C (23) Souls

"Then if we are married then you will know something about me that I vowed to tell only to one person and that was to the man I would marry. I would tell them the night before our wedding. If you truly are from the future you will know what I am talking about as I would have told you."

"Do you want me to leave?" Natasha piped up.

Pepper peered over Tony's shoulder and shook her head. "No. You should stay."

Tony knew what she was talking about. What she had trusted him with a day before their wedding.

He hadn't blamed her from keeping it from him all these years, he'd understood. It was something that even he with his large amount of resources would never have known about.

The connection wasn't obvious. It had been a tragedy for Pepper to have suffered so young.

One which had turned her cold and had made herself determined to find a place in the world where she didn't have to get close to anyone…

Yet Tony had managed to crawl his way into her heart… They'd been dancing around one another for years until they had finally gotten together. They'd been denying the inevitable.

"Tony?" probed Pepper carefully.

Sighing, Tony took her hands in his, squeezing them gently. "You told me a secret you've kept for years and that you would only reveal a day before our wedding day. It is a secret that you wanted to keep and by telling me then you were searching for trust. To know that I still wanted to marry you even though you'd kept this secret from me for years." He remembered it well:

Pepper informing him she had something to tell him, a secret she had kept from him and one where, she said, if he decided not to marry her after knowing then she would understand.

Tony had still married her, understanding her desire to keep it secret, keep it quiet.

Pepper swallowed.

"You told me when you were fourteen you were orphaned. You've never allowed yourself to get close to people since the fire," began Tony quietly.

She breathed out.

"It happened by accident but the consequences were severe for you. You survived but no one else did. You were the one to raise the alarm. You woke up in the middle of the night and smelt smoke. You told me how you ran to your parent's room and roused them from their sleep. The smoke was already thick, suffocating you all. Your dad smashed the window of their bedroom, told you to jump and they would follow once they got your younger sister. You jumped out, landed and broke your wrist and ankle in the process. You couldn't move. You were crying and in pain… Your whole house was in flames. Your parents were at the window with your younger sister." There were tears forming in Pepper's eyes.

He wanted to stop, to not harm her anymore. But she hadn't asked him too. "But then there was an explosion. The whole upper floor of your home collapsed, taking your sister and your parents with it. They died then. You were the only survivor and you hated it, hated surviving because you could have got your sister before going to your parents. You could have all lived and you blamed yourself for their deaths. But there was nothing you could have done. Since then you've been on your own, determined to work hard, to prove to the world that you survived for a reason. But you always refused to allow anyone to get close to you. You had boyfriends but you were afraid of letting them get too close to you in case you lost them. And then you met me. You were so difficult to read, to get close to. You worked hard, determined to succeed. You never let me get close to you. I always used to have my way with my Personal Assistants but, Pep, you were not a push-over. I took you seriously, and I got to know you, respect you and learned to love you legitimately. And… I think it took you years to trust me, to get close to me, to have feelings for me because of what you had survived. You fell in love with me over many years but you were still afraid to lose me like you lost your parents and your sister."

'And then I died anyway,' he thought, realising all of Pepper's fears had come true. He had left her. But he couldn't tell her that.

"Tony…" A slight smile tugged at her lips. One tear slipped down her cheek. "There is only one way you could have known about the fire…"

"Do you believe me now?" he asked quietly.

Pepper nodded. "I swore to only tell you once… And I know I've never said anything about it to you. The only way for you to know is if we going to get married… And, I'm sure I'd remember marrying you."

"So…?" Tony urged, waiting for confirmation.

"I believe you." She glanced at Natasha. "But I have no way of testing Natasha to determine if she is really from the future. All I can do is trust you, Tony, and I do."

A weight lifted from his shoulders. Pepper believed him.

But she pulled back, her eyes searching his, looking for something he was sure wasn't there. "Why have you come back? And… wait… does this mean there are two of you?"

"No," Tony said instantly. "We didn't do the traditional time-travel of hopping into a machine and coming out in history. There are not two versions of us running around. I… went to sleep in my future… and woke up back here." It was a semblance of truth.

Dying had felt like falling asleep… only losing awareness completely and being unable to breathe.

He had known he was dying, had felt the life slowly leaving his body. "The best way to describe it is…."

'Souls. Your souls moved backward in time.' the mysterious voice sounded again in Tony head.

Tony paused, eyes widening at the voice in his head.

A quick glance at Natasha told him she had heard the same thing.

"Tony?" Pepper prodded, noticing their simultaneous reactions.

'Tell her about the voice you hear.' the mysterious voice said again.

Natasha swallowed, moved slowly and sat down on the table in front of the sofa Tony and Pepper were sitting on.

"Souls. The best way to describe it is our souls moved back in time and inhabited our old bodies. We merged with our past selves, bringing all our knowledge of the future to the here and now," explained Natasha.

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