a/n: two and a half more chapters of Iron Man plot. I genuinely miss Tony Stark. the MCU doesn't feel the same without him.

this chapter is brought to you in part by kambucha, panda express, Deftones' rock cover of Sleep Walk and Stuck with Me by the Neighbourhood.


Breaking News: Tony Stark Not Set to Appear at Upcoming Firefighter Family Fund Annual Benefit Following Rumors of PTSD


"YAH-OW!"

Tony Stark took a deep breath following the sharp electric shock that vibrated through his body after Pepper Potts had finished plugging in his new miniaturized arc reactor into his chest. The heart rate monitors returned to normal now that he was no longer in cardiac arrest, but shit did that hurt.

He tried not to let it show just how much it hurt, concerned that he'd rattle an already terrified Pepper with her decently sized hands still working at pushing the reactor into place in the metal hole in his chest. "Was that so hard? That was fun, right?" he prompted his assistant, trying to ease her conscious about having almost killed him a second ago.

The reactor went in with a soft click, Pepper's breathing was ragged as she pulled her damp hands away from the reactor, a look of disgust on her face.

"Here, I got it. I got it. Here," Tony quickly took over the reactor placement, twisting it with another soft turn and clink. This was gonna take some getting used to, having metal literally embedded into his body, but he'd much rather have to deal with his arc reactor than the shrapnel en route to the rest of his body if he took it out again. "Nice..."

"Are you okay?" Pepper prompted, her hands still held up since being covered with inorganic plasmic discharge. She looked rattled, but then again he knew he had that effect on her sometimes.

"Yeah, I feel great," he reassured her with that same nonchalance he knew got on her nerves. "You okay?" he chuckled in amusement, watching the fear fade from her expression that was quickly replaced with known annoyance.

One thing he missed while in Afghanistan was the grating look of annoyance Pepper always seemed to fix him with whenever he did something crazy or risk-taking. She would probably have a heart attack if she knew everything that happened in that desert, which was why he felt the need not to ever disclose it to her.

A manic smile crossed Pepper's lips. He knew she couldn't hold back the laughs she was holding in as she spoke, "Don't ever... ever, ever, ever... ask me to do anything like that ever again."

He sheepishly glance up at her from his laid back position on the quote-unquote "operating table" he'd set up for himself in his Workshop. "I don't have anyone but you."

A serious look crossed Pepper's face after he'd confessed what he knew to be the obvious truth. Maybe she'd never thought of it, why he always called on her to do everything with him and for him. Why he depended on her for the smallest or biggest of favors. Because he quite literally didn't have any other person to depend on.

Sure, there was Rhodey or Happy or Obie, but they... Well, they weren't Pepper.

Tony fixed the strawberry blonde with a lopsided grimace before pulling himself up off his seat slightly. "Anyway..." he quickly diverted his attention to pulling the sensors suctioned to his bare chest. It had been a few weeks now since he'd returned from Afghanistan, but even something as minute as pulling himself upwards felt like running a mile with how sore his body still was from his three month ordeal.

Which reminded him...

"Hey, what do you know about a... Jamie Archer?" he prompted his assistant as he began to grab his shirt up from the table.

Pepper bristled slightly at his odd question. She would always do that, Tony began to notice; the little look of surprise she got before recomposing herself and giving an answer whether it was wrong or right. She'd caught on quickly when it came to the billionaire's odd requests and eccentric antics. It was something Tony had come to really appreciate about Pepper. "Uh, the reporter?"

"Yeah, her. You read her stuff?" he asked.

She shrugged, "Uh... maybe once while we were in New York. I know I recognize the name from a headline or two, but... she's based there in New York, isn't she?"

Tony wasn't really sure why she was asking him as if he knew. He'd only just learned the young woman's name the day he got back. He had been a little pre-occupied with another blonde Vanity fair reporter that night in Vegas to look her up after she'd ambushed him at Caesar's Palace. "I guess," he muttered, his fingers working at his shirt's buttons. "What do you think of her? Trustworthy? Reliable? Credible?"

Pepper placed both her hands in front of her, like she was standing at the ready to be sent off on another mission. "You want me to look into her for you?" she prompted.

Tony quirked an eyebrow, turning to face his assistant. "Is that... irritation I'm picking up a hint of?"

"No," she quickly insisted.

"It kinda sounds like it is-"

"It isn't," she reiterated. "It's just the last time you were... involved with a journalist, I was the one having to pick up her dry cleaning and cleaning up the PR mess she left in her wake after she published a rather detailed Vanity Fair spread about you a few weeks after you were gone."

Tony clicked his tongue and shook his head, "Speaking ill of the departed. How fitting of... uh... what was her name?"

"Christine Everhart," Pepper answered, a disinterested look on her face. Oh, this was really ticking her off, wasn't it? As much as Tony found riling Pepper up amusing, he did still have a favor to ask of her in regards to Jamie Archer.

"Hm," he hummed, finishing up the last of his buttons and continuing down to fix his sleeves. "I need you to, uh, pull a file together on the Archer girl, though. It's important."

Pepper nodded. Zero trace of annoyance or agitation. She had her task and he knew she could be trusted in getting it done.

"And what do you want me to do with this?" she prompted, her hands reaching out to carefully pick up the old arc reactor she'd pulled from his chest moments ago.

"That?" he paused, thinking it over for a moment. "Destroy it. Incinerate it." He tapped the new one as a reminder to her that he didn't need it anymore.

"You don't want to keep it?" she prompted in a soft voice. Pepper always was sentimental. Tony wasn't.

"Pepper, I've been called many things." War Mongrel. Weapons Czar. Merchant of Death. The World's Most Famous Mass Murderer. "'Nostalgic' is not one of them."

She sighed in resignation. That was an argument she wasn't taking on today. "Will that be all, Mr. Stark?"

He smirked ruefully. "That will be all, Miss Potts."


Tony didn't get that file to him until a day or two later.

Pepper had delivered it to him that morning with his breakfast- a bagel with schmear and a side of sunnyside eggs and fruit. She was trying to get him to eat a little healthier, but after she'd left back to HQ for the rest of her busy day of keeping the company afloat while he was locked away in his Workshop, Tony ended up just having donuts delivered.

While he scarfed down the glazed deliciousness he'd missed in those three months surviving on nothing but water, crackers and spite, he began to sift through the file on the Archer girl.

There was a sticky-note disclaimer left by Pepper in her perfect penmanship she picked up at New Haven that claimed 'I know it isn't much, but I found what I could.' Tony smirked before beginning his endeavor.

The first few pages of the file seemed to be copies and cutouts of Daily Globe news articles with her name on the bylines. Jamie Archer. Jamie Archer. Jamie Archer. Jamie Archer. Headlines about mostly local East Coast stories. Casino buses being hijacked in Atlantic City, laundromats as covers to brothels, politicians covering up asbestos in schools for reelections. She was good, Tony would give Archer that, but was she credible?

The next pages after the news articles seemed to be printed out copies of important papers. A transcript from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU, another transcript from Milton Academy in Boston, a published thesis on unattainable objectivity in journalism with her name plastered at the top, and a handful of letters of recommendation Pepper managed to dig up somehow- Tony tried not to question her methods.

He skimmed her thesis. She used a few words he had to Google, but overall it was solid. Her private education looked to be pretty fruitful. As a kid who suffered in boarding school at a young age, he could feel for the kid in the couple of behavioral incidents listed at the bottom of a few of her reports. Most of them were vague, but Tony knew the codes for just being a fun and irrational teenager in a stuck up world.

Her NYU transcript was stellar. It wasn't MIT, but from the grades in her biology and chemistry labs and lectures, Tony could tell science wasn't exactly Jamie's strong point. She still managed to graduate Summa Cum Laude at 21 and was given a full-time senior reporter job with the Daily Globe immediately afterwards, so Tony would say she did pretty well for herself.

The letters of recommendation were credible and reasonable. He knew what forced ass-kissing looked like, and this wasn't it. Her professors from NYU seemed to truly respect Jamie Archer, citing her perfect record for meeting deadlines, stubborn ambition and burning passion for what she did. One professor in his letter even went as far as calling Archer 'a role model within the journalism community with the moral backbone of a woman who knows how the world works and isn't afraid to make waves.'

Tony wanted to make waves with this new secret project he was working on. Mark II files sat in his private drive waiting to be tinkered with some more.

But he wanted to do it right. And to do it right, he needed to know what Jamie Archer knew. She had to have known some semblance of what was going on long before he woke up half-dead in that cave. But how?

Where did a New York reporter get evidence and information about Stark Industries weapons shipments in the Middle-East before he himself- the owner and CEO of the company- did?

"Jarvis."

"Yes, Sir?" the automated British AI responded back immediately upon being summoned.

"Pull me everything you've got on Jamie Archer."

A series of lights and images projected in front of him as he sat back from his desk and glanced up at the screens before him. Jarvis began to project a series of files, images and video footage attached to the name Jamie Archer. Tony smirked. Well, that was a lot more than what Pepper had found.

"Jamie Elizabeth Archer, born January 1st, 1986 to Ciara Mitchell and Michael Archer in Boston, Massachusetts," Jarvis began to list off as several official-looking documents projected onto the screen. A picture of her Driver's Permit from Massachusetts and another newer looking one for a over-21 New York Driver's License.

"Hm, an organ donor," Tony noted, carefully reaching over his desk to grab another glazed donut from his Krispy Kreme box.

"Miss Archer was also a known regular at the Boston Red Cross Blood Donation Center and a frequent volunteer at the annual Boston Marathon before she graduated from the Milton Academy in 2003 and was accepted to New York University and was the recipient of the National Merit Scholarship."

Tony took a large bite of his donut. "Yeah, yeah- you can skip through all the basics. I got all that," he stated, his mouth partially full. He swallowed when an idea hit him. "Look for any mentors, old professors or classmates that she's kept in touch with who have traveled to the Middle-East in the past six months or so."

Jarvis began to sift through information faster than the speed of light before coming up empty-handed, "There seem to be no connection to anyone in her emails, employment files, or former classmates that she's had contact with who could have possibly traveled out of the country in the past year and a half." Tony slouched. There went that idea. "But there may be a connection through her father who had been killed in an explosion in Gulmira, Afghanistan fairly recently."

Tony threw his hands up as if he'd hit the Hail Mary. "A connection? You think?" he prompted the AI exasperatingly. "Alright, you know the drill. Give me everything you've got on the Dad."

New information replaced Jamie's on the screens. The name Archer was still a constant presence.

"Michael Isaiah Archer has been a reporter with the Daily Bugle since 1977, he's been awarded several prestigious awards from many institutions and journalism organizations across the world for many decades. He'd recently retired for a little over seventeen years starting in 1986 before continuing his work where he'd left off in 2004," Jarvis gave him the rundown. Tony bit his cheek. Yeah, he knew why Pops had retired for those seventeen years... a feeling of discontent set into his chest as his AI continued. "Michael Archer took on several international projects as the lead senior reporter with the Daily Bugle, his latest had been a highly secretive project story based in Gulmira where he was killed several months later in a missile explosion that demolished the laundromat he'd been sheltered in."

Tony pursed his lips. Yet another life lost at the hands of weapons he was sure had come from his company. He now understand why Jamie Archer had been so hesitant on sharing information with him, he had practically signed her Dad's death warrant. He still wasn't sure what she'd meant when she said she'd been threatened by his company. Maybe just some public relations person throwing around words like 'defamation' and 'libel.'

"Was that us? The missile- was it ours?" he clarified.

A grainy image of a large plume of smoke and several other angles of rubble and gaping holes in concrete buildings appeared on the screens. "No official report of the incident has linked Stark Industries to the incident, but from your recent recounting-"

"And probably evidence from Archer himself, the Ten Rings was behind this... which means so were we," Tony came to the conclusion before his AI did. "He went to the Middle-East to document what he already suspected was going on and it got him killed, but..." he trailed off.

"Sir?"

Tony frowned. "But how much evidence did he gather before he was killed? He was there for months, he was bound to get some semblance of proof against us... And whatever he got," he pointed to the ID photo of Michael Archer. "-he sent to her." Tony's finger traveled across the screens to point to Jamie Archer's ID image.

A beat of silence passed.

"Would you like me to open a line of communication to Miss Archer now?" Jarvis suggested.

"You got one?" Tony prompted, a little caught off guard.

"Her MySpace account still has a cell phone number linked to it." Tony chuckled. Kids and their MySpace pages. A ten digit number appeared on the screen, area code 617. "Would you like me to put you through?"

Why wait? "What the Hell?" Tony gave the unofficial go-ahead to the AI.

The soft rings echoed through the Workshop as Jarvis dialed. By the time the fourth ring rang out, Tony was already growing impatient as he quickly scarfed down the remainder of his donut, making sure to wipe his mouth and brush off the front of his shirt.

When the call continue to the sixth ring, Tony was becoming irritated. "What, she givin' me the silent treatment now? After she tracked me down to Vegas and again here- now she doesn't even want to talk? What time is it in New York right now? Eight, nine?"

"Eastern Standard Time is currently at 1:45 am, sir."

Oh.

Well, that would explain why she wasn't answering calls at this time. In his rabbit hole of investigating and tinkering with Mark II, Tony hadn't realized how much time had passed since this morning... He really needed to invest in a watch or something.

"Screw it- kill the line," Tony instructed Jarvis, his AI complying.

"Would you like me to try again tomorrow at a more reasonable time?" Jarvis prompted.

Tony dragged a hand down his face in exhaustion. "Uh, sure... If I remember tomorrow."

"I'll set a reminder."

Tony Stark was yet again reminded of how grateful he was that he'd created Jarvis, but now wasn't the time to get sentimental over a program.

"Alright," he smacked his hands together and jumped to his feet, a rush of energy surging through him now that all the messy paperwork and red strings were set aside, for now. "Pull Mark II project file back up, we're not done just yet."

"Yes, Sir."

If he wasn't so sleep deprived, Tony would've almost commented on how exhausted his own AI sounded, but he knew he'd get some quippy response about how he's artificial and can't actually get exhausted.

...it was good to be back home.


Logan ignored the ringing phone buzzing gently from it's place inside of Jamie's bag of belongings.

It had been ringing a lot with unknown phone numbers, some spam and some not. It could've been Jamie's family, but Logan was instructed by Margot and Parker that unless she was on her death bed, she'd be in even bigger trouble if her family knew where she was and what she was doing with her free time now that she was unemployed. So, naturally, Logan kept his nose out of her business and let her phone ring until it eventually stopped.

It had been only a week since Jamie had been hospitalized after her crash. News segments came and went, a lot of updates on Stark Industries and their plummeting stock value. A few issues and statements had been released from the company, Obadiah Stane, as well as the Secretary of Defense. It was all anyone was talking about.

Jamie's lethal crash hadn't even made a ripple in the Los Angeles General Surgeon Hospital ER the day she was rushed in with a fractured wrist, bruises all along the left side of her upper-body, a severe concussion and several dozen cuts, scratches and deep lacerations from glass scattered across her body. Logan had only gotten the call when police found his information through the car rental place.

He had turned over the keys to the rental vehicle, which he'd thankfully paid extra for insurance on, and checked the pair out of their hotel in favor of staying full time at the hospital while she recovered.

After days in surgery for the careful and delicate removal of glass from Jamie's skin, she was put on bedrest and pulled off of the heavier pain medications. She was projected to make a full recovery when she eventually made an effort to wake up.

"Mr. Zimmerman?"

Logan perked up from his place half-asleep in the chair beside Jamie's bed. "Hm? Yeah- yes?"

The nurse standing at the door of the room winced apologetically for disrupting the young man's sleep. "The papers have gone through. Seeing as Ms. Archer hasn't yet woken up, we're in need of someone that can temporarily sign just a couple of forms before her release."

Logan nodded, scrambling to his feet and quickly straightening out his shirt and pants. "Okay. Uh, I can... do that." With a few quick glances back at Jamie's resting figure, he was led out into the hallway by the nurse, leaving the recovering woman to her rest.

A rest that was short-lived because it wasn't long after Logan had left the room that Jamie began to stir.

It was cold, too cold for Jamie's comfort. Her fingers instinctively began to claw at the scratchy blanket bundled at her waist. She felt too heavy to move her arms and pull it up all the way, so she gave up just as the blanket covered most of her chest. Her hands flattened back to her side and she felt a slight tug and pull in her arm that got her attention. That felt wrong...

Carefully, Jamie's eyes fluttered open to find what was stuck on her arm. She closed her eyes again when the bright fluorescent light from the TV became too much for her sensitive eyes. Using her free hand to feel her way down her arm, her fingers came into contact with something hard and... taped down. When her fingers budged it, she felt that tugging feeling inside her arm again.

Her eyes flew open and found her fingers attached to an IV plugged directly into the crease of her elbow.

"What the fuck...?" her throat was raw and her words were raspy. With her eyes still narrowed, she began to take in her surroundings. A hospital room. She identified it immediately from the IV chord that connected her to the bags of clear liquid medicine dripping down from a pole beside her gaudy white bed with sturdy fencing and a frame. And of course, the news on replay broadcasted from a TV attached to the far wall.

The door creaked open to reveal bright light from the open hallway and a dark silhouette Jamie didn't immediately recognize.

Still scared shitless from her last interaction with an unknown figure appearing from the dark, Jamie yanked out the IV from her arm and held the needle up as if it were a weapon.

"Woah, woah, woah!" The silhouette called out, their hands coming up in surrender.

Jamie, immediately upon hearing her assailant's voice, slackened in her bed. "... Logan?"

"James, put the IV down," her photographer urged her, his hands still up as he walked into the TV light. He looked exhausted. Even in the dim-light, Jamie could see the bags beneath his eyes. She wondered how long she'd been here for him to form those. "It's just me."

Slowly, she lowered her makeshift weapon and let it fall to her lap. The pain from what she'd just done catching up with her now that the spike of adrenaline faded away. "Ow..." she whimpered, rolling her arm back.

"Crap," Logan hissed, rushing to her side to examine the red spot in her arm where her needle had been pulled out. "What'd you do that for?"

Jamie shook her head, unable to explain where the instinctual reaction had stemmed from. Peril. Fear. Aggression. Desperation. "I- I don't know."

"The drugs must still be in your system," Logan tutted as if he were a nurse himself. "I'll call your doctor. They just had me sign a few forms outside pending your release."

"My release?" Jamie wondered aloud, her mind going a million miles an hour as she still tried to piece together how she ended up here.

"Yeah. Do you..." Logan faltered for a moment, setting the IV needle aside just before pressing the help button on the little remote attached to her bed. "Do you remember the car accident?"

Right. That.

How could she forget?

The hot LA sun beating down on the dented metal of the car. Stinging sensations all across her skin she wished so badly she could scratch, but knew she shouldn't. The feeling of blind pain and numbness all along her left arm. The ringing in her ears that led to a painful headache that made her want to punch a hole into her temple to relieve her mind from the pressure.

She hadn't even seen the car coming...

"I remember it... yeah," she nodded, her voice still a little raspy. Her mind was having trouble catching up with present events and everything just felt cloudy. Damn, those drugs were strong. "Who, uh... who hit me? Some drunk person? Old lady with an expired license? I didn't get a good look..." she winced.

Logan frowned, taking his seat beside her bed again. "Look, I don't want you to panic because you're in a fragile state right now-"

Jamie turned to face him then. She wasn't really sure what he was on about, but once she caught onto the fact that he was withholding something from her, her clouded thoughts began to piece themselves back together. "Who?" she repeated her question.

"-You're coming off of copious amounts of drugs and just got out of surgery. I really don't want to set you off or-"

"Who?" she reiterated, this time with a bit more force.

Logan wished he hadn't said anything to begin with. "Look, after I got the call, I didn't know what to do first. Of course, I was here worrying about you, but then the police came to talk to me the day before you went back under the scalpel..." Jamie held her breath. The police were involved, that was never a good sign for something as non-emergency as a car emergency days old. "They told me they ran the plates of the car that hit you, some fancy SUV. The driver ran from the scene before the ambulance even got there."

"It was a rental?"

Logan shook his head, "It was a dud. The car, the plates... they don't exist. They're not under any name or ownership. All the dealerships in the immediate area have no record of selling that type of brand, make or model with those plates."

Jamie felt her heart stop. While still on drugs, it was easier to believe the blood in her veins had turned to ice with how hollow and numb she felt all of a sudden. This was a cover up. This was... an attempt on her life. And she had no leads, only striking fear.

She became very aware all of a sudden of that very same fear she'd felt while being stared down by Obadiah Stane, the man who had threatened her to stay away from this ordeal with Stark and her Dad months before. He'd seen her at the press conference talking to Stark, and now... this.

Jamie sat back in her bed, her breathing growing rapid as she struggled to keep her calm. The drugs didn't help, it was like all her emotions were amplified even further.

Logan seemed to notice the oncoming panic attack and moved to help ease her back down onto her bed. The increasing beeping sound from the IV pole grew louder and it only ceased when doctors and nurses began pouring into the room.

"Sir, back away," they instructed Logan, casting him aside to begin reading her vitals while the panic attack took it's course.

The last thing Jamie could remember before going back under was a sharp pain in the crease of her elbow once more followed by the crooning voice of a concerned nurse asking, "What happened to her IV?"


After Jamie's panic attack, the hospital staff was nice enough to let her stay an extra few hours than they'd planned.

Jamie had to bite her tongue from making any kind dark jokes that would get her in trouble with Logan, who was already on the fence about letting her be released.

The last night there, Logan had managed to calm Jamie down enough to get her to sleep for at least three and a half hours and eat at least two times. She wasn't very eager to be looked after and cared for, but her photographer and her nurses weren't giving her much of a say in the matter.

At the end of the day, Jamie laid down with her head tilted so she could watch the nightly news. She understood why so many people in the journalism community back in college were so obsessed with the Los Angeles news anchor, he was pretty easy on the eyes... or maybe that was just the drugs still in her system talking.

At the reminder of being on drugs, the IV in her arm weighed down beneath her skin. It was agitating, to say the least, that she was stuck on bed rest for an immeasurable amount of time. And on top of that, Jamie wasn't even sure how she was supposed to afford this lengthy hospital stay. Her health insurance was through the Globe and now that she was unemployed...

Jamie sank deeper into the hospital mattress, wishing there was a setting on her attached remote that would allow the uncomfortable bed to swallow her whole.

Beside the bed, Logan shifted around in the small chair he was currently passed out in. She wasn't sure how much sleep her photographer had gotten since the accident, but he had to be pretty desperate for rest if he managed to fall asleep in such an uncomfortable position on a difficult surface.

She felt a twinge of guilt for being reminded that she was the reason he was even in this mess. If this "accident" really was what she suspected it to be, a direct threat from Obadiah Stane, then Logan really was in danger for just being associated or within close proximity to her. What would have happened if Logan had gone with her for the drive that afternoon? Would he be the one hopped up on drugs stuck in the hospital bed?

Jamie knew she'd never be able to sleep at night if something happened to Logan because of her decisions and their inadvertent consequences.

The redhead sat up straighter in her bed and tried not to focus on what-if's and worse case scenarios. She had time before drugs wore off and the doctors came back with her hefty medical bill, so she was going to use that time to just focus on the news...

The handsome news anchor faded from view as a new anchor popped up next to a gaudy bold headline: Tony Stark Not Set to Appear at Upcoming Firefighter Family Fund Annual Benefit Following Rumors of PTSD.

PTSD from his months in Afghanistan? Who would've thought? Certainly not countless soldiers and veterans. Definitely not the actual citizens of the country who are trapped in the middle of a war zone.

One part of broadcast news Jamie loathed to the biggest extent was the need to capture attention with lack-luster headlines with little to no actual in-depth analysis and well-rounded coverage. It was why she'd always been more of a print person than a morning news in front of big fancy cameras next to model news anchors.

The pretty news anchor on the screen was beaming as she read animatedly from an off-screen teleprompter, "Sources close to the eccentric billionaire have said that Stark, while making great progress health-wise since his return from captivity, is still not quite ready for full integration back into the party scene that he was once known for." Jamie bit back the urge to roll her eyes when no one was there to share her frustration. "But while Stark isn't expected to make an appearance tonight, several other high profile celebrities, politicians and Stark representatives have already been confirmed, including Tony Stark's infamous Executive Assistant Pepper Potts, Stark Industries backed California Senator Caleb Corrigan, and even Brad Pitt-"

Jamie hit the mute button before the bubbly anchor could continue absolutely gushing about the possibility of the Olsen Twins making an appearance at this charity ball.

Once again, the redhead found herself unable to escape Stark Industries. Was this her future? To rot beneath hospital sheets waiting while more people suffered beneath Stark Industries the longer she hesitated to get back out to uncover the truth and publish this story?

She had to make a stand. She couldn't run from SI forever, and she certainly couldn't just walk away and let Obadiah Stane scare her into submission. How many people have fallen victim to these tactics? How many times has he gotten away with this intimidation? If Jamie was right about who sent the vehicle that landed her in this hospital, then she could've been right about the theory she'd had back in Atlanta about who might've set Tony Stark up to be kidnapped in Afghanistan...

Tony Stark was quite possibly in just as much danger as she was.

Sitting up in her bed, Jamie recalled what the news segment was broadcasting about who would be in attendance at the charity ball in a few days.

On the screen, an older video of Pepper Potts was projected beside a Stark Industries media release statement. She was close to Stark, she would be out in public within the week... A lightbulb went off in Jamie's brain. This was her in.

Logan woke up some time after Jamie had come to her senses in the middle of the night to find her out of bed, shuffling around the room. She'd managed to procure some baggy grey sweats, hospital socks, sandals and a dark gray cardigan sweater in the time since he'd passed out at her bedside and he was a little caught off guard to see her looking... alive.

Logan had seen many shades of Jamie Archer.

He'd seen her bloody and bruised plenty of times. One of the first times they'd worked together they'd gotten caught in a very massive union protest that got crashed by NYPD with tear gas and batons. He'd seen her seen her at her lowest after her Dad's death. Margot and Parker had enlisted the photographer's help in convincing Jamie to even eat the first week since learning the news. Logan had also seen Jamie at her best. Rushing back and forth around the walls of clues, evidence and writer's notes in her rented out office space because her cubicle back at the Daily Globe was never big enough. She would be glowing with every new door she unlocked and every window of opportunity that opened the more she stood uncovering the truth.

She was a journalist. She was a reporter.

Not because her Dad was a legend in the community, not because Barney Bushkin took a chance on her and it didn't stop because he fired her either. Jamie Archer was a journalist because she had a burning passion for what she did, and she enjoyed it more than anything.

As Jamie wandered around the room with a Sharpie and blue post-it notes, she lugged her pole of IV bags around with her. Logan watched for a moment, idly recognizing the look of concentration on her face as one he'd seen one too many times in the few months they've worked together.

Eventually, Logan knew he'd have to put a stop to whatever puzzle she was working on currently in favor of getting her back in bed to rest her body. She was attached to her IV and fighting her sleeping meds, it was only a matter of time before her injuries from the accident would catch up to her.

"James..."

Before Logan could get another word out, Jamie held up her Sharpie as if she were a conductor telling him to hold off on that note. "I almost have a complete outline ready to go. I'm just thinking of a good subtitle for a more appropriate abbreviation to 'Obadiah Stane's descent into madness that led to him having Tony Stark kidnapped.' Any good ideas?"

Logan opened his mouth and closed it a few times, unable to really form coherent thoughts after hearing what she'd just said.

She paused for a moment then, realizing that she'd probably said too much, too quickly. "Right. I should probably start from the beginning..."

Logan held a hand up, finally finding his voice again. "No, no, no, no- I was there for that particular conversation," he assured her. "But what did you say about complete outline? How? With- with what sources? Interviews? Evidence?"

A grin spread across Jamie's face. She gestured for him to go over to where she stood in the center of a semi-circle of scattered papers and post-it's. Logan's knees cracked from his initial attempt at standing up from his uncomfortable place in the chair. As he grew closer, he tried his best not to step on any of Jamie's laid out work.

"What am I looking at?" he prompted once he was standing beside her, her pole of IV medication between them.

"Over here is the introductory portion- where I basically divulge who I am and what Stark Industries has taken from me," she explained, gesturing to each section of her semi-circle beginning to the left of them and working her way down. "The next section gets a little more into the history of Stark Industries and how Howard Stark had initially began building this untouchable empire with the help of World War II military contracts. There's a slight inkling in this section about the possibility that Obadiah Stane might have set up the lethal crash that resulted in Howard and Maria Stark's death, but I may have to cut that unless I wanna get sued for libel."

Logan nodded. She would probably also have a giant target painted on her back for bringing that one up. He hoped she wouldn't keep it in the story.

"Anyway," she quickly continued before she lost Logan completely. "Up next is the power passing to Obadiah Stane after the Starks' passing and eventually the introduction of young Tony Stark into the fold, which resulted to the double dealing beneath the table. Stane got greedy, started taking more than just US military contracts, but he started funding terrorist cells in the Middle East like the Ten Rings because what's better for the business of a weapons company than a constant war? And what happened shortly after '91 to give Stane his big break?"

Logan felt his blood run cold. "9/11..." Jamie nodded. "Wait, hold on- are you saying Stane had something to do with what happened to the Twin Towers-"

"What? No!" she shook her head adamantly. "I mean... maybe. I don't know. Anything is a possibility, but that's not the main takeaway. The main takeaway is that maybe the riff between Howard Stark and Obadiah Stane happened when Howard Stark started looking into clean energy. The Cold War was coming to a close and Stark Industries no longer had as many weapons contracts after the Vietnam War."

"Stane probably didn't like this new direction for the company as Stark's right hand man..." Logan surmised.

"...So he set him up somehow," Jamie finished the thought. "But that's just speculation- what isn't speculation is that after Howard Stark's death, Stane took notes on what made SI the most profit- WAR."

"Which started his reign over Stark Industries and ultimately began his greedy rise to the top," Logan ran a hand over his face as they reached the end of the semi-circle.

"Leaving a trail of bodies in his wake and even more around the world if we don't stop him," Jamie set her hands on her hips, looking over her work as if she'd just finished a million piece puzzle.

Logan faltered for a moment. "You're sure about this?"

Jamie looked taken aback, "Why wouldn't I be? This is all we've been working for since... since my Dad."

"I know that. I get that," he explained. "But it's just... this is sounding less and less like a journalism investigation and more and more like a detective case. We're reporters. We're not law enforcement."

"Well, what would you have me do?" Jamie threw her hands up in frustration, her eyes falling down to her wide array of info at her feet. "I can't go to the cops with this, no one would take me seriously. All I am is a girl with a dead Dad, crazy conspiracy theories and a few dozen photos that got sent to me in a PO box. No government official would listen to what I have to say."

"So who are you planning to release all of this to?" Logan prompted. Clearly, with the way she was speaking, she had someone in mind. "You planning on publishing this? Without concrete evidence, no editor would ever greenlight all of this, James."

Jamie didn't answer right away, but he could see her eyes darting back and forth between the floor and the large window on the side of the room that looked out over West LA.

"Jamie..." Logan began to grow worried. "Who are you going to show this to?"

Jamie deflated slightly, her hand holding onto the post-its and pen like a lifeline. She slowly turned towards him, "There's a charity ball... Pepper Potts is going to be there-"

"No-"

"Just hear me out!"

"No, no, no, no-"

"Logan, please!"

"Jamie," Logan took a deep breath, trying to regulate himself so not to overstep and send Jamie into a spiral. She was still very vulnerable and quite possibly out of her mind for thinking this was a good idea. He had to remind himself she wasn't acting like herself because she was acting out of grief. But how far was he willing to let her push her luck like this? Vegas was one thing. The SI press conference was another. This idea was something totally different. "You cannot just waltz into a high-level event like this and just drop all of this into Pepper Potts' lap. You realize she could very well turn you in-"

"Or she could believe me! Stark knows my name and face, maybe she could pass all of this on-"

"Or we could be thrown into a jail cell for trespassing and harassment," Logan reiterated. He took a step forward, grasping Jamie by the shoulders and forcing her to look at him. "Listen, I'm not asking you to give up this fight. I'm right there with you on this. Stane needs to be brought to justice and anyone else in Stark Industries who had a hand to play in all of this... crap. But we need to do this the right way. We just need more time-"

"I don't have time!"

Logan reeled, his hands falling from her arms as he took a step back.

He'd heard Jamie raise her voice before. She once helped to evacuate an entire subway station after a bad storm had started to flood down into the Metro. He'd heard her scream at the top of her lungs to get the attention of a couple hundred or so people during that incident.

But hearing her shout this time... was different. It wasn't because she was angry or frustrated with him, but because she sounded scared more than anything. Terrified, actually.

"I don't have time," she repeated, a little less loud but just as desperate and frightened. "I don't have safety. I don't have security. This is all I have." Her voice cracked and he could feel a piece of his heart shatter slightly as she held her arms out, gesturing to the empty hospital room and the floor of post-its around her. "This is all I have."

Logan frowned, "What if we can't trust him?" He didn't need to say his name. Jamie knew he was talking about Stark.

Jamie wanted to give a reasonable explanation. Flesh out the mental list of pros and cons she'd been mulling over for the past few hours laying lifeless in that hospital bed. But really what it came down to was the simple fact that she was desperate and this really was her only option. "He's the only one I can trust right now," she stated. "He's the only one who has the power to help me, Logan."

Logan frowned, a troubled expression etched into his usually trusting expression. His furrowed eyebrows were usually an indication that he knew something and was thinking it over. "James..."

He knew something.

"What is it?" she prompted her photographer. Clearly, a change in circumstances had occurred while she was incapacitated.

Logan exhaled heavily, clearly making up his mind about whether or not to tell her after all. "Look, I wasn't gonna tell you because I didn't want you to have more on your plate. With everything going on and then the crash-"

"What is it?" She repeated, growing more scared by the second.

He clasped his hands together. "After Vegas, I reached out to an old friend I knew was already in the Middle-East. He's not a photojournalist, more of a director for a small documentary film and I asked him to just do a me quick favor while his unit made a brief stop in Gulmira."

Jamie faltered momentarily. It didn't sound familiar at first, mostly because she was thinking of the small village her Dad had been in. But when she stopped to think, she realized... "That's the place that-"

"Tony Stark was kidnapped and kept in," Logan confirmed. "I had him take a quick trip, in and out, nothing too dangerous... And he sent me back the images while you were in surgery the other day."

Jamie set down the Sharpie and post-its in favor of following after Logan towards his laptop that he'd kept beneath his uncomfy chair. He flipped it open and unlocked it within a few moments. She lingered at the foot of the hospital bed, waiting for the screen to load until the images finally did.

Slowly and tentatively, Logan spun the screen around to face Jamie.

Her face fell.

"When were these taken?"

Logan's gaze dropped to the floor, "Jamie-"

"When?"

He looked back up to meet her eyes. "Friday."

Jamie gasped, taking a step back from the screen. A few days ago. The same town Tony Stark had been kidnapped in, a week after he announced his company would stop manufacturing weapons... and the cycle was just on repeat again.

There was no possibility that Tony Stark couldn't know by now with these large shipments of weapons. How could he be ignoring it? Maybe he knew after all.

So who did Jamie really have in the grand scheme of things?

Herself.

It always came down to that. She had herself.


Nicholas Park was beginning to hate these damn black-tie events.

When he became interested in politics, he didn't actually think he'd have to use the skills he learned in Alphi Phi Alpha more than the lessons he learned in Poli-Sci. But being the senior intern under Senator Caleb Corrigan really opened his eyes to a career in politics that he wanted to avoid at all costs.

However, if he quit now, his family would disown him and cut him off to distance themselves from embarrassment at the Saturdays at the Country Club in Calabasas. He could hear the whispers now. Did you hear about Anthony and Lois' son? The oldest? Ran away from his apprenticeship with the greatest Senator in modern California. Drugs. I'm calling it now.

Nick rolled his eyes.

The bright flash from a nearby paparazzi camera blinded him momentarily, so his rolling eyes looked more like a recoil from the flashing ambush.

"Oh, don't look so glum, Nicky." Nick wanted to recoil from the grating voice of his local Senator himself, Caleb Corrigan, approaching while still maintaining his charming façade for the cameras in front of them. He pretended to be clasping his cuff links for a proper pose, but all Nick wanted to do was strangle him with the Yves Saint Laurent tie he wore around his neck. "Take notes, son. All press is good press and every photo opportunity you have, take it. You never know which photo will eventually become the first picture that appears under a Google search of your name."

Words of the wise, Nick wanted to sarcastically retort, but knew better to bite his tongue.

"You should write a book, Senator," he eventually settled on replying.

He figured Corrigan would be too preoccupied with himself to realize his words were sarcastic. He was right.

"I just might," Senator Corrigan boasted in his best impression of an old-school news anchor announcing the nightly weather. "After this event, make sure to put that down in my itinerary for my trip to New York coming up next month."

Nick inwardly groaned. "Yes, sir," he nodded like an obedient little servant. "I'll get on that."

"Yes, yes," he waved dismissively in the air, as if brushing off everyone around him, paparazzi included. "Just try not to look so depressed while here. This is a Stark event. You'll come to find that in California, these are the best types of events in the scene."

Nick figured the type of scene he was referring to right now was the the controversial one. After Tony Stark's breakdown following his return from captivity in the Middle-East, the stunt he'd pulled at his first press conference where he'd called off all manufacturing of weaponry shot his name to the top of the headlines internationally. Which meant bad press for American people in favor of big military presence and good press for the California hippies that ate the regurgitated shit Senator Corrigan fed them when he weighed in on the topic.

In an interview he had done last week with some LA Times reporter, the quote that had landed Senator Corrigan his invitation to this fundraiser (ass-kissing) event had been something along the lines of, "I stand behind Tony Stark in his decision to cease all weapons manufacturing at Stark Industries. Peace is something that cannot be ushered in without taking extreme precautions."

The kicker: Corrigan had stocks in Hammer Industries.

The PR nightmare that would eventually come of him being at this Stark Industries fundraising event wouldn't fall on Corrigan's head though, it would land on Nick's.

The young senior intern watched his boss laugh and boast in front of the cameras from off to the side. He seriously debated in this moment just slipping away into the crowd to disappear to a bar where he'd be able to get shit-faced until he completely forgot about how nightmarish this job was.

His foot backed up slowly, leaning towards the latter choice. He was almost completely turning away from the flashing lights and the shouting reporters and when he had finally spun to a complete 180, his chest collided with something tangible that wasn't at all the freedom he'd been aiming for.

"Oof-" Nick harrumphed, his breath leaving his lungs as something small and sharp hit him square in his diaphragm. "Aw..." he began to kneel over in pain, ready to scream out in frustration because not only was his escape thwarted, but now he would be stuck here at this event being known as the kid who got injured before he'd even made it into the building for the rest of the night. Great, as if his night couldn't get worse-

"Shit! I'm so sorry!" the voice of a woman apologized in a rush of words. Still slightly slumped over, Nick peered through his fallen gelled hair to get a look at the petite woman he'd run into. Or more like, she'd run into him. But she was pretty enough that maybe he'd forgive her for it.

She looked to be more in distress than he was, bent over and clutching his middle.

Her hair, while curled, looked a little frizzy as if her car ride over had been with the windows down at full speed. After he'd gotten past the dark red glory around her face, he noticed that she was wearing a minimal amount of make-up, save for some mascara and lip gloss. Nick noticed a splotch of cover-up in some space around her left eye, but didn't focus on that. What he focused on was just... her.

It was a rare sight, a woman at these types of events not wearing a full face with a little more cleavage and a little less dress. Her red hair complimented the dark long-sleeved green dress that hung perfectly over her shoulders all the way down to her knees, the back of the skirt going a little lower to the back of her calves.

He realized that while he was ogling this poor young woman as if he were a pubescent teenage boy, she was still profusely apologizing for hitting him.

"Do you... do you need me to call anyone? Get you something? Advil? Champagne? My insurance company?" she went on, her eyes not meeting his. She kept looking over and around them as if she were searching for someone to avoid or track down. Maybe she thought some A-list celebrity would be in attendance. Brad Pitt or the Olsen Twins perhaps. "Look, I really have to head inside and you not giving me a verbal confirmation that you're not dying is starting to freak me out-"

"I'm fine," he coughed. "I'm fine." He repeated, this time in a lower octave. "What's got you in such a rush, if you don't mind me asking."

She faltered, her eyes stopped searching the crowd for a second as she turned to him. It was like watching a deer getting caught in truck headlights. "What are you, security?"

"Nah. No. Uh, not security. Just someone a little worried about a sketchy looking young woman at the North entrance wearing an elegant green dress with a black eye."

The woman, no longer looking as frightened, tilted her head ever so slightly. Her eyes narrowed, looking up at him skeptically. "First of all, this is the South entrance," she corrected him in an impassive voice that almost made him smirk in satisfaction. "And second of all, the... other thing-" her black eye "-is none of your concern, Mr..."

"Nick. Just Nick," he filled in for her. But before she could make a Cinderall-esque escape, he made sure to leave an impression. "And you are...? Miss Smartass?"

"Once again- none of your business," she shot back hotly. Nick could see her face flushing as if he'd struck a nerve. "And secondly, bold of you to make me out to be a smartass. But maybe that's just a side effective of always being such a jackass."

Nick's eyes widened as he reeled slightly. Wow, he hadn't expected that. And apparently, neither had she.

As soon as the words left her mouth, she looked as if she regretted them instantly.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Unsure of what to say.

Nick took the opportunity to soften the blow of her insult, "First time being speechless?"

It looked as if she couldn't help the surprised and mildly amused laugh that left her mouth. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lash out at you like that-"

"It's fine," he assured her.

"It's not," she immediately shot him down. "It's just been a very long week. I'm in this extremely uncomfortable dress. It's hot as shit in this city and it's literally night time- how is it even remotely possible to be this hot at this time of night?"

Nick shrugged. "Well, welcome to California...?" he tried again to get her name.

"Jamie," she held her hand out this time. "Jamie Archer."

Nick straightened a bit, making a dramatic gesture out of shaking this woman's hand. Shaking Jamie Archer's hand. "Nick. Nick Park."

"Just Nick," she repeated what he'd introduced himself as earlier.

He used the excuse to hold onto her hand a little harder by shaking it once more, "Just Jamie."

She chuckled, almost blushing beneath his intense gaze. His Eye, as he liked to call it, did wonders with the women in college. Clearly, he hadn't lost his touch.

She eventually dropped his hand, but he could still feel her touch lingering at his finger tips. "So, just Nick... any chance you are security or know someone with security that could get me in?" she prompted, gesturing back to the entrance of the bustling event.

Nick looked at her, scandalized. "Are you asking me to sneak you in, just Jamie?" She shrugged. Oh shit. She was seriously asking him to sneak her in. "Wait, seriously? You're telling me you showed up to this event with no invitation dressed ready to steal the spotlight?"

This time, she did blush. She looked away, brushing a deep red curl out of her face. "Like I said, it's been a very long week." She turned back to him, sincerity in her eyes. "You mind throwing me a bone?"

Nick paused, contemplating his options.

On one hand, he could attempt to sneak this stunning redhead woman into this very public and publicized event with the off-chance of possibly being fired from his very shitty and very miserable job. And on the other hand... he could spend his night listening to his boss make slightly misogynistic comments about the female wait staff.

...yeah, it was a pretty easy decision to make after thinking of it like that.

Nick pretended to play hard to get for a moment; pursing his lips and clasping his hands behind his back. Maybe it was the light, but he thought he could see a slight flush in her cheeks as he stepped closer to her. Even with her heels she stood a few good inches shorter than him, so it was pretty easy to tower over her ever so slightly.

She didn't waver. He couldn't decipher whether it intimidated him or turned him on. Maybe just a bit of both.

Carefully, he held a hand up to her. Nick glanced down at her, then back to the entrance of the fundraiser, then back to her. "May I?"

Jamie glanced down at his hand. She hesitated for a moment before looking back up at him through her mascara-coated eyelashes. Her perfectly polished hand came up to set itself in his palm. "You may," she answered.

With her hand in his, he intertwined their fingers and began to lead them up the steps towards the entrance, not caring much that he was leaving his boss behind back on the make-shift red carpet. He'd probably be fired by morning, but seeing the look on Jamie's face when they waltzed through the front doors without being stopped or escorted out made it all worth it.

"So, Miss Archer, are you ever going to tell me why you weren't officially invited to this event?" Nick wondered, his hand tracing up from her hand to the crook of her elbow where he smoothly hooked his arm with hers.

She instinctively grabbed his upper arm with her free hand. "Uh... how about we discuss it over a drink?" Jamie prompted.

Nick grinned. Perfect.

"Alright. Let me start us a tab-"

"Actually," Jamie interrupted with a startled jump. When he glanced down at her, he noticed her eyes scanning the room until landing on the lit up bar on the opposite side of the enormous ballroom, decorated from floor to ceiling with white flowers, sparkling lights, and reflecting glass art pieces. "How about I go get us drinks?" Before Nick could ask her what had her in such a rush, Jamie stopped him again. "Yeah? Yeah! I'll be right back."

And with that, Nick lost her to the crowd of black suits, white ties and sparkly gowns.

Even such an outstanding woman like herself could disappear in a crowd of hundreds. Nick inwardly hoped that wasn't the last time he'd see her that night.


After pulling herself from her eager and welcomed company, Nick Park, Jamie escaped towards the bar.

It was a little overwhelming to be in this setting. Everyone looked a little like Obadiah Stane. Too many white bald guys with beards wearing designer suits had Jamie's head on a constant swivel. It was hard enough to avoid the prying eyes of the many politicians ogling her freshly shaved legs and the way they looked accompanied by her strapped stiletto heels.

But luckily for her and her swiveling head, Jamie was able to spot a certain goatee from across the room through all the stuffy cologne-wearing corporate douchebags and their blonde and bubbly mistresses.

Jamie was actually starting to feel slightly less nervous in the comforting presence of Nick, but she knew she had come to this fundraiser with a reason. And as much as she would've liked to spend a lovely night with a handsome guy who had a "sex look" (as Margot would call it) about him, she had priorities that needed to be dealt with first.

It was a little hard to speed walk in high heels. Jamie honestly didn't know how Margot was capable of full-on sprinting in these things on days she was running late, but she also made do. Taking a few more quick strides through the crowd, the redhead was finally able to make it to the lit-up white bar counter.

After all of that unnecessary cardio and added with the exhaustion from the past few days in recovery from her accident, Jamie was a little winded by the time she'd slapped her palms down onto the counter.

The noise from her appearance caught the attention of the bartender on the inside of the bar counter and the man of the hour beside her.

Jamie didn't look up at him as she tried to steady her breathing enough to choke out her order to the concerned looking bartender, "Water. Please."

The bartender nodded, turning back to his work.

Lingering to her left, Tony Stark slid a little closer to her. "Oh, look at us," he sighed, his voice projecting as if trying to startle her with his presence. Perhaps he hadn't picked up on the fact that he wasn't sneaking up on her when she was at an event she had snuck into to get to him. "Just two people who have fallen off the face of the Earth that are back in the spotlight."

The bartender came back with her glass of water and a martini with a few olives in front of Stark.

Jamie reached into her dress- thank God for pockets- and slipped five bucks into the empty glass being used as tips set between her and the billionaire.

"You look nice," Stark continued, glancing down at her as she continued to refuse to look up at him. "What is this? Dulce & Gabbana? Banana Republic? H&M?"

At this point, the crippling fear of intimidation mixed with her boiling frustration and heavy exhaustion had caused Jamie to go idle for a moment. She could feel her hearing dim and her head felt as if it were underwater. Her eyes stayed locked on the ice cubes floating around in her glass of water as she tried to count how many there were to distract from her current situation.

It was hard to believe that only a few months ago, Jamie Elizabeth Archer had a stable life and a good income. She had a job, she had friends. Her Dad was still alive and the biggest threat to her safety and well-being was her lethal penicillin allergy.

Oh, how she wished in this single sliver of time that she could go back before she'd dug herself into this hole.

She didn't even really know why she was fighting so hard for this. Her Dad was gone, taking Stark Industries down with him wasn't going to somehow bring her back.

Jamie was scared of a lot of things. Snakes. Spiders. Clowns. Tornadoes. Sharks. The dark. But one thing that scared her the most, even now in a room full of the super rich and ultra famous facing her biggest threat of all, was the possibility that she succeeded. She would succeed in bringing Stark Industries to it's knees, Obadiah Stane would go to prison and Tony Stark would flee the country. She would succeed and get her job back at the Daily Globe, be promoted to editor-and-chief. She would succeed and... nothing would change. She would still feel empty and cold and distant.

She would still feel like she was drowning.

"Hey," Jamie was pulled from her deep train of thought by a sudden tug to her arm. She finally peered up through her curls to find Stark had been the one to shake her back to reality. His eyebrows furrowed in worry. "You okay?"

She should've wanted to scream at him. Slap him. Call him names. Spit in his face. Throw her glass of water on him. Make a scene. Grab the knife over the bar counter and plunge it into his chest, to laugh as she twisted it deeper into his heart to mimic the feeling she had after learning what happened to her Dad.

But she didn't want to do any of that. She didn't want to hurt Tony Stark.

All Jamie truly wanted... was the truth.

"No," she answered honestly. The heavy weight of what she held in the pockets of her dress was too much for her to keep ignoring. Without skipping a beat, Jamie reached into her pocket and produced the printed out images Logan had gotten her the day before this fundraiser on the off-chance that she'd be able to find Pepper Potts instead of Tony Stark himself. With her freshly painted nails, she slapped them face-up onto the counter between her and the billionaire. "I was an idiot-"

"What is this?" Stark asked, his eyes falling down to the pictures she was obscuring with her hand still pressed onto them. He could clearly make out the familiarity with the background of the first image, but she was adamant on finishing what she had to say before allowing him to see them.

"I was an idiot to believe for a second I could've trusted you." Jamie watched a flash of what she thought might've been hurt in Stark's eyes. He seemed to quickly recover by bowing his head again to try to get a look at the pictures once more.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied, his voice even. "I don't know what these are."

Jamie lifted her hand to reveal the first few pictures. She let him cipher through them, his eyes widening with each new image of dozens of crates and boxes filled to the brim with Stark Industries weapons. Next to those first few were followed by fires burning people, holes in walls, blood splattered next to gaping holes in the ground left by bombshells and scattered bullets.

"When were these taken..." Stark choked out.

"A few days before my Dad was killed in a bombing just outside of Gulmira, Afghanistan," she answered, her voice cracking slightly. She tried to cover it with a small cough as she reached into her other pocket to produce the next round of images. "And these just a few weeks ago."

She set them onto the bar and watched his face contort with horrified confusion.

Nearly identical images. One taken before her Dad died. The others taken after Tony Stark announced Stark Industries would stop producing weapons.

"Why are you showing these to me? I didn't authorize this," Stark stated, dropping the pictures back onto the counter with a small slap. He turned to fully face Jamie, but she didn't waver as she stood toe-to-toe with one of the most influential men in the world.

"Someone did," she shot back at him. "It has your name on it. The blood is on your hands."

Stark exhaled loudly through his nostrils, growing frustrated. However, Jamie could see the fear in his eyes. It was nearly identical to hers. He really had no clue what was going on behind his back. "What do you want me to do about this?"

"Fix it!" she snapped. She realized she might've shouted a little too loudly when a few guests turned to tune into the conversation.

Stark smiled through clenched teeth to attempt to remedy the unwanted attention she'd gotten. Once they were sure no one else was watching and listening in, Jamie turned back to him.

"This is your life. This is your legacy. You're one of the most powerful people in the world, if you can't do something about this..." she gestured to all the death and destruction the pictures got only a glimpse of. "...no one can, Stark."

Having said what she'd gone to the event to say, her chest still pounded with her erratic heart unable to contain it's anxious beating. Her hand shook slightly as she took a quick drink of her water and quickly turned away from the bar to high-tail it out of this stuffy building, away from all the extravagant dresses, blood money and expensive cocktails.

As she approached the exit, however, her body froze.

Standing at the foot of the entrance was Obadiah Stane.

His attention was turned towards reporters with smiles and flashing cameras, but Jamie still felt like a deer caught in headlights.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't move. All she could feel was an aching pain in her left side from the repeated memory of a car crashing into hers at full-speed.

It was all a flash and a blur at once and she could feel herself getting light headed until someone pulled her out and away.

Jamie found herself back inside, backed into a dimly lit corner behind the laughing and mingling guests. She was trying to steady her breathing when Nick Park's clean-shaven face popped back into her spotty vision. "Hey, hey, hey- breathe. Just breathe. Stay with me... Please don't pass out."

Jamie couldn't help the nervous laugh that escaped her mouth. She readjusted her weight from her wobbly heels to her back that leaned against the wall. She was starting to focus a little better now that she knew Stane hadn't seen her and he wasn't exactly a danger to her here in a very public setting. Actually- who knew? Maybe Stane would shoot her point blank and all his rich friends would cackle like hyenas while Jamie laid bleeding out on the polished ballroom floor.

"Where'd you just go right now?" Nick Park prompted nervously. "You blankin' out on me, just Jamie?"

She gave him her best attempt at a half-hearted smile. "Wouldn't dream of it, just Nick."

"Alright, how about we get you out of here, huh?"

Oh, he was a saint. She wanted to cheer with joy when he carefully placed her left arm over his muscular shoulders and slipped his free arm around her waist to guide her towards another exit. Using the arm that wasn't tucked around her body to steady her, Nick nudged and politely pushed through the crowd to get them to a secret back door Jamie had no idea existed. Whatever this man did for work must've brought him to this building a few times to know a pretty good escape route.

Once outside, Jamie was able to breathe again in the fresh air not so stifled with expensive perfumes and colognes.

She stumbled to the side of the building where she stopped to take a breath and pop one of the medications Logan had insisted she take if everything got too much to handle the way it was now. She'd have to thank him when he got back.

While Jamie was preoccupied with trying to open the little orange prescription pill bottle, Nick was busy fussing over what to do next. "Look, is there anyone I can call to pick you up? I didn't exactly bring my Rolls Royce to this thing, but I'm pretty capable of calling cabs."

"It's- it's alright," she held her hand up to stop him from doing anything hasty. "I can figure out my own way back home. You really don't need to help me." Truth be told, she could actually really use any kind of help with getting back to the motel room. But she already felt guilty enough having used poor Nick to get into the fundraiser just to ditch him not short after. She didn't want him to waste anymore of his time with her when she was only going to disappear on the guy again.

"I don't need to, but I'd like to," Nick retorted, a playful grin spreading across his face.

Jamie couldn't help but snort slightly. He sure was stubborn.

His smile faded into a more serious look as he bent down to her eye-level. "Hey, look, whatever's going on is none of my business and I'm not gonna push you to give me any kind of insight. But I can't, in good conscious, let you sit here in downtown LA all by yourself. So... cab?"

Jamie let her hit fall back, hitting the cement wall behind her with a slight thud that made her headache return. "You're too nice. Anyone ever tell you that?"

Nick let out a surprised laugh. Even in the dim light, his smile managed to light up his face. "What's that accent I'm hearing? New Jersey?"

"As if!" she scoffed, the laugh that followed causing her to wince in pain from the ongoing headache wracking her skull.

"Alright," Nick moved closer in case she toppled over like a domino. "How about you tell me all about where you're from over coffee sometime after?"

"After what?" Jamie didn't realize just how slurred she sounded, she was too focused on Nick pulling his phone from his suit pocket. It was already ringing and buzzing, blowing up with people trying to contact him. Jamie slackened in his hold. She knew it was too good to be true that she'd have the undivided attention of someone like Nick. She was sure she'd find someway to get back to the motel almost forty minutes away.

Nick must've picked up on her look of disappointment and quickly silenced his notifications.

"You seem pretty busy," she remarked.

"Not busy enough to make me leave you here all alone, just Jamie," he replied with a charming smile. With his phone still in hand, he quickly dialed up an unseen number. "Hey, can I get a car to the Disney Concert Hall? ...Yeah- ASAP... Thanks." With that, he snapped the call shut.

"You didn't have to do this for me," she sighed in exasperation.

"Don't worry about," he assured her. "Why don't you make it up to me by putting your number in here so I can call later and make sure you made it back safely?" He held his phone out to her.

She smirked. There was always a catch, but his dashing good looks and his humor that went hand-in-hand with hers made her inclined to take this catch with a pinch of sugar instead of salt. She took it and typed in her ten digits before handing it back to him.

Nick examined Jamie's phone number in his contacts. "A New York number? Brooklyn accent?"

"Nope," she popped her 'p'.

"Guess we'll have to find out over that cup of coffee then." He held his phone up to snap a quick photo of her glancing up at him through half-lidded eyes and a delirious smile playing at her lips. "There, so I have proof that you were real."

Just as Nick slid his phone back into his pocket, a sleek silver vehicle pulled up to the curb with it's lights on. It honked, causing both Jamie and Nick to jump slightly. "Sorry- that's, uh, that's my driver. Or one of them."

Jamie's eyes widened. Driver? One of them? There were more? What did this man do for a living?

"Don't worry- Bill's a cool guy. Former military so no funny business whatsoever," Nick reassured her, probably not catching on to the fact that it wasn't the danger she was concerned by but rather the fact that she was dealing with someone in a different tax bracket. "Come on." He took her hand and eased her over to the car. She was able to walk a little better thanks to her returned equilibrium and the fact that the medicine was starting to kick in a little.

After Nick set opened the back door and helped her into the backseat, even going as far as helping her buckle her seatbelt across her body for her, he stood waiting outside on the car. "I'll, uh, talk to you later to make sure you made it safely. Just tell Bill where you wanna go and he'll take you, no questions asked."

Jamie nodded idly. "Thank you... really," she told him with as much sincerity as she could express while the pain killers were starting to take effect.

Nick reached into the car to tuck a piece of her hair that had broken free from it's half-up hairdo behind her ear gently. The area of skin his fingers lightly touched at the base of her jaw felt like static electricity even after he pulled away. "See you around, Jamie Archer."

"Bye, Nick Park," she replied, slightly slurred.

Before shutting the door, Nick patted the roof of the car and turned towards the front of the vehicle where Bill sat facing forward, probably to give the pair some privacy. "Keep her safe, Bill." And with that, the young man shut the door and waved as the car pulled away from the curb and off into the streets of LA.

As the car turned the corner from the back of the Concert Hall, Jamie leaned her head against the window to watch the lights as they passed the front entrance where she'd been half an hour ago.

She strained her eyes to see through the tint. Maybe it was her medication or the exhaustion or the debilitating anxiety attack she'd suffered all adding up that made her see things, but as Bill asked her where she was headed, she could've sworn she saw Tony Stark on the steps next to Obadiah Stane taking pictures.

As she called back to Bill the address where the motel was, she squinted to find that while Stane was beaming for the many flashing cameras before them, Stark looked almost... pissed.

Perhaps she made a difference after all in the brief and almost catastrophic trip to the fundraiser event.

Now all she had to do was wait and have trust in Stark... like it was so easy to do.


a/n: "realized i'm less important than I thought I'd be" - stuck with me, the neighbourhood.