Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognise.

Author's Note: It's an update! I am sorry for the delay, ever since I came back off holiday things have just been busy at home and I've had writers block so that didn't help too much, but I finally got round to finishing off this chapter yesterday.

Big thank you's to Miel14, DoctorLia, Wonderwomanbatmanfan, Arrows the Wolf, sabaku no nathzu uchiha, Mi55 5tarFir3, Robin'sGirlStar12, katarina97, StarkObsessed, monalisamorocha, Mischief-Memories, ConnorVolturi, LouBlue, belgiques, fantasia-49, XBlueXCandyX, chocolate-licious and Ally Downey for reviewing on the last chapter.

Just 15 reviews away until we hit the 100 mark! That'll make me very happy.

Right, enjoy this chapter readers and I shall update when I can.

Reeves3.

Chapter Seven

If he hadn't been so angry Tony would have been impressed by his new record time of reaching the Helicarrier, docked in the Hudson River for repairs still, from Stark Tower. The HUD in front of his eyes scanned the entire aircraft and focused on the main headquarters. S.H.I.E.L.D agents were sitting at the computers working while two people patrolled around the room. Tony targeted on one man standing in-between the two control panels. As the image zoomed in closer Tony could see Nick Fury waiting, looking bored, with his hands clasped behind his back.

Tony's upper lip curled up into a snarl and he shot, like a bullet, through the giant windows at the front of the carrier, sending shattered shards of glass to the floor. Iron Man impacted with Nick Fury with a hard thud sent him across the room. They landed on the conference table towards the back of the room where Fury had once spoke to him and Captain America about the Avengers Initiative after learning about Coulson's death. Surprised by the sudden attack the agents immediately pulled out their guns and aimed them at Iron Man.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," grunted out Nick. Tony stood over him with one hand pinning him to the table and the other took off his helmet, threw it to the ground and raised his fist to strike.

"Give me a good reason why I shouldn't take out your other eye!" Tony growled. Fury gave him an unimpressed look and grunted out.

"You're surrounded by agents who know how to break a neck with their little finger."

Tony couldn't care less about the agents behind him aiming their weapons at the back of his head however he did care when someone pinched his shoulder in a firm grip causing all of his body to go numb. He looked and saw Natasha pulling him off Fury and dragging him back to the steps where Maria Hill was standing with her gun poised in the air. Natasha let him go causing Tony to stumble as he regained the use of his legs.

"Don't do that!" he snapped. Natasha shrugged and Fury sat up and rotated his shoulder making it crick.

"I understand you're angry Stark-," Tony let out a sardonic laugh, "-but you have to believe me I did it for your best intentions."

"Best intentions? Why should you care? And why should I believe you? What have you done to make me want to believe you or trust you? You're just a pain in the ass spy," shouted Tony. He raised a hand and for a moment everyone thought he was going to use his repulsor but instead Tony raised a metal middle finger in Fury's direction. The man with the eye patch sighed deeply.

"Agents could you give Mr Stark and I some privacy? Hill, Romanoff you can stay."

One by one the agents put their weapons away and filed out of the room. Tony kept his glaring eyes on Nick while Maria, Natasha and Fury kept sharing glances. No one in the room spoke or made a move until the last agent left and the doors closed shut behind him.

"I want an explanation and it better be a damn good one!" Tony said, struggling to keep his voice even as his rage coursed through his blood.

Just as Fury opened his mouth to explain a rumble of thunder filled the sky along with the sound of a faint humming that Tony recognised immediately as an engine. Through the broken window Thor, carrying Steve, led his way into the room using his hammer.

"Tony, don't kill Fury!" Steve yelled.

"I haven't," replied Tony, dryly. 'Yet,' he mentally added.

Thor settled them down next to Maria and Natasha. A second later Hawkeye, now fully dressed since his bath, drove into the room on his sky cycle with Bruce seated on the back. The archer parked it on the floor by all the computers and the two rushed up to the rest of the group. Tony looked around.

"Wait, did you guys leave Pepper alone?" he asked.

"I told her it was an emergency meeting and she told us to come. She said she's going to bed," explained Clint.

"Don't worry Tony I think she got over the shock of seeing Clint in the bath," said Steve. Natasha raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah what the hell did you think you were doing?" Tony asked.

"I too would like to know. Is it a custom on Midgard?" questioned Thor, in his innocent and confused way.

"No!" Tony, Steve, Bruce and Clint all yelled simultaneously. All of them didn't need Thor to randomly pop into their bathrooms while they were in use. Clint pointed at Fury and everyone looked at him.

"I was following his orders! He told me to stop it anyway I could."

"You could have just blown out the candles and drained the water. You didn't have to get in it," said Maria. Barton shrugged his shoulders.

"It was improvisation."

Tony glared at Hill. "You're in on it too?"

"From the start," answered Maria. Tony shook his head.

"How did S.H.I.E.L.D even find out I was going to propose?" he asked. A thought suddenly occurred to him and he looked over a Bruce with a slight hurt expression. "Did you tell them?"

Bruce shook his head. "I didn't say a word. I don't know how they found out."

As usual Fury had the answer. "Actually we heard on our own accord. What you don't know is that the war room has microphones in that links to S.H.I.E.L.D so we can keep a listen out on your work at all times."

"I didn't plan that," argued Tony, thinking back when he and Pepper rebuilt Stark Tower.

"No it was my idea," said Nick.

"Well I'm getting rid of it," snapped Tony. He was even more furious now. How dare S.H.I.E.L.D sneak hidden microphones into his building? "Y-Y-You have no right to get involved with my property or Pepper!"

"S.H.I.E.L.D has every right."

"And," added Natasha, "didn't you get J.A.R.V.I.S to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D when you were here working on the tesseract with Banner?"

Tony decided to ignore her comment and stay focused on Fury. "Not with this. Not with me and Pepper. I want to know everything you've done and why!"

Everyone's eyes turned to Fury and watched him closely as he calmly walked down the steps and over to the two control panels before finally speaking. Tony followed him down the stairs but remained at the bottom while everyone else leaned against the railings and watched Fury in the centre of the room.

"It started when we overheard-,"

"Eavesdropped," corrected Tony. Fury wiped round and stared fiercely at him with his good eye.

"I'm not going to tell you if you keep interrupting me." Tony remained silent and Fury continued. "Overheard you, Stark, talking to Banner about proposing to Miss Potts and requesting him to go get the ring for you. Hill heard this and reported back to me so I asked an agent to station himself on a nearby rooftop and call me to confirm Stark had the ring in his procession. The following few days afterwards we found out how you were going to propose."

"So you rang up Asgard and asked if Thor could pop by?" Tony asked more sceptical that accusation.

"Actually, we didn't plan his appearance. He just showed up. We had Barton on standby aiming at the electric billboard you were going to use as your display."

"I wasn't aware I was stopping your proposal of undying love Man of Iron to the maiden Potts. I am genuinely sorry," said Thor.

"It's okay Thor, I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at them," said Tony, pointing a finger at Fury. Nick ignored the finger pointing and carried on speaking as though Thor and Tony hadn't butted into the conversation.

"Anyway while Potts was in Malibu we heard Stark ridiculously trying to plan his next proposal-,"

"I have a question actually about that," said Maria, looking down at Tony. "Planning to steal a blue horn from the restaurant where you had your first date? What's that all about?"

"I thought it would be romantic," he answered. Maria rolled her eyes and Fury spoke up.

"When Banner gave Stark the idea for a picnic we sent Steve to interrupt it. Luckily the Captain had arrived at the Helicarrier that morning so we sent him to the park with specific orders."

"Why did you listen to them? You're not an S.H.I.E.L.D agent," said Tony turning around to glare up at his teammate. Steve rubbed the back of his neck.

"I'm a soldier. I follow the orders of my commanding officer which is Fury because I joined the Avengers," said Steve, guiltily. "I didn't want to be there but Fury told me there was a good reason to stop it so I did. I'm sorry."

"After the Captains success we then overheard you saying you were going to propose at the Canyon Ranch. So we sent Romanoff to stop that one. We knew by then you were getting suspicious but you didn't know who was behind it all. Then this morning before the celebration at Washington Square Park we heard you talking on the phone to the skywriting company and we got Barton to stop it where he ended up disobeying orders-"

"I stopped the proposal didn't I?" asked Clint, crossing his arms over his chest. "I told Tony I was sorry but I got the job done that makes it a success."

"And what brought Stark here?" Fury asked.

"Okay I might have told him I was following orders. Tony figured out the rest," said Clint.

"You gave him a pretty big clue," said Natasha. Clint glared at her and the room fell quite. Tony turned in a full circle so he could look at all of them.

"No one has explained yet why you did this," he said, quietly.

"We've been protecting her," Nick announced.

"Protecting her? What from?" Tony asked, his anger melting away into concern. Fury decided to give him the short answer.

"You." Tony frowned and turned his armoured body to face Fury in a threatening stance, his hands clenched into fists.

"I would never harm Pepper," he growled out.

"Not you but your enemies, they will," said Fury. "At S.H.I.E.L.D we don't only protect the team. We protect those who are involved with The Avengers. If you make Pepper your wife she will become the number one target to your enemies!"

Tony's anger took a temporary break from his body as Fury's words swirled around in his mind. Everyone remained quite to give Tony time to think but after a couple of minutes they were surprised to hear the billionaire laugh.

"What's so funny?" Fury asked, unimpressed.

"I'm laughing at the irony," Tony answered. "All this time you've been stopping my proposals to protect her when the thing you should have done is to let me propose so I can protect her."

"This isn't a laughing matter Stark. Now listen-,"

"NO! You listen to me!" Tony yelled causing a few people in the room to jump at the sudden volume change in his voice as others stared at him in shock. All the humour had vanished now and there was a burning passion in his eyes that was rarely ever seen.

"She already is a target! She has been from the moment I became Iron Man. Stane knew that and he tried to kill her and I know there will be others. The one thing I regret most when I informed the world my secret identity was Pepper. Because I knew if enemies found out how I always have to rely on her, they would target her and my fears became even worse when she and I became a couple. But if anyone even thinks about hurting her I will fight for her! That's what I promise when I ask her to be my wife! All of you know how far I'm willing to go to keep her safe."

Tony paused to catch his breath and when he spoke again the fire had died out in his eyes a little but he spoke with all his heart.

"Do you know what I told Coulson when he brought me here? Keep love alive. That's what I'm doing because if I go, I don't want Pepper to think that I didn't love her, I would want to show her and tell her every day what she means to me. Why else did you think I made that phone call? Fury, your concern is appreciated, not when you stop my proposal attempts, but when it comes to Pepper, I know what I'm doing, despite what some of you may think, and I've thought about this a lot and I want to be her husband. And if Pepper is targeted and taken, I should hope that S.H.I.E.L.D will help me find her but I need to know first if they're on my side and have my support."

Looking up at the platform above him Tony watched his teammates nod their heads and made murmurs of agreement until only Fury was left who was strangely looking at him with a bit of pride in his features.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asked.

"More sure than taking a nuke into deep space," said Tony, honestly.

"Good," said Fury. He paused for a minute as he thought about what Tony had said and then he spoke. "You have S.H.I.E.L.D's support and my apologies."

Tony gave a small incline to his head as a thank you.

I think I'll leave it there. Fury's intentions were pure, he didn't mean any harm, he just took a stupid way to show it.

The proposal is in the next chapter!

Don't forget to leave a review, lets see if we can get to 100, and I hoped you all enjoyed the chapter.

Reeves3.