I'M SUPPOSED TO SAVE YOU

I CAN'T EVEN SAVE MYSELF

MAYBE YOU'LL BE ENOUGH TO SAVE THE BOTH OF US

The clacking of the keyboard, methodical and somehow soothing, is currently the only sound Pepper Potts can hear in this large Malibu house that feels more like home than any other place in the world.

She knows the reason for her sentiment is currently on the floor above her, in the moderately sized gym with his little sister.

She's been at this report for ages now and she doesn't know what else she needs to say to convince Strutman to collaborate with SI for this project. She's been doing this far long before she was even officially CEO but every time she always ends up with an unbearable migraine and her anxiety skyrocketing under the pressure of success.

Her fingers let off the keyboard and she closes her eyes for a moment and rests her neck on the back of the white couch that she herself had picked out when they renovated the house after the shitshow that was Tony Stark's birthday two years ago.

The scream can be heard through the entire house and her eyes snap open at the same time Happy runs into the room with his gun out and Elizabeth Stark crashes through the ceiling behind her. Tony, as expected, follows suit.

Pepper manoeuvres herself on the sofa to check on the two siblings as they groan in pain, one decked out in his Iron Man suit while the other has little streaks of lightning lighting up her skin.

Pepper wonders if she'll ever get used to seeing Elizabeth Stark glowing blue or if she'll have to mask her awe for the rest of her life.

"I'm going to guess the training didn't go so well today."

The only response she gets is two painful groans from where the Starks still lay on the floor, bits of rubble surrounding them and dust swirling above the air.

She turns to the bodyguard standing at the door, not looking surprised, probably because he has walked into scenes similar to this for the past few weeks, ever since Elizabeth Stark decided to test the extent of her powers.

Calling the repair company, whom he has on speed dial, the head of security leaves the room, preparing himself to argue with the woman who owns the business over how it is that Tony and Elizabeth Stark keep destroying their home.

Pepper gets a call around the same time and she leaves the living room as well, making her way to her and Tony's bedroom where her tablet is charging in case she needs to pull up numbers and notes taken during old conference meetings.

The two Starks are still on the floor, needing a little more than a minute to compose themselves and get rid of the pain coursing through their bones.

Liz has been trying to practice staying midair while using only her electricity and shutting down her fire, and while she had been able to master using individual aspects of her power, she's yet to learn how to manipulate them into doing certain things given the circumstance without too much effort.

She's clearly failing.

"Pizza?" Her brother speaks up from beside her, not in too much pain thanks to the armour that's designed to protect him from guns and bombs.

She becomes acutely aware of the fact that she hasn't had a meal in seven hours, "Yes, please."

They eat on their kitchen island, too preoccupied with the schematics for Liz's next suit to bother retrieving the chairs from the bar or getting a plate to eat the pizza over.

They play around with the features and the accessibility until Liz gets a phone call from Charlotte McCoy informing her of an emergency at the hospital.

Grabbing the repressor that sits on the kitchen table as if it were a pair of keys or a ring, she lets it rest against the nape of her neck, no longer piercing deep into her skin and no longer hurting her with electric shocks that are near to unbearable. The pain is there but its lessened down a notch.

Refusing Tony's offer to carry her in the suit, she rushes towards the lab downstairs, grabbing the first set of keys that unlock the fastest car she and Tony have made and the loud rumble and reeve of the engine is the only thing that can be heard from the distance and Elizabeth Stark speeds towards the hospital.

Her brother shakes his head before closing the entrance to the garage, staring at the empty wall blankly before pulling up the several suits that he's obsessively designed, built and modified over the past few months.

Liz should be worried about the way her brother rarely gets any sleep, the way her brother goes days without actually sleeping. Liz should be worried about the forty-two suits her brother has somehow managed to make over the span of a few months. She should be worried that Tony's been having panic attacks, worried about his nightmares, worried about his fear of losing her and Pepper that has somehow been multiplied by a dozen fold since New York.

Liz doesn't worry because she doesn't know.

She doesn't know because she wakes up in a cold sweat every night dreaming of her brother flying up the portal and never coming back. She doesn't know because she can barely walk the streets without fearing the man, the 'they' that wants her dead. She doesn't know because she is living in trepidation of her capabilities now that she has lowered the efficiency of the Infinity Dampener 202.

The mandarin is both a nightmare and a relief.

Tony Stark now has something else to focus on. Something more tangible and repairable compared to aliens. The mandarin is human; a poor excuse for one but still human.

The mandarin gives Tony a break from aliens, and it's this idea, the idea that the mandarin is nothing compared to aliens, that causes Tony Stark to give out his address in a fit of rage after what happened to Happy Hogan; a man very much a part of Tony's family.

Pepper forces Liz to pack when she sees the news. Liz doesn't really have it in her to complain. She's scared for her brother and scared for Pepper and scared for herself so she packs her essentials in a suitcase and places it beside Pepper's.

She's never met Maya Hansen before. She isn't sure what to make of her. But she's the only other person around when Tony and Pepper argue and they strike up an awkward conversation.

"Big fan of you. I mean, you're almost ten years younger than me and you own six hospitals around the country and wrote a book on biochemistry that I use for my lectures."

Liz's eyebrows rise up at the compliment.

She's about to say something back. Something along the lines of she's never heard about her before but she must be impressive since not many people have been able to impress Tony Stark and apparently, Maya Hansen had done it in a couple hours.

But her eye catches on the screen behind them, a live stream of their Malibu home, more particularly the two missiles that come flying at top speed.

"Tony!" without thinking she runs towards her brother, not making it before she's flung off her feet.

The bombs blast.

The movement of his hands towards his sister is instinctive. Protecting her has been engraved in his bones and signalled through his cells for twenty-seven years and so he directs the Iron Man suit to her.

He had forgotten than a lightning bolt with an electric current of nearly 100,000 amperes had struck his sister's heart not even a minute after she was born. He had forgotten that somehow, she had survived.

The last time an orb of power had surrounded Liz to protect her, no one saw. They were in a SHIELD helicarrier and were being thrown back from the bomb that Clint Barton had released in the small lab.

This time, Tony Stark sees the blue and purple force field his sister releases causing the pieces of debris and glass to simply blow around her, not once touching her skin.

Tony Stark extends his hands further and closes his eyes when the suit encases Pepper; assured that the only two people that matter, the only two people that have ever mattered are safe.

The ground splits in half; he and Liz are on one side, and Pepper is on the other.

The younger Stark yanks out the chip at her neck and pockets the device, just in time to create an ice wall that protects her and her brother from the bullets.

"Your suit will be nice."

She knows he won't use it, not until he's sure that Pepper is safely away from the scene.

"Sir, Mark 45 is almost complete."

Liz does a double-take at the number, "Mark 45?"

They duck when another round of bullets hurl through the already broken glass, and her brother yells through the noise, "I've been going through some stuff."

He then says to Jarvis, "Get me Pep's suit and deploy Mark 45 for Liz when it's ready."

When the suit encases him, he fires at the first helicopter that's attacking them, causing the machine to swerve unpredictably through the sky.

Focusing her energy on the prickling of electricity she feels through her arm, she creates a ball of lightning, throwing the blue sphere at the second helicopter watching with satisfaction as it crashes violently into the water.

The bombers did not expect Elizabeth Stark. No one ever does.

The house is quiet, and they can hear the chaos occurring outside, reporters and cops and Pepper yelling Tony's name repeatedly before trying Liz's once and then reverting back to Tony.

Liz wants someone to love her like that.

"We should get out of here." Tony brushes off the dust on his pants as if it would make a difference.

"We," she emphasizes on the 'we' in a way that ensures Tony understands that she is not talking about the two of them but just him, "should have never given our address to a terrorist. It's kind of rule number one in keeping yourself safe."

Tony nods, rightfully ashamed, "Right. I'll remember that next time."

She glares at him, "There isn't going to be a next time."

"Sir, Ma'am." Jarvis' voice is cracking with static but not enough so that they can't understand the words, "the house is structurally destroyed and the foundation is fundamentally non-existent,"

The severity of the situation hits them too late, after Liz swears and breaks off into a run followed by her brother.

They don't make it out the door, even past the living room, before the house collapses and she and Tony are sent tumbling down.

Her scream is the last thing her brother hears from her before Mark 45 latches onto her frame and flies her away.

Elizabeth's scream is the last thing Tony hears before Mark 42 latches onto his frame and flies him away at full speed in the other direction.

To the world, the Starks are dead.

The news outlet, nearly every news outlet covers the tragic loss of the last remaining people of the greatest legacy humankind has ever witnessed.

In SHIELD, Nick Fury is going through a mission with Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers when Maria Hill bursts into the room, in a manner that was never seen from her prior to this moment.

"Sir," her tone is caution, unaware of Fury's reaction, "You need to see this."

She pulls out the remote and turns on the television mounted on the wall of the room, the only other furniture besides the large conference desk.

"After a horrifying bombing of the Malibu House by whom the media and the man himself calls The Mandarin, it has been reported that Tony and Elizabeth Stark are dead. Officials are currently combing the ocean for the two Starks, where it is presumed their bodies fell after the spacious mansion collapsed."

Natasha has already gotten her phone out, dialling the woman that she spoke to merely hours ago, assuming, hoping that this is some kind of sick joke and expecting, needing for Liz to answer and clear it up.

Steve looks at her, his stomach sinking when he hears Natasha's call go through voicemail. The last time he talked to Elizabeth Stark, it was after Loki and Thor had left for Asgard and she had asked him if she'll see him around.

He should have been there.

She's not dead.

"We don't know anything until there's a body." The Captain says with as much optimism he can muster up.

He doesn't know them as well as Natasha and Fury do but he knows that Elizabeth Stark had survived a lightning strike and shocks through her system on a daily basis and Tony Stark had survived shrapnel in his chest and carrying a missile into outer space.

They're not going to die. His sanity depends on him not losing more people that he cares about.

Fury, after being frozen for a minute, barks out orders, "I want a team sweeping the ocean for Tony and Elizabeth Stark. If, when, they don't find the body, I want that team to put out a search and rescue for the Starks."

The world may think that a measly bomb could kill the Starks but Fury knows better.

The Starks are not dead.