Chapter 12

The sound of incoming sirens woke him up, and not even Extremis was strong enough to help him regain his senses quicker than he would have wanted. His eyes blinked slowly and with each battering of the lids a new set of tears appeared. He was sure he was not crying, but something in the air was stinging his eyeballs to the point his tear ducts were left with no option but to work overtime. His nose then volunteered to help find the cause of the discomfort, and it was then Tony realized his eyes throbbed because of the thick smoke around him.

Smoke?

He tried to pull his arm toward his shirt to pull it over his mouth to filter some of the pollution around him, but his effort was in vain when he realized his right arm was bent at an awkward angle so that it was behind the driver's seat. If he did not know any better he would have thought his arm was broken.

"Ouch!"

Or maybe it actually was broken.

Ignoring the discomfort he felt he began scanning his body for other injuries at the same time he silently demanded that his mind told him where he was and how he had wound up here in the first place. His left arm seemed to be trapped between his body and the door and was somehow tangled with the seat belt as well. He figured that at some point and for some unknown reason he had tried to remove the top part of the seat belt off his person since the only part that kept him attached to the seat was the piece that ran across his hips.

When he moved his head to the left to stare at his stuck arm, he felt the pressure of the blood in his head was not normal, suggesting that he was probably upside down. The sounds of emergency vehicles and static from radios became louder and he concentrated on trying to understand what they said. The already loud noises were pooled together with cries of people, the shrieking of scrapping metal and the faint noise of music playing in the background.

Music? Radio? Pepper!

Suddenly, the memories of what had just occurred to them flooded his mind, and his head snapped to his right. He could see that the vehicle he had been driving was bent out of recognition, and it was a miracle he was still alive. He could not immediately see if Pepper was now merged with the scraps that used to be a perfectly usable car but his imagination was running wild with the possibilities of what a plastered Pepper would look like.

"PEPPER!" He yelled despite the pain he felt in his chest when he uttered her name. "PEPPER! DAMMIT, PEPPER!"

He wiggled his body from side to side until finally his right arm was released from its captivity. It was not broken but it was severely bruised and covered by an armored gauntlet. "What the hell?"

Tony stared at his armored glove and remembered that it was not a miracle he was alive: it was a product of his shield.

The moment he heard her scream his name his right hand flew from the steering wheel and aimed back towards the trunk. He knew there was no way he could get either him or her inside the suit while they were seated, but he only needed a few pieces of it to make do. He hardly had enough time to force the left gauntlet on her arm and the right one his and activate the shields. Some of the other pieces of the suit attached to her legs in the process but he knew they were not going to be enough to keep her safe. He had only seen one incoming car but the speed at which it had been approaching them was going to be enough to cause some major damage.

"Tony!"

"Hold on, Pepper!" He screamed at her when the first impact hit them. He heard her shriek in pain when the car was lifted off the ground and landed back on its side on the concrete only to be hit again from all directions. The screeching tires and screaming bystanders made his head hurt, and that combined with the sounds of rolling cars and twisting metal gave him an idea of was happening around them.

The light was green! The light was green! He told himself over and over again as he tried to keep up both Pepper's and his shields using Extremis. The pile up was happening so fast that by the time he felt his body going into shock it was too late to stop it from doing so.

"The light was green! The light…was green…" he mumbled until he passed out.

"Is anybody there?" He heard someone call near him. "Is anyone alive in there?"

"Yes!" Tony responded. "There's two of us!"

"Bring'em here, the jaws!" The man said. "We've got survivors over here."

Survivors, the words struck a chord inside the inventor. Survivors of what? Now that his arm was free, he used his repulsor to burn through the seatbelt and metal that were keeping his right arm immobilized. In a matter of seconds he was able to pull away his arm and was shocked to see the amount of blood surrounding it. Let it be my blood, please; only my blood.

He then burned through the belt at his hips and when he tried to move his legs, he became aware that his limbs were trapped by what had once been the hood of the car.

"Are you still with us, boy?" The same man from before asked.

"Yeah! My legs are stuck but I'm fine. Can you get to my girlfriend, first? I can't see her!"

"Where is she?"

"She's in the passenger seat, next to me."

"Son, there is no passenger seat anymore."

Tony felt the blood rush to his feet and the air leave his lungs. He opened his mouth to say something but his mind was too shocked to form a coherent sentence. The only phrase that echoed in his mind was the one spoken by the man outside: There is no passenger seat anymore. No passenger seat.

No.

He focused his mind and began calling upon the rest of his suit with the exception of his left gauntlet. If Pepper was still alive somewhere out there she probably needed the use of the shield. It was difficult to put on the suit while sitting upside down in the car, but with very piece of the armor he was able to secure, it was easier to bend the metal off him and suit up. By the time he was done putting on the outfit, the man he had been speaking with was almost near him.

"What the hell?" Tony heard the man say when the inventor blasted his way out of the car. "Is that Iron Man?" He heard a second man ask in disbelief.

Tony was still missing a few pieces of the armor but he had on enough to be of some use. He was expecting some police cars, fire trucks, and maybe an ambulance to be around, but what he saw he did not expect.

The intersection was littered with what could only be described as parts of cars. Shards of broken glass, loosened doors, personal belongings and the sort were scattered all around him. He saw an empty baby car seat and he prayed – which he did not do on a regular basis as he was not a religious person – that no baby had been propelled out of it and was now smashed somewhere on the hard concrete or walls.

"Hey, Iron Man, we need help here!" Tony heard from behind. He turned around slowly and saw an SUV was merged with a sedan, and he knew those two masses of scrap used to be two separate cars. "Can you give us a hand?"

"I…" He began as he remembered he was supposed to be looking for Pepper. He scanned the area for his gauntlet and found it to be about twenty feet away from where the surviving half of the car he and Pepper had been driving was at.

"Hello? We could really use your help!"

Tony snapped out of his reverie and reluctantly walked toward the firefighters. "What do you need me to do?" He asked.

"We can't get the jaws to pry this open. Can you see if there's anyone in there?"

"Give me a moment," Tony said and had his computer scan the wreckage. After obtaining vital signs and measurements, he lifted his arm and used his repulsor to make two holes in the vehicles. "There are five people in there, all unconscious but they're fine. I'm gonna go scan the rest."

"Thanks," one of the firefighters said before he began crawling inside the vehicles to take out the survivors. Tony repeated the same procedure with each vehicle he came across, but the one person he was searching for was still far away from him.

Hang in there, Pepper. I'm almost there.

Finally, after about five minutes since he had walked out of his vehicle, his scans came across the redhead under a pile of cars. "Pepper!" He called after her as he began removing boatloads of scrap. "Pepper, can you hear me?"

It was difficult to remove the debris off her with only one gauntlet, but he was afraid to call for the other armored glove while it was still attached to her hand. His search, however, became more frantic when he began seeing a red liquid trail spilling from the edges of the wreckage. He flinched as his uncovered hand began getting cut by the metal edges in his effort to get to the ginger but the pain was not enough to make him stop. No, no, no, NO!

After removing a crushed door he was finally able to see her red tresses sticking out from the debris. She was lying face down. He knelt onto the ground and retracted his helmet to get a better view of her; not caring for an instant if his secret identity was revealed by doing so. "Pep, talk to me, please. Come on, babe, say something to me."

"Hey! We need help over here!" The scientist heard someone behind him yell, but he did not bother to turn around to find out who it had been or what he was referring to. However, when the young inventor heard footsteps approaching him, he spared them a glance only to be surprised when a group of men and women, some of whom he had just gotten out of the cars himself, approached him and squatted next to him as they began removing the debris off Pepper with nothing more but their bare hands.

"Is she alive?" One of the women asked him as she and another man uncovered Pepper's feet.

"I think so," Tony responded more out of instinct than anything else, He did not want to just push the large car parts off her because he was afraid some of the glass around her was embedded in her body, and he did not want her to survive the crash only to bleed to death. One of the men uncovered Pepper's armored hand and Tony immediately called the missing piece of his armor to him.

"Someone get a paramedic over here!" The same woman from earlier yelled over her shoulder before she turned to face Tony and spoke to him. "She'll be alright, Mr. Stark." She assured him as if her word was law. "We'll get your girlfriend out and she'll be OK."

It seemed to Tony that news traveled fast.

Once most of Pepper's body was visible, Tony took a chance and blasted the last of the debris off her. The charred remains made a loud thud when they hit the ground as the genius carefully flipped her over so that she was face up and her head rested on his right arm. He retracted the glove from his left hand, pressed his fingers onto her neck and sighed. "She has a pulse," he said with relief, slowly removing the bloody hair off her face. "She still has a pulse!"

The sound of the incoming gurney caught his attention, and he immediately picked her up in his arms and placed her on the rolling bed. The paramedics surrounded her in the blink of an eye and before Tony understood what was happening, she was being given a quick check. Tony followed the paramedics on their way to the ambulance but someone's hand on his arm made him stop midway to his destination.

"Iron Man…" the man began, hesitating to even bother the obviously distraught teen. "Tony…" he then ventured. "Can you help us? We have one more car that needs checking, and that's it." Tony nodded to the man even though his eyes were glued to his girl for two more seconds before he followed the officer that had asked for help. He called on his helmet to return to his head and scanned the car to find two people inside the vehicle. One of them was alive, and the other was not.

"Someone didn't make it in there," Iron Man said as he began making his way through the debris. "The other person is fine."

A few kicks and blasts later, Tony was able to pull a young man from the wreckage, probably around the same age as he. He was battered and was bleeding, but he had no major injury on his person. As soon as he saw Iron Man pulling him out of the torn vehicle, the young man grappled his hands onto Tony's armor, tears of desperation running down his face. "Please, my fiancée is still in there. Please save her, Iron Man!"

Tony's heart broke in two, making it impossible for him to tell the poor man that his fiancée was no longer alive.

xxxXXXxxx

"In other news, young billionaire Tony Stark was revealed today as being no other than Iron Man. After a vehicular accident that is still under investigation, the heir to Stark International found himself being part of and assisting in the massive rescue mission following a 15-car pileup in the intersection of Gattis Road and 57th street. The cause of the accident remains unknown at this time since as all drivers claim the traffic light gave them the right of way. Surprisingly, only one death was reported from this devastating accident, and it was of 20-year old Vanessa Brown. Vanessa Brown, who had just become engaged a few days ago to her high school sweetheart sustained major head trauma when her side of the vehicle slammed against a concrete wall, dying at the scene. Everyone else reported minor injuries and are expected to make a full recovery."

Tony, who was sitting in a chair at the waiting room at a hospital, covered his face with his bandaged hands and he tuned out the rest of the news story. One by one the survivors of the crash had been leaving the hospital they had all been taken to, which happened to be the same one in which Virgil was still being admitted. With every person that left waiting room, one more expression of thanks reached the scientist in the form of a kind word of encouragement regarding Pepper's status, a pat on the back of the shoulder or a simple smile. He had helped save over 30 lives today, but the only life his mind could focus on right now was the one that did not make it.

I could've been him…that could've been Pepper; that could've been us, he repeated to himself in self-pity. The cries of pain the young man had made when they pulled his dead fiancée from the rubble were going to haunt him for years to come. He had not even blamed Tony, which made it worse for the inventor in some odd fashion as he had expected the man to take out his anger on him, blaming him somehow for the tragic misfortune. Yet, he had not; the devastated man had just held onto the dead body of the girl as she was taken to the coroner's van.

Now that his mind was clearing up, he could easily tell that there could have been many more deaths had he not been around. The smoke he had encountered belonged to small fires that were caused by the wreck, and the red liquid he had seen spilling out of the wreck where Pepper had been had been gasoline and other fluids from the car's innards.

We could've all blown up, or would've burned alive, at the least.

"Thank you for saving us," he heard a male voice said to his right. "My family would have not made it out if it wasn't for you. Thank you, Tony. Thank you so much."

Tony looked up to watch as the man, his wife, and their toddler all stared down at him with grateful faces. He nodded to them out of politeness but then his eyes hit the floor again. He then felt the man place a comforting hand on his shoulder as he spoke once more. "We're glad your girlfriend made it. We heard she's gonna be alright."

Tony nodded again but did not say anything. He already knew Pepper had some bumps, bruises and scratches, but other than the scare she was going to go back home with him tonight, practically unscathed. The protection the shield gave her had been a lifesaver, literally, since her side of the car had been split off his side when the vehicle hit a lamppost. Tony did not want to imagine what could have happened to her if he had not called upon his gauntlet and placed it on her. The image of the other girl, Vanessa – the one that did not make it – was fresh in his consciousness with the minor adjustment that in his mind it was Pepper's face on the mangled body rather than the actual deceased girl.

"Mr. Stark?" A voice Tony recognized as the doctor that had been monitoring Pepper's progress, spoke up. "Ms. Potts is ready to go home. She's with her dad right now and she asked me to tell you to stop by."

Tony lifted his face and thanked the doctor before he scurried away from the waiting room. He walked down the hall and into the area where Virgil was, not stopping until he stood by the door. He prepared his hand to knock to announce his presence, but the fear of seeing Pepper all bandaged up kept him from completing the task. It was not as if he was not glad that she had made it, but witnessing her state only served to remind him that he had not done enough to protect her.

"How terrible that one person died, Patricia," Virgil's voice came through the thin door. "But I know that without Tony's help, it could have been much worse. Are you sure he's alright?"

"He is, Dad. He's had worse battles with tougher villains."

"I didn't mean physically, sweetheart. I meant mentally. It's got to be tough on him to not be able to save everyone."

Tony clenched his jaw and groaned internally. He did not want to wait to hear Pepper's response to Virgil's accurate statement, so he knocked on the door before he knew he had done so. The last thing he wanted, however, was to overhear the redhead pitting him more than he was already pitting himself. Pepper trusted him with her life, and he did not want to break that trust she had him for any reason; even the reason was beyond anything he could do about it.

"Come in!"

Tony opened the door and walked inside, pretending that he had not been listening in outside. He gave Virgil a nod and the man returned it, and Tony felt a little bit of relief at seeing Pepper's dad did not blame him for the accident. His eyes then landed on the ginger and despite the knowledge that the retired FBI man was mere feet from them, Tony's hands flew to her face and his eyes scanned her body as he spoke. "Are you OK, Pep? The doctor said you're fine but I want to make sure."

Pepper gave Tony a smile and covered his bandaged hands with hers, her eyes also inconspicuously making sure he was alright. "I feel fine Tony. I'm fine thanks to you."

"Are you positive? We can go to another hospital if you aren't 100% sure."

"I'm fine, Tony! I've been through worse, you know that."

"Yeah, I know but…" his voice trailed as he gave her body one last look. "I'm still going to have the computer scan you when we get home."

"Tony…"

"Humor me, Pep. Just so that I can sleep better tonight, alright?"

Pepper rolled her eyes but relented. "Fine, even though my own dad is not that concerned about these little injures," she waved her hands on either side of her head. "I'll still let you scan me."

"Good. Because I was going to scan you anyway, but it makes it that much easier if you volunteer."

Virgil covered a snort with a cough, catching the attention of the two teens. "Well, I think you two deserve some rest, so why don't you go already. I'm happy to see you two are alright but I need to rest so that they don't' give me grief about going home tomorrow. I can't wait to get out of here."

"Alright, Dad. We'll be here to pick you up at 5 PM."

"I'll be here, waiting, with nothing to do." Virgil shrugged.

Pepper chuckled as she released herself from Tony's grip and walked over to her father to give him a kiss and a hug. She then returned to Tony and held his hand in hers as they both waved goodbye to Virgil and disappeared behind the closed door. Once they were out of view and earshot inside the elevator down the hall, Pepper threw herself at Tony and gave him a tight hug, finally able to show her true concern for him. "I was so scared Tony. Everyone said that you were fine but I just had to see it for myself. They wouldn't let me see you, even after I threatened to sue the hospital for malpractice!"

"That's not malpractice, Pepper." Tony chuckled and returned the embrace with as much strength as she was giving it. He patted her back with his right hand and drew circles on her lower back with his left hand, slowly kissing the side of her face. "I was worried, too, Pep. But, I'm so relieved you're alright."

Pepper nodded while still hugging him, and after taking a deep breath of courage, she spoke again. "Stay with me tonight, please. Stay with me."

"You know I am, Pep. You already offered me your couch."

"Not the couch, Tony," she said and felt heat rush to her face. "My bed."

Tony swallowed hard even though he was not sure why he was suddenly nervous about sleeping in the same bed as Pepper as he had already done so once. The situation, though, was entirely different this time around. Nevertheless, if his favorite redhead wanted his company tonight, she would get just that.

"OK, Pepper," he finally said when the elevator dinged to announce it had arrived to the first floor of the hospital. "I'll stay with you tonight."

A/N: So some of you might think that his accident served no purpose, but it really, truly did. It served a rather important purpose that is relevant to the overall plot of the story. Does anyone care to take a guess at how this chapter helps build the plot? I'd love to hear what you think!