We are so close the end, I can feel it and it makes me sad.

Tony lie face down on the floor, coughing and spitting blood. He couldn't move, his chest was on fire and his legs were pinned by something large and heavy that had broken in the explosion.

He didn't know what had happened, one minute he was watching the news, the next second he was face down, a pain so sharp in his chest that he'd wished he'd been killed.

Tony had decided that he was going to take back his company; he was done letting Pepper and Obie run SI into the ground. He had learned through some reporter, that Obie was double-dealing to terrorists and he wasn't going to allow that to happen anymore. Gone were the days where Tony would turn a blind eye and pretend nothing was wrong. He wasn't sure if Pepper had anything to do with the double-dealing, she was the CEO, not Obie. However, Obie held a prominent position within the company. He could do the double-dealing and not alert Pepper, he was smart enough for that, Tony was sure.

Tony, however, was smarter. He went to Pepper about taking control back from the company. It was still his company, when he had signed it over to Mrs. Potts, he had stipulated that he was to be allowed to take over at any time. He had not expected to ever use that claus. She had agreed right away, which told Tony she wasn't involved in the schemes. There would have been no way that she would give over control if she were.

The company was transferred back over to Tony within two weeks and no one knew until the day after it happened. Tony had required that only he, Pepper and the girl from legal know what they had planned. He had even forbid Pepper to tell Obie, he had felt bad that she needed to lie to her husband but well, Obie was a back stabbing double dealing mass murderer so Tony's guilt at making Pepper lie to her husband was easily abated.

The takeover went fine, other things, not so much. Shutting down the weapons department had caused their stock to take a dive. Tony had expect that though, he wasn't sure what he was going to replace it with, he just knew he needed to get his weapons out of the hands of anyone capable of using them on people. He didn't care if that meant terrorists or the us military. He had ordered all of his weapons tracked down and destroyed.

That had not been a fun month. He had managed to keep away from Obie for the most part and Pepper had become his personal secretary for lack of a better word, helping him figure out the company. It was not a job he had ever in his life wanted and yet he had been forced into it, in order to keep himself, Steve and everyone in the world safe. He didn't give a damn about himself or anyone other than Steve. He was the driving force in Tony's decisions, often times he found himself asking what Steve would do in a situation, and that was what he would do.

A few times, he had overheard fights between Pepper and Obie, he couldn't do anything to change that situation nor would he. He felt bad that he had caused a fracture in Pepper's life, but it wasn't anything he had control over. He wasn't about to let SI be run into the ground because of double-dealing. He sure as hell wasn't about to let US military men and women die because Obie wanted to make more money. That was not how he wanted the company run. That wasn't how the world needed to be run. He didn't give a damn about ruining relationships if it meant keeping the roads and airspace safe for the men and women that were in other countries fighting for the American people.

Running SI was a slightly different world then running a high school classroom. But not by much. You still had pissing contests within the departments. Each one vying for Tony's time and attention. Each one hoping for praise, praying their designs would be the next big thing for Stark Industries. The only difference was, he wasn't telling them what to do. They all had their own ideas. Each new department, each new person all with "brand new" ideas.

The Stark phone had actually been a concept he liked. In the world of iPhone and Galaxies, Tony felt it was time to break the mold. He would do it with flare and style and rock every phone company to the core.

Other ideas came and went, some more useful than others, some inane or asinine, some redundant or blatant rip offs. Those people had been fired on the spot; he would not allow people to rip off others designs. SI was not a knock off company; Tony's company would be the leader and forward thinker in everything.

He had pulled out some of the old notes his dad had kept stored, to see if any of those ideas could be of any use and he had found one. A renewable, self-sustainable, power source known as an arc reactor. His father had designed it to be large; it would probably need to take up the entire bottom floor of a building. Back when his father had thought the idea up, a computer took up an entire wall and a hard drive weighted about the same as a Mac truck. They had long since figured out how to shrink things down and still use them for the same purpose. Tony was sure he could do it with the arc reactor.

He worked for weeks on the reactor. It was time consuming and tedious. He didn't know much about the science before learning about it in his father's books. He had after three weeks of almost no sleep and lots and lots, like insane amounts, bleed Columbia dry amounts, of coffee, Tony had finally figured out how to make the reactor and get it to work. He had even figured out how to put it in a coffee maker so that the coffee maker was portable. Tony thought this was perhaps his best idea ever. He had put the coffee maker in his SI office seven floors down. He had decided that keeping the reactor hidden until he was ready to show it off was the best idea and hiding it in a coffee maker was the most logical place, in his sleep deprived brain.

It had been a long time since he had stayed up and worked with little sleep. Steve had been a bad influence on him, making him sleep regular hours, not allowing him to have too much coffee. Three weeks of no sleep or very very little and large amounts of caffeine, Tony crashed, he crashed hard. Never even made it to his bed, he had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room of his penthouse that was attached to SI.

It was because of his inability to make it to his bed that he found himself pinned to the floor under rubble and feeling like his chest was being spliced open a million times. It was also the reason he had survived. Whatever had exploded had been down a floor or two, his bedroom or his lab. Nothing he kept on either floor was dangerous enough to cause an explosion let alone one that would take out the top floor as well. He was pretty sure it had been an attack.

"Tony!" He could hear Pepper calling his name. She must have raced up the stairs after the explosion. He could hear the panic in her voice as she moved through the room, the crunch of debris under her feet told him she was close.

"Tony, oh god tell me you are alright. The fire department is on their way. Tony where are you God Damnit." Tony groaned and tried to call out but his breath was short and he couldn't form words. Just a bunch of garbled pained sounds escaped his lips.

"Oh my god!" Pepper said as she pushed rubble off of him. "The paramedics are on their way. I'll tell them we need a helicopter medivac." Pepper made to move but Tony grabbed her. He could feel himself fading and didn't want to be alone.

"Stay...Stay with me." She sat down and laid his head in her lap, the blood from his head wound staining her white pencil skirt.

Steve stood rooted to the spot in the coffee shop as he watched in horror and disbelief at what the news was reporting as an attempted assassination of Tony Stark, newly made CEO of Stark Industries. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Stark Tower, a place he had been to, was billowing smoke. The top 4 floors were destroyed and a medivac was lifting two people away. Steve hoped and prayed to whatever deity existed that Tony wasn't one of those two people and that he was ok.

"So I guess you heard, that jackass teacher from Shield High got blown up today." Bucky said a slight amusement in his tone. Steve didn't tell Bucky about him and Tony, there was no point. He and Tony had broken up and he didn't feel like explaining to anyone the messed up relationship he'd had with a teacher.

"Wait...You know that guy?" Johnny asked coming to stand next to Steve.

"Yeah, he was my high school science teacher."

"Mine too, he hated Steve. He always found a way to give Steve extra work or detention. It was ridiculous. A bunch of the guys used to think it was because he had a crush on Steve. Lord knows Steve had a crush on him." Bucky said nudging Steve in the ribs and making his ears go slightly pink.

"Oh please, Stark was an asshole to everyone. I was just the one that got hit the most with his crap because I didn't run away from him like a scared puppy." Steve said trying to ignore the way both Bucky and Johnny were looking at him. Talking about Tony hurt, bad mouthing him to keep up appearances hurt worse. He didn't hate Tony. He wished he did, but he didn't. Steve was still very much in love with the man. Talking bad about him was something he had never liked doing. It hurt even worse after the break up, but knowing Tony was in danger, it really didn't feel right putting him down.

"Yeah and you thought he was hot." Bucky said walking away from the TV and the horrific scene. Johnny laughed, clapped Steve on the back and followed Bucky back to their seat. Steve grabbed the coffee he had ordered but didn't move again.

A bald man was on TV, as a representative of Stark Industries. "It has been a tragic day for Stark Industries, I cannot comment as to the condition of Mr. Stark, but I can assure you we are doing everything to make sure he gets taken care of." Steve didn't know why, but he didn't like the guy.

Nothing else was said on the situation at Stark Tower and it took Steve a few days to gather up the courage to take the train and go see for himself.

He had been amazed to see the tower lively, people hurrying in and out not paying attention to a young college student. All he could do was stare at the wrecked floors that towered above everyone and remember that night, the day before Christmas that he had surprised Tony. Steve couldn't help the small sad smile.

He and Tony had had a really good relationship considering how they had started and what was at stake. They had somehow overcome all of that and yet, Steve still didn't know what had ended them. Why Tony had wanted to keep him hidden away.

Maybe he had know that he was in danger, that someone was trying to kill him. Maybe that was a crock of shit, how could Tony possibly know that someone would try to kill him? Why had he taken over SI? He had told Steve many times that that was his father's company, not his and he didn't want anything to do with it. So why? All these questions swirled in Steve's head and he could do nothing but wonder. He had no way of ever knowing, he would never get the chance to ask Tony and that bothered Steve.

He hated the way they left things, but he had no way of going back in time and changing any of it. He needed to move on with his life and just hope that Tony found happiness somewhere along the way.

Steve stayed on the street watching Stark Tower die down. He watched as the sun slipped down, the sky changing from gray to black and many colors in between. He watched as the lights went out in the tower and the doors were locked up. He stayed until the chill of the air made him leave. He decided to walk home rather than take the train back, it wasn't too far, maybe 30 blocks.

Two more chapters left now. *sniffs* I hope you all enjoyed it.

Remember, review and you get a preview of the next chapter. Until next Tuesday, I hope you have a good week.