Ok, so before we start, I would like to thank my friend OpheliusRex for helping me improve my smut writing over the past five months or so. Feels like I've known you a lot longer bro, but this is dedicated to you. And yes, here we go with a warning now: smut ahoy. If it's not something you want to read, don't. It's towards the end of the chapter, and this is the only chapter where that will be present.

Disclaimer: Still not mine. Thanks to Marvel Universe Wiki and Marvel Comics Database for character info, and to Slipknot for writing –in my opinion- the greatest unrequited love song ever. The lyrics pretty much summed up my 2009/10, it gave me the inspiration to write this sequel, and this entire chapter was written out with it on repeat. It's fucking genius.

I only wish you weren't my friend

Then I could hurt you in the end

I never claimed to be a saint

Ooh, my own was banished long ago

It took the death of hope to let you go

Nearly two months had passed, and in that time Tony had only managed to attain two more members to their cause. Luke Cage, who had been living peacefully with his wife and daughter in New Orleans, immediately joined when confronted by Don. He compared the act to slavery and had feared for his family's safety when SHIELD had requested he sign up, and as such had sent them to a safe place in Canada. Being self taught in hand-to-hand combat and possessing incredible strength and speed, as well as healing in almost a third of the time as a normal man and the fact that he was fluent in over a dozen languages, he had immediately been paired with Peter and sent away to find more help. So far, they'd been gone for three weeks and hadn't sent word back, and though Tony knew they could both handle themselves, he was still worried. There was no way to know if they'd been captured apart from tuning into the news every night to see if their names were amongst the Cape Killer's Captured List.

The only other member of the 'Secret Avengers' as Logan had dubbed them, was a Californian who, like Punisher, would only allow others to address him by his alias of Cable. He had turned up of his own accord one day, frightening the crap out of Pepper when she saw his hulking form, not to mention his techno-organic left arm and eye, which seemed to glow sporadically. He hadn't spoken to any of them apart from informing Tony he was fighting alongside them, and then settling down in the garden to, by all accounts, meditate. He hadn't moved for four days, but both Tony and Don agreed the best thing to do would be to leave him alone. Logan had passed on information from Professor X about Cable, saying he'd been intercepting a high frequency telepathic signal for a number of weeks, and it had gotten stronger as he had been communicating with Logan via Cerebro. Xavier guessed it was something to do with the newcomer and advised to keep their distance from him.

Over the past two months whilst the other Secret Avengers had been travelling not only through America, but the globe, searching for help, Tony had been holed up in his workshop for most of his days, planning and contacting as many people as he could that he knew he could trust to help. Both Pepper and Happy had been helping out as much as they could, but Pepper was finding it harder and harder to come up with stories for rushing out of the house at a moment's notice and not coming back for days on end, and Robert was getting sick of it.

"I mean, I just don't understand why you have so many meetings that only you can handle." He blurted out during yet another argument. "Surely you can't be the only person in the entire universe that can handle these problems."

Pepper groaned in frustration, glaring at him. "Do you think I want to fly all over the world every week? Well I don't. It's pissing me off just as much as you, but I'm the head of the company, some things can only be handled by me."

"But why does it have to be in person?" Robert argued, raising his voice.

"Because I'm the head of the fucking company!" Pepper yelled back.

Robert laughed and shook his head. "What the hell does that have to do with anything? When Tony was the head of the company, he still had you dashing all over the place, covering for him while he was recovering from a hangover or whatever."

"That was part of my job description." She said, trying to keep her head.

"So why is it still now?" he asked, his face reddening in anger. "For God's sake, Pep, the man's dead, stop letting him rule your life and let us get on with ours!"

Pepper stared at him for a second, huffing out a laugh and walking up to him.

"Contrary to what you think you know, Robert, I'm living my own life." She tensed her jaw and locked her gaze with his. "I spent ten years pretty much running that company myself with Tony in charge, and another ten years on my own. The fact that he's dead has changed nothing, and I am not giving this up just because you get a little…jealous, paranoid, whatever. That's your problem and I'll be damned if I let your problems drag me down." She turned before he could reply and grabbed her car keys, heading towards the door. "I'm going to Rhodey's, I might be back tomorrow."

She slammed the front door behind her and hurried to her car, reversing out of the drive as quickly as humanly possible and pulling out onto the road. She had no intentions of going to Rhodey's, unless it was to punch him in the face, so she turned onto the PCH when she exited her block and heading towards Tony's, thinking she may as well check up on any progress he'd made since she'd last seen him nine days ago.

Was she really counting the days?

The house seemed eerily quiet when she entered, and she only noticed Peter from his position lying on the couch when he called out her name, making her jump. She squinted through the darkness and blinked when he switched a nearby lamp on.

"Pete, you're back." She said, smiling and stepping towards him. "How come you're sat in the dark?"

Pete smiled back and laid down the book he was reading, and sat up, leaving her space to sit down.

"We only just got back. Luke's in the gym, I wasn't tired so I decided to read for a while." He grinned at her and winked. "Plus I had a feeling you'd turn up."

Pepper opened her mouth to reply but shook her head, ignoring his comment and sitting next to him, picking up his book, a very battered copy of Turn of the Screw.

"Why were you reading in the dark?"

Peter laughed. "I don't need light to see, really. Enhanced eyesight and all that." He gently took the book from Pepper and folded the corner of the page he was on before laying it on the coffee table. "Tony gave me that for my sixteenth birthday."

Pepper smiled softly and looked it over once more. "You must have read it a lot, it looks like it's been well used."

"Not really." Pete said, slumping back against the couch and stretching slightly, his shoulder cracking loudly. "It wasn't in much better condition when he gave it to me. It was Tony's before mine and his father's before that. It's his favourite book."

Pepper stared at it and then at Peter. "You two seem pretty close."

Peter smiled and nodded. "He's been pretty much like a father to me the entire time I've known him." He said, linking his fingers together on his knees. "He took me under his wing when I started working for SHIELD. I was fifteen, I'd only been Spiderman for maybe four months, I'd lost my Uncle, and I was completely blown away by the sheer amount of…stuff I had to deal with. It's more than anyone, never mind someone so young should have to deal with, and if it hadn't been for Tony, I probably would have freaking out in the first week." He chuckled a little and rubbed the back of his neck.

Pepper smiled a little. "So…you're what? Twenty-five?"

Peter nodded. "Had my birthday the week before you guys showed up at the Bugle. Tony was my pseudo father for the three years before he disappeared. I lost my parents when I was younger, and I only had my Aunt, and I couldn't tell her about any of this because I might put her in danger…it was great to be able to have someone to talk to, someone who understood and someone who could give me advise.." he looked up at Pepper, a serious look on his face. "I'd follow him into anything. No matter what."

Pepper saw the sincerity in his words and nodded. "Then he's lucky to have you. We all are."

He lifted one side of his mouth in a grin and grabbed his book again, nervously flicking through the pages and looking away from her. "He…he mentioned what happened between you two. About your son."

Pepper's jaw tensed a little as Peter looked at her again. "It took a while for me to get him to talk about it. He's still really broken up about it, as I'm sure you are. It's not something either of you will ever be able to forget, and I told him he was a dipshit for leaving like he did, but I think the work he did for the three years he was with us, if not the seven years he's been missing, helped him get through it. I know it must have been especially tough on you, but he honestly believed you'd be better off, safer, without him."

Pepper opened her mouth to reply but closed it again, nodding and getting up from the couch.

"Is he still up?"

Peter nodded and motioned to the entrance to the workshop. "Blake's down there with him, no idea what they're doing though." He said. Pepper nodded again and headed towards the stairs. "Pepper…he would have made a fantastic father."

She tensed her jaw, stopping for a second, before continuing down the stairs towards the workshop. As she descended the steps, she noticed Don's back facing her. He appeared to be sitting in one of the computer chairs, leaning over one of the dentist-style chairs that decorated Tony's workshop and as she opened the door, she saw Tony was actually in the chair. There was a cable poking out of a gap in Tony's reactor which was plugged into one of his computers, and Jarvis appeared to be rattling off the specifications of it to the two men. Blake turned as she opened the door and beamed widely at her.

"Ah, Miss Potts, lovely to see you." He greeted her, turning back to Tony, who smiled at her too. "Please come in, I'm nearly done here."

Pepper quietly stepped forwards and peered around Blake's form, gazing at the open reactor. Blake was examining some faded red and purple markings surrounding it, as well as nodding to the specs Jarvis was giving him, his hands protected by latex disposable gloves.

"Didn't expect to see you till next weekend." Tony said, shifting slightly as Blake prodded his chest. "Everything ok?"

Pepper shrugged and shoved her hands in her jeans pockets. "Rob and I had an argument is all. I threw a hissy fit and walked out…you mind if I crash here tonight?"

Tony was halfway through saying he didn't mind at all, when Blake clapped his hands together and rolled back in his chair, tugging the gloves off with a snap and throwing them in a disposable waste bucket underneath the desk.

"Well, Shellhead, your rash is clearing up nicely, and the new reactor seems to be doing wonders, so congratu-welldone." He said, turning to the desk and grabbing a clipboard, scrawling something down.

Pepper glanced at Tony's chest and sure enough, instead of the perfectly round insides that she had last seen in his reactor, this one was triangular.

"New element." Tony said, tapping his chest and answering her silent question.

Pepper furrowed her brow. "What happened to the old one?"

Tony winced a little. "Uh, well the old element, palladium, it was…it was poisoning me basically. I spent the last six months of my time at SHIELD trying to find a replacement once it got really bad. I hadn't been able to test it properly before I had to leave so Don's just giving me the once over."

"It took you six months to find a replacement?" Pepper asked, shocked.

Tony nodded. "Well, I tried every single element in existence until it got to the point where I had to create this one. Well, I didn't really create it exactly, I went to a country called Wakanda for a while and managed to bring back a metal called Vibranium. It's only found out there, and when I brought it back I just kind of refined it a little and…well it stopped the poisoning."

Pepper stepped forward and traced the fading coloured lines around the reactor. "Is that the poisoning?"

Tony swallowed and nodded. "Yeah…it's pretty much gone now. Right doc?"

"Uh huh." Blake said, looking up from his clipboard and laying it aside, shuffling forward on his chair again. "You shouldn't need to worry about that again. From what Jarvis tells me, you'll get a lot of mileage out of that baby."

The younger man grinned and sat up, pulling out the cable attached to his chest and stretching. "So I'm good to go right?"

Don shook his head and leant back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "I want to see the Virus."

Tony's smile faded a little and Pepper's eyebrows rose dramatically.

"A virus? What virus?" she said, looking from Don to Tony. "I thought you said you were ok?"

Tony sighed. "I'm fine Pepper, honestly. It's not really a virus in the traditional sense. It's…basically, the poison got to a stage where the only way I could stay alive long enough to finish the refining process was to take this Virus that Banner cooked up. He called it the Extremis, it's a techno-organic virus, it essentially…well it's kind of hard to explain what it does without showing you so…"

Tony held out his right arm and closed his eyes, evening out his breathing. Within seconds, the hair on his arm started to stand on end and the pores began to bleed. Pepper gasped and Blake shifted closer and the blood, or whatever it was, began to mould together, becoming thicker and shinier and…more solid, until his right forearm was covered from finger tip to elbow in armour. Tony flexed his hand as he opened his eyes and grinned. "Cool, huh?"

Pepper was gaping at his arm, struggling to believe that he'd literally just bled armour through his skin. Blake, on the other hand, took hold of Tony's arm and examined it studiously.

"This is extraordinary." He whispered. "I'd heard of the Virus but never believed…it's amazing from both a scientific and medical point of view." He did a few bending motions with Tony's elbow and wrist and then performed a blood pressure test, whistling once done. "Full range of motion and no stress on the blood flow…are there any side affects at all?"

Tony shook his head, glancing at Pepper as she took his hand in hers, studying it herself. "Nothing at all. If anything it's improved my health. I heal quicker, I can activate it at a moment's notice. I can feel things with it, but it's still armour, I can't get hurt by anything touching it."

Blake nodded and scratched his chin. "It sounds as if it's lying dormant in your nervous system…but that doesn't explain where the hell it comes from. Perhaps in your marrow? Hmm…very peculiar…I wonder if Logan would have an insight."

He stood up and grabbed his cane, hobbling towards the door and up the stairs, bidding them both good night as he left. Tony stared after him and then looked at Pepper.

"Did I just…baffle him?" he laughed. Pepper smiled a little stiffly and gently reached out for his arm. She held his wrist gently and ran her fingers down his forearm.

"This is amazing, Tony." She whispered. "Is this how you got home?"

Tony nodded, staring avidly at her as she caressed the metal. "Yeah. I managed to programme in a cloaking device, which was kind of difficult because I had to basically learn the code to make it work. No way to upgrade the suit." He clarified at Pepper's confused look.

She shook her head in amazement and let go of his arm. "This is…it's insane. How the hell did you manage to do all this whilst on the run? You've managed to do…this, and create your element…it's incredible."

Tony smiled bashfully and retracted his armour, rubbing his wrist slightly. "Well, ya know, I built the first one in a cave with a box of scraps, and I had the entirety of SHIELD's expertise to help me with this one, so…it wasn't that much of a big deal." He shrugged and hopped off the chair and stretched, scratching his head. "So, you had an argument with Robert? You ok?"

Pepper tensed her jaw and cleared her throat, looking away from him. Tony sighed. "Forget it. It's none of my business, sorry."

She rolled her eyes and huffed a breath through her nose. "No, it's fine. It's just…he keeps ragging on me about how much time I'm spending away from home and I'm running out of excuses. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, it's just difficult to keep lying to someone you love. I understand why I can't tell him, obviously, but I feel awful for lying to him and making him suspicious."

Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaning against the desk opposite her. "I'm sorry. I know you didn't ask to be involved in any of this. You have no idea how grateful I am that you're still here though, Pepper, and it won't be for much longer, I promise, and then you can go back to normal."

Pepper nodded, smiling a little and hopped up onto the chair Tony had vacated. "What will you do when all this is over?" she asked him. "I mean, you're dead right now, what's gonna happen when you…come back?"

Tony shrugged and picked up a screwdriver from the desk, twirling it between his fingers. "I don't know. I guess if this all goes the right way, SHIELD will need a new leader, so I guess I'll go back up to the airship. Assuming SHIELD is allowed to continue after all this of course." He smiled and looked up at her, but his grin quickly vanished when he saw the look on her face.

"So you're just going to up and leave again?" she asked.

Tony furrowed his brows and put the screwdriver down. "Well…yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have come back if I'd had another choice, and I figured it's probably best if once this is over I just…vanish again and pretend this never happened."

Pepper scoffed and looked away from him. "Typical Tony Stark, always running away from his mistake, never taking responsibility."

Tony's jaw fell open and his voice rose. "Never taking responsibility? What the hell do you think I'm trying to do now?" he shouted.

She gave him a steely look and sniffed, her eyes growing red with unshed tears. "I think you're trying to save yourself. Again. But you don't want to take responsibility for ripping our family apart."

"Hey!" he snapped, stepping towards her. "I left because I thought it would fix things," he stressed. "I needed you to move on and I thought the only way I could get you to do that was to make you hate me."

"I do hate you!" she screamed, jumping off the chair. "I hate everything you've put me through, I hate the fact that you thought leaving would fix everything, I hate the fact that I thought you'd died without ever coming back, but most of all I hate the fact that despite everything it only took me about three seconds to fall right back in love with you."

Tony recoiled, staring at her through watery eyes. "How can you say that?" he asked hoarsely. "I ruined everything between us."

Shaking her head and wiping her eyes as tears broke free, Pepper's voice cracked as she spoke. "You only ruined it when you left. I spent the last ten years mourning the loss of both my child and you." She looked back at him and let out a small sob. "When you left, you took part of me with you and I've never been able to repair that part."

She turned away from him, covering her face with her hands and shaking with sobs. Tears started slipping down Tony's own cheeks as he stepped forward, tentatively placing his hand on her shoulder. Pepper shrugged him off and tried to step around him but he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against his bare chest in a tight hug. She immediately folded into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck and crying quietly into his neck as he squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his face into her hair.

"I'm sorry." He mumbled. "I'm so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought you'd be better off without me."

Pepper swallowed harshly and lifted her head, sniffing and raising her hands to his face, wiping his tears with her thumbs. "Yeah, well for a genius, you're a real dumbass."

The corner of his mouth turned up slightly and his Adam's apple bobbed. "So I've been told."

Pepper's gaze flitted between his eyes before she tilted her head up and pressed her lips lightly to Tony's. He froze, inhaling sharply through his nose but slowly responding when she pressed harder, pushing her fingers into his hair and pulling him closer to her. He began kissing her back, tightening his arms around her waist, and then suddenly everything was happening ten times quicker than real life, until Tony was pressing her roughly against the desk he'd been leaning on, running his hands over every patch of skin he could find, Pepper's shirt lying crumpled on the floor and her legs wrapped tightly around his waist. His mouth was attacking her neck with licks and nibbles and her hands had wound themselves into his hair as she moaned softly, arching into his mouth and body, rocking her hips against the obvious bulge in his jeans.

Tony grunted, leaning up and popping open the button on her jeans and unzipping the fly, hastily tugging them down her legs along with her panties. At the same time, Pepper reached up and whipped his belt through its loops, pulling down his zipper and pushing the denim over his hips, tugging on his boxers. He kicked his jeans away and pulled his boxers down the rest of the way, leaning back over Pepper and kissing her deeply, taking himself in hand to push gently inside her. Pepper whimpered softly and Tony growled, sinking in to the hilt and holding himself there, pulling his mouth away and resting his forehead against hers, panting slightly. After a few seconds, Pepper tilted her head up to kiss him again, tugging on his hair.

"You can move." She whispered against his mouth. Tony exhaled heavily and adjusted his position a little, tensing his jaw.

"Gimme a sec…it's been a while. I don't want this to be over before it even starts." He gasped.

Pepper smiled and kissed him again gently, rolling her hips into his. He groaned breathlessly and slowly withdrew before pushing back in deep, starting a steady rhythm and making their hips meet with every thrust. Pepper moaned into his mouth and trailed her hands down his neck and chest. Tony caught them in his own hands and pulled them away, pressing them down onto the surface of the desk above her head, linking their fingers and moving his mouth along her jaw to her ear, sucking the lobe into his mouth. Gasping, Pepper closed her eyes and rocked against his body, matching him thrust for thrust as the slow burn began in the pit of her stomach, building and winding slowly until she let out a low yodel of release, tightening her legs around his waist and pushing her hips into his. Tony managed a couple more faltered thrust before pushing in as far as he could and gasping against her neck, mouthing her skin and climaxing hard. Pepper moaned again softly, squeezing his fingers with her own, turning her head to softly kiss his neck as they both gasped for breath.

After Tony had recovered, he let go of Pepper's hands and pushed himself up, gently pulling out of her and kissing her slowly on the mouth, cupping her cheek.

"Stay with me tonight." He said, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against hers. He felt her nod and grinned, kissing her again and sighing heavily. "I love you."

Pepper smiled tearfully and nuzzled his nose.

"I love you too."

TBC