Tony had been able to send his suit to Pepper as she was thrown towards a corner of a wall. If he hadn't, the back of her head would have been painfully split and the injury would have been fatal. Tony landed on the floor and coughed, heaving himself onto his elbow and looking around at his destroyed living room and kitchen. Maya was unconscious and Pepper was getting to her feet in the suit. Sue was standing and was mostly unharmed, thanks to her forcefield. Tony ignored the ache in his back and went to head over to Sue, when the floor cracked and began to lean off of the cliff.

'Tony! Susan!' Pepper called from inside the suit.

'Get her!' he pointed to Maya who was stirring awake. 'Get outside! We'll find another way around! Go!'

Sue looked out the window and saw helicopters that weren't with the press. Another missile was launched into the house, the floor tilting from under her. She forced her feet to stay flat as she powered the familiar cool sensation that came from within her. Rearing her head back, she thrusted forward a wind of energy that was near invisible. The force broke through the last of the walls from the front of the house and encased one of the helicopters. The vessel was pushed back and wobbled in the air, before losing control and heading into the ocean below.

'Sue!' she heard through the explosions. Tony was encased in his suit once Pepper was off the premises. He saw the cracks in the floor give way and send all that it held barrelling down the cliff.

Sue and Tony were able to grab the edge of the floor that tilted them downwards. Sue cried out at the ache in her arms from the steep incline. Her clothes were ripped and covered in dirt. Cuts bled down her skin and her hair was full of beige debris from the house. She could hear the alarms from Tony's luxury cars that fell into the ocean and tried to think of something she could do. She didn't have the concentration to form a forcefield while hanging from a cliff and she wasn't confident enough to keep it stable to fall into the ocean.

'Uh oh,' Tony mumbled as the grand piano from the front lobby barrelled towards him. He let go out of instinct and slid down the floor, using his repulsors to fire the instrument into one of the helicopters. A beam that stuck out from the wreckage caught him before he could fall to the watery depths.

'Tony!' Sue shrieked from above. Her arms were weak and she couldn't hold on any longer. Tony looked up and went catch her, when the final missile hit.

---

All Sue could see when she first woke up was white. What she could see, was a blur of lights that stung her eyes, and she was extremely disorientated. Her head rolled from side to side from the dizziness and her neck ached when she tried to hold up its weight. The blurs eventually came into focus, and she was able to make out the corners of the room.

Wispy curtains blew from the wind outside and Sue could make out the blue sky through the glass of the window. She saw the white sheets of the bed she laid in and the groups of flowers that lined the desk on the other side of the room. Miniature cards sat in front of each bouquet, all addressed to Susan Storm after the tragic incident.

Once she regained strength in her neck, Sue was able to turn her head to the right. In the uncomfortable chairs of the hospital, sat Johnny. His sling was gone but a large patch sat over his ear. The few scratches he modelled on his face were healing. He was in a better shape than Happy was, who was yet to wake up due to his severe injuries from the bomb.

Johnny sat with his arms crossed and his ankle resting on the opposite knee. His stare burned into nothing as his ears rang. He saw the Stark mansion destroyed on the news and got out of bed just in time to see his sister on the gurney. Nurses pushed the wheeled-bed through the halls as one held an IV drip to get supplement some pain relief into Sue's body. Her hair was soaked and turned the polyester pillow under her head into a wet slab. Her eyelashes sat against her cheeks, and she looked as if she was peacefully asleep. The cuts and grazes on her skin were beginning to bleed after being washed from her fall into the ocean.

'What the hell?!' Johnny had cried as she was wheeled past him. A nurse noticed him try to follow and tried to guide him back to his room, to which he resisted.

'Mr Storm, please,' the nurse blocked him from him following Sue down the hall. 'She's alive. You'll be allowed to see her in the next hour. For the time being, please just rest in your room.'

'Where's Stark? Is Stark here?'

Johnny never got an answer from the nurse.

'Hey... how are you feeling?' Johnny asked when he saw Sue's half-lidded eyes. He leaned forward and placed his hand over hers. She felt drained and her throat was roar. She opened her mouth to speak, and the strain and croak in her voice scared her.

'What happened?'

During Sue's unconscious sleep, Johnny watched the news on the TV in her room. The media went on nonstop about The Mandarin attacks, including the assumption of Tony Stark's death. From what the reporters said, they weren't sure if Iron Man was dead. Iron Man could never die from something as little as his entire house falling on him. He had survived a flight through a wormhole to the mothership of an alien race. Everyone knew better, but the doubt was beginning to settle in from his absence.

'You fell off the cliff from Tony's house,' Johnny explained. 'The whole house fell on you.'

The last of what she remembered came back to her. The missile hit the remainder of the house and Tony caught her as she fell from the edge she hung from. The two of them were hit with chunks of brick and tile. The suit's titanium-alloyed arms held Sue as they crashed into the ocean, the force hard enough to break bones. But Tony took the hit.

'Where's Tony?' she asked, and Johnny bit his lip.

'We don't know, yet. A suit was deployed from underneath the house and pulled you from the wreckage. They had to resuscitate you. You swallowed about half a litre of water. The suit flew off. Probably back under the house. Well, what was the house. How many of those damn things does he have?'

'Who are the flowers from?' Sue decided to ask after a while of silence. She didn't know what to say. If no one knew where Tony was, did that mean he was dead? But if a suit was deployed from the Hall of Armour, the storage that was under the house, that meant Tony had to have been alive to send the call through JARVIS.

'One's from Pepper... she tried to buy you orchids,' Johnny looked to the sunflowers that sat in the middle of the row of floral. 'You're still allergic, right? I knew the sunflowers would be better.'

'Yes, Johnny, I'm still allergic to orchids.'

Johnny snickered and was relieved that Sue was well enough to be passive aggressive. The worry he felt when he came into her room and saw how pale she was was like a kick to the stomach. He wished he was there at time of the attack. But he had to be there for Happy at The Chinese Theatre. He couldn't save everyone, no matter how much he wanted to. This was a trait he saw in Tony as well, and he knew that his sister was high on the man's save list. That's why he was relieved that Tony had done what he did to save Sue. It was an eye for an eye. Johnny saved Happy, and Tony saved Sue.

'There's one that didn't have a name,' Johnny stood and grabbed the white card that sat in front of the vase that held blue morning glories. 'But I think you'll know who they're from.'

Sue took the card from Johnny. It was hard to raise her arm and make her fingers enclose around the note. Once she had it in her hold, she let her arm fall and rest against the mattress. She tilted her head to look down at the words that read,

You know who I am. I'm sorry for everything.

---

'Stark Secure Server: Now transferring to all known receivers.'

'Sue, it's me. I've got a lot of apologies to make and not a lot of time. So first off, I'm so sorry I put you in harm's way. That was selfish and stupid and it won't happen again. You and Pepper are the only people I care about, and I still couldn't keep you guys safe. Talk about the world's worst screw-up in the history of screw-ups. And I'm sorry in advance because...I can't come home yet. I need to find this guy. You gotta stay safe, that's all I know. I just stole a poncho from a wooden Indian, none of this makes sense. I'm sure hothead's taking care of you. I'll send some flowers. Something blue.'

Tony hung up the payphone and shivered at the falling snow. The summer weather that hit California was yet to migrate to Rose Hills in Tennessee. Tony dragged the suit that was inoperable as JARVIS needed to be regenerated. He was angry at the fact that the flight plan he created before the attack was built into JARVIS's system. Far away from Malibu and from Sue, Tony was cold alone with a hunk of metal tied to a rope.

Once again, Sue was hurt because of his actions. Not only had his suit nearly fried her in his own kitchen, but she was also caught in the destruction of his house. When they fell over the cliff, Tony's only goal was to take the fall for Sue. His arms encased her and his back broke through the surface, the two sinking with the rest of his posessions. He had enough power to get JARVIS to deploy Mark 34 from the Hall of Armour, which he watched pull Sue from the ocean. A wire caught around his neck and pulled him down to the sea's bottom, JARVIS eventually pulling him free. But once he saw Sue's unconscious body fly with Mark 34, the urge to fly up to the surface was lower than expected. But JARVIS restored his flight power, and the flight plan was put into effect as he lost consciousness.

With him making his way to the first house he saw; he was far away from Sue. This meant she was safe. It was now up to him to finish The Mandarin story.