Guest Review Responses

Someone: I've been crying for literaly 20 mins... still am... OMG I'M STILL CRYING! I literally don't remember the last time I cried for this long! You are the BEST BEST BESTEST AUTHOR EVER! I don't read THAT much... but you are still... just... oh my god... I can't describe it... your stories are so FREAKING AWESOME and I don't know how you can do this at all... like seriously, you must have some mental issues O_o ... Anyway... you almost killed me at the end of this... I was laughing and crying at the same time, thought I was going mad... but isn't that the normal symptoms of reading your stories?! I KNEW HOWIE WAS ALIVE! I JUST NEW IT! And I also guessed that Fury was a good guy at the beginning of this epilogue... I don't think I can wait that long for the next story :( IT'S GONNA END SOON :'( Oh gosh... I've started crying again... I'm not actually an emotional person, just this story and the way you wrote it, completely threw me... I dunno what else to say now, I feel like this review should be as long as your chapters (which is long!) - telling you that from the beginning I still can't believe how you can write so freaking perfectly... and the way you fix things by unfixing them even more, and then fixing them... and also the way everything ties up together and not a single thing is left out and I'm sounding REALLY stupid and weird now lol... anyway... I'm gonna miss you and your stories :( but hey... at least you didn't end on a cliffhanger, well, it kinda was - not for me though cuz I guessed... so goodbyes and I hope you have an AWESOME holiday D xx – You can all thank Someone for me staying up late and trying to work on two stories at the same time while real life and work kick my butt. This… this review and everything that is described here is the reason why I write, and I can only hope that every single one of you feels the same way. If you do, you're welcome! And if you don't… challenge accepted ;) Thank you sooooooooo much, Someone! Your review made ME tear up :D

muah: I am shocked beyond words. You always have these crazy unpredictable ideas! So relieved to know that Pepper, Tony AND Howie are aliiivvee! Looking forward to the next installment! – Here's a brief intro to it! Be warned though: being alive is the easiest part of what's to come ;)

apps: I am happy now... all three are alive... yayyy... all cheers to you miss Starfire... looking forward to Christmas present!... happy Christmas... Enjoyyyy –A little bit late on the Christmas present, but here is a glimpse of what's to come. Epic does not begin to describe the conclusion of this saga!

Pepper210: Hola, soy nueva en esta paagina y devo decir que de todas las hisrorias que lei, tus cronicas le ganaron por mucho. Es la mejor saga que lei en mi vida. HAAAAAA! espero que actulizes pronto ya no aguanto las ganas de saber que pasaran (por sierto bueno uso de la tecnica de "si estas muerto no pueden matarte" en la histori, mucho escandalo pero estubo buen). Sos mi idola actualiza pronto... besos – ¡Bienvenida! Here is your starter pack for reading these stories, en especial esta historia final: twenty boxes of tissues, ten brown paper bags, three oxygen tanks, two automatic defibrillators, and five punching bags. ¡Espero que esta historia tambien te guste! ¡Saludos!

Summary: After years of struggling to build their lives together, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have lost everything. But as all-out war looms, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance, Tony and Pepper are ready to take it all back. It has all come down to this. Story 8 of 8. The epic finale to The Last Chronicles Saga.

Standard disclaimer for all my stories: My stories are graphic, angsty, frustrating, filled with cliffhangers, drama and foul language. Read at your own risk – medical issues and subsequent bills are not covered by yours truly ;) If you don't like, please don't read. I appreciate reviews and constructive feedback but if you cannot stand the plot, save yourself and me some time and walk away. You don't have to love all IMAA stories :) I don't own IMAA. My stories are better viewed by using the "half screen" option of FFNET.

THIS IS A SEQUEL TO THE FIFTH YEAR. Start with The Last Month, then The Last Summer, then The First Year, The Second Year, The Third Year, The Fourth Year and then The Fifth Year.

READ THOSE FIRST OR BE FOREVER CONFUSED!

A/N: Forgot to post this in C8 of the last story. A link to the song that Tony plays for Pepper while on the island can be found on my profile. The song is "Please Forgive Me" by Bryan Adams. You may want to re-read that section while listening to the song… but only if you want to smile and cry at the same time.

Welcome back, my Faithful Readers!

The Last Chronicle

Prologue

Twenty-four hours.

This was how long Tony Stark and Pepper Potts-Stark had given him to organize himself; to relay to them everything that had occurred for the past five years.

Twenty-four hours. This was their non-negotiable deadline to him.

Nick Fury sighed loudly and rubbed his face with his palms. He should have seen it coming – this was his fucking job: to predict what could or would occur and prepare in advanced for it. But if this mission had proven anything to him, it was that with the young Stark couple, nothing was ever easy. Nothing was ever predictable. Nothing was ever black or white.

Tony Stark and his wife marched to the beat of their own drums. And no one but them understood the notes of their tune.

He removed his hands from his face and stretched his arms forward above his desk. His eye then darted to the multiple clocks on the front wall of his office, all displaying the current date and time of different time zones. Why he had asked for these clocks from the original inhabitants of the location S.H.I.E.L.D. had relocated to, was now beyond him. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, however, it dawned on him that the destruction of humanity as everyone knew it was not contingent upon a certain time or day – not even to a celebrated holiday. The end of everything and everyone would come when he – the man that had marked the young inventor as his prey – wanted it to be.

Nick Fury chuckled bitterly at the irony of it. The inventor and his enemy: so different from each other, and yet both created and used their drums as they saw fit. Their resources and brightness were abundant, nearly equal at this point, yet their goals and mission in life were complete opposites of each other. Tony wanted to save the world. His enemy wanted to end it.

The head of S.H.I.E.L.D. groaned when he realized he had wasted hours pondering about the events of the day before. He had but a few hours before the sun rose – or before the morning alarms in the building went off – and Tony and Pepper would be at his doorstep, demanding the answers they wanted of him. Twenty-four hours was not enough time, especially if he only had an hour to convince them to stay below ground.

Those damned kids, Fury thought as he remembered what had occurred after he had relayed to the couple that their son was alive. He had hoped that this revelation would have gained their immediate cooperation, but the odds had not been in his favor. He actually could not blame them; he had betrayed their trust too many times thus far.

Nick Fury stared at the inventor and then at the redhead, and then his smug face turned somber.

"I didn't change my mind. This was always the plan. It had to happen this way, because the world is going to hell very soon, Tony, and we need your help. Everyone does. And also because…"

Nick paused to give Pepper an apologetic look, stared at the floor beneath him for a second, and then finally looked up to face the woman's forthcoming wrath.

"Your son is alive."

The silence that followed his statement was long and heavy, broken only after Pepper shook her head vehemently and glared at the older man.

"You… you're lying. You're fucking lying to us!"

"Whoa, there! Calm down. I'm not lying," Nick raised his hands again in an attempt to somehow calm the infuriated redhead. "I… it's a long story. But he is alive."

"Tony," Pepper barely whispered, pressed her forehead against his back, and then let her husband take over the conversation while she visibly held back sobs. Nick Fury inwardly flinched. He knew the least effective way to get through to them was by setting Tony in Pepper-defense mode. He had just caused the one thing he had wanted to avoid in the first place.

"Stark, listen to me."

"No," Tony snarled. "YOU," he pointed his right index finger towards Fury and then his thumb towards his chest, "Listen to me. I don't know what you want from us, but you aren't gonna get it. I don't know why you kept us alive or why you had Extremis come back online in me…"

Pepper's head snapped up at the inventor's last words, worry evident in her face. "What?" she placed her hands on his shoulders. "Tony… did you just… are you sure?"

"Yes," Nick said. "I had my people partially reawaken his Extremis."

"Partially?" Pepper asked in a tone Nick Fury did not like. "You're telling me you thought it was OK to blow up our jet, acceptable to pretend that we're dead to the world, funny to lie about my son, AND appropriate to turn back on the one thing that was killing Tony for months? Do you have a FUCKING DEATH WISH?!"

"I think he does," Tony said and then took a step toward Fury, fists ready and anger pouring out of him. Seeing this, Fury snapped his fingers once, but it was not until the redhead commanded the genius to stop his trek that Tony realized what Fury had just done. His eyes traveled down his form and then back to Pepper, only to see on her what was on him: red dots all over her body, mostly aimed at their heads.

"What the FUCK, Fury?" Tony screamed. "Do you WANT me to kill you?"

"Not if I kill you first," Fury replied. "Or maybe Miss Potts. Your choice, Tony."

"He's bluffing," Pepper snapped, anger dripping out of her words even though tears were yet to leave her eyes. "He's not going to touch us, Tony."

"Are you sure about that?" Nick challenged, hoping that his techniques worked on the couple as well as they had worked on their relatives, two weeks ago.

"Absolutely," Pepper answered and took a step closer to where Nick stood, the red dots of the dozens of snipers concealed in the hidden room above them, following her moves. "I don't know what you want us for, but you know damned fucking well that if you hurt either of us, you aren't getting shit out of us."

"You underestimate my resources, Potts."

"And you overestimate your options," Pepper began. "If what you're saying is true… if… if you did fake our deaths to help you save the world, then you need us both… ALIVE," she pointed towards her husband. "And I know that Tony is way smarter and more valuable to you than I am… but I also know that if you hurt me, he won't do anything for you. And you know that, too. And you also know that if you hurt him, I won't help you either."

Nick narrowed his eye at her. "You forget I have the best people in torturing techniques."

"Try me," Pepper glared back at him. "You have no idea what I've been tortured with."

"Actually, I do," Nick crossed his arms over his chest. "And I also know that Tony hasn't been through what you've been through. Do you think he can handle it, Potts? The electric shocks, the water dunking… the snake venom? Are you willing to put him through what you barely survived yourself?"

"You may have limited the range of Extremis' computer detection," Tony interjected when Pepper took longer to respond and had begun breathing hard in response to Fury's threat on his life. "But I'm still stronger and faster than you. You want to test it out, huh, Fury? Which arm do you want me to break first?"

"The left one," Pepper suggested in an unnerving tone, eyes focused on the general's arm in question. "It's dying, anyway," the redhead continued, head tilted to the left and her eyes slowly moving up and down Fury's body, as if she could see every part of his innards. "Or maybe we'll just wait for the darkness to finish taking over your head."

"Darkness?" Tony asked as he stared back and forth between his redhead and the clearly shaken Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. "Pepper… what-what do you mean?"

"I can see the darkness, Fury," Pepper said in an eerily calm voice and with a sadistic smile on her face that Nick Fury had only once seen on her: when she had threatened to kill Mitch Richards after he had verbally attacked Tony Stark and her son. "And it's almost done with you."

Nick swallowed hard, beads of sweat suddenly forming on his forehead. His sources had been on spot about Pepper Potts, and if their warnings were also correct, he knew to back down from the argument RIGHT now. He made a waving gesture with his index and middle fingers on his left hand. A second later, the red dots disappeared from the two heroes he had worked so hard to keep alive.

"Give…" he cleared his throat. "Give me a few days. I'll get everything ready and I'll explain everything to you."

"No," Tony said and walked over to Pepper. The moment his left hand laced with hers, the redhead blinked several times, as if coming out of a trance, shook her head lightly and the sparkle returned to her eyes. "You tell us right now," Tony insisted.

"I can't. I need more time."

"What for?" Pepper asked in her normal tone of voice. "I thought you were in a hurry to save everyone."

"I am," Nick assented with his head. "But to get you ready… up to speed, it's gonna take some time."

"You have one day," Tony said, lifting a single finger on his right hand. "Twenty-four hours to get your shit ready, and then one hour to sell us on it. If you don't convince us in an hour by telling us the truth, you can kiss your plans and our help goodbye."

"And, if I don't agree to this ridiculous timetable?" Nick inquired. "Then, what?"

"Then I'll use whatever we have available to completely turn on Extremis in Tony," Pepper replied. "And he'll make sure to burn down your fucking ship, or whatever this is, to the ground."

"With you in it?"

"We're already dead, aren't we?" Tony stated, his tone and posture showing he was more than in agreement with his wife's plan. "And from what you've told us, everything, everywhere is about to completely go to shit. So, maybe we'll just take the express exit; decide our own fates, on our own terms. We've got nothing to lose."

"And we're already underground," Nick indicated. "You can't bring anything down lower than where we already are."

"Good," the ginger replied almost immediately, released Tony's hand, walked up to the General, and stood inches from his face. "That only means no one will hear you scream when we burn you alive."

Burn him alive. The darkness. Her tone of voice. He was lucky he was still alive after facing them both, and that had been without them knowing fully what they could do. He knew now, more than ever, that the duo had grown closer and stronger in the past few years. And he also knew that he was yet to see what more they could do when properly motivated and trained. Bringing their son back in one piece was going to be motivator Number 1. Saving the world was going to be influence Number 2. Having a say in how they would go about it all, was going to be the third stimulus on the list.

He could only hope these would be enough for them.

"Director Fury," Maria Hill said from the door. By the shocked look on her senior, she knew he had been lost in thought again. "I have the agenda for today. Everyone's ready to carry out our plea to the Starks."

"Everyone?" Fury asked while he grabbed from Maria the paper she had brought with her. "Even our more recent guests?"

"Especially our more recent guests. Mister and Missus Stark's display yesterday morning was quite the incentive for them. For all of us, I think."

"No shit, Hill," Fury agreed. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eye."

"I don't think any of us would've. Mrs. Stark… Pepper… this is… it's so unfair to her."

"But that's life," Fury stood up from his chair and walked towards the door, already dreading what he would have to do in about an hour or so. "And it's time she finds out what she was made for."

"And Tony?" Maria asked. "What about him?"

"He…" Fury sighed. "He won't be coming back."

A/N: I'll just say it myself: I suck and you have every right to kill me right now. But the story is super good. I promise :)