Title: Protect My Heart

Author: Erik-in-CT

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to Stephanie Meyer or Marvel Comics, and not myself.

Tony was flying in a way he hadn't done before. As he navigated the winding PCH in the darkness on his way home, he knew he was acting like a lovestruck teenager, but he didn't really care at this point. He hadn't really felt this relaxed and, dare he say, happy since...well, since before those god awful three months of captivity. But there was something special about this girl. Something that made him feel easy around her. A kindred spirit. Someone who reminded him so much of himself. At first it had been simple curiosity that had drawn him to her. A girl with no formal training or education in computers, who was able to build programs that took him years to develop. But the more time he spent around her, the more he felt like she was drawing him out of a depth of darkness he hadn't even realized he had been falling into.

On some wicked impulse, he had kissed her. True, it was very brief, and he was gone almost as soon as it had happened, but she hadn't seemed bothered by it. Instead she had laughed and teased him right back. A smirk quirked up the corner of his lips as he remembered the look on her face after he had pulled back. As if a thousand fantasies had floated through her thoughts in that moment. They had definately flown through his, and he found himself forcing control in a way he had never done before. Bella wasn't like any of the women he had picked up and dropped when he was done with them. Behind her strong eyes lingered a fragility that shown she had been hurt before, and he found himself wanting to protect her from being hurt again.

As he pulled off the highway and onto the winding road leading up to his cliffside home, he caught a flicker of something out of the corner of his eye, and he glanced back in his mirror, only to find nothing there. He assumed it was some animal running across the road, wouldn't be the first time, and thought nothing more of it.

"Honey, I'm home," he said as he slipped out of his car in the garage of his workshop.

"Welcome home sir," Jarvis responded.

"Is the suit on the loading deck Jarvis?"

"Yes sir."

"Excellent. I'm gonna clean up, then I'd like to take it out, finally get a chance to really test out those new thrusters we installed."

"As you wish sir."

Grabbing the neoprene undersuit off it's hook, Tony dashed up the stairs into the main house. After a quick shower and a drink, he was ready for some fun. Stepping onto the platform that housed the disassembled armor, he activated the controls and waited as the robotic arms, controlled by Jarvis, built and secured the suit around him. As the faceplate of the helmet clanged shut, the HUD came to life, and he quickly checked over power levels and connections of the new equipment. Everything seemed to be in order. "Alright, let's see what this baby can do," he said as he activated the main thrusters and burst across the workshop and up the ramp leading to the outside.

The thrill of flying on his own never died out, and he laughed with exhiliration as he corkscrewed through the air, heading out across the open water. After another few moments of gyrating through the clouds, he settled down and began to concentrate. Steadying out his flight path, he cruised over the water. "Alright then, activate rear thrusters," he said, feeling the slight jolt in his speed as the thruster pack on his back flared to life.

"Power levels remain stable," Jarvis said. "Negligable effect in power output."

"Excellent. Let's try some manuevers and see how the pack affects them." Putting action to words, Tony began spinning again, and could feel the difference from before. The new thrusters were working just as they should, helping to stabilize his flight and keep him from bouncing about as he twisted and spun, rose and dove, through the air. "I think we can call the test a success."

"Agreed sir."

Taking a few more moments simply for the feeling of freedom that the armor gave him, Tony allowed himself to begin to drift back towards the shoreline and home. As he approached his house from the ocean side, he noticed something that didn't seem quite right. Hanging back, he turned his attention to the cliff just below the level of his balcony. There was something there that was catching and reflecting the moonlight. The HUD responded to his focus, and zoomed into the area he was watching. For a moment he thought there must have been some malfunction in the display system. There was someone clinging to the rock! The scanners in the suit roamed across the figure, and the readings he got back on his display were impossible. There was nothing to show that something was there. No heat readings, no vital signs, nothing. But there he/she/it was, clear as day.

Dropping altitude, he moved closer to the cliff face, hovering on level with the house. But the sound of his approach alerted the person on the cliff, and he got a brief glimpse of a beautifully pale woman's face surrounded by a cloud of red hair, then she disappeared, seeming to drop from the cliff right down into the water almost 100 feet below. He dove after her, hoving just above the water line, but could see nothing of where she might have gone, and the HUD showed nothing, just as it had before.

"Jarvis, what was that I just saw?"

"No readings appeared out of normal sir," Jarvis replied with his usual calm. Was he seeing things? No way, whatever it had been, it was real, and it was stranger than anything he had seen before.

Heading back down into the house, Tony felt slightly on edge as he thought about what he had seen. It had definately been a woman, but why did she give off no readings on his sensors, and where had she gone when she dropped off of the cliff. Why had she been there in the first place?

After the robotic arms had peeled the suit off, Tony moved upstairs and poured himself a glass of scotch, sitting down on the couch and thinking. There was always a possiblity that the...the entity (he wasn't sure if he could really call her a woman) might come back in the night, and how was he supposed to know, if the sensors couldn't pick it up. "Jarvis, activate the outside motion sensors and alarm them, will you?" Anything was better than nothing, he figured. At least if something moved outside of the house, he'd know about it. Deciding that was all he could do about it for now, he downed the rest of his glass and headed up to his bedroom. "Night Jarvis."

"Goodnight sir. Sleep well."

Author's Note:

Oooooo Tony better watch out. lol

A friend pointed out to me that I messed up the Twilight timeline. When the Cullens left, Bella had just started her senior year, so at this point of the story, she would have just graduated, not finished her junior year as I mistakenly said. For the sake of not messing with the story as I have it (Bella just finishing junior year), I'm gonna leave it. Does that bother anyone in a major fashion?

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Reviews are always welcome!