"Well, despite everything that had happened, we still did a lot better when we fought together." Pepper continues to fiddle with her mug, since it's still too hot to drink much of it. "And then you saved me and Rhodey. Again. It was always better when we were working together." Even when you were only pretending.

"Look, there's a lot of things you do have to be sorry for," she says evenly, doing her best to sound calm. "Like, serious stuff. But Malicant? The.. what happened in the vision. That was stuff you couldn't do anything about. You've got enough to grieve over without pouring an ocean's worth of salt into the wounds. And there is a lot of saltwater on this planet."

Pepper sips carefully at her tea and resolutely avoids looking up.