When A Bright Idea Dims

By Sinead

Author's Note: Monaco, part the second. Sorry for the delay. A lot of things started to come up, so I've had to prioritize where my time has been spent. Most of it has been allotted to preparation for and the actual renaissance faire, followed by getting into a school, which I start in this coming week. So to say that my writing took a back seat (and my original fiction is flagging) is an understatement. And for the record . . . I really hate Justin Hammer. -.-

Thank you everyone for the story watches and favorites! Reviews also do help the world go round and help keep me inspired to write chapters faster!

Chapter Five

"Becka, stay here," Happy ordered as he got into the car, the football still locked to his wrist.

Shoving her head through the passenger window, Becka snarled, "Are you kidding me? I'm coming with you!"

"Don't argue! Tony will kill me if he finds out that you got hurt again!" the chauffer/impromptu bodyguard hissed, his eyes pleading with the young woman to understand. "I'm not going to be held responsible for putting you into danger. Stay. Here. The police have orders to escort you to wherever you want to be, but you are not getting into the car with us."

Closing the door and taking off with the screech of tires, Happy's face folded into a frown immediately. Pepper's voice was soft. "How dangerous are we talking, here?"

"Trust me." He watched the lone figure in black and red stare after them for a moment before turning and trotting back inside the hotel. "I didn't tell her to stay away from the track."

"You couldn't have just told her to go down that way?"

"No. Because then Tony would blame me for putting her in harm's way. She'll get down there either way, and then Boss-Man can be angry at her for putting herself into danger."

That was when Happy aimed the Rolls Royce towards the closed gate.

Three escorts with her, one making the way for her in the crowd, one beside her, the third following a step behind, Becka made her way down to the track, but stopped just at the edge of the stands, taking the side of caution. She wanted to go down there and to see what it was that this man was doing, standing in the middle of the track, but she was physically out-matched and didn't feel like facing very fast race cars speeding by her and missing her frame by inches.

When the metal whips that dangled from his hands began to glow in a familiar light, Rebeckah gripped the railing in front of her and leaned in. This was going to get really bad, really fast, and if she was any judge of arc tech and the power, then what this man was sporting very well could be more powerful than Iron Monger, who was sheer brute force.

The police were shouting orders, getting everyone back from the stands. Ignoring that order and darting under the stands themselves, dodging through the supports while hearing what she could only assume were curses in French trailing behind her, Becka came out a few feet down the road from the madman, able to see his swarthy face for the first time, but only from an angle as he began wrecking hell.

She didn't like what she saw upon his countenance, and when he used a whip to cut through the first car, she liked him even less.

But she couldn't do anything but watch as Tony's car came around the bend and was mangled, shorn into two and separating the front fourth of the car from the remaining chassis, sending it flying through the air. Her cry of horror was lost in the millions of screams around her as people did everything that they could to get away. In her mind, she knew that these cars were built to withstand great impacts and drivers could walk away from a crushed and mangled vehicle, but her heart was pounding with stress and worry as she waited to see a sign of life from the white car. He was now fifty feet back in the direction that she had come from, his car stopped at the bend.

When she saw him dodging the whips, her heart soared . . . then plummeted. He didn't have his suit . . . he didn't have a chance! As if timing to her thoughts, Tony was sent flying into another car from a small explosion. If Pepper and Happy got to him in time with the football, then he'd be all right, provided that he wasn't seriously injured before that point.

Watching the battle from fifty, then thirty feet, was terrifying, but Becka had been in worse situations, for a longer amount of time, and had been directly face-to-face with terrorists. While the populace was panicking, she was running through ideas, plans, and discarding them all as they came up, knowing that her escort was relieved in the fact that she wasn't running headlong into danger.

The one thing that Rebeckah hated more than anything in the world was to be feeling as if she was useless. But in this situation, she most certainly was useless. She was a hazard, a liability, and knew that if she distracted Tony for even a third of a second, it could mean life or death.

So as much as she hated it, she stayed put to watch this battle to the end.

Having been in combat situations many times over the previous year, Tony slid right into the strategy and tactics part of his mind, planning his moves as he went, careful not to be out-maneuvered. He needed the football . . . he needed . . .

Tony was trapped. Wire fence behind him, whip-guy in front of him.

If he could be persuaded into having a deep-rooted faith in God, Tony still wouldn't have expected the miracle that was his Rolls Royce with Happy driving it coming around the bend and heading . . . straight for him. And not slowing down.

Cursing, leaping straight up and clawing his way up the fence, the billionaire watched as whip-guy was pinned between car and cement barrier. Looking around for the way down, Tony's heart leapt to his throat at seeing Becka. She motioned frantically, pointing down and motioning throwing something.

Right. She was keeping his head in the game. God, he loved her. Happy had the football, which was just the thing that he needed if this guy was going to prove to be a big problem. Jumping down amid another flurry of curses for Happy at the top of his lungs, Tony opened the door to get into his car when suddenly, the door wasn't attached to the car anymore. Everyone was yelling and screaming while Happy, obligingly, hit whip-guy again.

Chaos began to flurry around them, and Tony did everything he could to get his hands on that damn suit-in-a-suitcase. Finally, moving around to Pepper's side, he yelled for her to throw it out the . . . Well, there was no more window. Fine, to throw it out of the car and to him.

When she did, Iron Man took control of the situation.

Once Tony was in the suit, Becka's heart-rate started to drop into normal levels again. Natalie caught up with her, then started to run towards the battle. Grabbing the woman's arm, Becka snarled, "You stay out of his fight and you stay back here. You might have great combat skills, but even you must be able to tell that his weapons out-match yours." Letting her go with a jerk and walking ahead a pace just to physically tell Natalie that she was in charge, Rebeckah waited the battle out, arms crossed over her chest. She felt bat for the way that she was acting, but would apologize later if the girl realized just what kind of mess she would have created by storming in there.

"You aren't my boss."

"That's right; Tony is. And if you want him to stay alive and to stay your boss, then you'd better keep yourself right here."

"You say that as if you know that he's going to win."

"He is."

Natalie stared at the back of this woman's head and realized something quite startling. The files she had been given on Tony and Rebeckah weren't at all complete. They were partial files and didn't go into depth on two very major situations, nor did they go into detail about the aftermath of the second situation. Their time in the caves was glossed over, and the incident with Iron Monger was also glossed over, as well as the recovery from both. That could be because of doctor-patient confidentiality, but at the same time, Natalie had the nagging suspicion that the parties involved had quite a bit to do with the lack of intel in regards to their relationship.

But finally, someone outside of their trusted circle was able to begin to make an observation upon the actual "missing pieces" of the puzzle that surrounded their relationship and the circumstances that brought them together.

Becka trusted Tony implicitly, and she knew his capabilities. But did she know what Natalie knew? Did she know that Tony was slowly dying from palladium poisoning?

Then . . . it was all over. The man with the whips was being dragged away, and Rebeckah was running down to the track, the escort following a step behind her as she vaulted over a locked gate and up to the Iron Man, glad that she had chosen the smaller heels that had a better grip than the classic pumps that Pepper had been trying to suggest she wear. Feeling heat radiating off of the armor, she looked to some of the techs, motioning for gloves before trying to touch the metal. She'd gotten blisters before, and that had only made a post-mission Tony Stark all the pissier and guiltier. "Tony . . ."

"Don't want to talk."

She didn't even hesitate with her answer, nodding her assent. "Let's get you out of that armor, then, and into something easier to wear." And that was all that was said as she accepted gloves, as she looked to Pepper to see if she and Happy were all right. Getting a tense, wincing nod from the woman as medical crews were moving around them, Becka turned her attention back to Tony. She had been with him as he had designed and played with this portable armor, and knew how to get it off of him if it was damaged. First to go was the helmet, and she motioned for gauze at seeing the cut on his cheek.

Sneering and moving his head away from the medic that tried to assist them, Becka took the gauze and grabbed his armor with her other hand and didn't let him flinch away, cleaning the cut gently, despite the fact that she had thick leather gloves on. She wasn't even mad, and she wasn't in any way showing that she was anything more than a partner, an assistant, and someone who was picking up the slack.

At seeing that she knew what she was doing and had somewhere along the line received training in first aid, the medic left a first-aid kit to her and moved on. Moving without words in a silent bubble that enveloped just the two of them, the pair moved as a team to get the broken armor off of Tony. When he would get stuck getting a piece of armor off, she would grab the troublesome piece and begin to wrench it into the "release" position, then move on from there once it either broke off with the next movement, or slid into the proper position where the armor could detach normally.

Pausing at getting the top half of the armor off, Becka pulled his head down for a kiss, resting her forehead against his. "You scared me."

"I was scared."

Silent for another few moments, wrapping arms around each other and holding on for a long moment, the duo were unaware of the activity that was happening around them until flashes started to go off, signifying that the press had returned to the track. Pressing her face into his chest, feeling the warmth of the arc reactor against her cheek, Becka, for once, didn't care about the press as she and her fiancé stood in the middle of wreckage, happy and merely content to be alive beside one another for another sunset.