Author note: my fans will not be disappointed now! yes this was a VERY quick follow up, hope you like it! I HAVE ALSO CHANGED THE ENDING!

Disclaimer: Marvel ownership and all that blah blah blah

Warning: this follows along with my Avengers canon I've created, but reading the Hawkeye series is not necessary for this now.

Stark Dead

by: PeechTao

Clint Barton hated the lab. Where Tony and Banner spent majority of their waking hours was more than fine for them, but for Clint it always gave him a feeling of nails dragging along his spine. It didn't make much sense either. Nothing terrible had ever happened to him there. The Research and Development Department was pretty much Stark's wonton excuse to toy with everything known to man and a few things he just created out of his own bizarre imagination. It comprised an entire top ten floors of Stark Tower just below the basic living areas.

The last time Clint needed to be anywhere near it he was getting a new set of arrows for his bow. Tony came up with them on the fly, making the carbon fiber bodies work better with the new trick tips he currently had. The genius even had big plans on retrofitting his quiver in entirely new ways, but even with the advent of this pleasant circumstance, Clint could never quite shake off that bad feeling. He felt like a kid afraid of his basement. There was nothing the basement ever did to him. But the fact that it was strange, lurking down there in the shadows, and full of objects that could kill him without him even being aware of their existence was a little daunting. Maybe for that reason he never stayed very long.

For tonight, nothing so sinister lurked in the wings. The Avengers hadn't had a mission from SHIELD in nearly a week. This constituted a record given how busy they had been lately.

When Clint said "they", he really meant everyone except himself. Sidelined with a fractured rib, a missing rib, and a slew of healing scars from his face to his chest, SHIELD told him up front not to expect any excitement for another three weeks. So, Clint had to fill his time in other ways. Still technically on house arrest by Bruce Banner, he instead spent his time tonight doing Natasha's makeup for a mission and fixing Pepper's hair for her night out with Tony . . .at which time Tony mistook his intentions and tackled him to the bathroom floor. Since then, over three hours ago now, No one had seen the billionaire.

He'd been stuck with a crappy fabrication job back on the Helicarrier for the last five days. Then he decided to do some suit tinkering. After the Africa mission where Clint and Tony both nearly lost their lives, Pepper had felt a little neglected. So she planned a perfect little night out. Just the two of them. His favorite restaurant, her favorite wine, and a trip to the house they now shared just outside the city. It was an opportunity to spend some real time together and get him out of doors before he worked himself into a coma.

Of course with Tony, plans don't always go according to one's own time frame. She'd waited patiently for an hour getting all spruced up for dinner. When he disappeared after the tackling incedent, she had JARVIS relay a message to him. When that fell on deaf ears, she went down to the lab to get him herself. After another hour she called his cell phone, got sent to voice mail, sent down Steve, and Steve returned empty handed most likely because Tony had heard him coming down the stairs and hid under his desk. With three straight hours without anyone even seeing or hearing from him, Clint was not only the last straw, he was the final option.

Bruce Banner had been whisked away in Utah doing work with Jane Foster. Usually Banner could get Tony out of the lab easily enough when it was necessary. Thor could pick him up and haul him out just as easily as Steve could but that didn't mean he could find him. Clint was good at both.

He took the stairs down, wondering just what was so important for Tony to be slaving over to warrant Pepper's future wrath. She could be vindictive if she set her mind to be. The last bad side Clint ever wanted to be on, just south of Natasha that is, was Pepper's. Maybe it was a girl thing.

He opened the door to the first level of R & D. He knew where Tony's main desk sat and finding him not behind it was like seeing a light bulb sitting next to a lamp: both strange and out of place. He looked around the lab, the glass doors and sparse dividers giving him a rather unobstructed view around.

"Tony?" He called out. "Come one, stop being an idiot. If Pepper wanted to take you to get a root canal, I'd be all for this, but come on. Man up and get to dinner."

He didn't expect much of a reply, especially after Tony had been giving them the slip for the last three hours. Most likely he got caught up in something and didn't want to be drawn away from it willingly.

"You're lucky Pepper saw this coming and you didn't miss the reservation yet." Clint kept talking to himself as he searched around. Nothing under Tony's desk. Banner's looked untouched since the last time the doctor was in town. The drafting table had a dozen or so articles mismatched across the surface. Some stray digital documents lay in heaps of various sizes and categories. Clint ran his fingers along it to sort through them. He had another full nine levels of R & D department to go hunting through if this one turned up empty. It would be nice if he had a starting point.

Unsurprisingly a few dozen of the docs were of his Iron Man projects, code named Ozzy Osborne. Clint recognized some of the titles but the restricted access kept him from actually viewing any of them. Stark never left top secret information just lying around. In another pile a few different views of the Tower's ARC reactor with a digital mockup of Tony's own chest piece stood in specific arrays. A few strange periodic elements Clint didn't know or understand danced in the digital landscape like a screen saver. It seemed from the files that Tony must have been working on one of his suits. Maybe a short of some kind between the reactor and the armor. It wasn't uncommon as far as Clint knew. That tin can took one heck of a wallop on missions, leaving Stark with an irrepressible need for maintenance. It reminded Clint of driving a half a million dollar car around that ended up totaled at every intersection.

"What are you up to?" Clint wondered to himself. With these files lying around, he doubted he'd find Tony up on Level Ten. The Iron Man Sweat Shop, as he liked to call it, was down at a floor that didn't really even exist. Tucked between levels three and four, Tony built an extra room in Stark Tower that didn't show on any planning boards. From the outside, one couldn't ever tell the difference. There were no windows. The room itself was barricaded in enough anti-death metal to keep the Hulk from getting out even if he really, really wanted to. It took a careful play with the stairs to make it so even walking up and down the Tower one never realized they'd passed the secret level 3.5. Only Stark's private elevator could take him there, and that's only if he asked JARVIS very nicely.

Clint, at least, still had his clearance code up-to-date. From Level Ten he back tracked up to the living quarters, headed to Tony's room, took the private elevator down, stopped halfway between Three and Four, punched in his security code, and at last he'd made it to the Iron Man Sweat Shop. One could say that despite the disarray of the drafting tables, Levels 1-10 were generally clean. The Sweat shop, on the other hand, existed in a permanent state of chaos. Glass cases holding previous as well as current models of Tony's iconic legacy stood like iron soldiers in an arc to Clint's right. Work benches scattered around at Tony's haphazard needs. His robotic AI-tech support ringed one corner, all focused on the same thing with arms and gears moving one way or the other with a purposeful look. Tony's pilot's chair, as Clint called it, stood there too. In front of the chair were twelve separate LED panels with which he could scroll the internet, watch a movie, play iTunes, and maybe even accomplish some homework too, like causing the patriot missiles to be launched from Russian airspace or something equally malevolent. It was thoughts like that which caused Clint to be ever more appreciative that Stark was a good guy. He'd hate to have to go against him in a fight, global or domestic.

More often than not Stark plopped himself there to think or fit his suit. If he worked on some new leg plating, he'd sit with it, flex it, wing it around, make sure it was comfortable, and then try out an arm for a while. If this was all that had kept him from heading up stairs, Pepper had every right to wallop him for it. Clint started to come up with a cover story now, just in case he needed a good one.

"Finally." Clint said. "You're a butt-head when you're being summoned. And I hope this isn't about you finding me playing with her hair. Pep's not too pleased about you dissing her to voicemail. Think she even said something about making you put on women's underwear again. My first question is why did you ever put them on the first time?"

Clint crossed the room and came up behind Stark's chair. He shooed the robotic assistants off. The twelve screens all reflected similar objects to those from the past trips he'd made to the lab. One played iTunes. Another had Robin Hood Men in Tights with the sound on mute. Six of the eight others had various different angles and variations of ARC reactors in stages of deconstruction. A scrolling slideshow of photos took up the last upper screen with the lower being a digital photo of Tony and Pepper. An alarm blinked red over the top of the photo. It must have gone off about half an hour after Pepper went to see him in Level Ten.

Clint tapped his shoulder. "Come on, Tony, let's get going before I tell her where you are."

Stark never moved.

"Seriously? Cold shoulder? What are you, five?"

Nothing.

Maybe it was the fact that Clint always prepared to see the worst in situations. Or maybe it the atmosphere the lab gave him the willies. Either way, he felt instantly something was horribly wrong. He turned Tony around in his swiveling chair and met the horrifying sight head on.

Tony Stark's heart was out of his chest.

Clint fought the instant urge to lean over and hurl. Sure it wasn't Tony's actual heart, but his ARC reactor came close enough. It hung by little more than a single coiled wire out of the metallic cylinder created to house it in Stark's chest.

"Tony!" Clint screamed.

He could tell the billionaire was unconscious by the half-lidded eyes and the skin as pale as death. His veins here thick beneath his skin, as if they fought against sludge in clogged vessels. Clint could see the red and white wires tracing from their little suction cups on Tony's chest up to a separate computer monitor. The archer did a double take, to make sure the reading was correct. So far, it said Tony had slight tachycardia, but not enough to be overly concerned. His breathing was slightly labored, but steady as well. Clint's sudden freak out relaxed slightly.

The wire from the ARC hadn't disconnected from the chest plate. It probably meant the magnet that kept him alive remained intact as well.

"Tony?" Clint said again. He tapped Stark's face with his hands, trying to bring him around. He wondered if he should replace the reactor in Tony's chest or just not touch anything at all. "Tony, get up, you've got a big problem here!"

Tony didn't budge but the heart monitor did. It began to pick up some speed.

"JARVIS?" Clint called to the disembodied AI of the Tower.

"Yes, Agent Barton?"

"Fire up the comms, get Pepper down here right now."

"I'm sorry sir, but Mr. Stark has overridden my communication systems. He wanted to be undisturbed."

"Well, I'm overriding the override." Clint barked back.

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't believe I can do that."

Clint's face sank. Of course. That was his luck. His luck stated that when Tony Stark goes missing and Clint finds him all alone that he would find the genius passed out in his chair with a hole in his chest and no way to call for help.

"JARVIS, how long has the reactor been out of his chest?" Clint asked, still trying to bring Tony around with gentle slaps to his face and shakes of his shoulders.

"Mr. Stark had removed the reactor precisely at 5:12 pm." The AI stated.

Clint couldn't think enough to figure out how long ago that was. "How many hours has it been?" he asked, even as Tony at last began to show signs of coming out of his stupor.

"Two hours and thirty-five minutes, sir." JARVIS calculated.

"Hmm? Whar? Vat?" Tony mumbled incoherently as Clint kept talking him into consciousness. After passing one hundred and fifty beats per minute, the heart rate kept on climbing. Tony blinked his eyes a few times. They felt dry, like sandpaper under his lids. He didn't expect to see Clint standing there, so close to him. Touching him!

"What are you doin'?" Tony demanded, trying, but failing, to push the archer away. He felt weak and exhausted for no reason at all. His tongue was dry. His heart raced in his chest.

"What am I doing?!" Clint parroted. "Look at yourself! What do you think you're doing down here?! Tony, I thought you were dead!"

His head felt like an inflated basketball stuck on a neck made of Jello. As he tried to look down his whole body toppled right over itself toward the floor. A strange metallic ping resounded followed by repeated clanks. Clint started cursing.

The archer caught Tony's body as it pitched, just managing to ease him back when the force of the throw did the unthinkable. His ARC simply pulled free. The cord detached from whatever end plate existed in Tony's chest and dropped out; bringing with it the only thing in Stark's lab Clint knew anything definitive about: the magnet.

"Oh my God! Tony! Tony, pull yourself together, your magnet just came out!" Clint exclaimed.

Tony fell back against the chair. His chest heaved to breathe. His mind was still dazed and disoriented.

"What did I eat?" he asked no one.

Clint leaned down and grabbed the mess of coils and wires. He stood up again, poised with them over Tony's chest cavity. "Tony, what do I do?" he demanded urgently.

The heart monitor began to wail. Clint knew nothing about the little peaks and valleys that EKG's were made of, but he did know they should look similar to each other. These looked like a toddler drew them on the screen with a crayon in the midst of a grand mal seizure.

"Tony!" Clint said again. "Tony, you've got to help me now or else you are going to die in three minutes!"

Tony looked up at him. He was sweating now. His hand rested beside the metal hole, kneading the skin with his fingers. "Did . . . Did I eat Mexican? Heartburn's killin' me."

"WHAT?! Tony, help me put this back in! I don't know how!" Clint cried.

Tony's eyes rolled back.

"No!"

He was out again.

The heart monitor practically screamed. Clint's mental imagery was worse than anything he could have been told about what happened in front of him. The shrapnel in Tony's heart would shred through him, and then came the cardiac arrest, and after that sudden death. He was going to die in front of his best friend and there Clint could do nothing to save him if he didn't figure out how to get the ARC back in his chest and running.

"JARVIS call Pepper!" Clint instructed. He bent down over Tony's chest, peering through the hole to the base plate inside.

"My communication systems have been—"

"Just do it!" Clint interrupted. It seemed like there was a circular depression in a perfect size for the magnet in his hand to fit into. There were three connection ports, two that looked like socket holes and one like a printer plug suspended on the base of the metal chest cylinder.

"I'm sorry, sir, I cannot communicate without the override command."

Clint didn't have time to fight with the AI. He had minutes to get Tony put back together before his friend died in front of him. He swept a hand through his hair, unbelieving the situation he walked in on.

"Sir, by my calculations, Mr. Stark will be dead in one minute and thirty three seconds if his connections are not—"

"Yeah, yeah got that part!"

Clint had to wing it. He had no other choice. The readouts on the various screens were helpful to some degree, but not when he was ignorant in Tony and Banner language. He grabbed the solenoid first. Reaching his fingers through the metal hole, he eased the magnet back into place. He didn't realize the special attention needed for such a task at first. Like a life-or-death game of operation, he hit the side of the cylinder, set off a chain reaction that shocked not only him but Tony as well. The billionaire jumped, Clint yanked his hands away, and the solenoid dropped into Stark's chest to rattle around the end plate by itself. The ECG screen sparked as the electrical short rattled into its wires and exploded through the screen. Clint shook his hand, trying to get the sting out of it, but knowing he had no time. In fact, JARVIS continually reminded him of exactly that.

"Sir, there is only one minute and fifteen seconds before damage is irreversible."

Clint shoved his hand through the hole. His fingers could hardly fit as he pincered them to reach the magnet.

"Sixty second remain."

His fingers caught the end, edging it over just enough to fall passed the lip of the end plate and into the circular depression. He punched down until something clicked. Clint pulled back, grabbed the end of the ARC reactor and angled it over Tony's chest. He didn't know which side was up. What would happen if he put it in upside down?

"Fifty seconds, sir. I would advise an increase in pace."

"You know what I think, JARVIS?" Clint said in frustration. He picked a random orientation and just shoved the wires in. He carefully avoided the sides this time, but a little shock to Stark at this point could help, right? Clint could only manipulate two fingers in the cramped space to get the connector working. Another part of his mind monitored Tony's status. The veins still bulged, pumping with an erratic, slow squeeze. His breathing had slowed, or stopped. He was pale and covered in sweat. He looked dead already.

"Hold on, Tony." Clint whispered, trying to get the ARC attached. "God, just give me another minute. Hold on, I'll fix this!"

The ARC at last clicked into place. Overjoyed Clint pulled his hands back, looked down and waited. He expected Tony to just pop up, to shake it off. Say all was well, laugh, and walk away. But that didn't happen. Nothing happened.

"I believe there is no connection to the ARC reactor." JARVIS reported. "And there are only thirty seconds remaining."

Upside-down! Clint thought. It was the only explanation, at least the only good one. He yanked the cord free, turned it around and spent another painstaking amount of time trying to hook it back in with the tips of his fingers. All the while JARVIS continued bantering; reminding him of the time it would take to see his failure brought to fruition.

"Twenty-seconds."

Clint leaned over, perspiration dripping down his face as he tried to see what he wasn't doing right. He edged the connector over an inch.

"Fifteen seconds."

A screwdriver rested on the table. Clint grabbed it and shoved it down into the hole until the flat edge wedged directly behind one of the angles on the ARC's cord. With the improved reach he lined up the connection and shoved the wires down into the end plate.

"Only ten second remain, Agent Barton."

Clint pulled the screwdriver out. He grabbed the cord, shoved it down until the connection sealed like a plug on a socket. The light blue light of the ARC suddenly flowed down the cord and spread out in an explosion of power. Clint grabbed the ARC's hub and dropped it over Tony's chest, twisting until it clicked into place. He stepped back, waiting.

Sparks still drifted into the air from the heart monitor, occasionally coupled with the wisps of electrical smelling white smoke. The robotic AI's drifted around behind Clint's back, as if watching the happenings to see when they may be needed. Clint's entire body remained tensed with the adrenaline flushing through him.

"The time has expired." JARVIS announced matter-of-factly. "If his heart does not regain momentum Mr. Stark is unlikely to survive."

"Crap!" Clint lurched forward. He began pounding Tony's chest with his hand. Some random CPR course he'd taken as a requirement back during field days took over his mind. He pumped Tony's chest vigorously. He screamed for Pepper, Steve, anyone to hear him.

How had this happened? Why did this happen now? In front of Clint? For no reason whatsoever? What the Hell was Tony doing in his lab alone fussing with his ARC reactor? Didn't he know he'd kill himself? Didn't he have any idea what this would do to his friends? What about Pepper? How would Clint ever explain this to her?

"PEPPER!" Clint screamed into the abandoned level, feeling the overwhelming silence encompassing him all over. Even the music from Tony's neglected iTunes account had run out of songs in the playlist. There was nothing, nothing but Clint's ragged breaths as he stood over the dead body of Tony Stark.

Clint felt weak all over. His adrenaline high had run its course and now, as he faced the inevitable truth he could no longer stand at all. His legs fell out from under him. He lay, curled in a withered heap beside Tony's chair. His hands were shaking. His body wracked by sudden spasms of overwhelming guilt.

Stark was dead. He was just dead.

The overwhelming emotion hit him like a Mac truck. Stark and he had their differences, but somehow they always managed to get out of the worst situations together. For Clint to find him like this and try everything he could to help and yet watch Stark die anyway felt like too much to shoulder. The world around him dulled out of focus. It kept him from sensing the person coming up beside him. He didn't feel the hand on his shoulder. He didn't notice the person sit on the floor, place their arms around his shoulders, and pull him against their chest. When at last he did, when he came out of his stupor long enough to notice the presence he could do little more than grip the person's arm in his hands.

"I'm sorry." The person said.

Clint heard the voice, but he couldn't distinguish it. It didn't matter to him.

"Clint, what's wrong?"

Don't they know? He asked himself. Don't they understand? Don't they see just as easily as I can?

"Tony—" Clint whispered, catching himself up short. His eyes opened to look down at his own hands. They were covered in pus, goo, ectoplasm . . . whatever-the-hell it was that came out of Stark's chest.

"What is it?" the voice asked. Steve's voice? Couldn't be Banner or Thor. Definitely wasn't Tony's.

"Don't you get it?!" Clint cried.

The arms held him a little tighter. "Clint, come on. Let me know. Talk to me. Just say something. What's wrong?"

"He's dead!"

"Who?"

Clint pushed the person away almost standing if he'd had better coordination to do it. "Tony!" Clint exclaimed, turning at the same time to see Tony Stark, looking hurt, and sitting on the floor next to the chair.

Stark shrugged his shoulders. "What?" he asked, his concern evident in his voice. "God, Clint, I wake up and you're sitting down here bawling your eyes out! I thought Widow cut your jewels off or something."

Clint sat back on his hands, looking forward completely flabbergasted. His jaw swung open against his chest.

"Well say something!" Stark said.

Clint thought about something to say. He considered the words for half a second before realizing right away nothing could get passed the stronghold on his vocal cords. So he just sat there, jaw loose, saying absolutely nothing.

Across from him Tony threw up his hands. "Fine, have it your way. Look, if you wanted to have a heart-to-heart all you have to do is ask. Trust me, I get it."

He stood, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and shrugging it on before buttoning up his dress shirt. "All I did was come down here to do some quick work. One of the lights on my chest piece went out. It was a bugger to put back together I can tell you. Must have turned it off longer then I thought and passed out."

He fussed with a few of his panels. He looked at the ECG reading, surprised to find the state it was in. Hitching a thumb toward the monitor he asked. "What happened to this?"

Clint looked at the monitor, then back to Tony.

"Seriously, Clint, what's wrong? Can't you even tell me? I thought we were friends. That's what we agreed on when we beat the crap out of each other."

The blank stare continued.

"Are you like a mute or something?" Tony asked, giving him a strange look. "Well, when you feel like talking it out, tell me. I've got to get to dinner before Pepper decides to filet me instead. Lock up the shop when you leave, ok?"

Tony headed for the elevator. His back turned to the stunned agent on the floor. Barton grabbed him from behind. For a while he couldn't let go. He just stood there, trying to convince himself it was all real.

"Wow, never knew you cared. Ok, maybe that's a lie." Tony said, pealing Clint off of him.

"You were dead." Clint broke his silence at last. He had to say something. Had to make Tony understand what the billionaire scientist would probably never believe. "Stark, you were dead. I came in and you were dying. Then your ARC pulled free and you were just dead. Completely dead. I tried to put your reactor back in, then the EKG exploded, and I wasn't fast enough, and then I tried to do CPR—"

Tony cocked his head to the side. "Clint, I'm not dead."

"But you were." Barton pressed.

Stark gave him half a smile. "Sure, whatever you say. Is this your way of inviting yourself to dinner?"

Clint looked dumbfounded. "But . . . you don't get it."

"Fine. You can come. But no Mexican. I've got the worst heartburn right now." Tony walked into the elevator, dragging Clint in with him. As the doors pulled shut, Tony glanced over at his friend. "I do get it, Clint." He said quietly. "I don't like close calls. This is twice now you saved me."

Clint leaned back against the elevator wall, trying desperately to get his heart back under control. "Well stop making me do it. You're supposed to be Iron Man, I'm just the guy with the bow."

"I could make you an iron bow."

The archer shot him a wry look. Tony smiled, and the moment ended. This, as much as they didn't want to admit it out loud, was their new normal. Their life as Avengers would be full of near deaths and close calls, some self-made others not. For retribution, Clint grabbed Tony's jacket sleeve and smeared the fluid from Iron Man's chest cavity onto it. Stark groaned disapprovingly as he tried and failed to scramble away in the cramped space.

"Do me a favor and the next time you try dying, make Banner save you." Clint requested.

HOPE YOU ENJOYED!