"You know what happens after death, Pepper?"

He had been scared to ask the yet asked Pepper would friends would understand. They had been there with him from the beginning. They understood every fabric of him, every mask under his armour.

" 's peace,Tony." She tells him. She is sobbing, breath hitching with every syllable, but she is brave, and Tony knows it. There is something unbreakable in Pepper, stronger than anybody he has ever known.

Rhodey stands solemnly behind Pepper, trembling.

Tony felt wanted to act brave, but just the sight of his friends shook him to the core. He was scared, scared to close his eyes, scared to go before he wanted, before sorting all the messes he had created. All the demons under his bed, all the skeletons in his closet, he didn't want to go before the spring cleaning.

"Don't die."

It wasn't a command, it was a Pepper never pleaded with anyone.

"Please Tony, help will arrive."

Lies, Pepper, all lies.

There was no help. A brutal attack from the combined trio of ghost,whiplash and titanium man left Tony, Pepper and Rhodey stranded in a weak building, trapped within its wall by the portions that had crumbled. Rhodey wasn't wearing his armour and Tony's was damaged. Along with the arc reactor.

It hurt.

The armour was offline, there was no helping them.

At Least I'll die with my friends.

But Pepper and Rhodey could die too, from suffocation. He didn't want that.

"Pepper, Rhodey, retract the armour and use it to dig."

They looked scared, but it was a chance. A small one, for them. He was already dead, with the implant no longer functioning.

Rhodey began working on the armour.

It had to move and guide Rhodey, and the tiniest movement made spiking pain to travel though his heart. The shrapnel was moving, slowly, but surely, tearing his heart apart.

He prayed they would live.

Becoming iron man was his choice, why should they die?

But he would miss them, wouldn't he?

"Please don't die." He repeated Pepper's words in her ears and closed his eyes.