Title: Across the Universe
Chapter 2: Losing
Disclaimer: I don't own Iron Man

AN: Okay, so this was incredibly depressing. I am sorry to all of those fluff seekers but this story is pretty sad to start out but trust me that there will be eventual fluff. So please comment. The more you all comment, the more I write. Enjoy!

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When Tony had been in Afghanistan he had thought little of his life waiting for him back in the States. He told himself that this was because he was too preoccupied with the whole not being killed thing to really think about home. That was partially true; if he was completely honest with himself the main reason he forced his thoughts away from his lonely mansion in Malibu was because he would have been forced to realize how few people truly cared if he lived or died. So, consequentially, he had never considered what Pepper, Rhodey, and, to a degree, Jarvis went through during his disappearance. He had seen the relief in Rhodes' eyes when he first found him and he had been told by both Jarvis and Obidiah that Pepper had missed him greatly, but he had never really allowed himself to empathizes with his friends. It wasn't out of malice or even dispassion, Tony just wasn't the kind of guy who dwelt on his feelings or the feelings of others too often.

So, at 9:23 P.M., Tony Stark was basically blindsided.

He was zoning out on the couch. It happened every time he went on a working binge since he was seven years old. He would work for days without stop, his brain on high alert for hours on end. When he finally finished or allowed himself to stop he would first devour a small country's worth of food, then he would flick on the TV, and his brain would just shutdown like an overheated laptop. The first time it had happened his mother had found him lying on the floor in the middle of his room, completely oblivious to the world. Maria Stark had screamed bloody murder and rushed him to the doctor, positive something was wrong with her precious little boy. At the hospital, the doctor had assured his mother that it was a completely understandable that his mind would need a break after all that work it had been doing. Now, it was almost a ritual. After every long work session he would eat and plop down on his couch with cartoons blaring in the background.

As he got older the amount of time he zoned out got shorter. So, when the phone rang that day he had almost immediately snapped out of his trance. Taking a moment to regain his bearings, he sleepily rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and stretched like a big mountain lion, his hands in the air and his toes curled.

He grabbed clumsily at the receiver. "Hello?" His voice was hoarse and weak, he cleared his throat.

"Mr. Stark, this is Detective Mills, I need to speak to you…it is important."

Tony sat up so quickly that his head began to spin, he ignored it. He could feel something dark growing in the pit of his stomach. "What's this about?"

"Mr. Stark, do you know where a Miss Virginia Potts is?"

The bottom was falling out of his stomach; he tried desperately to keep it, to keep himself, from falling. His voice now had a tinge of panic to it and he realized that he was on his feet. "Detective, what the fuck is going on?"

There was a long silence and Tony had to restrain himself from screaming at the officer on the other line. The detective continued in a robotic voice that sounded eerily similar to Jarvis's, "Mr. Stark, today at 9:14 Miss Stacy Keller found Virginia Potts in her house with a gunshot wound to the head. She was dead long before the ambulance arrived."

Tony couldn't breathe, he sank slowly into the sofa, his legs suddenly Jello. "No. No. No. No. Pepper, she…she is a..at, with Chambers." He couldn't speak properly, he could only stutter. "Ju-Justin Chambers. She was g-going to work, and then t-to her…" He drifted off, unable to continue his throat closing up.

Detective Mills took advantage of his silence and continued, "Mr. Stark, it looks like this was a kidnapping gone wrong. From what we can tell there were two men, they surprised Miss Potts and tried to overpower her. However, she fought back and, from what we can guess, that was how she ended up shot."

Ice water ran through his veins as the detectives words registered. His stomach filled with lead and he clenched his fists. Steel was in his voice as he questioned the detective. "Do you have any other leads?"

Tony's tone disallowed any arguments about protocol on Mills' part. "Not really, we had actually hoped that you could tell us of any recent threats made against you."

His fingers itched and the guilt loomed on the horizon but a new project narrowed his vision. All he could think of now was finding the men who did this and causing them as much pain as humanly possible. Even that wouldn't be enough. "Thank you detective. I hope you catch the men who did this." His voice held no emotion and Mills felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on his head.

Sounding braver than her felt, Mills replied, "Mr. Stark, I can't imagine what you are feeling right now but I am telling you that you need to let us take care of it. Please for you own sake, don't do anything rash."

Tony was already halfway to the basement. "Thank you Mills. Please keep me updated." With that he hung up the phone, violently.

When in the basement he makes his way to his wall of computers. "Jarvis, bring up the surveillance videos of Miss Potts' condo from 5:30 to 9:30."

"Sir, I don't think that you should be-"

"Jarvis," Tony barked, "I didn't ask for you to say anything, just bring up the tapes."

"But, sir, I think-"

Tony slammed his fist on the table; he could feel his control slipping away. He needed to focus only on finding the people who hurt Pepper. He needed to. "No, that's where you are wrong. You don't think. You are a machine, I think for you. Do you understand? You do as you are told and I am telling you to just bring up the videos, that is all."

There is a long silence and under other circumstances he would have felt bad. But right now he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Finally, "Yes, sir."

The computers flared to life and then a moment later, the entrances of Pepper's expensive condo appear on his screen. He watched them intently for a minute, but soon lost his patience. "Fast forward."

The image began to move imperceptibly faster. Eventually some movement caught his eye. "Normal speed." The video slowed down just as two men appeared on screen. One was tall, at least six foot five, the other was about a foot shorter than his counterpart but he looked like he was in far better shape. They wore all black and dark baseball caps; it twisted his stomach but he could see right away that these guys were amateurs. He watched as they attempted to break into each window and back door. Eventually the shorter one got sick of the tall one's attempts at picking the lock and smashed one of her kitchen windows. They argued for a moment, the tall one clearly agitated by his partner's actions he even smacked him across the head in a sick parody of a Laurel and Hardy movie, the humanity of it all made his throat burn with disgust. He prayed that the men would look up at the cameras but he had no such luck, they entered the house and out of the range of the cameras. "Fast forward." The screen once again sped up. His eyes burned and he lost all ability to think when he saw Pepper into her house from her dark garage. She wasn't walking with her usual briskness and he felt a horrible sense of guilt over the fact that he was the cause of her tiredness. What seemed like hours later, the men reappeared on the screen; he slowed the picture and then he vomited over the side of his worktable. They were covered in blood from head to toe, one of them even slipped slightly from the bloody sole of his shoe. They both looked like they were shaking. As the tall one wiggled his way out of the window he looked directly at the camera.

In a hoarse and broken voice he said, "Jarvis take a picture of that..thing's…face." A little later the short man made the same mistake. He had them.

Shutting off the computer he told Jarvis to run the men's face against all records, even to hack into the DMV database. While Jarvis worked on the men's identities Tony went to the suit. He ran his hands over the cold metal. He touched the bright red, it reminded him chillingly of the blood that was on the two men's hands and he felt the familiar sense of overwhelming emotion. He promised himself to take away the red from his suit, it only sickened him.

Pushing away all feeling, he stepped on the platform and closed his eyes as his robots methodically pieced the suit on bit by bit. Once he was fully suited-up he spoke into his headset, "Do you have there known residences?"

"Yes, sir. I have already have programmed them into the suit."

He said nothing. The suit powered up and he had never felt so revolted by the smell of iron, it reminded him of blood. So much blood. When the suit was at full power he launched himself away from his garage, feeling a strange sense of vertigo as he flew through the sky. In the air, it oddly felt like he was running away. Maybe he was, he could give a fuck.

Only five minutes later, he arrived in Whittier. The stars were out and the air was fresh and crisp, it seemed like a sick joke on Nature's (to Tony God no longer existed) part. How could the night be so lovely when it had just lost its brightest star?

Landing in front of an old house that was crawling with cats and smelled like it. "Is this it?" he spoke softly into the dead air.

"Yes, please, sir don't do anything you will regret."

Tony obliterated the door of the ancient house. "I won't." Without another word he entered the premises. Immediately he found its occupants; a man in his 30's his body covered in various tattoos came out from another room, a gun in his hand. Lightning fast Iron Man grabbed the man by his throat and had him pinned against the wall, his gun useless limp at his side.

"Where are you friends, Luis and John Franklin?" The man's face was now a pastel purple color and he could see he had popped a few blood vessels in his neck, the blood was pooling just under the skin. He sniffed the air, the man had pissed himself. It gave him a horrific sense of satisfaction. He loosened his grip on the man's trachea allowing him to talk.

"Th-they aren't here."

He re-tightened his grip. "Where are they?"

The man choked and gasped, trying to get enough air to keep breathing. "They work at a garage down the block. They are probably there." Iron Man looked at the leathery face of the, clearly, drug addicted man. Tightening for a second longer, he tossed the man across the room where he landed with a crunch on the wilting couch.

The man pulled up his hands over his head, he thought that he could hear him sniffling. "Fuck." He whispered.

Smiling behind his mask, Iron Man left the rat-hole of a house.

He barely had to fly to get to the mechanic shop that he had been informed of. They second he got there he knew something was wrong. The hinges on the front door were broken and the remaining door was hanging haphazardly on the last hinge.

Entering the garage, he was immediately greeted by the stench of blood and it was all he could do to not be sick again. He picked his way through the blood smears that littered the garage and was greeted by a sickening sight. The two men from the video were lying face up on the floor. The tall one's face was covered in blood but the killing wound was a gunshot to the gut, he had probably been bleeding for at least thirty minutes before he finally died. His brother was luckier, a single gunshot to the back of the skull, he died instantly. It was too good for him.

He stared at the two mangled body. A horrible sense of loss finally filled him. He clenched his gloved metal hands. Iron Man began to shake. "Fuck," he said quietly. "FUCK!" He began to chant it at the top of his lungs. Then, without warning, he grabbed the nearest set of tools and flung them across the room. He soon was throw, shooting, and smashing everything in his reach. All of the cars were soon mangled messes of scrap and the room looked like a tornado had gone through it. Finally when he ran out of breath and things to destroy, Tony sank to his knees, his suit getting stained with Pepper's killer's blood.

Tony sat there in the blood of murder's and cried harder than he ever had before. He cried until he forgot who he was because let's face it he was nothing without her.

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AN: Again please bear with me. I promise to make it all better, cross my heart and hope to die.