Endeavour Nikolas Stark is perfectly fine as is.
As a child he had been extraordinary, finding a home among the friendliest of people at Charles Xavier's School For the Gifted, and finding himself Gifted in many ways just beyond the X-Gene in his DN...
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Suddenly the sunlight, bright and warm.
"Pepper!" Tony screamed her name as he landed a good fifteen feet from her.
He sprinted, running long and hard and grabbing her by the waist and lifting her into his arms as he took off again. The drone nearest to them blew as they flew off, she screamed in his arms, gripping his neck tighter as she did.
They landed on a rooftop blocks away, the sounds of the droids exploding in the distance a punctuation mark to their landing.
She backed away from him, her hands up by her ears as she yelled in frustration. "Oh my god!" Pepper turned back to face Tony, "I can't take this anymore!"
Tony's response was immediate, "You can't?" His face plate slid up.
"I can't take this."
He stepped towards her, holding out his hands and setting them on her shoulders. "Look at me."
Pepper attempted to pull away before relaxing and looking at him. "My body literally cannot handle the stress. I never know if you're gonna kill yourself or- or wreck the company!" She smacked his chest just over the arc reactor, "You keep secrets and you won't- you won't tell me where Nikolas is-"
"It is because I didn't want to admit to it." Tony took a deep breath, forcing a smiling onto his face as he did, "And besides I think I did okay."
"I quit!" Pepper shouted, "I am resigning! That is it!"
There was a pause, Tony felt himself shift. He stepped closer to her. "Okay." She looked down at his lips, pressing a chastised kiss there before leaning back with an angry face. "Wait, what about Nikolas?"
He winced.
"Yeah, what about Nikolas?" Rhodey's voiced joined in and both Tony and Pepper looked across the rooftop.
And suddenly Tony felt trapped.
He tried to keep his breathing steady, but his suit felt like it was constricting his lungs. "Jarvis check the- check the heart and uh-" Jarvis reacted instantly starting a scan on his heart, "And uh, open the suit. Open the suit now."
The Iron Man suit whirled loudly as it opened and Tony fell to his knees on the ground in front of the suit, his lungs filling fully without the constriction of the suit around him.
Pepper set her hand on his shoulder and only then did Tony remember where he was. Both she and Rhodey were taking turns calling his name and only after feeling his heart rate calm and Jarvis' reassurance that his heart was alright did he verbally respond.
"He's dead." Tony leaned back into the concrete of the building, carding his hand through the hair as he took a deep breath.
Rhodey looked at Pepper before speaking. "But we saw him after the explosion-" He cut himself off, considering the last time he had actually seen the younger Stark.
It had been before the explosion.
"He-" Pepper put her hand over her mouth, biting back as sob as she spoke. "Oh my god he's dead?"
Tony nodded, pushing the heels of his hand into his eyes as he spoke without being sure of what he was saying. "I keep imaging him here. Watching as I fought Vanko for the first time in Italy. Reassuring me when I created a new element and when Rhodey and I decided to blow ourselves up to defeat Vanko." A tear ran down his cheek. "But he gave himself up in the explosion at Stark International six months ago and there was nothing I could do to save him."
Something broke in Tony the moment he admitted it.
