A/N: I just realized that this file hadn't all the way uploaded so here is the full version of this chapter. There's really not that much that was cut off but I feel bad.

Tony wasn't sure what was going on. He was pretty sure he was dead but he had the slightest inclination that there were people around him. His ears were ringing and he couldn't seem to open his eyes. Tony tried to lift his hand to his face but it felt as if it had been injected with lead. He squeezed his hand closed to try and wake it up. As soon as he had done that, he heard some muffled noise.

'Maybe I'm not dead,' he thought

He again tried to open his eyes but was only able to open them slightly and immediately closed them. The light around him was extremely bright. Opening up his eyes again and blinking slowly he saw half a dozen doctors surrounding him. His ears were still ringing badly enough that he could not understand what they were trying to say. He looked over at the wall and realized it had only been a few hours since the fight with Stane. Tony felt tired and his head hurt but other than that he felt fine. He couldn't feel any broken bits. He looked down at his chest and saw that the doctors had replaced the worn out arc reactor with the one that had been stolen by Stane. His suit was standing in the corner looking quite a bit worn, scraped, and dented but definitely fixable. One of the doctors slowly approached him asking a question he couldn't quite make out. Tony lofted his heavy arm and pointed to his ear. The doctor nodded and pulled out a pen and paper.

'How are you feeling?' wrote the doctor. His name tag read Dr. John Williams.

Tony verbally responded with "okay, I want to go home."

Dr. Williams shook his head no at him in amusement. Tony Stark really did live up to his reputation of an individualistic know-it-all.

Tony moved to stand up but Williams tried to stop him.

"I want to go home." Tony said in protest. Immediately after thinking about home, he thought of Pepper Potts.

"Pepper Potts," Tony said aloud to the doctor. Williams shrugged and wrote on the paper 'who?'

Tony was furious. He knew she would have been monitoring him unless she was in the hospital herself.

"You haven't had a patient by that name?" Tony asked.

Williams wrote back 'No, only you and a few people from the car accident.'

Tony stood and walked over to the suit beginning to manually ready it for use. His hearing was slowly returning but the ringing stayed. He told the doctor of this.

"What are you going to do?" Dr. Williams asked.

"I'm going to find Ms. Potts." Tony replied.

"You can't." Williams was definitely getting on Tony's nerves.

"Yes I can, don't tell me what I can and can't do."

Tony put on the suit and woke up Jarvis.

"Jarvis, is Ms. Potts at home?" he asked the super computer.

"No, sir, she never returned," it replied. "Should I call her cell phone?"

"Yes," Tony replied worried. Pepper's phone rang several times but he got her voicemail.

"Hang up," Tony commanded. "Where is her car, Jarvis?"

"Sir, her GPS says her car is in the Stark Enterprises lab parking lot."

"Thank you." Tony walked outside of the hospital and took off in search of Potts. He landed by the destroyed building. Pepper's car was still there, some debris had landed on it.

"No," he said. He walked into the building and headed for the section 16 laboratory. When he entered the main room he saw the remnants of the original arc generator that he had ordered Pepper to overload. She was indeed very smart but he had never let her use her talent being selfish, wanting her to be there for him. He now felt guilt and uneasiness as he walked through the destruction. Tony lifted several large pieces of ruble but found nothing. He had to be precise and carful to be sure and not injure her if she was under something. Tony ordered Jarvis to run a life scan of the room. After a couple minutes of scanning different parts of the room, to his horror, Jarvis found nothing.

"What have I done?" Tony asked himself.

He continued to look for her, pulling metal and other building materials out of the way angrily as he know this was his fault.

'I never should have made her do that,' he thought hating himself for what had happened.

Tony searched the entire lab room for Pepper Potts getting more and more angry with himself. After finding no trace of Pepper's body he moved to a corridor next to the main lab. Removing a fallen beam, he opened the door to find a mass of thick debris. Lifting a wall panel from the floor he found a small black high heeled shoe. Staring at the shoe in his hand, Tony noticed tears of grief and anger rolling down his face. Slowly, morosely, Tony lifted up a large twisted metal beam and another wall panel to fin Pepper Potts sprawled on the floor face down. Her legs were trapped under a smaller beam. He lifted the beam off her legs and seeing her bloodied body, shook with anger at himself. Leaning down, he carefully rolled over her limp body seeing her blood covered face. His anger at himself resulted in a steady flow of tears down his face as he picked her up and held her. He stood, carrying her with him and left the building. Uncovering her car from the debris that had landed, he opened the back door and carefully loaded her in.

"I'm so sorry," he said to her lifeless body.

He quickly removed his suit and got into the driver's seat pulling out of the parking lot headed for the hospital. He wasn't sure why he didn't just call the paramedics. Maybe he just needed more time with her. Loading Jarvis into the cars navigation computer, he ordered the supercomputer to inform the hospital of his returning and the details of Ms. Pepper Potts. Sitting at a red light, Tony turned to look at her. Reaching back for her hand he grasped it. Crying softly, he held her hand while starring at her face. All the angles, curves, lines that she hated but he secretly loved. He looked over her features, memorizing them, instilling them in his mind to never forget. Finally getting to her hands, he studied the lean, dainty beauty of them. Just as he was about to turn back to the car he felt a twitch of her finger under his own hand. Looking back over to her face he saw the corner of her mouth move. Tony spun back around in the seat noticing the light change; he swerved around the other cars and began speeding through traffic to get to the hospital.

"Jarvis, alert the hospital that Pepper Potts is alive!"

"Yes, sir," Jarvis replied.

Arriving at the hospital, he was met by an emergency team at the door. As soon as he pulled, medical workers were already surrounding Pepper's Audi ready to get her out of the car. Tony refused to leave her side as the led her in on a gurney with a backboard and a neck brace forcing an oxygen mask over her face.

"Sir, we need you to stay here while we run some tests," a hospital employee informed him.

"No, I need to go with her," Tony protested.

"Sir, you are neither a relative nor a spouse, you cannot go with her," the woman replied.

Tony, seeing he had no choice but oblige to the adamant woman, sat down on a bench outside of the doors they had just taken Pepper through.