Age of Charon

Her sleep was fading away as she heard movement. She felt… warm. Comfortable. She burrowed into the pillow, unwilling to let go of the last vestiges of her dreams and return to the pain that waking up would cause. Wait, pain? 

“Good morning, Ms. Potts.” A familiar voice. Where had she heard it?

The memory of last night suddenly came at her at full force. She stood up abruptly. She was burning! Ultron had gone to find a doctor and… and then what?

She looked around. Big french windows. Beige walls and nice wooden furniture. She didn’t recognize this bedroom, but it looked like one of those models they used for house tours. Where was she? 

Finally, she turned her attention to the boy who sat in an armchair next to her bed, patiently waiting for her to finish taking in the sight of what was likely her prison of sorts. She was dizzy at how certain features looked so familiar, so similar, to someone else. To Tony. Was this Ultron’s child persona?

Messy brown hair, familiar cheekbones and a short skinny build. And those eyes. Those fake neon blue eyes. She hated them. She hated that fucking Stone. Where was it?! It was not on Ultron.

“Hi!” He said with a little wave. It was adorable. And had to be an act. Ultron — the one who looked like a man — didn’t behave like this.

“Hi.” She responded nonetheless. “Where did the big one go?”

He smiled impishly and so much like Tony she wanted to give him a hug. “ Someone broke a bunch of things and thus that suit is on the repair shop.”

“I am not about to apologize.” she said.

“Nah!” He waved it away before smiling and did this smile seem softer, sadder or was it just her? “It was business, right? No bad feelings.”

“On both our parts.” she reassured him, and he grinned. 

Silence fell among them once more and she took that moment to look at herself. She felt good. Really good. Fully healthy and rested and definitely not burning to cinders. Or exploding. 

“Extremis, huh?” Ultron said, realizing where her thoughts had gone.

“Yes.” she nodded before asking. “So I am not a pile of ash, nor a human torch any longer. Any ideas why? Or was the doctor you kidnapped just that good?” She didn’t think any doctor could be that good in such little time, honestly.

“Oh no. No doctors. This was just you. One of my Legionnaires had only barely managed to re-kidnap Dr. Cho, when you started healing on your own. Regenerating whole tissues at a rapid pace even.”

Regeneration? That was new. She had managed to heal scrapes a bit faster before but nothing like this. How long had she even been asleep?

“How long since—?”

“8 hours. You passed out mid-flight but I think it was more of a self-induced coma of some sort. Like a healing trance.”

Pepper couldn’t help but smile. “A healing trance? Like a Vulcan?”

“You have seen Star Trek!” Ultron’s obvious joy at her reference was infectious. 

“It’s practically a requirement for being Tony Stark’s friend.” she said but because she was feeling a little evil she added. “Star Wars is better though.” The indignation on the kid AI’s face was worth it.

“It’s not! You Americans have this weird cult fixation on—,” Ultron stopped his tirade when he noticed the mirth she was trying to hide. “Not funny.”

“It is. Works on Tony too, every time. Although he is one of ‘us Americans’.” She said, thinking of Tony’s melancholy and nostalgia whenever they rewatched those episodes. “That old man would watch them with me.” he had said and both she and Jim knew he didn’t mean Howard. 

Still, Pepper began to wonder when did Ultron have the time to watch a long series like that. She had thought she had figured things out and yet, there were still so many questions.  

“Tony doesn’t know.” Ultron said. “Otherwise he would be searching for a different cure during all this time. There was no record of anything like that in the servers.”

“No, he doesn’t.” She confirmed.

“You kept it a secret for a whole three years?” and the doubt and disbelief was quite transparent in his tone.

She snorted. “Of course not. I kept it a secret for three months.”

“Three months? But you were injected in—. Oh. Tony’s cure.” he said. “A temporary cure, so it seems.”

“I started showing symptoms six months ago.” she confessed. “Small things. My paper cuts would disappear too soon or I stopped feeling cold even if drenched in winter rain. And then, I set fire to my desk at work.”

“And that was three months ago.”

“Yes.” she continued. “I didn’t know how to bring it up to Tony. He felt so guilty about Extremis. As if being an asshole to someone when drunk was reason enough to feel personally culpable for a madman’s murder attempt.”

She closed her eyes and breathed in. Then breathed out. It wouldn’t be good to set fire to this perfectly nice bed. But just thinking about Killian enraged her so.

She opened her eyes and was graced with the sight of Ultron staring at her transfixed.

“Breathing exercises.” He noted. “To control your temper. And Extremis.”

“The more excited my emotional state, the more difficult it is to keep it in. I started yoga. Meditation. It was working. No more random fires. But I still had the perk of faster healing.”

“This doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Why didn’t you tell him then?”

She looked at her hands. Her pale, unmarred hands. She used to have a scar on her left ring finger from a bicycle accident when she had been a child. She woke up one day to find it gone. “It is progressing.”

“It has become more difficult to control it?” he asked, brow furrowed.

“No.” She would have told Tony much sooner if it had been so. “It is getting more powerful. A harsh bruise used to take hours to disappear. And two weeks ago it only took minutes.”

“So that is the reason why you were weaker than you should have been when we fought.” Ultron said. “When I realized you had Extremis, well, I had seen the footage of the Iron Man suits melting, ” and his horror at such a prospect possibly happening to him was almost funny. “I thought for a moment that I had miscalculated, that it was game over. But you didn’t melt through me. You could barely defend yourself.”

“Barely?” Pepper semi-mocked. “I threw you through two walls! Two walls!”

The childish AI raised a ridiculous eyebrow. “And you couldn’t even stand thereafter.”

Point taken. But still.

“I couldn’t tell him three months ago.” she started again. “But I started to draw up the courage to when… he suddenly became busy.” And she looked at him meaningfully as she said so. “Creating you.”

Ultron averted his electric blue eyes — she hated that color now — and ignored her words.

“What Tony gave you three years ago probably wasn’t a cure but a stabilizer. Something that would give your body time to prepare for the power of Extremis. You have been slowly showing greater healing, maybe greater strength but you overdid yourself during our fight. You reached for something your body hadn’t prepared yet.”

“You love being verbose, don’t you?” Pepper said. “It’s adorable, in a ridiculous kind of way. Just say that my molecular makeup is being slowly rewritten.”

He seemed to want to argue at her words but huffed and kept silent.

“Dr. Cho is still here, you know. She could look you over. See if there is any reason for concern.”

“I’d appreciate that.” she said, although mostly because it would give her a chance to see if there was a way to escape from here. Or send a message to FRIDAY.

Ultron then stood up to leave the room. Probably to get back to his ridiculous world domination plan. 

“Breakfast will be here soon.” he said but she caught his arm before he could move further.

“Wait!” he looked at her in question. “Promise me something, ok?”

“Ms. Potts, if this is a request to release you—.”

“No, it’s not. It’s different. It has nothing to do with my situation.” she said. 

“Very well.” he said and he suddenly sounded more like the man who ambushed her in her office than the child she had spoken to that morning. “But I must hear what it is first.”

“Take suicide off the list.”

He shook her hand off. “That is absurd. Why would I—?”

“Look,” she insisted. “You know I know. And I know you know I know.” He didn’t laugh. She had hoped… “Not even as a last resort. Promise me.”

He looked at her coldly. He had never seemed threatening before. 

“Ms. Potts. You may have some idea of my plans but do not think you truly understand the big picture here. You have no idea what my last resorts would be needed for.”

“Nothing can be worth that. Tony would be destroyed if something happened to—.”

“Mr. Stark,” he started, and his voice was pure frost now. “is not my concern. My choices are my own. If I choose to die —and I assure you, I am doing everything in my power to prevent that outcome— I will die of my own will .” 

“No one, not even you, can take that from me.”