"Iron Man 3" starts here and I'll be going into "Avengers Age of Ultron" after this.

I twisted and turned, sweat dripping down my body as I struggled in the grips of an invisible enemy. It was another nightmare. They'd gotten more frequent as of late. Ever since what happened with Loki and the Avengers. I was only human, after all. Seeing and experiencing what I had that day, it was only right that some of it would stick around to haunt me later, especially given my feelings on the matter of how useless I'd felt standing around doing nothing other than trying to stop the Tesseract. I still hadn't spoken with Tony about it, but how could I? He was obviously handling things better than I was. I always put on a brave face, so how could I possibly just crawl up to him and tell him how I felt useless and scared of everything? I couldn't let him see me like that. I wasn't even sure he knew about the nightmares.

Our relationship hadn't been great since then. He tended to sleep elsewhere—if at all—and had stopped really talking to me as much, more absorbed in making more of his suits. And now that I had finished my online classes, I was more involved in the company Pepper now ran. It wasn't that we felt any different about each other, it just appeared as though we were both not talking about what needed to be spoken, and were handling our own stress the only way we knew how: by diving headfirst into our work.

So, while Tony was downstairs working, I was upstairs trying to sleep and failing. This nightmare, in particular, was a rather bad one. Aliens trying to take over the world, people screaming and being shot down. Tony falling from the portal in the sky while I hovered above, trapped in the space as the opening closed. Then, he appeared. My father ripping open the closet door and jerking me out of the dark, throwing me to the ground and beating me over something foul that had happened at work. No… No, that wasn't it. He was attacking me for him, for Tony. He was beating me and laughing, mocking me.

"See? You thought you could be happy? With him of all people? You can't even help him! He didn't need you! You were just in the way! You're always in the way!"

Then, I jerked awake, eyes snapping open and gasps pouring from my lips as tears flowed freely down my face. I reached out for some sense of comfort, but the other side of the bed was as empty and cold as it had been when I fell asleep in it. I pushed myself up on shaky limbs, fighting to control my breathing and push away the fear and panic that I hadn't felt in ages. Knowing that there was no chance I would be able to get back to sleep, I forced myself to get up, grab a robe, and head downstairs for a cup of tea or coffee.

"Jarvis?"

"Yes, Miss?"

I rubbed at my tired, black-rimmed eyes. "Is Tony still downstairs?"

"Yes. He has been awake for almost seventy-two hours, miss, and hasn't eaten anything since this morning."

I nodded with a soft sigh. "I'll… I'll get him something to drink and eat. Maybe spike it with some diphenhydramine to get him sleeping," I joked.

"You as well, miss. My records show that your average time sleeping restfully is under two hours a night. Shall I make an appointment for you to see Dr. Marshall?"

I grimaced at the thought of the psychiatrist, who I hadn't seen since before I started working for Tony. "I don't even want to know how you got his information, but… maybe I should."

"I'll see what days are available and work around your schedule."

I waved the AI off, letting it do as it pleased, for now, knowing that it would probably be best for me to see Marshall again anyway. I had been meaning to see him for our annual checking-in appointment but had been avoiding it for a while, especially since I finally thought I'd found someplace where I could be happy without fear of my past with my father looming over me. Apparently not, I mused with another soft sigh as I grabbed the two glasses of tea—not wanting to give myself or Tony coffee when we should both be sleeping—and added them to the tray that carried some plates of left-over Chinese take-out from the evening before. Date nights have been a bust too. I've got a night off coming up that he knows about, but if he's going to keep being this busy, then it probably won't work out well. I pushed the thought from my mind as I headed downstairs, hearing crashes and bangs but not really being bothered or worried about it. There's no painful cries or grunts of pain, so it's probably nothing too dangerous. What I saw though, was a bit amusing.

Tony was standing on his typical platform for his suits, and various pieces were flying around the room and attaching themselves to him as he listened to a jazzy Christmas tune. He didn't notice me coming in—a bit too preoccupied when a particular piece slammed into his crotch and then his back, knocking him around. His faceplate was last it seemed and I raised a brow as he challenged the flying piece of metal that had silenced his music.

"Come on. I ain't scared of you."

The piece flew at him, bouncing off the edge of a table and flipping upside-down, making him do a front flip to get it on right and land on the platform in a crouched pose. While I was mildly impressed by the lengths he'd gone to, to get his suit to be able to home in on him, I could tell there were some things he needed to tweak. Which was proven when a piece he'd missed flew from across the room and knocked him to the ground—scattering the pieces on the floor as he groaned and pulled off the remaining face-plate.

"As always, sir, a great pleasure watching you work," Jarvis drawled.

"Do you need the medkit?" I asked, drawing his attention to me as he rolled his shoulder and hastily scrambled to his feet to look more presentable.

"What? No. I'm fine… How much of that did you see?"

I blinked slowly at him. "Enough to know that you need to adjust the speed of the pieces flying at you when they get closer, add a locked-in mechanism so the pieces don't throw each other off of you, and a navigation system to prevent them getting caught on things or bouncing off tables."

"So… everything."

"Pretty much."

He pulled off the helmet with a grumble of complaint under his breath as I lifted up the tray to show him and set it on his work-desk.

"I brought you some left-overs from yesterday and some tea. Jarvis said you haven't been sleeping or eating."

"I'm fine," he repeated, kicking a piece of the broken suit on the floor.

Knowing he was lying, but not wanting to start a fight, I pulled out a napkin from under one of the plates on the tray and stepped over to him, dabbing at the blood on the corner of his mouth.

"If you're going to lie, at least do it when it's not obvious it's a lie," I lightly chided him. "Do you want to come upstairs? Eat, maybe take a nap, or continue thinking up ideas on your suits with company?"

"I should probably stay here, work on a few things, get that calibration working and—"

"Please," I said quietly, shutting him up and making him look at me properly for the first time in the last few days.

Seeing that I was obviously unsettled about something, lacking sleep myself and looking just as worn out as he was probably feeling, he begrudgingly nodded.

"All right," he muttered, before turning to Dum-E—who was wearing a dunce cap for some reason. "Dum-E, get this mess cleaned up. I'll be back down here later."

The robot whirred dejectedly, and Tony headed for the stairs, leaving me to pick back up the tray to take with me, but not before I took off Dum-E's dunce cap and lightly shushed the robot with a small smile. I still had a soft spot for it, despite Tony's grievances with the thing. Once upstairs, the two of us settled on the couch leaning up against one another which helped us both relax slightly, though the elephant in the room still hovered over us until Tony couldn't handle it anymore and turned on the news. It wasn't the best thing to watch, but it did what it was meant to and distracted us from our troubles as a clip played of a man called the Mandarin.

"Should I look into it?" I offered Tony, seeing the stony cold look in his eyes that said he was more than ready to fly to this guy's house as Iron Man and offer him to the President on a silver platter.

"No," he said shortly, getting up and headed back towards the basement. "Don't wait up."

"Tony, if you're going to go after him, then I want to—"

"I said no, Jess," he said shortly, making me go quiet as a flicker of my father from my nightmare passed through my head. "Just go to sleep. You've got a meeting tomorrow, don't you?"

"Y-Yeah," I murmured, begrudgingly letting him head back downstairs and turning to the muted TV as the news channel scrambled to try and figure out what had happened.

"You're always in the way!"

"Tony's got them in his basement. They're wearing party hats," Happy tried to convince Pepper as they walked through Stark Industries. "This is an asset that we can put to use."

"Uh, huh," Pepper muttered, signing a document that an employee brought forward. "So, you're suggesting that I replace the entire janitorial staff with robots."

"What I'm saying is that the human element of human resources is our biggest point of vulnerability. We should start phasing it out immediately."

"What? Did you just say that?" Pepper questioned in disbelief as he lightly scolded a staff member for not wearing their I'd badge. "Happy?"

"Yes?"

"Okay. I am thrilled that you are now the Head of Security. Okay? It's the perfect position for you."

"Thank you. I do appreciate it."

"However, since you've taken the post—"

"You don't have to thank me."

"We've had a rise in staff complaints of 300%"

"Thank you."

"It's not a compliment," Pepper stopped him.

"It's not—It is a compliment. Clearly, somebody's trying to hide something."

Pepper was beginning to wonder if Happy had been picking up some things while working with Tony for so long, only to spot Jess walking in. "Look, Happy, why don't you try asking Jess what she thinks?"

"Huh?"

Pepper turned him around to an exhausted-looking Jess. "Jess, Happy has a proposition he would like to share."

"Um, well, I-I mean…" Happy cleared his throat as Jess stared back blankly, sipping probably her fourth cup of coffee that morning. "I-I was just thinking that maybe we could take some of those robots Tony has in his basement t-to replace the cleaning staff a-and better improve—"

"No," Jess said bluntly.

"W-What? But clearly there's a weakness in the company and that's—"

"Not going to be fixed by replacing the staff with hackable robots," Jess countered, giving him a bland look. "Or do you not remember the incident during the Expo where multiple robots were hacked into and caused havoc?"

"B-But these won't be Iron Man suits, just—"

"Just cleaning robots working in one of the most advanced technological labs in the world and able to pick up any information they please should someone hack into them and use them to either spy on conversations, look at private documents or hack into our computers and security." Jess thanked a woman who stepped over to refill her nearly empty mug, before giving Happy a raised brow. "Still think it's a good idea?"

Happy sagged, knowing when he was defeated and honestly knowing he hadn't stood a chance against Jess—which was why he tried Pepper in the first place.

"Excuse me?" Another woman called out, making Pepper turn.

"Yes?"

"Miss Potts, Miss Norris, your four o'clock is here."

"Thank you," Pepper said as Happy frowned.

"Did you clear this four o'clock with me?"

"Happy, we'll talk about this later," Pepper stopped him. "But right now, we have to go deal with this very annoying thing."

"No wonder I'm being dragged into it," Jess muttered as Happy hesitated.

"Annoying how?"

"I used to work with him, and he used to ask me out all the time," Pepper explained. "So, it's a little awkward. And he's rather intelligent and I assumed Jess would enjoy a bit of a challenge and be willing to translate anything I miss."

Jess rolled her eyes. "You're just trying to distract me from Tony."

"And if it works, then maybe I'll have a slightly more functional assistant manager. Did you get any sleep last night?"

"Don't start," Jess murmured as they stepped into the office only to stare in surprise at the well-dressed, rather good-looking man standing in Pepper's office.

"Pepper," he greeted with a smile.

"Killian?"

"You look great. You look really great."

"God, you, y-you look great," Pepper countered, making Jess shoot her a look. "I, I, I can't—What on earth have you been doing?"

"Nothing fancy," he shrugged. "Just five years in the hands of physical therapists. And please, call me Aldrich."

"Five years will do it," Jess muttered, drawing the man's attention to her and she put out her hand. "Jess Norris. Head tech engineer and technically the co-CEO of Stark Industries."

Killian took her hand, eyeing her. "Yes, I've heard of you. Graduated MIT in only a few years, dating Tony Stark himself too. You must be busy."

Jess scoffed. "Please. I've got nothing on you. You're the CEO for A.I.M. right?"

"You've heard of me?"

"Only the basics," Jess replied.

"You were supposed to be issued a security badge," Happy interjected then before Pepper hastily shooed him out.

She could see there was something going on between Jess and Killian, and while she felt a hint of jealousy, she couldn't help but wonder if Tony might start paying attention to Jess again should Killian start making moves on her. As much as Pepper didn't care for Tony's job-focused ideals, he and Jess had something good and currently, he was ruining it and making sure Jess ended up getting the brunt of it. Pepper had been trying to help Jess, but there was only so much she could do when the on who needed to do something was too busy playing with his suits.

"It's very nice to see you, Killian," Pepper said as Happy stepped out to wait not far from the doors. "So, what is it you wanted to speak with us about?"

"Well, after years dodging the President's ban on 'immoral' biotech research," he started, making Pepper internally wince.

If there was one thing Jess didn't like, it was people who dodged the system because they thought what they were doing was right above all else. Tony was the exception because he was doing right, but she doubted Killian was the same.

"My think tank now has a little something in the pipeline," Killian said, setting a box on the table and placing something behind his ear. "It's an idea we like to call Extremis. I'm gonna turn your lights down."

Jess's eyes narrowed, but she didn't say anything as Pepper just smiled politely and tried to get the frown off Jess's face by lightly kicking the woman's ankle. Killian showed them three small marbles.

"Regard the human brain," he said, rolling them across the glass table until they stopped, and a hologram appeared of a galaxy cluster of stars. "Uh, wait. Hold on, hold on. That's, that's the universe. My bad. But if I do that…"

Jess gave Pepper a raised brow, not impressed by the purposeful slip-up, but Pepper gave her a pointed nod towards him to get her to pay attention as the image changed to another image.

"That's the brain."

Jess eyed it with furrowed brows, before speaking up. "Is that a live feed?"

"How'd you know?" Killian questioned, rather surprised she'd figured it out and Jess lifted a finger to gesture to a part of the brain.

"There's electrical impulses traveling back and forth through the various portions of the brain and when you spoke, they went through the center responsible for speech, only to stop when you did."

"Well, now, how did Pepper find someone as clever as you?"

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Jess muttered, though Pepper could have sworn she saw a hint of pink on her cheeks as Killian got up and offered Jess a hand.

"Come on up. I'll prove it."

Jess hesitated but climbed up on the table when Pepper gave her a nudge.

"Now, pinch my arm."

She was more than willing to do that, and her eyes snapped over to the section of the brain that had lit up.

"What was that?" Pepper asked, enjoying the light show and stealthily reaching for her phone in her pocket.

"It's the primary somatosensory cortex," Killian explained. "It's the brain's pain center. But this is what I wanted to show you both." He reached out and turned Jess around, leaning over her shoulder and ignoring the way she stiffened as he turned and zoomed in on the image. "Now, Extremis harnesses our bioelectrical potential and it goes here. This is essentially an empty slot and what this tells us is that our mind—our entire DNA, in fact—is destined to be upgraded."

Again, Pepper winced. If there was one thing that hadn't changed with Killian, it was how oblivious he was towards women's feelings. Jess didn't look pleased with what he was saying, nor did she look particularly comfortable with how close he was. That and all his flirting with her was too subtle. It was part of the reason Jess and Tony worked out so well. Jess wasn't one to understand subtleties in relationships—despite how her entire job was looking into the subtleties of paperwork and laws. Tony was blunt and in turn, so was his flirting, which was always quick to hit home with Jess, who couldn't see anything other than blunt flirting. So, she could only hope the picture she just sent Tony might kick his butt into gear. Pepper wasn't sure she could stand much more of depressed Jess.

Tony rang Happy, mostly because he was bored, but also because he wanted an update on Jess. It had been odd that she'd suddenly begged for him to stay up with her the night before, but with how strained they'd been lately, he doubted he'd get an answer from her. So, to Happy he went, getting the image of the man's forehead.

"Is this Forehead of Security?"

"What? You know, look. I got a real job. What do you want?" Happy complained, lowering the iPad a bit. "I'm working. I've got something going on here."

"What? Harassing interns?"

"Let me tell you something. Do you know what happened when I told people I was Iron Man's bodyguard? They would laugh in my face. I had to leave while I still had a shred of dignity. Now, I've got a real job. I'm watching Pepper and your girlfriend."

"What's going on? Fill me in."

"For real?"

"Yeah."

"All right. They're meeting up with this scientist. Rich guy. Handsome."

"Right," Tony said with a frown.

"I couldn't make his face at first, right? You know I'm good with faces."

"Oh, yeah. You're the best."

"Well, so I run his credentials. I make him. Aldrich Killian. We actually met the guy back in… Where were we in '99? The science conference?"

"Um, Switzerland."

"Right. Right, exactly."

"Killian. No. I don't remember that guy."

"Of course, you don't remember him. He's not a blonde with a big rack. Or, well, anything like Jess. At first, it was fine. They were talking business. But now it's getting weird. He's showing Jess his big brain."

"His what?"

"His big brain and she likes it. Here, let me show you. Hold on. See?"

Tony raised a brow, still looking at Happy. "Look at what? You watching them? Flip the screen and then we can get started."

"I'm not a tech genius like you. Jess only showed me how to use this thing a few days ago. Just trust me. Get down here."

"Flip the screen, then I can see what they're doing."

"I can't! I don't know how to flip the screen. Don't talk to me like that anymore. You're not my boss. All right? I don't work for you. I don't trust this guy. He's got another guy with him. He's shifty."

Tony was only half-listening, looking up what he could really quick about Killian. "Relax."

"Seriously?"

"I'm just asking you to secure the perimeter. Tell them to go out for a drink or something."

"You know what? You should take more of an interest in what's going on here. This woman's the best thing that's ever happened to you a-and you're just ignoring her."

Tony pulled a drink from his alcohol cabinet. "A giant brain?"

"Yeah, there's a giant brain. There's a shifty character. I'm gonna follow this guy. I'm gonna run his plates and I'm gonna… You know, if it gets rough, so be it."

"I miss you, Happy."

"Yeah, I miss you too. But the way it used to be. Now you're off with the super friends. I don't know what's going on with you anymore. The world's getting weird."

"Hey, I-I hate to cut you off. Do you have your Taser on you?"

"Why?"

"I think there's a gal in HR who's trying to steal some printer ink. You should probably go over there and zap her."

"Yeah, nice," Happy scoffed as Tony shut the door and left the phone in the glass cabinet.

He had nothing to worry about. Jess didn't just fall for any old guy. She wasn't like him. They were just dealing with a rough patch after everything that happened with the Avengers, right? He lowered his drink, hesitating and remembering how she looked that evening when she'd asked for him to stay with her. Maybe he should be worried. Something was definitely wrong. And when his phone chimed and he looked at the photo Pepper had sent him, something in his gut twisted.

"Imagine if you could hack into the hard drive of any living organism and recode its DNA," Killian explained, but I eyed him dubiously as Pepper hummed.

"That would be incredible."

"And highly weaponizable," I jumped in, shooting Killian a look.

Handsome as he was, I could tell there was something off about him and his ideals.

"As in, enhanced soldiers, private armies, and Tony isn't—"

"Tony, Tony. You know, I invited Tony to join A.I.M. thirteen years ago. He turned me down. But something tells me, now there's a couple of new geniuses on the throne who don't have to answer Tony any more and who has slightly less of an ego."

I bristled, Pepper being the only thing stopping me from snapping at the man. I didn't appreciate people insulting Tony when they didn't actually know him. And while I knew he was an absolute dick when he was younger, that didn't give Killian a right to judge him now. Pepper's foot nudged my ankle and I begrudgingly reached back out for my coffee to try and hide the frown on my face.

"It's going to be a no, Aldrich," Pepper denied him for me. "As much as we'd like to help you."

He nodded and we got up, leading him out. "Well, I can't say that I'm not disappointed. But then, as my father used to say, 'Failure is the fog through which we glimpse triumph.'"

"That's very deep," Pepper smiled. "And I have no idea what it means."

"It means he's not giving up," I replied, eyeing Killian as he smiled.

"I'm sure I'll see you again, Jess. Pepper." He leaned forward and kissed my cheek, before rushing off and I turned to Pepper with a scowl.

"I hate him."

Pepper sighed. "I noticed. I'm sorry. I would have helped you a bit more, but I thought it might help." She waved her phone where a text she'd sent to Tony lay on the screen, holding a picture of me and Killian on the table.

"Pepper," I growled. "I told you, I'm fine. We're fine."

Pepper rolled her eyes, putting her phone away. "If you were fine, then you wouldn't be walking in looking like the living dead and pouring alcohol into your coffee. Don't think I didn't notice."

I stuck my tongue out at her childishly, making her sigh.

"I'm just worried about you two."

"We're just… dealing with some stuff is all. We'll get it figured out," I muttered, really hoping it was true.