Tony woke once more to a bland white hospital room. He turned and looked around him, the room was empty save for a small redheaded figure lounging on a couch. Tony smiled a little when he saw Pepper, but didn't try to wake her, he knew she was probably stressed and tired. Then he had a moment of panic. Where exactly was he? Why wasn't he still in a wheelchair about to fight off the tall guy with Bruce and Thor?

Tony had to find the answers. He sat up and found out why he was in the hospital in the first place. A searing pain shot from his abdomen and caused him to flinch and clutch at his side.

Moving slower, he levered himself out of bed and grabbed the IV stand connected to his arm to take out into the hall. As soon as he stepped into the hall, he recognized the hospital. He had been only once before, for some surgery after a particularly nasty fight. It was New York Regional Hospital, and Clint was watching guard at the Nurses station. As soon as he spotted Tony he rushed over with a smile on his face.

"Stark, glad to see you awake finally! Do you know where you are?" Clint could barely contain himself, Tony wondered why.

"Yeah, NY Regional right?" Tony was feeling a little woozy from the effort of standing up.

"Yep, you've been out for three weeks. There was an… accident." Clint's eyes became guarded and Tony was too tired to ask why. "Let me call in the team, but you need to get back in bed, the nurses said you weren't cleared for movement yet."

Tony nodded, his head swimming, and hobbled back into his room. As he was sliding onto the pristine white sheets, he heard Pepper shift and wake up.

"Tony? Tony! I'm so glad you're finally awake!" She glowed with relief and excitement. "You were out for four weeks!"

"Wh- what happened to me?" Tony managed to say.

"You were hit by a meteorite during one of your space missions, fortunately you had not left the atmosphere yet and fell back to earth. Your suit saved you Tony." Pepper gripped Tony's hand and tears welled in her eyes.

"Well, I'm just glad what I was dreaming about didn't actually happen." Tony let a slight smile grace his lips.

"What do you mean?"

"Well it was really weird, everyone on the Helicarrier was frozen and there was this evil mastermind who was-" Tony was interrupted by a SHIELD agent walking in the room.

"Excuse me, but there is an urgent message from Director Fury: Stark Tower has been sliced in half."

THE END

Okay, so I know I've taken forever to update, and this is not satisfying whatsoever, but I have been working on an epic tale that I will be posting soon and I needed to finish this one up. There will be a sequel in the future someday, and if you give me ideas I will mark them down and give you credit.

On another note, I now have an AO3 account (Archive of our Own) and will be posting future stories on there as well as on here, my username is Neenanite if you want to look me up :)

Thank you to all of the faithful readers and reviewers, you guys kept me going and now I must bid you adieu until the next fic