twelvepercentpepperpotts:
She smiled back at him. “Then the same goes for you,” she said. “Please, call me Pepper. Everyone does.” Some days it felt like ‘Virginia’ was a ghost-name, a skin she had shed and left behind a long time ago. If only the past were so easy to leave behind – Ty and his DreamVision flashed through her mind, as it so often did these days. But she managed to keep a bright, charming smile on her face. (She had a lot of practice at maintaining a poker face.)
“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she said, nodding as she gazed out among the crowd. T’Challa was different from the other Avengers. A leader, not just in battle, but in life as well. He knew what it meant to read a room and feel responsible for every person you saw. To want to ease the worries in their mind. The other Avengers wanted that too, but their solutions often involved fighting, more fighting, and even more fighting. “They are definitely very…” She trailed off as he tensed, then she noticed the shift in the crowd herself. The lights on the stage had changed, centering on a lone figure in the middle – Doom himself. “Distracting,” Pepper finished, turning to face the president with pursed lips.
His speech was quick, but powerful. Like a spark that lit a fuse. Pepper’s heart hammered in her chest – there was Tony’s name shining on the screen – and she immediately set down her glass of champagne. “This doesn’t feel like much of a celebration anymore,” she murmured, taking a step back as most of the crowd surged forward. The tension that had been momentarily staved off was back in full force, and had just hit a boiling point. She turned to T’Challa. “Your majesty, I think we should make a rather hasty exit. People will notice,” she whispered quietly, not wanting to draw attention to them.
“Pepper, then,” T’Challa agreed with a smile. He’d always been far less formal than other Wakandan kings, treating his Dora Milaje like old friends and his subjects like drinking buddies. It sometimes caused slight irritation -- like Shuri’s constant pranks or Okoye’s dry humor -- but it was more than worth it. T’Challa wouldn’t have traded any of it. He’d seen the fearsome respect people paid to his father and uncle, and he wanted little to do with it for himself.
The crowd seemed calm for the moment, a welcome change from New York’s recent uneasiness. It was nice, seeing the city’s people happy for once, though T’Challa had no doubt that it was a temporary solution. The party was never going to permanently quell their fears, and that was likely a good thing. The idea of them all being so easily pacified would speak poorly to their intelligence. “They certainly are,” he agreed, watching the stage thoughtfully. Doom taking center stage didn’t seem like the prelude to anything decent, and while he hoped to be proven wrong on that point, T’Challa had always been a realist.
The world seemed to change in an instant. The previously calm nature of the crowd shifted into something panicked and afraid, and everyone became a flurry of motion. There was yelling, there were accusations, there was fear, but T’Challa turned away from all of it to focus instead on Pepper. She seemed nervous, and he couldn’t blame her. T’Challa wasn’t sure whether it was safer to be one of those listed or one of those unlisted, but like him, Pepper had friends on both sides. “No, it feels like something else entirely,” he agreed, moving to put himself between her and the worst of the crowd. Glancing back to her, he nodded. “I think that would be best,” he agreed.














