like the right thing to do. She felt better than a moment ago, not as helpless, and energetic, with an unexpected adrenaline rush that doing something so extreme, more than a bit crazy, had caused. She stripped off the rest of the protective clothing, and stood there, in nothing but her regular clothes.
With everyone else staring at her in a stunned silence, she crossed the room to Tony's bedside, and then forgot that there was anyone else in the room. She swept back the damp hair from his forehead. It felt so hot with fever that he was practically radiating warmth. In the dim light, the arc reactor's glow cast strange bluish shadows on his pale face, in a horrible illusion that made him look like he was dead. She covered the reactor with her hand. It felt cool to the touch, unlike the skin around it. The changed light wasn't much better, though - now Tony's face looked gray instead of blue and white.
A chair appeared behind her, apparently brought there by Rhodes. She sat down on it, and took Tony's hand between hers, intertwining her fingers with his. She couldn't have done any of this properly if she'd still been wearing the protection, and if Tony was going to die, this was the way things should be, with Pepper by his side, until the very end.
In the room around her, people gradually returned to action. House sent away the nurses ("Don't you have anywhere else to be?"), and set his team to run some more tests. Pepper stayed where she was, so that they had to work around her, but they didn't complain.
Rhodes stopped by her side, and stood there silently, looking at Tony as well, and resting a comforting hand on her shoulder. He stayed there for some time - could've been an hour, could've been five minutes - and then, squeezed her shoulder and let go. "I've got to go away again for a while, I promised I'd be in touch with the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Okay," Pepper mumbled. As she watched him walk out, she wondered if Rhodey could guess anything, if he could see that things had somehow changed between her and Tony, and what he would think about it. But she quickly forgot the thought, placing it in the folder in her mind labeled "later", which she would consider thinking about once Tony got better.
More time passed. She didn't bother keeping track of it. At one point, Kutner addressed her, telling her that things were actually looking better for Tony, and that the worst was probably over. She rewarded the good news with a smile, but didn't say anything.
After another timeless while of sitting there, his hand held between hers, Tony grasped her hand.
Pepper jumped, startled by the sudden sign of life from him. She stood up, her hand still in his, and looked at his face. He was gazing towards her, his eyes feverishly bright and clearly unfocused, and his expression surprised and confused.
He lifted her hand with his onto his chest, over the arc reactor, and with his other hand, pointed first at himself and then at her, calling to mind his earlier drawing. He still looked confused, or maybe in doubt, eyebrows raised inquiringly.
Feeling more conscious than before of the fact that there were others in the room with them, Pepper smiled at Tony. "Yes, Tony. I meant it. And we're both still alive."
Tony seemed content with that, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep. Somehow, she thought, he looked better now. More relaxed, with less furrows on his brow.
"Hey!" Doctor James Wilson exclaimed, as Greg House grabbed the larger half of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
"It's for medical purposes," House answered. "I can't remember when I last ate. I might just pass out on the floor of your office any minute now."
Knowing House and the case he was suddenly working on, Wilson thought it was probably true, too. When House got really interested about a case, he wouldn't let little things like sleep or food distract him. But Wilson wasn't about to give up this easily. "Amber made these for me, you know."
"Oh, and you think she guessed I was going to come along when you're eating and pick the bigger half, so she poisoned it? That sneaky bitch!" House said, and bit into the sandwich.
Wilson sighed. Why did he even try? They ate in silence, and House stole what remained of Wilson's coffee before he could drink it himself. Well, it was probably cold and tasted awful anyway. Then, House just sat there, unusually silent, staring at Wilson expectantly. Yeah, Wilson could easily guess what this was about. "All right, I'll ask. How's your superhero?"
"I can't tell you, that's top secret. Men in Black would appear and sweep our memories if I did."
"Oh, come on, House, I know you're burning to tell me!"
"But how badly do you want to know?"
"I'm not the one who's fanatic about this sort of stuff," Wilson said, stood up and took a few steps as if to leave the room.
"Well, all right," House said, not so surprisingly, and Wilson returned to his chair. "He's not super, but he's getting better," House told smugly.
"It's not really thanks to you, though, is it? I mean, it was HPS, so what could you do? Or did you come up with some unheard-of drug that's not yet past trials?"
"Well..." House raised his eyebrows and smirked. "You could say that."
"It was HPS, wasn't it?"
"You could say that, too."
"So, it wasn't! That explains. I was wondering how you'd be this fascinated about a hantavirus infection, but I thought it was just the patient that made the case cool... What was it, then?"
"That's something I really can't tell you," House said, his tone slightly more serious.
"I heard rumors about people getting evacuated from the rooms surrounding Stark's, what was that about?"
"Engineering project. He was bored. It was pretty neat, actually. You know, he really is a genius. I think he might be almost as smart as I am!"
"Since when have you started liking hypocritical wannabe world-savers?" - which was what House had called Stark earlier, when he and Wilson had last discussed the subject.
"I haven't. But Stark's cool."
Chapter 8: "Good news!"
Tony was going through the longest, maybe the most tormenting dream so far. House had flipped the switch, but nothing had happened. The device hadn't done anything at all. So, Tony lived through the last minutes or hours of his life as his body irrevocably, completely succumbed to the nanovirus. The doctors kept throwing everything they could think of at it, House coming up with countless ideas, none of which helped at all, and some even made Tony worse. He observed it all both from a spectator's view, watching the desperation in the room, Pepper's tears, Rhodey's anger and sadness, the doctors' frustration, and, at the same time, through his failing body, feeling the overwhelming sickness, the pain, the final, faint fluttering of his heart, the inevitable knowledge that this was the end...
When he woke up again, still shaken by the horrible experience, House and the EMP device were nowhere to be seen. It took Tony some time to realize that his vision wasn't as clear as before, but blurred, and he couldn't focus his eyes properly, and he was no longer omnipresent, but confined to the narrow view from his bed. His thoughts were awfully sluggish as well, and rambling - it was nearly impossible to concentrate, let alone stay coherent. He felt just as bad as in the previous nightmare. He wondered what this scenario was about, whether this was yet another "no EMP" thing, or maybe he was going to die all alone this time, or something like that.
He tried to concentrate on the surroundings. The lamps in the ceiling above him were dark, but there was light everywhere else, which was new. With huge effort, he turned his head slightly, and saw Pepper sitting next to his bed, and realized that she was holding his hand. He squeezed it tentatively, her small, slender fingers cool against his burning skin. Her beautiful face looked so sad, but her strawberry-blonde hair and freckles and blue eyes stood out vividly, despite the dim light and his fuzzy vision. It all felt very real. Could he be awake? Really awake?
She flinched at his touch and looked at him. Pepper... Had she really said that she loved him, or had that been a dream as well? He tried to think back to the memories of what had happened before the dreams began, but it was all hazy, a jumble of more or less realistic nightmares, of the frenetic hours spent working on the device, and pieces of conversations that he couldn't put together properly.
He was still unable to speak because he wasn't breathing on his own, and he wondered whether he could've put together a sentence that made any sense anyway. Still, he had to know if it had been true. His limbs felt like lead, but he dragged up his hand, lifting hers with it, placing them on the arc reactor, and he pointed at himself and at her, willing her to understand, and she did. She told him she had meant it. It had been true, and this was true, this wasn't a dream. That was all he needed to hear.
Tony went back to sleep, and this time, there were no more bad dreams.
The second time he came to, he knew it was real. The lamps above him were still dark, and in addition to Pepper, who hadn't moved from her place, Rhodey was there too, standing by his other side. On some level, Tony registered the strange fact that Rhodey wore a hazmat suit but Pepper was in her regular clothes. He didn't know what to make of it. They were both smiling at him.
"Way to go, man," Rhodey said, and shook his hand firmly.
"Welcome back again," Pepper greeted, smoothing the hair from his clammy forehead.
Tony still felt like death warmed over, so dizzy that it made him nauseous even though he was lying down, but thinking wasn't as hard as before. He sought for the clipboard, and Pepper handed it to him. His hand lax and lacking the coordination for anything complicated, he wrote, WTF?
Pepper chuckled. "The EMP device worked like you said it would, and you're getting better. They still don't know if the device actually did anything to the virus, but you beat the disease anyway."
"Iron Man kicked ass, as usual," Rhodey added with a grin.
Tony drew a happy smiley, and went back to sleep again.
The third time he woke up, he felt much better. Unfortunately, this time, it wasn't Pepper and Rhodey by his side, but House and Kutner. Tony grimaced with distaste.
"That's no way to greet your saviors," House sneered. Tony scowled at him. Damn this stupid tube stuffed into his windpipe - he seriously needed to be able to return that with an equal load of wit and sarcasm.
With a sound of fast footsteps, Pepper ran to Tony's rescue. "Tony! Good morning!" she shouted, and her face emerged between the doctors, positively beaming at him.
"Good to see you awake, Mr. Stark. And we've got some good news for you," Kutner told. Amusingly enough, he looked like he was a bit annoyed at House, too. "Your lungs are looking much better, so we're here to suggest that we could try extubating you. Getting you off the ventilator, that is."
YES!!!!1, Tony scribbled on the clipboard, wondering if anyone got the joke.
A moment later, when Kutner was pulling at the tube, Tony almost hoped he had said no instead. One more thing to the list of stuff he'd gladly have skipped. He gagged and felt like he was suffocating, and suddenly had a detailed flashback of pulling an even longer and slimier tube out of his nose when he'd woken up in Afghanistan - and then everything faded to black.
He jolted awake to House's grating voice shouting, "Hey! Stark! You Iron moron, the idea was to keep breathing, not to stop doing it!"
He breathed in, sweet, fresh air from the oxygen mask someone had slapped over his face. As soon as he'd gathered enough air to speak, he answered House. "That's... Mr. Stark, to you... and great job... trying to kill... your patient... once again... Doctor Dimwit."
For the first time in days, although breathing was strenuous and his throat felt like he had swallowed a box of nails, Tony felt wonderful.
After they'd made sure that his readings were OK and he was going to keep breathing, the doctors finally left him alone with Pepper. To his puzzlement, Tony noticed that she was wearing an ugly hospital gown now, the same as he was, while the doctors had been in full protective suits.
"What's up... with the... fashion statement?" he croaked at her.
"Um, I... I'm in isolation. Because... I guess I sort of flipped, when I thought you were going to die, so I got rid of the protection..." she stuttered, sounding more than a bit embarrassed. "So I'm stuck here with you until they can be certain that I haven't caught the nanovirus too."
Tony stared at her in disbelief, feeling like his mind had just done a somersault. At first, there was worry for her - he'd never forgive himself if she'd get this horrible sickness too - but then again, he was sure the EMP device had killed the nanovirus like they had hoped it would. He couldn't possibly have survived if it hadn't.
As the concern passed, he came to think about the positive sides of the situation. Whoa. It was a bit overwhelming. Stuck in this not-too-big hospital room with Pepper, possibly for days? Holy shit.
"Pepper... am I still dreaming?"
She planted a firm kiss on his forehead. "Does that feel like you are, Mr. Stark?"
"Absolutely. And I don't want to wake up, ever."
Rhodey hated having to leave the scene in the middle of it, uncertain of whether Tony would live or die, and he hated having to leave Pepper there alone, mad with grief by the looks of it. He couldn't believe she had actually stripped off her protective clothing. He knew she was very dedicated to her job and cared a great deal about Tony, but that had been extreme even for her.
As much as he hated it, Rhodey had promised Sitwell that he'd stop by at the local S.H.I.E.L.D. office at 1600, so he had no choice but to go. Tony had made it clear that the investigation was important, probably more important than Tony's life, since many more lives could be at risk.
The local "office" was actually only one floor of a building otherwise occupied by other government agencies. There seemed to be only about ten people working there, with Sitwell the only one who was actually eager to get something done. Not that Rhodey wanted to criticize them too much, they were all doing their jobs well enough. The others just did it with less fervor and more coffee. The apparent small size of the office and the lack of staff didn't really mean anything, either. There was an extensive network of S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives all around the country, and they communicated with them real-time.
"Good news! Or, well, at least news, I'm not sure if they're that good, but anyway," Sitwell explained excitedly. "We've managed to track down several of the missing scientists, plus one more who was missing and Mr. Stark hadn't found out about. One of the Stark Industries researchers was found dead, still in Brazil. Looked a lot like a car crash, but we're working on the details, it may have been something else. Out of the other seven, we have proof that all of them have been to Brazil at some point, but four have now left the Americas completely. They were headed towards different parts of Asia, so we can't know exactly where they were going. Probably the same place. The whole operation was expertly arranged, they traveled under false identities and all that, but, of course, that couldn't keep us from finding out."
"Of course," Rhodey repeated. It wasn't exactly easy to keep track of Sitwell's rambling talk, when he felt so preoccupied, all his thoughts still in the hospital room with Tony. "Good job. So, to summarize, out of eight missing people, one's dead, four have fled the country and three are still unaccounted for?"
"Yes, and one of those three is the woman who used to work for Stark Industries. We have a few leads that suggest she might still be in Brazil, but no certain information. It's slow, working with the local authorities there. Still, I'm sure will have more on her soon."
"Great. I'm sure Mr. Stark will appreciate your work."
"How is Mr. Stark? Will he be joining us in the investigation soon?"
"I don't know," Rhodey replied, struggling to keep his emotions in check. "I think I should get going now."
"But you only just arrived, you haven't even seen the data yet!"
"There's time for that later," Rhodey said, walked out of the office and drove back to the hospital.
Rhodey had been away for some two hours, but when he returned to Tony's room, it was as if he had never left. Pepper sat in the exact same place, still holding Tony's hand, Tony was still unconscious, looked very ill and had the same amount of medical machinery around him. Doctor Taub was hovering about his bed, checking the monitors, and nodded to Rhodey as a greeting.
"Rhodey!" Pepper exclaimed, and that second Rhodey knew that unlike he'd first thought, things had changed. She was smiling.
"What's up?"
"Tony's better. He's getting better, he's going to be all right," she said, all the earlier anxiety swept away from her face.
Rhodey joined her again in keeping company to Tony. After over an hour of uneventful vigil, the wait was unexpectedly rewarded, as he woke up. He only stayed conscious for a minute or so, just long enough that Pepper and Rhodey got to say "hi" and tell him the good news of his condition. Of course, even during such a short time and restricted to communicating through words written in a barely legible hand, Tony also managed to toss in some geekish humor. As he fell asleep again and the clipboard and pen slipped from his hands, Rhodey picked them up and grinned fondly at the smiley Tony had drawn.
"Everything's going to be okay," he told Pepper.
"Yes, I think so, too."
"We still need to catch whoever's behind this, though. I've got news from S.H.I.E.L.D., they have a few leads."
"Well, that's fine, but please don't tell Tony yet, Rhodey," she pleaded. "If you do, he'll just leap up from that bed and rush head-first into the danger, and he's still far from healthy."
"Yeah, well, I guess I might keep the news to myself for a while longer. Especially seeing as he's asleep again," Rhodey winked. "By the way, it's almost bedtime for healthy people as well. I'm heading to the hotel soon. Now that I know Tony's recovering, I might actually manage to get some sleep. You should try, too," he noted, knowing well enough how little rest she had had last night.
"It's that late? I had no idea. I guess I'll have to ask someone to bring me a bed."
On his way to the hotel, Rhodey wondered about the change he thought he saw in Pepper's attitude towards Tony. It had been there all day, he realized, he just hadn't really stopped to consider it. Somehow, she was more at ease around him than before, and the way she'd touched him today was something Rhodey had never seen from her. Maybe it was just her being worried. Rhodey knew well how being close to death, or the death of someone close to you, could change people. Then again, Pepper staying in Tony's room, even through the night, when she probably could've gotten a room of her own if she'd only asked... Rhodey wondered what this was leading into.
Pepper just couldn't force herself to believe that she could be in any danger herself. That she might've caught the nanovirus and might end up as sick as Tony had been. The whole idea was so unreal now that Tony was healing that she just ignored it completely.
The doctors had told that Tony's latest blood sample showed less nanoviruses than before, but again, they emphasized that it might only mean that his immune system had won the fight regardless of what the EMP had or hadn't done. They had also taken blood from her, but so far nothing unusual had showed up - but they told her that it might not mean anything either, Tony had only started feeling sick days after he'd caught the bug, and they couldn't tell if it would show up in blood samples before that. The truth was, they lacked any accurate means to test for the nanovirus, since looking at someone's blood through a microscope really wasn't one.
So, here she was, stuck in the hospital too. By the evening, the doctors had done the paperwork, and she was officially admitted. For the night, when she asked, they brought her a bed of her own, and hideous hospital clothes. Of course, she had brought clothes with her, a nice satin nightgown, and her toothbrush, and her make-up, and everything, but now she couldn't remember where she'd left her luggage. Probably somewhere in the hospital hallway. She'd ask someone to fetch it for her tomorrow. Today, she was so tired that she was starting to nod off while sitting by Tony's side.
After she woke up with her forehead resting against his ribs with no recollection of falling asleep, she decided she could as well follow Rhodey's advice and lie down. She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
In the morning, everything was better. After Pepper had eaten the completely tasteless hospital breakfast, the doctors showed up, and Tony woke up, and they pulled out the breathing tube. Though he gave her a horrible scare and stopped breathing for a while, House brought him back with a few mocking words, and there he was, breathing on his own, finally!
Only when she had to explain to him what she had done, why she was here without protection, and he asked her if he was dreaming, and she kissed his brow, the full reality of the situation dawned on her. She was trapped in this room with him, for who knew how long. Oh God.
"So, Pepper, I was thinking... Since we're stuck here for a while," he started in his still breathless voice. She frowned at him, slightly worried about what was coming. "This room's dreary. Seriously need to do something about it. I want a proper TV... and a surround sound system... and a king-size bed."
"Doctor Dimwit," House shook his head at Stark's wisecrack. That was lame. Then again, Stark had almost died, maybe it wasn't a wonder he was a bit rusty. House was looking forward to him getting better. There was some stuff he wanted to talk about, and, of course, a lot of verbal sparring to do.
House and Kutner left Stark's room after the successful extubation, to find themselves surrounded by a group of men in suits - or more exactly, three men and one woman, who also wore a pantsuit and had short swept-back hair. They all looked bored but sinister, wearing suitable secret agent earpieces, and one of them even had sunglasses.
"Kutner, look out! The Men in Black are here. I told you Stark was an alien!" House quipped, not really put off by the situation. He'd been expecting visitors like this a lot sooner, actually.
The secret agent people showed no reaction to House's words. "Doctor House," one of them said, and offered him a clipboard with a very official-looking form on it. Kutner got one too. House eyed it through: a non-disclosure agreement. No surprise there, either. The only interesting question was who the people worked for.
"Special agent Newell, S.H.I.E.L.D.," the man who had given House the form introduced himself. "We're here to make sure that no word whatsoever of Stark's arc reactor or the nanovirus that attacked him will ever reach the public."
"But... we sent Mr. Stark's blood samples to the CDC earlier on, when we didn't know what this was," Kutner spoke up timidly.
"That has been taken care of already, Doctor Kutner. Should anyone ask them, they will assure them that Stark's blood tested positive for HPS."
"Shield?" House repeated, frowning. He'd never heard the acronym before. "Superhero-Helping Intelligence-Evading Lot of Dorks or something like that?"
Newell took House's taunting without the slightest change in his expression. "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division," he answered, and showed House a badge with a logo depicting an eagle.
"Oh, all right, that really explains everything. Not," House scoffed.
"Believe me, Doctor House, you don't want to get in trouble with us."
He looked at the form again. As far as he could tell, it seemed genuine. He signed it. "I wouldn't have spoken to anyone anyway," he told them. "There is this little thing called doctor-patient confidentiality, you know." What he didn't say aloud was, he might not have cared about getting in trouble with these secret agent men, but he definitely didn't want to get in trouble with Iron Man. Or, at least any more trouble than he already was in, to be exact.
Back to Chapters 5 & 6
On to Chapters 9 & 10
