AN – This was originally stirred by the Santana song "Put Your Lights On" which made me think of a funeral for the ever-loved Iron Man who died in battle. But I can't kill him – that's just sad. But I can make him less of a man. =3 And not in the fun-spoiling way.

Prologue – I think.
Show Me How to Live

The first thing I noticed was beeping. Beep, beep, beep- it got faster. My heart rate. The sheets over me were next, and the pillow behind my head. When I turned my head, something was attached to the front left part of my face, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

My eyes wouldn't open. My right wrist was strapped down, but I couldn't' feel anything on my left arm. Hell, I didn't feel anything at all over there.

I groaned and shifted, and I heard a specifically metal noise. Machinery working. I tried to sit up, but found my body too tired and weak to hold me. My head was pounding, and all I could hear was machinery like I still had the suit on. I can't be in the suit. I could feel the sheets on my skin and the bed underneath my back. I didn't have neoprene on or feel the warm metal around me.

My eye finally opened.

My right one only. Something was wrong with my left. I couldn't make it work. It was refusing.

I knew why once I opened my right eye.

The piece I felt on the side of my face was an apparatus that seemed to not only be connected to the side of my head, but also into my eye socket.

Not that I could feel any of that over there. I didn't feel it on my skin. I couldn't feel it on my skull. I only noticed it when I moved my head on the medical grade pillow or looked at it.

It was something mechanical, something electric that had some sort of connection to my head. It made the same whirring as my reactor, meaning it was putting out electricity.

It was when I was able to sit up enough that I noticed why I couldn't feel my arm.

What had been my flesh and blood left arm was a base metal apparatus in the shape of one.

When I thought of moving it, it did. Very slowly, but it moved. With distinction and thought, I could move each finger.

It hit me a moment later.

I lost my arm.

Panic set in as I looked around. I was strapped to a hospital bed with bandages all over me and a number of machines attached to my right side as well as my left. The right ones I knew – the left ones I did not.

Who did this to me?

The blast – I remembered the bomb that I turned to look at just in time for it to blow up right above my left shoulder. My suit was already damaged, and that close of a bomb still could do enough damage.

It had cost me my arm.

And now that I thought about it – more than likely, the side of my face.

By this time I was hyperventilating. Nurses rushed in and pushed my head back down to my pillow before sticking a lengthy needle into my arm with a sharp jab. They didn't say anything as they stared and I floated back away from them.

The last thing I saw was someone in a white coat staring at me from the door.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Rhodey, don't lie to me – is he…"

"We don't know, all we found was pieces of the suit and a lot of blood."

"But no body."

"No, there's no body, but…"

"But what? Tell me!"

"…We found what seems to be the remains of a charred arm." A long pause, a sniffle. A moment he needed."Left. His…his dad's ring was on the middle finger."

It had finally happened.

I waited years and years to get this phone call. Instead I got a warm, beaten body. I would always prefer the beaten body, but finally I got this phone call.

I was at the planner. We were finalizing the places for our small ceremony and our large reception when Rhodey called me.

He'd been gone for days. I wasn't surprised when he hadn't come home last night, or called. I wasn't worried more than normal. I was trying to keep myself busy with fabric choices for my dress and my first measurements so Vera could start making it.

I hadn't let myself think that he wouldn't come back.

"He…he could be somewhere. He could be out there, trying-"

"Pepper, no one survives losing a limb for that long."

That wasn't what I wanted to hear, but I knew he was right.

"I'm…at the planners. I'll call you back."

I hung up on him with no remorse. I needed time. I needed to leave this place. I needed to cancel the planner meetings for the next few weeks. I wasn't about to be planning a wedding that…

may not even happen anymore.

Sobbing, I told my planner that I would call her when I would be returning to our scheduled meetings. She seemed to understand what I meant. Everyone knew who Iron Man was. And this woman certainly knew who I was to Iron Man.

I didn't notice when I got in my car and drove off. I wasn't really paying attention when I drove down the road into the garage next to the pristine sports cars and quiet worktables. I had long since left my townhome, but in this moment, it didn't feel like home. It felt like a prison of memories. He should be sitting at one of the tables tinkering with something or under a car somewhere. But it was dark and quiet. The only thing giving off light was the lights in the floor pointing to my spot.

I didn't want to get out. I could see everything I wanted to know from my driver's seat. He wasn't here. That's all that mattered to me.

I forgot completely about Rhodey wanting to talk to me. I was more interested in plans of my own. Plans of how I was going to cope with the idea that Tony Stark had died.

I didn't want to believe those words. He wasn't dead. He couldn't be.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"Mr. Stark? Can you hear me?"

A woman's voice. Soft, kind…a hand on my arm. My wrong arm. My metal arm. What would have been a few moments of waking turned into a jolt awake as I remembered that I didn't have an arm anymore, but I could feel her skin on whatever it was I had now.

My eyes darted open, and one looked like I was staring through dirty glass and the other was crystal clear. And quick to dart, too. My right eye looked like I had a film over my cornea. My left eye was like an HD camera.

"Oh, good, you're awake. Can you feel that?"

"What?"

"Can you feel my hand?"

"Yeah, I can…" She was holding my hand. My metal hand. My metal hand that was grasping hers. I could feel her soft skin, how thin her bones were, and her pulse.

"Good. Now, close your right eye…"

I did as told, and she held up a finger. I followed it with computerized precision. I could hear it. It was mechanical. That apparatus was gone, and I could see.

"Nurse, I don't mean to be…rude…"

"Yes, Mr. Stark?"

"Do you...have a mirror?"

"Oh, certainly sir. The Doctor thought you might want to see…we're still in the middle of testing, but you seem to be doing well. No pain, pinching, any headaches?"

"No…thank you." She held up a normal sized hand-held mirror, and that was the first time I saw it.

My entire left side was moving, whirring machine. Even my eye. I had a new shoulder, neck, face, ear, eye…skull, apparently, because I had no skin past my nose. What skin I did have on my face was burned in spots and peppered with black specks.

I wanted to scream. Instead, everything went black.