Author's Note: Bottom line, this whole story is part of the bargaining phase of grief over the loss of a beloved character. Tony's arc through the MCU was masterful and could only end the way it did. Give RDJ an Oscar (and let's be honest: He should have been nominated and won it for the first Iron Man, but I digress). Despite my adoration for what Tony did and how it makes the character now immortal, I can't leave him dead—not in world as screwed up as this one is currently. So, for those who want to tag along in my FF therapy, I will give you fair warning. This story will be a little lengthy, a little wordy, a little deus ex machina, but you're here because you're not ready to say farewell to Mr. Stark either. So hop in; we're going for a ride. It will mostly follow the MCU up to Endgame and then completely ignore Far From Home as that plot doesn't work for this story.

So time to queue up AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" because I just distinctly heard a familiar voice over the radio ask if we missed him…

PROLOGUE

April 7, 1970

New York

Inventor and engineer extraordinaire Howard Stark looked at his watch and sighed with frustration as Tuesday afternoon got eaten by traffic into the City. He'd spent longer than he intended at Camp Lehigh that day and getting home was going to be hellish as the one of the first truly warm days of spring was bearing down on the region. He hoped the sauerkraut he was toting with him wouldn't go bad. Maria's cravings during the pregnancy were odd but hadn't strayed into spoiled food. But, he thought as he gripped the bouquet in his other hand, if the damn German slaw was bad, the flowers would make up for it.

He watched the cars out his window without honestly seeing them. His mind kept straying to that MIT professor he'd just met. There was something odd about Professor Potts.

At first, Howard wondered if it was just his own usual combativeness with academics coloring the encounter in his mind. Some intelligentsia gave him the cold shoulder—a self-satisfied superiority complex they carried by wrapping themselves in degrees (that he did not hold) like armor. They did it simply to try to overcome their feelings of jealousy over having never invented what he had. They were forced to teach his accomplishments to their students. Degrees were great for those who needed them, but Howard wondered what value did multiple PhD's hold compared to actual inventions that worked and hands-on technological breakthroughs? Just as bad were the academics that fawned over him with a sickening reverence. Sure, he liked attention, but sycophants turned him off instantly.

Potts was definitely different. He spoke respectfully to Howard, yet there was also something in his voice that might have been regret. The entire encounter gnawed on Howard. As he made a mental note to ask the man about it the next time he ran across him at the installation, the phone rang.

One of the perks of being a cutting-edge inventor was having access to all sorts of bells and whistles the average Joe didn't know existed. For Howard, his latest perk was a telephone in his car. Granted, it was up front with Jarvis because the wiring needed to be closer to the battery in order for the sound in the handset to travel properly. He'd made notes on how that could be fixed in the future, but after the call came in, his thoughts about call clarity disappeared.

Jarvis answered and held a clipped conversation that was over in a matter of seconds. The result was the car racing out of their lane and toward an exit.

"I'm supposed to be heading home, Jarvis," Howard said. "If that was anyone telling me I'm needed for work tonight, they can kiss my…"

"It's about Mrs. Stark, sir," Jarvis replied. "They are taking her to the hospital."

"Maria?" Howard sat forward instantly. "Why? What's wrong?"

"They are not sure, sir," Jarvis replied. "She apparently experienced sudden pain and collapsed. The ambulance is transporting her."

"It can't be time for the baby," Howard argued. "There's still two months to go."

"The doctor will be with her shortly, sir," Jarvis offered in his reassuring tone. "We will be there soon as well."

Howard released a tense breath and stared out the windscreen with an intensity he used to reserve for Nazis.

He'd been against having children. He'd married late life, just two years earlier, but Maria was nearly 20 years younger than him and wanted a baby. He really couldn't deny her anything. He'd given up his confirmed bachelorhood for her and settled down. No more starlets or dancers; it was dinner with the wife and a lot of evenings at home since they wed. Knowing what a bastard his own old man had been, Howard was certain fatherhood was one undertaking at which he would fail, but Maria had gone and gotten pregnant (okay, he was a willing participant in the fun part of the process). Then, somewhere along the way, he'd gotten suckered in by a creature he didn't even know. The kid (in Howard's mind it was a boy—a girl would be too much trouble and too much payback for his wilder days) had changed the way Howard looked at the world and his own life. Once the baby arrived, Howard planned to leave SHIELD. Peggy Carter could run things without him (she'd been saying so for years). Howard was done with it all. He planned to retire from the world of intrigue and espionage to be a full-time family man (who still invented weapons—after all, a guy still needed a hobby).

Now he was faced with circumstance he never contemplated: What if it all fell apart?

What if something was wrong with the baby? What if he died before he was born?

Misery at that possibility, one that had never occurred to Howard until that crippling moment, settled into his chest, leaving it tight and fluttering.

Just 30 minutes ago, he'd told Potts there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for his child and now… Howard thrust himself back into his seat and scraped his hands down his face. The world was a dangerous place. He was a man who worked with and against dangerous people. What the hell was he doing bringing a helpless infant into that mess? This sudden scare that the kid could be taken from him before they ever met shook Howard to his core. Even if the kid was born, there would be other dangers, and who would be there to protect him? The enemy knew Howard's name. They'd targeted him before. Now, with a family, there was another way to hurt him, to control him, to find his vulnerabilities and threaten freedom everywhere.

Howard had spent 30 years defending freedoms. The free people of the world, even if they didn't know it, depended on him. How could he walk away? Sure, Peggy could handle the spy part of the job like she was born to do it, but she was not inventor. She couldn't build the weapons and support they needed to do their jobs. Leaving that job to someone else was setting SHIELD up to fail.

Howard blinked as life took on a startling clarity—one he'd been ignoring since his wife first told him she was pregnant. It wasn't the kid's fault, but suddenly the baby seemed more like a liability than a reason to rejoice.

Howard felt exceptionally wretched as that thought arced across his mind. He stroked his moustache with a trembling hand and knew he hated himself more than a bit in that moment. He didn't mean it, the liability bit, not in the way it first formed in his mind. But the essence of the thought—the realization that the child, by his very existence, was going to change the world in ways too hard to predict—jolted Howard's mind onto a course he did not see any way to avoid.

It was then, during that nerve-racking car ride to the hospital that Howard Stark, a man whose mind made many momentous (and occasionally disastrous) leaps in an effort to do what he thought was right, decided something pivotal.

The only way to protect his child from the dangers of the world was to keep him as far from Howard as his life and his wife would allow.

oOoOo

8 Days-post Tony Stark's funeral

Delta Base—temporary operations center for the Avengers

Colonel James Rhodes sat in front of his battered armor staring into nothingness. He'd been that way for 20 minutes before Sam Wilson decided enough was enough. He strode forward and clapped his teammate on the back.

"So I got the paperwork officially," he offered. "No court martial. Not even getting a fine. They said it like I should thank them—like I'd been on vacation all this time and they were doing me the favor. It's nice to know somethings never change."

"Mmm," Rhodes nodded.

"Hey, man," Sam jostled him. "I'm talking to you."

"What?" Rhodes shook his head. "Sorry. Right. Good they cleared you. Not like they had any other choice. You served five years as dust cloud."

"What I like about you most is your compassion and understanding," Sam grinned then sighed. "How you doing?"

"Me?" Rhodes nodded. "Fine. Just looking at this and thinking…"

"It needs a tune up?" Sam offered as he looked at the many dents, rips, and burn marks in the War Machine armor. "It still functional?"

"It's still got some game, but it needs an overhaul," he admitted. "I was just thinking…" He paused and swallowed to control his voice. "It'll be the first time it gets worked on without the possibility of… Well, I won't have to listen to a laundry list of all the things the techs do wrong or what upgrades it should have. Won't have anyone stepping in to catch a mistake or make a tweak I didn't ask for but realize later was a good idea."

He thumbed a stubborn tear from his eye but kept his gaze straight ahead. He'd lost airmen in combat before, but this was different. Tony was a friend, his best friend, long before the iron suits. They'd met as students—when Rhodes was working his way through MIT on an ROTC scholarship hoping to fly fighter jets someday and Tony was a punk-ass prodigy who yawned during lectures like he already knew the material (usually because he did). Decades of friendship sprouted between them there and flourished years later when Rhodes got to be the Defense Department's liaison with Stark Industries where Tony created all their war toys.

"If you need to talk," Sam said, "I used to run counseling sessions before we all started doing this."

"I know," Rhodes nodded. "Talking isn't my problem. It's the memories. There's a lot, but I'm stuck on one, and it isn't even the last one."

His mind was drifting into the past. 2008. Afghanistan. Kunar Valley. An ambush followed by a disappearance.

Each night since the last battle, that arduous three-month period spent looking for Tony Stark flashed in Rhodes' mind when he tried to sleep. He knew why, too. It was the first time he nearly (maybe he should have?) lost Tony. That was also the first time he got Tony back. That was the real knife in the gut. Tony had been thought dead more than once, but this time there was no skin of his teeth miracle for Tony to pull off. There was no hope that Rhodes could, one last time, save his friend.

"Let me guess," Sam remarked with eerie accuracy, "you're thinking about a burned out Humvee and miles of sand and mountains." Rhodes stared back with a bewildered expression.

"I told you," Sam continued. "I used to do this full-time. You rescued him the first time. You think you should have done it again. That's the space between denial and bargaining, man. It's natural. It's also the grief stage that's hardest to get through. You can tread water in it for a long time, just let me know if it feels like you're going under, okay?"

As Rhodes nodded, Sam sighed. Tony was never his favorite of the bunch, but the guy had stones and Sam could admire that even if he wanted to throat punch the guy at least once a week. Sam once joked with Steve Rogers that Tony was a headache that would come and go—the pain flared sometimes when he arrived and sometimes when he left. In typical Rogers fashion, Cap explained that Tony wasn't like other people and the way his mind worked made him as much of a detriment as an asset at times. Still, Sam knew deep down that what the man did to save everyone (like the whole universe of everyone's) was a feat no one in the whole existence of everything had ever done. It was admirable, especially considering the guy could have chosen to sit in the sidelines (and probably should have knowing what he'd left behind).

"You been hearing the stuff on the news?" Sam asked. "All the tributes?"

"They want to give him the Nobel Prize in physics for figuring out time travel," Rhodes nodded.

"Imagine if he was still here?" Sam chuckled. "No way we'd ever hear the end of that."

"Nah, he wouldn't go to the ceremony," Rhodes shook his head. "He didn't like people handing him things. I suppose Pepper might have forced him. Then again, he might have talked about declining it just to piss off Lang and then mention it wouldn't be his first time being up for a Nobel. He was supposed to win it once before, but he decline."

"No way."

"Yeah, pulled his name from consideration maybe 15 years ago because if he won it, the Board of Directors at Stark Industries was going to claim proprietary interest in the particle field generator he created," Rhodes shook his head.

"I get that he's considered a martyr right now, but I'm having a hard time thinking Tony Stark turned down that kind of praise just because some old dudes in suits were gonna give him grief," Sam said.

"Well, he did it to be a pain in the ass to the Board of Directors as much as anything," Rhodes explained. "He gave the technology he invented to a group called Aqua International."

"I heard of them," Sam nodded. "They do clean water projects for impoverished villages in Africa."

"They do that because Tony gave them the way to do it," Rhodes explained. "He had a patent for a generator. He signed it over to them and bought some tiny little five-guy company in Poland to build the generators. There's no big corporate reason to hang on to that technology other than to gouge some devoted humanitarians trying to help suffering people into giving up something for it."

Sam stared, amazed by the detail but intrigued by the quick grin on Rhodes' face.

"See, I'd think he just wanted to sleep with some hottie Peace Corps woman so he used the patent to close the deal," he asserted prompting Rhodes to laugh.

"Probably," Rhodes nodded then shrugged as his smile appeared reluctant and sad. "Tony wasn't always such a philanthropist. Years ago, I used to get on his case that he could be so much more than be the guy with the headlines with all the money. The day I found out what he did with that patent…"

"You backed off?" Sam guessed.

"No," Rhodes said. "I didn't say anything, but I didn't let up. Anytime I saw the chance, he heard it from me that I thought there was more to him than the playboy. I mean, without telling anyone, he made it so that women in southeast Sudan no longer needed to walk five miles every day, two times a day, to fetch water for their kids only to watch a third of them die from poisoned water. He fixed that, and I never even asked him about it. Now, I can't. I keep thinking about stuff like that. All the things… We were best friends for so long, but… There was a lot of stuff left unsaid, you know?"

As Sam nodded and contemplated how a guy who once dated supermodels and ended up on the pages of every pop culture publication on the planet for a decade could somehow miss giving himself credit for saving a bunch of children he never met, an alert sounded over the PA system.

"Wilson and Rhodes to the control room," the voice of Maria Hill commanded.

The control room, nothing more than a concrete box atop a concrete bunker, was dark and dank. The whole compound was constructed during the Cold War to house Air Force techs who nervously scanned the skies for radar blips that might indicate the Russians were invading. That none ever did simply added to the dismal feeling of the place. Abandoned during the base closure purges of the late 1980s, the place smelled moldy or stale, depending on whether it was a below or above ground location. Nick Fury, recently returned from his dust days, relocated what remained of the Avengers to the secluded spot 24 hours after Thanos departed the universe forever.

The previous site, palatial even by comparison to any base with a military aspect, was a pile of rubble still too hot in some spots to attempt to retrieve what tech might have survived. How the group would rebound was a mystery to most. Their primary benefactor was dead. It was only beginning to dawn on those who supported the initiative how much Tony Stark personally funded the operation. It was unclear to most if Stark Industries would step in and lend financial help. That speedbump left the organization in chaos.

When Banner snapped and brought back all those dusted five years earlier, it wasn't only the heroes who returned. Teachers, cabdrivers, retirees, nurses and lunch ladies reappeared alongside perverts, robbers, embezzlers, murders, and international criminals. While everyone appeared right where they vanished, that was another issue. Being dusted while asleep in bed was one thing. Getting dusted on an airplane at 30,000 feet or while driving on the freeway feet pretty much guaranteed soon-to-be-dead bodies falling from great heights or becoming road pizza during rush hours.

Some returns resulted in desperate and dangerous fugitives—a few of whom were supposed to be in SHIELD custody. Some of those unfortunately returned in locations where they were placed in harm's way resulted in terror filled deaths for others. There was a sudden rash of panic and bodies cropping up in a variety of locations. Shouldering the responsibility to dealing with that had become the Avenger's latest operation.

"You want us to pick up a dropped body?" Sam scoffed as he folded his arms and shook his head. "If we got paid, this would be below our paygrade, I'm guessing. Why aren't you just sending out a detail with a body bag?"

"Because I'm sending you," Fury replied. "This one isn't just anywhere. It's at Camp Lehigh."

"Lehigh?" Rhodes repeated. "Someone was on the base? I thought there was security to prevent that."

"There was a lot going on," Fury said. "Perhaps you recall?" He cut his one good eye back to the computer screen (a small one that made him miss the bigger and crisper one he had the last time he was in charge). "There's also an energy spike detected."

"What kind of energy?" Rhodes asked. "My suit is a little beat up, but it should be able to withstand moderate radiation for a short period of time. No reason to send in Sam."

"It's not radiation," Fury replied. "We don't know exactly what it is other than it registered as magma displacement."

"It was earthquake?" Sam wondered.

"No, but it sent the sensors off like it was one," Fury explained. "We don't know what it is. That's why I'm sending you two. Look, we've got body details all over the place. This one is a single body, spotted by a security guard. He called in a 'weird flash' then he passed out. He woke up and said there's a body where he saw the light burst. US Geological survey reports a magma displacement registration but nothing on the Richter Scale. They're baffled. So am I. Go get me answers."

oOoOo

Camp Lehigh, New Jersey

3 p.m.

Sam grazed his eyes over the battered and faded sign proclaiming the decommissioned base as the "birthplace" of Captain America. He smirked at the thought of a short, scrawny Steve Rogers. He turned his head to comment to Rhodes, who had just retracted his face shield, but halted. The man wore the thousand yard stare of a man expecting trouble.

"Too soon," Sam said to his partner. "You shouldn't be here. This is milk run. I'll go scan the body, get facial recognition and we'll call in a bus to grab this one. You head back. I can see you're crawling in your skin to get out of that can."

Rhodes shot him a sharp look then deflated. He did want out. His mind was elsewhere—never a good approach to any operation.

"I'll hang back in case you need assistance," he offered then stepped out of the suit, feeling the still crispness of the autumn air envelop his body.

"If this one goes zombie on me, I'm sending it your way," Sam smirked over his shoulder. "This is Jersey. Anything that comes back to life here is bound to be nasty."

He disappeared around what looked like a barracks enroute to the coordinates for the energy signature—one that had dropped off all sensors nearly as quickly as it registered. Rhodes scuffed his foot in the dirt and tried to clear his mind. Taking time off wasn't his style. He was an Airman. He knew about getting back in the cockpit after losing a wingman in battle. He'd done it before. He attributed his current jumble to being closer to the deceased than any other brother-in-arms he'd lost before. Tony was family. Tony's family was Rhodes' family. He was supposed to stop by the house that night to see Pepper and Morgan just to check in. His head was on how that visit, his first since the funeral a week earlier, might go when Sam began shouting.

It wasn't a voice raised just to be heard over the distance and obstructing buildings. There was fear, panic even, in his tones. Rhodes dove back into his armor and launched himself toward the shouts. He dropped to the dusty ground seconds later to find Sam kneeling over the supine form of a man with dark hair.

"What?" Rhodes asked, raising his palm ready to issue a defensive pulse if needed.

"He's alive!" Sam said with wild eyes as he scrubbed a hand over his mouth.

"He is?" Rhodes moved forward. "Call for medical!"

"I think we need more than an ambulance," Sam said as he shifted away to reveal the rest of the man's face.

Rhodes gasped and dropped to his knees as his shield retracted. His breath caught in his chest as he registered the face in front of him with its closed eyes, dark hair, and goatee with chinstrap sides.

"You're seeing what I'm seeing, right?" Sam asked.

Rhodes retracted his gauntlet and pressed two fingers to the body's neck just has Sam had been doing. There was a pulse. Strong and quick. He keyed his comlink and found his voice.

"We need immediate transport at the Camp Lehigh site," Rhodes ordered. "Bring the containment cradle and have medical standing by."

"Transport dispatched," the calm and commanding voice of Maria Hill responded.

"Rhodes," Fury's voice followed. "What have you got?"

"Not a what," Sam replied. "It's a who. Damn!"

"Come again?" Fury demanded.

"Sir," Rhodes exhaled as he placed a trembling hand on the unconscious man's shoulder to feel the warmth of a very much alive body, "you're not going to believe this."

He then re-engaged his helmet and activated the broadcast camera. Fury alone could see what was transmitted to his terminal. He blinked his eye as he muttered in surprise under his breath.

"What the fuck?"

"That's what I was gonna say, sir," Sam remarked. He then looked at Rhodes. "Remember what I said about weird shit happening in Jersey? I rest my case."

Rhodes nodded without truly hearing.

"He's got a pulse," Rhodes said. "He's got a pulse!"

"I know," Sam said nodded, but his partner didn't seem to need acknowledgement or agreement. His entire focus was on the man who showed no sign of waking.

"Tony?" Rhodes began in a voice struggling to remain steady as it grew louder and more insistent. "Tony! It's me! It's Rhodey! Can you hear me? Man, open your eyes. Do it now. Damn it! Tony?"

The two shocked Avengers were too occupied with their curious (and impossible) discovery to notice they were not alone. Phased between the corrugated steel wall of the abandoned barracks stood a man. In a previous life, one before his company and life were destroyed by Stark Industries, his name was John Morely. Since dawning his suit, a full-encasing ultra-light titanium armor enhanced with his own special creation, AccuTech, he refered to himself simply as Ghost. It was a fair description because to the world, he was quite dead. He also possessed the technology to walk through (or in this case linger in) solid matter. Ghost hadn't counted on the cavalry arriving to scoop up his prize. He'd been promised that if he successfully made the leap, he could take whatever he hauled with him. Stark, what was left of him, belonged to Ghost.

oOoOo

A/N: So this is how the chapters are going to go: some short (this is considered short); some long. This was originally a completed story in script format (about 100 pages of dialogue). Friends begged for it to be a story, so I'll be throwing the scenes and whatnot together as I go along and publish the chapters. Enjoy.