Sorcerer in the Marvel Universe

Pepper Potts was hardly an ordinary figure anymore.

Once upon a time, she had been Tony Stark’s personal secretary. Now she was the president of Stark Industries, with real authority over the company.

Plenty of women across America looked at her career and thought, If only.

Of course, they were missing the point.

Being Tony Stark’s secretary had never been as simple as being physically close to him. Setting aside loyalty and personal feelings, keeping a company as enormous as Stark Industries running smoothly while pushing it toward continued growth was no small feat. The media practically praised Pepper as the woman who had saved Stark Industries.

That took brains.

So when this remarkable woman walked into Evenson’s modest shop, he wasn’t expecting her.

Unfortunately, the first thing Pepper saw was Evenson holding another woman’s hand, wearing a rather suspicious smile.

It looked exactly like the sort of situation where a man might be about to lead a woman downstairs for reasons that would not survive close examination.

Pepper stopped.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Before Evenson could deny it, May stood up.

"If you have business with him, I’ll wait."

She walked over to Evenson, gave him two light pats on the shoulder, and disappeared into the back room.

Pepper watched her go.

Well. Apparently I really did interrupt something.

Then she narrowed her eyes.

No.

Something wasn’t right.

She’d spent years working beside Tony Stark. If she’d walked in on Tony holding a woman’s hand like that, there would have been no mystery whatsoever.

But Evenson?

He wasn’t quite operating on that level.

"It’s nothing like that," Evenson hurriedly explained. "She’s a SHIELD agent. We have some official business to discuss. Nothing urgent."

He needed to make that clear.

Fast.

If the wrong rumor got started, he might lose more than half his life trying to explain it.

"Oh."

Pepper nodded as though this confirmed what she’d already suspected.

I knew it.

Still, the fact that the woman was a SHIELD agent gave her pause.

"Are all the consultants this busy lately?"

"Hm?"

Evenson didn’t bother hiding anything.

"I was certainly busy for a while. Has Tony been keeping busy too?"

"Yes."

Pepper sighed.

"SHIELD recently asked him to help with a design project."

She shook her head, irritation creeping into her voice.

"They could at least look at his condition before asking him to work. He’s already been through enough."

"A design project?"

Evenson’s ears immediately perked up.

He kept his voice casual.

"Yeah, SHIELD has a real talent for squeezing every last ounce of labor out of people. Especially Fury. Don’t they have an entire army of scientists on the payroll? What kind of project could possibly require Tony Stark personally?"

"I don’t know all the details." Pepper frowned. "Something about an antigravity flight system, I think."

She sighed again.

"SHIELD always keeps everything unnecessarily secret."

"It’s an intelligence agency. Isn’t that practically the job description?"

Antigravity flight system...

Evenson filed that information away.

Then another part of what Pepper had said caught his attention.

"You mentioned Tony’s condition. What’s wrong with him? I thought the problem with his chest had already been solved."

Before becoming Iron Man, Tony Stark had been nearly killed by one of his own weapons. Shrapnel from the explosion had lodged near his heart, and to keep the fragments from traveling through his bloodstream and killing him, Tony had built a device in his chest to hold them in place.

The device had become the first Arc Reactor.

Unfortunately, the reactor used palladium, which slowly poisoned Tony’s body.

That problem had eventually been solved when Tony developed a new generation Arc Reactor using the legacy Howard Stark had left behind.

The shrapnel, however, remained in Tony’s chest.

Not because it couldn’t be removed.

Because Tony had deliberately left it there.

It was a reminder of what his weapons had done to the world.

Pepper shook her head.

"It’s not his chest."

She pointed worriedly at her own head.

"The problem is here."

"His head?"

Evenson clenched his right fist and slammed it into his left palm.

"That’s easy. Amputate everything below the eyebrows."

Pepper stared at him.

Evenson laughed.

"I’m kidding."

He quickly amended his statement.

"It’s probably something psychological, isn’t it?"

Pepper took a deep breath.

For a brief moment, she imagined running Evenson over with her car approximately twenty times.

That helped.

Barely.

"He has severe anxiety."

"Anxiety?"

Evenson waved dismissively.

"That doesn’t sound particularly serious. Especially for Tony Stark."

He thought about it.

"Throw a few parties for him. Better yet, bikini parties. Give him a little time to relax and he’ll be fine."

Pepper’s eyes widened.

Her fingers tightened around each other until her knuckles cracked.

She remained silent for several long seconds before finally swallowing whatever she had been about to say.

"That," she said carefully, "is exactly what worries me."

Evenson’s smile faded.

"Since the Battle of New York, Tony hasn’t thrown a single party."

Pepper’s expression became increasingly concerned.

"For more than a month. He barely seems interested in women anymore, either. He spends practically all his time in the workshop, obsessively designing new Iron Man suits."

Evenson rubbed his jaw.

That was... unusual.

Tony Stark claiming that work made him happy was one thing.

Tony Stark behaving as though work was the only thing in the world that mattered was another.

"Yeah," Evenson admitted. "That does sound serious."

"There’s more."

Pepper hesitated.

"He has nightmares."

Her voice had become quieter.

"He’s been suffering from insomnia. When he finally manages to fall asleep, he wakes up from nightmares and immediately runs back into the lab to work until he’s exhausted again."

She looked genuinely troubled.

"The Battle of New York affected him more than he wants anyone to know."

Evenson pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Flying a nuclear warhead into a wormhole isn’t exactly something most people walk away from without consequences."

Tony Stark was different from many of the other superheroes.

He’d never been the sort of man who dreamed of sacrificing himself.

During the Battle of New York, he’d nevertheless carried a nuclear missile through the portal himself.

Perhaps Captain America’s words had been right.

Sometimes people simply found themselves doing things they never thought they were capable of.

That didn’t mean they weren’t terrified afterward.

Tony had survived the battle.

His subconscious apparently hadn’t.

The lingering fear had turned into anxiety.

As for whether Evenson himself possessed the willingness to sacrifice his life?

Please.

If you were constantly volunteering to die, why become a Warlock in the first place?

What a terrible career strategy.

Evenson finally nodded.

"Postpartum..."

He stopped.

"Sorry. Post-battle anxiety."

He leaned back.

"I think you should take him to a veterans’ service center and find a psychologist. Why are you coming to me?"

"Tony would rather fight a supervillain than see a psychologist."

Pepper didn’t hesitate.

She knew Tony far too well.

There was no chance he’d willingly sit down with a therapist and admit he needed help.

"So I want to hire you again as his health consultant."

She looked directly at Evenson.

"As for the price, we can negotiate."

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