A/N

Surprise! Back with an update! I'll continue writing again. Just have to finish the story :)

Hope you like that new chapter. Have fun reading for sure.

Nicolle was busy placing new flowers in the vase atop her pristine white counter, arranging them according to the 'stunning flower presentation protocol'. She still couldn't believe that such a thing existed. A PDF had popped up on her screen one day, detailing where to buy new flowers and which colors were favorable and how to arrange them. She could only guess, that Friday had monitored the flowers and had opened the correct file when it was time for a change. Creepy, if you thought about it. Having an AI watch your every step. And the state of flowers on the reception desk. Yet, it came with the job. Friday was part of Stark Industries. Everyone knew that. And even AIs were governed by privacy laws. Hopefully. Moving the purple flower to the front, Nicolle sighed content. That was it. Looked good. According to protocol, which demanded one 'eye catcher' as part of the flower arrangement.

The sound of the doors sliding open behind her back made her heart nearly stop. Those doors normally unlocked at 9, which was in about 15 minutes. By then she had planned to sit behind her table and smile her freakishly polite smile. Welcome to Stark Industries on her lips every time they opened. Yet, she didn't sit behind her table. She had her back to the door, unable to greet anyone. Unable to even look at anyone. She hadn't seen their guests coming. And if Friday unlocked the doors early, the guests had to be important.

The click of high heels on the floor made her head catch up with the situation. She had to do the best with what she had. She couldn't simply stand here and pray that whoever had entered just walked past her as if she was invisible because quite frankly, she wasn't. If only there was a hole beneath her feet. Or she was able to turn into thin air. Yet, she couldn't. Nicolle gathered all the courage she had left, swirled around and wanted to present her best I'm super happy to see you and feel welcomed even though you are early you damn bastard smile. Yet, her heart skipped a beat once again the moment she laid eyes on their 'guests'. She never managed to get a word out.

Pepper Potts and Tony Stark were walking into the company. Of course, Friday had unlocked the doors for them. Were that Iron Man suits in front of the door?

"Morning Nicolle." Tony Stark greeted her. Him greeting her by name made her eyes move away from the two suits outside and focus on him. For a long moment, Nicolle stared at her boss. Or well, the owner of the company as her boss stood right beside him. She knew for sure that she hadn't told him her name. She had scolded herself for of that. After all, she had decided to make an impact on as many people as she could and not at least trying and telling her name to Tony fucking Stark, who would surely forget it, but still, was idiotic. To know her name now, he… he must have checked her files. Why on earth should Mister Stark check her files? Because… because… her poor head frantically searched for a reason why he should check on her and came up with the most plausible answer: She had asked him such stupid questions last time. She had forgotten to address him with sir. No-goes as a damn receptionist-intern. She was the face of the company. The first person people saw when walking in. She had to behave. Not ask stupid questions. Oh god, this couldn't be good.

"Can you get me a visitor ID again?" Mister Stark asked her, smiling softly. A… visitor ID again? Just that? She wasn't fired for… what did she know? Not being polite enough? Not smiling enough?

"Oh, take your time, Nicolle, keep him busy. I want some free time." Miss Potts stated while walking off towards the doors leading into the company. Reaching them, she stopped for only a moment. "Actually, you can do me a favor and take ages."

"Oh, come on, you would only miss me!" said Mister Stark, but the doors already slid shut, hiding Miss Potts from view and sound.

A sigh made her head move back from the shut doors to Mister Stark. "Isn't she lovely?" he asked in a soft voice.

Nicolle really didn't know what to say to that. In her still panicked state of mind, she decided to buy some time. "Ehm…" yeah, brilliant. He would think she had lost the ability to speak again. Just like last time.

He only chuckled. "Friday? What are her options?"

"Her best reply would either be to have no opinion on your relationship whatsoever or be very happy for Miss Pots but refrain from judging whether she is lovely or not."

Mister Stark pointed towards the ceiling, a smirk on his lips. "Never get yourself into a position where your words can be used against you. So, visitor ID?"

Nicolle blinked, nodded and moved behind her desk, sitting down. Opening the mask for visitor IDs, her fingers hovered above the keyboard, but never moved further. Miss Potts had said she should take her time. That she should take ages. Had that been a direct order from her? Should she take ages and keep him busy? If she disobeyed a direct order from Miss Potts and just handed him the ID to send him through she would definitely blame her.

"Relax."

Relax. She blinked. Yeah, she should relax. No one would rip her head off for anything. Taking a deep breath, she tried as told. After a few long moments, hear heartbeat calmed and her head cleared.

She started to smile weakly and looked at Mister Stark, who had started to mess up her carefully arranged flowers. Moving the purple one to the back and hiding it behind the others. Should she… no. She couldn't tell him of all people to keep his hands off the flowers.

Instead, she focused on entering all the standard information again. Name, age, "What is your reason to be here, sir?" she asked, watching how he leaned against the table, an amused smile on his lips.

"Spending time with her. Pepper, I mean. She would say I'm annoying her." He chuckled at that. Nicolle nodded absentmindedly and entered 'Annoy Miss Potts.' into the reason field. Grabbing an ID card, she activated it but didn't hand it over. Of course, she knew that it was simply pro forma for him, that he didn't need it at all. Yet, her fingers played with the card, letting it flip from finger to finger, just as if she had something he needed.

"Well, sir, I was asked to take ages, so I'll at least give it a try. You never answered my question from last time. How you advanced Friday from a normal neuronal network to what she is now."

Tony Stark smirked at her. As if he liked her daring challenge. "You sure?" he asked back. And she only smiled. "Try me. I love numbers and IT and all that stuff. Trying to get a place at MIT and" she stopped mid-sentence. As if Tony Stark wanted to hear her plans.

"Well, Friday never really started from scratch. My last neuronal network… that's ages ago. Long before Jarvis. The tricky part wasn't the language interface, the research functionality or the initial limitations on resources. A 512 MB RAM can only do what it can do. I plugged a ton of PCs together to get reasonable computing power. The hard part was the personality of the program…" he went off talking about specifics, throwing technical terms around. And Nicolle couldn't help but listen with bright eyes. Oh, that man was brilliant. Just. Brilliant. She didn't understand quite a lot. Yet, Google would surely help. Or she could simply ask Friday later. If she could use her at work, why not make the best of it?

After they were done talking about technical stuff, Mister Stark looked at her, still leaning against the table. Something like curiosity was shining in his eyes.

"Well, after I answered your question, how about you answer one of mine." Her heart skipped a beat again. What could Tony Stark possibly want to ask her? "You worked here for a month. Where here during this entire messy takeover. Do you know…" he lowered his voice to a conspiratorially whisper "…which managers make Pepper's life worse? She doesn't want to tell me their names."

Nicolle stared at him. She knew some names. Everyone knew some names. It was obvious if one worked here. If Miss Potts didn't want to call names… "I don't know, sir. I'm sorry." She stated firmly, holding his gaze. She wouldn't spill. Her loyalties lay with Miss Potts on this one. He just kept smiling, his gaze remaining curious. It didn't seem to bother him that she hadn't answered his question. And if it did, he hid it extremely well.

While she was wondering whether he was unhappy with her or not, he leaned over the table and snapped the ID card from her. She blinked at that. How dare he… Nicolle opened her mouth to say something, maybe even have the nerve to scold Tony fucking Stark, but he was faster once again.

"Always pay attention to your surroundings, Miss Brewster. Comes right after never saying anything that can be used against you." He stated smirking and walked off to enter the company. Right in front of the automated doors, he stopped. "Oh. I think the flowers have to be arranged differently. Something about an eye catcher. I would fix that. Or better, tell me not to mess it up in the first place."

Pepper was busy reading through reports when her door opened. And closed again. She raised her gaze, watching Tony watch her.

"Done with annoying poor employees?" she joked while turning the page, scanning the lines. She hated signing reports, but it had to be done. Tony hat suggested using Friday to check them and just sign them at the end, but she liked to know what was going on in her company. Which project was done, which wanted to get started, which…

"Oh, I haven't even started." Tony answered, sitting down in her visitor chair and made a face. Yeah. She knew she had to get a new one. She just always forgot about it.

"You mean you can waste even more of your money because you keep your employees from working?" this time, she mocked him, curious how he would react. Most likely something along the lines that it was his to decide what to waste his money on.

"Oh, come on. It's small talk. Lifts the spirits. I think happy employees who know their owner still cares for them are more productive." He teased back. "Only did two selfies with fans of mine on my way to your office, by the way. Should I walk into the engineering department up in Vancouver? I swear, I won't get out of it for days."

Pepper chuckled softly, grabbed her pen and signed off one report, placing it on her fairly low 'signed reports' stack and grabbed a fresh one from her pretty high 'reports to sign' stack. "Yeah, but you wouldn't come out for days because you end up inventing stuff with your employees. That's…" she stopped, looked up at him. "Can I advertise you working with them over a weekend as a special event? Surely doable. Friday, create a reminder for me. You would do it, if I asked you nicely, right?" she checked his face, seeing a small smile on his lips, which usually meant yes.

"As long it's before Christmas I'll nearly do anything for you." He teased, leading to her chuckling.

"Yeah, I know. Christmas. The terrible deadline. We celebrate together with your crazy friends, right? Even though I wonder what to get a living cloak."

"Well…" he started, making her look at him. He didn't look as if he wanted to celebrate with them. He looked as if he wanted to celebrate with her. "Oh, you. We can be alone on New Year's. I think you should bond with the people you have to save the world with. Even though I think you are quite close to adopting Peter."

She saw how he wanted to object again and just snorted. "Don't even try to talk me out of this one. Friday? Create me a set of Christmas invitations to choose from." And her gaze went back to the reports, but she didn't get past the first line.

"Friday? Cancel the Christmas invitations. I would like to talk with you about this."

Pepper sighed annoyed. Looked at him. "What is there to talk about? Christmas is for family and friends. Shouldn't you at least celebrate that you made it to the end of the year alive seeing that god-knows-what wants to kill you? Besides, fireworks are more romantic. We could go on holidays. Rent someplace off the grid and pay someone to do the fireworks for us. Oh, and Friday, cancel the cancellation of the Christmas invitations."

She saw that he intended to turn this into a full-fledged fight over their Christmas plans when he grimaced and groaned. Slumped into the chair, his hand moving to grab his side, his face contoured in pain.

Pepper jumped to her feet, Christmas and reports and New Year's Eve forgotten, her heart beating in fear. She had seen that already. That expression on his face. Him slumping and grabbing his side in agony. Before… before that alien popped up in the city. For a mere second, she looked around. Would an alien pop up right here and try to kill him? Were her employees in danger? Was she in danger? She thought about calling the Iron Man suits in, just in case, but nothing happened. She could see people pass by her office calmly. No sudden screams. No people running for their lives. No Friday alerting them of alien activities. But something was happening. She saw that. She knew that. Her lover's expression gave it away. She took a step to get to Tony's side. To hold him or whatever, when he suddenly talked.

"Why would you do that?"

"Do what?" she asked confused. "Invite them for Christmas?" she asked, starting to round her table to get to him.

She stopped when she saw his eyes tough. They were completely empty, staring right through her into nothingness. He hadn't talked to her.

Peter's eyes moved to check the time. Twenty minutes left. And down onto the stupid surprise math test. Their teacher had started the lesson by collecting their homework, followed by a lecture on how important homework was and pulled a surprise test out of his bag afterward. All students had groaned in unison. Not a surprise test! True, they could have guessed because their teacher loved surprise tests, true, he could have remembered that the test was coming, but he had been too busy with telling Ned about his crazy weekend. After all, the doc had come visit. And he had done sparkles! Actual, golden sparkles, all by himself! With a bit of help. But sparkles! Ned had freaked out hearing it, just as Peter had expected. And then his friend had turned deadly serious.

"Portals by next week, Peter." and both had started to laugh. Yeah, portals by next week. That wasn't possible. Maybe in another world, where he went to Hogwarts, but as is he had to content himself with sparkles. If he managed to create them again.

He had wanted to go on reporting about his weekend, but then he had seen Liz' back and excused himself, hurrying after her. He really wanted to ask her out to homecoming. Get things done and safe. By the time he had reached up to her, she was surrounded by her friends and Peter just casually walked by. He didn't dare to ask her out in front of the others. He could only guess how some of her friends thought about him. Ew, stupid nerd. Look at that, Peter Parker asking out Liz Taylor! No. He would better ask her when they were alone, just like last time.

And now he had to answer stupid questions of a stupid surprise test. He vaguely remembered that he had screwed that one up pretty bad back then because he simply hadn't cared. Now… he stared at the next question. Moving his pen, writing an answer. Everything seemed fairly easy, compared to back then. Reasonable, after all, he was two years ahead of his co-students.

Tackling the next question, his world drowned in a flash of white. Just like last time, it took away his senses. Sound, vision, even the feeling of him holding the pen. Instead, his body groaned, feeling his old bruises again. Those bruises he would most likely never forget again. Not after feeling them over and over. This time, his vision returned astonishingly fast. He saw his hand holding the pen. He saw the test. He saw the question he wanted to answer. He saw the desk. The student sitting next to him out of the corner of his eye. But at the same time, he was on Titan, swinging towards Tony, who sat on the ground with a pained expression.

Landing beside him, he extended his hand to help him back onto his feet. As soon as Tony stood, Peter raised his gaze, looking at the others. Starlord and Mantis, the latter helping the former walk, Drax, Nebula. They were all walking, well, limping, towards them, forming a loose circle. The doc was a bit away, grimacing while sitting up. Thunder rumbling caught his attention. Something was odd about it. And then something changed. He couldn't explain it using words. And yet, it seemed fundamental. Altogether. Everything. As if the very core of existence shuddered and changed and…

"Something's happening." Mantis said fearfully while looking around. Peter saw, how Tony took a few steps towards her, trying to…

But there was nothing to try, when she turned to ashes in front of their eyes, being blown away by the wind. Peter's heart skipped a beat, maybe even more and then returned to its task frantically. She had just turned to ashes. She was dead. Just like that. All Peter could hear was the odd wind, their combined panting, them looking around, not quite believing.

"Quill?" he heard Drax surprised voice and turned his head, just in time to watch him too turn to ashes and float away.

"Steady, Quill." Tony's voice tried to remain calm. But what did it matter?

Peter looked at the other Peter, Starlord, and watched him turn to ashes too. Carried away by the wind like his other friends.

They were all dying. They were all dying. They were all

At this point, Peter let the pen drop and jumped to his feet, rushing to leave the classroom. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he heard his teacher yell after him. "Parker! You sit back down or…" but he never heard the rest of that sentence.

"Tony?" the doc said, Tony turned to look at him. Peter rushed out of the classroom, seeing the empty corridor of the school in New York, on Earth, while he too saw Tony on Titan. He looked at the doc.

"There was no other way." And to his horror, the doc too turned to ashes. Just pieces blown away. Dead. Just like that.

And then he felt it. A tingle somewhere deep within him. It started in his chest. From there, it crept its way into all directions.

"Mister Stark? I don't feel so good." He heard himself say, feel how he moved, trying to get to Tony. "I… I don't know…" He stumbled forward, his legs trembling. Tony caught him. Holding him. Peter held onto him frantically, but it had no use. He felt, how his arm tingled. He saw how it started to turn to ashes. Little flakes of him flying away. "I don't want to go, I don't want to go, please." He heard himself say in a weak, terrified voice, close to tears. He didn't want to die. Not here, on this strange planet, while he too leaned against a wall in his school corridor. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to…

But he seemed to have no say in it as his legs started to tingle and fail. He felt, how Tony tried to hold him but didn't manage and they dropped to the ground. He saw his body. Flakes of ashes flying up and moving away. Tony looking at him with a terrified gaze. And then it was everywhere. The tingling. And as it turned stronger, he saw more ash flying up, carried away by the wind.

"I… I'm…" he tried to say but never made it. His face tingled too now. All of his body. The last thing, he ever saw, was ash floating up in a sudden gush of wind.

There wasn't anything after. Only darkness. Only cold.

And then reality snapped shut around him again. It felt like being ripped back into his body, everything too bright to see, everything still tingling. He was dead. He was dead. Slowly, very slowly, he recognized the corridor of his school. They were all dead. Tears were running down his face, his entire body trembling. He had turned to ashes. He still felt it. The tingling in his body and on his skin. And then… the wind gust. He had seen how he was blown away. Seen how he disappeared. How he died. He felt a hand on his shoulder, despite the tingling. Someone shaking him. They were all dead. The doc, the poor cloak, the other Peter, Mantis, Drax. All. Dead. Turned to ashes and carried away by the wind.

"Peter!" a voice. A voice at the far end of his consciousness. He blinked. There was a face in front of him. A face. Ned's face. Ned's afraid face. Slowly, very slowly, his head pieced together reality for him. He got aware of his own body again when the tingling subsided. He shivered like a leaf. He was frantically crying. And Ned was shaking him like a madman. He was alive. Oh dear god, he was alive.

"What…?" he asked, blinking, hearing himself sniffle.

"Peter?" Ned asked, surprised, relieved, worried, confused.

"Yes?" Peter asked slowly, realizing how week his voice was. How broken he sounded. He had just died.

"Are you okay? You stormed out of the class and…" Ned turned silent for a moment. "Talked with someone. It sounded as if…"

He never got to hear the end of that sentence as bright, white light tuned out the world he had just returned to. This time, the bruises he knew Thanos had given him, hurt worse. They hurt like hell. Ten thousand times worse and. As if he had gotten stabbed instead of hit. He groaned in pain, whimpered even. Hugged himself in agony.

Slowly, very, very slowly this time, his senses returned. His face was pressed against a cold ground. Low humming surrounded him. Those weren't the tiles of his school corridor. And that weren't the sounds of a... That was…

"Peter?" Ned's voice reached his ears. It was more a panicked whimper than anything else. Slowly, he pushed himself off the ground, groaning in pain while doing so. Never in his life had his body hurt that badly.

While he got up, he finally saw his surroundings. And his surroundings sent his heart into a beating frenzy again. A cold shiver ran down his spine. Ned looked around, terrified, moving closer to him. As close as possible without being awkward.

He knew that corridor.

He knew that humming sound.

They were in that stupid flying donut – alien spaceship, which had kidnapped the doc. At least he hoped it was the stupid flying donut which had kidnapped the doc.