A/N: I'm truly sorry that I left you guys hanging for so long. I've just been so busy lately, and I elected to spend my time with my baby cousin that I barely get to see because of her bitch of a mother instead of writing. Sorry. Life and stuff.

Disclaimer: I own diddly-squat.

Epilogue

After Natasha hands Pepper off to Bruce, she races towards the door to the stairs, leaping over the different levels and dodging the bright word that still burns on the ground; Thor, Steve and Clint follow right her heels. She wretches open the door to the stairs—her mind taking in and cataloguing the damage it has taken, but not thinking about it now—and she bounds down the stairs, taking them three and four at a time. She still had the blueprints of the mansion memorized and knows this set of stairs doesn't lead all the way down to the workshop, which is where Tony is most likely to be. So she stops on the landing to the main floor, holding up a hand behind her so the guys won't run her over and she presses her ear up against the door and lets her eyes fall shut. She can hear voices and footsteps as the men move around the room waiting for their orders. She listens as carefully as she has been trained to and determines that there are most likely ten armed men on the other side of the door, the closest a mere four feet away.

She opens her eyes and turns back to the rest of the team and signals to them what she has learned. The Captain nods once and he signals back a plan, they agree and just like that the Avengers are in action.

After listening once more to assure nothing has changed, Natasha crouches ready by the door while Steve stands next to her with a hand on the doorknob, ready to pull it open on her signal. She nods to him and he yanks the door open and she charges into the room, sliding across the wooden and knocking a man's feet out from under him and sending him into the path of an arrow. He's dead before any of the others even turn towards him.

Then Steve and Thor follow her in, shield flying and hammer spinning. Clint kneels at the entrance and fires, and Natasha moves freely, unlike the other two, who keep glancing over their shoulders, because she knows she will not be hit. She trusts him.

She runs through the room, throwing punches and kicks whenever one of the men tries to interfere, knocking them off to the side to let the others deal with them. She makes it through the crowd and hears the sound of the last man's body hitting hit floor and then the rest of the team catching up with her as she bounds down the stairs to the shop. She reaches the bottom just in time to see Justin Hammer's body fall to the floor.

She doesn't waste time with the code; she just puts a foot through the glass and ducks under the falling shards while she pulls her gun from the thigh holster on her leg and holds the pistol in her hands as she darts into the room. Her eyes dart around the room and she takes in her surroundings; she sees four bodies on the floor—three unconscious, one clearly dead—and one Stark bleeding profusely. She runs around to face him, and she sees that his eyes are open and she says, "Tony, hey—Tony!"

"Hey, 'Tashalie… got some wicked Déjà Vu, eh?" he mumbles at her, still keeping his hand firm against his arm. He's right, this situation is so very similar to when they found him at Hammer's base that she can't help but smile at his words.

"You good, Stark?"

"Well, 'side from the bleeding hole in m' arm, 'm just fine… where's Pepper?" his eyes suddenly open up wide and he looks right in Natasha's face, a look that in his eyes that she can't describe.

"Pepper's fine, Stark, she's with Bruce, but you're not. We need to get you to a doctor."

"…Yeah," he says as his eyes droop shut.

…

When Pepper has calmed down and caught her breath, she turns to go to the stairs and makes it down the first flight when she has to duck aside to make room for the god of thunder carrying Tony's wheelchair up the stairs, with said man still in it. Thor's followed by the other three Avengers who stop when they see the small woman stopped next to them. Natasha nods to Clint and Steve to keep going and she stops to speak to Pepper.

"What—what's going on, Natasha? Is Tony—"

"Tony's okay, Pepper, he's going to be fine. We just need to bring him up to the helicarrier—he got shot."

"He got shot?! What?!"

"It's nothing major—he just got hit in the arm, grazed, really. C'mon, they're loading him into the jet now—gotta move if we're gonna go with them." Natasha grabs Pepper's wrist and pulls her up the stairs, Pepper still asking questions the whole way up.

They board the quinjet and, after securing Tony on a stretcher, they take off. Pepper holds his hand the whole ride.

He's taken to the infirmary as soon as they arrive, still unconscious, and the doctors patch up his arm—a simple procedure that only takes ten minutes and six stitches, then they re-administer his pain meds—the good ones that keep him under for a while—and he's wheeled back into his old room. Then the team falls back into the old routine that they'd perfected all those weeks ago—they wait for Tony to wake.

…

It doesn't take long.

Once again, coming out of the disoriented, drug-induced haze takes Tony several minutes to process, his senses returning to him slowly. He feels that all-too-familiar sensation of a hand gripping tightly to his, and as he blinks his eyes open, he turns his head to the Pepper beside him, her head lolling forward as she snores lightly. Smiling softly, he wiggles his fingers between hers a few times, but then notices the stab of pain that accompanies the action. He turns his head further and sees the fresh bandages on his upper right arm and remembers what had happened.

He remembers raising his arm and feeling the kick of the repulsor as it fired and seeing the blast move as if in slow motion as it burned a hole straight through Justin Hammer's chest.

And he feels absolutely no remorse for his actions.

He knows that he should, he really does, (he's been working on the whole "human compassion and other basic social interactions" thing lately) but he just can't bring himself to feel sorry for the death of a man that's tried to kill him and the few people he truly cares for that many times, and for that asinine of a reason.

So instead of dwelling on his actions, he observes his surroundings and sees that he's in what is now officially 'his' room. Bruce, bless his sciency little heart, has installed JARVIS in the room—he can tell by the tiny speakers and cameras that are nearly invisible in the corners of the ceiling. He sees evidence of the rest of the team's presence in the room as well: a large, elaborate bouquet full of red and gold carnations with arc reactor blue baby's breath just has to be from Clint (inside joke… don't ask), the Poptart gift basket with exclusive marshmallow-hot-chocolate and gingerbread flavors was a gift from Thor, Steve must've left the dorky little Hallmark card that had cartoon versions of the whole team on the front with the caption "You're Super Too!" in bright blue lettering, and Natasha left something that she has made herself—a pair of handmade fingerless gloves that quite closely resemble the gauntlets on the suit (Natasha Romonov is many things—deadly assassin, covert agent, seductress—on occasion—and a crocheter, too, apparently).

He's touched, really, by these small things. Even after all this time, he's still not used to people actually caring about him (not his money or his weapons or his body or his name), so it's nice to be reminded. But then Tony's taken from his musings by movement on his right side. He looks over and sees that Pepper's waking.

She blinks her eyes quickly several times and looks around for a moment, then focuses on the man in the hospital bed beside her.

"Hey, Tony," she mumbles sleepily and squeezes his hand.

"Hey, Pep," and he grips her hand back.

A few seconds pass, then Pepper's half-closed eyes fly wide open and she nearly shouts, "Oh my god. Tony, when did you wake up?! Are you okay—?"

"Pepper."

"Does your arm hurt—?"

"Pepper."

"Should I get the nurse—?"

"Virginia!"

"What?"

"Just stop talking for a second, okay? Jeez, you're always rambling about stuff, Pep, it's crazy. Yes, I'm okay; my arm hurts a little but it's fine; no, you don't need to get the nurse."

"Are you sure? I—"

"Yes, I'm sure." he sighs, and is about to say more when Bruce pokes his head in the door.

"Oh—hey, you're both up."

"Brucie! It's been too long, my science bro. How ya been?"

"Uh, okay, I suppose. Er—how are you feeling?"

Tony sighs and rolls his eyes. "Honestly, is that all you people are going to ask me? I'm hurt."

"Tony, don't be rude. He was just trying to be polite, but you don't know the meaning of that word, do you?" Pepper admonishes.

"Pepper, I'm a genius, I know exactly what 'polite' means and what polite behavior entails; I just choose not to act on this knowledge."

"Of course you do…" and she shakes her head, and Bruce just smiles.

…

Not long after Bruce leaves, Dr. Pierce arrives and checks up on Tony, looking over all his wounds, both old and new. He is deemed well enough to be taken back home that night.

So the team loads back up and they take Tony down to his home, which had had the bodies and blood and other various, damages have been removed and repaired almost immediately the events of that night. They get Tony plopped on the couch surrounded by a generous number of cushions and one Pepper, and then it's decided that it would just be too much trouble for the rest of them to go back up to the base. So Tony shoos them off to the assorted spare rooms and then finds his way back to his own (without a repeat of the Thor incident from a few weeks prior).

He lies back in his bed with the love of his life curled into his side and stares at the ceiling, the soft light of the arc reactor casting everything in the room a pale blue shade, and hears Pepper whisper quietly, "Are we gonna be okay?"

He considers the question for a few moments then smiles and answers, "Yeah. We're gonna be just fine."

A/N: Abrupt and crappy ending because I'm bad at endings. This is now officially a completed story. Cool!

Now that I'm done with this, I'd like to take a moment of your time to explain my next project. It's going to be one of those multi-chapter things that's really a whole lot of oneshots in one story. It'll have all different kinds of stories ranging in length and seriousness but all will hopefully be good.

Since I'm sometimes bad at ideas, I ask of you my friends:

Challenge me! Any ideas that you've had but never written down, or just some ambiguous plot device, I'll take anything. PM me or leave it in a review, just let me know! I'm cool with just about anything but slash or anything explicit, FYI.

Okay please send me those! I have a working title of Anything Goes, but it might change. Is it okay if I post a little chapter on the end of this to let you know when it's up?

Okay bye. You people have been wonderful to me throughout the course of this story, and I can't thank you enough.

Adios, mi amigos!