"Please," Brigitte says, automatically and unhesitatingly, with audible relief. No stubborn macho pride here: Brigitte has always been trained to ask for help and supply it in return, to acknowledge her weaknesses. (And right now, she feels like she's all weakness.) Seifer and Thor are her big-hearted blond boys, but they're not engineers, and it was a shock to look around the forge and all its helpers and realise that, of all of them, she was the best-positioned to fill the man's shoes. The most experienced, somehow, when it had always been so easy to take refuge behind Tony and, back home, behind Torbjörn Lindholm. Behind everyone.
She rises numbly, heads over to the stacks of paperwork she's already organised, and shows Pepper what she's been working on. One stack for in-progress projects, another for ones that haven't even started yet, and a third which is all question marks. Until she'd started clearing everything away, the smithy had looked like he'd just stepped out for lunch. Would be back any moment. The wall still has some of his jokes and smudges from his thumb.
Then, after a moment, she asks: "You were paid to work with him? He mentioned you ran his company, back home." Which she'd always assumed was a partner thing, a soon-to-be-husband-and-wife thing, with no idea of Pepper's rise from such humble origins.
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"Please," Brigitte says, automatically and unhesitatingly, with audible relief. No stubborn macho pride here: Brigitte has always been trained to ask for help and supply it in return, to acknowledge her weaknesses. (And right now, she feels like she's all weakness.) Seifer and Thor are her big-hearted blond boys, but they're not engineers, and it was a shock to look around the forge and all its helpers and realise that, of all of them, she was the best-positioned to fill the man's shoes. The most experienced, somehow, when it had always been so easy to take refuge behind Tony and, back home, behind Torbjörn Lindholm. Behind everyone.
She rises numbly, heads over to the stacks of paperwork she's already organised, and shows Pepper what she's been working on. One stack for in-progress projects, another for ones that haven't even started yet, and a third which is all question marks. Until she'd started clearing everything away, the smithy had looked like he'd just stepped out for lunch. Would be back any moment. The wall still has some of his jokes and smudges from his thumb.
Then, after a moment, she asks: "You were paid to work with him? He mentioned you ran his company, back home." Which she'd always assumed was a partner thing, a soon-to-be-husband-and-wife thing, with no idea of Pepper's rise from such humble origins.