AN: The last chapter has cleaned up a few loose ends and explained a few things, now, back to the story. If there are any medical professionals reading this i will apologies now if some of the facts are not quite medically correct, but this is based on a true story.

Thank you every single one of you for reading this. It means so much to think that anyone has taken any notice of my writing. Tissues at the ready!

She's almost made it down the corridor before her body decided it was time to protest again. She was out of the captains' eye line and knew he wasn't following. The tears she'd been fighting with since she'd finished reading threatened to pour down her cheeks. The pains in her abdomen where back, now she knew exactly where they where, jabbing into her like a sharpened knife that was igniting her insides. Pepper knew most of what she's just said was probably very stupid, but it was how she felt. Love was a strange thing; it never had worked for her like it worked for the women in those fairy tales. Love was the reason she had her bump.

Which was very insistent that she took some notice of it right now, the words she'd been reading not so long ago invaded her mind again. The feelings swelling inside her .

Every book and every line on the internet was telling her the same thing Bruce had told her, She needed to talk to a doctor, the pains where wrong.

Every word she read seemed to tell her the same thing, seemed to insist upon it, she was going to lose that baby. Something was going to go wrong. And it was going to break her heart.

She wasn't having that.

Pepper Potts was not going to lose the one part of Anthony Stark that was still hers.

Tony had been something that she'd been pushing to the back of her mind, but the plans for tonight just kept remanding her. This gala was just like the one from the night she'd worn that stupid blue dress and forgotten her deodorant. Now she thought about it, it really was typical that tony had chosen the night she felt like shit to take some notice of her. Secretly she'd know exactly who it was staring at her from across the room, and Pepper had known he was going to turn up. She'd never been able to stop him doing anything.

But when he'd ignored everyone else and crossed the room to her side, and the look on his face at the sight of her in anything but her work clothes had given her butterflies. She'd felt like a teenage girl getting cornered by her crush, and it had taken everything she'd had inside to stop herself blushing. He'd danced with her, and even though she couldn't dance it had been amazing just to be held that close for a few seconds. But she'd been grateful when he'd dragged her outside. The heat of the moment when he'd been that close to her, she'd felt it, and she regretted not kissing him.

But Pepper still hadn't quite forgiven him for leaving her standing on the balcony.

"Maybe…" She muttered to her bump, stroking it gently in a vain hope that it would calm down at her touch, that it would stop hurting her so much. Maybe that it would even move at her touch. Everything she'd read had terrified her, and the bump didn't move. It never had really moved like the book had insisted it should: "Maybe then you would have been around sooner…maybe it would have been different…We could have been a proper family…"

Biting back her tears at her own stupid thought pattern she pulled the usual medication from her bag, not even quite sure why she kept bothering with it. It didn't do anything for the pain or the heartache.

Her legs wanted to give way; this was the same corridor from all those months ago when she hadn't really known what was going on, or why her body was trying to tear her apart from the inside out. So much had changed since then.

Before this started Virginia Potts had known exactly what she wanted to be, and who she wanted to be. The girl that had spent all those years at college with a secret crush on the boy genius that was taking over his fathers company had known what she wanted out of life.

But the baby inside her probably wasn't even real. There was something inside her but it shouldn't hurt like it did. Pepper had just never wanted to accept that fact. And Steve had been a nice distraction for a few minutes from what was breaking her heart.

She needed a doctor but she felt like she knew what was going to happen. Why would it have ever gone right for her?

But right now, she had a job to do. The Maria Stark Foundation Winter Ball was going to happen and she needed to get herself sorted. As always, she could wait, she'd have to wait.

Her job came first, and this time he wasn't there to tell her to stop being so stupid and take some notice of herself. Tony had been doing that for years, making her take five minutes to joke that she'd work herself to death if she didn't go shopping. Pepper had stopped arguing when he'd pressed his debt cards in her hand with a wink and something about needing a bonus. He'd sent he on business trips that weren't real before, sending her to Cyprus and other beautiful places all expenses paid just to make her take a break.

All the little things like that had shown how much he loved her, that he'd taken a chance to think about her before they'd even started dating.

Pepper wanted to put of the thought of finding out what was really going on off for a little longer. If this was an Ectopic Pregnancy the books had made it all too clear what they where going to do to her. Surgery was the last thing she wanted to think about, and the reprimand that she'd get for leaving this for so long.

Putting all her thoughts and the logical part of her brain aside she headed for the room where she knew Bobbi would have left her dress and everything else for tonight. She was too caught up in her emotions to realise what she'd done.

Her phone was in her office still, along with the abandoned invitation for tonight's Ball. And it had been ringing non-stop.

The hospital had already left her 12 missed calls.

Bruce Banner had left 3 missed calls.

SHIELD had left a missed call too.

The fourth time the doctor called, he left a message for her, still surprised by the fact she hadn't picked up her phone: "Miss Potts, There's something I have to tell you."