Hydrogen Fusion drabble
It was long and terrible and Tony was mostly useless. The pain would crawl over Pepper's tightening abdomen and she couldn't talk, couldn't do anything except writhe sometimes.
The early hours of birth, when she worried about what she would do in front of the men, faded along with her concept of time. Tony was ordered out of the room, 20 minutes before Pepper screamed and begged for him and made animal noises with her face against his neck. She could tell that Bruce was a little worried, a little fragile, but she finally broke and could do nothing but blindly trust.
For a few hours, the bath soothed, and she was even able to doze with her head propped on the edge and one of her boys watching her (and they did not speak of the secret-- as nerve-wracking as the process was, it continued for hours and hours and hours and boredom set in, even as their wife wept and moaned).
Any time either of them brought up drugs, she would glare or shove at the offending man. Pepper wanted them oh god she wanted the pain to end someday, over and over it attacked like hammers on bones for hours but the memory of the Extremis treatment lingered in her hindbrain, and even as desperate as she was, she could not bring herself to have someone inject chemicals into her spine, and Bruce was not an anesthesiologist.
The water's touch changed to an annoyance, one more stimulus lapping across her skin, and she endured Bruce's touch as he helped her out and the horrible grating feel of the luxury towel that Tony dried her with.
She needed to move, she needed-- her whole body was forcing downwards and she went to her knees in the bedroom.
"Pepper, you're pushing, we should move you to the bed--" she batted away the hands and moaned.
So it was there on the rug that Pepper, her head buried in Tony's neck, her hands digging into his elbows like claws, pushed and fought and birthed their daughter. Bruce made excited sounds that she couldn't decipher as her body burned to stretch around the baby's head.
Bruce had Pepper lean back against Tony before he placed the baby on Pepper's belly and she looked down. It was hot and red and wet with dark whorls of hair pasted to her scalp and she was Pepper's daughter, had come out of Pepper's body, was Pepper's family. The little baby made bleating, testing sounds, and then started to cry. So did her new mother.
The cord was cut and Bruce instructed Tony on a few tasks, all of which Pepper ignored. She held her baby up up against her heart-- her hands absolutely steady in supporting the infant, and leaned into Bruce's shoulder while he took care of the aftermath of the birth. The moment he allowed her to, she curled up in the nest of blankets and towels that Tony had constructed.
With encouragement, Pepper helped her new daughter nurse for the first time, and still she wept.
Hands wrapped blankets around Pepper, around the sweet tiny body that she held, and she looked up.
"Thank you," she told her husbands, her voice rough and thin. "Thank you for letting me have her."
