Ok, this was written some months ago as an RP between me and my friend Falafelmayo. This is gonna be pretty long I'll wager, and it covers some pretty sensitive material during the beginning, not to mention both movies in our own special, angst ridden ways. So enjoy!

The day had started well enough.

He'd managed to recover from the award ceremony's hangover quick enough and escape the torment of actually having to talk to...Carrie? Kristi? Whatever. He'd escaped to the haven of his workshop and left Pepper to handle her, and handle her she must have because the woman herself was click-clacking her way into the room, commandeering his stereo as she did so.

"Please don't turn down my music." He called to her, not bothering to take his eyes away from the car he was attempting to fix.

"Sir, the compression in cylinder three appears to be low." Jarvis supplied and Tony immediately set about trying to remove it.

"You are supposed to be halfway around the world right now." Pepper sighed, scribbling something on the ledger in her hands while juggling the phone she'd just put down before looking up at him, rolling her eyes when she noticed what he was doing. "How long are you going to keep fixing that thing, Tony?"

"I'm not...fixing it." He mumbled through gritted teeth as he tried to release the cylinder Jarvis had noted before. "I'm...improving...damn that's tight. Potts, pass me the lube would ya?"

Pepper rolled her eyes again but obliged, reaching over the car to the worktable behind it and grabbing the spray lubricant, pausing before handing it to him.

"It's a rust bucket." She said. "You've never even driven it."

Tony's head shot up and he gave her a scandalized look, taking the lubricant from her and sitting back to stare at her.

"Pepper, you don't drive a car like this!" he stressed, spraying the bolt he was trying to loosen and trying once more to get it off. "I'm restoring it back to how it would have run back when it was new. My Dad bought this thing when I was a kid and we used to work on it together, and it was-"

"'It was a heap of junk but we got it to run and now it just needs tender loving care', yes, I know Tony, you've told me this story a thousand times." Pepper sighed. "I didn't come down here to talk to you about the damn car."

Tony sighed and promptly stood up, abandoning his seemingly impossible mission to remove the cylinder and fixing Pepper with an understanding smile.

"You've finally seen the light and realised you want me." He nodded. "I gotta tell you, Potts, I was starting to worry that you'd never get there. But it's ok, I forgive you."

Pepper closed her eyes and counted to ten in her mind before opening them again, finding Tony with a smug smirk fixed on his face. She smiled back, her patented 'I'm-about-to-reach-the-end-of-my-rope' smiled, and stepped forwards slightly, causing his smirk to falter slightly.

"Tony." She said slowly, dangerously. "It took me two and a half weeks of phone calls, emails and meetings with six different Governments, including our own in order to secure not only the permission, but the security for you to go and demonstrate the Jericho. During those two weeks, I missed five meals, got about four hours sleep per night, had to cancel on a friend's birthday party and hung up on my mother halfway through a conversation because I had to answer another call. If I don't see you on that plane within the next hour, I will make sure that the next year of your life is a constant hell of budget meetings, meet-and-greets, public high school speeches and I will guarantee that the only tail you'll be chasing will be the one between your legs." She raised an eyebrow as she gauged his reaction, pleased to see his Adam's apple bob in his throat and his nostril's flare. "Do I make myself clear?"

Unfortunately, Tony always liked poking the dragon while it slept, and a smile slowly crept back onto his face as he stared her down.

"God, I love it when you're strict with me." He growled, but backed away when her eyes blazed. "Ok, ok, I'm going, I'm all packed. I am all packed right?"

Pepper silently thanked whatever God was looking out for her and nodded, quickly ushering him back up to the house. "Yes, your bag is right by the door like I told you this morning and Happy is still waiting out front." She started texting Rhodey to tell him Tony was on his way and didn't notice that the man himself had stopped, meaning she bumped right into his chest, a soft squeak coming from her mouth. "Why have you stopped? Get going!"

"What about you?" he asked. "Where's your luggage."

Pepper furrowed her brow. "Um...at home stuffed under my bed? Where I usually keep it when I don't need it?"

Tony looked a bit put out at this and crossed his arms over his chest. "So...you're not coming with me?"

"They don't call you genius for nothing, do they?" she jibbed before smacking him lightly on the arm with her ledger. "Move, Tony, or do you want me to get Mr Heavyweight Champion of the World in here?"

Tony snorted and stood his ground. "Come with me. I need an assistant."

"You'll have an assistant." Pepper all but whimpered. "Cedric is flying out tomorrow, come on Tony."

"I don't want Cedric." He spat, saying the other man's name like it was a curse. "I want you."

That made her stop in her tracks. She didn't quite know what to say to that, and it looked like Tony hadn't meant to say it because suddenly he was looking like he'd lost the ability to articulate

"Um...that is to say...cos Cedric's useless." He covered after a moment, but Pepper noted the faint blush in his cheeks and fought to control her own.

"He's not useless." Pepper tried to defend her colleague. Cedric was new, he'd only been with the company for two months, fresh from University and still star-struck.

"Pep, he only puts three sugars in my coffee!"

"Because normal people don't have five sugars in their coffee!" she argued. "They don't even have three!"

Tony threw his head back on his shoulders like a petulant child and sighed heavily before lifting it and staring at her again.

"Please?" he tried again, thinking maybe this was one of those times he should use those manners his mother taught him when he was a child. "Please will you come with me instead? I promise to behave. Mostly." He smiled a little and could see her defences waning. Pepper could feel it too, and she couldn't really think of a good enough excuse to say no to him. 'I'm afraid I'll bone you at some point' didn't seem to cover it, and it wasn't exactly like she could phrase it differently.

"Fine." She sighed after a moment, hiding a smirk at Tony's victory air punch. "But you're driving me to my apartment to pack first."

And so the day had started well. They'd even made it through the afternoon and through the demonstration without a hiccup. It was on the way back to base that things started to fall apart. They were travelling in a convoy on the way back, Tony in one car and Pepper and Rhodey in the one behind. He'd been bantering with the soldiers assigned to protect him and was just taking a picture with the youngest kid, Jimmy, who couldn't have been older than twenty, when the Humvee in front of them exploded in a ball of flame. A thunder of bullets hammered into the left hand side of the vehicle and all hell broke loose. Tony barely registered the soldiers yelling at each other and yelling at him to stay the fuck down, and time seemed to stretch on and at the same time stop completely. He watched as Jimmy jumped out of the truck and was torn apart by bullets almost instantly. The other two soldiers didn't seem to have fared much better, and Tony was fairly certain that staying in the truck was not the best option, so he jumped out of the right hand side and ran for his life. He could hear yells and a definitely female scream and that made him stop.

"Pepper!" he yelled and pelted back the way he had come, watching as the Humvee he'd been in seconds before went up in a ball of flame. He'd almost made it to Pepper and Rhodey's car when a haze of bullets rained down, missing him by inches. He threw himself behind a boulder, panting and craning his neck around the rock as much as he dared to see what was going on. All he could see was smoke, the only sounds coming from guns and Pepper's screams. And then a whooshing noise by his right ear. He turned his head and struggled to register what he was seeing, because there was no way that he could be seeing it. One of his own missiles was lying in the sand mere feet from him. A missile that hadn't even been signed off to be sold yet. Unfortunately, by the time his brain had processed what he was seeing, it was already too late. He jumped to his feet and was immediately thrown thirty feet backwards, landing with a thud on his back as the missile exploded. He blinked lazily up at the baking sun and coughed, pain ripping through his chest. He frantically tore at his shirt and stared at his body armour, which seemed to still be intact...and then he saw the blood. It spread rapidly out from dozens of spots around his chest and every breath he drew pushed more blood to the surface.

The last thought that floated through his mind before he passed out was thinking how ironic it was that only he would create the only indestructible body armour in the world, and then create the only missile that could penetrate it.