Hey guys... I'm still alive, okay? Are you? I really really really really need some inspiration, and do you know how I get that? Through reviews. Thank you so much to the guys who has been so polite and left a message, and shame on you other guys. Hope you like this new chapter even though I don't.

Tony came crashing into the workshop and landed on the floor. He tried to stand up on his feet, but found the task very hard to finish. After a while on the floor, he decided that Jarvis would have to help him through the suit to stand up. The second he stood up and the suit opened up, he fell right down on the floor again. He leaned into a desk and cradled his feet up to his head.

"Tony, is everything all right?" Pepper's careful and worried voice startled Tony so much that he hit his head into the desk and revealed where he was.

"Over here, it's okay" He whispered, exhausted of the recent events.

"God, Tony, why can't you ever tell when something's wrong?" Pepper ran over to him and crouched down.

"It was so, so… awful" He said with a quiet whisper and looked distantly up at Pepper.

"Come here, stand up with me" Pepper helped an unwillingly Tony up on his feet. "Tell me what happened" She said and held around him.

For some time he didn't say anything, he hesitated…. wondered, if it was a good idea to tell her. He took his arms around her waist and leaned his forehead into hers.

"We thought we got them all"

"Who is them?" Pepper placed her hands at the back of his head and started fiddling with his hair.

"what" He corrected her. "The bombs, we didn't get them all, as we thought, and… and… we had to get out of there… and the whole thing blew up, and so many innocent people…" He couldn't bear to continue, he just closed his eyes tightly and took an even firmer grip around Peppers waist.

"Died…" She finished. "Tony, you, the Avengers, you were together about this, it isn't all your fault. You may have that…" Pepper had to find the right word for it. "Piece of crap in your chest, but you do not have superpowers because of it, you couldn't know that there was one bomb left" She had now pushed his head away and cupped his cheeks so that she could look into his stirring eyes.

"My instruments… my… gut, should've told me that there was more left. Those innocent people died because I wasn't aware enough" Tony dropped his gaze and let go of Pepper to hold around himself instead.

He was afraid, afraid that something was wrong with him because he hadn't been 100% aware. Tony started feeling dizzy, just as he had when he had seen the bomb go off and two small villages nearby had been set on fire, and he felt that his feet started to struggle holding his weight. He started swaying a bit and Pepper could see how his skin was pale and that silvery drops started forming in his hairline. His eyes started to grow distant and his mouth was pursed together into a thin line.

"Tony, I think it's time for us to go to bed" She said softly as if nothing had happened.

Pepper placed her hands on his back to support him as she turned him around and started pushing him towards the stairs, as if he was an old man. After three steps he stumbled and almost hit the floor, but Pepper dragged him up again and continued pushing him slowly forwards. When they reached the stairs, Tony took hold of the railing attached to the wall and he stopped so firmly that Pepper almost jumped one step back. She didn't say anything, she just waited for him to keep going forwards, but he didn't, he just stood there. Pepper was starting to get worried, was he having an attack again? Was this ever going to stop, or was this like a disease there was no cure for? Pepper tried to push his back again, but he was all tensed up and stiffened and he was clenching to the railings, not seeming to have any plans on going anywhere. Suddenly he doubled over and vomited all over the first step. It didn't seem like he was going to move now either, but he let go off the railing and he started swaying again. Pepper thought for sure that he was going to pass out, so she quickly put her hands back on his back and supported him. He swallowed hard as another wave of nausea came and he doubled over, only this time he just gagged. Pepper pushed his back a bit harder this time and he started to move up the stairs surprisingly easy. It didn't take long for them to reach the bedroom and Tony crashed down on the bed, sighing of frustration for being such a weak person.

"Hey… hey… it's okay. Rest now" Pepper walked towards him and dragged off his clothes so that he was left in his underwear and with the glowing arc reactor fully visible.

Tony looked down at it as if it was the first time he noticed it was there. He looked at it with confusion and contempt. The blue light was illuminating the dimly lit room and he found it very exhausting not being able to turn it off, so even if he was sort of in another world, his fingers found their place on the arc reactor with an accustomed move and turned it around until a click was heard. Pepper didn't mind much, she thought he just turned off a light. He slowly dragged the arc reactor out of its place and inspected it thoroughly before he yanked it out so that the wires let go. A shocked and unsteady breath made Pepper turn around and she quickly registered that the blue light wasn't were it was supposed to be. She saw Tony looking utterly confused at the arc reactor while he struggled breathing and he winced every time his chest moved. It didn't take long for her to launch towards him and take hold of the contraption she wholeheartedly despised and put it into him again.

"What are you thinking?" She screamed at him, but he didn't answer, he just looked up at her like a person totally out of time and place. "Don't you ever… can you even understand me?" Tony made a slight nod. "Then just sleep" She snorted and slid out of bed to get into her sleeping wear.

Pepper woke up when she felt someone kick her leg, and she abruptly sat up when she understood why that someone kicked her. Tony was shivering, sweating and talking incoherently as he buried his face in the pillow and clenched to it. Confusion and worry swelled up in her and she was really terrified of the thought that this was the new him. He had been so bewildered he hadn't even understood what the arc reactor was for. Now he was lying there next to her, wincing and screaming and talking nonsense because of what probably was the worst nightmare he had had this far. Pepper put her hands on his shoulders and tried to calm him down, but he just drew himself away from her and curled in on himself. Pepper tried to shake him even firmer to wake him up which only resulted in sobs and whimpers to escape his mouth.

"Don't… I di-dn't mean… to kill" Tony's incoherent talking suddenly wasn't so incoherent anymore, and Pepper got even more confused of the words he said. "Stop… stooop, enough!" Tony screamed so high Pepper almost fell out of the bed and she got terrified of the thought of what may have caused him to scream so painfully.

Once again she decided to try and shake him out of the terrible place he was in, but this time he yanked himself so forcefully out of her grasp that he fell down on the floor and his head hit the bedside table. Pepper heard a low groan and she jumped over to the other side of the bed to help him. He laid on his back with his hands covering his eyes as if to shield himself from the rest of the world.

"Tony?" Pepper reached her hand down to him and placed it on his arm to get his hands away from his face. "Tony, it's okay, you didn't kill anyone, you're okay" Her voice was trembling, she was really scared that he was still going to be in some sort of delirium.

"Yes… I did" The weak, shaking figure sat up against the bed and looked up at Pepper with a thoughtful look. Was he still dreaming? He seemed awake, but what he said… "The one who, eh… gave me this" he laid his hand on the arc reactor. "I was angry…" Pepper put a hand over her mouth, was this real?

Something in Tony's voice told her that this was very real and that he spoke of the truth. For a second she felt very dizzy, and the only thing she wanted was to just close her eyes and hope for it to be a dream, but she knew it wasn't. Her bare feet slowly found the cold floor and she walked silently out of the room with a foggy head as she heard Tony scream for her to come back behind of her. How? He thought. How could he be such a fool to tell her, he knew it meant giving up the one thing he loved. He knew this would be the outcome, he had just hoped that she would give him another chance, but he knew he'd had enough of them already. Always when he woke up without rembering how he got into bed or what happened the few minutes before, he knew he had had one of the attacks, and he knew that he had also had a nightmare… He had been self destructive, childish and a very heavy stone to have placed on ones shoulders lately, asking for a hundreth chance wouldn't go through very well. Suddenly he felt how tense he was, but he didn't manage to relax, he felt another one of the attacks slowly flow over him as he understood that this time it wasn't because he felt locked up… he needed to see that Pepper was safe. He couldn't go back to sleep now, so he silently walked out of the room after her. On his way up from the floor he supported himself on the bed as a wave of exhaustion hit him, and he sat down on the bed for a few seconds before he told himself that he had to speak to her, now. The wall made a great support for him when he shuffled out of the room and he had to stop to catch his breath whenever the memories of the last mission came back to him.

"Pepper?" He yelled, hoping so intensly for her to reply. "Pepper, please can we just… just talk this out?" You killed a man out of pure anger and panic, she should hate you… everyone should hate you. "Jarvis?" Tony whimpered.

"It seems that miss Potts has left, Sir" He replied in his ever polite, british voice.

"W-what does that mean?" Tony mumbled weakly.

"Obviously she needed time to think, she seemed very upset. She's still in the building, but I would reccomend that you wait untill she's settled down"

"And what if she doesn't?" He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought.

When Jarvis didn't answer, Tony got afraid and he shouted the same sentence once more, with all the power he had.

"Unfortunately this is something I can't help you with, Sir" The AI's voice actually sounded sorry in Tony's ears, but he knew that it was just how he wanted it to be.

Tony walked over to the couch and sat down, he took his head in his hands and clenched to his hair as he tried to think of a way to make a time machine. It was so wrong though, he would've had to tell her anyways, he couldn't keep it a secret forever. Tony felt his eyelids closing slowly as his head got heavier and heavier in his hands, there wasn't anything he could do about the fact that moments later he was asleep.

"-r, Sir, Mr. Stark, there's an urgent message for you" Tony woke up to the frantic voice of Jarvis, and suddenly he wasn't so sleepy anymore.

"What? What's wrong?" Has something happened to Pepper?

"Miss Potts asks for you to meet her at Central Park right away, she says it's important" Jarvis said hurriedly.

"Should I suit up?" Tony was suddenly very confused.

"No, she actually requests that you walk there" Now he got even more confused.

Walk there? Why would she want for him to walk there? Maybe so that whoever captured her shouldn't notice him coming, or maybe she just wanted to sort out something in privacy, but why not just come to the apartment then? Well, if it was urgent he didn't have the time to think about this. His feet rushed over to the bedroom to get some discrete clothes and then he put a big jacket on, which he hid some of his small self defense gadgets in, and then he took the earpiece into his ear, just to be sure. He pushed the button to the now fixed elevator and he felt as if it couldn't go quickly enough. When the door finally slid open on the main floor, he walked fast out in the fresh morning air and continued on the way to central park amongst the crowded streets. It was far less people there at this time of the day, but Tony actually got surprised of how many there were anyways. He held his hands in his pockets and had his baseball cap drawn over his face so that no one should recognize him. On his way there were several people stopping and pointing, but they just shrugged it off and walked on, but suddenly he had to stop for a red light and he felt how the adrenalin and fear of being recognized rushed through him. Suddenly he was pushed out in the road so that he stumbled down on the asphalt. He got hit by panic, but managed to get up on his feet only to see two blinding lights coming closer and something hard hitting him, and then everything went black.

Pepper once again found herself walking back and forth in the apartment, not entirely sure what to feel. Tony had said right to her face that he had killed someone, because he was angry, but then Jarvis had told her that he was out because she had sent him a message, very much like the one he had told her that he had got from her right before he got kidnapped by S.H.I.E.L.D. She couldn't anything to it but feeling slightly worried, but the anger and confusion from what he had told her the night before still clung to her mind. Endless tears had been streaming down her face since she left the apartment, at one point she had managed to straighten up, but only to find herself crying seconds later. She knew that Tony had his flaws, but everyone's got flaws, she too, but killing someone isn't just a flaw. It would feel different if it was a terrorist or some evil person that he killed on a mission, but this was personal, worth getting into jail for. The thing was, Tony might be in danger at the moment she stood there thinking of it, and even though her feelings were a total mess, she at least didn't think he should die, that much she knew.

"Jarvis, is there any possibility for you to track Tony down?" She asked with a shivering voice.

"I can try to find his earpiece, if that's good enough" She nodded energetically, anything would be good enough. "It seems that it's located in Tennessee, Madame"

Tony slowly opened his eyes, but they quickly shut down again. He tried his best at staying awake, but it was a futile attempt.

"Wakey wakey Tony, you've been asleep for a long time now" A creepy, dark voice made its way into Tony's ears without it doing anything about him being sleepy. "Wake up I said!" A hard punch was landed right on the old cut in Tony's side which made him cough violently.

Blood was splattered all over the floor to Tony's horror, and he felt the hot liquid run down his chin. As a reflex, his hand tried to get down to his cheek, but he quickly found out that it didn't work. His arms were tied up to the wall with chains and his feet were just long enough to touch the ground. He tried to wrestle himself free, but gave up as soon as he understood it would only make his wrists bleed instead. That would be his least problem… After he was finished getting panic, the pain came and a sharp cry escaped his throat. He could feel every inch of his battered body crunching when he moved and he could see that there was blood spilled all over him, first of all from the stitched wound in his side which wasn't stitched anymore, but also from small abrasions covering his arms, face and back. Right after he had inspected his own body as well as he could, he took notice of the surroundings. Cold air, frost mist was clouding up in front of him as he breathed in short gasps, feeling a burning sensation every time his lungs got filled with air. He had to be in some sort of underground tunnel, the walls were made of concrete and the whole thing was formed as a bow. He looked over to the other side of the tunnel from where he was standing, and he saw what he thought was a whole load of batteries, what where they for? Suddenly a slim, tall figure came out from the shadows.

"Ready to give me some arc reactor technology Stark?"

So what do you think? Excited about the Tennessee part? :D LEAVE A REVIEW, C'MON, I KNOW YOU CAN READ THIS GUYS!